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

[John Clark]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 9:38 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*>> 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? *
>>
>
> *> The cow just more fundamental than our ideas or language describing
> cows.*
>

*Thank you.  *

*> Just as the physical universe is more fundamental than our human ideas
> and theories about physics. And just as the integers are more fundamental
> than our symbols like "1" and "2".*
>

*So we both agree that the underlying mathematics would be the same
regardless of what language was used to express it, but do you also
believe, as most mathematicians do, that mathematics itself is a language?
I think it is and if it is then like any language it could be used to write
both fiction and nonfiction, and some very abstract realms of higher
mathematics might be compared to a Lord Of The Rings book telling us in
great detail how dragons behave even though dragons do not exist and even
describing other languages even though nothing has ever used or is using or
will use those languages except the author of the book. In literature
that's called "world building". *


> *>>> 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?*
>>
>
> *> For the same reason we can speak of layer 3.*
>

*I can speak of it because I don't believe in your 8 layers, but you do so
you can't.  *

*> The quantum mechanical properties of this universe strongly suggests it
> is part of (at least) a quantum multiverse. Likewise the inflationary
> conditions of the early universe strongly suggests it is part of an
> infinite eternally inflating universe among countless other bubbles. And
> similarly, the extreme fine tuning of forces and constants required for
> life to be possible strongly suggests our universe is one of a huge number
> of physical universes ruled by other laws.*
>

*I agree with all of that. Physics is capable of producing a hell of a lot
of interesting and very diverse stuff, but it cannot produce everything
that is conceivable. I**n none of those other universes is the Second Law
Of Thermodynamics untrue and, although this is a little less certain,
probably in none of those universes will an electron spontaneously turn
into a proton. Nevertheless it would be possible to write a story in
English or Spanish or Mathematics or any language in which both those
things occur.  You could even write a story in which 2+2=5, although such a
story would not be consistent, it would be full of plot holes.    *


> * >> 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,*
>>
>
> *> Have you ever stopped to ask what hardware computes how an electron
> behaves in any given situation?*
>

*Yes I have because I'm a retired electrical engineer and that's how they
make their living. *


> *> Or consider a photon, which is physically trapped in 0-time, it can't
> change and therefore it can't compute anything on its own.*
>

*It's true that time doesn't exist from the viewpoint of a photon, so
because of that you could conclude that a photon can't compute anything, or
you could conclude that a photon can compute everything. But I conclude
that neither viewpoint is useful. *

*>  I would again ask what computational substrate powers all the 10^106
> operations per second that occur within just the observable part of our
> universe?*
>

*The answer is the laws of physics. For example the Pauli Exclusion
Principle says that an electron in an atom can be in any quantum state but
2 electrons can NOT be in the same quantum state, so physics recognizes a
difference between 1 and 2, and once that is done any integer can be
defined and computations are possible. Incidentally the Pauli Exclusion
Principle is the only reason that the chair you're sitting in right now
does not sink down to the center of the Earth. *


*> My own answer to that question is "particular mathematical structures,
> by their very nature, can compute on their own."*
>

*If mathematical structures can perform computations on their own then why
is Nvidia the most valuable company in the world?  Instead of spending
trillions of dollars on huge data centers why don't companies like OpenAI
and Anthropic just buy a book about those data structures and let the book
perform those computations? I'll tell you why, because that won't work. *


> *The discoveries are not mine, I simply am trying to get the word out by
> writing about them.*
> *See the work of Marchal,  Standish, Mueller, and Wolfram  *
>

*Standish is a big fan of Marchal and I am VERY familiar with Marchal's
work, and I find it to be utterly worthless. I don't know Mueller but I
have read a few books by Wolfram and although I don't agree with everything
he said I certainly wouldn't say his ideas are worthless. *



> *>  You have been on a mailing list with 2 out of 4 of these people for
> decades and you still pretend these ideas are alien to you.*
>

*Far from pretending these ideas are unknown to me I've been debating with
those 2 people for the better part of a decade, and I still think their
ideas are full of holes.   *

* > Now for the big one: see Russell's work in deducing the Schrodinger
> equation from pure mathematics. Surely, you will admit, if that can be
> done,*
>

*Deriving Schrodinger's Equation from pure mathematics means that
Schrodinger's Equation is consistent with the laws of logic and therefore
of mathematics. Well I should hope so!! There are an infinite number of
things that are consistent with the laws of mathematics and Schrodinger's
Equation happens to be one of them. But Schrodinger's equation is also
consistent with the laws of physics, and that could NOT have been predicted
from just the laws of mathematics.*


*>> 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?".*
>>
>
> *> But can these 3 energy states for half-spin particles be removed
> without making the laws themselves more complex?*
>

*The answer is probably yes. It is a fact that the laws of physics were
simpler before the muon and the tau were discovered, we had to make them
more complex to account for these extremely rare things, and as far as we
know the universe could've gotten along just fine without them.    *


*>> 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. *
>>
>
> *> There is another answer hardly anyone pays any attention to, which does
> not require the universe to begin in a low entropy state. It requires only
> that the maximum entropy state at a given period of time, increases more
> quickly than the universe can reach equilibrium with that maximum entropy
> state.*
>

*First of all, before you can use a word like "quickly" in your answer
you've got to explain why time has the fundamental properties that it has.
And it's easy to understand why tomorrow the universe will be in a higher
entropy state than it is today, it's because tomorrow will be in
a different  state than it is today (otherwise "today" and "tomorrow" would
mean the same thing) and there are vastly more ways something can be
disordered than ways than can be ordered. *

*But by using the exact same logic you must conclude that yesterday the
universe was in a higher entropy state than it is today, and that is not
true. You need to add another axiom to explain why there is an arrow of
time, one that cannot be deduced from pure mathematics, and it is "the
universe started out in a low entropy state, lower than anything that has
occurred since".*


> *> Note that this happens naturally in an expanding universe.*
>

*That is one possible result of a universe starting out in a low entropy
state.  *



> *>> 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.  *
>>
>
> *> I have a clear list of questions. You think they're unanswerable,*
>

*I don't know if those questions are answerable or not, but I do know that
you wouldn't have found your list of questions if you hadn't had access to
physical reality and knew nothing but pure mathematics. *

*> we can justify a belief in a mathematical reality empirically, by seeing
> what predictions such an ontology implies for our observations, and
> comparing those predictions against what we see.*
>

*Quantum Mechanics wasn't discovered by somebody deriving it from pure
mathematics, everybody was satisfied with Newtonian physics and Maxwell's
equations until technology improved enough that we could perform
experiments that we were unable to do before and we started to get some
very weird results.  Max Planck, the guy who invented the quantum in 1900,
said he did it in an act of desperation because it was the only thing that
enabled him to make predictions, and even then he thought it was just a
mathematical trick and did not indicate anything physical; it wasn't until
Einstein's 1905 paper on the Photoelectric Effect (the thing that got him
the Nobel prize) did it become clear that the quantum was physical and not
just a mathematical artifact. *

*  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.*
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>


>
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