On 7/1/2014 1:01 AM, LizR wrote:
On 1 July 2014 17:59, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/30/2014 9:35 PM, LizR wrote:
ISTM...
In primitive materialism, what exists are space / time and matter / energy.
Information is an emergent property of the arrangements of those things,
like
entropy. Neither of these exist at the level of fundamental particles, or
Planck
cells, or strings, or whatever else may be the primitive
mass-energy/space-time)
involved.
There are problems with this view if information has primitive status,
which would
indicate that the real picture is something like "it from bit" or what
might be
called "primitive informationism". Evidence for PI come from the entropy of
black
holes, the black hole information paradox, the Landauer limit, the
Beckenstein
bound, the holographic principle, and (unless I already covered that) the
requirement that erasing a bit of information requires some irreducible
amount of
energy. (And maybe some other things I don't know about ... perish the
thought).
That's the Landauer limit, which isn't really relevant at a fundamental
level. It's
a thermodynamic law which is reducible to statistical mechanics.
Interesting. How is the energy required to erase a single bit reducible to statistical
mechanics?
PI isn't equivalent to comp, but from what you said above PI might be a
necessary
consequence of comp, which would give the "ontological chain" arithmetic ->
consciousness -> information -> matter (I think ... this is all "ISTM" of
course).
OK, except I think the chain is:
arithmetic -> information -> matter -> consciousness -> arithmetic
That doesn't make sense to me. I mean everything except the last term is OK, but you're
apparently claiming that arithmetic is fundamental AND an invention of the human mind.
Which at first glance looks suspiciously like fence sitting and having and eating your
cake...
Unless you have a theory of circular ontology, of course, in which case please fill in a
few more details.
Why? The details are no different than in the linear case. In the details you look at
each "->" separately. What's different about the circular case is that you don't suppose
that one of the levels is "fundamental" or "primitive". But I generally consider ontolgy
to be derivative. You gather data, create a model, test it. If it passes every test,
makes good predictions, fits with other theories, then you think it's a pretty good model
and may be telling you what the world is like. THEN you look at and ask what are the
essential parts of it, what does it require to exist. But that's more of a philosophical
than a scientific enterprise, because, as in QM, there maybe radically different ways to
ascribe an ontology to the same mathematical system. Even Bruno's very abstract theory is
ambiguous about whether the ur-stuff is arithmetic or threads of computation. You can
probably show they are empirically equivalent - just like Hilbert space and Feynman paths
give the same answers but are ontologically quite different.
and I'm not so inclined to take it as more than another possible model of
the world.
We aren't in a position to do more than build models of the world. If you think it's a
possible model then that's /all/ you can ever claim for it, well, unless some evidence
comes along that disproves it, when you can't even do that.
I think of it as a way to describe and predict and think about the world;
but
without supposing that it's possible to prove or to know with certainty the
world
must be that way.
Of course, we can't know for certain what the world is like.
As for A Garrett Lisi, I was under the impression that his particles were
something
like a "point in a weight diagram" - or something - which sounds to me at
least
like some form of information theoretic entity. But I have to admit my
understanding of how birds and flowers could emerge from the E8 group or
whatever
it's called is, well, about like this...
In a way, all of fundamental physics posits information theoretic entities.
"Particles" are nothing more than "what satisfies particle equations". Bruno
complains about Aristotle and "primitive matter", but I don't know any
physicists
who go around saying,"I've discovered primitive matter." or "Let's work on
finding
primitive matter."
Well, I think Bruno thinks it's more an unconscious assumption for most physicists,
rather than something explicitly stated. For example your statement about your mother
implicitly assumes her mind is "nothing but" what her brain does. That's a primitive
materialist assumption
But it's not an assumption. There's lots of evidence for it and practically none against
it. I don't think Bruno contests that. He just supposes that this mind/body relation can
be explained from a level he considers more basic (but I don't).
(and one that may be right, of course) but my point is that no one stops to make it
explicit, because nowadays it's deeply ingrained in the thought processes of anyone who
isn't strongly religious, and "goes without saying".
They just want a theory that is a little more comprehensive, a little more
accurate,
a little more predictive than the one they have now. And they couldn't
care less
what stuff is needed in their theory - only that it works.
So why the century-long kerfuffle about the correct interpretation of quantum
mechanics? :-)
There are two reasons for worrying about the interpretation of QM. One is that an
interpretation may really be, or lead to, a different theory, i.e. something that is
testable. Obviously GRW and Penrose collapse theories are in principle testable. Deutsch
thinks a quantum computer could test Everett's interpretation. The other is that
different interpretations may suggest different ways to make QM compatible with GR.
Brent
"Every complex problem has a solution that is simple, direct,
plausible, and wrong."
-- H L Mencken
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