On 25 May 2015 at 05:50, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 5/24/2015 2:12 AM, LizR wrote: > >> The stability of natural laws is also the simplest situation, I think? >> (Isn't there something in Russell's TON about this?) Natural laws remain >> stable due to symmetry principles, which are simpler than anything >> asymmetric (although physics contains some asymmetries, of course, like >> matter vs antimatter). >> >> I'm not sure about this "person in an empty room" - surely they >> experience all sorts of phenomena that can ultimately be traced to the laws >> of physics? An obvious one is the pull of gravity (or lack thereof). >> >> But I have to admit I can't see how one gets from the UDA to physics. The >> notion that physics "falls out of" all the computations passing through a >> specific observer moment seems approximately as difficult to explain as how >> physics operates if one assumes "primary materialism" - but of course >> physics based on primary materialism comes with the benefit that for 100s >> of years, people have believed the ontology to be correct, and they have >> slowly built up a body of knowledge on that basis. Hence comp finds itself >> doubly disadvantaged in that no one has worked out how it might work in >> practice, and also in that most people react with an "argument from >> incredulity" because they've been taught that physics is based on primary >> materialism. >> >> This is a bit like the situation with cars that run on something other >> than petrol, or subcritical nuclear reactors. No one has put in a century >> of research to work out how (say) alcohol driven cars might work, or 50 >> years of research on how thorium reactors might work. Or 300 years of >> thinking on how reality might be derived from computations. >> > > Well actually cars running on alcohol raced on U.S. tracks through most of > the 20th century.
Hardly the same as millions being built and honed to meet consumer demand worldwide over a century, is it? > A thorium reactor was built and operated in the 50's. The use of 'a' here is rather telling, Again there hasn't anything like been the time and effort expended. I think a more accurate analogy would working out how cars would run on > trigonometry or philology. > That is nothing like as accurate an analogy. The correct metaphor is to find two things that could in theory be equally plausible, one of which has been chosen due to historical accident, and the other of which has been virtually ignored. So, A+ for (as usual) desperately finding something "wrong" with what I've said, but in this case D- for the actual content of your objections. -- 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.
