On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 07:14:16PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > 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...
You didn't answer the second corollary part, which is the implication that a rocks does not compute all computations under suitable interpretation of its state variables. > although I don't see how one could > exist in such an environment. Probably by inventing POVI by suitable variable transformations 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. > I was never claiming there was no empirical content. Evolution would have fashioned us to see the environment in a patterned way, so it become unsurprising that we will see some patterns in empirical data. Those patterns will not be predictable ab initio, as it will depend on the tortuous path that evolution took. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.
