<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Oct 7, 2026 at 3:51 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="4"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>>> </span>John Conway didn't know all the properties of his Game of Life, that has become a famous example of not knowing what a system will do before it does it. Mandelbrot didn't know all the properties of fractals. </font></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div class="gmail_attr"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="4"><br></font></blockquote></div></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div class="gmail_attr"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i>><span class="gmail_default" style="">></span> But note the two examples you gave are mathematical objects--the very kind that Godel would say were discovered rather than created.</i></font></blockquote></div></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div class="gmail_attr"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="4"><br><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Are they? I thought they were computer algorithms. They can probably be represented mathematically, but that doesn't make them 'mathematical objects'. Does it? </font></blockquote><div><br></div><div> </div><div><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:transparent">Conway<span class="gmail_default" style=""> and </span></span><span style="background-color:transparent">Mandelbrot<span class="gmail_default" style=""> used mathematics to described something, but something that can't exist without physics. For either of those things to come into existence you need something that can perform a calculation, a physical computer or a biological brain. That's why I think physics is more fundamental than mathematics. </span></span></font></b></div><div><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default" style=""><br></span></span></font></b></div><div><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default" style="">John K Clark </span></span></font></b></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
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