Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Dec 2013, at 17:04, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


>>> you know in Helsinki that you will survive and feel to be in  
only one city with probability one


>> That depends, Is "You" the Helsinki Man or the Moscow Man or the  
Washington Man or John K Clark?


> They are the same man, we have already discussed this

If they are all the same man then the Washington Man is the Helsinki  
Man, thus the report from the Moscow Man that he sees Moscow and  
only Moscow is insufficient information


Exactly. As I said, we can only have a 3p confirmation of the comp 1p- 
indeterminacy by tracking and interviewing all copies (or some  
reasonable sample).






to judge the quality of the prediction about which cities the  
Helsinki Man will see, you've got to hear what the Washington Man  
has to say too if you want to know if the prediction was correct;


Yes. And in the step 3 case, both confirms they see only one city, and  
that gives the complete information each of them have access too in  
the first person way. They both confirms that they were unable to  
predict the city with certainty.





not that the accuracy of predictions has anything to do endowing us  
with a sense of self. And they are NOT all the same man, they are  
all John K Clark but the Moscow Man is not the Washington Man.


Exact. That is the root of the indeterminacy. They are the same man,  
but their history have irreversibly differentiated.

We agree on all this, but this explains the 1-indeterminacy.






 > As I said you confuse "indeterminacy" (the general vague concept)  
with the many different sort of indeterminacy:
 1) by ignorance on initial conditions (example: the coin), that is  
a 3p indeterminacy.
 2) Turing form of indeterminacy (example: the halting problem),  
that is again a 3p indeterminacy.
 3) quantum indeterminacy in copenhague (3p indeterminacy, if that  
exists)
 4) quantum indeterminacy in Everett (1p indeterminacy, which needs  
the quantum SWE assumption)
 5) computationalist 1p-indeterminacy (similar to Everett, except  
that it does not need to assume the SWE or Everett-QM). Itis the  
one we get in step 3, and it is part of the derivation of physics  
from comp.


Only the first 3 make any sense, and even there all those peas are  
unnecessary.



OK. But here, contrary to what you answered many times to Quentin, you  
seem to agree that if your argument is valid again the comp- 
indeterminacy, it is valid against Everett formulation of QM.


I recall you that, like Einstein and many others, I believe that "3)"  
is "insanity". You might be  right that it is logically conceivable  
(perhaps---I am not even sure about that), but once we accept events  
without cause, we fall in the "don't ask" type of theories. As  
explanation, it is as bad as the God-of-the-gap. On the contrary, self- 
duplication explains the appearance of such indeterminacy, without  
adding any further assumptions. Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)"  
substitutes a very simple explanation by a call to a form of built-in- 
non-explainable magic.


Bruno





 John K Clark






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Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Dec 2013, at 21:43, LizR wrote:


On 16 December 2013 06:46, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

Perhaps "politician" should not be a profession. We would vote for  
programs and ideas, and let them implemented by a random sample of  
the population through some social services, or by well sworn robots  
or the net.  We must find ways of keeping well the separation of the  
powers.


That sounds like an excellent idea - though who will administer it?  
We really need open source AIs in charge!


Good idea, but even this will concentrate some power in the hand of a  
category of people (like "Linux nerds"). Nothing is simple.





Then again, have your read Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" ?


It seems I remember having read a long time ago some books by Ira  
Levin, but I don't really remember. You can sum up the punch line, if  
you have the time.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[Telmo Menezes]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 5:59 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 12/15/2013 4:23 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 14 Dec 2013, at 23:27, LizR wrote:
>>
>> I haven't had a chance to watch it, but I do know that banks are stealing
>> our wealth - as indeed are rich people generally, since "wealth breeds more
>> wealth" and that more wealth has to be extracted from you and me.
>>
>>
>>
>> Money and richness is not a problem. It is the blood of the social system.
>>
>> Money and richness is a problem only when it is based on lies, and when it
>> is used to hide the lies and perpetuate them.
>>
>> Honest money enrich everybody. True, it is slower for poor, and quicker
>> for the rich, but when people play the game "honestly", everyone win, and
>> poverty regress.
>>
>> In a working economy, there are few poor. Presence of poverty means that
>> there are stealers and bandits (or war or catastrophes). Accusing the system
>> and money itself is all benefices for the bandits. It dilutes their
>> responsibility and wrong-doing in the abstract. It helps them to feel like
>> not guilty.
>>
>> As I said, criticizing the economical system is like attributing to the
>> blood cells the responsibility of some tumor since the blood cells feeds it.
>> It hides the real root of the problem, and focus on the wrong target.
>
>
> I agree, unsurprisingly. :)
> I also agree with Liz, in that it is clear who is stealing the money.
>
> The "rich get richer" is a very fundamental phenomenon. Even if we remove
> money from society, it will still happen because it also applies to social
> interactions. The more friends and alliances you have, the more likely you
> are to get new ones. This is the reason why every entrepreneur seeks the
> allegiance of celebrities. It's a more subtle form of currency.
>
> However, we got trapped into a system that effectively amplifies "rich get
> richer" dynamics. This system is central banking -- since the powerful have
> the capacity to issue fiat money in the form of debt, two things happen:
>
>
> It doesn't take central banking to make the rich get richer.

Yes, that is what I said. My claim is that central banking amplifies the effect.

> Ever since
> civilization began the rich have been able to get richer just by owning
> stuff. For a couple of millenia it was owning land.  If you owned land then
> serfs and peasants had to pay you for working the land.  Then merchantilism
> added ships to what you could own.  Then industrialization added mines and
> oil and factories.  Banking and insurance added financial instruments that
> you could own.  But it's all of a piece.  If you own stuff that you can
> rent/lend you're rich and you can get richer.

But central banks can print new money. This new money is lent. The
more money you have, the more new money the banking system will lend
to you. Thus the amplification. Also, the marginal value of money
decreases the more you have, so this devaluation and speculation with
new money exposes the poor to more risk, while they don't actually
have access to the investment opportunities that the rich have.

>  Of course you can also
> influence government and governments exist largely to protect your property
> rights.
>
>
>
> - The money I have in my pocket is not safe. They can devalue it and there
> is nothing I can do about it. They have a strong incentive to devalue my
> money because they can give the new money they created to their allies,
> through sophisticated mechanisms. It is very cleverly disguised, but it's
> still plain old theft;
>
>
> That means you have a strong incentive to invest/spend your money.  And that
> applies also to a rich person that has a lot of money - inflation encourages
> him to spend it on something.

Right, and this prevents the bulk of the population from escaping wage
slavery even though technology could replace labour.

> So one of the reasons for the current
> recession is that wealth is very concentrated by inflation is quite low, so
> corporations and wealthy persons are not motivated to take much risk on
> investing their money; they can easily wait and see.

I would argue that a deeper reason is that technology made many jobs
disappear, but the inflationary economic system we live under cannot
accommodate that.

>
> - The more wealthy, who can invest, can leverage their investments by orders
> of greatness. The more money you have, the more you can leverage it (by
> effectively creating new "fake" money). The poor are the most vulnerable to
> the inevitable systemic collapse that a debt-based economy will create. The
> poor implicitly risk their homes and means of survival when the rich play
> the big casino game of leveraged investments, derivative markets and so on.
>
>
> But that money isn't fake.

Yes, maybe a better word is stolen, because it was created by diluting
the value of the money in people's banks accounts, but it is then
given to other people.

Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[LizR]

On 16 December 2013 21:52, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 15 Dec 2013, at 21:43, LizR wrote:
>
> On 16 December 2013 06:46, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> Perhaps "politician" should not be a profession. We would vote for
>> programs and ideas, and let them implemented by a random sample of the
>> population through some social services, or by well sworn robots or the
>> net.  We must find ways of keeping well the separation of the powers.
>>
>
> That sounds like an excellent idea - though who will administer it? We
> really need open source AIs in charge!
>
>
> Good idea, but even this will concentrate some power in the hand of a
> category of people (like "Linux nerds"). Nothing is simple.
>
> Then again, have your read Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" ?
>
> It seems I remember having read a long time ago some books by Ira Levin,
> but I don't really remember. You can sum up the punch line, if you have the
> time.
>
> The world is run by a computer system (called "Uni" (!)) which has
scanners and terminals everywhere, and which monitors everyone's behaviour
and administers drugs to keep them happy and "team players". But as you
might expect, the world isn't really being controlled by Uni, there is a
group of people behind it - the "programmers", or (I guess) the descendants
of the original programmers. So basically it's what you were saying above :)

(Ira Levin also wrote "Rosemary's baby", "The Stepford Wives" and "The boys
from Brazil". "This Perfect Day" is, I think, his only novel *not* to have
been made into a film).

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Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Dec 2013, at 09:59, LizR wrote:


On 16 December 2013 21:52, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 15 Dec 2013, at 21:43, LizR wrote:


On 16 December 2013 06:46, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

Perhaps "politician" should not be a profession. We would vote for  
programs and ideas, and let them implemented by a random sample of  
the population through some social services, or by well sworn  
robots or the net.  We must find ways of keeping well the  
separation of the powers.


That sounds like an excellent idea - though who will administer it?  
We really need open source AIs in charge!


Good idea, but even this will concentrate some power in the hand of  
a category of people (like "Linux nerds"). Nothing is simple.

Then again, have your read Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" ?


It seems I remember having read a long time ago some books by Ira  
Levin, but I don't really remember. You can sum up the punch line,  
if you have the time.


The world is run by a computer system (called "Uni" (!)) which has  
scanners and terminals everywhere, and which monitors everyone's  
behaviour and administers drugs to keep them happy and "team  
players". But as you might expect, the world isn't really being  
controlled by Uni, there is a group of people behind it - the  
"programmers", or (I guess) the descendants of the original  
programmers. So basically it's what you were saying above :)


OK :)



(Ira Levin also wrote "Rosemary's baby", "The Stepford Wives" and  
"The boys from Brazil". "This Perfect Day" is, I think, his only  
novel not to have been made into a film).


I remember now. Thanks. I read them, and I saw also the movie  
"Rosemary's baby", by Polanski. A good movie which scared me a lot, at  
that time :)


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 3:53 PM, LizR  wrote:


>>  >>>  As I said you confuse "indeterminacy" (the general vague concept)
>>> with the many different sort of indeterminacy:
>>>  1) by ignorance on initial conditions (example: the coin), that is a 3p
>>> indeterminacy.
>>>  2) Turing form of indeterminacy (example: the halting problem), that is
>>> again a 3p indeterminacy.
>>>  3) quantum indeterminacy in copenhague (3p indeterminacy, if that
>>> exists)
>>>  4) quantum indeterminacy in Everett (1p indeterminacy, which needs the
>>> quantum SWE assumption)
>>>  5) computationalist 1p-indeterminacy (similar to Everett, except that
>>> it does not need to assume the SWE or Everett-QM). Itis the one we get
>>> in step 3, and it is part of the derivation of physics from comp.
>>>
>>
>> >> Only the first 3 make any sense, and even there all those peas are
>> unnecessary.
>>
>
> > What doesn't make sense about number 4 (the MWI explanation of
> indeterminacy) ?
>

It adds nothing to number 3, and if there were a explanation of
indeterminate changes, if there were a reason they did what they did, then
they wouldn't be indeterminate. And # 5 is the same as number # 2.

  John K Clark

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:37 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >> to judge the quality of the prediction about which cities the Helsinki
> Man will see, you've got to hear what the Washington Man has to say too if
> you want to know if the prediction was correct;
>
> > Yes. And in the step 3 case, both confirms they see only one city,
>

Acording to Bruno Marchal's terminology "you" will see only one city and
one city only; and "you" will see both Washington and Moscow; therefore
Bruno Marchal's terminology is inconsistent in the one pee, two pee, three
pee, and pee pee point of view.

> contrary to what you answered many times to Quentin, you seem to agree
> that if your argument is valid again the comp-indeterminacy, it is valid
> against Everett formulation of QM.
>

I can't comment because I don't know what "comp-indeterminacy" is or
understand how it is more (or is it less?) indeterminate than regular old
indeterminacy.

  John k Clark

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 07:30, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 3:53 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> > What doesn't make sense about number 4 (the MWI explanation of
 indeterminacy) ?

>>>
> It adds nothing to number 3,
>

It adds a better explanation to number 3, and removes an adhoc postulate
from it.

and if there were a explanation of indeterminate changes, if there were a
> reason they did what they did, then they wouldn't be indeterminate.
>

The point of the exercise is to explain how *apparent* indeterminism arises
from *actual* determinism.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 12:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Dec 2013, at 17:04, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:


>>> you know in Helsinki that you will survive and feel to be in 
only one
city with probability one


>> That depends, Is "You" the Helsinki Man or the Moscow Man or the 
Washington
Man or John K Clark?


> They are the same man, we have already discussed this


If they are all the same man then the Washington Man is the Helsinki Man, thus the 
report from the Moscow Man that he sees Moscow and only Moscow is insufficient information


Exactly. As I said, we can only have a 3p confirmation of the comp 1p-indeterminacy by 
tracking and interviewing all copies (or some reasonable sample).






to judge the quality of the prediction about which cities the Helsinki Man will see, 
you've got to hear what the Washington Man has to say too if you want to know if the 
prediction was correct;


Yes. And in the step 3 case, both confirms they see only one city, and that gives the 
complete information each of them have access too in the first person way. They both 
confirms that they were unable to predict the city with certainty.





not that the accuracy of predictions has anything to do endowing us with a sense of 
self. And they are NOT all the same man, they are all John K Clark but the Moscow Man 
is not the Washington Man.


Exact. That is the root of the indeterminacy. They are the same man, but their history 
have irreversibly differentiated.

We agree on all this, but this explains the 1-indeterminacy.






 > As I said you confuse "indeterminacy" (the general vague concept) with 
the many
different sort of indeterminacy:
 1) by ignorance on initial conditions (example: the coin), that is a 3p 
indeterminacy.
 2) Turing form of indeterminacy (example: the halting problem), that is 
again a 3p
indeterminacy.
 3) quantum indeterminacy in copenhague (3p indeterminacy, if that exists)
 4) quantum indeterminacy in Everett (1p indeterminacy, which needs the 
quantum SWE
assumption)
 5) computationalist 1p-indeterminacy (similar to Everett, except that it 
does not
need to assume the SWE or Everett-QM). It is the one we get in step 3, and 
it is
part of the derivation of physics from comp.


Only the first 3 make any sense, and even there all those peas are unnecessary.



OK. But here, contrary to what you answered many times to Quentin, you seem to agree 
that if your argument is valid again the comp-indeterminacy, it is valid against Everett 
formulation of QM.


JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds, although Everett 
didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only considered one world and wrote about the 
"relative state" of the observer and the observed system.  In some ways this is more 
fundamental because in principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one 
another.  That they usually don't is a statistical result.





I recall you that, like Einstein and many others, I believe that "3)" is "insanity". You 
might be  right that it is logically conceivable (perhaps---I am not even sure about 
that), but once we accept events without cause, we fall in the "don't ask" type of 
theories. As explanation, it is as bad as the God-of-the-gap.


I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic theories just push the 
problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused event or an infinite past.  
So there is not great intellectual virtue in rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics 
is an interesting intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly 
limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a statistical level.


Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations of a universal 
dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired by QM, but QM itself doesn't 
entail that everything happens. If you measure a variable you only get eigenvalues of that 
variable - not every possible value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue 
again - not any value.


On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such indeterminacy, without 
adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further 
assumption.

Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple explanation by a call to 
a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Brent

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Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 12:53 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 5:59 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

On 12/15/2013 4:23 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:




On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


On 14 Dec 2013, at 23:27, LizR wrote:

I haven't had a chance to watch it, but I do know that banks are stealing
our wealth - as indeed are rich people generally, since "wealth breeds more
wealth" and that more wealth has to be extracted from you and me.



Money and richness is not a problem. It is the blood of the social system.

Money and richness is a problem only when it is based on lies, and when it
is used to hide the lies and perpetuate them.

Honest money enrich everybody. True, it is slower for poor, and quicker
for the rich, but when people play the game "honestly", everyone win, and
poverty regress.

In a working economy, there are few poor. Presence of poverty means that
there are stealers and bandits (or war or catastrophes). Accusing the system
and money itself is all benefices for the bandits. It dilutes their
responsibility and wrong-doing in the abstract. It helps them to feel like
not guilty.

As I said, criticizing the economical system is like attributing to the
blood cells the responsibility of some tumor since the blood cells feeds it.
It hides the real root of the problem, and focus on the wrong target.


I agree, unsurprisingly. :)
I also agree with Liz, in that it is clear who is stealing the money.

The "rich get richer" is a very fundamental phenomenon. Even if we remove
money from society, it will still happen because it also applies to social
interactions. The more friends and alliances you have, the more likely you
are to get new ones. This is the reason why every entrepreneur seeks the
allegiance of celebrities. It's a more subtle form of currency.

However, we got trapped into a system that effectively amplifies "rich get
richer" dynamics. This system is central banking -- since the powerful have
the capacity to issue fiat money in the form of debt, two things happen:


It doesn't take central banking to make the rich get richer.

Yes, that is what I said. My claim is that central banking amplifies the effect.


Ever since
civilization began the rich have been able to get richer just by owning
stuff. For a couple of millenia it was owning land.  If you owned land then
serfs and peasants had to pay you for working the land.  Then merchantilism
added ships to what you could own.  Then industrialization added mines and
oil and factories.  Banking and insurance added financial instruments that
you could own.  But it's all of a piece.  If you own stuff that you can
rent/lend you're rich and you can get richer.

But central banks can print new money. This new money is lent. The
more money you have, the more new money the banking system will lend
to you. Thus the amplification. Also, the marginal value of money
decreases the more you have, so this devaluation and speculation with
new money exposes the poor to more risk, while they don't actually
have access to the investment opportunities that the rich have.


You always refer to "central" banks.  But all banks always did this.  The bank would take 
1M$ in deposits and then make 10M$ in loans, depending on the fact that statistically only 
a few depositors would ask for their money at any one time.  So they collected interest on 
10M$ while only having to pay interest on 1M$ (if at all).  Of course this occasionally 
resulted in "runs" on banks and consequence failure of the bank.  Central banks were set 
up as part of a system to regulate this.  The central bank insures deposits, but also the 
same regulatory system limits the discount rate, i.e. the amount of money a bank has to 
have as a fraction of what it can loan.  So Central banks exist to *limit* the "printing" 
of money.


And the policy is generally adjusted to try produce small, but positive inflation.  This 
is because deflation is considered unstable.  Inflation is stable and encourages 
investment because just holding money loses value.





  Of course you can also
influence government and governments exist largely to protect your property
rights.



- The money I have in my pocket is not safe. They can devalue it and there
is nothing I can do about it. They have a strong incentive to devalue my
money because they can give the new money they created to their allies,
through sophisticated mechanisms. It is very cleverly disguised, but it's
still plain old theft;


That means you have a strong incentive to invest/spend your money.  And that
applies also to a rich person that has a lot of money - inflation encourages
him to spend it on something.

Right, and this prevents the bulk of the population from escaping wage
slavery even though technology could replace labour.


The reason technology doesn't allow them to escape is that they generally can't buy the 
technology to replace their labor.  When they can, as for example farmers do by buying 
tractors, cultivators, e

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:

> JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
> although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
> considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
> and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
> principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
> That they usually don't is a statistical result.
>
> ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like Big
Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly
Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)

I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic theories
> just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused
> event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in
> rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
> intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
> limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
> statistical level.
>

The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.

Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations of
> a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired by
> QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure a
> variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible
> value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any
> value.
>

I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events, and
that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?

 On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
> indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.
>
 Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises
from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the
same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
misunderstood that too?

(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make all
the time anyway?)

 Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple explanation
> by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.
>
 No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)

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Re: How the banks are stealing our wealth

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 09:02, meekerdb  wrote:

> You always refer to "central" banks.  But all banks always did this.  The
> bank would take 1M$ in deposits and then make 10M$ in loans, depending on
> the fact that statistically only a few depositors would ask for their money
> at any one time.  So they collected interest on 10M$ while only having to
> pay interest on 1M$ (if at all).
>

On the subject of "always did this" --- I believe Karl Marx said something
similar?

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds, 
although Everett
didn't write about multiple worlds. Everett only considered one world and 
wrote
about the "relative state" of the observer and the observed system.  In 
some ways
this is more fundamental because in principle the "different worlds" of MWI 
can
interfere with one another.  That they usually don't is a statistical 
result.

("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like Big Bang (better 
than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly Glowing Region of Infinite 
Gravity :)


I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen. Deterministic theories 
just push
the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused event or 
an
infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in rejecting 
uncaused
events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting intermediate case.  It has 
randomness,
but randomness that is strictly limited and limited in such a way that it 
produces
the classical world at a statistical level.


The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If there is an 
original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge naturally from (for example) 
the equations that are believed to describe the universe. One can say the same about an 
infinite past.


Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations of 
a
universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired by 
QM, but QM
itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure a variable 
you only
get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible value.  If you 
measure it
again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any value.


I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events, and that they 
simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary consequence of its existence. 
Did I get that wrong?


I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a successor of 2." 
implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a confusion to say that a logical formula 
is satisfied by X is the same as saying X exists in the ontological sense.



On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such 
indeterminacy,
without adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further 
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises from the 
equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the same extent that one has 
it within ones own personal past? Or have I misunderstood that too?


(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make all the 
time anyway?)


Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple explanation 
by a
call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)



It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  It's in Platonia.  
It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical than "that atom decayed by 
potential tunneling just like the equations say."


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 10:14, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
>> although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
>> considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
>> and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
>> principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
>> That they usually don't is a statistical result.
>>
>>   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like
> Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly
> Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)
>
> I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic theories
>> just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused
>> event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in
>> rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
>> intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
>> limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
>> statistical level.
>>
>
>  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
> there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
> naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
> the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.
>
>  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations
>> of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired
>> by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure
>> a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible
>> value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any
>> value.
>>
>
>  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
> and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
> consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?
>
>  I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a
> successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
> confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
> saying X exists in the ontological sense.
>
> Is that another way of saying you don't think Arithmetical Realism is
correct? (Which is fair enough, of course, it is a supposition.)

 On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
> indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.
>
Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises
from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the
same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
misunderstood that too?

 (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make all
the time anyway?)

  Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
> explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.
>
No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)

 It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  It's
> in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical than
> "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."
>
> Well if you don't think AR is correct, then of course it sounds magical
(although that leaves the problem of how those equations which somehow
(magically?) control the behaviour of atoms actually do so.)

Personally, I don't find the "argument from incredulity" works for me any
more towards maths being "less real" than primitive matter. Maybe I've been
in contact with Bruno for too long.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 1:30 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 10:14, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds, 
although
Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only considered 
one world
and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer and the observed system. 
In some ways this is more fundamental because in principle the "different

worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.  That they usually don't 
is a
statistical result.

("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like Big 
Bang
(better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly Glowing 
Region of
Infinite Gravity :)

I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen. Deterministic 
theories just
push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused 
event or
an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in 
rejecting
uncaused events. Quantum mechanics is an interesting intermediate case. 
 It has
randomness, but randomness that is strictly limited and limited in such 
a way
that it produces the classical world at a statistical level.


The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If 
there is an
original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge naturally from (for
example) the equations that are believed to describe the universe. One can 
say the
same about an infinite past.

Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the 
computations of a
universal dovetailer. The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired by 
QM, but
QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure a 
variable you
only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible value.  If 
you
measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any value.


I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events, and 
that they
simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary consequence of its
existence. Did I get that wrong?

I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a 
successor
of 2." implies that 3 exists. Personally I think it is a confusion to say 
that a
logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as saying X exists in the 
ontological
sense.

Is that another way of saying you don't think Arithmetical Realism is correct? (Which is 
fair enough, of course, it is a supposition.)


Yes. I think it is a questionable hypothesis.


On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such 
indeterminacy,
without adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further 
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises from the 
equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the same extent that one 
has it within ones own personal past? Or have I misunderstood that too?


(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make all the time 
anyway?)



Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple explanation 
by a
call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)


It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  It's 
in
Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical than 
"that atom
decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."

Well if you don't think AR is correct, then of course it sounds magical (although that 
leaves the problem of how those equations which somehow (magically?) control the 
behaviour of atoms actually do so.)


I don't think they 'control' them, I think they describe them (to the best of our 
knowledge).  Notice that this explains "where the laws of physics come from"; they're 
invented by us.




Personally, I don't find the "argument from incredulity" works for me any more towards 
maths being "less real" than primitive matter. Maybe I've been in contact with Bruno for 
too long.


Bruno, has a good point about 'primitive matter'.  It doesn't really mean anything except 
'the stuff our equations apply to.'; but since the equations are made up descriptions, the 
stuff they apply to is part of the model - not necessarily the ding an sich.  To say 
physicist assume primitive matter is little more than saying that they make models and 
some stuff is in the model and some isn't - which of course is contrary to the usual 
assumption on this list. :-)


Brent


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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 10:43, meekerdb  wrote:

> Is that another way of saying you don't think Arithmetical Realism is
> correct? (Which is fair enough, of course, it is a supposition.)
>
>Yes. I think it is a questionable hypothesis.
>

Yes, I think so too on days with an 'R' in them.

Well if you don't think AR is correct, then of course it sounds magical
> (although that leaves the problem of how those equations which somehow
> (magically?) control the behaviour of atoms actually do so.)
>
>
> I don't think they 'control' them, I think they describe them (to the best
> of our knowledge).  Notice that this explains "where the laws of physics
> come from"; they're invented by us.
>
> Bad phraseology on my part. What I meant was, there is a possible problem
of "unreasonable effectiveness" that AR purports to explain, but which
otherwise remains "magical".

Obviously the laws of physics as written down and taught and understood by
us were invented by us, but we have this hope that they correspond to
something real out there, and it's at least possible that the "something
real out there" comes in a form (something like) the laws we've invented to
describe it, and may be in a form *exactly* like some laws we will one day
invent. On that glorious day it may seem like splitting haris to say that
mass, energy, space and time are in some magical way different from the
equations describing them, assuming such equations exist.

Bruno, has a good point about 'primitive matter'.  It doesn't really mean
> anything except 'the stuff our equations apply to.'; but since the
> equations are made up descriptions, the stuff they apply to is part of the
> model - not necessarily the ding an sich.  To say physicist assume
> primitive matter is little more than saying that they make models and some
> stuff is in the model and some isn't - which of course is contrary to the
> usual assumption on this list.  :-)
>

Yes, some people on this list seem to read far more into the existence of
matter (energy, etc) than that it's just the object referred to in some
equations. (Arguments that the UD couldn't really exist because there
aren't enough resources in the universe to build one, for example.)

Bruno et al may also have a good point about the (lack of) supervenience of
mind on matter, although I'm still trying to get my head around that one
(appropriately enough).

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
>> although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
>> considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
>> and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
>> principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
>> That they usually don't is a statistical result.
>>
>>   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like
> Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly
> Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)
>
> I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic theories
>> just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused
>> event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in
>> rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
>> intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
>> limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
>> statistical level.
>>
>
>  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
> there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
> naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
> the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.
>
>  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations
>> of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired
>> by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure
>> a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible
>> value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any
>> value.
>>
>
>  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
> and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
> consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?
>
>
> I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a
> successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
> confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
> saying X exists in the ontological sense.
>
>
>  On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
>> indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.
>>
> Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
> further assumption.
>
> Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises
> from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the
> same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
> misunderstood that too?
>
>  (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make
> all the time anyway?)
>
>   Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
>> explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.
>>
> No more magic than a UD.
>
> Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)
>
>
> It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  It's
> in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical than
> "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."
>
>

In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
besides 1 and 7. So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could
not doubt the "unreality of arithmetically impossible experiences". In that
sense, arithmetic would in-part control possible experiences, and is harder
to doubt than the possibility that physics is constrains experiences.
Indeed, computationalism suggests this is true.  An appropriately
programmed computer can generate any experience that can be possibly
experienced in any universe: our own "laws of physics" do not constrain our
possible experience whatsoever, so long as a Turing machine can be built
within the laws of some physical universe.

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 2:05 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 10:43, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


Is that another way of saying you don't think Arithmetical Realism is 
correct?
(Which is fair enough, of course, it is a supposition.)
Yes. I think it is a questionable hypothesis.


Yes, I think so too on days with an 'R' in them.

Well if you don't think AR is correct, then of course it sounds magical 
(although
that leaves the problem of how those equations which somehow (magically?) 
control
the behaviour of atoms actually do so.)

I don't think they 'control' them, I think they describe them (to the best 
of our
knowledge).  Notice that this explains "where the laws of physics come 
from";
they're invented by us.

Bad phraseology on my part. What I meant was, there is a possible problem of 
"unreasonable effectiveness" that AR purports to explain, but which otherwise remains 
"magical".


Obviously the laws of physics as written down and taught and understood by us were 
invented by us, but we have this hope that they correspond to something real out there, 
and it's at least possible that the "something real out there" comes in a form 
(something like) the laws we've invented to describe it, and may be in a form /exactly/ 
like some laws we will one day invent. On that glorious day it may seem like splitting 
haris to say that mass, energy, space and time are in some magical way different from 
the equations describing them, assuming such equations exist.


True, the models /might/ be accurate.  But even if they are we can't know it with any 
certainty.  That's one thing that bothers me about Bruno's definition of knowledge as 
"true belief".  We may have true beliefs by accident.  But notice that the 'laws of 
physics' don't describe everything - in general they rely on 'boundary conditions' which 
are not part of the laws.  Most theories of cosmogony put forward rely some randomness, 
e.g. 'quantum fluctuations', as boundary conditions.


Secondly, note that even as physics becomes more successful in predictive power and more 
comprehensive in scope, it's ontology changes drastically, from rigid bodies to classical 
fields to elementary particles to quantum field operators.  What stays roughly constant 
are the experimental facts.




Bruno, has a good point about 'primitive matter'.  It doesn't really mean 
anything
except 'the stuff our equations apply to.'; but since the equations are 
made up
descriptions, the stuff they apply to is part of the model - not 
necessarily the
ding an sich.  To say physicist assume primitive matter is little more than 
saying
that they make models and some stuff is in the model and some isn't - which 
of
course is contrary to the usual assumption on this list.  :-)


Yes, some people on this list seem to read far more into the existence of matter 
(energy, etc) than that it's just the object referred to in some equations. (Arguments 
that the UD couldn't really exist because there aren't enough resources in the universe 
to build one, for example.)


Bruno et al may also have a good point about the (lack of) supervenience of mind on 
matter, although I'm still trying to get my head around that one (appropriately enough).


I don't think the supervenience of mind on material processes is any more problematic than 
its supervenience on computation.  The nice thing about Bruno's theory is that it provides 
a model which might explain the incommunicable nature of consciousness.  And he even 
provides a critereon, Lobianity, for whether a computer is conscious.  But it leaves so 
much of the physical aspects of consciousness and perception unexplained, except by 
hand-waving "it must be so", that I find plenty of room for doubt.


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds, 
although
Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only considered 
one world
and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer and the observed system. 
In some ways this is more fundamental because in principle the "different

worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.  That they usually don't 
is a
statistical result.

("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like Big 
Bang
(better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly Glowing 
Region of
Infinite Gravity :)

I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen. Deterministic 
theories just
push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused 
event or
an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in 
rejecting
uncaused events. Quantum mechanics is an interesting intermediate case. 
 It has
randomness, but randomness that is strictly limited and limited in such 
a way
that it produces the classical world at a statistical level.


The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If 
there is an
original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge naturally from (for
example) the equations that are believed to describe the universe. One can 
say the
same about an infinite past.

Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the 
computations of a
universal dovetailer. The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired by 
QM, but
QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure a 
variable you
only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible value.  If 
you
measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any value.


I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events, and 
that they
simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary consequence of its
existence. Did I get that wrong?


I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a 
successor
of 2." implies that 3 exists. Personally I think it is a confusion to say 
that a
logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as saying X exists in the 
ontological
sense.



On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a further
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises 
from the
equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the same extent 
that
one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I misunderstood that too?

(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make all 
the time
anyway?)


Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple 
explanation by
a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)



It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  It's 
in
Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical than 
"that atom
decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."



In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the physical 
reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in atoms, and stars, and 
photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that same demon to give us the experience 
of factoring 7 in to two integers besides 1 and 7.


But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.  Their our language 
and that's why we have control of them.


So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt the "unreality 
of arithmetically impossible experiences".


I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.  Even Bruno rejects solipism and 
that's just doubting the reality of other people.  I find it pretty easy to doubt that you 
can always add one more to an integer.  I think 10^10^10 + 1 may well equal 10^10^10 in 
most contexts.


In that sense, arithmetic would in-part control possible experiences, and is harder to 
doubt than the possibility that physics is constrains experiences. Indeed, 
computationalism suggests this is true.  An appropriately programmed computer can 
generate any experience that can be possibly experienced in any universe: our own "laws 
of physics" do not constrain our possible experience whatsoever,


?? They seem to constrain my experience of breathing un

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb  wrote:

>
> In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
> physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
> besides 1 and 7.
>
>
> But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
> They're our language and that's why we have control of them.
>
> If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable
effectiveness" come from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary
maths that has been found to apply to physics was "made up" with no idea
that it mighe turn out to have physical applications.)

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 4:41 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:




In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the 
physical
reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in atoms, and 
stars, and
photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that same demon to give us 
the
experience of factoring 7 in to two integers besides 1 and 7.


But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.  
They're our
language and that's why we have control of them.

If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable effectiveness" come 
from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary maths that has been found to 
apply to physics was "made up" with no idea that it mighe turn out to have physical 
applications.)


I'm not sure your premise is true.  Calculus was certainly invented to apply to physics.  
Turing's machine was invented with the physical process of computation in mind.  
Non-euclidean geometry of curved spaces was invented before Einstein needed it, but it was 
motivated by considering coordinates on curved surfaces like the Earth. Fourier invented 
his transforms to solve heat transfer problems.  Hilbert space was an extension of vector 
space in countably infinite dimensions.  So the 'unreasonable effectiveness' may be an 
illusion based on a selection effect.  I'm on the math-fun mailing list too and I see an 
awful lot of math that has no reasonable effectiveness.


Another answer is that we're physical beings who evolved in a physical world and that's 
why we think the way we do.  That not only explains why we have developed logic and 
mathematics to deal with the world, but also why quantum mechanics seems so weird compared 
to Newtonian mechanics (we didn't evolve to deal with electrons). There's a very nice, 
stimulating and short book by William S. Cooper "The Evolution of Reason" which takes this 
idea and develops it and even projects it into the future. 
http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Reason-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521540259


Brent
"The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to
expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies."
 --- Norm Levitt

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 14:03, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 4:41 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>
>>   In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than
>> the physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>> besides 1 and 7.
>>
>>
>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>> They're our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>
>>   If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable
> effectiveness" come from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary
> maths that has been found to apply to physics was "made up" with no idea
> that it mighe turn out to have physical applications.)
>
>
> I'm not sure your premise is true.  Calculus was certainly invented to
> apply to physics.  Turing's machine was invented with the physical process
> of computation in mind.  Non-euclidean geometry of curved spaces was
> invented before Einstein needed it, but it was motivated by considering
> coordinates on curved surfaces like the Earth. Fourier invented his
> transforms to solve heat transfer problems.  Hilbert space was an extension
> of vector space in countably infinite dimensions.  So the 'unreasonable
> effectiveness' may be an illusion based on a selection effect.  I'm on the
> math-fun mailing list too and I see an awful lot of math that has no
> reasonable effectiveness.
>

Well, maybe my sources are misinformed (Max Tegmark for example). I imagine
the "selection effect" comes about because it's hard to think of completely
abstract topics, so a lot of maths problems will originate from something
in the "real world". My point was that they weren't invented (or
discovered) with the relevant physics application in mind (with exceptions
where the physics drove the maths, like calculus).

(The lack of application in some cases would I suppose fit with Max
Tegmark's suggestion that maths is "out there" and different parts of it
are implemented as different universes.)

>
> Another answer is that we're physical beings who evolved in a physical
> world and that's why we think the way we do.  That not only explains why we
> have developed logic and mathematics to deal with the world, but also why
> quantum mechanics seems so weird compared to Newtonian mechanics (we didn't
> evolve to deal with electrons).  There's a very nice, stimulating and short
> book by William S. Cooper "The Evolution of Reason" which takes this idea
> and develops it and even projects it into the future.
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Reason-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521540259
>
> Surely the maths we "made up" to deal with the "classical" world applies
to quantum mechanics, too? Or are you saying that we had to make up a new
load of maths to deal with QM, and that "quantum maths" is incommensurate
with "Relativistic maths" and "Newtonian maths" ?

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 5:23 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 14:03, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


On 12/16/2013 4:41 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:



In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in 
atoms,
and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that same 
demon
to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers besides 1 
and 7.


But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.  
They're
our language and that's why we have control of them.

If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable 
effectiveness" come
from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary maths that has been 
found to
apply to physics was "made up" with no idea that it mighe turn out to have 
physical
applications.)


I'm not sure your premise is true.  Calculus was certainly invented to 
apply to
physics.  Turing's machine was invented with the physical process of 
computation in
mind.  Non-euclidean geometry of curved spaces was invented before Einstein 
needed
it, but it was motivated by considering coordinates on curved surfaces like 
the
Earth. Fourier invented his transforms to solve heat transfer problems.  
Hilbert
space was an extension of vector space in countably infinite dimensions.  
So the
'unreasonable effectiveness' may be an illusion based on a selection 
effect.  I'm on
the math-fun mailing list too and I see an awful lot of math that has no 
reasonable
effectiveness.


Well, maybe my sources are misinformed (Max Tegmark for example). I imagine the 
"selection effect" comes about because it's hard to think of completely abstract topics, 
so a lot of maths problems will originate from something in the "real world". My point 
was that they weren't invented (or discovered) with the relevant physics application in 
mind (with exceptions where the physics drove the maths, like calculus).


You asked where does the unreasonable effectiveness come from. Maybe I should have asked 
what you thought Wigner was referring to. I don't think he was referring to 'all possible 
mathematics' like Tegmark was.  Or even all computable functions as Tegmark has more 
recently.  Wigner was probably still assuming a continuum.


Shannon's theory of channel capacity turns out to use a form of Boltzmann's entropy.  Is 
that 'unreasonable effectiveness' or a real relation between transmitting information and 
randomness in statistical mechanics.




(The lack of application in some cases would I suppose fit with Max Tegmark's suggestion 
that maths is "out there" and different parts of it are implemented as different universes.)



Another answer is that we're physical beings who evolved in a physical 
world and
that's why we think the way we do.  That not only explains why we have 
developed
logic and mathematics to deal with the world, but also why quantum 
mechanics seems
so weird compared to Newtonian mechanics (we didn't evolve to deal with 
electrons).
There's a very nice, stimulating and short book by William S. Cooper "The 
Evolution
of Reason" which takes this idea and develops it and even projects it into 
the
future. 
http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Reason-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521540259

Surely the maths we "made up" to deal with the "classical" world applies to quantum 
mechanics, too? Or are you saying that we had to make up a new load of maths to deal 
with QM, and that "quantum maths" is incommensurate with "Relativistic maths" and 
"Newtonian maths" ?


It's not all or nothing.  There was mathematics, like Fourier transforms and Hilbert 
space, that had already been invented before von Neumann formulated QM in terms of them.  
But the subsequent interest in QM inspired Gleason's theorem and the Kochen-Specker 
theorem and the concept of POVMs and rigged Hilbert space.  William Thompson proposed a 
vortex theory of matter which could be seen as the forerunner of braid and knot theory 
which developed as 'pure' math and then came back to physics in string theory.


As to whether they are incommensurate I'm not sure what that means. They may have 
contradictory axioms so that if you tried to axiomatize Newtonian mechanics and quantum 
mechanics together you'd get contradictions.  But if you just take them as pure math, real 
valued differential equations and Hamiltonian functions vs complex Hilbert space and 
Hamiltonian operators then there's no contradiction because they're about different 
domains.  Riemannian geometry is a consistent theory which include Euclidean geometry as a 
special case.  But in a physical theory about the geometry of spacetime the geometry is 
either Euclidean or it's not.


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
>>
>>  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
>>> although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
>>> considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
>>> and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
>>> principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
>>> That they usually don't is a statistical result.
>>>
>>>   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description,
>> like Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very
>> Faintly Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)
>>
>> I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic theories
>>> just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an uncaused
>>> event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual virtue in
>>> rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
>>> intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
>>> limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
>>> statistical level.
>>>
>>
>>  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
>> there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
>> naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
>> the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.
>>
>>  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the computations
>>> of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was inspired
>>> by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you measure
>>> a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible
>>> value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any
>>> value.
>>>
>>
>>  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
>> and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
>> consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?
>>
>>
>>  I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a
>> successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
>> confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
>> saying X exists in the ontological sense.
>>
>>
>>  On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
>>> indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.
>>>
>> Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
>> further assumption.
>>
>> Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) arises
>> from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the
>> same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
>> misunderstood that too?
>>
>>  (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make
>> all the time anyway?)
>>
>>   Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
>>> explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.
>>>
>> No more magic than a UD.
>>
>> Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)
>>
>>
>>  It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?
>> It's in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical
>> than "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."
>>
>>
>
>  In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
> physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
> besides 1 and 7.
>
>
> But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
> Their our language and that's why we have control of them.
>
>
That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.


>
>   So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt the
> "unreality of arithmetically impossible experiences".
>
>
> I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.
>


He did.  It could have all be an illusion or a dream, as in the Matrix.
There is no proof that your perceptions correspond to reality any more than
the reality necessary to create your perceptions.



> Even Bruno rejects solipism and that's just doubting the reality of other
> people.  I find it pretty easy to doubt that you can always add one more to
> an integer.  I think 10^10^10 + 1 may well equal 10^10^10 in most contexts.
>

I don't see the relevance of this to the fact that even a highly doubtful
person (such as Descartes or yourself :-) ), can reason that his possible
experiences are constrained by mathematical possibility (even if all his
(or your) p

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Amen to that, Brent!


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:03 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 4:41 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>
>>   In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than
>> the physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>> besides 1 and 7.
>>
>>
>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>> They're our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>
>>   If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable
> effectiveness" come from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary
> maths that has been found to apply to physics was "made up" with no idea
> that it mighe turn out to have physical applications.)
>
>
> I'm not sure your premise is true.  Calculus was certainly invented to
> apply to physics.  Turing's machine was invented with the physical process
> of computation in mind.  Non-euclidean geometry of curved spaces was
> invented before Einstein needed it, but it was motivated by considering
> coordinates on curved surfaces like the Earth. Fourier invented his
> transforms to solve heat transfer problems.  Hilbert space was an extension
> of vector space in countably infinite dimensions.  So the 'unreasonable
> effectiveness' may be an illusion based on a selection effect.  I'm on the
> math-fun mailing list too and I see an awful lot of math that has no
> reasonable effectiveness.
>
> Another answer is that we're physical beings who evolved in a physical
> world and that's why we think the way we do.  That not only explains why we
> have developed logic and mathematics to deal with the world, but also why
> quantum mechanics seems so weird compared to Newtonian mechanics (we didn't
> evolve to deal with electrons).  There's a very nice, stimulating and short
> book by William S. Cooper "The Evolution of Reason" which takes this idea
> and develops it and even projects it into the future.
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Reason-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521540259
>
> Brent
> "The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to
> expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies."
>  --- Norm Levitt
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 14:54, meekerdb  wrote:

> You asked where does the unreasonable effectiveness come from.  Maybe I
> should have asked what you thought Wigner was referring to.  I don't think
> he was referring to 'all possible mathematics' like Tegmark was.  Or even
> all computable functions as Tegmark has more recently.  Wigner was probably
> still assuming a continuum.
>

He obviously wasn't referring to all possible maths, as you pointed out
most of it doesn't have any obvious effectiveness.

>
> Shannon's theory of channel capacity turns out to use a form of
> Boltzmann's entropy.  Is that 'unreasonable effectiveness' or a real
> relation between transmitting information and randomness in statistical
> mechanics.
>
> I suspect it shows up a deep connection between the two subjects, which
isn't too surprising in this case.

>
> It's not all or nothing.  There was mathematics, like Fourier transforms
> and Hilbert space, that had already been invented before von Neumann
> formulated QM in terms of them.  But the subsequent interest in QM inspired
> Gleason's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem and the concept of POVMs
> and rigged Hilbert space.  William Thompson proposed a vortex theory of
> matter which could be seen as the forerunner of braid and knot theory which
> developed as 'pure' math and then came back to physics in string theory.
>
> As to whether they are incommensurate I'm not sure what that means.  They
> may have contradictory axioms so that if you tried to axiomatize Newtonian
> mechanics and quantum mechanics together you'd get contradictions.  But if
> you just take them as pure math, real valued differential equations and
> Hamiltonian functions vs complex Hilbert space and Hamiltonian operators
> then there's no contradiction because they're about different domains.
> Riemannian geometry is a consistent theory which include Euclidean geometry
> as a special case.  But in a physical theory about the geometry of
> spacetime the geometry is either Euclidean or it's not.
>

My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the
Newtonian domain in which things behave "roughly according to common sense"
and the quantum domain in which they very much don't. The fact that the
same maths applies to these domains, which as you pointed out are wildly
different, at least implies that maths has an independent (or at least
physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just
something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian).

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi Liz

 My $.0001.


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:23 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 14:03, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 12/16/2013 4:41 PM, LizR wrote:
>>
>>  On 17 December 2013 13:07, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>   In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than
>>> the physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>>> besides 1 and 7.
>>>
>>>
>>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>>> They're our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>>
>>>   If it's just something we made up, where does the "unreasonable
>> effectiveness" come from? (Bearing in mind that most of the non-elementary
>> maths that has been found to apply to physics was "made up" with no idea
>> that it mighe turn out to have physical applications.)
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure your premise is true.  Calculus was certainly invented to
>> apply to physics.  Turing's machine was invented with the physical process
>> of computation in mind.  Non-euclidean geometry of curved spaces was
>> invented before Einstein needed it, but it was motivated by considering
>> coordinates on curved surfaces like the Earth. Fourier invented his
>> transforms to solve heat transfer problems.  Hilbert space was an extension
>> of vector space in countably infinite dimensions.  So the 'unreasonable
>> effectiveness' may be an illusion based on a selection effect.  I'm on the
>> math-fun mailing list too and I see an awful lot of math that has no
>> reasonable effectiveness.
>>
>
> Well, maybe my sources are misinformed (Max Tegmark for example). I
> imagine the "selection effect" comes about because it's hard to think of
> completely abstract topics, so a lot of maths problems will originate from
> something in the "real world". My point was that they weren't invented (or
> discovered) with the relevant physics application in mind (with exceptions
> where the physics drove the maths, like calculus).
>

Thing is that Tegmark, and others, seem to forget that the "space of all
possible math" is not well behaved. We know this from Godel's theorems. So,
how does it get to have well behaved probability densities of "reasonable
effectiveness"? Are we "just lucky" or is there some kind of mechanism
that allows us to "sniff out" nice math?
  Penrose talks of mathematical intuition. Is he "not even wrong"?



>
> (The lack of application in some cases would I suppose fit with Max
> Tegmark's suggestion that maths is "out there" and different parts of it
> are implemented as different universes.)
>

 What kind of "physical universes" are required for mathematical entities
that are not provable consistent in finite time N and yet are provably
inconsistent in N+1 time?
  Maybe interaction is the secret. So far math is being treated as it where
an eternal timeless creature. What if it isn't? What if it evolves too?



>
>> Another answer is that we're physical beings who evolved in a physical
>> world and that's why we think the way we do.  That not only explains why we
>> have developed logic and mathematics to deal with the world, but also why
>> quantum mechanics seems so weird compared to Newtonian mechanics (we didn't
>> evolve to deal with electrons).  There's a very nice, stimulating and short
>> book by William S. Cooper "The Evolution of Reason" which takes this idea
>> and develops it and even projects it into the future.
>> http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Reason-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521540259
>>
>> Surely the maths we "made up" to deal with the "classical" world applies
> to quantum mechanics, too? Or are you saying that we had to make up a new
> load of maths to deal with QM, and that "quantum maths" is incommensurate
> with "Relativistic maths" and "Newtonian maths" ?
>
>   I think that they are "discovered", not made up, in a way that reflect
the explanation of "the world" that persons have. The only thing that
physicists have over laymen is that they learned some canonical math that
was discovered by others previously.
  It is as if Math is a cybervirus that lives in human minds, evolves
therein and reproduces itself via language.


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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

Are you saying 17 may evolve to no longer be prime?

:)

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:28 PM, LizR  wrote:
"My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the
Newtonian domain in which things behave "roughly according to common sense"
and the quantum domain in which they very much don't. The fact that the
same maths applies to these domains, which as you pointed out are wildly
different, at least implies that maths has an independent (or at least
physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just
something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian)."

  Umm, no, the math is not the same for this two different domains!
Therefore you're "hence..." does not follow. Sorry.



On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:28 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 14:54, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> You asked where does the unreasonable effectiveness come from.  Maybe I
>> should have asked what you thought Wigner was referring to.  I don't think
>> he was referring to 'all possible mathematics' like Tegmark was.  Or even
>> all computable functions as Tegmark has more recently.  Wigner was probably
>> still assuming a continuum.
>>
>
> He obviously wasn't referring to all possible maths, as you pointed out
> most of it doesn't have any obvious effectiveness.
>
>>
>> Shannon's theory of channel capacity turns out to use a form of
>> Boltzmann's entropy.  Is that 'unreasonable effectiveness' or a real
>> relation between transmitting information and randomness in statistical
>> mechanics.
>>
>> I suspect it shows up a deep connection between the two subjects, which
> isn't too surprising in this case.
>
>>
>> It's not all or nothing.  There was mathematics, like Fourier transforms
>> and Hilbert space, that had already been invented before von Neumann
>> formulated QM in terms of them.  But the subsequent interest in QM inspired
>> Gleason's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem and the concept of POVMs
>> and rigged Hilbert space.  William Thompson proposed a vortex theory of
>> matter which could be seen as the forerunner of braid and knot theory which
>> developed as 'pure' math and then came back to physics in string theory.
>>
>> As to whether they are incommensurate I'm not sure what that means.  They
>> may have contradictory axioms so that if you tried to axiomatize Newtonian
>> mechanics and quantum mechanics together you'd get contradictions.  But if
>> you just take them as pure math, real valued differential equations and
>> Hamiltonian functions vs complex Hilbert space and Hamiltonian operators
>> then there's no contradiction because they're about different domains.
>> Riemannian geometry is a consistent theory which include Euclidean geometry
>> as a special case.  But in a physical theory about the geometry of
>> spacetime the geometry is either Euclidean or it's not.
>>
>
> My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the
> Newtonian domain in which things behave "roughly according to common sense"
> and the quantum domain in which they very much don't. The fact that the
> same maths applies to these domains, which as you pointed out are wildly
> different, at least implies that maths has an independent (or at least
> physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just
> something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian).
>
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi Liz,

  Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.



On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:31 PM, LizR  wrote:

> Are you saying 17 may evolve to no longer be prime?
>
> :)
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 15:34, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Hi Liz,
>
>   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.
>

What about it?

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 15:33, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:28 PM, LizR  wrote:
> "My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the
> Newtonian domain in which things behave "roughly according to common sense"
> and the quantum domain in which they very much don't. The fact that the
> same maths applies to these domains, which as you pointed out are wildly
> different, at least implies that maths has an independent (or at least
> physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just
> something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian)."
>
>  Umm, no, the math is not the same for this two different domains!
> Therefore you're "hence..." does not follow. Sorry.
>
> Go on. In what was isn't it the same?

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi LizR,

  For example, the commutator that relates observables to each other is
different. The statistical relations that can be used to accurately model
experimental data is different. Most importantly, the ontologies are very
different.
  Classical physics allows a Laplacean observer to exist, QM does not.
There is no such a thing as a "view from nowhere" nor a single narrative of
all events in a QM consistent universe.


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:42 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 15:33, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:28 PM, LizR  wrote:
>> "My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the
>> Newtonian domain in which things behave "roughly according to common sense"
>> and the quantum domain in which they very much don't. The fact that the
>> same maths applies to these domains, which as you pointed out are wildly
>> different, at least implies that maths has an independent (or at least
>> physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just
>> something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian)."
>>
>>  Umm, no, the math is not the same for this two different domains!
>> Therefore you're "hence..." does not follow. Sorry.
>>
>> Go on. In what was isn't it the same?
>
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

An observer in such a univer could never count to 17...


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:42 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 15:34, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Liz,
>>
>>   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.
>>
>
> What about it?
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 6:28 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 14:54, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


You asked where does the unreasonable effectiveness come from.  Maybe I 
should have
asked what you thought Wigner was referring to.  I don't think he was 
referring to
'all possible mathematics' like Tegmark was.  Or even all computable 
functions as
Tegmark has more recently.  Wigner was probably still assuming a continuum.


He obviously wasn't referring to all possible maths, as you pointed out most of it 
doesn't have any obvious effectiveness.



Shannon's theory of channel capacity turns out to use a form of Boltzmann's
entropy.  Is that 'unreasonable effectiveness' or a real relation between
transmitting information and randomness in statistical mechanics.

I suspect it shows up a deep connection between the two subjects, which isn't too 
surprising in this case.



It's not all or nothing.  There was mathematics, like Fourier transforms 
and Hilbert
space, that had already been invented before von Neumann formulated QM in 
terms of
them.  But the subsequent interest in QM inspired Gleason's theorem and the
Kochen-Specker theorem and the concept of POVMs and rigged Hilbert space.  
William
Thompson proposed a vortex theory of matter which could be seen as the 
forerunner of
braid and knot theory which developed as 'pure' math and then came back to 
physics
in string theory.

As to whether they are incommensurate I'm not sure what that means.  They 
may have
contradictory axioms so that if you tried to axiomatize Newtonian mechanics 
and
quantum mechanics together you'd get contradictions. But if you just take 
them as
pure math, real valued differential equations and Hamiltonian functions vs 
complex
Hilbert space and Hamiltonian operators then there's no contradiction 
because
they're about different domains.  Riemannian geometry is a consistent 
theory which
include Euclidean geometry as a special case.  But in a physical theory 
about the
geometry of spacetime the geometry is either Euclidean or it's not.


My point, such as it is, is that we can use the same maths for both the Newtonian domain 
in which things behave "roughly according to common sense" and the quantum domain in 
which they very much don't. The fact that the same maths applies to these domains, which 
as you pointed out are wildly different, at least implies that maths has an independent 
(or at least physics-domain-independent) existence. Hence it probably isn't just 
something we made up to work in one domain (roughly the Newtonian).


I don't see that it follows.  Just like Shannon's information and Boltzmann's entropy, the 
domains are very much related so it's no surprise that we can carry over some math 
developed for Newtonian physics and apply it to quantum physics.  After all the former 
should be a kind of statistical mechanics of the latter.


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

There couldn't be an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple. But
if there was one, he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
work out its properties.


On 17 December 2013 15:48, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> An observer in such a univer could never count to 17...
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 17 December 2013 15:34, Stephen Paul King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Liz,
>>>
>>>   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.
>>>
>>
>> What about it?
>>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 15:50, meekerdb  wrote:

> I don't see that it follows.  Just like Shannon's information and
> Boltzmann's entropy, the domains are very much related so it's no surprise
> that we can carry over some math developed for Newtonian physics and apply
> it to quantum physics.  After all the former should be a kind of
> statistical mechanics of the latter.
>
> Again, I may have been misinformed. I was under the impression that matrix
mechanics and the Schrodinger equation and so on were rather different from
anything in Newtonian physics (although part of the same mathematical
system). Is that not so?

(I wouldn't have expected the domains of hydrogen atoms and billiard balls
to be as closely related as information theory and thermodynamics, by the
way.)

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Dear LizR,

  That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be an
observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be one
wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and work out
its properties" is impossible: probability zero.

  We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a
universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:51 PM, LizR  wrote:

> There couldn't be an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple. But
> if there was one, he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
> work out its properties.
>
>
> On 17 December 2013 15:48, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
>> An observer in such a univer could never count to 17...
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 December 2013 15:34, Stephen Paul King >> > wrote:
>>>
 Hi Liz,

   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.

>>>
>>> What about it?
>>>
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>>
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>>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Dear LizR,
>
>   That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be an
> observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be one
> wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and work
> out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.
>

I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether such
observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes. And we can
also work out the properties of a universe containing 16 objects. So it
appears that observers in a universe which allows observers to exist can
work out the properties of universes containing any number of objects. (Or,
for short, they can do maths,)

>
>   We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a
> universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
> the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
> that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?
>

I can't see any chain of reasoning.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Hi Liz,
>
>   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.
>
>
>
Our observable universe has less than 10^100 things in it, yet the HTTPS
connection to my mail server relied on prime numbers of many hundreds of
digits, far larger than 10^100.

If numbers larger than things that can be counted can still have definite
properties, then I would say 17 is still prime even in a universe with 16,
(or for that matter 0) things in it.

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> An observer in such a univer could never count to 17...
>
>
Did you know you can count up to 1023 on your fingers?  I'll leave it as an
exercise to figure out how. ;-)

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Dear LirZ,


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:52 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear LizR,
>>
>>   That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be an
>> observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be one
>> wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and work
>> out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.
>>
>
> I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
> number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether
> such observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
> Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes.
>

Are we really "working it out" or are we merely doing some approximation
that is cut off far below the 10^80 limit? So, no!




> And we can also work out the properties of a universe containing 16
> objects.
>

You just pointed out that there cannot be observers in the 16 object
universe, so why are you arguing as if they could exist in such? This is a
typical mistake that we make: assuming that there can exist an observer of
a universe that does not allow the existence of such an observer in that
particular universe. To do such is a fallacy!



> So it appears that observers in a universe which allows observers to exist
> can work out the properties of universes containing any number of objects.
> (Or, for short, they can do maths,)
>

Wrong, there is no actual "working it all the way out". There is, OTOH,
lots of shortcuts and cheating by assuming that some thing is true without
actually working the proof by demonstration.

>
>>   We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a
>> universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
>> the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
>> that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?
>>
>
> I can't see any chain of reasoning.
>

Does it make more sense now?



>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 6:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the 
observer
and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental 
because in
principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another. 
That they usually don't is a statistical result.


("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, like 
Big
Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very Faintly 
Glowing
Region of Infinite Gravity :)

I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic 
theories
just push the problem back in time. Ultimately there is either an 
uncaused
event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual 
virtue in
rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is 
strictly
limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical 
world at
a statistical level.


The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If 
there
is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge 
naturally from
(for example) the equations that are believed to describe the universe. 
One
can say the same about an infinite past.

Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the 
computations
of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism" was 
inspired
by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens. If you
measure a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not 
every
possible value.  If you measure it again you get the same 
eigenvalue again
- not any value.


I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events, 
and that
they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary 
consequence of
its existence. Did I get that wrong?


I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists a
successor of 2." implies that 3 exists. Personally I think it is a 
confusion to
say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as saying X 
exists in
the ontological sense.



On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a 
further
assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) 
arises from
the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to the same
extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I 
misunderstood
that too?

(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make 
all the
time anyway?)


Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)



It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?  
It's in
Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh." Sounds a lot more magical than 
"that
atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."



In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the 
physical
reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in atoms, and 
stars, and
photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that same demon to give us 
the
experience of factoring 7 in to two integers besides 1 and 7.


But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.  
Their our
language and that's why we have control of them.


That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.



So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt the 
"unreality
of arithmetically impossible experiences".


I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.



He did.  It could have all be an illusion or a dream, as in the Matrix. There is no 
proof that your perceptions correspond to reality any more than the reality necessary to 
create your perceptions.


Proof is for mathematic

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi Brent,

  Could you elaborate on how "...there is no way to know when a simulation
would have succeeded in creating them" might be a sound claim? A
simulation, like a recording, cannot do anything other
than, perhaps, convincing some fool that it is something that it is not.


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:11 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 6:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
>>>
>>>  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:
>>>
 JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
 although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
 considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
 and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
 principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
 That they usually don't is a statistical result.

   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description,
>>> like Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very
>>> Faintly Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)
>>>
>>> I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic
 theories just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an
 uncaused event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual
 virtue in rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
 intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
 limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
 statistical level.

>>>
>>>  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
>>> there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
>>> naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
>>> the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.
>>>
>>>  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the
 computations of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism"
 was inspired by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens.
 If you measure a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not
 every possible value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue
 again - not any value.

>>>
>>>  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
>>> and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
>>> consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?
>>>
>>>
>>>  I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists
>>> a successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
>>> confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
>>> saying X exists in the ontological sense.
>>>
>>>
>>>  On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
 indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.

>>> Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
>>> further assumption.
>>>
>>> Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication)
>>> arises from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to
>>> the same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
>>> misunderstood that too?
>>>
>>>  (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make
>>> all the time anyway?)
>>>
>>>   Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
 explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.

>>> No more magic than a UD.
>>>
>>> Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)
>>>
>>>
>>>  It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?
>>> It's in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical
>>> than "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."
>>>
>>>
>>
>>  In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
>> physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>> besides 1 and 7.
>>
>>
>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>> Their our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>
>>
>  That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.
>
>
>>
>>   So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt
>> the "unreality of arithmetically impossible experiences".
>>
>>
>>  I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.
>>
>
>
>  He did.  It could have all be an illusion or a dream, as in the Matrix.
> There is no proof that your perceptions correspond to reality any more than
> the reality ne

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 6:31 PM, LizR wrote:

Are you saying 17 may evolve to no longer be prime?

:)


Actually it did.  It became a real and infinitely divisible.

Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 6:54 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 15:50, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


I don't see that it follows.  Just like Shannon's information and 
Boltzmann's
entropy, the domains are very much related so it's no surprise that we can 
carry
over some math developed for Newtonian physics and apply it to quantum physics. 
After all the former should be a kind of statistical mechanics of the latter.


Again, I may have been misinformed. I was under the impression that matrix mechanics and 
the Schrodinger equation and so on were rather different from anything in Newtonian 
physics (although part of the same mathematical system). Is that not so?


Sure.  But matrices already existed, Heisenberg however extended them to infinite rank.  
Schrodinger's equation was just a partial differential equation, one of several he tried 
out as possible model's of quantum systems.  The concepts of energy, momentum, and angular 
momentum were carried over from Newtonian mechanics because Noether's theorem shows they 
are necessary in order that the theory not refer a special time, location, and orientation 
- attributes WE insist on because we want generality, not a physics of Genoa and a 
different physics of Stockholm.


And besides the Schrodinger equation and matrix mechanics were both developed by 
physicists to model specific phenomena.  I thought you were going to defend the view that 
the mathematics was just lying around for the physicist to pick up out of the mathematical 
universe.  Your examples seem to support my view that mathematics is just stuff we invent.


Brent



(I wouldn't have expected the domains of hydrogen atoms and billiard balls to be as 
closely related as information theory and thermodynamics, by the way.)


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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

In finite time and with a finite minimal action? NO!


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:17 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

> On 12/16/2013 6:31 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>> Are you saying 17 may evolve to no longer be prime?
>>
>> :)
>>
>
> Actually it did.  It became a real and infinitely divisible.
>
> Brent
>
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:06 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear LirZ,
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:52 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear LizR,
>>>
>>>   That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be
>>> an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be
>>> one wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
>>> work out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.
>>>
>>
>> I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
>> number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether
>> such observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
>> Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes.
>>
>
> Are we really "working it out" or are we merely doing some approximation
> that is cut off far below the 10^80 limit? So, no!
>
>
It is fully possible to represent a number 10^80 on a computer.  It would
take only a few 10s of bytes of memory.  This e-mail itself takes more
space up than 10^80; there are far more than 10^80 ways to write an e-mail.



>
>
>
>> And we can also work out the properties of a universe containing 16
>> objects.
>>
>
> You just pointed out that there cannot be observers in the 16 object
> universe, so why are you arguing as if they could exist in such? This is a
> typical mistake that we make: assuming that there can exist an observer of
> a universe that does not allow the existence of such an observer in that
> particular universe. To do such is a fallacy!
>


Like the tree falling in the woods, Stephen believes a number can only be
prime if it is written down on a piece of paper and gazed upon by a
mathematician. To me, this seems more fallacious than the idea that a
number is prime or not depending on whether or not someone is looking at it.


>
>
>
>> So it appears that observers in a universe which allows observers to
>> exist can work out the properties of universes containing any number of
>> objects. (Or, for short, they can do maths,)
>>
>
> Wrong, there is no actual "working it all the way out". There is, OTOH,
> lots of shortcuts and cheating by assuming that some thing is true without
> actually working the proof by demonstration.
>

As of today, the largest known prime is over 17 million decimal digits
long.  This number, by the way, is far larger than the number of Planck
volumes that could fit in the Hubble volume, but we have still discerned
its properties.  You doubt its properties are really true because there
aren't this many things to count in our universe?  Is 17 not prime because
slugs cannot comprehend the concept?





>
>>>   We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a
>>> universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
>>> the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
>>> that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?
>>>
>>
There may be many universes in which certain things cannot be proved, but
we shouldn't take that to mean those those things are not true.

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Observables, in general, have been shown to not commute, contra the
Classical assumptions of observables.


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:27 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 6:54 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 15:50, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> I don't see that it follows.  Just like Shannon's information and
>> Boltzmann's entropy, the domains are very much related so it's no surprise
>> that we can carry over some math developed for Newtonian physics and apply
>> it to quantum physics.  After all the former should be a kind of
>> statistical mechanics of the latter.
>>
>>  Again, I may have been misinformed. I was under the impression that
> matrix mechanics and the Schrodinger equation and so on were rather
> different from anything in Newtonian physics (although part of the same
> mathematical system). Is that not so?
>
>
> Sure.  But matrices already existed, Heisenberg however extended them to
> infinite rank.  Schrodinger's equation was just a partial differential
> equation, one of several he tried out as possible model's of quantum
> systems.  The concepts of energy, momentum, and angular momentum were
> carried over from Newtonian mechanics because Noether's theorem shows they
> are necessary in order that the theory not refer a special time, location,
> and orientation - attributes WE insist on because we want generality, not a
> physics of Genoa and a different physics of Stockholm.
>
> And besides the Schrodinger equation and matrix mechanics were both
> developed by physicists to model specific phenomena.  I thought you were
> going to defend the view that the mathematics was just lying around for the
> physicist to pick up out of the mathematical universe.  Your examples seem
> to support my view that mathematics is just stuff we invent.
>
> Brent
>
>
>  (I wouldn't have expected the domains of hydrogen atoms and billiard
> balls to be as closely related as information theory and thermodynamics, by
> the way.)
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing with
the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act as it
is does...


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:29 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:06 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear LirZ,
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:52 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King >> > wrote:
>>>
 Dear LizR,

   That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be
 an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be
 one wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
 work out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.

>>>
>>> I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
>>> number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether
>>> such observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
>>> Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes.
>>>
>>
>> Are we really "working it out" or are we merely doing some approximation
>> that is cut off far below the 10^80 limit? So, no!
>>
>>
> It is fully possible to represent a number 10^80 on a computer.  It would
> take only a few 10s of bytes of memory.  This e-mail itself takes more
> space up than 10^80; there are far more than 10^80 ways to write an e-mail.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> And we can also work out the properties of a universe containing 16
>>> objects.
>>>
>>
>> You just pointed out that there cannot be observers in the 16 object
>> universe, so why are you arguing as if they could exist in such? This is a
>> typical mistake that we make: assuming that there can exist an observer of
>> a universe that does not allow the existence of such an observer in that
>> particular universe. To do such is a fallacy!
>>
>
>
> Like the tree falling in the woods, Stephen believes a number can only be
> prime if it is written down on a piece of paper and gazed upon by a
> mathematician. To me, this seems more fallacious than the idea that a
> number is prime or not depending on whether or not someone is looking at it.
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> So it appears that observers in a universe which allows observers to
>>> exist can work out the properties of universes containing any number of
>>> objects. (Or, for short, they can do maths,)
>>>
>>
>> Wrong, there is no actual "working it all the way out". There is, OTOH,
>> lots of shortcuts and cheating by assuming that some thing is true without
>> actually working the proof by demonstration.
>>
>
> As of today, the largest known prime is over 17 million decimal digits
> long.  This number, by the way, is far larger than the number of Planck
> volumes that could fit in the Hubble volume, but we have still discerned
> its properties.  You doubt its properties are really true because there
> aren't this many things to count in our universe?  Is 17 not prime because
> slugs cannot comprehend the concept?
>
>
>
>
>
>>
   We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such
 a universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
 the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
 that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?

>>>
> There may be many universes in which certain things cannot be proved, but
> we shouldn't take that to mean those those things are not true.
>
> Jason
>
>
>  --
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Mobile: (864) 567-3099

stephe...@provensecure.com

 http://www.provensecure.us/


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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 6:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:
>>>
>>>  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:
>>>
 JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
 although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
 considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
 and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
 principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
 That they usually don't is a statistical result.

   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description,
>>> like Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very
>>> Faintly Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)
>>>
>>> I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic
 theories just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either an
 uncaused event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual
 virtue in rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
 intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
 limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at a
 statistical level.

>>>
>>>  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. If
>>> there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
>>> naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
>>> the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.
>>>
>>>  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the
 computations of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism"
 was inspired by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens.
 If you measure a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not
 every possible value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue
 again - not any value.

>>>
>>>  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
>>> and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
>>> consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?
>>>
>>>
>>>  I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists
>>> a successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
>>> confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
>>> saying X exists in the ontological sense.
>>>
>>>
>>>  On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
 indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.

>>> Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
>>> further assumption.
>>>
>>> Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication)
>>> arises from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to
>>> the same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
>>> misunderstood that too?
>>>
>>>  (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to make
>>> all the time anyway?)
>>>
>>>   Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
 explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.

>>> No more magic than a UD.
>>>
>>> Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)
>>>
>>>
>>>  It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?
>>> It's in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical
>>> than "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations say."
>>>
>>>
>>
>>  In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
>> physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>> besides 1 and 7.
>>
>>
>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>> Their our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>
>>
>  That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.
>
>
>>
>>   So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt
>> the "unreality of arithmetically impossible experiences".
>>
>>
>>  I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.
>>
>
>
>  He did.  It could have all be an illusion or a dream, as in the Matrix.
> There is no proof that your perceptions correspond to reality any more than
> the reality necessary to create your perceptions.
>
>
> Proof is for mathematicians - and they are only relative to axioms. My
> point is not that Descarte couldn't say he doubted reality, but that he
> couldn't act on that doubt; he couldn't really doubt it because that makes
> the concept of 

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 8:52 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King > wrote:


Dear LizR,

  That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be an 
observer in
such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be one wherefore "he 
could
deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and work out its properties" is
impossible: probability zero.


I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough number, say 
10^80, that observers /can /exist, we can then ask whether such observers could work out 
the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.


Can we?  Whenever I add 1 to 10^80 I get 10^80 in spite of Peano.

Brent


Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes. And we can also work out 
the properties of a universe containing 16 objects. So it appears that observers in a 
universe which allows observers to exist can work out the properties of universes 
containing any number of objects. (Or, for short, they can do maths,)



  We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a 
universe
does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider the 
collection of
universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in that collection. Could 
"we"
experience anything like those universes?


I can't see any chain of reasoning.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing
> with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act
> as it is does...
>
>
Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:

332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
846877090853919880937

Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the case
of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical means
to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime is not
equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing
>> with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act
>> as it is does...
>>
>>
> Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:
>
> 332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
> 846877090853919880937
>
> Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the
> case of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).
>
> Jason
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
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-- 

Kindest Regards,

Stephen Paul King

Senior Researcher

Mobile: (864) 567-3099

stephe...@provensecure.com

 http://www.provensecure.us/


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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:45 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 8:52 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
>>  Dear LizR,
>>
>>That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be
>> an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be
>> one wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
>> work out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.
>>
>
>  I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
> number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether
> such observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
>
>
> Can we?  Whenever I add 1 to 10^80 I get 10^80 in spite of Peano.
>
>
Use a programming language such as python or Java which supports big
integers. It will let you add 1 to 10^80.

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

So you are arguing that doing the computations is what makes a number prime
or not?

When does the number first become prime, is it when the first person
anywhere in the universe checks it? What about people beyond the
cosmological horizon that compute it, or what about people in hypothetical
other universes?  Does the first person ever to check and verify that a
number is prime, make it prime for all people, in all universes, forever?

Jason


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical means
> to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime is not
> equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing
>>> with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act
>>> as it is does...
>>>
>>>
>> Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:
>>
>> 332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
>> 846877090853919880937
>>
>> Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the
>> case of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).
>>
>> Jason
>>
>> --
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>> Google Groups "Everything List" group.
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>> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/1NWmK1IeadI/unsubscribe
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>>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Kindest Regards,
>
> Stephen Paul King
>
> Senior Researcher
>
> Mobile: (864) 567-3099
>
> stephe...@provensecure.com
>
>  http://www.provensecure.us/
>
>
> “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of
> the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain
> information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and
> exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as
> attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
> hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of
> this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
> message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message
> immediately.”
>
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 9:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:11 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 12/16/2013 6:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum 
worlds,
although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds. Everett 
only
considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the
observer and the observed system.  In some ways this is more
fundamental because in principle the "different worlds" of MWI 
can
interfere with one another.  That they usually don't is a 
statistical
result.

("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description, 
like
Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very 
Faintly
Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)

I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen. Deterministic
theories just push the problem back in time. Ultimately there is
either an uncaused event or an infinite past.  So there is not 
great
intellectual virtue in rejecting uncaused events. Quantum 
mechanics
is an interesting intermediate case.  It has randomness, but
randomness that is strictly limited and limited in such a way 
that it
produces the classical world at a statistical level.


The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental. 
If
there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to 
describe
the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.

Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the
computations of a universal dovetailer. The whole idea of
"everythingism" was inspired by QM, but QM itself doesn't 
entail that
everything happens. If you measure a variable you only get
eigenvalues of that variable - not every possible value.  If you
measure it again you get the same eigenvalue again - not any 
value.


I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't 
events, and
that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?


I wouldn't say "wrong". It depends on whether you think "There 
exists a
successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the 
same as
saying X exists in the ontological sense.



On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of 
such
indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.


Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
further assumption.

Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication) 
arises
from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, 
to the
same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
misunderstood that too?

(Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to 
make
all the time anyway?)


Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable 
magic.


No more magic than a UD.

Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)



It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is 
it? It's
in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh." Sounds a lot more magical 
than
"that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations 
say."



In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than the
physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in 
atoms,
and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that same 
demon
to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers besides 1 
and 7.


But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.  
Their
our language and that's why we have control of them.


That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.



So while Descartes could dou

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric? If there can exist a physical
process that is a bisimulation of the computation of the test for
primeness, then the primeness is true. Otherwise, we are merely guessing,
at best.


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:54 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

> So you are arguing that doing the computations is what makes a number
> prime or not?
>
> When does the number first become prime, is it when the first person
> anywhere in the universe checks it? What about people beyond the
> cosmological horizon that compute it, or what about people in hypothetical
> other universes?  Does the first person ever to check and verify that a
> number is prime, make it prime for all people, in all universes, forever?
>
> Jason
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical
>> means to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime is
>> not equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
 No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing
 with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act
 as it is does...


>>> Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:
>>>
>>> 332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
>>> 846877090853919880937
>>>
>>> Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the
>>> case of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>> --
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Kindest Regards,
>>
>> Stephen Paul King
>>
>> Senior Researcher
>>
>> Mobile: (864) 567-3099
>>
>> stephe...@provensecure.com
>>
>>  http://www.provensecure.us/
>>
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>> hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 9:49 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:45 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 12/16/2013 8:52 PM, LizR wrote:

On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King mailto:stephe...@provensecure.com>> wrote:

Dear LizR,

  That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be an
observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be 
one
wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and work 
out its
properties" is impossible: probability zero.


I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough 
number,
say 10^80, that observers /can /exist, we can then ask whether such 
observers could
work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.


Can we?  Whenever I add 1 to 10^80 I get 10^80 in spite of Peano.


Use a programming language such as python or Java which supports big integers. It will 
let you add 1 to 10^80.


I know.  I was just taking 10^80 to mean "a very big number" which of course depends on 
context.  I generally do applied physics and engineering and so 10^80+1 = 10^80 for 
physical variables.


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>

I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in that
numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some entity
somewhere.


> If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>

When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether or
not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find out
either it was, or it wasn't.

My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not prime?
Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result. Presumably
even causally isolated observers will also get the same result. If humans
get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build computers, and
they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to get a different
result?

My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that N
was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or not
prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.

Jason


>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:54 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>> So you are arguing that doing the computations is what makes a number
>> prime or not?
>>
>> When does the number first become prime, is it when the first person
>> anywhere in the universe checks it? What about people beyond the
>> cosmological horizon that compute it, or what about people in hypothetical
>> other universes?  Does the first person ever to check and verify that a
>> number is prime, make it prime for all people, in all universes, forever?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical
>>> means to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime is
>>> not equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>



 On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
 stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a thing
> with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so to act
> as it is does...
>
>
 Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:

 332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
 846877090853919880937

 Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the
 case of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).

 Jason

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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Kindest Regards,
>>>
>>> Stephen Paul King
>>>
>>> Senior Researcher
>>>
>>> Mobile: (864) 567-3099
>>>
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com
>>>
>>>  http://www.provensecure.us/
>>>
>>>
>>> “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use
>>> of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain
>>> information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and
>>> exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as
>>> attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
>>> hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of
>>> this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
>>> message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message
>>> immediately.”
>>>
>>> --
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>>>
>>
>>  --
>> You received this message because 

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King > wrote:


Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?


I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in that numbers only 
have properties when observed/checked/computed by some entity somewhere.


If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the 
computation of
the test for primeness, then the primeness is true. Otherwise, we are merely
guessing, at best.


When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether or not it is 
prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find out either it was, or it wasn't.


My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not prime?  Any time we 
re-check the calculation we get the same result. Presumably even causally isolated 
observers will also get the same result. If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take 
over the world and build computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible 
for them to get a different result?


My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that N was always 
prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or not prime) even if we 
lacked the means or inclination to check it.


That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime, to 17 exists.  
That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that "satisfying a predicate" = "exists".


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 9:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>   On 12/16/2013 6:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 12/16/2013 2:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:14 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>>
  On 12/16/2013 12:40 PM, LizR wrote:

  On 17 December 2013 08:06, meekerdb  wrote:

> JKC makes a big point of the complete separation of quantum worlds,
> although Everett didn't write about multiple worlds.  Everett only
> considered one world and wrote about the "relative state" of the observer
> and the observed system.  In some ways this is more fundamental because in
> principle the "different worlds" of MWI can interfere with one another.
> That they usually don't is a statistical result.
>
>   ("Many worlds" is just a nice (and roughly accurate) description,
 like Big Bang (better than Small Hiss) or Black Hole (better than Very
 Faintly Glowing Region of Infinite Gravity :)

 I think that's an unfair criticism of Copenhagen.  Deterministic
> theories just push the problem back in time.  Ultimately there is either 
> an
> uncaused event or an infinite past.  So there is not great intellectual
> virtue in rejecting uncaused events.  Quantum mechanics is an interesting
> intermediate case.  It has randomness, but randomness that is strictly
> limited and limited in such a way that it produces the classical world at 
> a
> statistical level.
>

  The problem is pushed back onto whatever is considered fundamental.
 If there is an original event, it is only uncaused if it doesn't emerge
 naturally from (for example) the equations that are believed to describe
 the universe. One can say the same about an infinite past.

  Your own theory also introduces uncaused events, namely the
> computations of a universal dovetailer.  The whole idea of "everythingism"
> was inspired by QM, but QM itself doesn't entail that everything happens.
> If you measure a variable you only get eigenvalues of that variable - not
> every possible value.  If you measure it again you get the same eigenvalue
> again - not any value.
>

  I was given to believe that the computations of the UD aren't events,
 and that they simply exist within arithmetic as a logically necessary
 consequence of its existence. Did I get that wrong?


  I wouldn't say "wrong".  It depends on whether you think "There exists
 a successor of 2." implies that 3 exists.  Personally I think it is a
 confusion to say that a logical formula is satisfied by X is the same as
 saying X exists in the ontological sense.


  On the contrary, self-duplication explains the appearance of such
> indeterminacy, without adding any further assumptions.
>
 Well, the existence of self-duplication, even via Everett, is a
 further assumption.

 Surely the existence of duplication (rather than self-duplication)
 arises from the equations? So one has self-duplication as a consequence, to
 the same extent that one has it within ones own personal past? Or have I
 misunderstood that too?

  (Or are you just talking about the sort of assumptions we have to
 make all the time anyway?)

   Occam favors it. Your belief in "3)" substitutes a very simple
> explanation by a call to a form of built-in-non-explainable magic.
>
 No more magic than a UD.

 Why is the UD magic? (Is arithmetic magic?)


  It's hypothetically generating all possible worlds, but where is it?
 It's in Platonia.  It's "the word made flesh."  Sounds a lot more magical
 than "that atom decayed by potential tunneling just like the equations 
 say."


>>>
>>>  In a sense, one can be more certain about arithmetical reality than
>>> the physical reality. An evil demon could be responsible for our belief in
>>> atoms, and stars, and photons, etc., but it is may be impossible for that
>>> same demon to give us the experience of factoring 7 in to two integers
>>> besides 1 and 7.
>>>
>>>
>>>  But that's because we made up 1 and 7 and the defintion of factoring.
>>> Their our language and that's why we have control of them.
>>>
>>>
>>  That's what Hilbert thought, but Godel showed he was wrong.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>   So while Descartes could doubt physical reality, he could not doubt
>>> the "unreality of arithmetically impossible experiences".
>>>
>>>
>>>  I don't think Descartes could doubt physical reality.
>>>
>>
>>
>>  He did.  It could have all be an illusion or a dream, as in the Matrix.
>> There is no proof that your perceptions correspond to reality any more than
>> the reality necessary to create your perceptions.

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:06 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>>  Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>>
>
>  I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in
> that numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some
> entity somewhere.
>
>
>>  If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
>> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
>> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>>
>
>  When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether
> or not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find
> out either it was, or it wasn't.
>
>  My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not
> prime?  Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result.
> Presumably even causally isolated observers will also get the same result.
> If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build
> computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to
> get a different result?
>
>  My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that
> N was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or
> not prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>
>
> That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime,
> to 17 exists.  That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that
> "satisfying a predicate" = "exists".
>
>
All you need are truth values.  If it is true that the recursive function
containing an emulation of the wave function of the Hubble volume contains
a self-aware process known as Brent which believes he has read an e-mail
from Jason, then it is true that the aforementioned Brent believes he has
read an e-mail from Jason.  We don't need to add some additional "exists"
property on top of it, it adds nothing.

Jason

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

I agree with Jason!


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:13 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:06 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>>>
>>
>>  I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in
>> that numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some
>> entity somewhere.
>>
>>
>>>  If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
>>> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
>>> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>>>
>>
>>  When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether
>> or not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find
>> out either it was, or it wasn't.
>>
>>  My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not
>> prime?  Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result.
>> Presumably even causally isolated observers will also get the same result.
>> If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build
>> computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to
>> get a different result?
>>
>>  My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result,
>> that N was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime
>> (or not prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>>
>>
>> That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime,
>> to 17 exists.  That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that
>> "satisfying a predicate" = "exists".
>>
>>
> All you need are truth values.  If it is true that the recursive function
> containing an emulation of the wave function of the Hubble volume contains
> a self-aware process known as Brent which believes he has read an e-mail
> from Jason, then it is true that the aforementioned Brent believes he has
> read an e-mail from Jason.  We don't need to add some additional "exists"
> property on top of it, it adds nothing.
>
> Jason
>
> --
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-- 

Kindest Regards,

Stephen Paul King

Senior Researcher

Mobile: (864) 567-3099

stephe...@provensecure.com

 http://www.provensecure.us/


“This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Stephen Paul King]

Hi Jason,


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:02 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>>
>
> I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in that
> numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some entity
> somewhere.
>

  No, I am just trying to be consistent. If we make a claim, than that
claim is possibly true iff its consequences can be actually observed,
otherwise we are merely confused.



>
>
>> If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
>> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
>> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>>
>
> When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether or
> not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find out
> either it was, or it wasn't.
>

Without the actual proof, what is there?



>
> My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not prime?
> Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result. Presumably
> even causally isolated observers will also get the same result. If humans
> get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build computers, and
> they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to get a different
> result?
>

How could I possibly know? It is not my burden to show. I am only claiming
that if an actual computation of the primeness is not done then the plain
cannot be true in that universe, otherwise we are appealing to a
consciousness that is somehow beyond computation.



>
> My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that N
> was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or not
> prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>

Such is unprovable. Merely claiming that some X has some property does not
make it so.



>
>
> Jason
>
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:54 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>> So you are arguing that doing the computations is what makes a number
>>> prime or not?
>>>
>>> When does the number first become prime, is it when the first person
>>> anywhere in the universe checks it? What about people beyond the
>>> cosmological horizon that compute it, or what about people in hypothetical
>>> other universes?  Does the first person ever to check and verify that a
>>> number is prime, make it prime for all people, in all universes, forever?
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
 I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical
 means to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime is
 not equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.


 On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a
>> thing with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, so
>> to act as it is does...
>>
>>
> Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:
>
> 332694894848329434549105787414873502606112802712440024745636803095039036420080826797726325643727533347094562684200739500429461145303257192536463211027218435305302565244506232330240506160052373297550819467601665370364223791626506805746132690937677414
> 846877090853919880937
>
> Either it is or it isn't. If it is, then this is no different from the
> case of 17 being prime (even if the universe had only 16 objects).
>
> Jason
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Hi Jason,
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:02 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>>>
>>
>> I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in that
>> numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some entity
>> somewhere.
>>
>
>  No, I am just trying to be consistent. If we make a claim, than that
> claim is possibly true iff its consequences can be actually observed,
> otherwise we are merely confused.
>

As in my example of the slug, we may be confused, but that doesn't mean
everyone everywhere is. We can't use our own local ignorance as the basis
for what is real or unreal, true or not true.



>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
>>> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
>>> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>>>
>>
>> When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether or
>> not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find out
>> either it was, or it wasn't.
>>
>
> Without the actual proof, what is there?
>

Truth. Truth =/= Proof.


>
>
>
>>
>> My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not
>> prime?  Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result.
>> Presumably even causally isolated observers will also get the same result.
>> If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build
>> computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to
>> get a different result?
>>
>
> How could I possibly know? It is not my burden to show.
>

It is something your world view ought to be able to account for rationally
or meaningfully, otherwise you might look to replace that world view with
one which can more adequately address these questions.


> I am only claiming that if an actual computation of the primeness is not
> done then the plain cannot be true in that universe, otherwise we are
> appealing to a consciousness that is somehow beyond computation.
>

I don't understand your point.  How are we appealing to a consciousness
beyond computation by assuming a number can be prime or not prime
irrespective of our capability or willingness to prove it?

Let me ask two questions which might help clarify my understanding of your
view:

1. Is it possible for someone, in some universe, somewhere to compute
(without error) and find some number N to be prime, while another person
elsewhere finds it is not prime?
2. If your answer to question 1 is "no", then what is the mechanism through
which consistency is maintained between these causally isolated observers
(who may even be in different universes?)


>
>
>
>>
>> My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that
>> N was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or
>> not prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>>
>
> Such is unprovable. Merely claiming that some X has some property does not
> make it so.
>

If it did not already have the property X before it was observed, then why
is it that aliens a trillion light years beyond our cosmological horizon
get the same result when they compute whether or not N is prime?  Does the
first entity to compute it "collapse the mathematical wave function"?

Jason



>
>
>
>>
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:54 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
 So you are arguing that doing the computations is what makes a number
 prime or not?

 When does the number first become prime, is it when the first person
 anywhere in the universe checks it? What about people beyond the
 cosmological horizon that compute it, or what about people in hypothetical
 other universes?  Does the first person ever to check and verify that a
 number is prime, make it prime for all people, in all universes, forever?

 Jason


 On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Stephen Paul King <
 stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> I do not assume that computations can occur if there are no physical
> means to implement them. My imagination that s 270 digit string is prime 
> is
> not equivalent to actually doing the computation that tests for primeness.
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> No, your making the mistake of identifying a representation of a
>>> thing with the thing. The symbol 10^80 does not have 10^80 components, 
>>> so
>>> to act as it is does...
>>>
>>>
>> Tell me this, is the following (270 digit) number prime:
>>
>> 3326948948483294345491

Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:17 AM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> I agree with Jason!
>
>
Great :-)

Now all I need to do is convince you that 17 is prime without anyone having
to compute and confirm that fact, and then you will have an explanation for
why you believe you are reading this e-mail right now. (It is a consequence
of some truth about a particular number relation involving some big numbers)

Jason


>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:13 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:06 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
  Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?

>>>
>>>  I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in
>>> that numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some
>>> entity somewhere.
>>>
>>>
  If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
 computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
 Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.

>>>
>>>  When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether
>>> or not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find
>>> out either it was, or it wasn't.
>>>
>>>  My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not
>>> prime?  Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result.
>>> Presumably even causally isolated observers will also get the same result.
>>> If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build
>>> computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to
>>> get a different result?
>>>
>>>  My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result,
>>> that N was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime
>>> (or not prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>>>
>>>
>>> That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime,
>>> to 17 exists.  That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that
>>> "satisfying a predicate" = "exists".
>>>
>>>
>> All you need are truth values.  If it is true that the recursive function
>> containing an emulation of the wave function of the Hubble volume contains
>> a self-aware process known as Brent which believes he has read an e-mail
>> from Jason, then it is true that the aforementioned Brent believes he has
>> read an e-mail from Jason.  We don't need to add some additional "exists"
>> property on top of it, it adds nothing.
>>
>> Jason
>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Kindest Regards,
>
> Stephen Paul King
>
> Senior Researcher
>
> Mobile: (864) 567-3099
>
> stephe...@provensecure.com
>
>  http://www.provensecure.us/
>
>
> “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of
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> information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and
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> attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
> hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of
> this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 10:13 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:06 AM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King 
mailto:stephe...@provensecure.com>> wrote:

Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?


I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in that 
numbers
only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some entity 
somewhere.

If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the 
computation
of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true. Otherwise, we 
are merely
guessing, at best.


When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether or 
not it is
prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find out either it 
was, or
it wasn't.

My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not prime?  
Any time
we re-check the calculation we get the same result. Presumably even causally
isolated observers will also get the same result. If humans get wiped out 
and
cuttlefish take over the world and build computers, and they check to see 
if N, is
prime is it possible for them to get a different result?

My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that N 
was
always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or not 
prime) even
if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.


That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime, to 
17
exists.  That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that "satisfying a 
predicate"
= "exists".


All you need are truth values.  If it is true that the recursive function containing an 
emulation of the wave function of the Hubble volume contains a self-aware process known 
as Brent which believes he has read an e-mail from Jason, then it is true that the 
aforementioned Brent believes he has read an e-mail from Jason.  We don't need to add 
some additional "exists" property on top of it, it adds nothing.


It does if you don't have an axiomatic definition of all those predicates such that 
satisfaction of the predicate is provable. Otherwise you're just assuming there's a 
mathematical description that implies existence.  That might be true, but I think it's not 
knowable that it's true.  It's like "the laws of physics".


Brent

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 17:58, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> An observer in such a univer could never count to 17...
>>
>>
> Did you know you can count up to 1023 on your fingers?  I'll leave it as
> an exercise to figure out how. ;-)
>
> Please sir, I know!

Although you have to have rather flexible digits...

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 18:06, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Dear LirZ,
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:52 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear LizR,
>>>
>>>   That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't be
>>> an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There could not be
>>> one wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17 theoretically, and
>>> work out its properties" is impossible: probability zero.
>>>
>>
>> I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large enough
>> number, say 10^80, that observers *can *exist, we can then ask whether
>> such observers could work out the properties of numbers greater than 10^80.
>> Since we appear to be in such a universe, the answer is yes.
>>
>
> Are we really "working it out" or are we merely doing some approximation
> that is cut off far below the 10^80 limit?
>

No, we really can work out the properties of very large numbers. You don't
have to be able to count up to them one at a time to do it. For example, we
can work out the product of two large numbers without counting up to the
result, which is just as well, since (for example) 12345678 x 87654321
= 1,082,152,022,374,638 which would take about 35 million years to count up
to.

So, no!
>

Or rather, yes.

>
>
>> And we can also work out the properties of a universe containing 16
>> objects.
>>
>
> You just pointed out that there cannot be observers in the 16 object
> universe, so why are you arguing as if they could exist in such? This is a
> typical mistake that we make: assuming that there can exist an observer of
> a universe that does not allow the existence of such an observer in that
> particular universe. To do such is a fallacy!
>

I didn't argue that we could *exist* in such a universe, I said we could *work
out its properties*. In fact one can work out the properties of a universe
containing zero objects, as Einstein did - it's actually a lot easier than
working out the properties of complicated universes like ours.

None of which has very much bearing on maths, because you don't have to
picture weird universes to do maths. Maths works in any universe regardless
of the presence or absence of observers, in much the same way that it works
on the Moon and inside the Sun.

>
>
>> So it appears that observers in a universe which allows observers to
>> exist can work out the properties of universes containing any number of
>> objects. (Or, for short, they can do maths,)
>>
>
> Wrong, there is no actual "working it all the way out". There is, OTOH,
> lots of shortcuts and cheating by assuming that some thing is true without
> actually working the proof by demonstration.
>

See above.

>
>>>   We could never experience such and thus it follows that, to us, such a
>>> universe does not exist. Now, to follow the chain of reasoning, consider
>>> the collection of universes that are such that 17 is not prime is true in
>>> that collection. Could "we" experience anything like those universes?
>>>
>>
>> I can't see any chain of reasoning.
>>
>
> Does it make more sense now?
>

No.

>
>

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 19:01, meekerdb  wrote:

>  I know.  I was just taking 10^80 to mean "a very big number" which of
> course depends on context.  I generally do applied physics and engineering
> and so 10^80+1 = 10^80 for physical variables.
>

That reminds me of a joke...

...but you've probably heard it already, so I will stick to the point.

10^80 + 1 may happen to be a prime number (I leave the proof (or disproof)
up to Stephen Paul King as an exercise in applied mathematical reasoning)
in which case it is very different from 10^80 in terms of its mathematical
properties, even though it is the same when used physically "for all
intents and purposes" - since we already know that 10^80 is divisible by 10
(how did I work that, out without even being able to imagine 10^80 objects?
It's like magic...! :)

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[meekerdb]

On 12/16/2013 11:26 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 19:01, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


I know.  I was just taking 10^80 to mean "a very big number" which of 
course depends
on context.  I generally do applied physics and engineering and so 10^80+1 
= 10^80
for physical variables.


That reminds me of a joke...

...but you've probably heard it already, so I will stick to the point.

10^80 + 1 may happen to be a prime number (I leave the proof (or disproof) up to Stephen 
Paul King as an exercise in applied mathematical reasoning) in which case it is very 
different from 10^80 in terms of its mathematical properties, even though it is the same 
when used physically "for all intents and purposes" - since we already know that 10^80 
is divisible by 10 (how did I work that, out without even being able to imagine 10^80 
objects? It's like magic...! :)


Which is a true statement in mathematics.  But suppose I said the number of protons in the 
universe was 10^88, would you then know that the number of protons was divisible by 10?


Brent
Notice that it's a trick question.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 19:06, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 10:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>>  Yes, but why are you being anthropocentric?
>>
>
>  I thought that was your position, or at least (observer-centric), in
> that numbers only have properties when observed/checked/computed by some
> entity somewhere.
>
>
>>  If there can exist a physical process that is a bisimulation of the
>> computation of the test for primeness, then the primeness is true.
>> Otherwise, we are merely guessing, at best.
>>
>
>  When we check the primaility of some number N, we may not know whether
> or not it is prime.  However, eventually we run the computation and find
> out either it was, or it wasn't.
>
>  My question to you is when was it determined that N was or was not
> prime?  Any time we re-check the calculation we get the same result.
> Presumably even causally isolated observers will also get the same result.
> If humans get wiped out and cuttlefish take over the world and build
> computers, and they check to see if N, is prime is it possible for them to
> get a different result?
>
>  My contention is that it is not possible to get a different result, that
> N was always prime, or it was always not prime, and it would be prime (or
> not prime) even if we lacked the means or inclination to check it.
>
>
> That's fine.  But it's a leap to go from the truth value of 17 is prime,
> to 17 exists.  That's what I mean by mathematicians assuming that
> "satisfying a predicate" = "exists".
>

I guess it depends on what you mean by existing (I also suspect you knew
I'd say that :). I generally consider things that exist are the ones that
kick back in some fashion, or as someone said, it's what doesn't go away
when you stop believing in it.

17 exists in the sense that it exhibits certain properties that will always
be discovered by anyone who performs the relevant calculations, in this
universe or any possible universe. And it will continue to do so whether I
think it does or not, or whether anyone is around to think it does or not,
or whether anyone has ever considered its existence, ever, or not. Whether
you think that's good enough to say it exists is, I guess, a matter of
taste.

Likewise, whether matter or energy exists comes down to what it actually
is, which so far nobody knows. My best description of (say) a photon is
that it is something that registers a result in certain experiments, e.g.
causes a photomultiplier to click or a grain of emulsion to darken. Are
those properties worthy of being called existence, any more than being
unable to divide 17 by any smaller integers except 1 is? I don't know.

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[LizR]

On 17 December 2013 20:34, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 12/16/2013 11:26 PM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 17 December 2013 19:01, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  I know.  I was just taking 10^80 to mean "a very big number" which of
>> course depends on context.  I generally do applied physics and engineering
>> and so 10^80+1 = 10^80 for physical variables.
>>
>
>  That reminds me of a joke...
>
>  ...but you've probably heard it already, so I will stick to the point.
>
>  10^80 + 1 may happen to be a prime number (I leave the proof (or
> disproof) up to Stephen Paul King as an exercise in applied mathematical
> reasoning) in which case it is very different from 10^80 in terms of its
> mathematical properties, even though it is the same when used physically
> "for all intents and purposes" - since we already know that 10^80 is
> divisible by 10 (how did I work that, out without even being able to
> imagine 10^80 objects? It's like magic...! :)
>
>
> Which is a true statement in mathematics.  But suppose I said the number
> of protons in the universe was 10^88, would you then know that the number
> of protons was divisible by 10?
>

No, because you couldn't truthfully make that statement (except by
accident). You don't know the number of protons in the universe, which is a
physical fact that could only be determined by measurement, not to mention
a far greater knowledge of cosmology than we currently possess (e.g.
whether the universe is infinite). And the measurement would be impossible,
except perhaps to within an order of magnitude, for all sorts of practical
reasons.

While the properties of the number 10^88 are mathematical facts, and their
truth or falsity can be determined by calculation.

>
> Notice that it's a trick question.
>
> I'm not sure. Did I miss something?

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Re: How can a grown man be an atheist ?

[Richard Ruquist]

Jason, String theory predicts that there may be as much as 10^90 Calabi-Yau
compact manifold per cc. Richard


On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Liz,
>>
>>   Yes! Consider a universe with only 16 objects in it.
>>
>>
>>
> Our observable universe has less than 10^100 things in it, yet the HTTPS
> connection to my mail server relied on prime numbers of many hundreds of
> digits, far larger than 10^100.
>
> If numbers larger than things that can be counted can still have definite
> properties, then I would say 17 is still prime even in a universe with 16,
> (or for that matter 0) things in it.
>
> Jason
>
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