Re: Watch "Can Many Worlds Solve The Measurement Problem?" on YouTube

[Tomas Pales]

A split into a finite number of worlds would solve the measure problem but 
where did he get his finite number? And why are physicists like Tegmark and 
Greene still talking about the measure problem if the number is finite?

On Wednesday, December 6, 2023 at 2:52:31 PM UTC+1 Jason Resch wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2023, 7:24 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>> But isn't there a problem when the number of worlds after the split is 
>> infinite? In popular science books they always write that if the number of 
>> worlds is infinite then there are different ways of counting the 
>> probabilities and so we can arrive at different probabilities than those 
>> given by the Born rule. They call it the "measure problem" (not measurement 
>> problem).
>>
>
>
> Here, at about 6 minutes and 30 seconds in, Deutsch is asked how many 
> universes are there. He gives a finite number:
>
> https://youtu.be/Kj2lxDf9R3Y
>
> Jason 
>
>
>> On Wednesday, December 6, 2023 at 7:28:54 AM UTC+1 Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>> https://youtu.be/BU8Lg_R2DL0
>>>
>>> This is timely.
>>>
>>> Jason 
>>>
>> -- 
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>>  
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/013311b5-c92b-403a-8dad-5e090fd95affn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer>
>> .
>>
>

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Re: Watch "Can Many Worlds Solve The Measurement Problem?" on YouTube

[Tomas Pales]

But isn't there a problem when the number of worlds after the split is 
infinite? In popular science books they always write that if the number of 
worlds is infinite then there are different ways of counting the 
probabilities and so we can arrive at different probabilities than those 
given by the Born rule. They call it the "measure problem" (not measurement 
problem).

On Wednesday, December 6, 2023 at 7:28:54 AM UTC+1 Jason Resch wrote:

> https://youtu.be/BU8Lg_R2DL0
>
> This is timely.
>
> Jason 
>

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 2:08:51 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/2/2022 4:45 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 1:38:20 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/2/2022 2:34 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:54:50 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/2/2022 1:42 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:07:22 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/2/2022 12:58 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent 
>>>>>>> description we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague 
>>>>>>> description we may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it 
>>>>>>> or 
>>>>>>> there may appear to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For 
>>>>>>> example, if we try to describe a quantum object in terms of classical 
>>>>>>> physics the description will not be precise enough and the assumptions 
>>>>>>> inherent in those terms will be contradictory. The ideal description 
>>>>>>> would 
>>>>>>> reveal the complete structure of the object down to empty sets but we 
>>>>>>> can't 
>>>>>>> physically probe objects around us to that level.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was 
>>>>>>>> imprecise.  It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have 
>>>>>>>> different ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no 
>>>>>>>> amount 
>>>>>>>> of logic will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in 
>>>>>>>> the 
>>>>>>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you 
>>>>>>>> have no 
>>>>>>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved 
>>>>>>>> it or 
>>>>>>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>>>>>>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. 
>>>>>>> Classical 
>>>>>>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>>>>>>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is 
>>>>>>> not 
>>>>>>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>>>>>>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't 
>>>>>>> mean it exists either.  
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Which word?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Complete" mathematical description.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure 
>>>>&g

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 1:38:20 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/2/2022 2:34 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:54:50 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/2/2022 1:42 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:07:22 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/2/2022 12:58 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent 
>>>>>> description we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague 
>>>>>> description we may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it 
>>>>>> or 
>>>>>> there may appear to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For 
>>>>>> example, if we try to describe a quantum object in terms of classical 
>>>>>> physics the description will not be precise enough and the assumptions 
>>>>>> inherent in those terms will be contradictory. The ideal description 
>>>>>> would 
>>>>>> reveal the complete structure of the object down to empty sets but we 
>>>>>> can't 
>>>>>> physically probe objects around us to that level.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was 
>>>>>>> imprecise.  It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have 
>>>>>>> different ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no 
>>>>>>> amount 
>>>>>>> of logic will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in 
>>>>>>> the 
>>>>>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have 
>>>>>>> no 
>>>>>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it 
>>>>>>> or 
>>>>>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>>>>>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. 
>>>>>> Classical 
>>>>>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>>>>>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
>>>>>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>>>>>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean 
>>>>>> it exists either.  
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Which word?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> "Complete" mathematical description.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure 
>>>> can be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete 
>>>> mathematical description of any object. It basically means that an object 
>>>> is analyzed down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal 
>>>> structure of the object also establishes all the object's relations to all 
>>>> other objects, including for example the relation of "insurability" 
>>>> between 
>>>> a car and insurance providers.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Which mea

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:54:50 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/2/2022 1:42 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:07:22 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/2/2022 12:58 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent 
>>>>> description we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague 
>>>>> description we may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or 
>>>>> there may appear to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For 
>>>>> example, if we try to describe a quantum object in terms of classical 
>>>>> physics the description will not be precise enough and the assumptions 
>>>>> inherent in those terms will be contradictory. The ideal description 
>>>>> would 
>>>>> reveal the complete structure of the object down to empty sets but we 
>>>>> can't 
>>>>> physically probe objects around us to that level.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was 
>>>>>> imprecise.  It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have 
>>>>>> different ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no 
>>>>>> amount 
>>>>>> of logic will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in 
>>>>>> the 
>>>>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have 
>>>>>> no 
>>>>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it 
>>>>>> or 
>>>>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>>>>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. 
>>>>> Classical 
>>>>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>>>>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
>>>>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>>>>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean 
>>>>> it exists either.  
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Which word?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Complete" mathematical description.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure 
>>> can be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete 
>>> mathematical description of any object. It basically means that an object 
>>> is analyzed down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal 
>>> structure of the object also establishes all the object's relations to all 
>>> other objects, including for example the relation of "insurability" between 
>>> a car and insurance providers.
>>>
>>>
>>> Which means you are assuming the world is a mathematical structure.  In 
>>> other words begging the question.
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, I am assuming that things constitute collections - that's what a 
>> mathematical structure is. What other kind of structure can there be?
>>
>>
>> Don't you see that "things" and "collections" are concepts we impose on 
>> the world.  Didn't you notice when the whole ontology of the world shifted 
>> from particles to fields?  No?  Did you see metphysicians rushing to revise 
>> the

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:07:22 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/2/2022 12:58 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description 
>>>> we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we 
>>>> may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may 
>>>> appear 
>>>> to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
>>>> describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
>>>> will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms 
>>>> will 
>>>> be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete 
>>>> structure 
>>>> of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
>>>> around us to that level.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was 
>>>>> imprecise.  It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have 
>>>>> different ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount 
>>>>> of logic will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in 
>>>>> the 
>>>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have 
>>>>> no 
>>>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it 
>>>>> or 
>>>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>>>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. 
>>>> Classical 
>>>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>>>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
>>>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>>>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean 
>>>> it exists either.  
>>>>
>>>
>>> Which word?
>>>
>>>
>>> "Complete" mathematical description.
>>>
>>
>> I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure 
>> can be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete 
>> mathematical description of any object. It basically means that an object 
>> is analyzed down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal 
>> structure of the object also establishes all the object's relations to all 
>> other objects, including for example the relation of "insurability" between 
>> a car and insurance providers.
>>
>>
>> Which means you are assuming the world is a mathematical structure.  In 
>> other words begging the question.
>>
>
> Yeah, I am assuming that things constitute collections - that's what a 
> mathematical structure is. What other kind of structure can there be?
>
>
> Don't you see that "things" and "collections" are concepts we impose on 
> the world.  Didn't you notice when the whole ontology of the world shifted 
> from particles to fields?  No?  Did you see metphysicians rushing to revise 
> their world views?
>

And the concept of "collections" obviously corresponds to the world. After 
all, how could it be otherwise? If there are two somethings they 
automatically constitute a collection of two somethings. Particles or 
fields, whatever - they have mathematical descriptions and mathematical 
descriptions are in principle reducible to pure sets.


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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description 
>>> we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we 
>>> may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear 
>>> to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
>>> describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
>>> will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will 
>>> be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure 
>>> of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
>>> around us to that level.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was 
>>>> imprecise.  It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have 
>>>> different ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount 
>>>> of logic will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in the 
>>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have no 
>>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it or 
>>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>>
>>>
>>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. Classical 
>>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
>>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>>
>>>
>>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean it 
>>> exists either.  
>>>
>>
>> Which word?
>>
>>
>> "Complete" mathematical description.
>>
>
> I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure can 
> be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete mathematical 
> description of any object. It basically means that an object is analyzed 
> down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal structure of the 
> object also establishes all the object's relations to all other objects, 
> including for example the relation of "insurability" between a car and 
> insurance providers.
>
>
> Which means you are assuming the world is a mathematical structure.  In 
> other words begging the question.
>

Yeah, I am assuming that things constitute collections - that's what a 
mathematical structure is. What other kind of structure can there be?
 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description 
>> we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we 
>> may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear 
>> to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
>> describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
>> will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will 
>> be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure 
>> of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
>> around us to that level.
>>
>>
>> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was imprecise.  
>>> It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have different 
>>> ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount of logic 
>>> will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in the 
>>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have no 
>>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it or 
>>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>>
>>
>> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
>> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. Classical 
>> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
>> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
>> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
>> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>
>>
>> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean it 
>> exists either.  
>>
>
> Which word?
>
>
> "Complete" mathematical description.
>

I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure can 
be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete mathematical 
description of any object. It basically means that an object is analyzed 
down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal structure of the 
object also establishes all the object's relations to all other objects, 
including for example the relation of "insurability" between a car and 
insurance providers.

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description we 
> need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we may 
> be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear to 
> be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
> describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
> will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will 
> be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure 
> of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
> around us to that level.
>
>
> I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was imprecise.  
>> It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have different 
>> ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount of logic 
>> will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in the 
>> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have no 
>> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it or 
>> even knowing whether one exists .
>>
>
> It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
> mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. Classical 
> physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
> they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
> feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>
>
> And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean it 
> exists either.
>

Which word?


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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:


But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description we 
need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we may 
be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear to 
be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will 
be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure 
of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
around us to that level.


I think that's a cheat.   It's not that classical physics was imprecise.  
> It was just wrong.  QM and Newtonian mechanics even have different 
> ontologies.  If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount of logic 
> will correct that.  Logic only explicates what is implicit in the 
> premises.  It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have no 
> way of producing such a description  or knowing if you have achieved it or 
> even knowing whether one exists .
>

It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every 
mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. Classical 
physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so 
they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not 
feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures 
doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 1:47:04 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/28/2022 4:08 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 12:15:39 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 2/28/2022 1:29 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:47:21 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/28/2022 2:47 AM, Tomas Pales wrote: 
>>> > The structure of every object should be reducible to a pure set, which 
>>> > is a set of sets of sets etc., down to empty sets. So in principle we 
>>> > could check the consistency of the structure by defining it as a pure 
>>> > set. But due to Godel's second incompleteness theorem we can't do even 
>>> > that because it is impossible to prove that set theory is consistent. 
>>> > But our inability to prove the consistency of an object has no impact 
>>> > on whether the object is consistent and thus whether it exists. We 
>>> > just know that if an object is not consistent it cannot exist because 
>>> > it is nonsense. 
>>>
>>> To say an object is consistent is nonsense.  It just means the object is 
>>> not self-contradictory.  But objects aren't propositions. So already 
>>> there's a category error.  
>>
>>
>> I said what it means that an object is consistent. It means that it is 
>> identical to itself, or in other words, it has the properties it has. No 
>> square circle.
>>
>>
>> Which, if I understand correctly, means every object is tautologically 
>> consistent.
>>
>
> Every existent object is what it is. A square circle is not what it is, so 
> it can't exist.
>
>  
>
>> You refer to the properties of the object.  
>> But those are mostly relational and we invent them, like my car that is 
>> insurable.  They are no "of the object" per se.
>>
>
> What else do we invent? The whole world around us?
>
>
> If you limit "the world" to it's description, yes.
>>
>
> But only consistent descriptions correspond to the world, so in this sense 
> the world is consistent.
>
>
> I didn't say it wasn't.  I was just pointing out that this is based on the 
> premise that the world exists.  So it is invalid to infer from "this world 
> has a consistent description" that "all world's with consistent description 
> exist".
>

I was not making such an inference. I was just clarifying what it means for 
a world to be "consistent": it means that it has only a consistent 
description. As for "all worlds with consistent description exist", my 
reason for believing this is still the same: I see no difference between a 
world being consistent and existing. 
 

>
> And having a consistent description is not really that helpful.  Before 
> quantum mechanics everyone was sure that it was true of the world that 
> nothing could be in two different places at the same time.  It was* just* 
> logic.
>

But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description we 
need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we may 
be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear to 
be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to 
describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description 
will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will 
be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure 
of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects 
around us to that level.

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 12:15:39 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/28/2022 1:29 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:47:21 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 2/28/2022 2:47 AM, Tomas Pales wrote: 
>> > The structure of every object should be reducible to a pure set, which 
>> > is a set of sets of sets etc., down to empty sets. So in principle we 
>> > could check the consistency of the structure by defining it as a pure 
>> > set. But due to Godel's second incompleteness theorem we can't do even 
>> > that because it is impossible to prove that set theory is consistent. 
>> > But our inability to prove the consistency of an object has no impact 
>> > on whether the object is consistent and thus whether it exists. We 
>> > just know that if an object is not consistent it cannot exist because 
>> > it is nonsense. 
>>
>> To say an object is consistent is nonsense.  It just means the object is 
>> not self-contradictory.  But objects aren't propositions. So already 
>> there's a category error.  
>
>
> I said what it means that an object is consistent. It means that it is 
> identical to itself, or in other words, it has the properties it has. No 
> square circle.
>
>
> Which, if I understand correctly, means every object is tautologically 
> consistent.
>

Every existent object is what it is. A square circle is not what it is, so 
it can't exist.

 

> You refer to the properties of the object.  
> But those are mostly relational and we invent them, like my car that is 
> insurable.  They are no "of the object" per se.
>

What else do we invent? The whole world around us?


If you limit "the world" to it's description, yes.
>

But only consistent descriptions correspond to the world, so in this sense 
the world is consistent.


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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 10:37:32 PM UTC+1 Jason wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 2:23 PM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2:48:48 PM UTC+1 Jason wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 11:43 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Since reality is a mess of everything possible we might expect that the 
>>>> regularities (laws) of our world may change or disappear any second, which 
>>>> apparently doesn't happen.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Or you don't remember it happening:
>>>
>>> "When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to 
>>> function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and 
>>> coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We 
>>> lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible 
>>> worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in 
>>> some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist 
>>> and never in ones where we don’t. The nature of the next simplest world 
>>> that can host us, after we abandon physical law, I cannot guess."
>>>
>>> -- Hans Moravec in “Simulation, Consciousness, Existence” (1998)
>>>
>>> https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
>>>
>>
>> I am not sure that my consciousness would continue to exist in a 
>> different world after it ended in this one. A copy of me might continue in 
>> another world but it wouldn't be me, just someone who looks like me and has 
>> the same history as me until the point of my death.
>>
>>
> 1. If you lose consciousness tonight and wake up in bed the next morning, 
> despite being in a different time, place, and slightly different atomic 
> make up via metabolism, have you survived and is it still you?  (why or why 
> not?)
>
> 2. If you are resuscitated after falling into a frozen lake and drowning 
> after 40 minutes have you survived death, would it still be you? (why or 
> why not?)
>
> 3. If half of your head is blown up in a lab accident, and advanced 
> medical technology restores you to your original self by healing your 
> wounds and replacing missing tissues have you survived? (Does it matter to 
> your survival whether your original body's atoms are used in the 
> reconstruction?)  (why or why not?)
>
> 4. If you are transported in a destructive teleportation machine which 
> breaks down and scans you at a molecular level and reassembles you on Mars, 
> have you survived?  (why or why not?)
>
> 5. If your mind is uploaded into a computer, which lasts until near the 
> heat death of the universe, and some compassionate aliens in another 
> universe having vastly more computational resources than our own, which 
> simulated our universe from the big bang until the heat death, chose to 
> copy your uploaded mind state at the time of the heat death into their own 
> universe so that it could continue, have you survived?  (why or why not?)
>
> I am interested at which numbered stage you cease to believe in your 
> survival.
>
> Jason
>

Ok, it depends on how we define "you". If we define "you" as on object that 
only exists at a certain moment of time, then the "you" at this moment is 
not the "you" at the next moment. You die instantly and never survive. But 
in a world of time we experience objects as persisting or extended in time 
and we *care* (a positive emotion) about a definition of "you" as an object 
persisting or extended in time, and we identify survival with the extension 
of this object in time. Would we also care about a definition of "you" as 
an object that is extended in time until some point, then is destroyed and 
restored to the previous state at a later time? (this object would be a 
collection of objects that are extended but not continuous in time) In some 
I cases, I think yes. We care about the object being continuously conscious 
but we are willing to let the conscious object be destroyed every night if 
we can expect with a high degree of certainty that it will be restored in 
the morning. But even then, we would not want the object to be destroyed or 
restored in a painful way or to be restored in an alien world to which it 
would have difficulty adjusting or have its social bonds from the previous 
day severed (the severing of social bonds would occur also if you were to 
die in this world and your consciousness would be "restored" in an exact 
copy of you in an exact copy of this world, because the bonds would be 
severed in the original

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:47:21 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/28/2022 2:47 AM, Tomas Pales wrote: 
> > The structure of every object should be reducible to a pure set, which 
> > is a set of sets of sets etc., down to empty sets. So in principle we 
> > could check the consistency of the structure by defining it as a pure 
> > set. But due to Godel's second incompleteness theorem we can't do even 
> > that because it is impossible to prove that set theory is consistent. 
> > But our inability to prove the consistency of an object has no impact 
> > on whether the object is consistent and thus whether it exists. We 
> > just know that if an object is not consistent it cannot exist because 
> > it is nonsense. 
>
> To say an object is consistent is nonsense.  It just means the object is 
> not self-contradictory.  But objects aren't propositions. So already 
> there's a category error.  


I said what it means that an object is consistent. It means that it is 
identical to itself, or in other words, it has the properties it has. No 
square circle.
 

> You refer to the properties of the object.  
> But those are mostly relational and we invent them, like my car that is 
> insurable.  They are no "of the object" per se.
>

What else do we invent? The whole world around us?

 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:42:33 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/28/2022 12:23 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2:48:48 PM UTC+1 Jason wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 11:43 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>>
>>
>> Since reality is a mess of everything possible we might expect that the 
>>> regularities (laws) of our world may change or disappear any second, which 
>>> apparently doesn't happen.
>>>
>>
>> Or you don't remember it happening:
>>
>> "When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to 
>> function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and 
>> coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We 
>> lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible 
>> worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in 
>> some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist 
>> and never in ones where we don’t. The nature of the next simplest world 
>> that can host us, after we abandon physical law, I cannot guess."
>>
>> -- Hans Moravec in “Simulation, Consciousness, Existence” (1998)
>>
>> https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
>>
>
> I am not sure that my consciousness would continue to exist in a different 
> world after it ended in this one. A copy of me might continue in another 
> world but it wouldn't be me, just someone who looks like me and has the 
> same history as me until the point of my death.
>
>
> If it had the same memories as you wouldn't it be you?
>

It seems like asking that if there are two same cars aren't they the same 
car?
 

>   And would it be insane you if those memories were inconsistent with the 
> history of the world you found yourself in?  And among all logically 
> possible worlds (which you think exist) aren't worlds like that in which 
> your memories and the recorded history in the world are inconsistent, 
> infinitely more numerous than those in which they are consistent?
>

A severe disconnect between an organism's memories and the history of its 
world appears to be an evolutionary disadvantage, heading for extinction 
even before the organism evolves enough complexity to hold a significant 
level of consciousness.  


> Have you read Robert Wilson's "Divided by Infinity".  It's a short story: 
> https://www.tor.com/2010/08/05/divided-by-infinity/
>
>
Looks interesting.
 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 3:52:53 PM UTC+1 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 27, 2022 at 3:59 PM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
> *> A world without me is possible (logically consistent)*
>
>
> I would certainly agree with that, but the tiny minority of physicist who 
> believe in Superdeterminism, such as Sabine Hossenfelder, would not; they 
> think the universe could only have started out in one very very specific 
> way, a way that required it to produce you 13.8 billion years later because 
> if it did not a paradoxical logical inconsistency would have been 
> produced.  Personally I think that idea is nuts because I simply can't 
> imagine a more egregious violation of Occam's razor than Superdeterminism.
>

Any empty set is a world without me.
 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2:48:48 PM UTC+1 Jason wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 11:43 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>
> Since reality is a mess of everything possible we might expect that the 
>> regularities (laws) of our world may change or disappear any second, which 
>> apparently doesn't happen.
>>
>
> Or you don't remember it happening:
>
> "When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to 
> function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and 
> coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We 
> lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible 
> worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in 
> some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist 
> and never in ones where we don’t. The nature of the next simplest world 
> that can host us, after we abandon physical law, I cannot guess."
>
> -- Hans Moravec in “Simulation, Consciousness, Existence” (1998)
>
> https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
>

I am not sure that my consciousness would continue to exist in a different 
world after it ended in this one. A copy of me might continue in another 
world but it wouldn't be me, just someone who looks like me and has the 
same history as me until the point of my death.


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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 4:52:11 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/27/2022 4:44 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 11:45:32 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 2/27/2022 12:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 8:50:02 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/27/2022 8:43 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 4:45:11 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This should be of interest to all the everythingists on this list.  I'd 
>>>> especially like to hear what Bruno thinks of it.  It's a bit expensive, so 
>>>> I may wait for more reviews before I take it up.
>>>>
>>>> *Birmingham-based philosopher Alastair Wilson has taken up the 
>>>> Herculean task of putting modal realism and many-worlds quantum theory 
>>>> together into a coherent, unitary view of reality. The results of this 
>>>> effort have been presented in several papers in recent years, and are now 
>>>> assembled in this thought-provoking book. While, as we will see, questions 
>>>> remain, Wilson has no doubt managed to come up with ingenious new 
>>>> hypotheses and has proposed solutions to existing problems and, more 
>>>> generally, with a powerful new modal realist view. The resulting 
>>>> perspective will certainly be of interest in the coming years, especially 
>>>> for naturalistically inclined philosophers, demanding that metaphysical 
>>>> hypotheses be made as continuous with our best science as possible.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-nature-of-contingency-quantum-physics-as-modal-realism/
>>>>
>>>> From the review I take it that Wilson has missed the intermediate kind 
>>>> of possibility, namely computability which is between logical possibility 
>>>> and nomological possibility.
>>>>
>>>> Brent
>>>>
>>>
>>> I am not sure what is new here. Many-worlds interpretation of QM is 
>>> obviously an example of Lewis' modal realism in the context of QM. As was 
>>> discussed here some time ago, it may not even involve splitting of worlds. 
>>> That is, all the quantum parallel worlds may be distinct worlds (objects) 
>>> even before a measurement; they are just exactly the same before the 
>>> measurement (exact copies of each other) and they start to differ at the 
>>> measurement event. A regularity in the multiverse of these quantum worlds 
>>> manifests in the fact that the worlds start differing in proportions given 
>>> by the Born rule, based on the (same) state of the worlds at the moment of 
>>> measurement. 
>>>
>>> More generally about possible worlds or objects, I still see no 
>>> difference between a world that is logically possible (consistent) and a 
>>> world that "exists". 
>>>
>>>
>>> Really?  It is logically possible that you don't exist.  So would the 
>>> world without you have no difference from this world?
>>>
>>
>> A world without me is possible (logically consistent). A world with me is 
>> possible too, obviously. And so both worlds exist, because they are both 
>> possible.
>>
>>
>> But they are certainly different.  You tried to infer that they must both 
>> exist because there is no difference between the one with you, which exists 
>> by observation, and the one without you.
>>
>
> No, I talked about two exactly same worlds (copies), with all the same 
> properties, and I asked what it would even mean if one of them existed and 
> the other didn't.
>
>  
>
>> A logically possible world is a world that is identical to itself, that 
>> is, it has the properties it has and does not have the properties it does 
>> not have. If two worlds have all the same properties except the property of 
>> existence (one exists and the other doesn't) what does it even mean? 
>>
>>
>> That only shows that a given world must either exist or not exist.  Maybe 
>> only worlds with Tomas Pales in them exist.  That's a different property.
>>
>
> It shows that if a given world is possible, it doesn't make sense to ask 
> whether it exists. Because there is no difference between being possible 
> and existing.
>
>
> And you know this last how:?
>>
>
> Because I see no differenc

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 11:45:32 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/27/2022 12:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 8:50:02 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 2/27/2022 8:43 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> On Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 4:45:11 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> This should be of interest to all the everythingists on this list.  I'd 
>>> especially like to hear what Bruno thinks of it.  It's a bit expensive, so 
>>> I may wait for more reviews before I take it up.
>>>
>>> *Birmingham-based philosopher Alastair Wilson has taken up the Herculean 
>>> task of putting modal realism and many-worlds quantum theory together into 
>>> a coherent, unitary view of reality. The results of this effort have been 
>>> presented in several papers in recent years, and are now assembled in this 
>>> thought-provoking book. While, as we will see, questions remain, Wilson has 
>>> no doubt managed to come up with ingenious new hypotheses and has proposed 
>>> solutions to existing problems and, more generally, with a powerful new 
>>> modal realist view. The resulting perspective will certainly be of interest 
>>> in the coming years, especially for naturalistically inclined philosophers, 
>>> demanding that metaphysical hypotheses be made as continuous with our best 
>>> science as possible.*
>>>
>>>
>>> https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-nature-of-contingency-quantum-physics-as-modal-realism/
>>>
>>> From the review I take it that Wilson has missed the intermediate kind 
>>> of possibility, namely computability which is between logical possibility 
>>> and nomological possibility.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>> I am not sure what is new here. Many-worlds interpretation of QM is 
>> obviously an example of Lewis' modal realism in the context of QM. As was 
>> discussed here some time ago, it may not even involve splitting of worlds. 
>> That is, all the quantum parallel worlds may be distinct worlds (objects) 
>> even before a measurement; they are just exactly the same before the 
>> measurement (exact copies of each other) and they start to differ at the 
>> measurement event. A regularity in the multiverse of these quantum worlds 
>> manifests in the fact that the worlds start differing in proportions given 
>> by the Born rule, based on the (same) state of the worlds at the moment of 
>> measurement. 
>>
>> More generally about possible worlds or objects, I still see no 
>> difference between a world that is logically possible (consistent) and a 
>> world that "exists". 
>>
>>
>> Really?  It is logically possible that you don't exist.  So would the 
>> world without you have no difference from this world?
>>
>
> A world without me is possible (logically consistent). A world with me is 
> possible too, obviously. And so both worlds exist, because they are both 
> possible.
>
>
> But they are certainly different.  You tried to infer that they must both 
> exist because there is no difference between the one with you, which exists 
> by observation, and the one without you.
>

No, I talked about two exactly same worlds (copies), with all the same 
properties, and I asked what it would even mean if one of them existed and 
the other didn't.

 

> A logically possible world is a world that is identical to itself, that 
> is, it has the properties it has and does not have the properties it does 
> not have. If two worlds have all the same properties except the property of 
> existence (one exists and the other doesn't) what does it even mean? 
>
>
> That only shows that a given world must either exist or not exist.  Maybe 
> only worlds with Tomas Pales in them exist.  That's a different property.
>

It shows that if a given world is possible, it doesn't make sense to ask 
whether it exists. Because there is no difference between being possible 
and existing.


And you know this last how:?
>

Because I see no difference between being possible and existing.

 

So I see no alternative to modal realism.
>
> If we want to go into more details we may ask what properties a world or 
> object may have and based on that we may differentiate between different 
> kinds of worlds or objects, for example spatiotemporal worlds versus worlds 
> that don't have a temporal or spatial structure. An important kind of 
> property is relations between objects (relational properties), and the most 
> general kind of relation is similarity, which holds between any two 

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 11:38:00 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

> How could a set of things produce contradictions.  Contradiction is a 
> relation of propositions, not things.  I'm surprised that you a strong 
> advocate of examples over definitions would not have noticed that there are 
> no examples of contradictory things.
>

Example of a contradictory (and thus logically impossible) thing: a square 
circle. A circle that is not a circle. A contradictory thing is such that 
it has a property that it does not have.
 

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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 8:50:02 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
> On 2/27/2022 8:43 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> On Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 4:45:11 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>
>> This should be of interest to all the everythingists on this list.  I'd 
>> especially like to hear what Bruno thinks of it.  It's a bit expensive, so 
>> I may wait for more reviews before I take it up.
>>
>> *Birmingham-based philosopher Alastair Wilson has taken up the Herculean 
>> task of putting modal realism and many-worlds quantum theory together into 
>> a coherent, unitary view of reality. The results of this effort have been 
>> presented in several papers in recent years, and are now assembled in this 
>> thought-provoking book. While, as we will see, questions remain, Wilson has 
>> no doubt managed to come up with ingenious new hypotheses and has proposed 
>> solutions to existing problems and, more generally, with a powerful new 
>> modal realist view. The resulting perspective will certainly be of interest 
>> in the coming years, especially for naturalistically inclined philosophers, 
>> demanding that metaphysical hypotheses be made as continuous with our best 
>> science as possible.*
>>
>>
>> https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-nature-of-contingency-quantum-physics-as-modal-realism/
>>
>> From the review I take it that Wilson has missed the intermediate kind of 
>> possibility, namely computability which is between logical possibility and 
>> nomological possibility.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
> I am not sure what is new here. Many-worlds interpretation of QM is 
> obviously an example of Lewis' modal realism in the context of QM. As was 
> discussed here some time ago, it may not even involve splitting of worlds. 
> That is, all the quantum parallel worlds may be distinct worlds (objects) 
> even before a measurement; they are just exactly the same before the 
> measurement (exact copies of each other) and they start to differ at the 
> measurement event. A regularity in the multiverse of these quantum worlds 
> manifests in the fact that the worlds start differing in proportions given 
> by the Born rule, based on the (same) state of the worlds at the moment of 
> measurement. 
>
> More generally about possible worlds or objects, I still see no difference 
> between a world that is logically possible (consistent) and a world that 
> "exists". 
>
>
> Really?  It is logically possible that you don't exist.  So would the 
> world without you have no difference from this world?
>

A world without me is possible (logically consistent). A world with me is 
possible too, obviously. And so both worlds exist, because they are both 
possible.
 

>
>
> A logically possible world is a world that is identical to itself, that 
> is, it has the properties it has and does not have the properties it does 
> not have. If two worlds have all the same properties except the property of 
> existence (one exists and the other doesn't) what does it even mean? 
>
>
> That only shows that a given world must either exist or not exist.  Maybe 
> only worlds with Tomas Pales in them exist.  That's a different property.
>

It shows that if a given world is possible, it doesn't make sense to ask 
whether it exists. Because there is no difference between being possible 
and existing.
 

>
>
> So I see no alternative to modal realism.
>
> If we want to go into more details we may ask what properties a world or 
> object may have and based on that we may differentiate between different 
> kinds of worlds or objects, for example spatiotemporal worlds versus worlds 
> that don't have a temporal or spatial structure. An important kind of 
> property is relations between objects (relational properties), and the most 
> general kind of relation is similarity, which holds between any two objects 
> and thus is a necessary kind of relation. It just means that two objects 
> have certain common properties and certain different properties. 
> Mathematics as the most general study of relations explores the similarity 
> relation as morphism in category theory and has reduced it to the set 
> membership relation in set theory. Set theory is interesting to me in that 
> it grounds mathematics in concrete worlds made of collections (sets), as 
> opposed to abstract relations like numbers, functions, symmetries etc.
>
> But if all mathematically (structurally) and consistently characterized 
> worlds/objects exist, it seems surprising that we live in a world with 
> quite stable laws of physics that persist in time (along the time dimension 
> of spacetime). Since reality is a mess of everything po

Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 4:45:11 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:

> This should be of interest to all the everythingists on this list.  I'd 
> especially like to hear what Bruno thinks of it.  It's a bit expensive, so 
> I may wait for more reviews before I take it up.
>
> *Birmingham-based philosopher Alastair Wilson has taken up the Herculean 
> task of putting modal realism and many-worlds quantum theory together into 
> a coherent, unitary view of reality. The results of this effort have been 
> presented in several papers in recent years, and are now assembled in this 
> thought-provoking book. While, as we will see, questions remain, Wilson has 
> no doubt managed to come up with ingenious new hypotheses and has proposed 
> solutions to existing problems and, more generally, with a powerful new 
> modal realist view. The resulting perspective will certainly be of interest 
> in the coming years, especially for naturalistically inclined philosophers, 
> demanding that metaphysical hypotheses be made as continuous with our best 
> science as possible.*
>
>
> https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-nature-of-contingency-quantum-physics-as-modal-realism/
>
> From the review I take it that Wilson has missed the intermediate kind of 
> possibility, namely computability which is between logical possibility and 
> nomological possibility.
>
> Brent
>

I am not sure what is new here. Many-worlds interpretation of QM is 
obviously an example of Lewis' modal realism in the context of QM. As was 
discussed here some time ago, it may not even involve splitting of worlds. 
That is, all the quantum parallel worlds may be distinct worlds (objects) 
even before a measurement; they are just exactly the same before the 
measurement (exact copies of each other) and they start to differ at the 
measurement event. A regularity in the multiverse of these quantum worlds 
manifests in the fact that the worlds start differing in proportions given 
by the Born rule, based on the (same) state of the worlds at the moment of 
measurement. 

More generally about possible worlds or objects, I still see no difference 
between a world that is logically possible (consistent) and a world that 
"exists". A logically possible world is a world that is identical to 
itself, that is, it has the properties it has and does not have the 
properties it does not have. If two worlds have all the same properties 
except the property of existence (one exists and the other doesn't) what 
does it even mean? So I see no alternative to modal realism.

If we want to go into more details we may ask what properties a world or 
object may have and based on that we may differentiate between different 
kinds of worlds or objects, for example spatiotemporal worlds versus worlds 
that don't have a temporal or spatial structure. An important kind of 
property is relations between objects (relational properties), and the most 
general kind of relation is similarity, which holds between any two objects 
and thus is a necessary kind of relation. It just means that two objects 
have certain common properties and certain different properties. 
Mathematics as the most general study of relations explores the similarity 
relation as morphism in category theory and has reduced it to the set 
membership relation in set theory. Set theory is interesting to me in that 
it grounds mathematics in concrete worlds made of collections (sets), as 
opposed to abstract relations like numbers, functions, symmetries etc.

But if all mathematically (structurally) and consistently characterized 
worlds/objects exist, it seems surprising that we live in a world with 
quite stable laws of physics that persist in time (along the time dimension 
of spacetime). Since reality is a mess of everything possible we might 
expect that the regularities (laws) of our world may change or disappear 
any second, which apparently doesn't happen. Hume put it as "the constant 
conjunction between causes and effects." The fact that the laws of physics 
in our world have been stable for billions of years may be explained by the 
anthropic principle: we could have evolved only in a world with such a long 
term stability. But it may not be obvious why such a stability would 
continue into the future.  In fact, it may seem that such a stability in 
the future is very unlikely because there are many ways our world could be 
in the future but only one way in which it would be a deterministic 
extension of the world it has been until now. Maybe the future stability 
can be explained by Solomonoff induction, which seems to imply the 
opposite: it is more likely that laws of physics will continue to hold. 
Why? Because *given the way our world has been until now*, this world is 
more simple if its regularities (such as laws of physics) continue than if 
they are discontinued, and more simple worlds are more likely (more 
frequent in the collection of all possible worlds) than more complex 
worlds. (A simpler 

Re: Dark Matter Update

[Tomas Pales]

If dark matter interacts only weakly with itself and with ordinary matter 
does it mean that it is less susceptible to quantum decoherence?

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Re: Dark Matter: How Physics Overlooks Chemistry?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, September 27, 2021 at 1:05:01 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

In general, i.e. outside controlled laboratory conditions, particles 
> interact a lot.  Air molecules bump into other air molecules, IR photons 
> get emitted and absorbed,...  All those interactions imply entanglement.
>

So if dark matter particles didn't interact with each other at all, there 
could be no quantum entanglement between them and thus no "spooky action at 
a distance"? Could their wave functions interfere with each other?

It seems to me there are two kinds of interaction between particles: (1) 
causal interaction via forces and (2) acausal interaction via interference 
of the particles' wave functions and instantaneous "spooky action at a 
distance". If there is no causal interaction between dark matter particles 
does it mean there is no acausal interaction between them either?

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Re: Dark Matter: How Physics Overlooks Chemistry?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, September 26, 2021 at 12:43:06 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> If a particle is isolated, no interactions, then it's in a pure state.  A 
> pure state is not a superposition in some coordinate basis, but it's a 
> superposition in other bases.  So being in a superposition is relative the 
> basis you use to write the state.  Being weakly interacting would I think 
> make dark matter particles (if dm is particles) more isolated and therefore 
> less likely to be entangled and not in a superposition.
>

I mean that the particle's properties like position and momentum are in a 
superposition of values instead of having single values - the particle's 
wave function is not collapsed. There is almost no interaction and so 
almost no decoherence. Does that also mean that the wave functions of the 
particles don't interfere much? Could such particles be in a quantum 
entanglement? (the "spooky action at a distance")
  

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Re: Dark Matter: How Physics Overlooks Chemistry?

[Tomas Pales]

If dark matter interacts only weakly, does it mean that it is more likely 
to be in quantum superpositions than ordinary matter?


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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at 11:41:20 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> So you agree with me that the number things is matter of how you like to 
> nominate bits of the world.
>

No, but you can focus on those things that are useful or interesting to you.
 

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at 6:58:42 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> So eternally means momentarily.  Hmmm?
>

Everything exists in the same timeless moment, if you like.
 

> Even one object is a conceputalization.  Thomas Pales now is a different 
> object from Thomas Pales a moment ago.  And as a physicists I may regard 
> him as 1e30 different atoms.
>

My body at time t is a different object than my body at time t-1. And there 
is also another object that is a collection of those two objects. You can 
call those objects whatever you like but they are all there.

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at 1:51:01 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 8/30/2021 12:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, August 30, 2021 at 8:51:32 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>> In other words eternally at a particular time.  Is there any reason I 
>> should take that seriously?
>>
>
> And how would you like to take it? According to theory of relativity time 
> is a kind of space.
>
>
> So my house here is exists everywhere?
>

No, by "eternally" I didn't mean everywhere in the time dimension but 
without passage of time. There is no passage of time just as there is no 
passage of space.
 

> Are they.  Here's two photons.  If I interchange them I have the same 
> state.  Here's two golf balls.  If I interchange them I have different 
> state.  Here's a member of the tennis team and a member of the band.  I 
> can't interchange them...because they are the same person.  It's seems to 
> me that my conceptualization makes a lot of difference in how things map 
> onto the natural numbers.
>

Just because two objects are the same doesn't mean they are one object. 
They are differentiated from each other by their position in reality (by 
their relations to other objects).

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, August 30, 2021 at 8:51:32 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> In other words eternally at a particular time.  Is there any reason I 
> should take that seriously?
>

And how would you like to take it? According to theory of relativity time 
is a kind of space.
 

> Any two things form a pair, why would anyone need to "nominate" them as a 
> pair.
>
>
> Being two things, or even one thing, is a conceptualization about the 
> world.
>

All things are there. Just because you pick one or two of them doesn't mean 
they are your conceptualization.
 

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 8/29/2021 5:50 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 1:46:50 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>> If you ask the same question about numbers it seems that maybe they can 
>> exist because there are a lot of different pairs and without one of them 
>> the number 2 can count another pair.  But can 2 exist if there are no pairs 
>> to count, or no counters to identify pairs?
>>
>
> Number 2 is a relational property of all pairs. I don't think that a 
> property can exist without that which it is a property of. It is the 
> meaning/nature of property to be a property of something. All pairs exist 
> eternally, just like number 2 and everything else.  
>
>
> All the pairs I know of, my shoes, my gloves, my dogs,... do NOT exist 
> eternally.  And they are only conceived of as pairs because I and other 
> people nominate such.
>

They exist eternally at a particular spacetime location. Any two things 
form a pair, why would anyone need to "nominate" them as a pair.

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021 at 4:23:08 AM UTC+2 spudb...@aol.com wrote:

> virtual particles. The have to initiate from somewhere, correct?
>

Ultimately, no. They exist eternally, just like everything else.

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 1:46:50 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> If you ask the same question about numbers it seems that maybe they can 
> exist because there are a lot of different pairs and without one of them 
> the number 2 can count another pair.  But can 2 exist if there are no pairs 
> to count, or no counters to identify pairs?
>

Number 2 is a relational property of all pairs. I don't think that a 
property can exist without that which it is a property of. It is the 
meaning/nature of property to be a property of something. All pairs exist 
eternally, just like number 2 and everything else.  


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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 24, 2021 at 11:34:07 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> That's almost literally Mermin's slogan for the view, which he also 
> advocates, "Relations without relata."  But are relations abstracted away 
> from relata really any different from numbers abstracted from things 
> counted?
>

Of course we can abstract relations from relata and numbers from things, 
just as we can abstract the Cheshire cat's grin from the cat. It doesn't 
mean that the grin can exist without the cat.
 

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 24, 2021 at 11:32:38 PM UTC+2 telmo wrote:

>
>
> Am Di, 24. Aug 2021, um 20:54, schrieb Tomas Pales:
>
> On Tuesday, August 24, 2021 at 1:00:34 PM UTC+2 telmo wrote:
>
> Those relations are between nothings?
>  
>
>
> Between relations.
>

That's fine but infinite regress of relations won't work, it will just make 
all relations undefined, a word without meaning.

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Re: there is no ultimate essence

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, August 24, 2021 at 1:00:34 PM UTC+2 telmo wrote:

> I haven't read "Physics for the Feeble-Minded" (yet?), but something 
> caught my attention in the review below:
> https://theamericanscholar.org/physics-for-the-feeble-minded/
>
> "Rovelli’s short answer to this and other bizarre takes on quantum 
> weirdness: Nonsense! His real purpose is to posit his own theory of 
> “relations.” He suggests that most, if not all, of quantum theory’s 
> perplexities can be resolved by understanding that there is no ultimate 
> essence, no Kantian Ding an sich, no existence in and of itself 
> attributable to a particle. What we know, since we too are part of nature, 
> is only how something manifests itself to us. It is only in relation to 
> something else that anything can be known—and a thing can manifest itself 
> differently to different things."
>
> Maybe Rovelli is ready for Marchal :)
>
> Cheers
> Telmo
>

Those relations are between nothings?
 

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 4:39:25 PM UTC+2 Bruno Marchal wrote:

> but I would say that self-reference in the sense of intrinsic identity of 
> an object explains qualitative properties of consciousness (qualia).
>
>
> But what is a object? What is intrinsic identity? And why that would give 
> qualia?
>

I think reality consists of two basic kinds of object: collections and 
properties. Collections are also known as combinations or sets. Properties 
are also known as universals or general/abstract objects. For example, a 
particular table is a collection, but table in general, or table-ness, is a 
property (that is possessed by particular tables). Collections have parts 
while properties have instances. Properties as real objects are 
controversial; many people think they are just words (yet these words 
apparently refer to something in reality). Collections as real objects are 
somewhat controversial too; people might hesitate to regard a collection of 
tables as a real object even though they don't mind regarding a single 
table as a real object despite it being a collection too (of atoms, for 
example).

Collections are rigorously defined in various axiomatizations of set 
theory. All of these axiomatizations refer to real collections as long as 
they are consistent (which may be impossible to prove due to Godel's second 
incompleteness theorem). Pure collections are built up only from 
collections, with empty collections at the bottom (or maybe some 
collections have no bottom, as long as this is consistent). Properties can 
constitute collections too but these would not be pure collections since 
properties are not collections. More general properties have instances in 
less general properties (for example "color" has an instance in "green") 
and ultimately they have instances in collections (for example "green" has 
an instance in a particular green table); instantiation ends in collections 
(for example a particular table is not a property of anything and so it has 
no instances); this is the reason why set theory can represent all 
mathematical properties as collections. All properties are ultimately 
instantiated as collections.

As for intrinsic identity, it is something that an object is in itself, as 
opposed to its relations to other objects. Without the intrinsic identity 
there would be nothing standing in relations, so there would be no 
relations either. Intrinsic identities and extrinsic identities (relations) 
are inseparable. Surely there are relations between relations but 
ultimately relations need to be grounded in intrinsic identities of 
objects. Since qualia are not relations or structures of relations but 
something monolithic, indivisible, unstructured, they might be the 
intrinsic identities. Note that intrinsic identities and relations are 
dependent on each other since they constitute two kinds of identity of the 
same object. That could explain why qualia like colors are mutually 
dependent on relations like wavelengths of photons or neural structures. 

I imagine that every object has two kinds of identity: intrinsic identity 
> (something that the object is in itself) 
>
>
> To be honest, I don’t understand. To be sure, I like mechanism because it 
> provide a clear explanation of where the physical appearance comes from, 
> without having us ti speculate on some “physical” object which would be 
> primary, as we have no evidence for this, and it makes the mind-body 
> problem unsolvable.
>

Numbers are relations. For example number 2 is a relation between 2 
objects. If there were just relations and no intrinsic identities of 
objects then there would be relations between nothings. For example, there 
would be 2 nothings. Which seems absurd.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, July 10, 2021 at 11:34:28 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> I think this kind of talk puts far too much on consciousness.  Conscious 
> thoughts seem to pop into my head with no antecedents, yet they relate to 
> past and distant things in my experience.  The Poincare' effect shows that 
> even the most abstract thought is largely unconscious.
>

What is Poincare effect?

Consciousness seems to be the necessary basis of personal identity: "I am 
conscious therefore I am". Of course it depends on unconscious parts of the 
brain, the rest of the body and the environment; where to draw the boundary 
of personal identity is somewhat blurry.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, July 10, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 4:19 PM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
> *>You are conscious of certain parts of your brain*
>>
>
> I've never actually seen it 
>

Your eyes receive visual signals from outside your head, not from the 
inside, so you don't see your own brain.
 

> so if I hadn't read about human anatomy in books I wouldn't even know that 
> I had a brain. How can I be conscious of something that I don't even know 
> exists?
>

Neuroscience says that we are not directly conscious of the external world 
but we are directly conscious of its neural representations in our brain. I 
would say that's because we* are* those representations. So you are 
conscious of parts of your brain but not of those properties of the brain 
that look like gray matter when they are looked at through the eyes. 
Instead, the properties of the brain you are conscious of look like a red 
tomato, taste like chocolate or sound like music.

You may wonder how can a piece of gray matter look like a red tomato? I 
think it's because only those properties of the brain matter that are 
perceptible by the eyes look gray. The brain matter has many other 
properties that cannot be seen but some of them may feel like when you are 
looking at a red tomato.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 10:28:11 AM UTC+2 Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> On 3 Jul 2021, at 14:13, Tomas Pales  wrote:
> Can't there be a machine that computes gravitational interaction with 
> gravitational constant 6.674 x 10 to the -11 up until some time t and then 
> continues the computation with gravitational constant 5 x 10 to the -11, or 
> just halts? That would be an instability or cessation of gravitational law.
>
>
> Yes, and that exists, but such world will have a very low probability to 
> be accessed by any observer, due to the fact that, below our mechanist 
> substitution level, all such theories intervene.
>

How low is this probability? Is it maybe as low as the probability that my 
whole body quantum-tunnels through a wall?

What does it mean that "below our mechanist substitution level, all such 
theories intervene"?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 10:12:49 AM UTC+2 Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> The physical laws are stable because they have an arithmetical origin in 
> the “head” of any universal+ machine (those which have the theology G*)
>

What do you mean by "head"?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 8:45:10 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

On 7/5/2021 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> What is the difference between "realized" and "unrealized"? If I don't 
> grace something with my presence and perception it doesn't mean that it is 
> "unrealized".
>
> But it means it's otiose.
>

For me, yes.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 8:03:46 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> How can my consciousness be located in a place that I am not conscious of?
>

You are conscious of certain parts of your brain (presumably those that 
have high organized complexity of a certain kind), many of which are 
representations of external objects. If there are no representations of 
your skull it is probably because they have not been useful in evolution. 
It is more useful to be conscious of what is going on around your body than 
of the interior of your skull.

We can't rule out that your consciousness is not located in your brain and 
your brain just serves as a kind of preliminary processor of sensory data 
that somehow sends the preprocessed data to some other object (soul?) where 
your consciousness is located but there's not much evidence for that.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 4:42:00 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> I disagree, I think asking where my consciousness is located would be like 
> asking where the number 11 or the color yellow  or "fast" is located.
>

The problem is that the color yellow, as an abstract property, doesn't look 
yellow at all. It doesn't look like anything because it is not located in 
space, so you can't see it or visualize it. Similarly, consciousness as an 
abstract property may not be conscious much.
 

> If my brain is in Paris and I'm looking at a TV football game from Detroit 
> and I'm listening to a friend in Australia on my telephone and I'm thinking 
> about The Great Wall of China would it  make sense to say my consciousness 
> is really located inside a box made of bone mounted on my shoulders when I 
> have no conscious experience of being in a bone box on my shoulders? I 
> don't think so.
>

I actually do. You are still looking out of the eyes in your head, 
listening through the ears on your head and you can imagine various places 
while sitting in a sofa.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 3:03:53 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 5:33 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
> *> I think consciousness is the brain,*
>>
>
> I disagree. "Brain" is a noun, "consciousness" is not, that's why you 
> can't measure consciousness by the pound or by the cubic inch.
>

In English language it is used as a noun. Check out a dictionary:

*consciousness* noun <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noun> 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness
 

> Intelligence is what a brain does not what a brain is, and because 
> Darwinian Evolution is almost certainly correct, consciousness must be an 
> inevitable byproduct of intelligence, therefore "consciousness" is not a 
> noun, it's a word that describes what a noun (in this case the brain) does, 
> in other words consciousness is an adjective. 
>

You mean a verb then, no? Verbs say what something does. Anyway, words like 
"action" and "process" are nouns too. "Conscious" is an adjective. If you 
mean to say that consciousness is a process, you are probably right. 
Without certain processes in the brain there wouldn't be much 
consciousness. So consciousness is a spatiotemporal object.


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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 4:25:09 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> But there's no random selection involved unless you make it a postulate.  
> Otherwise it's just a collection.
>
There is obviously a selection because I don't see all possible outcomes, 
just one.

>   And if there's a selection (by nature) then why not a selection of one 
> that is realized?
>
What is the difference between "realized" and "unrealized"? If I don't 
grace something with my presence and perception it doesn't mean that it is 
"unrealized".

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 4:22:51 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> So consciousness is just an epiphenomenon of brains or other quantum 
> systems.
>
I think consciousness *is* the brain, and its qualitative properties 
(qualia) are intrinsic identities of parts of the brain (something that the 
parts of the brain are in themselves). This view of consciousness is also 
known as Russellian monism. 

 

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 2:58:33 AM UTC+2 Jason wrote:

I find the differentiation of preexisting states a more palatable way to 
> think of splitting universes, which tends to raise questions that create 
> misunderstanding (like: where does the energy come from to make these other 
> worlds). The many minds interpretation seems to favor this view, but it 
> left open the question of where these infinite mind states came from. 
> Bruno's "many worlds of arithmetic" provides a plausible answer, in my 
> opinion.
>

If a universe split similarly like an amoeba splits into two, wouldn't we 
observe the mass of our universe drop by half? Or would its mass drop by 
half but we wouldn't notice because the mass of all objects would drop 
proportionally? Or would the mass of each branch be the same as the mass of 
the original universe, which would mean that the total mass was doubled at 
the split?  

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 2:50:48 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> On 7/4/2021 5:30 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> For example, A happens in 16 worlds and B in 9 worlds. Or in general, the 
> proportion of worlds where A happens to worlds where B happens is 16/9.
>
> But it's an additional axiom that this is a probability measure and the 
> split is per the Schroedinger amplitudes.
>
Calculating probabilities by counting objects in a collection from which a 
random selection is made is not an additional axiom; it's the definition of 
probability. In MWI the probabilities must be calculated by counting the 
branches because the selection is made from a collection of branches. We 
know that the probabilities are such as given by the Born rule, either by 
logical necessity (as you say) or from observational evidence, and so the 
proportions of the numbers of branches are the same as probabilities given 
by the Born rule.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 12:57:03 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> So you are this single magic soul that selects one world of many to really 
> be in? 
>
I don't select it; nature does.

> That seems contrary to the idea that your consciousness gets entangled 
> with every different result and so is equally in each world.
>
I am conscious only of one world, so my consciousness is not in each world. 
Copies of me and their consciousnesses are in different worlds.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 1:28:34 AM UTC+2 Jason wrote:

>
> Wei Dai, the founder of this list, proposed something quite similar, I 
> think:
>
> http://www.weidai.com/qm-interpretation.txt
>

Thanks. From the last two sentences it does seem that the parallel worlds 
don't arise by splitting at measurement from one world but already exist 
before measurement.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, July 5, 2021 at 12:54:45 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> It's not that it's necessarily 50/50; it's that there's no mechanism for 
> it being the values in the Schroedinger equation. In one world A happens.  
> In the other world B happens.  How does, for example, a 16:9 ratio get 
> implemented.
>
For example, A happens in 16 worlds and B in 9 worlds. Or in general, the 
proportion of worlds where A happens to worlds where B happens is 16/9.

>   There's nothing in Schroedinger's equation that assigns one of those 
> numbers to one world or the other.  You can just make it an axiom.  Or 
> equivalently, if you can show these are odds ratios, you can invoke 
> Gleason's theorem as the only consistent probability measure.  But all that 
> is extra stuff that MWI claims to avoid by just being pure Schroedinger 
> equation evolution.
>
In MWI the odds of being in a particular world depend on the counting of 
branches, similarly like the odds of selecting a particular ball from a 
basket depend on the counting of balls. But if there are infinitely many 
branches in MWI, different ways of counting give different probabilities, 
which means there are different possible probability measures, and so MWI 
needs an additional axiom that specifies the measure and thus the way of 
counting the branches. You say that the only possible (consistent) measure 
is the Born rule; in that case no additional axiom about the measure is 
needed (beyond the axiom of consistency, which goes without saying) and the 
branches must be counted in such a way that the probabilities result in the 
Born rule.

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, June 18, 2021 at 8:46:39 PM UTC+2 Jason wrote:

> In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to date, 
> or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them 
> wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?
>
> I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure 
> which one or which combination is right.  For example:
>
> Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
>

I don't know if self-reference in the sense of Godel sentences is relevant 
to consciousness but I would say that self-reference in the sense of 
intrinsic identity of an object explains qualitative properties of 
consciousness (qualia). I imagine that every object has two kinds of 
identity: intrinsic identity (something that the object is in itself) and 
extrinsic identity (relations of the object to all other objects). 
Intrinsic identity is something qualitative (non-relational), a quality 
that stands in relations to other qualities, so it seems like a natural 
candidate for the qualitative properties of consciousness. All relations 
are instances of the similarity relation (similarities between qualities 
arising from common and different properties of the qualities), of which a 
particular kind of relation deserves a special mention: the composition 
relation, also known as the set membership relation in set theory, or the 
relation between a whole and its part (or between a combination of objects 
and an object in the combination), which gives rise to a special kind of 
relational identity of an object: the compositional identity, which is 
constituted by the relations of the object to its parts (in other words, it 
is the internal structure of the object - not to be confused with the 
intrinsic identity of the object, which is a non-structural quality!). Set 
theory describes the compositional identity of all possible composite 
objects down to non-composite objects (instances of the empty set).

Since all objects have an intrinsic identity, this is a panpsychist view 
but it seems important to differentiate between different levels or 
intensities of consciousness.
  

> Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
>

Study of neural correlates of consciousness suggests that the level or 
intensity of consciousness of an object depends on the complexity of the 
object's structure. There are two basic approaches to the definition of 
complexity: "disorganized" complexity (which is high in objects that have 
many different and independent (random) parts) and "organized" complexity 
(which is high in objects that have many different but also dependent 
(integrated) parts). It is the organized complexity in a dynamic form that 
seems important for the level of consciousness. Tononi's integrated 
information theory is based on such organized complexity though I don't 
know if his particular specification of the complexity is correct. 
 

> Dennett/Chalmers: function is key
>

>From the evolutionary perspective it seems important for an organism to be 
able to create internal representations of external objects on different 
levels of composition of reality. Such representations reflect both the 
diversity and regularities of reality and need to be properly integrated to 
have a unified, coordinated influence on the organism's behavior. So the 
organized complexity of the organism's representations seems to be related 
to its functionality. 



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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, July 4, 2021 at 1:51:51 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> And in the two-outcome experiment, how do you ever get a probability 
> different from 0.5 for each possible outcome?
>
> You would seem to be looking for a branch counting explanation of 
> probability (self-locating uncertainty). But there is no mechanism in 
> Everett or the Schrodinger equation to give anything other than a 50/50 
> split when only two outcomes are possible. This is wildly at variance with 
> experience.
>

In the classical example with balls you may have a collection of blue and 
red balls so there are only two possible outcomes of a random selection of 
a ball: blue and red. This doesn't mean that the proportion of blue and red 
balls in the collection must be 50/50. Why would the proportion of 
branching worlds necessarily be 50/50 if there are only two possible 
outcomes?
  

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, July 4, 2021 at 12:48:06 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

> But that works only if the copies are generated in the actual quantum coin 
> tossing experiment -- they can't be pre-existing because then the idea 
> doesn't work -- there is no causal connection between the experiments and 
> the copies. The issue then is how the Schrodinger equation generates all 
> these copies.


I am wondering, is it really necessary that the split into copies occurs at 
measurement? Would it not be possible that all the copies of worlds already 
exist before the measurement, evolving in the same way until the moment of 
measurement, and at the moment of measurement their evolutions start to 
differ? Causality may be just a regularity in the temporal sequence of 
states of a world where a particular state of the world is logically 
derived from a prior state of the world and from the regularity. But at the 
moment of measurement this regularity is broken, which may just mean that 
the state of the world after the measurement cannot be logically derived 
from a prior state of the world and from a regularity; still there may be a 
regularity on the level of the multiverse in the way the particular worlds 
start to differ from each other at the moment of measurement, and this 
regularity gives proportions of different worlds after the measurement and 
thereby probabilities that we exist in a particular world.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, July 4, 2021 at 4:38:42 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> Advocates of MWI want to claim there are no projections (they aren't 
> unitary) that instead the the world "splits" and each approximately 
> diagonal value is realized in a subspace.  But then one needs to explain 
> what about those subspaces corresponds to the probabilities, or in other 
> words what does "probability" mean when they all exist?
>
Well, probability has always been about random selection of something from 
a collection of somethings. A classical example is random selection of a 
ball from a collection of balls. In MWI there is random selection of a 
world in which you find yourself. All the worlds exist just as all the 
balls in the collection exist.



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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 1:55:59 PM UTC+2 Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> With Mechanism the physical laws remains persistent because they are the 
> same for all universal machine, and they come from the unique statistics on 
> all computations (in arithmetic, in lambda calculus, in any Turing 
> universal theory or system).
>

Can't there be a machine that computes gravitational interaction with 
gravitational constant 6.674 x 10 to the -11 up until some time t and then 
continues the computation with gravitational constant 5 x 10 to the -11, or 
just halts? That would be an instability or cessation of gravitational law.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 1:10:43 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> On 7/2/2021 2:43 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, July 2, 2021 at 2:54:19 PM UTC+2 Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>
>> The GRW interpretation states there is with any quantum wave a 
>> fundamental phenomenon of collapse. The collapse occurs fundamentally by a 
>> stochastic rule.
>
>
> Fundamental, irreducible probability seems like an incompletely baked 
> concept. Mathematically/structurally, probability can be defined in terms 
> of pure sets, like any other mathematical/structural concept. Pure sets 
> (combinations of combinations of combinations etc. founded on the empty 
> combination) are the fundamental concept from which it is possible, in 
> principle, to build up any structure. MWI attempts to define the quantum 
> probability in terms of sets, whose most straightforward interpretation 
> seems to be worlds. But the problem is that there seem to be infinitely 
> many worlds in MWI and a system of infinitely many objects may have 
> different probability measures that give different results, so it seems 
> that the Schrodinger equation is not sufficient to calculate probabilities 
> even in MWI and MWI also needs a probability measure as an additional 
> property of the quantum multiverse, namely such that it results in the Born 
> rule. There have been some claims that such a measure is the only possible 
> one 
>
> There's only one consistent measure on a Hilbert space and that's the Born 
> rule, as proven by Gleason's theorem.
>
If it is obvious that the Born rule is the only consistent probability 
measure in QM, why is there not a generally accepted proof of it? What is 
so controversial about proving that 1 = 1?

Wikipedia mentions several attempts to derive the Born rule from more basic 
principles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_rule#Derivation_from_more_basic_principles
 
and one of the referenced articles concludes at the end: "The conclusion 
seems to be that no generally accepted derivation of the Born rule has been 
given to date, but this does not imply that such a derivation is impossible 
in principle."
https://www.math.ru.nl/~landsman/Born.pdf

Everett noted that every observer gets entangled with the result and then 
> exists in a superposition of different observed values.  He claimed this 
> meant that any observer would observe the Born rule probablity.  But this 
> depended on considering the observer in one special basis of the Hilbert 
> space (the pointer states) and then zeroing out cross terms in the density 
> matrix.  By what mechanism the observer or instrument gets into this state 
> is unclear.


Isn't it the mechanism of decoherence that is contained in Schrodinger 
equation?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, July 2, 2021 at 2:54:19 PM UTC+2 Lawrence Crowell wrote:

> The GRW interpretation states there is with any quantum wave a fundamental 
> phenomenon of collapse. The collapse occurs fundamentally by a stochastic 
> rule.


Fundamental, irreducible probability seems like an incompletely baked 
concept. Mathematically/structurally, probability can be defined in terms 
of pure sets, like any other mathematical/structural concept. Pure sets 
(combinations of combinations of combinations etc. founded on the empty 
combination) are the fundamental concept from which it is possible, in 
principle, to build up any structure. MWI attempts to define the quantum 
probability in terms of sets, whose most straightforward interpretation 
seems to be worlds. But the problem is that there seem to be infinitely 
many worlds in MWI and a system of infinitely many objects may have 
different probability measures that give different results, so it seems 
that the Schrodinger equation is not sufficient to calculate probabilities 
even in MWI and MWI also needs a probability measure as an additional 
property of the quantum multiverse, namely such that it results in the Born 
rule. There have been some claims that such a measure is the only possible 
one and as a layman I can't comment on that but as far as I know there is 
no consensus among physicists on how to derive the Born rule and so it may 
be a property of the quantum multiverse in which we happen to live and 
other quantum multiverses may have different probability measures. Or the 
Born rule might be derived with the help of another property that emerges 
from a deeper theory such as quantum gravity (which perhaps restricts the 
number of worlds to a finite number).

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 5:56:25 AM UTC+2 Brent 

>
> Used to seeing the difference between possibility and existence.
>

What difference? 

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 12:55:45 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> Just like it would be a contradiction if natural laws were unstable where 
> they are stable.
>

Sure, that would be a contradiction.
 

> Ain't it wonderful what you can prove with logic.
>

I just proved some trivial stuff.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 12:02:04 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> Are you saying it would entail a logical contradiction for a unicorn to 
> exist on this planet?  I don't think "logical possibility" means what you 
> think it means.
>

It would be a contradiction if a unicorn existed where it doesn't exist. Or 
if a triangle existed in a set of all circles.


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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 11:53:29 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 6/28/2021 4:54 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> Because why does this particular world exist instead of some other? And 
> what is the difference between a possible world that exists and a possible 
> world that doesn't, anyway? What does it mean "to exist"? I see no 
> difference between possibility and existence.
>
>
> Then it must seem curious to you that you only have one head today and 
> have two arms.
>

Why, I guess I'm used to it.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 2:24:08 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 9:54 PM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
> And what is the difference between a possible world that exists and a 
>> possible world that doesn't, anyway? What does it mean "to exist"? I see no 
>> difference between possibility and existence.
>>
>
> That is a serious conceptual shortcoming on your part. It is possible that 
> there exists a horse-like creature with a single horn (unicorn), but that 
> does not mean that unicorns exist anywhere outside the realms of the secret 
> forest in Harry Potter novels.
>

If unicorns are defined logically consistently with the whole reality, I 
don't see why they wouldn't exist, though apparently not on this planet. So 
what is the difference between a possible world that exists and a possible 
world that doesn't?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 5:35:32 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> Why should you think that symmetry requires maintenance? Unless you take a 
> medieval religious view and hold that God is necessary in order to hold the 
> universe in order -- to hold the heavens in place. I think Galileo and 
> Newton successfully dispelled such a notion.
>

Why should you think that a broken symmetry needs something to break it? 
Sometimes there is a cause that breaks it and sometimes it breaks without a 
cause. Reality as a whole doesn't need a cause to have symmetries or 
asymmetries; they exist because they are logically possible.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 5:30:43 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> Why should we ever be led to consider the set of all logically possible 
> worlds?
>

Because why does this particular world exist instead of some other? And 
what is the difference between a possible world that exists and a possible 
world that doesn't, anyway? What does it mean "to exist"? I see no 
difference between possibility and existence.
 

> I doubt that such a set can ever be well-defined.
>

Maybe it can't. All possible concrete worlds might be identical to all 
possible pure sets, which would need uncountably many axioms to define, as 
per Godel's first incompleteness theorem. But there are some more limited 
sets of possible worlds that are closely connected to known physics that 
might be easier to define: possible worlds beyond the horizon of our 
observable universe (but still in our universe), possible worlds of 
inflationary multiverse, of string theory multiverse and of quantum 
mechanical multiverse.
 

> Current evidence is against the existence of these other worlds -- we have 
> evidence only for our world.
>

What about worlds beyond the horizon of our observable universe (but still 
in our universe)? By definition, we don't have direct observational 
evidence for them. We do have indirect observational evidence that they 
exist because they seem to be predicted by known physics. One might argue 
that known physics also predicts some types of multiverse, although the 
matters are not so clear there.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 3:12:31 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 6/27/2021 5:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> I am talking about properties of objects - atoms, ducks, worlds..
>
>
> But the regularities of nature are in the theories.  The explain how a 
> duck flies, but they don't explain why *this *duck flies while *that *one 
> swims.  Physics leaves to particularities to historians.
>

The regularities of nature are in nature. The apple falls down regardless 
of any theories anyone might have about it. Whether a particular duck flies 
or swims is a joint consequence of regularities, initial conditions of the 
universe and randomness.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 1:01:14 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

> One can have confidence in the continuation of angular momentum 
> conservation because there is nothing in prospect that will spoil this 
> symmetry -- the rotational invariance of space.


And there is nothing in prospect to maintain the symmetry either.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 10:56:33 PM UTC+2 Jason wrote:

>
> By chance I was just reading this: 
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286624424_My_8_Big_Ideas by 
> Zuboff, and in it he shows how to justify induction through a priori 
> reasoning:
>
> "By the same reasoning
> as above, if all the first beads randomly drawn are blue, it is becoming 
> more and more
> probable that the beads in the urn are generally blue. (Otherwise 
> something improbable
> would be happening in another colour not appearing; and what’s improbable 
> is improbable.)
> It is therefore probable also that the next bead drawn will be blue. This 
> is induction. As Hume
> would have said, we could not know a priori, given this evidence, that the 
> next bead will be
> blue. But, as he overlooked, we can know a priori, given this evidence, 
> that it is probable that
> the next bead will be blue.
>

That makes sense. I am wondering, if this idea was worked out in more 
detail maybe it would end up being the same as Solomonoff's theory of 
induction?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 10:12:23 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 6/27/2021 5:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> No, atoms are more simple than ducks, and atoms are also more frequent 
> than ducks because there are atoms in every duck but there is no duck in an 
> atom. However, it seems that every object can be represented as a binary 
> string, which is a useful representation in computer science.
>
>
> Actually that's doubtful.  You're idealizing "object" into a class.  A 
> specific duck or atom may require and infinite string to define it's 
> relation to the rest of the universe.  But you've tried to pull a switch 
> from "being" to "represented"; a common move for those enamored of 
> language, description, computers,...
>

I meant a structure-preserving, complexity-preserving representation, at 
least in principle. So the binary string would completely represent the 
structure of the real object. But there may be a problem with calculating 
probability if there is an infinite number of objects. For example, it may 
seem that there are more natural numbers than even numbers but actually 
they are both infinite numbers. I don't know how Solomonoff got around the 
problem with infinity.  

A supposition on the same order as nature has regularities.  Remember 
> you're talking about "properties" within theories...not necessarily the 
> same as within objects.
>

I am talking about properties of objects - atoms, ducks, worlds...

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 2:44:31 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> I suppose in that way the fundamental laws of physics can be thought of as 
> data compression algorithms
>

Yes, and this makes a universe more simple and therefore more likely than a 
universe without laws.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 2:30:56 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> Our confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow is not based on any 
> induction from a large number of previously observed sunrises.
>

What is it based on then?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 2:29:38 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> The problem with that is that it is dependent on the language in which you 
> express things. The string 'amcjdhapihrib;f' is quite comples. But I can 
> define Z = amcjdhapihrib;f', and Z is algorithmically much simpler. 
> Kolmogorov complexity is a useful concept only if you compare things in the 
> same language. And there is no  unique language in which to describe nature.
>

Complexity is a property of structure, so if we want to explore complexity 
of real-world objects indirectly, that is, in representations of the 
real-world objects rather than in the real-world objects themselves, we 
must make sure that the representations preserve the structure and thus the 
complexity of the real-world objects. So there must be some systematic, 
isomorphic mapping between the real-world objects and their representations 
- a common language for describing (representing) the real world objects. 
It seems that one such language could be binary strings of 0s and 1s, at 
least this approach has been very successful in digital technology.

Another way of isomorphic representation of the structure of real-world 
objects that is even more similar to the structure of real-world objects is 
set theory since real-world objects are collections of collections of 
collections etc.


> What is science a matter of then?
>>
>
> Maybe it is a matter of finding laws. And laws are not just 
> empirical generalizations obtained by induction.
>

Sure, but how do we know that our world has laws that will hold in the 
future when it seems possible and even likely that they will not (because 
there are many ways that the world could deviate from the past laws in the 
future)?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 1:24:41 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> Induction does not work.
>

So there is no reason to expect that the sun will rise tomorrow?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 1:21:32 PM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 7:38 PM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 2:36:38 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:
>>
>> Much as I respect Russell, his book is not an authoritative source for 
>>> anything. It is all rampant speculation.
>>> On the matter of the stability of laws and the connection with 
>>> simplicity, I refer you to the 'grue/bleen' paradox introduced by Nelson 
>>> Goodman. That shows that the idea of simplicity as an explanation for 
>>> anything is misplaced.
>>>
>>
>> Note that the relation between simplicity and frequency is not Russell's 
>> speculation but a fact following from Kolmogorov's definition of 
>> complexity: simpler objects are more frequent than more complex objects 
>> because the same simpler object is contained in less simple objects.
>>
>
> This is only if everything is considered to be a bit string. There is no 
> reason to suppose that this is true.
>

No, atoms are more simple than ducks, and atoms are also more frequent than 
ducks because there are atoms in every duck but there is no duck in an 
atom. However, it seems that every object can be represented as a binary 
string, which is a useful representation in computer science.
 

> What a load of garbage! Science is not a matter of induction from observed 
> data.
>

What is science a matter of then?
 

> Goodman's grue/bleen paradox puts paid to that idea. Algorithmic 
> simplicity has nothing to do with real world data.
>

But the property of "grue" is more complex than the property of "green". 
"Grue" means "green before time t (for example year 2030) and blue after 
time t". More complex properties are less frequent than simpler properties. 
For this reason, and given the way the world has been until now, objects 
that have been observed as remaining green in the past are more likely to 
remain green in the future, instead of becoming blue at some time.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 3:53:18 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> Notice that they don't exist in the sense you mean.  Newton's laws aren't 
> around anymore.
>

By laws I mean regularities in nature. The apple still falls down and not 
up or in random directions, so the regularity exists like it did in the 
days of Newton although Einstein's theory can describe this regularity more 
accurately than Newton's theory. 
 

> So there's no guarantee they will continue without change, but they will 
> apply to the past.  How do we know?  We don't, but it's supported by 
> induction.  Induction is a self-supporting form of inference.  If there is 
> any effective form of empirical inference, then induction will do as well.
>

The problem is, why does induction work? Solomonoff tried to explain it 
with his theory of induction and that's what Russell's book refers to.
 

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 2:36:38 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

Much as I respect Russell, his book is not an authoritative source for 
> anything. It is all rampant speculation.
> On the matter of the stability of laws and the connection with simplicity, 
> I refer you to the 'grue/bleen' paradox introduced by Nelson Goodman. That 
> shows that the idea of simplicity as an explanation for anything is 
> misplaced.
>

Note that the relation between simplicity and frequency is not Russell's 
speculation but a fact following from Kolmogorov's definition of 
complexity: simpler objects are more frequent than more complex objects 
because the same simpler object is contained in less simple objects. This 
fact is then used in Solomonoff's theory of induction:

"Solomonoff induction is an ideal answer to questions like "What probably 
comes next in the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8?" or "Given the last three 
years of visual data from this webcam, what will this robot probably see 
next?" or "Will the sun rise tomorrow?" Solomonoff induction requires 
infinite computing power, and is defined by taking every computable 
algorithm for giving a probability distribution over future data given past 
data, weighted by their algorithmic simplicity 
, and updating those weights 
by comparison to the actual data."

https://arbital.com/p/solomonoff_induction


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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 1:54:29 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote:

>
> How do you know that? Or is it just an arbitrary assumption? If it is just 
> an assumption, your initial question is without content.
>

It is in Russell's book on page 58 (universal prior), with reference to 
equation 2.1 (complexity).

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 1:44:32 AM UTC+2 Bruce wrote: 

>  
>
Why should the universe be simple?
>

 Because simpler universes are more frequent and hence likely.

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 11:36:47 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
> But presumably the *laws *are stable.  Why?  Because that's the way we 
> want them.  If they weren't stable (or even time invariant) we wouldn't 
> call them laws of physics.  They'd be initial conditions or historical 
> accidents.
>

But why do stable laws exist in our universe and what is the guarantee that 
they will continue to exist?

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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 7:26:01 PM UTC+2 Jason wrote:

> Hi Tomas,
>
> The origin of laws, and why the universe follows them are great mysteries, 
> but I think there's been some recent progess. I link to done other sources, 
> in addition to Standish, that have worked towards an answer here:
>
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Why_Laws
>

Hi Jason,

Markus Muller seems to be making the same argument as Russell Standish: 
given the history of our universe it is more likely that we live in a 
universe where the past regularities will continue in the future because 
that makes the universe more simple. I am wondering what would be the 
probability (approximately) that the laws will remain the same as they have 
been?


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Re: Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 6:16:06 PM UTC+2 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> But the world is not stable. The universe looked very different 13 
> billion years ago than it does now because space is not only expanding, 
> it's accelerating; and Black Holes evaporate eventually, they are not 
> stable, and there are theoretical reasons to suspect protons are not stable 
> either, although that has never been experimentally verified.  
>

But the laws of physics are apparently the same as they were 13 billion 
years ago: law of gravity, quantum mechanics, constants of nature.

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Why are laws of physics stable?

[Tomas Pales]

Recently I've been thinking about why we live in a world with stable laws 
of physics, out of the plethora of all possible worlds. Why does the sun 
rise every day, why is the intensity of the Earth's gravitational field 
constant, why do causal relations ("the constant conjunction between causes 
and effects", as Hume put it) persist in time?

While the anthropic principle might be used to explain why the laws have 
been stable in the past (because this stability is probably necessary for 
the evolution of living or conscious organisms such as humans), it doesn't 
seem to explain why we should expect that the laws will continue to be 
stable in the future. In fact, it may seem that such a stability is very 
unlikely because there are many ways our world could be in the future but 
only one way in which it would be a deterministic extension of the world it 
has been until now. 

But in the book Theory of Nothing by Russell Standish I have found an 
argument that seems to claim the *opposite *(if I understand it correctly): 
given 
the way our world has been until now, this world is more simple if its 
regularities (such as laws of physics) continue than if they are 
discontinued, and simple worlds are more likely (more frequent in the 
collection of all possible worlds) than more complex worlds. (A simpler 
property is instantiated in a greater number of possible worlds than a more 
complex property.) Such a deterministic world is fully defined by some 
initial conditions and laws of physics, while a world whose regularity is 
discontinued at some point would need an additional property that would 
define the discontinuation and thereby make the world more complex.

Can it work like that? If so, I guess the probability that the laws remain 
stable is growing with the time that they have actually been stable. So 
now, after more than 13 billion years of stable laws of physics in our 
universe, is the probability that they remain stable overwhelmingly high 
(practically 100%)?

Here is a link to the book:
https://www.hpcoders.com.au/theory-of-nothing.pdf 
(the persistence of laws of physics is discussed in chapter 4, parts 4.1 
and 4.2)

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 10:57:08 AM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> But what is an object?
>

Anything that is identical to itself. It also seems necessary that every 
object is part of a greater object and has properties.
 

> We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the 
>> inquiry.
>>
>
> I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of 
> course).
>
>
> I take x = x as a logical truth about identity. So every thing is equal to 
> itself, and so, self-identity cannot be a criteria of (fundamental) 
> existence.
>

Why not? Why would some objects that are identical to themselves exist and 
other objects that are identical to themselves would not exist? What would 
such an existential distinction even mean?
 

>
> But the collection of all sets equal to themselves, {x I x = x} is 
> typically not a set, despite that collection is equal to itself.
>

I don't see a difference between collection and set. And there is no 
collection of all collections, just like there is no biggest number. 
 

>
> You seem to assume everything at the start, but without defining things, 
> that will lead easily to inconsistencies.
>

I assume the law of identity for every object, so all inconsistencies are 
thereby ruled out.
 

> A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.
>

No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle, so it is not 
identical to itself. It is not an object, it's nothing.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 11:02:45 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

> So then is it possible that there is a dog in your bathroom, at this 
> moment?
>

No.
 

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 1:30:55 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

I translate this by “an object is an element of a set together with some 
> structure or laws. OK? So vectors, numbers, maps, can all be seen as 
> (mathematical) object.
>

Yes. 

(And with mechanism, we can then deduce that there is no physical object, 
> although the mind can easily approximate them by some “object” (build by 
> the mind). 
>

Not sure what you mean by "physical". I regard as physical those 
mathematical objects that are in spacetime (and spacetime itself is a 
mathematical object too, a 4-dimensional space with one dimension somewhat 
different that the other three).

OK. In math we use often set theory, intuitively (or formally) to define, 
> or better to represent, the different object we want to talk about.
>
> It is known that arithmetic (the natural numbers) can be used too, for 
> most of the usual mathematics (including a lot of constructive real 
> objects, and more, but not all real numbers)
>

Reality may be bigger than arithmetic and then we need set theory to 
capture it, no? Well, we may never know if reality is bigger than 
arithmetic because it's impossible to prove that even arithmetic is 
consistent, let alone something bigger.
 

> “Concrete” is a tricky term which does not survive Mechanism, which 
> reverse not just physics and psychology-theology, but also abstract and 
> concrete. Just 0, s0, … are concrete, but a physical object like a table 
> becomes abstract. It looks concrete phenomenologically, but that is because 
> we have millions of neurons making us feel that way.
>

By "concrete" object I mean an object that is not a property. For example, 
the general triangle (an abstract object) is a property of all concrete 
triangles such as ones I can draw on a piece of paper. But a concrete 
triangle is not a property of anything. Same with tables; the concrete 
table in your room is not a property of anything but the abstract table 
("table in general") is a property exemplified in all concrete tables.

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.
>

I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of 
course).

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of 
identity, therefore nothing.


Fair enough, at least with a content relative to the metaphysics, or basic 
> ontology we assume at the start.
>

Without respecting law of identity, logical explosion will erase all 
differences between object and non-object, existence and non-existence, 
turning everything into nonsense. Paraconsistent logics arbitrarily deny 
law of identity in some circumstances and arbitrarily block explosion in 
some circumstances. They are meaningful and corresponding to reality only 
to the extent they affirm the law of identity.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 1:03:38 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/11/2021 2:23 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 10:27:35 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/11/2021 9:44 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means 
>>>> that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to 
>>>> itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible 
>>>> and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists 
>>>> necessarily in reality as a whole.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the 
>>> result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a 
>>> circular argument.
>>>
>>
>> I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference 
>> between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any 
>> fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.
>>
>>
>> Is there a dog in your room?  Is it possible for a dog to be in your 
>> room?  Do you understand those two questions?
>>
>
> Sure. And these are the answers: There is no dog in my room at this 
> moment. It is impossible for a dog to be in my room at this moment. 
>
>
> I didn't write "at this moment".   So apparently you can't a question 
> about what is possible.
>

You obviously meant "at this moment" when you asked about whether there is 
a dog in my room. If you didn't implicitely mean "at this moment" also in 
the second question then the answer to that question is that it might be 
possible for a dog to be in my room at a different time.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 10:27:35 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/11/2021 9:44 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means 
>>> that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to 
>>> itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible 
>>> and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists 
>>> necessarily in reality as a whole.
>>>
>>
>>
>> That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the 
>> result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a 
>> circular argument.
>>
>
> I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference 
> between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any 
> fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.
>
>
> Is there a dog in your room?  Is it possible for a dog to be in your 
> room?  Do you understand those two questions?
>

Sure. And these are the answers: There is no dog in my room at this moment. 
It is impossible for a dog to be in my room at this moment. Why is it 
impossible? Because it would be a contradiction if a dog was in a room 
where it is not. Like I said in a similar example, it might be possible in 
a different world but not in this one.

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 2:39:11 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/10/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>>
>>> Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) 
>>> changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.
>>>
>>
>> As I said, possible means identical to itself. 
>>
>>
>> I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that 
>> there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two 
>> primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number 
>> between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible 
>> it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and 
>> "necessary".
>>
>
> If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means 
> that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to 
> itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible 
> and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists 
> necessarily 
>
>
> You're avoiding the questions.  Your coin coming up heads isn't an object.
>

Why not? It's an event, which is an object in spacetime.
 

>   Neither is the even number that is not the sum of two primes.
>

Numbers are properties (abstract objects). For example, number five is a 
property of all collections that have five members. Concrete and abstract 
objects go hand in hand, for example if there are concrete triangles then 
there is also the property (abstract object) of triangleness (triangle "in 
general") that all concrete triangles have. Some people think that 
properties are just thoughts or words but apparently they are inherently 
connected with the nature of concrete objects so I would locate properties 
"out there" similarly like concrete objects, not just in the mind.
 

>   And as Bruno pointed out "object" is not well defined.
>

And I replied to Bruno about that yesterday.
 

> Is John Clark an object, or as he puts it "a verb". 
>

He is an object in spacetime.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>>
>> If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means 
>> that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to 
>> itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible 
>> and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists 
>> necessarily in reality as a whole.
>>
>
>
> That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the 
> result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a 
> circular argument.
>

I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference 
between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any 
fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) 
>> changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.
>>
>
> As I said, possible means identical to itself. 
>
>
> I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that 
> there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two 
> primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number 
> between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible 
> it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and 
> "necessary".
>

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that 
the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself 
and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and 
necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists 
necessarily in reality as a whole. The distinction between possible and 
necessary is used when talking about something that exists only in some 
possible worlds versus something that exists in every possible world, 
respectively.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed 
> the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.
>

As I said, possible means identical to itself. Now you tell me how it 
differs from "real".


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 4:12:21 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:03, Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
> The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which 
> is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly 
> existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and 
> hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.
>
>
> But what is an object? 
>

Good question. Whatever an object is, it seems it must necessarily have 
these two kinds of relations to other objects: 

1) composition relation (the relation between a part and a whole, or 
between an object and a collection (combination, set) of objects that 
includes this object)
2) instantiation relation (the relation between an object and its property)

Having a composition relation means being a part or having a part (all 
objects are parts of a greater object, and some objects also have parts). 
Having an instantiation relation means having a property or being a 
property (all objects have a property, and some objects are also 
properties). Wouldn't you agree that every possible object must have these 
two kinds of relations?

The composition relation generates all possible collections (combinations, 
sets), down to empty collections (non-composite objects) and maybe even 
without bottom as long as there is no contradiction. And the instantiation 
relation generates all possible properties and objects that have these 
properties, down to collections (which are not properties of anything else) 
and maybe even without bottom as long as there is no contradiction.

So, there are two kinds of objects: collections and properties (roughly 
synonymous with concrete and abstract objects, respectively). Actually, we 
might count relations as a third kind of object because, after all, they 
are something too. Abstract relations are also properties of concrete 
relations (for example the abstract/general composition relation is a 
property of any concrete composition relation).
 

> I agree that Unicorn can exist, in the mind of some people, or in a dream, 
> but most would say that Unicorn do no exist, because being fictional is 
> part of their definition.
>

Minds are parts of reality, so parts of minds (like unicorns) are parts of 
reality too. Like every object, unicorns exist in the way in which they are 
defined, in this case as parts of minds. And maybe in some other world also 
outside of minds, as long as there is no contradiction.
 

> Or take a square circle, or a dog which is also a cat…
>

These are not possible objects because their definition violates the law of 
identity. What is a circle that is not a circle? Nothing.

Why? A red can which is blue can be identical with itself. All odd natural 
> number solution to 2x = x + 1 are equal to itself, despite not existing. 
> Your self-identity criteria is too weak for being a criteria of existence.
>

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of 
identity, therefore nothing.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:40:51 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/9/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which 
>> is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly 
>> existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and 
>> hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.
>>
>>
>> So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly 
>> exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means *just 
>> now* then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." 
>> and has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even 
>> confined to the near future, it's false.
>>
>>
> When you talk about something you must define it. The temporal position of 
> an object is part of its definition (identity). So when object X can exist 
> at time t, then it must exist at time t. It's trivial, just an example of 
> the law of identity. 
>
>>
>>
>> To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked 
>> in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car 
>> would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object 
>> that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would 
>> be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence 
>> impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different 
>> possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not 
>> really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that 
>> other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a 
>> proof that it doesn't exist.
>>
>>
>> c.f. Russell's teapot.
>>
>
> c.f. Granny's glasses - when she can't find them, they don't exist
>
> The question is what is the difference between a possibly existing object 
> and a "really" existing object? The fact that you don't see something 
> doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>
>
> That you can put it's name in a sentence doesn't mean it does exist 
> either. Or even that it's (nomologically) possible.
>

I am not saying that something exists. I am not even saying that something 
is possible (identical to itself). I am just saying that if something is 
possible then it exists, because I don't see a difference between possible 
and "real" existence.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
> The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which 
> is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly 
> existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and 
> hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.
>
>
> So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly 
> exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means *just 
> now* then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and 
> has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even confined 
> to the near future, it's false.
>
>
When you talk about something you must define it. The temporal position of 
an object is part of its definition (identity). So when object X can exist 
at time t, then it must exist at time t. It's trivial, just an example of 
the law of identity. 

>
>
> To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked 
> in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car 
> would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object 
> that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would 
> be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence 
> impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different 
> possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not 
> really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that 
> other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a 
> proof that it doesn't exist.
>
>
> c.f. Russell's teapot.
>

c.f. Granny's glasses - when she can't find them, they don't exist

The question is what is the difference between a possibly existing object 
and a "really" existing object? The fact that you don't see something 
doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Tomas Pales]

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which 
is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly 
existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and 
hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked 
in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car 
would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object 
that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would 
be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence 
impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different 
possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not 
really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that 
other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a 
proof that it doesn't exist.

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 6:34:51 AM UTC+1 Jason wrote:

> I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"
>
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/
>
> I thought members of the list might appreciate some of the references 
> included in it. My thinking on this question has of course been greatly 
> expanded and influenced through my interactions with many of you over the 
> past decade.
>
> I welcome any feedback, thoughts, corrections, or questions regarding 
> anything written.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jason
>

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Re: A universe where everything exists?

[Tomas Pales]

The idea of an all-encompassing set (a set of all sets) is inconsistent, 
for example because the power set of a set (=the set of all subsets of a 
set) is an even bigger set. If a set is infinite then its power set has an 
even bigger infinite size. So there is no biggest set, just as there is no 
biggest number and no biggest infinity. There just seems to be a 
never-ending hierarchy of sets, from the empty set upward and maybe there 
are also sets that have no bottom, that is they contain sets that contain 
sets etc. without end. But everything needs to be kept consistent and I 
have heard that according to Godel's second incompleteness theorem there 
may be inconsistencies lurking in infinities which we may never be able to 
detect.


On Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 6:57:47 PM UTC+1 Mindey I. wrote:

> Curiously, I found the Everything List, because I wanted to to create a "A 
> Universe Where Everything Can Exist" ( https://mindey.com/world.pdf ), 
> which the Google search of 2007 returned me to my search query "How to 
> create a universe, where everything can exist?"
>
> So, suppose that we create a universe, where everything exists, -- would 
> that universe be a superset of all possible universes, or, just the same 
> set?
>

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Re: Probability in Everettian QM

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, September 6, 2020 at 12:39:24 AM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

>
>
> On 9/5/2020 3:31 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, September 4, 2020 at 8:03:55 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:
>
>> If there are an infinite number then frequency is ill defined and you 
>> have to introduce some measure...which is essentially the same as just 
>> postulating a probability.  This is something like Carroll's solution which 
>> is to give "weights" to branches.
>>
>
> Don't we need to postulate a measure to calculate the (frequentist) 
> probabilities of classical coin toss outcomes too? I mean, if we assume an 
> unlimited (infinite) repetition of a fair coin toss then the probabilities 
> of heads and tails are no longer 0.5 but become undefined despite the fact 
> that the coin is fair (so its properties don't favor either side). Similar 
> problem like calculating the proportion of even integers out of all 
> integers - the proportion is not defined without choice of a particular 
> measure. So it seems that we can't avoid using a particular probability 
> measure also in classical physics.
>
> The probabilities in QM are obviously defined, as expressed by the Born 
> rule or the Gleason theorem. Which means (if I understand correctly) that 
> if MWI is right then the number of branches arising at a decoherence event 
> is either finite, or it is infinite but the structure of our quantum 
> multiverse also has a particular measure that is expressed by Born and 
> Gleason or by Carroll's weights of branches. The reason why our quantum 
> multiverse has this particular measure may be that we happen to live in 
> such a multiverse and other multiverses may have other measures.
>
>
> If the other universe has the physics of quantum mechanics then the only 
> consistent way of assigning probabilities to observation is Born's rule.  
> That's what Gleason proved.
>

Ok, that reduces options for other multiverses.

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Re: Probability in Everettian QM

[Tomas Pales]

On Saturday, September 5, 2020 at 8:11:57 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> There are some people who can't abide probabilistic theories and will 
> invent fantastic worlds in order to have a deterministic ensemble which 
> then must be reduced by ignorance to agree with observation.  They then 
> feel they've made great progress because they think their theory is 
> deterministic.
>

They are trying to give an answer why a particular possible outcome is 
observed while others just give a shrug.

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Re: Probability in Everettian QM

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, September 4, 2020 at 8:03:55 PM UTC+2 Brent wrote:

> If there are an infinite number then frequency is ill defined and you have 
> to introduce some measure...which is essentially the same as just 
> postulating a probability.  This is something like Carroll's solution which 
> is to give "weights" to branches.
>

Don't we need to postulate a measure to calculate the (frequentist) 
probabilities of classical coin toss outcomes too? I mean, if we assume an 
unlimited (infinite) repetition of a fair coin toss then the probabilities 
of heads and tails are no longer 0.5 but become undefined despite the fact 
that the coin is fair (so its properties don't favor either side). Similar 
problem like calculating the proportion of even integers out of all 
integers - the proportion is not defined without choice of a particular 
measure. So it seems that we can't avoid using a particular probability 
measure also in classical physics.

The probabilities in QM are obviously defined, as expressed by the Born 
rule or the Gleason theorem. Which means (if I understand correctly) that 
if MWI is right then the number of branches arising at a decoherence event 
is either finite, or it is infinite but the structure of our quantum 
multiverse also has a particular measure that is expressed by Born and 
Gleason or by Carroll's weights of branches. The reason why our quantum 
multiverse has this particular measure may be that we happen to live in 
such a multiverse and other multiverses may have other measures.

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