[ExI] What is "Elemental Redness"?

Wed May 3 15:56:09 UTC 2023

On Wed, May 3, 2023, 11:17 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> To me "information" doesn't belong with Space/Time and Matter/Energy.  In
> the "Why the laws are mathematical" section of that paper it says:
>
> "It has long been recognized that mathematics is “*unreasonably effective
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences>*”
> in describing the physical laws. In 1623, Galileo
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei> wrote
> <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei>, “[The universe] is
> written in the language of mathematics.”"
>
> I'm in the camp which believes it isn't "unreasonably effective" at all.
>

Why is that?

  Mathematics is simply platonic, necessarily true logic, which must be
> true in all possible physical worlds.
>

If you believe in platonic existence, does that belief extend to
mathematical objects that are indistinguishable from our physical universe?

And in that case, wouldn't "physical existence" become redundant, given
that "mathematical existence" already includes all possible physical
universes?

  But mathematics needs something physical to represent, reason about, and
> discover it, otherwise it is nothing.
>

This a rejection of platonism then. I am a bit confused about what your
position is. Let's simplify it:

Do you believe the truth that 2+2=4 exists independently of the existence
of a physical universe or mathematicians who believe it or prove it?

If you do, this is enough to prove constructively how mathematical truth
leads to conscious observers who will believe themselves to inhabit
physical universes, governed by simple probabilistic laws which evolve in
time.

  I know there seems to be a lot of people that desperately seem to want to
> make mathematics more fundamental, but this seems biased and non-scientific
> to me,
>

Some could make that claim, but that was before others showed it is a
theory that leads to testable predictions, all of which have been confirmed
thus far.

similar to the way all my Mormon friends and family desperately want to
> believe there are disembodied ghosts and other substance dualistic
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/48-Substance-Dualism>
> ideas.
>
> Wouldn't it be great if we could get these great ideas of yours in these
> great papers canonized, where they can constantly progress, and we can
> build and track consensus around the best ideas we all agree on (which
> would be most of what you have in this paper) but this idea of
> information belongs with the other two, where we disagree, could be pushed
> down to supporting sub camps, and we could see how many people believe one
> way, vs the other, and why.  Wouldn't it be great to track this kind of
> always improving concisely stated consensus, over time?
>
> How pervasive is this belief that the universe could be purely
> mathematical?  Is this belief growing or decreasing in popularity?  What is
> causing this?
>

It depends who you ask. Many scientists probably never think about it.
Platonism is a majority opinion among mathematicians. I think many
theoretical physicists, especially string theorists, are amenable to the
idea. I think it is growing in popularity but it's still a pretty early in
it's development and few in the field are even aware of it at this time.
Tegmark has probably done the most to popularize the idea.

Jason

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 2:54 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 2, 2023, 3:11 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 02/05/2023 18:27, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> > The hard problem of consciousness comes about by assuming a particular
>>> > answer to the mind-body problem.
>>> >
>>> > The mind-body problem asks: what is the nature of the connection
>>> > between mind and matter.
>>> >
>>> > If you assume matter is fundamental (materialism) then you end up with
>>> > "the hard problem of consciousness" -- how to explain the appearance
>>> > of consciousness given only matter.
>>> >
>>> > On the other hand:
>>> >
>>> > If you assume consciousness is fundamental (materialism) then you end
>>> > up with "the hard problem of matter" -- how to explain the appearance
>>> > of matter given only consciousness.
>>>
>>> Nonsense. (in my opinion).
>>>
>>> There isn't one fundamental thing, there are three. There are only three
>>> things that make up the world and they are all subject to the laws of
>>> physics, all understandable and all predictable (or at least computable):
>>>
>>
>> That's the materialist position. There are others, however.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Space/Time
>>> Matter/Energy
>>> Information
>>
>>
>> Where do math, truth, logic, physical law, integers, mathematical objects
>> and other universes fit in?
>>
>> Reality might be much larger than what we can see from our present
>> vantage point as a human in this universe. Physics offers no evidence
>> against this larger reality, and actually supplies much indirect evidence
>> of it.
>>
>>
>>> Absolutely everything falls under some combination of these three things
>>> (and some people do reckon they can be collapsed into one thing, but I
>>> don't really know anything about that. It probably involves lots of very
>>> difficult maths, and is probably irrelevant to the world we inhabit).
>>>
>>
>> On the contrary, it's very relevant. See this section of an article I
>> wrote, about how much of physics can be explained by presuming math is more
>> fundamental than physics:
>>
>>
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory
>>
>>
>>> Even gods ghosts and goblins fall under these things, because they are
>>> the imagined products of (some rather deranged) human minds.
>>>
>>> I mean if you really wanted to, I suppose you could call this
>>> 'tripleism'. But I don't think it would catch on. But still, they are
>>> the raw ingredients of reality. The recipes you can create from them are
>>> infinite, but everything is made up of them, and there is nothing else
>>> (as far as we know).
>>>
>>
>> Do you believe in the existence of other universes having different
>> physical laws?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>>> That's what I call materialism.
>>>
>>> Ben
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230503/a40f7684/attachment.htm>