On Saturday, August 16, 2014 8:35:23 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote: > > Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's > ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually > caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only > ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a "chain of turtles" - > i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, > some "shut up and calculate" beyond which we supposedly can't go. > > A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the > only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, > with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made > that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut > up .... is there? >
Not that I know of and in fact if you're looking for something "necessarily so" then as far as I can tell logic and maths is not just the lighted bit of the street, there's nothing outside of the lighted bit, because only in maths can you find what is "necessarily so". I suppose the question then is, is the universe "necessarily so", or just a brute fact? Or on the other hand, are we embedded in infinities which mean that nothing is a brute fact, everything having an explanation, but also that there is no ultimate explanation (turtles forever!). > > Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, > so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's > the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are > in the well-lit part.... Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, > and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in > (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a > feeling that "it from bit" goes in that sort of direction, as does A. > Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? > It from bit inverts the ontological priority of matter and information, but it's unclear what the information is "floating around in". The information space still seems arbitrary, but then I don't know Wheeler's work well. I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to > the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just > need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea > has some merit on the "it from bit" front (although I don't think it's > particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of > known physics.) > oh please, Edgar is a crank pure and simple. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
