[ExI] Another reason why Platonism can't be true

Sun Feb 22 16:03:11 UTC 2026

On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 10:46 AM scerir via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Interesting page from Frank Wilczek, about information and (physical)
> action.See also R.Thom and the same topic.
>
> "Information is another dimensionless quantity that plays a large and
> increasing role in our description of the world. Many of the terms that
> arise naturally in discussions of information have a distinctly physical
> character. For example we commonly speak of density of information and flow
> of information. Going deeper, we find far-reaching analogies between
> information and (negative) entropy, as noted already in Shannon's original
> work. Nowadays many discussions of the microphysical origin of entropy, and
> of foundations of statistical mechanics in general, start from discussions
> of information and ignorance. I think it is fair to say that there has been
> a unification fusing the physical quantity (negative) entropy and the
> conceptual quantity information. A strong formal connection between entropy
> and action arises through the Euclidean, imaginary-time path integral
> formulation of partition functions. Indeed, in that framework the
> expectation value of the Euclideanized action!
>   essentially is the entropy. The identification of entropy with
> Euclideanized action has been used, among other things, to motivate an
> algebraically simple but deeply mysterious "derivation" of black hole
> entropy. If one could motivate the imaginary-time path integral directly
> and insightfully, rather than indirectly through the apparatus of energy
> eigenvalues, Boltzmann factors, and so forth, then one would have
> progressed toward this general prediction of unification: Fundamental
> action principles, and thus the laws of physics, will be re-interpreted as
> statements about information and its transformations."
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.07735v1.pdf

Great reference, and I agree with his prediction that laws of physics will
be re-interpreted as statements about information and its transformations.
Note that "information and its transformations" is another way of saying
"computation" for computation is nothing besides information and its
transformations. In the same paper, Wilczek saw that such a revision in
physics would promote a sort of neutral monism, saying:

"If physics evolves to describe matter in terms of information, as we
discussed earlier, a circle of ideas will have closed. Mind will have
become more matter-like, and matter will have become more mind-like."

This is exactly the picture we obtain from mathematical/computational
monism. Observer mind states are computational. And the apparent physical
universes seen by those observers are also computational. And because any
given observer's mind state exists in a One-to-Many relationship with the
physical universes that contain said mind state, the observer will see a
reality that behaves as if it is part of a quantum multiverse, with
parallel states that can branch or merge depending on information
accessible to the observer's mind, with such branching events producing
apparently random and unpredictable outcomes, which not even the laws the
observer knows can predict. And this is exactly what we find with our own
universe and its laws.

"It’s just our “parsing” of [everything] that defines the subject matter of
what we call science. We might have thought that the science of the
universe was just something that’s “out there”. But what we’re realizing is
that instead in some fundamental sense, it’s all “on us”."
— Stephen Wolfram in “The Concept of the Ruliad” (2021)

For those that are curious to learn more about this strange relationship
that exists between mind and matter, I have this excerpt from an upcoming
article I am writing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11-fcvG1TiuHcS9bDCN05UQJyYY6Dl0LY/view?usp=sharing

Jason

>
>
> > Il 22/02/2026 14:44 CET Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> ha scritto:
> >
> >
> > On 22/02/2026 11:41, John K Clark wrote:
> > > ... it's impossible to process data without physics
> >
> >
> > Very good point. And further, it's impossible for information to even
> exist without some kind of physical embodiment.
> >
> > That's all that needs to be said, really.
> >
> > 1) It rules out the existence of a 'Platonic realm' containing all of
> maths, because maths is full of things that need to be calculated in order
> for them to be known.
> >
> > Unless you claim that all the results of all the calculations that are
> possible, already exist (an infinite number).
> >
> > And then, 2) you'd need to explain how this infinite amount of
> information can exist without any physical embodiment.
> >
> > If that were somehow possible, what would then be the point of the
> physical world? Why would it even exist? That would be the biggest
> violation of Occam's Razor possible.
> >
> > There's no information processing, or even any information to be
> processed, without the physical world. Any possible 'platonic realm' would
> have to be another physical world, but with an infinite information
> capacity (and probably no time dimension).
> >
> > --
> > Ben
> >
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