Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Reminds me of using an additional physical dimension! Like Clifford Pickover 
used to write about.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309522477_Overview_of_Hypersphere_World-Universe_Model


-Original Message-
From: Jason Resch 
To: Everything List 
Sent: Wed, Mar 17, 2021 1:35 pm
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?



On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 10:17 AM Bruno Marchal  wrote:



On 14 Mar 2021, at 17:26, Tomas Pales  wrote:


 
 A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.

No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle, 

Obviously, a square circle is a circle. It is a counter-example to the idea 
that a square cannot be a circle. It does not exist, but that does not make it 
different to itself. Even a Unicorn is equal to itself.The real problem of the 
square circle is that we don’t have provides definition, or we talk about 
something which cannot exist, so we can’t really build meaningful proposition 
about it, without being inconsistent.


I know this isn't a proof of anything, but I found it interesting nonetheless, 
and thought some might appreciate seeing a "square circle"
https://m.facebook.com/ARTPIQ/videos/642129876609181/

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 10:17 AM Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 14 Mar 2021, at 17:26, Tomas Pales  wrote:
>
>
>
>
>> A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.
>>
>
> No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle,
>
>
> Obviously, a square circle is a circle. It is a counter-example to the
> idea that a square cannot be a circle. It does not exist, but that does not
> make it different to itself. Even a Unicorn is equal to itself.
> The real problem of the square circle is that we don’t have provides
> definition, or we talk about something which cannot exist, so we can’t
> really build meaningful proposition about it, without being inconsistent.
>


I know this isn't a proof of anything, but I found it interesting
nonetheless, and thought some might appreciate seeing a "square circle"

https://m.facebook.com/ARTPIQ/videos/642129876609181/

Jason

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/17/2021 2:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 16 Mar 2021, at 19:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 3/16/2021 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra > wrote:


On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.
Brent
There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The 
leading term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, 
low energies and velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.


It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)


I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of 
any observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of 
precision are themselves independent of us, even if the taste for 
this or that precision might depend on us, and of some context.


I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of 
physics which is not an approximation of such sort, but for the 
point I was making I was alluding to some such laws, and that would 
make sense for anyone realist on some physicai reality (fundamental 
or not). If not, then “the laws is a construct of mind” would be 
interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the humans are at the 
origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 does not 
depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.
If it doesn't depend on human thinking, then what does the "=" sign 
mean?  What does "F" refer to?


It means that IF an observer was there, and want to evaluate the 
acceleration toward the object of mass M, of an object of mass m, by 
F=ma, we get ma = GmM/r^2, and thus a = GM/r^2. In passing we see that 
all objects near M have the same accelaration, and thus we get the 
usual orbits, etc. So, in absence of any observer, the planet will 
move around a star in some way, etc…


I use Einstein’s principle of Reality here, which is the 
counterfactual asserting that if we can predict a result with 
certainty, then, even if we don’t make the measurement, there is an 
element of reality (fundamental or not).




In my view they refer to a model (in the physics sense) in which the 
equation expresses a relation between elements of the model.


Which is interesting only if the elements of that model (in a 
physician sense) correspond to element or reality (which “model” in 
the logician’s sense, basically).



That the model is a useful approximation does happen to depend on our 
circumstances.


The usefulness of that approximation depends on the circumstances, and 
the goal of some observer.
Yet, the fact that it is true, or approximately true, should be true 
independently of any observer.
Earth is approximately a sphere, and it makes sense to assume/believe 
that Earth was approximately a sphere long before life appeared on it.



If we lived a planet closely orbiting a red dwarf/black hole binary 
it might not be close enough to be considered useful, much less a "law”.


? You might need better equation, like Einstein GR, if you have the 
time. The was of physics are not contradicted by a Black Hole, and if 
that was the case, it means that the law we discovered was false, and 
would search for a better law. But those laws are supposed to be 
independent of the observer. Quarks exchanged gluon already two 
seconds after the big-bang. If a human is needed for having a reality 
obeying some law, we will need some human to start the physical 
histories. That become a form of solipsism.


We cannot prove the existence of a Reality does not mean that there is 
no Reality. Indeed, that is the reality that we will confront with our 
theories.





Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) 
description of that law.


And what would an "incorrect description of a law" be?


F = mv (like Aristotle did, which still makes sense due to friction, 
but it is Newton who got the correct (or better) insight, and then 
Einstein get even more correct on this.



One can say describing a cow as a bird is an incorrect description of 
a cow, because you can point to the cow and say "That is not a 
bird".  But you can't point to a law, you can only point to a better 
approximation.


The theory which classify a cow as a bird can be considered as a 
better approximation than the theory classifying the cow as a star, 
which is better that the theory according to which the cow is a number.







This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the 
arithmetical reality run all computations must not be confuse with 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 16 Mar 2021, at 19:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/16/2021 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
 On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
> guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
> before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?
 I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
 approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.
 Brent
>>> There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The leading 
>>> term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low energies and 
>>> velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.
>>> 
>>> It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)
>> 
>> I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any 
>> observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are 
>> themselves independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision 
>> might depend on us, and of some context.
>> 
>> I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics 
>> which is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I 
>> was alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist 
>> on some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a 
>> construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if 
>> the humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = 
>> GmM/r^2 does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.
> If it doesn't depend on human thinking, then what does the "=" sign mean?  
> What does "F" refer to? 

It means that IF an observer was there, and want to evaluate the acceleration 
toward the object of mass M, of an object of mass m, by F=ma, we get ma = 
GmM/r^2, and thus a = GM/r^2. In passing we see that all objects near M have 
the same accelaration, and thus we get the usual orbits, etc. So, in absence of 
any observer, the planet will move around a star in some way, etc… 

I use Einstein’s principle of Reality here, which is the counterfactual 
asserting that if we can predict a result with certainty, then, even if we 
don’t make the measurement, there is an element of reality (fundamental or not).



> In my view they refer to a model (in the physics sense) in which the equation 
> expresses a relation between elements of the model. 

Which is interesting only if the elements of that model (in a physician sense) 
correspond to element or reality (which “model” in the logician’s sense, 
basically).


> That the model is a useful approximation does happen to depend on our 
> circumstances. 

The usefulness of that approximation depends on the circumstances, and the goal 
of some observer.
Yet, the fact that it is true, or approximately true, should be true 
independently of any observer.
Earth is approximately a sphere, and it makes sense to assume/believe that 
Earth was approximately a sphere long before life appeared on it.


> If we lived a planet closely orbiting a red dwarf/black hole binary it might 
> not be close enough to be considered useful, much less a "law”.

? You might need better equation, like Einstein GR, if you have the time. The 
was of physics are not contradicted by a Black Hole, and if that was the case, 
it means that the law we discovered was false, and would search for a better 
law. But those laws are supposed to be independent of the observer. Quarks 
exchanged gluon already two seconds after the big-bang. If a human is needed 
for having a reality obeying some law, we will need some human to start the 
physical histories. That become a form of solipsism.

We cannot prove the existence of a Reality does not mean that there is no 
Reality. Indeed, that is the reality that we will confront with our theories.


> 
>> Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) 
>> description of that law.
> 
> And what would an "incorrect description of a law" be? 

F = mv (like Aristotle did, which still makes sense due to friction, but it is 
Newton who got the correct (or better) insight, and then Einstein get even more 
correct on this.


> One can say describing a cow as a bird is an incorrect description of a cow, 
> because you can point to the cow and say "That is not a bird".  But you can't 
> point to a law, you can only point to a better approximation.

The theory which classify a cow as a bird can be considered as a better 
approximation than the theory classifying the cow as a star, which is better 
that the theory according to which the cow is a number.


> 
>> 
>> This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical 
>> reality run all 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/16/2021 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra  wrote:

On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.
Brent

There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The leading 
term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low energies and 
velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.

It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)


I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any 
observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are themselves 
independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision might depend on us, 
and of some context.

I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics which 
is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I was 
alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist on 
some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a 
construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the 
humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 
does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.
If it doesn't depend on human thinking, then what does the "=" sign 
mean?  What does "F" refer to?  In my view they refer to a model (in the 
physics sense) in which the equation expresses a relation between 
elements of the model.  That the model is a useful approximation does 
happen to depend on our circumstances.  If we lived a planet closely 
orbiting a red dwarf/black hole binary it might not be close enough to 
be considered useful, much less a "law".



Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) description 
of that law.


And what would an "incorrect description of a law" be?  One can say 
describing a cow as a bird is an incorrect description of a cow, because 
you can point to the cow and say "That is not a bird".  But you can't 
point to a law, you can only point to a better approximation.




This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical 
reality run all computations must not be confuse with that fact that we can 
describe the computations in arithmetic, as a computation is not the same as a 
description of a computation, even if to prove that Arithmetic is Turing 
universal imposed *us* to go through those description. There is a complex 
pedagogical problem here. It is like the difference between the number 1 and 
the symbol “1”, those are extremely different entities. Nobody knows what the 
number 1 is, but everybody can handle it very easily, and the symbol “1” is 
anything you want, even the Mount Everest if you want, although that would not 
be a practical symbol, for sure.


But they handle it easily because they learn the rules for handling the 
symbol and the semantics for translating from symbols to the meaning.  
Most people can't do even simple addition beyond one digit without using 
symbols at least mentally.


Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra  wrote:
> 
> On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>> On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
>>> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
>>> guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
>>> before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?
>> I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
>> approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.
>> Brent
> 
> There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The leading 
> term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low energies and 
> velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.
> 
> It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)


I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any 
observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are 
themselves independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision 
might depend on us, and of some context.

I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics which 
is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I was 
alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist on 
some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a 
construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the 
humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 
does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2. 
Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) description 
of that law.

This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical 
reality run all computations must not be confuse with that fact that we can 
describe the computations in arithmetic, as a computation is not the same as a 
description of a computation, even if to prove that Arithmetic is Turing 
universal imposed *us* to go through those description. There is a complex 
pedagogical problem here. It is like the difference between the number 1 and 
the symbol “1”, those are extremely different entities. Nobody knows what the 
number 1 is, but everybody can handle it very easily, and the symbol “1” is 
anything you want, even the Mount Everest if you want, although that would not 
be a practical symbol, for sure.

Bruno


> 
> Saibal
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Mar 2021, at 18:47, Philip Benjamin  wrote:
> 
> [Philip Benjamin]
>Laws are NOT constructs of the human mind. The ‘expressions of the 
> Laws’ are indeed human constructs.  F=GmM/r^2 = ma is only a human expression 
> of Laws governing an unknown force called gravity. ‘Unknown’ here means 
> unknown to human consciousness that DID NOT and COULD NOT have CREATED 
> ‘gravity’. From F = GmM/r2 = ma, where F is the gravitational force, G is the 
> gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth, r is the radius of the 
> Earth, and m is the mass of another object (near the surface of the Earth),  
> GM/r2= a (The m's canceled out.) which allows solving for M, the mass of the 
> Earth. M = ar^2/G, where a = 9.8m/sec^2, r = 6.4 x 10^6 m, and G = 6.67 x 
> 10^-11m3/(kg sec^2).  M = 9.8 x (6.4 x 10^6)^2/(6.67 x 10^-11) = 6.0 x 
> 10^24kg. This mass, radius, gravity and their relationships etc. are not 
> created by human minds!! Greek Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the 
> earth comparing shadows in wells during the summer solstice about 230 B.C.
>   No human mind howsoever brilliant can escape facing the necessity of 
> aseity of something or other. Only a degree of rationality can be settled 
> here. What is MORE rational: Eternal dead-matter producing life 
> (consciousness) or E ternal LIFE producing both dead-matter and life 
> (consciousness)?


Assuming Mechanism, there is no choice here. What is more rational is 
elementary arithmetic, as it explains where the beliefs n creator and creation 
comes from, and why it can hurt sometimes.

Then, if we get wrong on anything observable, we can speculate that Mechanism 
is false, or we are in a malevolent simulation, etc.

Bruno




> Philip Benjamin
>  
> everything-list@googlegroups.com  On Behalf 
> Of Jason Resch verything List 
> Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist? On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno 
> Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
>  
> I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell  <mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>  
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
> [Brent Meeker]
> “https://alwaysasking.com/ 
> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falwaysasking.com%2F=04%7C01%7C%7Ce85437ffe6d546fdcfa408d8e6f95056%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637513305755870501%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000=xxiBa5jFlmboc103NsaS6z0B7EfKETnwfZBVt%2FMOYSg%3D=0>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
> [Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex 
> nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
>  
> OK. Key point.Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a 
> conscious Law Giver.
>  
> But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
> machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
> oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.
>  
> What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?
>  
> Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more 
> powerful system could prove it?
>  
> Is it a consequence of self reference?
>  
> Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove 
> P"?
>  
> If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove 
> statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?
>  
> What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?
>  
> Jason
> 
> 
> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing 
> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
> rationality can be established here.
> Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a 
> simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is 
> the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to 
> reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…
>  
> Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion 
> common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.
>  
> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
>  
> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you 
> are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life 
> appears on this planet and after. OK?
> 
> There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.
>  
> … OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with 
> Nature. Then there are some 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Mar 2021, at 17:26, Tomas Pales  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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.


That’s not enough precise. It makes any thing into object, except that it seems 
to need a notion of part, and thus can be structured, in many ways, as many as 
there are set theories, at least, and there are many, from ZF and NF to the 
many toposes...





>  
>> 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?

As a scientist, I try to assume as less as possible, and only things on which 
everyone agree.

Most people agree that 4+5=9, and that this implies Ex(x+5 = 9), and do one. 

With Mechanism, this is enough, and mandatory (up to a Turing equivalence). 

Then, from the numbers’ point of view, they get hallucinated in the difference 
between p, []p, []p & p, etc… which will explain the apperance of the laws of 
physics, in the mind of large stable collection of universal numbers/machines, 
but it would be long to explain this right now. I can give references for more.




>  
> 
> 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.

A collection is a set in the intuitive sense. A (formal) set, in an axiomatic 
theory of set, is an element (in the intuitive sense) of a model of set theory. 
Yes, the difference is a bit subtle, but capital when we study the axiomatic of 
set theory and its models.

If you identify all collection with (formal) sets, you get contradictions. For 
example, by Cantor theorem all set of parts P(S) of a set S is bigger than the 
set S: PS > S. But if the collection U of all sets was a set, PU > U, but U is 
the set of all sets, so certainly U should be bigger than all sets. And there 
are many other contradictions...



> And there is no collection of all collections, just like there is no biggest 
> number. 


The problem is that there is a collection of all sets, once we define set 
axiomatically. We just have to be careful to distinguish set and collections, 
once we want use such theories to solve some problem.



>  
> 
> 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.

? (You seem to assume some object, and it is unclear if you mean “physical 
object”, psychological object, etc. You seem to have a general theory of 
object, but you don’t seem to characterise them axiomatically, so, to be 
honest, I don’t see any theory.




>  
> A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.
> 
> No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle,

Obviously, a square circle is a circle. It is a counter-example to the idea 
that a square cannot be a circle. It does not exist, but that does not make it 
different to itself. Even a Unicorn is equal to itself.
The real problem of the square circle is that we don’t have provides 
definition, or we talk about something which cannot exist, so we can’t really 
build meaningful proposition about it, without being inconsistent.



> so it is not identical to itself. It is not an object, it's nothing.

x = x is usually an axiom of all theory of identity, with the symmetry and 
transitivity. At least we agree on that. Your notion of object is still too 
much fuzzy to be used in metaphysics/theology, Imo.

Bruno




> 
> 
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Mar 2021, at 16:53, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
> 
> On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 5:24:27 AM UTC-5 Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> 
> I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
> 
> 
> 
>> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell > > wrote:
>> 
>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
>> [Brent Meeker]
>> 
>> “https://alwaysasking.com/ 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
>> 
>> [Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex 
>> nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
>> 
> 
> OK. Key point.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.
>> 
> 
> But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
> machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
> oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing 
>> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
>> rationality can be established here.
>> 
>> 
> 
> Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a 
> simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is 
> the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to 
> reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…
> 
> Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion 
> common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
> 
> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you 
> are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life 
> appears on this planet and after. OK?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.
> 
> … OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with 
> Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection 
> and dialog with others.
> This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical 
> reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, 
> and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, 
> as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal 
> system/theory.
> 
> 
>> The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.
> 
> Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better 
> to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume 
> at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well 
> (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).
> 
> 
> 
>> Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no 
>> true nothingness.
> 
> Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, 
> actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an 
> explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in a 
> physical reality.
> 
> With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the 
> induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal 
> numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics becomes 
> a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated in 
> Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.
> 
> What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an arithmetical 
> notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a proof of this, 
> but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel missed it because he 
> missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite skeptical until 1936 where he 
> was convinced by Turing.
> 
> 
> As I indicated nothingness is a sort of self-annihilating concept, 
> nothingness annihilates nothingness meaning there is something. Does 
> nothingness exist? If it does then by having existential properties it is not 
> true nothingness. Maybe it is more the quantum vacuum. If nothingness does 
> not exist then there must be something.


Nothingness means nothing without defining which things we are talking about. 

In mathematical logic, no model is empty, by definition (making AxP(x) -> 
ExP(x) into a logical axiom).

We presuppose that we are alway talking about *some* things.



> 
> Even the theological argument of 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Mar 2021, at 15:56, Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno Marchal  <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
> 
> 
> I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
> 
> 
> 
>> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell > <mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
>> [Brent Meeker]
>> 
>> “https://alwaysasking.com/ 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
>> 
>> [Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex 
>> nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
>> 
> 
> OK. Key point.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.
>> 
> 
> But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
> machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
> oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?


The truth concerning consciousness is provable in a (or the) theory of 
consciousness (given by the sound machine).

The truth of “the fact of my consciousness here and now”, for example, is shown 
to be true and non provable by the machine, a bit like the truth of the 
consistency of the (sound) machine cannot be made by the machine itself.

> 
> Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more 
> powerful system could prove it?


It is knowable-for-sure by the machine (indeed it is the only thing which is 
knowable-for-sure), but the machine can know that it is not rationally knowable 
or justifiable. It belongs to a variant of a G* minus G type of proposition.



> 
> Is it a consequence of self reference?

It is indeed a consequence of the mathematics of self-reference, together with 
the classical definition of Plato and the Neoplatonician. But those definition 
can be motivated through the thought experiences when assuming mechanism, in a 
diverse way.



> 
> Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove 
> P”?


Yes. (And through mechanism, we can relate it also to the mechanist thought 
experience, as it is the only thing linking consciousness to the machine, by 
the “yes doctor” act of faith).

More generally, with “[0]p” interpreted by Gödel’s provability predicate 
(sigma_1 complete) provable(‘p’), it is related  to 

~[0]p
~[1]p
~[2]p
~[3]p
~[4]p

With the arithmetical, and non-arithmetical operators defined by

[0]p = the usual Gödelian provability predicate (beweisbar, provable, …).

[1]p = [0]p & p (knowable; This one cannot be defined in arithmetic, or by the 
machine)

[2]p = [0]p & <0>t (observable)

[3]p = [0]p & <0>t & p (sensible; This one cannot be defined in arithmetic, or 
by the machine).



> 
> If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove 
> statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

Yes, you can, but only by assuming it has a (conscious) mind, which is 
something that you cannot prove, even for humans, aliens, gods, whatever. You 
cannot prove it about yourself either, despite you can know-it-for-sure.



> 
> What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?


It is about any Reality big enough to satisfy all your beliefs, where you is 
any sound machine believing in any essentially undecidable theory, like the 
very weak theory Q (Robinson Arithmetic).

No machine can define its own semantic. From the machine points of view, its 
own semantic obeys many typical axioms of the One of the neoplatonician (not 
nameable, not provable, not doubtable, not observable, yet responsible for 
*all* the nameable, the provable, the doubtable, the observable).
With mechanism, in a first pass “god”, the One,  is the arithmetical Reality, 
and in the second pass, when we interview the computationalist Löbian machine, 
in fine, the One is the tiny sigma_1 complete part of arithmetic (aka the 
universal dovetailing).

Bruno



> 
> Jason
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing 
>> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
>> rationality can be established here.
>> 
>> 
> 
> Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a 
> simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is 
> the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to 
> reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…
> 
> Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illu

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[smitra]

On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]


The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?


I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.

Brent


There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The 
leading term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low 
energies and velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.


It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)

Saibal

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]


The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I 
guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before 
human life appears on this planet and after. OK?


I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the 
approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.


Brent

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FW: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Philip Benjamin]

general_the...@googlegroups.com<mailto:general_the...@googlegroups.com>  
Subject: [Consciousness-Online] RE: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Philip Benjamin]
   Laws are NOT constructs of the human mind. The 'expressions of the Laws' 
are indeed human constructs.  F=GmM/r^2 = ma is only a human expression of Laws 
governing an unknown force called gravity. 'Unknown' here means unknown to 
human consciousness that DID NOT and COULD NOT have CREATED 'gravity'. From F = 
GmM/r2 = ma, where F is the gravitational force, G is the gravitational 
constant, M is the mass of the Earth, r is the radius of the Earth, and m is 
the mass of another object (near the surface of the Earth),  GM/r2= a (The m's 
canceled out.) which allows solving for M, the mass of the Earth. M = ar^2/G, 
where a = 9.8m/sec^2, r = 6.4 x 10^6 m, and G = 6.67 x 10^-11m3/(kg sec^2).  M 
= 9.8 x (6.4 x 10^6)^2/(6.67 x 10^-11) = 6.0 x 10^24kg. This mass, radius, 
gravity and their relationships etc. are not created by human minds!! Greek 
Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the earth comparing shadows in wells 
during the summer solstice about 230 B.C.
  No human mind howsoever brilliant can escape facing the necessity of 
aseity of something or other. Only a degree of rationality can be settled here. 
What is MORE rational: Eternal dead-matter producing life (consciousness) or E 
ternal LIFE producing both dead-matter and life (consciousness)?
Philip Benjamin

everything-list@googlegroups.com<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com> 
mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> On 
Behalf Of Jason Resch verything List 
mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>>
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist? On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno 
Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell 
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> 
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
[Brent Meeker]
"https://alwaysasking.com/<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falwaysasking.com%2F=04%7C01%7C%7Cf54135b9db8044e18ade08d8e7114138%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637513408580053102%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000=oJjjN3rmKgz92F0xa1HhGMj9eaPNOAWx6ca8W%2B7O2G4%3D=0>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation"
[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. "Ex nihilo, 
nihil fit" (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a 
conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
oneself. Introspective machine/number can't miss it.

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more 
powerful system could prove it?

Is it a consequence of self reference?

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove 
P"?

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove 
statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

Jason

The logical question is: "what is more reasonable?" DEAD MATTER producing life 
or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
rationality can be established here.
Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple 
consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact 
that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce 
itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved...

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion 
common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you 
are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears 
on this planet and after. OK?
There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

... OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with 
Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection 
and dialog with others.
This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical 
reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and 
in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as 
this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.
The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter

RE: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Philip Benjamin]

[Philip Benjamin]
   Laws are NOT constructs of the human mind. The 'expressions of the Laws' 
are indeed human constructs.  F=GmM/r^2 = ma is only a human expression of Laws 
governing an unknown force called gravity. 'Unknown' here means unknown to 
human consciousness that DID NOT and COULD NOT have CREATED 'gravity'. From F = 
GmM/r2 = ma, where F is the gravitational force, G is the gravitational 
constant, M is the mass of the Earth, r is the radius of the Earth, and m is 
the mass of another object (near the surface of the Earth),  GM/r2= a (The m's 
canceled out.) which allows solving for M, the mass of the Earth. M = ar^2/G, 
where a = 9.8m/sec^2, r = 6.4 x 10^6 m, and G = 6.67 x 10^-11m3/(kg sec^2).  M 
= 9.8 x (6.4 x 10^6)^2/(6.67 x 10^-11) = 6.0 x 10^24kg. This mass, radius, 
gravity and their relationships etc. are not created by human minds!! Greek 
Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the earth comparing shadows in wells 
during the summer solstice about 230 B.C.
  No human mind howsoever brilliant can escape facing the necessity of 
aseity of something or other. Only a degree of rationality can be settled here. 
What is MORE rational: Eternal dead-matter producing life (consciousness) or E 
ternal LIFE producing both dead-matter and life (consciousness)?
Philip Benjamin

everything-list@googlegroups.com  On Behalf 
Of Jason Resch verything List 
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist? On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno 
Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell 
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> 
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
[Brent Meeker]
"https://alwaysasking.com/<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falwaysasking.com%2F=04%7C01%7C%7Ce85437ffe6d546fdcfa408d8e6f95056%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637513305755870501%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000=xxiBa5jFlmboc103NsaS6z0B7EfKETnwfZBVt%2FMOYSg%3D=0>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation"
[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. "Ex nihilo, 
nihil fit" (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a 
conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
oneself. Introspective machine/number can't miss it.

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more 
powerful system could prove it?

Is it a consequence of self reference?

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove 
P"?

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove 
statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

Jason


The logical question is: "what is more reasonable?" DEAD MATTER producing life 
or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
rationality can be established here.
Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple 
consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact 
that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce 
itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved...

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion 
common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you 
are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears 
on this planet and after. OK?

There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

... OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with 
Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection 
and dialog with others.
This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical 
reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and 
in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as 
this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.

The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better to 
not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume at 
least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well 
(natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).

Where did the mind come from, and if suc

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?

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 5:24:27 AM UTC-5 Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
>
> I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
>
>
>
> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
>
>> [*Brent Meeker*] 
>>
>> “https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
>>
>> [*Philip Benjamin*] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. 
>> “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
>>
>
> OK. Key point.
>
>
>
>
> Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law 
>> Giver. 
>>
>
> But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
> machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
> oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.
>
>
>
>
>
> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing 
>> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
>> rationality can be established here.
>>
>>
> Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a 
> simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It 
> is the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, 
> to reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…
>
> Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an 
> illusion common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent 
> histories.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
>
>
> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess 
> you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life 
> appears on this planet and after. OK?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.
>
>
> … OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with 
> Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by 
> introspection and dialog with others.
> This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical 
> reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, 
> and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the 
> qualia, as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal 
> system/theory.
>
>
> The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly. 
>
>
> Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is 
> better to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to 
> assume at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works 
> very well (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal 
> system).
>
>
>
> Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no 
> true nothingness.
>
>
> Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, 
> actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an 
> explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in 
> a physical reality.
>
> With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the 
> induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal 
> numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics 
> becomes a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated 
> in Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.
>
> What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an 
> arithmetical notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a 
> proof of this, but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel 
> missed it because he missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite 
> skeptical until 1936 where he was convinced by Turing.
>
>
As I indicated nothingness is a sort of self-annihilating concept, 
nothingness annihilates nothingness meaning there is something. Does 
nothingness exist? If it does then by having existential properties it is 
not true nothingness. Maybe it is more the quantum vacuum. If nothingness 
does not exist then there must be something.

Even the theological argument of creati ex nihilio is self-defeating, for 
there had to be a God in that argument. Does God exist? If so then there 
was not truly nothingness. If God does not exist the argument is 
meaningless.

BTW, I have Davis's book. He was a part of the quartet who showed the 
Hilbert thesis for a single method of p-adic numbers was false.

 

>
>
>
> [Benjamin:]
>
>   Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of 
>> Grec

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
>
> I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.
>
>
>
> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <
> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
>
>> [*Brent Meeker*]
>>
>> “https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
>>
>> [*Philip Benjamin*] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today.
>> “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
>>
>
> OK. Key point.
>
>
>
>
> Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law
>> Giver.
>>
>
> But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about
> machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including
> oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.
>
>
>

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another
more powerful system could prove it?

Is it a consequence of self reference?

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot
prove P"?

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove
statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

Jason



>
>
> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing
>> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of
>> rationality can be established here.
>>
>>
> Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a
> simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It
> is the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself,
> to reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…
>
> Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an
> illusion common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent
> histories.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]
>
>
> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess
> you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life
> appears on this planet and after. OK?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.
>
>
> … OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with
> Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by
> introspection and dialog with others.
> This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical
> reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed,
> and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the
> qualia, as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal
> system/theory.
>
>
> The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.
>
>
> Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is
> better to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to
> assume at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works
> very well (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal
> system).
>
>
>
> Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no
> true nothingness.
>
>
> Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work,
> actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an
> explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in
> a physical reality.
>
> With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the
> induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal
> numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics
> becomes a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated
> in Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.
>
> What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an
> arithmetical notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a
> proof of this, but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel
> missed it because he missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite
> skeptical until 1936 where he was convinced by Turing.
>
>
>
>
> [Benjamin:]
>
>   Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of
>> Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the
>> West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  (
>> https://www.midwestaugusti

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.



> On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:
> [Brent Meeker]
> 
> “https://alwaysasking.com/ 
> <https://alwaysasking.com/>why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
> 
> [Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex 
> nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).
> 

OK. Key point.




> Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.
> 

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about 
machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including 
oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.





> The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing 
> life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of 
> rationality can be established here.
> 
> 

Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple 
consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact 
that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce 
itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion 
common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.






> The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you 
are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears 
on this planet and after. OK?








> There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

… OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with Nature. 
Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection and dialog 
with others.
This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical 
reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and 
in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as 
this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.


> The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better to 
not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume at 
least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well 
(natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).



> Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no 
> true nothingness.

Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, 
actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an 
explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in a 
physical reality.

With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the 
induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal numbers, 
and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics becomes a 
statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated in Arithmetic, 
in virtue of the laws of + and *.

What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an arithmetical 
notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a proof of this, 
but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel missed it because he 
missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite skeptical until 1936 where he 
was convinced by Turing.




[Benjamin:]

>   Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of 
> Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the 
> West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  
> (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine 
> <https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine>). Thus he 
> was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of 
> the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman 
> Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) 
> Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.
> 
>   Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the 
> questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading 
> them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.
> 

I think that most “progressive pagans” never really assumed the existence of 
Dead Matter, nor even of any Matter, to begin with.

Bruno





> Philip Benjamin    
> 
>  
> 
> From: 'Brent Meeker' Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:38 PM  
> everyth...@googlegroups.com 
>   Subject: Re: Why Does 
> Anything Exist?
> 
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
> 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 12 Mar 2021, at 14:42, Tomas Pales  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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”.

The observable. It concerns measurable numbers, in the usual repetitive sense 
of physics, like temperature, momentum, position, clock, etc.




> 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).

This looks like making the physical into a mathematic structure. With 
Mechanism, the physical universe is not a mathematical structure among others, 
but an invariant in the mind of all Turing machine. It is the arithmetical (or 
Turing equivalent) seen from inside. Physics becomes (again) a branch of 
Theology, albeit here Digital Mechanism makes  the theology into a branch of 
computer science/mathematical logic, and even into a branch of arithmetic. It 
is testable by comparing the observation with the physics “in the head of the 
universal Turing number/machine.

The ontology is simple (just the natural numbers together with the two laws of 
addition and multiplication).




> 
> 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

The internal phenomenology of arithmetic is indeed bigger than the arithmetical 
truth. But the ontology is not, and eventually we have to limit the 
arithmetical truth (something infinitely complex) to its partial computable 
part. “God” is the sigma_1 (partial computable) part of the arithmetical 
reality (which is the union of the sigma_1, and all sigma_i (which are less and 
less computable, necessitating stronger and stronger oracles (in Turing sense).




> and then we need set theory to capture it, no?

Only in the phenomenology. It is a theorem of arithmetic (+ mechanism) that 
most universal number believe in set and infinity axioms, due to the 
unbound-able complexity of the arithmetical reality when "seen from inside” (a 
notion made precise using the mathematic of self-reference (Gödel, Löb, 
Solovay).



> 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.

We cannot prove anything about Reality, not even that there is one, beyond our 
personal consciousness. But we can try theories, and we learn something when 
and if they are refuted.

Now, Arithmetic, with a big A, that is, the standard model of arithmetic is 
consistent per definition. Also, we can prove the consistency of arithmetic 
with no more axioms that we use in Analysis, and a theory like PA (Peano 
arithmetic) is believed to be consistent by all mathematician (except Nelson).

But with Mechanism, even PA is too much for the ontology, and we can use only 
RA (Robinson Arithmetic). This is PA minus the induction axioms. The usual 
induction axioms have to be added only in the machine’s phenomenology. RA (aka 
Q) is believed to be consistent by all mathematicians, including Nelson and 
even the ultrafinitist. 



>  
> “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.

But what is an object?


> 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.

(Hmm… I cannot use at the ontological level notion like piece of paper. I can 
explain (or see my papers) that a piece of paper is something quite abstract. 
That it is looks concrete is basically an illusion, requiring long 
computational histories, and many neurons...



> 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.

I would need to know what you assume to exist, and what you derive from that 
assumption. I do 

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?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/12/2021 1:09 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:



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.


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

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/12/2021 12:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
So, the algorithm to save democracy and science would be 1) abolish 
the prohibition laws (or equivalently, reinstate the free-market,


If you lived in Texas, you'd have a $16,000 electric bill.  :-)

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[John Clark]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 2:20 PM Telmo Menezes 
wrote:


>>without the laws of physics a Turing machine can't exist,
>
>
> *> The laws of physics are a human construct.*
>

No. Humans are a law of physics construct.

> * > Mathematically different sets of laws can fit the same experimental
> results and produce the same results.*
>

Yes. And that's because mathematics is a language, and you can say the
exact same thing in many different ways.


> *> I guess what you actually mean is: "without physics a Turing machine
> can't exist".*
>

Yes.

*> If you mean a physical instance of the machine, then you are trivially
> correct. *
>

I mean you need physics to *DO *anything, and a Turing Machine needs
to *DO* things.
A description of a Turing machine in a book, no matter how detailed, cannot
make a single calculation or do anything else either; and a description of
a cow in a book can not produce milk no matter how many organic chemical
formulas are included in the book.


> *> Of course, Turing's point was not to provide instructions on how to
> construct a very inefficient computational device. His point was to
> formalize the very idea of computation.*
>

Touring wasn't suggesting that a practical way to make a computer was with
a long string of tape with nothing but ones and zeros on it, but he wanted
to make a hypothetical computer as simple as possible to get at the bare
essentials, and he found that to get down to the core understanding of
computation you've got to talk about something physical; that is to say he
had to talk about getting things done and the only way things can get done
is by making use of the laws of physics. And so Turing  came up with
something that we now call a Turing Machine.

*> So, if your claim is actually "without physics computation cannot
> exist", then you are just betting on one brute fact to build reality upon
> instead of another. Maybe you are correct,*
>

I'd say my odds of being correct are pretty damn good considering the fact
that nobody is ever observed a computation being made without making use of
the laws of physics, and nobody has ever even proposed a theory about a
computation could be made without making use of the laws of physics.

> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis




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> 
> .
>
>
>

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

> [*Brent Meeker*] 
>
> “https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”
>
> [*Philip Benjamin*] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex 
> nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides). Laws of any kind necessarily requires the 
> existence of a conscious Law Giver. The logical question is: “what is more 
> reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter 
> and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.
>
The laws are constructs of the human mind. There may be patterns in nature, 
and we inductively infer them as laws. The idea there must be a mind for 
anything to exist is silly. Where did the mind come from, and if such a 
mind existed there was then no true nothingness.

LC

 

>   Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of 
> Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the 
> West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  (
> https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he 
> was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of 
> the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (*Acts 17*) where the 
> Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH 
> (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the 
> Apostles. 
>
>   Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the 
> questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply 
> evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.
>
> *Philip Benjamin*
>
>  
>
> *From:* 'Brent Meeker' Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:38 PM  
> everyth...@googlegroups.com  *Subject:* Re: Why Does Anything Exist?
>
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>  
>
>  
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
> What was there before there was nothing?
>
>  
>
> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falwaysasking.com%2Fwhy-does-anything-exist%2F%23A_Story_of_Creation=04%7C01%7C%7Cec5e0f69aead43a3c24308d8e32a6d06%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637509118637908964%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000=Lrh0EuaQoC0WABBOwHIKVI7SwW4TYdzZaqaqysIVp6c%3D=0>
>
>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  
> The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any 
> sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has 
> several different meanings.
>
> Brent
>
> --.
>

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:00:51 PM UTC-6 Bruce wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then 
>>> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness 
>>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the 
>>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>>
>>
>> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between *nothing* 
>> and *everything*, particularly as it relates to information theory. 
>> Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>>
>
>
> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- 
> written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information 
> equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.
>

A random string of characters of length N, where each character has p_n 
probability of occurring in the string has entropy 

S = -k sum_{n=1}^N p_n log(p_n).

If p_n = 1/N then S = k log(N), consider sum as an integral and use 
properties of log, which is Boltzmann's rule. This is a measure of 
information. It may tell you nothing, but it actually still has information.

LC
 

>
> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: 
>> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>>
>
>
> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>
> Bruce
>

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 11 Mar 2021, at 20:20, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Am Do, 11. Mär 2021, um 18:05, schrieb John Clark:
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 8:09 AM Jason Resch > > wrote:
>> 
>> > So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
>> 
>> But if I think 2+2 = 5 then thoughts still exist,
> 
> Which goes to show that just by adding the two words "I think" to an 
> interesting statement you can turn it into an uninteresting statement.
> 
>> but without the laws of physics a Turing machine can't exist,
> 
> The laws of physics are a human construct. Mathematically different sets of 
> laws can fit the same experimental results and produce the same results. I 
> guess what you actually mean is: "without physics a Turing machine can't 
> exist". If you mean a physical instance of the machine, then you are 
> trivially correct. Of course, Turing's point was not to provide instructions 
> on how to construct a very inefficient computational device. His point was to 
> formalize the very idea of computation.
> 
> So, if your claim is actually "without physics computation cannot exist", 
> then you are just betting on one brute fact to build reality upon instead of 
> another. Maybe you are correct, but I don't know if you are and neither do 
> you.


Since Aristotle, or perhaps since the Church imposed the theology of Aristotle 
(the belief in some primary matter or physical universe), a lot of people 
confuse the many evidences that we have for the existence of a physical reality 
with evidences that the physical reality would be the fundamental Reality. 
Of course, Aristotle reacted to Plato, who was aware that there were no 
evidence for a physical reality which would be primary, and actually that there 
are some evidences that the fundamental reality is not physical, but rather 
number theoretical or even musical (like with Pythagorus), or “ideal”, like 
with his own “world of ideas” (the Noùs). 

The existence of a primary physical universe is an hypothesis absent from any 
physical theoiries. It is in fact a very strong metaphysical commitment.
Now, even if there was such a primary universe, it would remain true that all 
computations are run in a tiny part of the arithmetical reality, like it would 
remain true that there is no biggest prime number. Those existence are not a 
priori related, despite eventually Digital Mechanism has to, and does, relate 
them through machine’s canonical psychology/theology/metaphysics.

Bruno


> 
> Telmo
> 
>> and without a Turing Machines thoughts, even incorrect thoughts produced by 
>> faulty programming, can't exist. 
>> 
>> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
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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?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 11 Mar 2021, at 19:05, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 8:09 AM Jason Resch  > wrote:
> 
> > So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
> 
> But if I think 2+2 = 5 then thoughts still exist,


That is ambiguous. Strictly speaking if 2+2=5, I am the pope, and in fact 
everything becomes provable, so unicorn exist, even square circles.
So it is true that thought exists, but anything exist in that case, making that 
existence vacuously true.




> but without the laws of physics a Turing machine can't exist,

That is false. PA proves the existence of all Turing machine. You identify a 
mathematical notion with its representation in a physical theory. 
Those are different concepts. 
I prefer (for good reason) to not assume an ontological physical reality at the 
start, which is implicit in your remark here.

Bruno




> and without a Turing Machines thoughts, even incorrect thoughts produced by 
> faulty programming, can't exist. 
> 
> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 
> 
> 
>  
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 11 Mar 2021, at 18:52, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 5:56 PM Jason Resch  > wrote:
> 
> > I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite 
> > strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the 
> > shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string 
> > itself.
> 
> Yes, but that definition has one severe disadvantage. Mathematicians can 
> prove that they are an infinite number of finite strings of X length in which 
> there are no program shorter than X that could produce them, however there is 
> no way to prove in general that one particular string of length X is of that 
> nature.


Indeed. In fact Chaitin did prove a “new" incompleteness theorem, but unlike 
Gödel’s one, it is not constructive. No machine can prove the algorithmic 
randomness of sequence bigger than themselves (up to some constant related to 
its code length).

I put “new” in quote, because that theorem was proved by Emil Post much before, 
but in a context having no relation with complexity of string, but with his 
notion of simple and immune set. It illustrates set whose logical complexity is 
between the recursive and the m-complete (or creative) sets (which are also 
Turing-complete).

Randomness, unlike creativity or Turing-universality is a non constructive 
notion, which is as we could expect intuitively.

Bruno



> .
> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 
> 
> 
> .
> 
>  
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Now what we had were Republics, Bruno, not democracies. The Italians had these 
republics, for some, in the late middle ages in which the power of the nobles 
was contained a bit. For the US being a republic today, was not true for a long 
time. Not when politicians in the US absolutely require lots of cash to win any 
election, and the big corporations here are happy, indeed, to supply them. As 
the Orange Man said in 2015, in response to a reporters question. "No, no, 
they'll take the money and they'll do whatever ya want!" So this is the 
American system, an oligarchy, a plutocracy. On the honesty of scientists as a 
class, I see this as dubious, because the ability to pull back and not be 
ideological is sorely missing from most. Also, group loyalty and identity with 
these people, if only for career purposes, lends itself to what I view as 
conformity, at best. 
On the subject of God, I have been told by a wise women, to view God as the 
Universe. I am using this as a working theory for myself alone, only because it 
is appealing for some reason, and kind of lend itself to my Boltzmann Brain 
fascination. As American philosopher Jack Handey once wrote, "They say that a 
little bit of God is inside everyone's heart. Well, if that is true, I hope he 
likes enchiladas, because tonight that's what He's getting." 
Food for thought!

-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Mar 12, 2021 3:53 am
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?



On 11 Mar 2021, at 03:00, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:
Well for this knuckle dragging savage, I compulsively am driven towards how can 
our species make use of science and philosophy to make life better? 
99,9% of the human problem comes mainly from dishonesty, and people who does 
not do their job. Then the rest is preferably selected through the democratic 
process.
Of course,  a democracy has to separate religion/theology from politics and 
state, and it can only help to bring back theology at the faculty of science, 
and try to “cure” the consequences of the lies, which last since 1492 years, 
and have been the cause of many other lies in the applied human science, like 
the idea that it makes sense to make a medication illegal due to its danger. 
Here “science” has shown that the more a medication has a high potential of 
danger, the more that danger is amplified by the illegality. For cannabis, le 
danger itself was a lie, and as you can see, just one hundred of years of lies 
is very hard to “cure”, so for 1492 years, we will have to be patient. As we 
have regressed since I am born, I am not over-optimistic on this, and I would 
already be pleased if we could avoid a next millenium of obscurantism.
Science per se is neutral on ethic, except that 1) it is an ethic by itself, by 
its exemplary modesty, when it is done honestly, and 2) a minimal science of 
ethics can be extracted from the study of the machine theology. For example, 
with Mechanism, it becomes a quasi-theorem that Hell is paved with the good 
intentions, and this favours above all the democracies, in politics, but 
actually in any 3d-brain processing, where the left/right brain might be the 
specialisation of the []p/([]p & p) duality. []p is the part specialised in 3p 
notions, and thus language, and []p & p handle the unnameable first person 
subject. In politics, the same occurs, although they can permute the task, and 
usually the right realise the program of the left, and vice versa. But here 
too, we have regressed, and some people endangered democracies by having 
extreme discourse, and I guess the many lies.
Then, anything which can help people to come back to reason, including plants, 
will help, but again, only through serious education and research, etc. The 
theology of the machine should help, as it imposes some level of modesty, a bit 
like some plant, but I am not sure the human are spiritually mature enough. 
Most people in this domain prefer the comfortable lies to searching a truth 
which they might dislike. To recognise oneself in the universal (Löbian) 
machine can help, but like love, it is not something enforceable.
So, the algorithm to save democracy and science would be 1) abolish the 
prohibition laws (or equivalently, reinstate the free-market, 2) for the long 
run, bring back *all* sciences back to the academy of science, not just the 
natural sciences.

We may chose to view your fellow compuationalist philosopher, Juergen 
Schmidhuber, viewing God (you know He doesn't like to be called that!) As being 
The Great Programmer. 

The expression “Great programmer” is a bit like the expression  “Gaia”: an 
anthropomorphisation of something which might just be thing, in a context where 
it is more complicated and part of the subject inquiry. 
You need to understand that the definition of program, or digital machine 
requires (very) elementary arithmetic, which is recursively equivalent 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 11 Mar 2021, at 00:52, 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 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.


That is the alethic (Leibnizian) modal logic S5, which is the only one not 
obtained in the modal logics of self-reference. Possible P becomes 
not-provable-not P, that is consistent(P).

We have to use the modal logic G for the 3p self-reference, then we get a logic 
S4 for knowledge and quantum logics for the notion of observable-predictible. 
In fact we get 8 logics of self-references, and each of them have their own 
notion of possibility and necessity, but none are even close to S5.

Bruno




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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Bruno, I am sure that if one parallel earth never produced cannabis and the 
people travel through, there would be a market. Thus, capitalism is a 
multi-universal force that many here would find discouraging. From dealing with 
physics as we know it to be, and not wander off into dark matter speculation, 
we both have an awareness that often discoveries get altered a bit, by 
researchers themselves who decide that they know what is best for us all, as 
well as the failure of proper peer review, because what's to force them to be 
honest, their conscience? Ahem!
For the purpose of existence, I say why not work with the need for an observer, 
as with Everett-Schrodinger-Wigner? Keep it as a working theory till it fails 
in tests repeatedly. Asking why this method for changing (identifying) reality 
has evolved, or was placed in I am open to. 


-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Mar 12, 2021 4:18 am
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?



On 11 Mar 2021, at 03:09, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:
Only if we could break into other worldliness does MWI seem interesting. 


The question is “is it true”. Truth does not care about us finding it 
interesting or not. Imagine that you discover that an asteroid will destroy the 
planets, and that the publisher rejected it and  tell you “this will not 
interest our audience” … This is like using a fake religion to control people. 
The scientist, on the contrary, try to remain cold minded, especially in hot 
subject.


Especially for trade between earth’s! 
This would be possible (theoretically) if the Schroedinger equation was only a 
linear approximation of a non linear fundamental wave equation. That has been 
argued by Weingerg, and also Plaga in this very list. Again, we can wish the 
SWE to be non linear, as we could steal the petrol in infinity many “Irak” in 
parallel world, but note also that this makes thermodynamic and Relativity 
theory false…The quantum is the MW, and probably the symptom that we are living 
in arithmetic, not in a physical reality. It is the reason of why consciousness 
remain focused on long and complex (deep) histories in Arithmetic. In fact it 
might even make us instinctually rare, and that would solve the Fermi paradox. 
Again, that solution is not fun, but then … we have to educated people to 
appreciate, or at least accept, truth. But after 1492 years of tradition of 
lies in the fundamental domain, that will still take some time. Hopefully not a 
millenium, but the last 30 years do not make me over-optimistic on this.



Maybe the Neanderthal earth never discovered yams as a food source, so we could 
trade some of ours for their wonderful gray crystals that do photonic computing 
so well? Your axioms are indisputable, but I would still hug the real world 
closely, as it doesn't do to ignore the punches that nature delivers.

Let us fight for the abolition of the prohibition laws in the whole multiverse! 
(Lol). 
Bruno






On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal  
wrote:



On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:45, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:
I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the cosmos 
as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. One may 
ask, running on what?



IF you are willing to bet, like Darwin did implicitly, that life is Turing 
emulable, so that for example, you can survive with an artificial digital brain 
(and there are evidences for this, if only the success of Darwin’s type of 
explanation in biology),Then, the “Great program” are given any Universal 
Turing Machinery. More precisely, any Model (in the sense of Logician) of any 
Turing-complete theory would do the work. As the elementary arithmetic that we 
all learn in primary school is a universal machinery, we need only to believe 
in the truth of 2+2=4 & Co.
Now, you might ask where does that arithmetical reality come from?
Answer: any other universal machinery can explain this. You can derive the 
Robinson Axioms of Arithmetic from the simple theory of combinators, which has 
only two axioms Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz) together with three simple identity 
axioms(*). I did it explicitly on this forum (search “combinators”). So, all we 
need is to assume one Universal machinery, whichever you want.
Now, you might ask where does that “first” universal machinery comes from?
Answer: It is impossible to derive a universal machinery from something which 
is not already a universal machinery. So, a universal machinery is a needed to 
even just define the notion of machine and machinery.
(In case people have forgotten: a universal machinery is given by all programs 
in some Turing universal system, or the partial computable functions associates 
with those programs, the phi_i. A universal machine/number is a number u such 
thatphi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y). u is ca

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 23:38, Tomas Pales  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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?

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. (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). 



> 
> 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.

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)

With mechanism, we can (and must, up to a Turing-equivalence) take as only 
“metaphysically, or ontologically real” object the natural numbers (0, s0, ss0, 
…).


> 
> So, there are two kinds of objects: collections and properties (roughly 
> synonymous with concrete and abstract objects, respectively).

“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.




> 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).

In logic, the basic object are the intended meaning of the term of the theory, 
then we can build higher order logics. 



>  
> 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,

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



> 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.

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

Bruno



> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 22:43, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
 On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch >>> > wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell 
 >>> > wrote:
 Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by 
 having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness 
 does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the 
 antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
 
 There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and 
 everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as 
 the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>>> 
>>> Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over 
>>> your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not 
>>> self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?
>>> 
 
 
 A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- 
 written on a piece of paper, for example. 
>>> 
>>> I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum 
>>> information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks 
>>> random; although you can't really define random in the information 
>>> theoretic sense for finite strings.
>> 
>> 
>> You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.
> 
> What does it mean "up to a constant”?


It means that the notion of algorithmic randomness is the same for all 
universal machine, except for the (finite) sequence which are small compared to 
the length of the (finite) code of the universal machine in use.
The precision are lengthy to describe, as you need a language with prefixed 
(self-delimiting) programs, but the idea is basically the idea of Kologorov 
complexity, and use some theorem by Chaitin. Then there are many variants, 
obtained by Martin Löff, and also Solovay.

Basically, a finite sequence is random is the program to generate it is as long 
as the sequence itself. But it is obvious that the length will depend on the 
universal machine use to run the programs, so different machine might get 
different result, and then it can be shown that the difference can be bounded 
by a constant, depending natural of the code of the universal machine in use.

Maybe you will find an answer to your question in this pdf:
https://math.uchicago.edu/~may/REU2013/REUPapers/Steinitz.pdf 


(I should find some time to (re)read it). 



> 
>> Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, but can 
>> differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book by Calllude on 
>> the randomness of finite string.
>> This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be 
>> random if almost all his initial segments are.
> 
> Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him.  If you have 
> a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which it has a short name, 
> "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity is that of "Bob".  So I don't 
> see by what definition you can prove a finite string to be random.

The name of a program is not the program itself. The program is supposed to be 
written in the computer language. Its name is only a local macro, and if you 
use macro, you need to compile it first. 

The wiki is not bad on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity 


Bruno



> 
> Brent
> 
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Brent
>>> 
 This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary 
 confusion of categories.
 
 This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: 
 https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html 
 
 
 
 That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
 
 Bruce
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 18:29, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed 
> the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.


Actual existence can be seen indexically. It is a possible world viewed from 
that world. This allows a treatment with modal logics (mainly invented to solve 
that “relative existence” problem. Then with Mechanism, the modal logics are 
imposed by incompleteness, and we get the 8 different sorts of phenomenological 
existence, build from the first-order-logical notion of existence from 
arithmetic. What really exist are the numbers, 0, s0, ss0, sssO, … The only 
laws are addition and multiplication. All the rest belong to the number 
“imagination” defined by their arithmetical relation with (infinite in some 
case) universal numbers.
(You don’t need to postulate 0, nor s, as they can be defined from only + and x 
(exercise)).

Bruno

> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

by the modal logic of the “observable” variant of Gödel’s 
> beweisbar predicate. 
> 
> A believer in an ontological physical universe must abandon Mechanism, or 
> abandon rationality.
> 
> I got the "many-world” aspect of physics from this in the 1970, and it took 
> 30 years to get quantum logic for the observable, and quantum intuitionist 
> logic for the sensible.
> 
> I recall you the 8 modes of self-reference imposed by incompleteness. P 
> represents sigma_1 arithmetical proposition. 
> 
> p (truth)
> []p (justifiable) (splits in two along G*/G)
> []p & p (knowable)
> []p & <>t (observable)(splits in two along G*/G)
> []p & <>t & p (sensible)  (splits in two along G*/G)
> 
> G* proves them all equivalent, but G cannot prove any of those equivalences. 
> It means that the machine sees the same truth, but from 8 very different 
> perspective obeying 8 very different mathematics.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> (*) the full basic theory of combinators is:
> 
> RULES:
> 
> 1) If x = y and x = z, then y = z
> 2) If x = y then xz = yz
> 3) If x = y then zx = zy
> 
> AXIOMS:
> 
> 4) Kxy = x
> 5) Sxyz = xz(yz)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch > <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones >> <mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
>>> What was there before there was nothing?
>>> 
>>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
>>> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
>>> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
>>> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
>>> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
>>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation>
>> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
>> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
>> logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
>> discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several 
>> different meanings.
>> 
>> Hi Brent,
>> 
>> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>> 
>> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or 
>> modes of existence: 
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence>
>> 
>> Jason
>> 
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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?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 11 Mar 2021, at 05:43, Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 8:00 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
> wrote:
> Well for this knuckle dragging savage, I compulsively am driven towards how 
> can our species make use of science and philosophy to make life better? We 
> may chose to view your fellow compuationalist philosopher, Juergen 
> Schmidhuber, viewing God (you know He doesn't like to be called that!) As 
> being The Great Programmer. Yet, we primates are behaviorally motivated by 
> rewards, so we would have to gain a material reason to act in common?
> 
> I believe that a universal ethics, can follow from theories of personal 
> identity.
> 
> To me, the most sensible of which suggest universalism / open individualism: 
> the idea that there is only one mind and we are all it.


OK. But that might belong to “G* minus G”, making such an idea true, but 
expressing it might delay it (!). It is also hard to say to someone suffering a 
particular problem (disease, pain).
Some medication can help, but hereto, the truth is double-edged.


> 
> This converts self interest into a common interest for the good of all 
> sentient beings.


I agree. Sometimes I think it could be good that our work are not signed. 
Papers would be judged and perhaps published without the name of the authors, 
like … in the Middle-Âge.
But that would be too much, and could make us into sort of “ants”, and as I say 
above, it works only through people who understand by themselves the 
open-individualism. To enforce it through discourse might lead to the contrary, 
like form of super-individualism and other manifestation of the “little ego”, 
which can sometimes become very big for some people.


Bruno



> 
> Jason
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal  <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
> 
>> On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch > <mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
>> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
>> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
>> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. 
>> One may ask, running on what?
>> 
>> 
>> I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to) the 
>> observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of this 
>> thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome 
>> revisions/improvements):
>> 
>> If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 + 2 
>> = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths 
>> like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
>> 
>> We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe computable 
>> physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those generated 
>> states to facts about these computable realities
>> 
>> It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a 
>> universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written by 
>> a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of a 
>> computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
>> 
>> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
> 
> Indeed :)
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
>> 
>> Jason
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch > <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones >> <mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
>>> What was there before there was nothing?
>>> 
>>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
>>> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
>>> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
>>> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
>>> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
>>> <

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Telmo Menezes]

Am Do, 11. Mär 2021, um 04:43, schrieb Jason Resch:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 8:00 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
>  wrote:
>> Well for this knuckle dragging savage, I compulsively am driven towards how 
>> can our species make use of science and philosophy to make life better? We 
>> may chose to view your fellow compuationalist philosopher, Juergen 
>> Schmidhuber, viewing God (you know He doesn't like to be called that!) As 
>> being The Great Programmer. Yet, we primates are behaviorally motivated by 
>> rewards, so we would have to gain a material reason to act in common?

> I believe that a universal ethics, can follow from theories of personal 
> identity.
> 
> To me, the most sensible of which suggest universalism / open individualism: 
> the idea that there is only one mind and we are all it.
> 
> This converts self interest into a common interest for the good of all 
> sentient beings.

Very nicely put Jason.
This is also what I believe.

Telmo

> Jason
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
>>>  wrote:
>>>> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
>>>> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
>>>> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great 
>>>> Program. One may ask, running on what?

>>> 
>>> I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to) 
>>> the observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of 
>>> this thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome 
>>> revisions/improvements):
>>> 
>>> If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 + 
>>> 2 = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths 
>>> like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
>>> 
>>> We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe 
>>> computable physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those 
>>> generated states to facts about these computable realities
>>> 
>>> It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a 
>>> universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written 
>>> by a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of 
>>> a computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
>>> 
>>> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
>> 
>> Indeed :)
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Jason
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> What was there before there was nothing?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. 
>>>>>> Rather, there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, 
>>>>>> properties of numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations 
>>>>>> concern and define all computational histories, and the appearance of a 
>>>>>> physical reality is a result of these computations creating 
>>>>>> consciousness observers. See: 
>>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation
>>>>> 
>>>>> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical 
>>>>> laws, number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" 
>>>>> physically.  The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a 
>>>>> predicate.  Any sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with 
>>>>> recognizing it has several different meanings.
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Brent,
>>>> 
>>>> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>>>

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

, a simple fix would consists in making 
mandatory for a candidate to presidential election to show his taxes, just to 
give one example. We must (re)educate people about why lying is very bad for 
the whole society including all individuals, and lying at the top of the power 
should be enough to enforce resigning for any one in any society. The problem 
is that when liar get power, they are very difficult to dislodge, and a 
democracy can slide into a tyranny.

Bruno



> 
> 
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal  
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch > <mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
>> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
>> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
>> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. 
>> One may ask, running on what?
>> 
>> 
>> I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to) the 
>> observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of this 
>> thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome 
>> revisions/improvements):
>> 
>> If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 + 2 
>> = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths 
>> like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
>> 
>> We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe computable 
>> physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those generated 
>> states to facts about these computable realities
>> 
>> It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a 
>> universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written by 
>> a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of a 
>> computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
>> 
>> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
> 
> Indeed :)
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
>> 
>> Jason
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch > <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones >> <mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
>>> What was there before there was nothing?
>>> 
>>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
>>> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
>>> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
>>> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
>>> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
>>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation>
>> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
>> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
>> logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
>> discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several 
>> different meanings.
>> 
>> Hi Brent,
>> 
>> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>> 
>> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or 
>> modes of existence: 
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence>
>> 
>> Jason
>> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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.


Brent

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 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?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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?


Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Telmo Menezes]

Am Do, 11. Mär 2021, um 18:05, schrieb John Clark:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 8:09 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
>> *> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.*
> 
> But if I think 2+2 = 5 then thoughts still exist,

Which goes to show that just by adding the two words "I think" to an 
interesting statement you can turn it into an uninteresting statement.

> but without the laws of physics a Turing machine can't exist,

The laws of physics are a human construct. Mathematically different sets of 
laws can fit the same experimental results and produce the same results. I 
guess what you actually mean is: "without physics a Turing machine can't 
exist". If you mean a physical instance of the machine, then you are trivially 
correct. Of course, Turing's point was not to provide instructions on how to 
construct a very inefficient computational device. His point was to formalize 
the very idea of computation.

So, if your claim is actually "without physics computation cannot exist", then 
you are just betting on one brute fact to build reality upon instead of 
another. Maybe you are correct, but I don't know if you are and neither do you.

Telmo

> and without a Turing Machines thoughts, even incorrect thoughts produced by 
> faulty programming, can't exist. 
> 
> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 
> 
> 
>  
> 

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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?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 8:09 AM Jason Resch  wrote:

*> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.*
>

But if I think 2+2 = 5 then thoughts still exist, but without the laws of
physics a Turing machine can't exist, and without a Turing Machines
thoughts, even incorrect thoughts produced by faulty programming, can't
exist.

John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 5:56 PM Jason Resch  wrote:

*> I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite
> strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the
> shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string
> itself.*
>

Yes, but that definition has one severe disadvantage. Mathematicians can
prove that they are an infinite number of finite strings of X length in
which there are no program shorter than X that could produce them, however
there is no way to prove in general that one particular string of length X
is of that nature.
.
John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis


.

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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?

[Jason Resch]

Hi Alastair,


On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 6:47 AM  wrote:

> Hi Jason
>
> I can't think of any more fundamental question than 'why anything?'.
>
I agree! I think this question is key to so many other questions in life
and philosophy, and sometimes in unexpected ways. For instance, as Bruno
showed, it could provide evidence for or against otherwise
difficult-to-test theories of consciousness.


> The associated question 'why *this* something?' can be used to skewer
> most attempted TOE's, but from what I understand of your approach I agree
> that you avoid this fate, so just on those grounds alone I think it should
> be taken seriously. And there are not many other surviving candidates.
>

I appreciate that. However, I must disclaim responsibility for this being
*my* approach. With my writings, I am only trying to shed light on and
share more broadly the approaches of others: Bruno Marchal, Russell
Standish, Markus Muller, among others who have been working on theories
of existence and reality that offer observationally-testable predictions. I
believe this is key, as if we stay only in the domain of pure philosophy,
we can easily get stuck in debates that last for millenia with no
resolution.


> Embracing many different ideas at once requires some careful navigation
> though. For example, I am not sure how Bruno's link to Everett
>
More work is required. I think some elements of quantum theory are
suggested by all computations. But is our exact form of quantum theory
entirely extractible?  It might not be, if we live in a "multi-multi-verse"
(that is to say, there might be many various kinds of multiverses).  There
are also different possible explanations for why our multiverse has the
particular form it does, for instace, here are just a few possibilities:

   - Do we see a quantum reality because of the pre-existence of an
   infinity of minds? -- (i.e. many-minds interpretation)
   - Do we see a quantum reality because quantum realities yield the most
   observers? -- (some kind of measure-theoretic argument based on branch
   splitting)
   - Do we see a quantum reality because of anthropic reasons? -- (e.g.
   atoms are unstable without Pauli exclusion principle, we wouldn't be alive
   without it)
   - Do we see a quantum reality because only quantum computation yields
   consciousness? -- (A zombie/binding based argument, a Penrose style quantum
   consciousness approach)



> and the Born Rule (or equivalent) for the purposes of obtaining relative
> measures across worlds/histories (level 3 multiverse in Tegmark's notation)
>
The source of Born's Rule is not established, but I have seen arguments
that it is the only plausible rule, given Gleason's Theorem
 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason%27s_theorem )

would connect up to that given by favouring shorter programs over longer
> ones (level 4).
>
> The general critique of Tegmark's level IV is that there are more possible
universes of greater complexity than simpler ones. Algorithmic Information
Theory comes to the rescue, I think, by showing most observers will be
produced by shorter programs. I also find it curious just how many
observers appear to be created by the universe we are in. Eternal inflation
suggests the number of observers in our universe doubles rapidly, for all
time. It is hard to imagine a program that could generate more osbervers
more quickly than this. Is this any kind of clue for why our universe is as
big and growing as fast as it is? I am not sure, but I find it curious.



> The clarity of ideas presented in the article have helped to crystallize
> some of my own thoughts, and I would agree with much of its content. I hope
> that the article (and any book from it) is widely read and digested.
>
> I am very happy to hear that. I and others on this list are always looking
to discuss these and similar ideas. I've been on this list since 2007 and
it has had a huge role in shaping my view of reality. Others have been on
even longer.

Jason

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[amalcolm]

Hi Jason

I can't think of any more fundamental question than 'why anything?'. The
associated question 'why _this_ something?' can be used to skewer most
attempted TOE's, but from what I understand of your approach I agree
that you avoid this fate, so just on those grounds alone I think it
should be taken seriously. And there are not many other surviving
candidates.

Embracing many different ideas at once requires some careful navigation
though. For example, I am not sure how Bruno's link to Everett and the
Born Rule (or equivalent) for the purposes of obtaining relative
measures across worlds/histories (level 3 multiverse in Tegmark's
notation) would connect up to that given by favouring shorter programs
over longer ones (level 4).

The clarity of ideas presented in the article have helped to crystallize
some of my own thoughts, and I would agree with much of its content. I
hope that the article (and any book from it) is widely read and
digested.

Alastair

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 09:00:38AM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, 
> then
> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If
> nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense
> God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same
> paradoxical issue.
> 
> 
> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and
> everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as
> the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
> 
> 
> 
> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
> written on a piece of paper, for example.

To be fair, I usually talk of descriptions that are sets of infinite
strings equivalent under some observer's notion of
classification. Strings sharing a suitable common prefix are usually
equivalent. Information is a property of these descriptions.

I never claimed that a random description has zero information, just
that it is low information. From my point of view, a string consisting
of the works of Willam Shakespeare, followed by an arbitrarily long
sequence of random bits is not a random string, even though it would
be considered as such by AIT. By excluding such sequences as non
random, actual random string will still have non-zero information.

> This idea that zero information
> equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.
>

I think I said that nothing and everything are duals, in the same way
the empty set and the full set are duals. I never said zero
information equates to nothing.

The full set of strings, corresponding to the zero length description
has zero information. This is what I'm identifying as the Everything.

How is this a confusion of categories?

> 
> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: 
> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
> 
> 
> 
> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>

You need to engage with the work rather than making sweeping
statements like this. Perhaps it is you who got so many things wrong
in the book.

> Bruce
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

ote:
>
>
>
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
> What was there before there was nothing?
>
>
> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather,
> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of
> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define
> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a
> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation
>
>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws,
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.
> The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any
> sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has
> several different meanings.
>
>
> Hi Brent,
>
> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>
> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types,
> or modes of existence: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-
> anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence
>
> Jason
>
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> msgid/everything-list/78897196.50015.1615428555721%40mail.yahoo.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/78897196.50015.1615428555721%40mail.yahoo.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer>
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 8:00 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Well for this knuckle dragging savage, I compulsively am driven towards
> how can our species make use of science and philosophy to make life better?
> We may chose to view your fellow compuationalist philosopher, Juergen
> Schmidhuber, viewing God (you know He doesn't like to be called that!) As
> being The Great Programmer. Yet, we primates are behaviorally motivated by
> rewards, so we would have to gain a material reason to act in common?
>
I believe that a universal ethics, can follow from theories of personal
identity.

To me, the most sensible of which suggest universalism / open
individualism: the idea that there is only one mind and we are all it.

This converts self interest into a common interest for the good of all
sentient beings.

Jason



--
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great
> Program. One may ask, running on what?
>
>
> I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to)
> the observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of
> this thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome
> revisions/improvements):
>
> If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 +
> 2 = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths
> like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
>
> We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe
> computable physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those
> generated states to facts about these computable realities
>
> It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a
> universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written
> by a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of
> a computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
>
> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.
>
>
> Indeed :)
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> Jason
>
>
>
> --
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch 
> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
> What was there before there was nothing?
>
>
> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather,
> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of
> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define
> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a
> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation
>
>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws,
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.
> The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any
> sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has
> several different meanings.
>
>
> Hi Brent,
>
> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>
> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types,
> or modes of existence:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence
>
> Jason
>
> --
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> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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>
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> .
>
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Without any thinking involved I would guess that the only thing that could be 
running is information. Info in the form of photons and electrons and the 
patterns we detect, if any? As Jason Resch pointed out months ago, a lot of 
info necessarily is hidden from us, physically. How? Jason noted that it simply 
is not in our light cone, in the Minkowski sense of things.  A photon emitted 
from the far side of the sun cannot be observed from earth telescopes. Now, if 
you were to sign an enormously large check for an interplanetary space based 
solar telescope that observed solar phenomena from it's special perspective, 
and then sent the data forward to earth, then it would be in our light cone. 
This was Everett's big thing, the Observer. It was also Bryce DeWitt & Wheelers 
big thing.

Mayhaps, if the cosmos or multiverse has a purpose, it is to be a species that 
is an observer, and then create and launch multiple mechanical observers to 
detect things? Like the good Von Newmann machines they are, they will make more 
in order to better observe.  To induce outcomes in this universe or to cause 
logical split offs.

For my world view Shrodinger's Cat is not a potential victim in a ghastly 
experiment, but an active participant, for the cat observes sitting in the lap 
of Wigner's Friend.  

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 John Clark  
wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 6:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:




> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. 
> One may ask, running on what?



There's only one thing it could be running on, the laws of physics. 


 John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis



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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Only if we could break into other worldliness does MWI seem interesting. 
Especially for trade between earth's! Maybe the Neanderthal earth never 
discovered yams as a food source, so we could trade some of ours for their 
wonderful gray crystals that do photonic computing so well? Your axioms are 
indisputable, but I would still hug the real world closely, as it doesn't do to 
ignore the punches that nature delivers.

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:45, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:

I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the cosmos 
as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. One may 
ask, running on what?




IF you are willing to bet, like Darwin did implicitly, that life is Turing 
emulable, so that for example, you can survive with an artificial digital brain 
(and there are evidences for this, if only the success of Darwin’s type of 
explanation in biology),Then, the “Great program” are given any Universal 
Turing Machinery. More precisely, any Model (in the sense of Logician) of any 
Turing-complete theory would do the work. As the elementary arithmetic that we 
all learn in primary school is a universal machinery, we need only to believe 
in the truth of 2+2=4 & Co.
Now, you might ask where does that arithmetical reality come from?
Answer: any other universal machinery can explain this. You can derive the 
Robinson Axioms of Arithmetic from the simple theory of combinators, which has 
only two axioms Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz) together with three simple identity 
axioms(*). I did it explicitly on this forum (search “combinators”). So, all we 
need is to assume one Universal machinery, whichever you want.
Now, you might ask where does that “first” universal machinery comes from?
Answer: It is impossible to derive a universal machinery from something which 
is not already a universal machinery. So, a universal machinery is a needed to 
even just define the notion of machine and machinery.
(In case people have forgotten: a universal machinery is given by all programs 
in some Turing universal system, or the partial computable functions associates 
with those programs, the phi_i. A universal machine/number is a number u such 
thatphi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y). u is called the computer, x is called the program, 
and y is called the data. (x, y) is supposed to be a number (coding the two 
numbers x and y).
Note that when you have a universal number, you can define a universal 
machinery associated with it, and all universal machinery contains (infinitely 
many) universal numbers.
Once we assume/believe/bet-on Indexical Digital Mechanism (yes doctor + the 
Church Turing thesis), physics is reduced to a statistics on all (relative) 
computations going through our computational mental states, and that statistics 
is given by the modal logic of the “observable” variant of Gödel’s beweisbar 
predicate. 
A believer in an ontological physical universe must abandon Mechanism, or 
abandon rationality.
I got the "many-world” aspect of physics from this in the 1970, and it took 30 
years to get quantum logic for the observable, and quantum intuitionist logic 
for the sensible.
I recall you the 8 modes of self-reference imposed by incompleteness. P 
represents sigma_1 arithmetical proposition. 
p (truth)[]p (justifiable) (splits in two along G*/G)[]p & p (knowable)[]p & 
<>t (observable) (splits in two along G*/G)[]p & <>t & p (sensible) (splits in 
two along G*/G)
G* proves them all equivalent, but G cannot prove any of those equivalences. It 
means that the machine sees the same truth, but from 8 very different 
perspective obeying 8 very different mathematics.
Bruno
(*) the full basic theory of combinators is:
RULES:
1) If x = y and x = z, then y = z2) If x = y then xz = yz3) If x = y then zx = 
zy
AXIOMS:
4) Kxy = x5) Sxyz = xz(yz)








On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  wrote:



On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
 wrote:

  
 
 On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
  
  
  
  On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
  
 What was there before there was nothing?
  
 
  I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all 
computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result 
of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation   
 
 But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensi

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Well for this knuckle dragging savage, I compulsively am driven towards how can 
our species make use of science and philosophy to make life better? We may 
chose to view your fellow compuationalist philosopher, Juergen Schmidhuber, 
viewing God (you know He doesn't like to be called that!) As being The Great 
Programmer. Yet, we primates are behaviorally motivated by rewards, so we would 
have to gain a material reason to act in common?
On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch  wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:


I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the cosmos 
as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. One may 
ask, running on what?


I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to) the 
observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of this 
thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome 
revisions/improvements):
If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 + 2 = 
4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths like 
"The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe computable 
physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those generated states 
to facts about these computable realities
It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a 
universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written by a 
computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of a 
computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.

Indeed :)
Bruno



Jason



On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
 wrote:

  
 
 On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
  
  
  
  On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
  
 What was there before there was nothing?
  
 
  I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all 
computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result 
of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation   
 
 But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different 
meanings.


Hi Brent,
You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or 
modes of existence: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence
Jason
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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.  Neither is the even number that is not the sum of two primes.  
And as Bruno pointed out "object" is not well defined.  Is John Clark an 
object, or as he puts it "a verb".


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.


But if something is not necessary then there are world's that are same 
except that the something exists in one and not the other.  Is it 
identical to itself if it doesn't satisfy the "exists" predicate?


Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruce Kellett]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM 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 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.

Bruce

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 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?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

Just name the string "Bob" and output Bob.

Brent

On 3/10/2021 2:55 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite 
strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the 
shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string 
itself.


Jason

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 3:43 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:



On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch
mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness
exist? If so, then by having existential properties it
is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist
then there must exist something. In a sense God is the
antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the
same paradoxical issue.


There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between
/nothing/ and /everything/, particularly as it relates to
information theory. Insofar as the total set of all
possibilities has zero information content.



Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're
getting in over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you
mean?  Simple not self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?




A random message string can contain zero information, but still
exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.


I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries
maximum information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally
compressed string looks random; although you can't really define
random in the information theoretic sense for finite strings.



You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.


What does it mean "up to a constant"?


Most universal machine will agree on some large string being
random, but can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say.
See the book by Calllude on the randomness of finite string.
This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is
said to be random if almost all his initial segments are.


Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him. 
If you have a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which
it has a short name, "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity
is that of "Bob".  So I don't see by what definition you can prove
a finite string to be random.

Brent



Bruno






Brent


This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an
elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory
of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html




That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/10/2021 2:51 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:38 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 3/10/2021 9:41 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:



On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:



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.


Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real"
existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

Brent


Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs 


Minsky says real is relative to "this"...not your meaning.   He
doesn't define what he means by possible. It's interesting that he
takes as an example repeated addition and says he can't understand
how there could be a world in which it doesn't exist.  But only a
moment before he's discussing things existing in computer games,
which can only do finite arithmetic.


He said his preference would be to get rid of the word 'real' and only 
speak of 'possible', because exist doesn't add anything (except for 
the case of relative existence within the universe, like the button in 
his shirt).


In other words, except for the only case that makes sense.

But thinks it's a useless concept to speak of other possible universes 
being 'real', and prefers only using possible in that context.


Whether he thinks possibility by itself is enough for existence is not 
clear, but he suggests it when he says we could be part of the logical 
possibilities of a program that was never turned on.


But is it possible to turn the program on?  If it was not turned on, and 
possible=necessary then it was necessarily turned off and could not 
possibly be turned on.  In which case it was possible, was it?


Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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".


When you define a word you need to make it consistent with usage.

Brent



Now you tell me how it differs from "real".


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite
strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the
shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string
itself.

Jason

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 3:43 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
>> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then
>>> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness
>>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the
>>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>>
>>
>> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between *nothing*
>> and *everything*, particularly as it relates to information theory.
>> Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>>
>
> Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over
> your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not
> self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?
>
>
>
> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
> written on a piece of paper, for example.
>
>
> I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum
> information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks
> random; although you can't really define random in the information
> theoretic sense for finite strings.
>
>
>
> You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.
>
>
> What does it mean "up to a constant"?
>
> Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, but
> can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book by
> Calllude on the randomness of finite string.
> This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be
> random if almost all his initial segments are.
>
>
> Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him.  If you
> have a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which it has a short
> name, "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity is that of "Bob".  So I
> don't see by what definition you can prove a finite string to be random.
>
> Brent
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> Brent
>
> This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary
> confusion of categories.
>
> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing:
>> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>>
>
>
> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>
> Bruce
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> .
>
>
>
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:38 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 3/10/2021 9:41 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2)
>> changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
> Then Minsky was mad:
>
> https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs
>
>
> Minsky says real is relative to "this"...not your meaning.   He doesn't
> define what he means by possible.  It's interesting that he takes as an
> example repeated addition and says he can't understand how there could be a
> world in which it doesn't exist.  But only a moment before he's discussing
> things existing in computer games, which can only do finite arithmetic.
>

He said his preference would be to get rid of the word 'real' and only
speak of 'possible', because exist doesn't add anything (except for the
case of relative existence within the universe, like the button in his
shirt). But thinks it's a useless concept to speak of other possible
universes being 'real', and prefers only using possible in that context.

Whether he thinks possibility by itself is enough for existence is not
clear, but he suggests it when he says we could be part of the logical
possibilities of a program that was never turned on.

Jason


> Brent
>
>
> --
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> 
> .
>

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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?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/10/2021 9:41 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:



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.


Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2)
changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

Brent


Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs 


Minsky says real is relative to "this"...not your meaning.   He doesn't 
define what he means by possible.  It's interesting that he takes as an 
example repeated addition and says he can't understand how there could 
be a world in which it doesn't exist.  But only a moment before he's 
discussing things existing in computer games, which can only do finite 
arithmetic.


Brent


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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch > wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist?
If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure
nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must
exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of
nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.


There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between
/nothing/ and /everything/, particularly as it relates to
information theory. Insofar as the total set of all
possibilities has zero information content.



Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in 
over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not 
self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?





A random message string can contain zero information, but still 
exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.


I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum 
information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string 
looks random; although you can't really define random in the 
information theoretic sense for finite strings.



You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.


What does it mean "up to a constant"?

Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, 
but can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book 
by Calllude on the randomness of finite string.
This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said 
to be random if almost all his initial segments are.


Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him.  If you 
have a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which it has a 
short name, "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity is that of 
"Bob".  So I don't see by what definition you can prove a finite string 
to be random.


Brent



Bruno






Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an 
elementary confusion of categories.


This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of
Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html




That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[smitra]

On 10-03-2021 18:41, Jason Resch wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
 wrote:


On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

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.
Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2)
changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

Brent

Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs

Jason


Here the discussion about possible and real starts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJwzVD3jEs=294s

This point of view makes sense, existence is relative in the sense that 
everything that is possible exists and then relative to some agent X, 
some other possible thing Y may not exist inside X's universe such that 
X can interact with Y. But Y is also guaranteed to exist in its own 
universe.


Saibal

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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

Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs

Jason

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:



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.


Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) 
changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.


Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 10:18, Tomas Pales  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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.


That is close how logicians relativise existence, in some theory, to existence 
in a model of that theory. 

Now, by using both Gödel completeness (a theory has a model iff the theory is 
consistent) and incompleteness theorem (no theory can prove all arithmetical 
truth), we get that no machine can prove the existence of a model satisfying 
its theorem, and that is why all machine get mystical, as they do experience a 
reality without being able to justify its existence.

Bruno,



> 
> 
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:22, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/9/2021 2:30 PM, Philip Benjamin wrote:
>> If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” 
>> (Parmenides).
> 
> Yeah, but what has he published recently?

According to Simplicius, Moderatus of Gades attributed the five “hypostases” 
(that he talk about well before Plotinus) to Parmenides, making him still far 
in advance on humans, but not on the arithmetically sound universal machine, 
which lives in arithmetic (as we know or should know since Gödel’s 1931 paper + 
Church-Thesis, that Gödel missed, as he explained himself.

Bruno




> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch > > wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell 
>> mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> 
>> wrote:
>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by 
>> having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness 
>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the 
>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>> 
>> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and 
>> everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the 
>> total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
> 
> Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over 
> your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not 
> self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?
> 
>> 
>> 
>> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- 
>> written on a piece of paper, for example.
> 
> I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum 
> information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks 
> random; although you can't really define random in the information theoretic 
> sense for finite strings.


You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant. Most universal 
machine will agree on some large string being random, but can differ on strings 
shorter than themselves, say. See the book by Calllude on the randomness of 
finite string.
This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be 
random if almost all his initial segments are.

Bruno




> 
> Brent
> 
>> This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary 
>> confusion of categories.
>> 
>> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: 
>> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>> 
>> Bruce
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> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

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

The interesting things is what is the minimal amount of things that we have to 
assume in a theory so that we can derive the existence of all appearances, and 
of the laws to which they obey? How to get consciousness, how to get the 
appearance of matter and of physical laws. Assuming Mechanism, it can be proved 
that any Turing universal machinery will do the job, and that makes Mechanism 
testable: drive physics and compare with the observation.

What must be searched is to relate the different notion of existence that we 
are willing to make sense of.



> 
> 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,

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.



> 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.

OK with this.


Bruno


> 
> 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/ 
> <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: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Philip Benjamin]

[Brent Meeker]
“Yeah, but what has he [Parmenides] published recently?”
[Philip Benjamin]
   Facetious? A modern Parmenides will be one of the (late or alive) 
physicists who arbitrarily BELIEVE (not reason) in particle-wave duality and 
self-creating quantum world etc. Wave-likeness ≠ Waviness. Calculations based 
on both wave-likeness and waviness will be alike, just the same way as 
Geocentricism (from primitive astrology to Ptolemaic astronomy that was 
naturally defended by Ecclesiastical establishment) will yield verisimilar 
mathematical results as heliocentrism. Self-creation of anything is 
oxymoronic-something has to exist before it exists!! That is against all laws 
of logic!! No physics is ever against laws of logic. “Quantum vacuum” is no 
vacuum at all. Moreover one cannot ignore 95% of the missing (dark) matter as 
trivial or unreal. If 5% of the visible light-matter has chemistry, then 95% of 
invisible (dark) matter also has chemistry necessarily.   No Parmenides can 
deny that. Dark-matter chemistry cannot but yield a dark-twin along with the 
light-twin from the moment of conception.
The entire acade-media (in fact, the whole world) can be divided into 
two and only two fundamental groups: 1. Pagan with un-awakened consciousness’ 
2. Non-pagan with awakened consciousness.
  The Western hemisphere was ‘once upon a time’ pulled out from the ethos 
of the pagan into that of the non-pagan thanks to the “instant  transformation” 
of the 4 th  Century Augustine. Today paganism in the West is the prevalent 
culture everywhere including the pulpits and the pews, thanks to the 
indoctrinations in the educational systems from KG through the highest levels.
Philip Benjamin
From: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
Sent: Tuesday, March 9, 2021 5:22 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?


On 3/9/2021 2:30 PM, Philip Benjamin wrote:
If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” 
(Parmenides).

Yeah, but what has he published recently?

Brent
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 9 Mar 2021, at 16:41, Lawrence Crowell  
> wrote:
> 
> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by 
> having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does 
> not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis 
> of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There are as many notion of “nothing” than there are notion of things. Nothing, 
when thinking of numbers, can be played by the number 0 (not to confuse with a 
set containing 0).
In set theory, nothing is given by the empty set. Note that the unary 
intersection (the intersection of the elements of a set), when applied to the 
empty set, gives the class of all sets (something too much big to be a set).

Obviously, the quantum nothingness might be well played by the quantum vacuum; 
which we know to be full of things and happenings.

Some might try a notion of absolute nothingness, but I have no idea what that 
could be.

The empty theory has all possible models, and so is trivially satisfied in all 
models, and is thus not interesting. Adding axioms can lead to genuine theory 
of everything, but it can be shown that adding more axioms than the one 
required to have a universal machinery leads to contradiction, unless they are 
particular axioms to described local phenomenologies.

Using arithmetic for the universal base, we have a clear notion of existence, 
as most people agree on the “standard model of Arithmetic (the set {0, 1, 2, …} 
+ the usual laws learned in school. Then the physical existence and the 
psychological, and theological existence are provided in the internal 
phenomenologies imposed by incompleteness (to any arithmetically sound 
machines). That is testable, and the discovery of the “many-histories” in 
quantum physics confirmed the “many-world/histories interpretation of 
arithmetic on which all universal machine converge, soon or later (in the 
universal dovetailer “number-of-step”).

Bruno 





> 
> LC
> 
> On Monday, March 8, 2021 at 11:34:51 PM UTC-6 Jason wrote:
> I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"
> 
> https://alwaysasking.com/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: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 14:08, Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
> wrote:
> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. 
> One may ask, running on what?
> 
> 
> I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to) the 
> observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of this 
> thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome 
> revisions/improvements):
> 
> If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 + 2 
> = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths 
> like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".
> 
> We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe computable 
> physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those generated 
> states to facts about these computable realities
> 
> It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a 
> universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written by 
> a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of a 
> computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."
> 
> So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.

Indeed :)

Bruno


> 
> Jason
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones > <mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
>> What was there before there was nothing?
>> 
>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
>> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
>> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
>> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
>> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
> logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
> discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different 
> meanings.
> 
> Hi Brent,
> 
> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
> 
> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or 
> modes of existence: 
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence 
> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence>
> 
> Jason
> 
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 13:05, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 6:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
> > astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
> > cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great 
> > Program. One may ask, running on what?
> 
> 
> There's only one thing it could be running on, the laws of physics. 


This cannot work.

Years ago, I would have said “this cannot work unless you defend an 
ultra-finitist (and fictionalist) theory of machine, but eventually I have 
shown that even such a weird conception of machine cannot help to escape the 
necessity to reduce physics to a finitist (but non ultrafinitist) theory of 
mind. 

When we assume Mechanism, we can no more invoke an ontological commitment 
richer than “very elementary arithmetic”. The Aristotelian God (Matter, with a 
big M to say that it is not reducible to simpler) cannot exist, in fact cannot 
make any sense.

Bruno




> 
>  John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
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>  
> .

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:45, spudboy100 via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the 
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. 
> One may ask, running on what?
> 
> 


IF you are willing to bet, like Darwin did implicitly, that life is Turing 
emulable, so that for example, you can survive with an artificial digital brain 
(and there are evidences for this, if only the success of Darwin’s type of 
explanation in biology),
Then, the “Great program” are given any Universal Turing Machinery. More 
precisely, any Model (in the sense of Logician) of any Turing-complete theory 
would do the work. As the elementary arithmetic that we all learn in primary 
school is a universal machinery, we need only to believe in the truth of 2+2=4 
& Co.

Now, you might ask where does that arithmetical reality come from?

Answer: any other universal machinery can explain this. You can derive the 
Robinson Axioms of Arithmetic from the simple theory of combinators, which has 
only two axioms Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz) together with three simple identity 
axioms(*). I did it explicitly on this forum (search “combinators”). 
So, all we need is to assume one Universal machinery, whichever you want.

Now, you might ask where does that “first” universal machinery comes from?

Answer: It is impossible to derive a universal machinery from something which 
is not already a universal machinery. So, a universal machinery is a needed to 
even just define the notion of machine and machinery.

(In case people have forgotten: a universal machinery is given by all programs 
in some Turing universal system, or the partial computable functions associates 
with those programs, the phi_i. A universal machine/number is a number u such 
that
phi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y). u is called the computer, x is called the program, and 
y is called the data. (x, y) is supposed to be a number (coding the two numbers 
x and y).

Note that when you have a universal number, you can define a universal 
machinery associated with it, and all universal machinery contains (infinitely 
many) universal numbers.

Once we assume/believe/bet-on Indexical Digital Mechanism (yes doctor + the 
Church Turing thesis), physics is reduced to a statistics on all (relative) 
computations going through our computational mental states, and that statistics 
is given by the modal logic of the “observable” variant of Gödel’s beweisbar 
predicate. 

A believer in an ontological physical universe must abandon Mechanism, or 
abandon rationality.

I got the "many-world” aspect of physics from this in the 1970, and it took 30 
years to get quantum logic for the observable, and quantum intuitionist logic 
for the sensible.

I recall you the 8 modes of self-reference imposed by incompleteness. P 
represents sigma_1 arithmetical proposition. 

p (truth)
[]p (justifiable)   (splits in two along G*/G)
[]p & p (knowable)
[]p & <>t (observable)  (splits in two along G*/G)
[]p & <>t & p (sensible)(splits in two along G*/G)

G* proves them all equivalent, but G cannot prove any of those equivalences. It 
means that the machine sees the same truth, but from 8 very different 
perspective obeying 8 very different mathematics.

Bruno

(*) the full basic theory of combinators is:

RULES:

1) If x = y and x = z, then y = z
2) If x = y then xz = yz
3) If x = y then zx = zy

AXIOMS:

4) Kxy = x
5) Sxyz = xz(yz)






> 
> 
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones > <mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
>> What was there before there was nothing?
>> 
>> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
>> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
>> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define 
>> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a 
>> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation 
>> <https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
> logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
> discussion 

Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 5:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great
> Program. One may ask, running on what?
>

I agree that thought is in a sense, more fundamental (existing prior to)
the observed. Of course the next question is what explains the origin of
this thought? This is the answer I now tell myself (I welcome
revisions/improvements):

If one accepts the independent existence of mathematical truths, like "2 +
2 = 4" then, due to Turing universal equations, one must also accept truths
like "The 1,829,735th step of program #789 contains a bit string "01011101".

We can keep going, and extend this to say, programs that describe
computable physical worlds, and relate the bit strings representing those
generated states to facts about these computable realities

It therefore becomes a mathematically provable fact that "there exists a
universal equation that includes an encoding of this very e-mail, written
by a computational version of a person just like me, who exists as part of
a computed physical reality which looks just like our observable universe."

So if 2+2=4, then thoughts exist.

Jason



--
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch 
> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
> everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
> What was there before there was nothing?
>
>
> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather,
> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of
> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define
> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a
> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation
>
>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws,
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.
> The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any
> sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has
> several different meanings.
>
>
> Hi Brent,
>
> You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
>
> I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types,
> or modes of existence:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence
>
> Jason
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
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>
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> .
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 6:45 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

*> I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British
> astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the
> cosmos as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great
> Program. One may ask, running on what?*
>

There's only one thing it could be running on, the laws of physics.

 John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis


>
>

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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?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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.


Brent




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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?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

I kind of side with Canadian philosopher John Leslie, as well as British 
astronomer, James Jeans on this question. Both Leslie and Jeans see the cosmos 
as a Great Thought. I formalize their conjectures as a Great Program. One may 
ask, running on what?
On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Jason Resch  wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
 wrote:

  
 
 On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
  
  
  
  On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
  
 What was there before there was nothing?
  
 
  I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, 
there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of 
numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all 
computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result 
of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation   
 
 But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different 
meanings.


Hi Brent,
You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".
I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or 
modes of existence: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence
Jason

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

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.




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.

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/9/2021 2:55 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 9:46 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:


On 3/9/2021 1:20 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:57 AM Kim Jones mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:

/> What was there before there was nothing?/


"Before" implies time and time implies change; if nothing exists
then nothing can change, and if nothing can change time can not
exist, and if time can't exist then there is no "before".


So when was there nothing?  Never.  So what is there now? Everything.



Silly word play does not amount to philosophical insight.


That was my point, Bruce.

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/9/2021 2:30 PM, Philip Benjamin wrote:
If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil 
fit” (Parmenides).


Yeah, but what has he published recently?

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch > wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell
mailto:goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If
so, then by having existential properties it is not pure
nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must
exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of
nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.


There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between
/nothing/ and /everything/, particularly as it relates to
information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities
has zero information content.



Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in 
over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not 
self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?





A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist 
-- written on a piece of paper, for example.


I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum 
information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks 
random; although you can't really define random in the information 
theoretic sense for finite strings.


Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an 
elementary confusion of categories.


This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of
Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html




That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce
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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: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 9:46 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On 3/9/2021 1:20 PM, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
> *> What was there before there was nothing?*
>>
>
> "Before" implies time and time implies change;  if nothing exists then
> nothing can change, and if nothing can change time can not exist, and if
> time can't exist then there is no "before".
>
>
> So when was there nothing?  Never.  So what is there now?  Everything.
>


Silly word play does not amount to philosophical insight.

Bruce

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 3/9/2021 1:20 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:57 AM Kim Jones > wrote:


/> What was there before there was nothing?/


"Before" implies time and time implies change; if nothing exists then 
nothing can change, and if nothing can change time can not exist, and 
if time can't exist then there is no "before".


So when was there nothing?  Never.  So what is there now? Everything.

Brent

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 9:21 AM Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
>>> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then
>>>> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness
>>>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the
>>>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>>>
>>>
>>> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between *nothing*
>>> and *everything*, particularly as it relates to information theory.
>>> Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>>>
>>
>>
>> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
>> written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information
>> equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.
>>
>
> Random strings contain a maximum amount of entropy per bit and are
> incomprehensible. They may not signify anything useful but they require
> more bits to encode/represent than any less random string of the same
> length, so in that sense are maximal in the information they convey.
>
> I think you may be operating under a different definition of information
> than the standard Shannon sense of information theory.
>
> I grant that the equivalence between all strings and no strings is
> unintuitive,
>


It is certainly unintuitive. But does it make any sense? You have made the
retrievable information content of the strings to be of paramount
importance. But that is just a choice on your part. Other choices could
work better in these circumstances. Information content in the form of
comprehensible messages is not the only property of the strings, so they
are not equivalent to 'nothing'.

Applying information theory outside of its intended domain can lead to all
sorts of confusion..

Bruce

but I think my section on the Library of Babel is illustrative:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#The_Library_of_Babel
>
> Jason
>

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RE: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Philip Benjamin]

[Brent Meeker]
"https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation;
[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. "Ex nihilo, 
nihil fit" (Parmenides). Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of 
a conscious Law Giver. The logical question is: "what is more reasonable?" DEAD 
MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only 
a degree of rationality can be established here.
  Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman 
roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off 
Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  
(https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was 
the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the 
Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman 
Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) 
Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.
  Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the 
questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading 
them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.
Philip Benjamin

From: 'Brent Meeker' Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:38 PM  
everything-list@googlegroups.com<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>  
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?
On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones 
mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:
What was there before there was nothing?

I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, there 
are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of numbers, 
etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all 
computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result 
of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: 
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falwaysasking.com%2Fwhy-does-anything-exist%2F%23A_Story_of_Creation=04%7C01%7C%7Cec5e0f69aead43a3c24308d8e32a6d06%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637509118637908964%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000=Lrh0EuaQoC0WABBOwHIKVI7SwW4TYdzZaqaqysIVp6c%3D=0>

But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, 
number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The 
logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible 
discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different 
meanings.

Brent
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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, Bruce Kellett  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
>> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then
>>> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness
>>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the
>>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>>
>>
>> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between *nothing*
>> and *everything*, particularly as it relates to information theory.
>> Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>>
>
>
> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
> written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information
> equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.
>

Random strings contain a maximum amount of entropy per bit and are
incomprehensible. They may not signify anything useful but they require
more bits to encode/represent than any less random string of the same
length, so in that sense are maximal in the information they convey.

I think you may be operating under a different definition of information
than the standard Shannon sense of information theory.

I grant that the equivalence between all strings and no strings is
unintuitive, but I think my section on the Library of Babel is
illustrative:
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#The_Library_of_Babel

Jason


>
> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing:
>> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>>
>
>
> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>
> Bruce
>
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> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTXSHt%3DASkdBiA%2Bh_-4d3FCAHMX7puXWq9_1tG%3DnjbXSg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer>
> .
>

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
> goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then
>> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness
>> does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the
>> antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.
>
>
> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between *nothing* and
> *everything*, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar
> as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>


A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information
equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing:
> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>


That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 2:00 PM Jason Resch  wrote:

*> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and
> everything,*
>

I agree. Meaning needs contrast, so a universe where everything has the
flogknee property would be indistinguishable from a universe where nothing
has the flogknee property, and the best definition of "nothing" that I know
of is infinite unbounded homogeneity.

John K Clark

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:

*> What was there before there was nothing?*
>

"Before" implies time and time implies change;  if nothing exists then
nothing can change, and if nothing can change time can not exist, and if
time can't exist then there is no "before".

John K Clark

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Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones  wrote:
>
>> What was there before there was nothing?
>>
>
> I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather,
> there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of
> numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define
> all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a
> result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation
>
>
> But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws,
> number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.
> The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any
> sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has
> several different meanings.
>

Hi Brent,

You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".

I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or
modes of existence:
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence

Jason

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