On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 2/2/2013 6:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On 1/27/2013 6:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Stephen P. King >> <[email protected]>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 >>> <[email protected]>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 [email protected]. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
