On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
> On 2/2/2013 6:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote: > >> On 1/27/2013 6:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Stephen P. King >> <stephe...@charter.net>wrote: >> >>> On 1/27/2013 6:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> >>> Dear Bruno and Stephen, >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Stephen P. King >>> <stephe...@charter.net>wrote: >>> >>>> On 1/27/2013 7:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> >>>>> The big bang remains awkward with computationalism. It suggest a long >>>>> and deep computations is going through our state, but comp suggest that >>>>> the >>>>> big bang is not the beginning. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Dear Bruno, >>>> >>>> I think that comp plus some finite limit on resources = Big Bang >>>> per observer. >>>> >>> >>> Couldn't the Big Bang just be the simplest possible state? >>> >>> >>> Hi Telmo, >>> >>> Yes, if I can add "...that a collection of observers can agree upon" >>> but that this simplest possible state is uniquely in the past for all >>> observers (that can communicate with each other) should not be just >>> postulated to be the case. It demands an explanation. >>> >> >> It's uniquely in the past for all complex observers >> >> Hi Telmo, >> >> I would partition up "all possible observers" into mutually >> communicating sets. Not all observers can communicate with each other and >> it is mutual communication that, I believe, contains the complexity of >> one's universe. >> > > That makes sense to me. > > > Hi Stephen, > > Can you see that this requirement even works if there are an infinite > number of 'observers'? > Sure. > > > >> Basically my reasoning follows Wheeler's *It from Bit* idea. >> >> >> because: >> >> - It cannot contain a complex observer >> >> >> How do we know this? We are, after all, speculating about what we >> can only infer about given what we observe now. >> > > Isn't it just a tautology? I don't know how to justify it any further. > It's like saying that an empty glass does not contain water. > > > Yes, it is a bit tautological but non-negligible because it sets up > the contra-factual basis for what is. That *is* is the complement of what > *is not*. Since the number of things that 'didn't happen' is, generally > infinite, we can see how events are somehow sieved or selected from many. > This leads to the idea that an observation is a selective action, a map > from many to one. > Ok I see what you mean. I feel that the content of our memories is a fundamental part of our 1p, and have difficulty imagining how a 1p close to the bing bang would be like. But it ends up being a similar difficulty to imagining how it feel to be a bacteria. > Classical physics seems to claim that only one event follows from a > previous single event, but this kind of reasoning fails when we try to make > sense of QM. I am working out a logical strategy... > Cool. > > > > >> >> >> - It is so simple that it is coherent with any history >> >> >> Simplicity alone does not induce consistency, AFAIK... >> > > I'm thinking in the following terms: imagine a CA which has an initial > state where a single cell is on. For any super-complex state that you find > down the line, the initial simple step is always a consistent predecessor. > > > I generally do not like CA models as they presuppose a fixed set of > possible outcomes or rule - which then requires an explanation as to how > that rule is selected, and it assumes an absolute time or, equivalently, > global synchrony of the transition events. > One idea I have (not sure if original) is an hyper-CA, where the outcome of a rule can be 0, 1 or a superposition of 0 and 1, in which case the universe is split. > I start with a pair of physical events and their duals (propositional > algebras) and work out the mappings between them as Vaughan Pratt describes > in his *Rational Mechanics and Natural Mathematics* paper. One can then > set up chains of such and more complex lattices to obtain space-time toy > models. > Cool, I'll have a look at the paper. > > > > >> >> >> >> That doesn't mean it's the beginning, just that it's a likely >> predecessor to any other state. >> >> >> > The word "predecessor' worries me, it assumes some way to determine >> causality even when measurements are impossible. Sure, we can just >> stipulate monotonicity of states, but what >> >> >> > would be the gain? >> >> I mean predecessor in the sense that there are plausible sequences of >> transformations that it's at the root of. These transformations include >> world branching, of course. >> >> >> I am playing around with the possibility that monotonicity should >> not be assumed. After all, observables in QM are complex valued and the >> real numbers that QM predicts (as probabilities of outcomes) only obtain >> when a basis is chosen and a squaring operation is performed. Basically, >> that *is* is not something that has any particular ordering to it. Here I >> am going against the arguments of many people, including Julian Barbour. >> > > Ok, this also makes sense to me. But can you accept that there is > quantifiable similarity between states? > > > Sure, there must be to have any thing like continuity and transitions > of event to event and state to state. My point is that we should never > assume a measure of similarity that cannot be physically implemented. It > one's idea of a measure requires an infinite task to be performed, one > should have a pretty good reason why it is being promoted! If it is > impossible to measure some quantity, then it cannot be taken to be > knowable. We can cheat a bit and use equivalence classes and so form to > reason abstractly about things, but all of the results are mere concepts > and should not be promoted to being 'real' in the same sense that a > physical object is 'real'. > But the similarity metric would just be a high level statistical measurement, like entropy. Entropy is equally not real in the sense that a physical object is real, it's just a way to make sense of things. > > > In this case we can still build a state graph from which we can > extract timelines without requiring ordering. > > > Sure, but there must be some relation between events that is > equivalent to a greater than or equal to (or less than of equal to, of the > logical equivalent such as A implies B, or A necessitates B, ...) for the > state graph to be relatable to timelines unambiguously. > Ok, some form of causality would still be implied. > > > > > >> >> >> >>> >>> The more complex a state is, the smaller the number of states that it >>> is likely to be a predecessor of. >>> >>> >>> Sure, what measure of complexity do you like? There are many and if >>> we allow physical laws to vary, infinitely so... I like the Blum and >>> Kolmogorov measures, but they are still weak... >>> >> >> I had Kolmogorv in mind and it's the best I can offer. I agree, it's >> still week and that's a bummer. >> >> >> Maybe we should drop the desiderata of a measure and focus on the >> locality of observers and its requirements. >> > > I don't think I understand what you mean here. > > > > Why start off with statistics? Why not start of with a simple relation > between a pair of objects and then work out a combinatorial model. We can > work out the statistics after we have figured out a model of the system. > Ok, that's an interesting proposition. > > -- > Onward! > > Stephen > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. 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