On Saturday, November 10, 2012 12:15:59 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:>>wrote: > > >> If numbers exist then so does geometry, that is to say numbers can be >>> made to change in ways that exactly corresponds with the way objects move >>> and rotate in space. >>> >> >> > I'm saying that there would be no such thing as objects, movement, >> space, or rotation in a comp universe. >> > > I don't know what a "comp universe" is because I no longer know what > "comp" means and I no longer believe that Bruno, the inventor of the term, > does either. But I do know that over the past year you have told this list > that information does not exist, and neither do electrons or time or space > or bits or even logic, so I don't see why the nonexistence of movement in a > "comp universe" or any other sort of universe would bother you. >
It bothers me because it doesn't make sense to suggest that a universe of experiences full of objects and positions can be reduced to a mechanism for which objects and positions are meaningless. What I am pointing out is that what comp implies is a universe which looks and feels nothing like the one which we actually live in. It does present a plausible range of logical functions which remind us of some aspects of our minds, but I think that there is another reason for that, which has to do with the nature of arithmetic. Comp mistakes the lowest common denominator universality of arithmetic for a claim to primitive authenticity and causal efficacy, when in fact numbers by themselves don't even have a use for geometric forms. > > You can prove this by understanding that there are no objects or spaces >> actually moving around in the chips of your computer. >> > > Electrons move around the chips in your computer, and potassium and sodium > ions move around the Cerebral Cortex of your brain. > That doesn't matter. My point is that our senses require a particular presentation of forms and experience for us to consciously make sense, whereas a computer does not need any such thing. The fact that we have ion pumps does not allow us to forego the luxury of having a screen and GUI to use our computer geometrically. Servers don't need GUIs to communicate with each other, but more importantly, no kind of computer will ever benefit from any kind of geometric presentation of data. > > >> make the Real numbers be the horizontal axis of a graph and the >>> imaginary numbers be the vertical axis, now whenever you multiply a Real or >>> Imaginary number by i you can intuitively think about it as rotating it by >>> 90 degrees in a counterclockwise direction. >>> >> >> > Do you understand why computers don't need to do that? >> > > I said a lot of stuff so I'm not sure what "that" refers to (sometimes > pronouns can really suck) but apparently you believe that computers have > some innate ability that humans lack, there is something computers already > know and so "don't need to do that". > It's not that they have an ability that humans lack, it is that humans are privileged with the sense of forms and objects, while computers are forever confined to the intangible (if there were any subject there to act as having a computer's point of view - which there isn't.) > > I do know that computers calculate with complex numbers all the time, > especially when rotation in 3D is important, such as calculations involving > Maxwell's or Schrodinger's equation. > > > This is my point, we have visual intuition because we have visual sense >> as a method of participating in a universe of sense. It would be >> meaningless in a universe of arithmetic. >> > > I would maintain that computers are already far better than humans in > determining what a complex object will look like when it is rotated. > I would agree that it is better at plotting such a complex object rotation on a screen for us to admire, but the computer itself wouldn't know an object from a string of bank transactions. Computers know nothing, they think of nothing, they understand nothing. What a computer does is no different than what a lever does when a metal ball falls on to one side of it and the other side rises. You will likely tell me again that potassium ions are no different, and you aren't wrong, but the difference is that we know for a fact that potassium ions are part of an evolved self organizing biological system that thinks and feels while no inorganic lever system seems to aspire to anything other than doing the same thing over and over again. Instead of trying to sweep this obvious and important difference under the rug, I suggest that the difference in structural organization is not the whole story, and that experience itself, accumulated through time, contributes to the life represented by the bodies of such self-dividing systems. > > > I am saying, IF the universe were purely functional, >> > > I don't know what that means, is the universe broken? > No, it means that comp is digital functionalism - it promotes the position that subjectivity and reality can be reduced to arithmetic functions rather than aesthetic experiences or physical matter. > > > Why would there even begin to be a theoretical underpinning for a >> universe which remotely resembles this one? >> > > I don't have a theory that explains everything about the universe and > neither does anybody else, but unlike some I am wise enough to know that I > am ignorant. > Yet you claim to be omniscient about what I can't know. Craig > > John K Clark > > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/yGB7zOUwOwUJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
