Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: > But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the > uncompressible class?
Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. > It seems the only way to tell is to test every > possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. > What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking > about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there > is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole "conscious observer" thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of "first cause" or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for "the one true Actor" in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. > COuld there not be the objective > fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not > correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word "law" (and based on my own private definition of "articulated" ;-). An unimplemented "law" is a "thought", which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word "implementation" is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use "realization" or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists "faith" at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute "faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. >8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
