On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 01:04:02PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote: > > The "dovetailer" keeps sounding like a powerful idea. I do remember that it > has often been mentioned here, but somehow I failed to pick up a sense of > what it was really about. Was there a message to the Everything-List in which > it was explained so that non-experts can understand it? I'm not asking you to > track that message (or series of messages) down, but if you or somebody > remembers around which month it was, that should be enough for me to find it. > Or is there a link to a Webpage with such an exposition?
Do a Google search, or a search on the everything list archives eg
Google "everything list dovetailer".
>
> Level III varies across quantum branchings. Level II varies across times and
> places along a single quantum branch in such a way that its features come out
> the same as Level III's features.
This is not my reading. Level II universes vary their fundamental
physical constants, eg G, alpha and so on.
Level I universes merely vary in time and space, but sufficiently
separated as to be causally independent.
...
>
> But I haven't noticed anybody here talking about variational principles or
> optimizational equations in any connection, much less in relation to Level
> IV. (While there is an obvious echo of optimization in applying Occam's Razor
> to Level IV's mathematical structures, this doesn't seem to involve any
> application of mathematical extremization, variations, Morse Theory, etc., so
> it seems not really the same thing. It's certainly not the only echo between
> a mode of inference (present instance: surmise, simplest explanation) and a
> mathematical formalism (extremization, shortest paths, etc.).)
>
Extremum principles come up mostly in Roy Frieden's work. No-one has
managed to integrate Frieden's stuff into the usual framework of this
list, so little mention has been made of it, but I do mention it in my
book. The hope is that some connection can be forged.
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