[ExI] Why do the language model and the vision model align?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2026 at 10:26 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*>>>> Which is more fundamental, the English language word "c-o-w" or the
>>>> thing with four legs that can produce milk? *
>>>>
>>>
>>> *>>> I see you remain confused*
>>>
>>
>> *>>And I see you have not answered my question.  *
>>
>
> *> I answered it previously when I agreed there is math the human invented
> language, and there is the separate (plausibly fundamental) mathematical
> reality.*
>

*No, you STILL haven't answered my question. Which is more fundamental, the
English word  "c-o-w" or the thing with four legs that can produce milk? I
think the thing with four legs is more fundamental. Do you disagree? *

*> When I talk about the plausibility of mathematical objects as plausibly
> being fundamental I am speaking of layers 1 & 2, not layer 8.*
> *8. Human ideas about math and physics*
> *7. Human Ideas *
> *6. Human minds*
> *5. Human brains*
> *4. Our physical universe*
> *3. All existing universes in a multiverse *
> *2. All computations playing out in all possible ways*
> *1. Mathematical truth*
>

*How can you speak about layers 1 & 2 when you only have access to layers
6,7 and 8? And Information is physical, there is no way you can have "all
computations playing out in all possible ways", or even compute 2+2,
without a physical universe. You need hardware, that's why Nvidia is more
valuable than any software company, in fact it is the most valuable company
in the world. And whatever level you wish to put brains and minds
into you've got to put them into the same level because the only difference
between the two is that one is a noun and the other is an adjective, mind
is what a brain does.*

*> I suggest taking a look at the paper I linked.*
>

*I already had and I was not impressed by the paper and Penrose’s triangle
was even more mundane. Mind is just what the brain does, and a brain needs
physics to work. *

*> And that's where you hit a wall and stop asking further questions. Other
> great physicists, however, do not stop there. They ask questions*
>

*There is nothing wrong with scientists asking profound questions, but
unfortunately very few of them have found profound answers, usually not
even mediocre answers.  *

*> Are you curious about any of these questions?*
>

*Sure.*


> *> If so I can provide you plausible answers.*
>

*Well what are you waiting for, do so! I'll settle for just one, and then
I'll start a campaign to try to get you the Nobel Prize for physics. *


> *> physics itself makes no claim that physics is the most fundamental
> thing there is.*
>

*I don't think physics is making a claim about itself of any sort, but I
have no hesitation in making claims and I claim that physics is more
fundamental than mathematics. This is not a value judgment, I'm not saying
one is more important than the other, I'm just saying that you can deduce
pure mathematics from physics but it's impossible to deduce physics from
pure mathematics, except perhaps for the second law of thermodynamics.  *

*>> Occam's razor is simply a matter of economy, we don't have access to
>> infinite computing capacity therefore it is wise to look for the least
>> complex way you can to find an answer to a puzzle, and as a result of that
>> fundamental laws tend to be simple.*
>>
>
> *> What we find is a bit stronger than that. Consider these statements:*
> *"A very interesting question to me is: is the universe more complicated
> than it needs to be to have us here? In other words, is there anything in
> the universe which is just here to amuse physicists?*
>

*A muon is identical to an electron except that it's 207 times more massive
and it only lives for 2 *10^-6 seconds before decaying, and a tau particle
is identical to a muon except that it's 3477 times more massive than an
electron and it only lives for 2.9*10*-13 seconds; and both the muon and
the tau have their own special type of neutrino associated with them. As
far as we know none of those 4 particles plays an important part in the
operation of the universe; as one scientist famously asked "who ordered
that?".*

*>> if there are any physical laws that are not computable then we wouldn't
>> be able to find them, therefore any laws that we do find are going to be
>> computable. *
>>
>
> > *This would be a valid argument if there were things that happened
> which we could not explain with any laws. However, our standard model of
> physics can explain virtually everything. **And all of it is computable.*
>

*The standard model can say absolutely nothing about Dark Energy or Dark
Matter, and together they make up about 94% of the cosmos. It also cannot
explain why there's so much more matter than antimatter, or why the
neutrino has mass, or what's going on at the very center of a Black Hole or
at the singularity at the start of the Big Bang. It also cannot explain why
there is an arrow of time other than to say it's because the universe
started out in a very low entropy state, but why it started out in such a
low state today's physics can't say. *



> *>>As for the other questions on your list, forget about finding the
>> answers, *
>>
>
> *> This is a very unscientific attitude.*
>

*It is neither scientific nor unscientific, and it is not an attitude, it's
simply acknowledging the undeniable logical FACT that it's impossible to
provide an answer if you don't know the question.   *

*>> The most profound question of all is not on your list, it is "**Why is
>> there something rather than nothing?**", *
>>
>
> *>If you keep asking "why?" in response to any answer, eventually you
> reach a point where no further answers are possible:*
>

*I agree, an iterated sequence of "why" questions either goes on forever or
they terminate in a brute fact, and I think it's a brute fact that
consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed
intelligently. And it's impossible to process data without physics.  I
strongly suspect that some things about physics are also brute facts and
that's why experimentation is so important in science, brute facts can be
discovered but they cannot be deduced.  *

*>> if you didn't have access to physical reality you wouldn't even know
>> there was something that needed explaining. *
>>
>
> *> True, but irrelevant.*
>

*Irrelevant?!  You wanted to know why quantum mechanics was linear, but if
you didn't have access to external physical reality you would have no way
of knowing there was a thing called "quantum mechanics" and there was
another thing called "Schrodinger's Equation" which implied the existence
of other worlds.  And if you knew about nothing except mathematics then
you'd never even be able to understand what the strange word "time" means
because unlike the physical world, mathematics is timeless, it doesn't
change.    *

*John K Clark*
















>
>>
>>>
>>>> *Also, consider a mathematical model of a hurricane and a real physical
>>>> hurricane, is the physical hurricane modeling the mathematical
>>>> representation or is the mathematical representation modeling the physical
>>>> hurricane? ** You'd expect the real deal to be more complex than a
>>>> mere model, so if you're right then the physical hurricane should be
>>>> simpler than the mathematical model that is running on a computer, but that
>>>> is not the case. It is never the case, the mathematical model always uses
>>>> approximations, the physical hurricane never does.   *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> *Even large finite numbers can't exist in our heads. Computers have
>>>>>> calculated 105 trillion digits of π, but if you want to calculate the
>>>>>> circumference of the observable universe from its radius to the greatest
>>>>>> accuracy that physically makes sense, the Planck length, you'd only need
>>>>>> the first 62 digits. So I think the 63rd digit has less reality than the
>>>>>> 62nd, and the 105 trillionth even less.*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *> We could also say that physical laws depend on or are downstream
>>>>>>> of higher mathematical laws. So if physics laws can be said to exist, then
>>>>>>> in the same sense these mathematical laws (i.e. rules) can also be said to
>>>>>>> exist.*
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *I believe it is probable that mathematics is the language of physics
>>>>>> but is a language nevertheless, if that is true then you've got it
>>>>>> backwards, physics is more fundamental than mathematics. The English word
>>>>>> "cow" cannot produce milk and it exists only within the mind of a human,
>>>>>> but the thing that can produce milk exists within the human mind and
>>>>>> outside of it too.  *
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> * >  To advocate a bit for Platonism, I am wondering how you would
>>>>>>> class the existence of mathematical truths and objects.*
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *If Jane, Susan and John find 9 cupcakes and they decide to divide
>>>>>> them up equally  among themselves, how many cupcakes does each person get?
>>>>>> The answer to this word puzzle is 3, it is a mathematical truth, however
>>>>>> none of those 9 cupcakes are physically real. Mathematics is capable of
>>>>>> generating puzzles of arbitrary difficulty and complexity, however that
>>>>>> doesn't necessarily mean they have any reality outside of the mind that is
>>>>>> attempting to solve the puzzle.  *
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *>  when one of our useful mathematical theories says it is true that
>>>>>>> "$1000 - $995 = $5" also tells us that 9 is non-prime because an integer
>>>>>>> factor of 9*
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Here is another word puzzle, Jane, Susan and John decide to arrange
>>>>>> those 9 cupcakes into a square (or a rectangle), would that be physically
>>>>>> possible? The answer is yes. Here is yet another word puzzle Jane, Susan
>>>>>> and John decide to arrange 11 cupcakes into a square (or a rectangle),
>>>>>> would that be physically possible? The answer is no. But none of these word
>>>>>> puzzles has any bearing on the existence of cupcakes, we could've just as
>>>>>> easily been talking about unicorns instead of cupcakes. *
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> *> It is no different from the physicists who takes general
>>>>>>> relativity serious and who concludes, based on the measured curvature of
>>>>>>> the universe, that there exist regions space far beyond the cosmological
>>>>>>> horizon. They are so far away that we will never be able to see them. But
>>>>>>> these regions must exist if our theory of GR is true.*
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *That is a perfectly logical argument, and that's why I think those
>>>>>> who say that the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is not
>>>>>> science because we could never see those other worlds is invalid. I think
>>>>>> those other worlds must exist if quantum mechanics is true. Probably.   *
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *> "A 53rd Mersenne prime exists." Is such a statement true?*
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *I don't know but I do know that the existence or non-existence of
>>>>>> a 53rd Mersenne prime makes a difference only within the mind attempting to
>>>>>> find it or attempting to prove it doesn't exist. The planets will continue
>>>>>> on with their orbits unchanged regardless of what the answer to that word
>>>>>> puzzle turns out to be. *
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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