Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

If you really consider the issue closely, you'll see it depends on not overlooking certain dark corners of it which you can sort of ignore and assume to not contain contradictions—but they're there! And once you see them, it's hard to unsee them: what in the world would it mean for a desk to 'made' of mathematics—it's nonsensical. I think programmers are especially susceptible to this mistake because they're used to using mathematical descriptions to generate things, but even there, the idea that the math is doing any generating is a bias of our perspective since we're focused on the math; what's actually going on is a physical process involving silicon and plastic and metals etc., which can also be described mathematically, but the leap to being math is an unfounded step which could probably be predicted by the fact that that's where our focus lies.

It also begins to look kind of silly when you consider how human math is: it's an outgrowth of an evolved mental faculty. Cognition is certainly impressive relative to the other things we and various animals are able to do—but it's probably still in the same category of our other faculties like the olfactory, visual, tactile etc.—and unlikely to be involved in the literal fabrication of the universe.

It's not so much that chaotic systems can not be calculated but instead that enough precision of starting conditions can't be obtained to ensure an accurate result (for example, highly non-linear systems). The double pendulum system is a perfect example where computation is simple yet the system is still chaotic.

(My favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

I do not say that to belittle physicists. Not at all, I have the utmost respect for what they do.

But as they dig deeper and deeper, what they come up with sounds like the universe is a pretty strange place to be. Personally, I am okay with that idea, because, if I look closely enough, I have been living all my life in a world that does not really make sense. But it is really strange, nevertheless.

But it's also a contradiction since science scientific methodology demands we check our results empirically: the fact that you have subjectivity (i.e. that qualia exist) and what it's like, is the most direct empirical fact we have access to and which needs reconciling in any discussion of the universe's constitution.

I think people sort of push this point aside either by saying that qualia/subjectivity could be generated by math (or a computational process), and that's what really matters. But we have no examples of abstract math generating anything; physical processes generate things and we use math to influence their behavior—but that's it! And furthermore, even if math generated subjectivity—it's still there in all of its un-mathematical obviousness at the end of the day.

I've yet to see an argument in favor of math having higher ontological status than this which wasn't every bit as unrestrainedly imaginative and unfounded as Plato's 'ideal forms'. I would expect a thoroughgoing adherent to scientific methodology to instead say something on the lines of, "this is outside the domain of science to judge one way or the other; the most we can say is the idea that reality is made of math is one untestable hypothesis among many whose probabilities of correctness each approach zero by dint of their many peers."