On Sat, Sep 09, 2017 at 09:56:05AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: > On 9/09/2017 9:36 am, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 05:08:39PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: > >>OK, proper time is taken from SR and applied only locally, so the > >>concept is not ruled out by GR. The problem is still that you have > >>simply introduced a time parameter out of thin air. If you are to > >>have time in the picture, it must emerge from the timeless > >>bitstrings, and you have given no account of how this might happen. > >> > >I think you are imposing a requirement for theory completeness I do > >not impose myself. After all, my theory is not a "theory of > >everything", but a theory of "Nothing". > > > >You are right, that ultimately, we would like to know how subjective > >time arises - whether it is via Barbour's time capsules, or some other > >stitching of observer moments, or the natural connection between > >machine states during a computation in a computationlist account. > > > >However, my approach is - OK - we're probably not going to solve this > >problem any time soon - so let's just assume that psychological time > >is necessary, and see where that takes us. That is my TIME > >postulate. If the results are nonsense, then we need to reexamine the > >various assumptions. So far, they're not nonsense. > > This is not really what you propose in your book: > > "Our descriptions are so detailed that perhaps it no longer makes > sense to ask Stephen Hawking’s question “what breathes fire into > them?”[59]. Putting Hawking’s question aside, a question that has no > answer in conventional ontologies, we note that the collection of > all possible descriptions has zero complexity, or information > content. This is a consequence of algorithmic information theory, > the fundamental theory of computer science. There is a mathematical > equivalence between the Everything, as represented by this > collection of all possible descriptions and Nothing, a state of no > information. That some of the descriptions must describe conscious > observers who obviously observe something, gives us a mechanism for > getting Something from Nothing: Something is the “inside view” of > Nothing. Hence my book’s title /Theory of Nothing/." > > That seems to commit you to finding consciousness in the infinite > set of all possible bitstrings. And if you are to find consciousness > there, you must, as a preliminary, at least find a decent theory of > emergent time there. > > It seems that as difficulties arise, you shy away from the grand > scheme as outlined in the introduction to your book. >
The book has many aims, and has a number of strands to it. The derivation of quantum mechanics as a theory of observation does not depend on whether it is the bitstrings themselves that are doing the observing, or something else. As for shying away from difficulties, I would refute that by pointing to section 9.3, where I discuss the very problem you mention. It is left as an open problem in the book, and it still is IMHO. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
