On 3/24/2014 8:24 PM, LizR wrote:
"But Tegmark goes further. He doesn't say that the universe is "isomorphic" to a
mathematical structure; he says that it /is/ that structure, that its physical and
mathematical existence are the same thing."
I can see the appeal. If the universe ever /does/ prove to be isomorphic to a
mathematical structure (and I'm sure that's a long, long, long way from being proved at
present) - by which I mean, if the universe is /exactly described/ by said structure,
with nothing else needed to completely describe reality - at that point, at least, I
would take Max's MUH seriously, if only because Ockham's razor would indicate there was
no point in hypothesising the existence of two things that are exactly isomosphic.
I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously isomorphic to a
mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different mathematical structures, all of
which are in Borges Library of Babel. Almost all of them are just lists of what happens.
Scott's point is that this is not very interesting, important, or impressive. It's only
some small elegant compression of those lists that's interesting - if it exists. Scott
seems to think that it does. I think it does *only* because we're willing to call a lot
of stuff "geography" as Bruno puts it, aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking,
randomness...
However we are a long way from that point, and I imagine the nature of knowledge and
measurement and so on mean that we can never actually reach it with 100% certainty.
We can't reach it because reaching it via infinite lists of what happens isn't
worth the trip.
Brent
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