You could could say that the universe is only relatively time related to a special theory and each special theory is only related where they overlap. When you start talking like that some people will accuse you of moving toward a God in the gap theory. Which I believe is lausten’s concern. I call it the absolute ignorance problem.
Here is what I think we are struggling with. As we move to an every more probabilistic view a distinction between a deterministic and random universe becomes less clear. In the paper we were discussing earlier the probabilities are getting so high we just as well use the colloquial definition of random from a practical perspective. The person I was chatting with in the freewill forum says we should always return to Newtonian perspectives when ever possible to keep us grounded. That more or less is the pragmatist view.
If you are getting bored with this just let me know and I will reduce the spam comments.
Noo, I enjoy these conversations. They clarify issues for me.
On the queston of God v Newtonian physics, I am exploring Max Tegmark’s MUH as an alternative to both.
I see a mathematical universe as a quasi-intelligent object (emphasis on quasi-)
When all values and function are guided by generic (unnamed) mathematical equations it would give an appearance of ID, but without the motive and intent assigned to a God like model.
Consider the term "quasi-intelligent"
quasi- (combining form)
seemingly; apparently but not really: i.e. seemingly intelligent but not really.
This description fits both physical and meta-physical descriptions of Universal constants and interactive functions. It is the perfect definition to the question if the Universe operates on mathematical (logical) guiding principles.
It doesn’t seem to me any of what you’ve written here can be labeled “spam” - I’m finding it pretty interesting, even if I have nothing to add, or complain about.
Agreed. At this point, our AI filter probably would not recognize you, wolfhnd, as spam. Once you’ve posted enough and shown you’re a real person, you can do a lot. Now, if you started mass posting links to some site selling something, that could change. Posting long form is not spam. It might turn off a lot of readers, but that’s your choice of who and how you want to engage. We did have someone who is a long time member, wrote a lot, and then started harping about a particular movie about a particular political issue and disrupted other threads with it. A couple warnings and they stopped. But you aren’t doing that.
I believe wolfhnd is a welcome addition to the forum. His inputs are well constructed and logical in essence.
And he does research what he writes about.
The spam question has to do with how I carried this conversation over to another forum. Here is the latest from that forum.
To me, the relationship to intelligence and its subsequent irreducibility to local dynamics, is a function of the substrate-independence of information.
Information requires let’s say deterministic rule-structures in order to be conveyed. If-then statements are a requirement for differentiation, and differentiation is required for information. But that information can be expressed via any number of potential local deterministic rules.
I can program the game “Doom” to be played in any number of potential programming languages, on any number of potential hardware systems. Each one of these languages and systems operate on “different” deterministic rules of local interaction, their if-then relationships are completely unique. But even so the final product (the game Doom) is exactly the same either way; the information requires deterministic rule-structures to be expressed, but it is not bound (or reducible) to anything unique about those rule structures.
I can talk to you by tapping in Morse code, writing in binary, converting sound into radio waves, or translating into pig Latin. Each of those frameworks have varying rule-structures, but the information expressed is identical. Although the rule-structure is required to express the information, the specifics of the structure itself is kind of irrelevant. If a framework of if-then statements is sufficiently complex such that it is Turing complete, it is entirely equivalent to any other Turing-complete framework with vastly different local if-then relationships. The global structure is based on the system’s informational topology, which is substrate-independent. It requires local determinism to be expressed, but is not bound to whatever unique equations of motion that it is currently running on. The important part, the relational topology, is substrate independent. Which is why we can make a “general” topological theory of self-order without ever considering the local deterministic equations of motion it is currently running on A unified field theory of topological defects and non-linear local excitations | npj Computational Materials.
I intentional did not include links because referring to other forums distract from traffic here. It is just the way the web works. You decide lausten and let me know. I don’t think it is a good practice but I made an exception here because I thought that it would nice to show that other people are thinking along the same lines. The person I quoted is a chemical engineer at the PHD level just for background.
