Hi Liz, Mike, et.al.
It's time for the nature/descriptions of it/math relationship to undergo some formal attention by science. Discussions of the options we have in how we humans behave when describing the universe, in any other human social context, would be the job of a *governing body* and is called self governance. Variable levels of social formality attract varying levels of formality in the self governance. We have self governance for tennis, rugby, legal system, trade etc. etc. etc. We have _zero_ self governance for science. Scientists are unaware there is even an option. Scientific behaviour is universally assumed complete, finished, fixed. It is learned by imitation of mentors, not by being handed the rules on a single sheet of paper on day 1. Self-governance at least writes down the 'rules' e.g. tennis. In the book I write down the rules of scientific behaviour (as practiced for 350 years) for the first time. It is not written down anywhere else. If there is a fundamental limit in the behaviour, and you never ever review the behaviour .... isn't it obvious what goes wrong? Please do not confuse the behaviour that produces science outcomes with the outcomes of the behaviour. This is about the former, not the latter. This list's decade++ of unresolved endless debate devoid of any sort of progress is a symptom of the lack of self governance in science. Nothing will ever get resolved until we document what we actually do as scientists, look formally at its weakness/limits and then propose changes, to what scientific behaviour is, to deal with it. We must change scientific behaviour itself. We can't 'discover' our way to progress in this. We have to 'govern' our way to progress. Self-governance is not self-regulation. Science brilliantly ensures the ‘assumed, undocumented rules’ are followed. Science never ever reviews the rules. It’s assumed complete. My book reveals this strange, unique position in science for what it is. Science’s governance is not and never was the job of philosophy. Until we have at least one serious attempt at self governance, and a willingness to change science itself, we will be stuck with a 350 year old fossil social behaviour operating in an anomalous undocumented way, full of presupposition and endless debates and no resolution on the relationship between computing and scientific description, the scientific account of the observer, the scientific account of what is observed, and the natural world itself. In the conduct of science, none of us have a right to an opinion: "Assume X", "Take exception to Y", "I Believe Z", "any sort of philosophical XYZ-ism", "Tegmark is right" etc etc etc. We only have the right to what we can argue for with evidence. That's what I do in the book. About science behaviour itself, not its outputs. Dual aspect science is an empirical proposition. It has a relationship between the underlying world and computation. It has a relationship between the natural world and the observer. It has a self-established and doubtable account of the limits of knowledge of the natural world acquired from within. It does not assume uniqueness or arbitrary fixedness in any description of nature. It lets a computer’s account of nature and the human cognitive account of nature differ in structured, known ways. All of it is directly testable. The framework upgrade is a testable hypothesis. Someone on this list might have another proposal. Great! Let's organise a governing body to examine all options and actually _do something_ about it. I am going to have a go at establishing a forum for the first act of science self-governance in the modern era. An ASSC consciousness conference, where physics and neuroscientists are well enough informed, would do nicely. Meanwhile, if the folk on this list could raise their awareness of self governance and what it might mean for science, then something might actually come of all the endless debates. Nothing is ever going to happen if we don't do this. Cheers Colin Hales -- 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/d/optout.
