On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote: >> >> >> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote: >> >> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them >> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical >> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of >> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going >> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to >> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?" >> >> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question, >> >> >> Yes. :) >> >> >> > Very nice. It seems then Feynman's intuition was in the right place. The > second half of the above quote was: > > "So I have often made the hypothesis ultimately physics will not require a > mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and > the laws will turn out to be simple, like the checker board with all its > apparent complexities. But this is just speculation." > > > So it looks like that simple machinery is the machinery of the universal > machine and the simple laws are those of Peano (or Robinson?) Arithmetic. > > >> >> in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the result of an >> infinity of computations going through an observer's mind state as it >> observes the tiniest region of space? >> >> >> That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is >> suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but with >> Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here suggested. The >> reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could make a computation >> different from another, >> > > I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman diagrams", where > any possible diagram might be drawn in the tiniest area of space, so long > as it is closed, e.g. fluctuations/particle creations are permitted so long > as they all cancel out. So if space is physical, and enables any of these > fluctuations to happen, then this noise can take any possible value from > the observer's point of view (like the polarization of a photon). > > >> and so space could be only a marker differentiating some computations, >> like time seems to be in the indexical approach. All this would need big >> advance in the mathematics of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical >> matter. I expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant algebra >> due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical operators (I mean []<>[] >> and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, apparently space and time are >> really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in English >> sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to the mind). >> >> > Thanks I very much appreciate these additional insights. I do subscribe to > the belief that time is an illusion created by the mind. I have a little > more trouble seeing that when extended to spacetime as a whole. Though > perhaps what's come closest to helping me see this picture is Amanda > Gefter's excellent book "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"--I would recommend > it to everyone on the Everything list. It takes the approach that only > things that are invariant are real, and from there proceeds to deconstruct > almost all of physics. > > Jason > > I wanted to add, it also shows that the function (if you can call it that) of practically every physical law is to ensure consistency between observers. I think you would like it. 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
