On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:32, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
> This is debatable. nobody has found, nor can found, example of
primitive matter.
Unlike the proton and neutron nobody has found any experimental
evidence that the electron has a inner structure, that it is made of
parts.
The primitive matter I talk about is the idea of primary matter in the
Aristotle sense (simplified). If I say that electron is not primitive,
I don't mean it is made of part, almost the contrary, that it is a
mathematical reality, or that it is reducible to a non physical
mathematical or theological reality, an invariant in our sharable
computations.
> Now, it is easy, when assuming comp, to have example of
consciousnes without *primitive* matter,
But then its odd that in the "illusion" we live our lives in
consciousness is ALWAYS linked with matter.
In REM sleep, the night, clearly consciousness is related to
appearance of matter, and the day, we can agree on stable patterns,
apparantly consistent pattern. The physicist measure numbers, infer
relations, extrapolate, and publish about those relations of numbers.
That consciousness is always related to matter can be explained
through evolution, and long computation (and the derivation of physics
from arithmetic). The point is not the non existence of matter, but of
primitive (not "atomic", but conceptually irreducible) matter.
> consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced a
separation between me and not me,
In the "illusion" my body is always linked with my consciousness but
a rock is not unless the rock interacts with my body, a very odd
illusion if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, and odd
the illusion is so persistent and universal.
Yes, but it is odd in a sufficiently precise way as to make comp
testable. That's the point. The physics appears already rather weird,
but is it more weird than QM? Oddness, weirdness is subjective and
cultural.
>> 3) I dunno and will never know. (What are the first hundred
digits of Chaitin's Omega Constant?)
> This one, you can know, if you are patient enough. But you will
not know it and also know that you know it
True in a way. It's very unlikely but a random number generator
could spit it out but it would not do you any good because you'd
have no way of knowing it is Chaitin's Omega Constant.
I can run all programs and wait. This will give me all correct decimal
in the limit, but I will never be sure on almost all decimals.
> Chaitin's constant can be computed *in the limit*. Its decimal
will stabilize, you just don't know when.
It can't be computed in a finite number of years.
Each initial segment can. But not in an ascertainable way.
To calculate the first 100 digits of Chaitin's constant you'd need
to feed all programs that can be expressed in 100 bits or less into
a Turing Machine and see how many of them stop and how many of then
do not. Some of them will never stop but the only way to know how
many is to wait a infinite number of years and then see how many
programs are still running. So you'd need to be infinitely patient,
in other words you'd need to be dead.
Only to be sure of the decimals obtained. If I relax that constraints,
then I need only to be *very patient*. The non computable, but well
defined Buzzy Beaver function (BB) bounds the time needed to wait. Of
course it grows *very* fast. But I don't need an *infinite* time to
get the 100 first digits correct. Any time bigger than BB(100) will do.
>> Although meaningful the question has no answer. (Why is there
something rather than nothing?)
> OK, but the question can be reduced to "why there are natural
numbers obeying addition and multiplication law"
Lawrence Krauss in his book "A Universe From Nothing" says that
someday something close to that might actually be possible.
You mean? Deriving addition and multiplication from physics? That is
impossible. You can't derive them from anything which does not
postulate them implicitly. Physics already assume + and * (or R and
trigonometric functions, which are a way to (re)define the integers in
analysis, by sin(2*PI*x) = 0; for example).
> A physical event without a cause or a reason does not make much
sense to me (and makes no sense with comp).
Of course it doesn't make sense, it's in the nature of the beast.
So we agree on this. It is gibberish.
If it made sense that would mean you knew the reason behind it but
if it's truly random there is no reason behind it. It doesn't make
sense that X came to be, that is to say you don't understand it
because there is nothing to understand, X came to be for no reason.
Here it looks like it makes sense, after all. Why do you use
"gibberish" to condemn free will, and not to condemn event without
cause?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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