On 3/10/2018 5:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 04:14:13PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
We want POVI. We look for symmetries, which are no more than patterns, that
we can build theories around. The fact that we're only satisfied with
theories that don't depend on particularities, i.e. are as general as
possible, doesn't mean we can make them out of whole cloth, independent of
observation.
So in effect, you are claiming it is possible for an environment to exist that
doesn't have any patterns, under any transformation of variables,
whatsoever.
I suppose that is logically possible...although I don't see how one
could exist in such an environment. But it's not what I said. I was
answering Bruce's concern that if one imposes POVI our theories would
have no empirical content. I look at as selecting for POVI, not
imposing it.
Brent
A corrolory of which is that one cannot implement a
program computing the value of Pi by an appropriate transformation of
the microstate variables describing a rock.
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