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

[John Clark]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 11:03 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*>>> Change is possible in mathematical objects, or universes, or
>>> computational functions, but change is always in respect to something.*
>>>
>>
>> *>> Yes, and we call that "something" a " Physical Object".*
>>
>
> *>No it is with respect to time,*
>

*Give me a fundamental definition of the word "time" or even "change" using
just pure mathematics and without using any ideas from physics, I'd really
like to hear that!   *


> * >>> Think of a plot of a graph of y=f(x) on an X-Y coordinate plane. The
>>> entire graph is static, and yet, we can say that f(x) changes with respect
>>> to x.*
>>>
>>
>> *>> But "x" could represent everything or it might represent nothing,
>> there is no way to tell. And both the symbols x and f(x) never change, they
>> just sit there in a book. Neither symbol can add 2+2, and the symbol "cow"
>> cannot produce milk. *
>>
>
> *> You deleted my point above bot p(t) could define the position of a
> particle with respect to time.*
>

*I deleted it because you used 2 gibberish words, I understand nothing but
pure abstract mathematics, so what are these things you call "time" and
"position"? *

> However with respect to t it does change.


*What is "time" and what is "change"? I want these things unambiguously
defined using just the ZF axioms and the Axiom of Choice. *

*>>a Turing Machine can be a real physical object and not just an
>> abstraction described in a book. *
>>
>
> *> That both the laws of physics and the properties of Turing machines can
> be described in books is a red herring.*
>

*The fundamental difference between a book and a Turing Machine is that one
can change but the other cannot, so one can perform a calculation but the
other cannot. And that's also why Nvidia is the most valuable company in
the world and Penguin Random House is not.*


*>>>> Apparently Mueller is as silly as Marchal, like him the man believes
>>>> that it is of profound significance that physics cannot give even a
>>>> probabilistic answer to the question " if 2 perfect copies of you are made
>>>> and one goes to Washington and one goes to Moscow  which city will you find
>>>> yourself in?". Well of course physics can't give an answer to that because
>>>> not every string of words that happens to have a question mark at the end
>>>> is a question, sometimes it's just gibberish. How do I know this thought
>>>> experiment is ridiculous? Because even after the experiment has been
>>>> completed nobody can say what the correct answer should have been. It's
>>>> amazing how good personal pronouns are at hiding nonsense, if instead of
>>>> asking which city will you see Mueller and Marchal had asked which city
>>>> will John Clark see then that would NOT have been nonsense, it would've had
>>>> an answer, and the answer would have been "both". *
>>>>
>>>
>>> *>>> Add Tegmark to your list of silly people, for he says the exact
>>> same thing in Our Mathematical Universe:*
>>>
>>
>>> *"It gradually hit me that this illusion of randomness business really
>>> wasn’t specific to quantum mechanics at all. Suppose that some future
>>> technology allows you to be cloned while you’re sleeping, and that your two
>>> copies are placed in rooms numbered 0 and 1. When they wake up, they’ll
>>> both feel that the room number they read is completely unpredictable and
>>> random."-- Max Tegmark in “Our Mathematical Universe” (2014)*
>>>
>>
>> *>> And I agree with Tegmark's above statement 100%. What I very strongly
>> disagree with is the statement "it's impossible to predict what number
>> "YOU" will see" is a profundity. It's a silly thing to say because in this
>> context the word "you" is undefined. *
>>
>
> *> If you agree with Tegmark, then you agree with Marchal*
>

*NO!! The way Marchal threw around personal pronouns made it very clear
that the man LITERALLY didn't know what he was talking about, I don't agree
with everything Tegmark said in his book but, unlike Marchal, he
did LITERALLY understand the words he was using. *


> *>>> **Standish made some basic assumptions about the nature of
>>> observation, and then showed how one can, starting only from those
>>> assumptions, derive the Schrödinger equation deductively, (not
>>> empirically).*
>>>
>>
>> *>> If a conclusion is based on an observation, and his is, then it is an
>> empirical conclusion because the Dictionary on my iMac says "empirical"
>> means "verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure
>> logic". *
>>
>
> *> The derivation is deductive, the verification of course is empirical.*
>

*You can deduce an infinite number of things from the axioms of pure
mathematics, that is to say they are mathematically correct, but almost
none of them have anything to do with physics, and it would be impossible
to find the very few that do without experimentation. Ptolemy's geocentric
theory of astronomy was absolutely correct mathematically, but dead wrong
physically. *

> Think about it like string theory. No one ever has seen a string, it is a
> premise from which string theorists start, and from that assumption they
> try to deduce properties of physics which they can connect to observations
> of our universe.
>

*And string theory has been stuck in a rut for decades because it has been
unable to make one single prediction about the physical universe. No, I
take that back, it did make one prediction but it was wrong, it predicted
that the universe would have 10 spatial dimensions, unfortunately it only
has 3. So to patch up the theory they had to add a whole lot of bells and
whistles about 7 dimensions being very small and tied up into 10^500
different types of **hyper complex knots. And it still can't make a
testable prediction. M**aybe someday it will improve but right now string
theory is not physics, it's just mathematics.   *

*> >> The more things are clumped together within a given volume, the lower
>>> the entropy of that system is.*
>>
>>
>> *>>That is true for some types of entropy, but the exact opposite of that
>> is true for entropy that is produced by gravity, and gravitational entropy
>> is BY FAR the dominant form of entropy in the universe.  *
>>
>
> *> Could you explain this more or provide links or references?*
>

*Roger Penrose (and others) have calculated what he calls the **entropy
budget of the observable universe. In the following chart he measures
entropy in units of the Boltzmann constant .*


*Source of Entropy* *Estimated Entropy (kB)* *Description*
*Stars & Planets* *approx 10^{80}* *Mostly thermal entropy from nuclear
fusion.*
*Neutrinos* *approx 10^{88}* *Leftover particles from the Big Bang.*
*Photons (CMB)* *approx 10^{89}* *The Cosmic Microwave Background
radiation.*
*Black Holes* *approx 10^{104}* *Mostly Supermassive Black Holes at
galactic center*
*You may also find this useful: *

*Bekenstein-Hawking entropy*
<http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Bekenstein-Hawking_entropy>


*>>  When you take gravity into consideration entropy doesn't behave in the
>> same way it does in high school chemistry. The Bekenstein-Hawking
>> gravitational entropy of something is proportional to the SQUARE of its
>> mass and is proportional to its AREA, not its volume. They aren't opposing
>> forces; More Area = More Entropy  and Less Area = Less Entropy.*
>> *Your confusion may arise because in everyday life if you pack more mass
>> into the same volume the density goes up, but for a black hole, as mass (M)
>> increases the volume grows so much faster (M^3) that the average density
>> drops. The largest known black hole has a mass of 66 billion suns, but its
>> density is less than that of water and is only slightly denser than the air
>> that we breathe. *
>>
>
> *>> I know it increases by the square of the radius. That's not at issue.
> The issue is that the same mass in a larger volume of space, still has a
> larger bound on entropy than the same mass in a smaller volume of space.
> Paste the Bekenstein bound formula here and prove me wrong.*
>

*The Bekenstein Bound is a physics law that sets a limit on the maximum
amount of information (entropy) that can be contained within a given area
(not the volume) of space. The formula is S ≤ 2πKRE/hc  where R is the
radius, E is the total energy (including mass), and π,K,h and c are all
constants. But it's important to understand the difference between the
Entropy Bound (a container's capacity) and the Actual Entropy (how much
stuff is actually inside the container). *

*A large, spread-out cloud of gas has a very high Entropy Bound because its
large area is capable of holding a lot of information, a.k.a. entropy, but
its Actual Entropy could be quite low if mass of the gas is small and
smoothly distributed. A Black Hole of the same mass has a much lower
Entropy Bound than the large cloud because its radius R is small and thus
so is its area, BUT small though it is the Black Hole has maxed out that
bound. So if you want a given amount of mass to encode as much information
as is physically possible then you'll need to concentrate that mass until
it turns into a Black Hole.*

*>>>  in the early universe (say when it was a quark-gluon plasma) was
>>> likely at or near a maximum entropy state (for that epoch of the universe).*
>>
>>
>> *>> No! If you want to calculate the entropy of the universe during the
>> quark-gluon plasma era, or any other error for that matter, the positions
>> of quarks and gluons is of trivial importance; the important thing is the
>> gravitational entropy, it's about 10 trillion times larger than all other
>> sources of entropy combined. Nearly all the entropy in the universe is
>> contained within black holes, the super massive variety being the most
>> important. *
>>
>
> *> There is one sense in which I can see that as true. But then there is
> another sense in which I question it.Consider that the energy density of
> our entire observable universe is identical to the density of a black hole
> of the same size as the observable universe.*
>

*If you're talking about the entire universe then you need General
Relativity and in General Relativity the very concept of energy becomes
dodgy because in that theory energy is not globally conserved. Noether’s
Theorem says that every symmetry has a conserved quantity. Energy is the
conserved quantity associated with time-translation symmetry, the idea that
the laws of physics don't change from one moment to the next. But in an
expanding universe, spacetime itself is changing. *

*A good example of that is the cosmological redshift, after photons travel
huge distances they shift towards the red end of the spectrum which,
according to quantum mechanics, means they have less energy. So where did
that energy go?  It didn't go anywhere, it's just gone.*


*John K Clark*
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