On 12/12/2012 3:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 4:45 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/12/2012 8:00 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
All,
One of the questions in mathematics is where does mathematical truth
come from,
if it exists platonically, how does it manifest physically (e.g. as the
utterances of mathematicians).
I had a thought inspired by one of Roger's posts regarding cause and
effect
extending outside of spacetime. I thought, there is nothing preventing
the
goings on in this universe from having causal implications outside our
universe.
Consider that an advanced civilization might choose to simulate our
universe
and inspect it. Then when they observe what happens in our universe the
observations generate causal effects in their own universe. The same
applies to
our universe, we might choose to observe another universe through
simulation,
and our discoveries or observations of that other universe change us.
Thus, the
various universes that can exist out there are more interconnected than
we might
suppose. Our universe is an open book to those universes possessing
sufficient
computational power to simulate it. Likewise, how simple universes
like certain
small instances of the game of life are open books to us. The
possibilities of
gliders in the GoL has led to many discussions about GoL gliders, their
existence in the GoL universe has led to the manifestation of physical
changes
in our own universe.
I think the entrance of mathematical truth to our own universe is no
different.
Mathematicians have used their minds to simulate objects and
structures that
exist in other universes, in a sense they observe them, and then those
mathematicians report their observations and discoveries concerning
those
objects, just as an advanced civilization might report discoveries
about our
universe, or we might report discoveries about the GoL universe. Thus
the
structures and objects which exist in other universes have directly
changed the
course of the evolution of our own.
Except the simulation of the other universe is in this universe and the
existence of
that 'other universe' being simulated is just an assumption.
Even the existence of our own universe, we must admit, is an assumption.
So it boils down to assumptions made in this universe can have
consequences in this
universe.
I see your point, someone in this universe at least needs to have the idea about a
possible other universe out there, before building a simulation of it, but we could just
as well iterate over all the natural numbers, and map each number to a string of
letters, and any such strings of letters which describe how to setup a simulation could
be run, so it doesn't really take any creativity at all, like the UD, it can be entirely
automated. Thus in just starting from 0 .. infinity, we can iterate over all possible
digital simulations, and spend eternity exploring them and learning things about them.
I would also add, the existence of glider guns (and even Turing machines) in the GoL
universe is not immediately clear from the assumptions of the rules that define the GoL
universe. When they were discovered, is it more appropriate to say "they were
discovered in our starting assumptions" or "they were discovered a GoL universe"?
Simulating other universes which are anything like ours is impossible
anyway because
it is impossible to gather the necessary information to initialize the
simulation.
There are events out beyond our past light cone that we cannot know about
now, but
which will affect us in the future.
Well once you have identified the volume and length of time you wish to run the
simulation for, you can fill out the X number of light years beyond that volume just so
you don't get any surprises.
Then you *will* get a surprise when a gamma ray burster hits from that volume you assumed
empty. :-)
E.g., to simulate our solar system over the next 5 years, simulate 5 light years around
our solar system.
But the orbits are chaotic so you need arbitrarily high precision (or a quantum theory of
gravity) to simulate arbitrarily long periods.
Or if our universes is folded in on itself, it has a non-infinite volume, which could
serve as a boundary for the simulation.
Yeah, but what's on that boundary? And how could anyone find out?
Brent
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