[ExI] Simulating the brain (was Question for the psych squad?)

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Wed Jul 12 14:25:13 UTC 2017


On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 11:46 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:



> *>…* question: which​ is more fundamental, physics or mathematics?  I
>> don't know the answer to any of these questions I'm just asking.​  John
>> K Clark​
>
>
>
> ​> ​
> Math is more fundamental and more real in my mind.
>

​At one time it was to my mind too, but now I'm not so sure. And after all
my mind is just the way matter behaves when it is organized in a
johnkclarkian way.​


> ​> ​
> Physics exists as a way to approximate the perfection of mathematics.
> That whole 10^80 atoms in the universe thing seems so confining and
> approximate, never liked it.  The math can soar with the eagles, no need to
> worry over the chronon, the Planck length, any of that icky real-universe
> stuff.
>

​
True, but that icky stuff can be important. The
​ ​
Taylor series expansion of PI doesn't
​really ​contain
 enough information to calculate the
​ ​
10^100^100^100 digit of PI
​ (or even the first digit) because it ​takes for granted something it very
much needs, matter.
The
​ ​
Taylor series
​ doesn't explain how ​to produce matter or its equivalent energy (by way
of E=MC^2), and nobody has ever observed a calculation being made without
matter or, as far as I know, even proposed a theory about how that might
occur. Perhaps the Taylor series is just the way atoms that
are organized as brains that obey the laws of physics think
about
​something they invented called ​
PI.
​

I have another question, we say a meteorologist's mathematical model of a
hurricane
​is a approximation of a real physical hurricane, so why don't we also say
a mathematical circle is a approximation of a real physical circle made by ​
​a blacksmith?​

​I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here so ​m
aybe I was right the first time and math really is more fundamental than
physics, but it's not as obviously true as I once thought.

 John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170712/61b017f0/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list