Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
On 08/05/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well of course I agree with you in this case. 'Election' is a human construct. That's why it was a horrifyingly unfortunate typo on my point. The point is that if you try to apply the same reasoning to everything, you'll end up saying that *everything* is just a human construct - and throw the scientific method out the window. We don't 'construct' those things in reality which are objective. Our concepts *make reference* to them. The concepts may be invented, but there has to be a match between at least *some* of the informational content of our theories and the informational content of objective theory (or else the concepts would be useless). Think computers and information here. Objective reality is information. And our concepts are information too. So there has to be a partial match between the information content of useful concepts and objective reality. That's why we can refer a failure of reductionism from the concepts we invented which proved useful. Yes, but the theory is our idea of that partial match and is a human construct. As a human idea, the theory is something separate. But the objective reality of nature (whatever it is) is not something separate to the objective reality of nature. Maybe we are quibbling about words, but it is in the spirit of Occam's Razor to have the minimum number of entities possible. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
On May 8, 4:22 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have now given three clear-cut exmaples of a failure of reductionism. (1) Infinite Sets But there is no infinite set of anything. Says who? The point is that infinite sets appear to be indispensible to our explanations of reality. According to the Tegmark paper just recently posted, math concepts map to physical concepts. We can infer that there must be some physical concept which can be indentified with an infinite set. And the existence of this physical thing would be a violation of reductionism. To escape from the conclusion we either have to deny that infinite sets are real, or else deny the one-to-one match between the mathematical and physical world. (2) The Laws of Physics and (3) Quantum Wave Functions It is established that all of these concepts are indispensible to our explanations of reality and they are logically well defined and supported. But none of these concepts can be reduced to any finite set of empirical facts. That's because we invented them. No, it's because reductionism is false. We invented the concepts, but (as I mentioned in the previous post) for concepts which are useful there has to be at least a *partial* match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. Therefore we can infer general things about reality from knowledge of this information content. Where informational content of our useful concepts is not computable, this tells us that there do exist physical things which also mimic this uncomputability (and hence reductionism is false). QM isn't even a physical theory; it's just a set of principles for formulating physical theories; as classical mechanics was before it. Exactly so! I agree. QM is really an abstract *high-level* explanation of reality. This sounds strange, because the QM description is usually thought of as the *low level* (basement level) description fo reality, but it ain't. It's true that QM may be the basement level in the sense of *accuracy* (best scientific model so far), but *not* in the ontological sense. As you point out, in the *ontological* sense it's really a sort of high-level *reality shell* - an abstracted set of principles rather a complete physical principle in itself. My reality theory is a three-level model of reality (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). And QM is actually at the *highest* level of explanation! This is the complete reverse of how QM is conventinally thought of. It makes more sense of you think of the wave function of the whole universe. Then you can how QM is actually the *highest level* (most abstract) explanation of reality. Next level down are functional systems. Then the lowest level is the particle level. All three of these levels of description are equally valid. This is somewhat similair to Bohm's two-level interpretation (wave function at one level, particles the other level). Only I have inserted a third level into the scheme. *Between* the QM wave level description (high level) and the aprticle level description (low level) is where I think the solution to the puzzle of consciousness may be found. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
On May 8, 6:03 pm, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, but the theory is our idea of that partial match and is a human construct. As a human idea, the theory is something separate. But the objective reality of nature (whatever it is) is not something separate to the objective reality of nature. Maybe we are quibbling about words, but it is in the spirit of Occam's Razor to have the minimum number of entities possible. -- Stathis Papaioannou No! The theory is not the *idea* of the partial match. The theory (the parts which are correct) *is identical* to to the match. The distinction between map and territory is dissolving. Again, you need to keep your eye on the ball and think computer science and information here. The theory *is information*. The reality is *information*. Therefore, *for the particular parts of the theory which are correct* , those parts of the theory (the abstracted information content) *are identical* to the reality. Reality is informationtheory is information...and at the intersection (where the two over-lap and at the right level of abstraction) it's *identical* information. Think of it another way. OOP (Object Oriented Programming) draws no distinction between an objective 'object' and an abstracted 'class'. You can create abstract classes (which correspond to for instance abstract ideas) but these classes ARE THEMSELVES OBJECTS. Think about it. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
Le 08-mai-07, à 04:27, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Say what!! this is not a valid analogy since the laws of physics are absolutely the fundamental level of reality, where as dsecriptions of chimpanzee behaviour are not. What makes you so sure. This is a physicalist assumption, and it has been shown non compatible with very weak form of mechanism. 'The Laws of Physics' don't refer to human notions (they certainly are not regarded that way by scientists - the whole notion of an objective reality would have be thrown out the window if we thought that there were no objective laws of physics since as mentioned, physics is the base level of reality), but are precise mathematical rules which have to be (postulated as) *universal* in scope for the scientific method to work at all. Actually, although the current laws of physics does not refer to humans, they do refer to observers, if not only through the notions of observable and measurement.. With Everett, the observer can be just a memory machine. Once a machine, the laws of physics have to emerge from something else, like number or information science/computer science, or mathematics. You are perhaps confusing the notion of objective reality with the physicalist assumption that the objective reality is the physical reality. This has never been proved, and indeed is already jeopardized independently by both the quantum facts and simple hypotheses, like the finiteness of some possible representations of the observers. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Every creation and gravitation
Every creation hypotheses, instead of every computation or every mathematical structure. I favor a variant of the everything idea, which I would like to call the every creation approach. In some sense it creates every computational moment. Computations are not required as fundamental entities. Almost all you need is a natural definition to make new creations from pairs of creations. This determines the evolution of an avalanche of creations. Creations inside the avalanche may be aware only of those creations to which they are in relative equilibrium. As with other approaches, a consequence seems to be the emergence of the laws of Physics. Let me start with the following 4 hypotheses: 1. There is an underlying time. 2. There are creations (creation objects). 3. There is a natural creation operation defined, which creates new creations from existing creations. 4. Every natural creation operation happens. Some more words on these hypotheses: (1) There is an underlying time, which is discrete. This makes it easy to talk about creation operations, as if they happened in our time. I will do this. (2a) New creations can be made (created). (2b) Creations do not get deleted. (2c) Creations can be made in multiple copies. Creations have multiplicities. Whether a creation can be made does not depend on (can not be prevented by) the preexistence of an identical creation. (3) For any two creations x and y, there is a natural creation operation [x,y] defined, which makes a creation z. Lets call x the operator, and y the operand. I do not specify the definition of the natural creation operation here. I have given one of my favorite definitions, using replacement operators, in a previous posting, where [(x1 x2),y] creates a copy of y and replaces every occurrence of x1 by x2. (4a) Every-creation hypotheses. The natural creation operation [x,y] is happening for every existing creation x and for every existing creation y. (4b) Every existing creation x has equal chance to become the operator in [x,y]. (4c) Every existing creation y has equal chance to become the operand in [x,y]. Let's also make the assumption that creations are (directly) responsible for our awareness and our perceptions of the world. What are the consequences of such a hypotheses? Creations may perceive other creations only indirectly and only if the later possibly play a role in the creations' histories. We may not perceive properties which depend on the underlying time Tau. But we may be able to perceive invariant properties, which do not change when the underlying time Tau is getting larger and larger. We can be indirectly aware of creations who's multiplicities are on average in relative equilibrium with the multiplicities of the creations which are directly responsible for our awareness. Thus the observable universe consists, possibly only, of creations who's multiplicities grow on average at the same rate. Multiplicity(creation,Tau) = phi(creation) * growth_factor(Tau) Multiplicity (observer,Tau) = phi(observer) * growth_factor(Tau) The relative multiplicity, Multiplicity (creation,Tau) /Multiplicity (observer,Tau) = = phi(creation) / phi(observer), is independent of Tau. For creations inside the avalanche, the importance of the initial conditions depends on the number of possible equilibrium states (or the number of certain equivalence classes of possible equilibrium states.) If there is only one possible equilibrium state, then the initial conditions are not relevant at all. Let's assume that Tau is large enough, so that the equilibrium is reached for the creations under consideration. The growth factor can be calculated when we make the simplifying approximation that every operation [x,y] just creates one new copy of y. In that case trivially all creations are in equilibrium, as required. If one of the operations [x,y] does not create a new copy of y, but instead another creation z, the equilibrium is broken. There is one creation y missing and one creation z too much. This is as if the creation y had been moved from y to z. The effective movement can be compensated by an effective movement back. There could be another operation [x2,z] which creates a creation y. Adding loops of effective movements does not change the equilibrium. May a set X of creations x_i form a pattern, and the operations among these creations may produce another pattern Y of creations y_i. Lets call this an effective particle P moving from X to Y. The broken equilibrium can be restored by an effective particle moving from Y to X. Let me call this the effective antiparticle P_bar moving into the opposite direction as particle P is moving. The choice of naming is intended to remind you of the Feynman-Stückelberg interpretation of E0 Solutions of equations like Dirac or Klein-Gordon Equation: Negative-energy particle solutions going backward in time *describe*, positive-energy
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 4:06 pm, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 08/05/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Silly spelling error in my last post - I meant 'electrons' of course. Let avoid talk of 'electrons' then, and talk about 'Quantum Wave Functions' then, since surely even Russell must agree that QM fields are fundamental (at least as far as we know). You can't say that QM fields are just human inventions - take away the base level and you have no objective reality left to argue about! ;) Actually I didn't pick it as a typo - I thought you were talking about elections. Elections are complex things, involving candidates, voters, timing, standards of empirical verification and many other rules. They also involve concepts such as fairness, democracy, deceitfulness and so on. You can't physically grasp an election or draw a circle around it. Nevertheless, calling it an election is just a shorthand for a collection of matter behaving in a certain way. There is no extra election-substance instilled by the universe which makes the difference between an election and an otherwise identical non-election, and there is no election-entity distinct from the behaviour of matter which we observe and call an election. -- Stathis Papaioannou Well of course I agree with you in this case. 'Election' is a human construct. That's why it was a horrifyingly unfortunate typo on my point. The point is that if you try to apply the same reasoning to everything, you'll end up saying that *everything* is just a human construct - and throw the scientific method out the window. We don't 'construct' those things in reality which are objective. Our concepts *make reference* to them. The concepts may be invented, but there has to be a match between at least *some* of the informational content of our theories and the informational content of objective theory (or else the concepts would be useless). Think computers and information here. Objective reality is information. There's the sticking point. Information is about something, it's not necessarily something itself - though of course it is always embodied in some way. And our concepts are information too. In what sense is an electron information? The state of an electron, relative to some apparatus or preparation, may carry some information but I don't see that the electron IS information. So there has to be a partial match between the information content of useful concepts and objective reality. But it doesn't follow that reality IS information. Brent Meeker That's why we can refer a failure of reductionism from the concepts we invented which proved useful. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 3:56 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 'The Laws of Physics' don't refer to human notions (they certainly are not regarded that way by scientists They are by the scientists I know. The *knowledge* we have of the laws of physics are human notions. But the laws of physics *per se* are not. All the laws of physics we know of, or ever will know of, are. See other post. Think computer science and information. Our concepts are information and so is reality. How do you know what reality is? So in the case of useful concepts there has to be a partial match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. This means we can infer properties about reality from our concepts. The distinction between map and territory is not absolute. A simulated hurricane for instance, has *some* of the exact same *information content* as a real hurricane. But some is not all. The hurricane embodies the information of our fluid dynamic model of a hurricane plus a whole lot more. - the whole notion of an objective reality would have be thrown out the window if we thought that there were no objective laws of physics since as mentioned, True. But ask yourself why you think there is an objective reality, as opposed to being a brain in a vat or a simulation in a computer or a number in a UD? It's not because you perceive reality directly. physics is the base level of reality), but are precise mathematical rules which have to be (postulated as) *universal* in scope for the scientific method to work at all. Sure, they are precise mathematical systems, which the scientist hopes and intends to describe (part of) an objective reality. But the map is not the territory and scientists know it. See above. And read Tegmark's paper! ;) In the case of mathematics the distinction between map and territory is breaking down. Remember what we agreed on earlier - math is *both* epistemological (a map we use to understand reality) *and* ontological (the territory itself) I have never agreed that mathematics has the same ontological status as reality (whatever that is). I think mathematics is all a human construct which is used to describe reality and a lot of other stuff. I've read Tegmark's paper; that doesn't mean I accept it as 'the truth'. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 4:22 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have now given three clear-cut exmaples of a failure of reductionism. (1) Infinite Sets But there is no infinite set of anything. Says who? The point is that infinite sets appear to be indispensible to our explanations of reality. All measurements yield finite numbers. Infinite sets and infinitesimals are mathematical conveniences that avoid having to worry about how small is small enough and how big is too big. Do you ever use infinite sets in computer science? According to the Tegmark paper just recently posted, math concepts map to physical concepts. We only know that some math concepts map to physical concepts and we dont' know that the mapping is perfect and in fact we have some reason to believe that it is not. We can infer that there must be some physical concept which can be indentified with an infinite set. And the existence of this physical thing would be a violation of reductionism. To escape from the conclusion we either have to deny that infinite sets are real, or else deny the one-to-one match between the mathematical and physical world. (2) The Laws of Physics and (3) Quantum Wave Functions It is established that all of these concepts are indispensible to our explanations of reality and they are logically well defined and supported. But none of these concepts can be reduced to any finite set of empirical facts. That's because we invented them. No, it's because reductionism is false. We invented the concepts, but (as I mentioned in the previous post) for concepts which are useful there has to be at least a *partial* match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. Therefore we can infer general things about reality from knowledge of this information content. Where informational content of our useful concepts is not computable, this tells us that there do exist physical things which also mimic this uncomputability (and hence reductionism is false). Or that our mapping is faulty and there a mathematical concepts that don't map to anything physical - which I think would be obvious since it has been shown that a mathematical system will always include undecidable propositions and such propositions or their negation can be added to create new, mutually inconsistent mathematical systems. QM isn't even a physical theory; it's just a set of principles for formulating physical theories; as classical mechanics was before it. Exactly so! I agree. QM is really an abstract *high-level* explanation of reality. This sounds strange, because the QM description is usually thought of as the *low level* (basement level) description fo reality, but it ain't. It's true that QM may be the basement level in the sense of *accuracy* (best scientific model so far), but *not* in the ontological sense. As you point out, in the *ontological* sense it's really a sort of high-level *reality shell* - an abstracted set of principles rather a complete physical principle in itself. My reality theory is a three-level model of reality (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). And QM is actually at the *highest* level of explanation! This is the complete reverse of how QM is conventinally thought of. It makes more sense of you think of the wave function of the whole universe. Then you can how QM is actually the *highest level* (most abstract) explanation of reality. Next level down are functional systems. Then the lowest level is the particle level. All three of these levels of description are equally valid. This is somewhat similair to Bohm's two-level interpretation (wave function at one level, particles the other level). Only I have inserted a third level into the scheme. *Between* the QM wave level description (high level) and the aprticle level description (low level) is where I think the solution to the puzzle of consciousness may be found. But QM assumes a fixed background spacetime, which is inconsistent with general relativity - so one of them (or more likely both) are wrong. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 6:03 pm, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, but the theory is our idea of that partial match and is a human construct. As a human idea, the theory is something separate. But the objective reality of nature (whatever it is) is not something separate to the objective reality of nature. Maybe we are quibbling about words, but it is in the spirit of Occam's Razor to have the minimum number of entities possible. -- Stathis Papaioannou No! The theory is not the *idea* of the partial match. The theory (the parts which are correct) *is identical* to to the match. But how do you know any part is correct. Thermodynamics is a very good theory, I use the thermodynamics of gases often and I get very good answers - but I know it's not exact because it's neglecting the finite number of molecules involved and approximating them as a continuum. And in fact for hypersonic flows I have to start taking the molecules into account. And *really* I know the molecules are made up of atoms and so there is dissocation at high temperatures and I need to make corrections for that and...so on. Brent Meeker The distinction between map and territory is dissolving. Again, you need to keep your eye on the ball and think computer science and information here. The theory *is information*. The reality is *information*. Therefore, *for the particular parts of the theory which are correct* , those parts of the theory (the abstracted information content) *are identical* to the reality. Reality is informationtheory is information...and at the intersection (where the two over-lap and at the right level of abstraction) it's *identical* information. Think of it another way. OOP (Object Oriented Programming) draws no distinction between an objective 'object' and an abstracted 'class'. You can create abstract classes (which correspond to for instance abstract ideas) but these classes ARE THEMSELVES OBJECTS. Think about it. They are themselves objects only in the conceptual world of the program. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
On May 9, 5:59 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So in the case of useful concepts there has to be a partial match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. This means we can infer properties about reality from our concepts. The distinction between map and territory is not absolute. A simulated hurricane for instance, has *some* of the exact same *information content* as a real hurricane. But some is not all. The hurricane embodies the information of our fluid dynamic model of a hurricane plus a whole lot more. This point about information is indeed the sticking point in this thread. But both here in your other post you seem to be agreeing with me! In the other post you said: The state of an electron, relative to some apparatus or preparation, may carry some information. And here you say: The hurricane embodies the information . But this was precisely my point. If you indeed agree the electron itself 'is carrying information', and that the hurricane 'embodies information', then you are agreeing that there exists something in external reality which is 'information'. It is not neccessery for you to accept that reality is all information. For my points to stick you only need to agree that *some* part of external reality is *information* (or that 'reality has an informational layer or component). You seem to have agreed. I have never agreed that mathematics has the same ontological status as reality (whatever that is). I think mathematics is all a human construct which is used to describe reality and a lot of other stuff. I've read Tegmark's paper; that doesn't mean I accept it as 'the truth'. Brent Meeker Well here is a major ontological disagreement between us then, since I think math *does* have the same status as 'reality'. It all comes down in part to the sticking point about information we've just beenarguing about. If something in reality is 'infomation', then something in reality is also math, since (discrete math at least) is all about information. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
On May 9, 6:08 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 4:22 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have now given three clear-cut exmaples of a failure of reductionism. (1) Infinite Sets But there is no infinite set of anything. Says who? The point is that infinite sets appear to be indispensible to our explanations of reality. All measurements yield finite numbers. Infinite sets and infinitesimals are mathematical conveniences that avoid having to worry about how small is small enough and how big is too big. Do you ever use infinite sets in computer science? Infinite sets and infinitesimals are a lot more than 'mathematical conveniences'. There are precise logical theories for these things (As I mentioned before - Cantor worked out the theory of infinite sets, Robinson/Conway worked out the theory of infinitesimals). A dislike of infinities characterized the early Greeks and pre 20th century mathematicians. It hindered the development of mathematics. (Read the excellent books by Rudy Rucker). It's true that infinite sets are not used in comptuer science (which is all about discrete/finite math) but beware of making assumptions about reality purely on the basis of what can be measured ;) It has never been established that space is discrete (a point Stephen Hawking just recently was at pains to get across). The supposed discreteness of space seems to be yet another dogma currently popular with computer scientists. No, it's because reductionism is false. We invented the concepts, but (as I mentioned in the previous post) for concepts which are useful there has to be at least a *partial* match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. Therefore we can infer general things about reality from knowledge of this information content. Where informational content of our useful concepts is not computable, this tells us that there do exist physical things which also mimic this uncomputability (and hence reductionism is false). Or that our mapping is faulty and there a mathematical concepts that don't map to anything physical - which I think would be obvious since it has been shown that a mathematical system will always include undecidable propositions and such propositions or their negation can be added to create new, mutually inconsistent mathematical systems. I don't see that uncomputability or undecidability has any bearing on the issue of the mapping between the physical and mathematical. In the multiverse view, all possible mathematical systems could be physically real. 'Physical' does not have to mean 'finite' or 'computable'. My reality theory is a three-level model of reality (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). And QM is actually at the *highest* level of explanation! This is the complete reverse of how QM is conventinally thought of. It makes more sense of you think of the wave function of the whole universe. Then you can how QM is actually the *highest level* (most abstract) explanation of reality. Next level down are functional systems. Then the lowest level is the particle level. All three of these levels of description are equally valid. This is somewhat similair to Bohm's two-level interpretation (wave function at one level, particles the other level). Only I have inserted a third level into the scheme. *Between* the QM wave level description (high level) and the aprticle level description (low level) is where I think the solution to the puzzle of consciousness may be found. But QM assumes a fixed background spacetime, which is inconsistent with general relativity - so one of them (or more likely both) are wrong. Brent Meeker There are *degrees* of rightness/wrongness. Later successful theories of reality will still have to have some of the same features of the earlier theories in areas where the earlier theories were empirically proven. For instance it's been proven from the EPR experiments that any theory that replaces current QM still has to have some of the same general features such as a 'wave of possibilities/sum over histories', non-locality or uncertainties and so on. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 9, 6:08 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 4:22 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have now given three clear-cut exmaples of a failure of reductionism. (1) Infinite Sets But there is no infinite set of anything. Says who? The point is that infinite sets appear to be indispensible to our explanations of reality. All measurements yield finite numbers. Infinite sets and infinitesimals are mathematical conveniences that avoid having to worry about how small is small enough and how big is too big. Do you ever use infinite sets in computer science? Infinite sets and infinitesimals are a lot more than 'mathematical conveniences'. There are precise logical theories for these things (As I mentioned before - Cantor worked out the theory of infinite sets, Robinson/Conway worked out the theory of infinitesimals). Being logically consistent and/or precise doesn't imply existence. There are consistent theories in which there is a cardinality between the integers and the reals. But there are also consistent theories which deny such a cardinality. Does that mean some set exists with that cardinality or not? A dislike of infinities characterized the early Greeks and pre 20th century mathematicians. It hindered the development of mathematics. (Read the excellent books by Rudy Rucker). I've read'em. I don't dislike them - as I said calculus is a lot easier than finite differences. It's true that infinite sets are not used in comptuer science (which is all about discrete/finite math) but beware of making assumptions about reality purely on the basis of what can be measured ;) If it can't be measured even indirectly, like an infinitesimal, then whether it is kept in your model of reality is mostly a matter of convenience. It has never been established that space is discrete (a point Stephen Hawking just recently was at pains to get across). The supposed discreteness of space seems to be yet another dogma currently popular with computer scientists. True, but neither is it clear that spacetime must be a continuum. No, it's because reductionism is false. We invented the concepts, but (as I mentioned in the previous post) for concepts which are useful there has to be at least a *partial* match between the information content of the concepts and the information content of reality. Therefore we can infer general things about reality from knowledge of this information content. Where informational content of our useful concepts is not computable, this tells us that there do exist physical things which also mimic this uncomputability (and hence reductionism is false). Or that our mapping is faulty and there a mathematical concepts that don't map to anything physical - which I think would be obvious since it has been shown that a mathematical system will always include undecidable propositions and such propositions or their negation can be added to create new, mutually inconsistent mathematical systems. I don't see that uncomputability or undecidability has any bearing on the issue of the mapping between the physical and mathematical. In the multiverse view, all possible mathematical systems could be physically real. 'Physical' does not have to mean 'finite' or 'computable'. But the multiverse view is anything but precise and logical. Where are the multiverses? What does it mean for them to be physically real - but undetectable and immeasurable? My reality theory is a three-level model of reality (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). And QM is actually at the *highest* level of explanation! This is the complete reverse of how QM is conventinally thought of. It makes more sense of you think of the wave function of the whole universe. Then you can how QM is actually the *highest level* (most abstract) explanation of reality. Next level down are functional systems. Then the lowest level is the particle level. All three of these levels of description are equally valid. This is somewhat similair to Bohm's two-level interpretation (wave function at one level, particles the other level). Only I have inserted a third level into the scheme. *Between* the QM wave level description (high level) and the aprticle level description (low level) is where I think the solution to the puzzle of consciousness may be found. But QM assumes a fixed background spacetime, which is inconsistent with general relativity - so one of them (or more likely both) are wrong. Brent Meeker There are *degrees* of rightness/wrongness. Later successful theories of reality will still have to have some of the same features of the earlier theories in areas where the earlier theories were empirically proven. But the earlier theories were NOT empirically proven - they were found to hold over the observable
