Bruno wrote: Do you assume a physical reality, or are you agnostic on this question?
I do believe in a natural or physical reality, but I am agnostic if it needs to be assume and thus involved primitive element, or if what we take as a physical universe is a (collective) experience of numbers that we can derive from arithmetic (as it seems to be necessarily the case once we bet that brains are Turing emulable (I am agnostic on this, but not on the fact that if the brain is Turing emulable then the physical is an emergent pattern in the mind of the (relative) numbers). Hard to follow the summersaults of your concepts. I was waiting for some 'mathematical' reality as well. To "LIVE" in this universe I have to accept some scientific conclusions of the little info we so far absorbed (observed?) from a wider infinite Nature. That does not mean "I ASSUME". I may use it. Turing - as I think - was a human person so T-emulable is human conclusion. Again you seem to have circumwent the 'physical experience that we can derive from arithmetic" vs. "arithmetic, for which we learned a lot from Nature". I don't think arithmetic just jumped out from the human mind as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeuss. In full armor. Integers, Primes or else. We know a nice history how "zero" was invented and so on after the Romans with their decimal(pentagonal?) system. Our agnosticism may be different (I stress the so far unknown and maybe even unknowable infinite complexity of the Entirety as potentially influencing our (known/knowable) world as the basis of "MY" agnosticism. Beyond that I try to comply with the World as we humans may know it by now). JM On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 3:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > On 17 Jun 2015, at 22:11, John Mikes wrote: > > Bruno: to describe what OTHERS did does not mean (in my vocabulary) > that "I KNOW (agree?) the same domain as it was handled. I 'know' (or > may know) the efforts to derive science by human scientists. > > Does NATURE have regularities indeed? or our scientific observation > assigns returning facets and calls them regularities as long as they are > not > contradicted? OK, maybe I should use "EVENTS" instead of regularities. > And please do not make me a Straw-Man by repeating what I wrote. > Your sentence: > > *"Humans *might have learned a lot in mathematics by looking at nature, > but this does not prove that nature precedes logically mathematics."* > > I have not included "logically" and may write: Q.e.D. > > > Do you assume a physical reality, or are you agnostic on this question? > > I do believe in a natural or physical reality, but I am agnostic if it > needs to be assume and thus involved primitive element, or if what we take > as a physical universe is a (collective) experience of numbers that we can > derive from arithmetic (as it seems to be necessarily the case once we bet > that brains are Turing emulable (I am agnostic on this, but not on the fact > that if the brain is Turing emulable then the physical is an emergent > pattern in the mind of the (relative) numbers). > > Bruno > > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > >> >> On 15 Jun 2015, at 21:53, John Mikes wrote: >> >> Brent concluded ingeniously: >> >> >> *They have a theory for why THIS might be so no matter what THIS is. You >> just have to find the right mathematics to describe it and miracle of >> miracles the mathematics is obeyed!Brent* >> >> May I step a bit further: by careful observations humanity (or some >> 'higher' cooperating intellect maybe?) derived the connotions we call >> 'theories', math, even axioms to make them fit. Then we fall on our >> backside by admiration that they fit. Don't forget the historic buildup of >> our 'science' etc, stepwise, as we increased the observational >> treasure-chest of Nature. >> So Nature does not "obey" mathematics, mathematics has been derived in >> ways to follow the observed regularities of Nature. >> >> >> I thought that you were agnostic, but here you talk like if you *knew* >> something, which I don't. >> >> Even assuming Nature, the question remains: why does it have >> regularities? Why does it look like it obeys mathematics? To say we derive >> mathematics from nature does not really address the question. >> >> *Humans *might have learned a lot in mathematics by looking at nature, >> but this does not prove that nature precedes logically mathematics. I have >> given argument that the contrary might have happened: nature might belong >> to the imagination of the Löbian machines or numbers. We know that such >> imagination is lawful, and obeys strict constraints. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >> >> JM >> >> >> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 2:45 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: >> >>> On 6/14/2015 2:49 PM, LizR wrote: >>> >>> On 15 June 2015 at 08:22, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> I'm not saying it's ineffective. I'm saying it's not a mystery why >>>> it's effective. >>>> >>> >>> Because the universe appears to operate on principles that map very >>> well onto some parts of maths, >>> >>> >>> I think that's an illusion of selective attention. Remember how Kepler >>> thought the size of the planetary orbits were determined by nesting the >>> five Platonic solids. An impressive example of the effective of >>> mathematics - except it turned out there weren't just five planets. Now we >>> regard the orbits as historical accidents and predicted by any >>> mathematics. Instead we point to fact that they obey Newton's law of >>> universal gravitation to great accuracy. Another impressive example of the >>> effectiveness of mathematics...except it's slight wrong and Einstein's >>> spacetime model works better. >>> >>> and may even map exactly (we have no reason to think not - every >>> improvement in measurement so far indicates this, >>> >>> >>> Except when they don't. >>> >>> but there will always of course be room for doubt - just room that's >>> been getting steadily smaller over the last few centuries). >>> >>> But you haven't said why it does so. I may not agree with Bruno or Max >>> Tegmark, but at least they have a theory for why this >>> >>> >>> They have a theory for why THIS might be so no matter what THIS is. You >>> just have to find the right mathematics to describe it and miracle of >>> miracles the mathematics is obeyed! >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> *might* be so, and I haven't seen any definitive demonstration of >>> mistakes in their theories as yet (there are lots of suggestions that may >>> become definitive with more work, of course). >>> >>> So far, your answer to the question of the "unreasonable >>> effectiveness" of maths is basically "It works that way because it works >>> that way, I can't explain it - but trust me, it isn't worth explaining." >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >>> >> >> >> -- >> 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. >> >> >> 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 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. >> > > > -- > 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. > > > 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 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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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