Yes, this discussion is, as the saying goes, "above my pay grade" but I do it to please (neurobiologically) my amygdala, and satisfy my cerebrum. Since I am stealing and modifying Eric Steinhart's theories on the Universe(s), consciousness, Leibniz, existence, and all the rest, I would say that God, as Mind, evolved from the simplest possible mind (arithmetic??) and spawned more and greater versions of himself/herself, all the while carrying along the previous iterations, as what physician called a veriform appendix to refer to, the simpler versions being a look-up table. I make these imbecilic statements because I suspect they are fact. Steinhart has speculated that each subsequent God/Mind has a universe within it. Where he gets this, I don't remember, but I somehow, like it. To paraphrase the old American rock song, "Be true to your God, just like you would to your girl!"
Steinhart uses his background in computer science to formulate his philosophy, since more and more, as physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians, start identifying analogies in nature, that we discover in computer science. He is big on Plato and Plotinus, as well as our old friend Nietszche, John Leslie, Liebniz again, etc. So your Platonic otherworld is, a subset of a big computer system. Where'd it come from? It evolved. How'd it evolve? Probably a program. Who programmed these sets to evolve? I don't know. Steinhart can sometimes espouse some kind of mathematical polytheism. I am not sure that I do. Benefits? It provides for a certitude of an afterlife, though his Revision theory of Resurrection, is all about improved universes with improved clones.Clones are likely via Everett's MWI, and Lewis's Modal realism. Not interesting for me. His Promotion theory solves this but using the under-floor of reality as computation,programs, axioms, arithmetic,processes. Information gets transferred to a better environment via pipelines, and Promoted. What makes these other universes better? Well, the operating system of these other domains have more evolved minds running the place, plus, depending on how time works, our ancestors and our descendents. Input-Processing-Output. Pipelines move our old minds into, wherever? Problems? It could all be useless dreck, and it's a complex and nuanced view. It is logical, but rational? It sort of works for me and all I am doing is modifying such thinking, on the fly, as we say in the states. -----Original Message----- From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Apr 6, 2015 5:18 am Subject: Re: The Object On 04 Apr 2015, at 19:04, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: My view is that rather than being a simulation, our universe and an infinitude of others,are programs that yields physical universes, as a programmatic process. ? That seems contradictory. Being a simulation means being brought by a program implemented in some universal number relation (physically realized or not, at first). The underlying software and hardware are more real than the reality we sense, OK, so we can take the simplest one: elementary arithmetic, for example. but our lives are very real. In the case above, our lives are very epistemologically, or phenomenologically real. Underneath everything is organized data, programs, processes, and pipelines to other universes (or parts of a greater very big universe). This is like using a God in an explanation. Why to introduce a universe to make programs and program execution, when we know that already exists once we assume elementary arithmetic? (with some measure that we can test so that we can test the hypothesis). So theoretically, humans and galaxies and bacteria, get promoted (as in software) to other places. I am stealing from Eric Steinhart's Promotion hypothesis, to suit my own pitiful intellect, and emotions. It is OK, but you don't need universes, still less other bigger universe. The whole of real math and physics use a tiny amount of arithmetical truth. Only logicians, category theorists and theologian needs sometimes to refer to the big one, the whole of the arithmetical reality, that we cannot even define from inside. That is *very* big. Bruno -----Original Message----- From: Bruno Marchal < [email protected]> To: everything-list < [email protected]> Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 11:10 am Subject: Re: The Object Nice! Quite Platonist! "We never invent anything---we always only discover." would assess a platonist. Bruno On 07 Jan 2015, at 23:54, Jason Resch wrote: From Douglas Jone's short story ( http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.html ): But suppose it were possible to create physical universes like yours within an appropriately specified computational universe. What could you say about the origin of the universe then? Very little, actually. Why? Because all general-purpose computers are equivalent. If it is possible to perform this "computation" within any one computational universe, then there are an infinite number of computational universes in which this "computation" is performed. If you were to try to follow the chain of causality back past the origin of your physical universe, you would find an infinite number of causes. These are all deep, deep questions. We have been thinking about them, and doing experiments, for a very long time. Our mathematicians have proven certain things... I’m sorry, I have to be very careful about what I say here. There is the very real possibility of inducing cardiac arrest in certain people if I say too much. So let me say some vague things: There exists an object, a mathematical object, which has certain properties. For reasons that should be obvious, there is no general agreement on what the best name for this object is, so for the sake of convenience, let’s just call it The Object. Your world, that is, the entire universe that you can observe, is an infinitesimal part of that Object. And so is mine. And so is every universe that can possibly exist. And everything else that can exist, whether or not you would call it a universe. All of Mathematics is inside that Object. And the various parts of that Object are somehow connected together. We expend a considerable amount of effort attempting to deduce the properties of that Object. In a sense, we are Exploring it. As I said before, we are Explorers, and we are exploring Everything. And exploring the nature of the connections between the various parts of The Object is the most fundamental kind of exploration there is. And some of the most interesting kinds of connections are related to Consciousness. The Object is Eternal. It exists outside of time. It has no beginning and no end; it simply Is. It contains many universes that have a property called Time, and you live in one of them, and so do I. But these universes are Eternal too. The Time within them is visible only from a particular point of view. Whenever we speak of creating a computational universe, or of creating a physical universe, or of creating anything, we are not really speaking of creation; we are really speaking of making a connection. Making a connection between different parts of The Object. The parts are already there. They have always been there. And we don’t really make the connection; the connection was always there too. We just discover what is already there. In other words, we just become aware of it. So whenever we think we’re creating something, this is just a vanity of the ego, which exists within Time. Everything is already there, within The Object. B: What do you mean, the Afterlife? Apparently, each of us gets an infinite number of different ones, simultaneously. And this doesn’t just happen when you die. It happens to you all the time. In the last five minutes, you have split into an uncountable number of different versions of yourself, each one in a different universe. And some of those versions of yourself have found themselves in universes that are very different from the one you all shared just over five minutes ago. Just because you don’t recall ever experiencing a discontinuity that big, doesn’t mean that it never happens to you. The Object contains all possible computational universes, with all possible initial conditions. So there are an infinite number of computational universes which contain, as part of their initial conditions, You as you exist at this precise instant. And this instant too. And all of the other instants of your life. And in precisely zero percent of those universes, which is to say an infinite number of them, you will find yourself in a world like the one I live in, the Realm of Possibilities. Where you will have freedom, and infinite choices, and immortality. Where you can visit worlds of invention, and live innumerable lives. Where you can follow, for a time, the paths of other Souls. Of course, in the vast majority of those universes, you will find yourself completely alone. But nevertheless, it can be shown that there are an infinite number of universes that will also contain all of your friends and loved ones. Even the ones who are already dead in your world. And we can take this even further. It can be shown that there exist an infinite number of universes that each contain almost Everyone! You see, The Object contains the Continuum of Souls. It is a connected set, with a frothy, fractal structure, of rather high dimensionality. The Continuum contains an infinite number of Souls, all Souls in fact, and an infinite number of them are You. Or at least, close enough to being You so that nobody could tell the difference. Not even You. And the Continuum also contains an infinite number of souls that are almost You. And an infinite number that are sort of You. And because it is a Continuum, and because there is really no objective way to tell which one is really You, then any method one uses to try to distinguish between You and non-You will produce nothing but illusion. In a sense, there is only one You, and it is Everyone. Of course, You can tell which one is you, can’t you? Or can you? I saw some old posts in the archive on this list by a "Doug Jones", does anyone remember him? Jason -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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. -- 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.
