Re: belief, faith, truth

[danny mayes]

Bruno, Going back to the discussion a few days ago, I agree with the value of the UDA as an idea worthy of development, as you are doing.  In fact it seems to be the only idea on the table that I'm aware of that provides some explanation for the 1-indeterminacy of QM and also gives insight into why the most elegant or simplest explanations of observations in nature tend to be the correct explanations. My earlier suggestion regarding the popularity of your ideas was not intended to be a criticism.  To the extent I understand you I find myself in agreement with many of your ideas. Regarding the view of everything as mathematical object, it seems this has an element of truth to me, but it also seems to possibly miss something important.  As Hawking said, what is it that breathes fire into the equations?  Perhaps a better view is the reduction of everything to information, versus mathematical object, as some have suggested in recent publications?  A quick search for a definition of information came up with this:  1) that which reduces uncertainty. (Claude Shannon); 2) that which changes us. (Gregory Bateson).  Interesting in this context, maybe, to look at it that way.  The view of everything in the context of information perhaps leaves open the role of intelligence/consciousness in a fundamental explanation.  Danny Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, If I remember correctly Robert Rosen does not accept Church Thesis. This explains some fundamental difference of what we mean respectively by "machine". I use the term for digitalizable machine, which, with Church thesis, is equivalent with "programs", or with anything a computer can imitate. With Church thesis all computer (universal machine) are equivalent and can emulate (simulate perfectly) each other. The machine I talk about are mathematical object in Platonia. I never use machine in the materialist sense of something having some body to act in a environment, because my goal is to find out why immaterial machine in Platonia are confronted with stable appearance of materiality. I hope this can help a little bit, Best, Bruno Le 17-févr.-06, à 21:27, John M a écrit : <snip> Now a silly point: after so much back and forth about 'machines' and our best efforts to grasp what we should understand, would it be asking too much to re-include a BRIEF identification about the way YOU use the term? (Never mind Loeb). It would help me for sure. I could not decipher it from the quoted URLs (yours included), <snip> Lately on the Rosen-list Robert Rosen's 'machine' term got so mixed up that my understanding what I developed some 5-6 years ago got mixed up. It is different from yours, which just adds to the confusion. Yours is also going on over at least 2-3 years. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/