On 18 January 2014 19:51, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/17/2014 10:18 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 18 January 2014 19:12, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > >> But where does it exist? X has to be conscious of a location, a >> physics, etc. If all this is the same as where I exist, then it is just >> a translation of this world into arithmetic. It's the flip side of "A >> perfect description of X is the same as X", i.e. "X is the perfect >> description of X". If every perfect description is realized somewhere in >> arithmetic (and I think it probably is) nothing is gained by saying we may >> be in arithmetic. >> >> Don't we gain less entities, making Occam a bit happier? If we can get > the appearance of a universe without having to actually have one, can't we > "retire the universe" and just stick with the > "appearance-of-one-with-equal-explanatory-value" ? (Not an original idea, > of course, I'm fairly sure Max Tegmark said something along those lines > regarding his mathematical universe hypothesis -- that if the maths was > isomorphic to the universe, why bother to assume the universe was > physically there?). > > > I'm asking why have the maths? >
Well (putting on my AR hat) we have it because the maths is *necessarily*existent, while the universe isn't. > > Of course there's an answer - we can manipulate the maths - but then > doesn't that proves that the maths aren't the universe. They wouldn't be > any use as predictive and descriptive tools if they WERE the things > described. They are only useful because they are abstractions, i.e. they > leave stuff out (like existence?). > Well .... the maths does have that "unreasonable effectiveness" (that you're probably bored to death hearing about). And one reason for that could be because it is - in the guise of some yet-to-be-discovered TOE - isomorphic to the universe. In which case - should it ever prove to be the case - see above. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
