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Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

arxiv.org

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Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#121

Post by jlg23 »

westoncb wrote: post #114
jlg23 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just because we admit an external reality that is supposed to imply there is no internal reality? Do we? Were? I don't see that in the essay. > This is the typical omission made by the many people who have formed similar arguments to Tegmark. Do you have any links? I'd like to read more.

> Do we? Were? I don't see that in the essay. Actually, I think you are correct—I misread part of it the first time. He is pretty meticulous about saying this only applies to 'external physical reality,' and the only reference to an internal part is in the excerpt I gave above about the sensation of self-awareness. However, it's a similar kind of trick. He goes ahead and makes statements like: > Everything in our wor…

>> Everything in our world is purely mathematical — including you.

> —which isn't really so significant if you are implicitly ignoring any interior aspects.

You are quoting the quite catchy climax of the introduction. The paragraph this quote ends with starts with "So here is the crux of my argument." The author is trying to pave the way for the actual argument and a context-free quote of the buildup does not help the discourse.

>> Do you have any links? I'd like to read more.

> I've already spent far too much time on this thread

I am sorry to have wasted your time with requests for foundations of your claims.

> Edit: also: this is just a recent manifestation of the idea, which has been around at least since Plato.

Which aspect? I actually find it very refreshing to read an essay that goes down to foundations of philosophy. If your valuable time allows, could you maybe find the time to explicitly point out congruent arguments in philosophy "since Plato"?

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#122

Post by omazurov »

The tale of the frog and the bird may be good for a less mature audience but here we can really go with a richer analogy: the two views correspond to how a virtual machine is seen from within and from the environment in which it runs. I prefer this analogy to the "abstract mathematical structure, an immutable entity existing outside of space and time"because it not only allows to comprehend how space and time could emerge within that VM and not only what it means to exist outside that emergent space and time, but also that that outside environment could have its own space and time and in turn be just another VM, totally beyond our reach but not inconceivable.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#123

Post by westoncb »

jlg23 wrote: post #121
westoncb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we? Were? I don't see that in the essay. Actually, I think you are correct—I misread part of it the first time. He is pretty meticulous about saying this only applies to 'external physical reality,' and the only reference to an internal part is in the excerpt I gave above about the sensation of self-awareness. However, it's a similar kind of trick. He goes ahead and makes statements like: > Everything in our wor…

>> Everything in our world is purely mathematical — including you. > —which isn't really so significant if you are implicitly ignoring any interior aspects. You are quoting the quite catchy climax of the introduction. The paragraph this quote ends with starts with "So here is the crux of my argument." The author is trying to pave the way for the actual argument and a context-free quote of the buildup does not help th…

> The author is trying to pave the way for the actual argument and a context-free quote of the buildup does not help the discourse.

The reason I quoted it is to show that he makes assertions meant to sound as if they include interior aspects of reality, even though he says previously in the article that he is only talking about external aspects. There is nothing that happens in that paragraph which affects that fact at all.

To be more clear, the pattern is like: Let us redefine the universe to just refer to exterior aspects of the universe. Then for the rest of the article he can just talk about anything and the reader is supposed to call to mind the initial disclaimer. Statements like "Everything in our world is purely mathematical — including you" gain their force from the fact that he stated his limitation only early on, so that 'everything' has been redefined to mean something else.

> I am sorry to have wasted your time with requests for foundations of your claims.

If I were deferring justification that would be another matter. Instead, I was declining to give yet more elaboration of which there's plenty in this thread already.

> If your valuable time allows, could you maybe find the time to explicitly point out congruent arguments in philosophy "since Plato"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

The common thread is that folks since Plato have tried to make arguments that general categories of things are more real than particular things themselves. The means of going about this have been various. The author's particular tack is called 'mathematical platonism': https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#125

Post by xelxebar »

wolfgke wrote: post #113
kingkawn wrote: post #94

a Subset cannot have greater cardinality than the set it derives from. Subjective existence cannot be reduced to Math because it is our explorations in subjectivity that led to math’s invention and refinement

> a Subset cannot have greater cardinality than the set it derives from. I am not completely certain in the subtleties of non-standard set theory, but at least if we replace the axiom of Choice (AC) by the axiom of Determinacy (AD) - which is perfectly fine, though it is less common to do mathematics in this system - we can partition the real line R by an equivalence relation that has more equivalence classes than el…

Oh cool. Thanks for sharing this!

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#126

Post by goatlover »

titzer wrote: post #80
westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

> It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. Do they? Everyone is entitled to their unquestioned assumptions as long as they state them outright and describe their parameters. I have yet to see dualists (which ultimately is at the base of this whole line of argumentation) admit that they posit subjective experience _without evidence_, since they equate asking quest…

Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences?

Here's another problem. You know about the physical/mathematical properties of the world by abstracting away from our experience of a world with color, sound, etc in it. Remove the colors and how would you know about shape, extension, mass?

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#127

Post by eli_gottlieb »

westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

Look, as far as I know, I definitely have an actively inferring predictive-coding central nervous system, so I know I'm in here. But you keep insisting you're a ghost, so I can't really be sure you're not a zombie. After all, I only get access to your behavior, so I can't see that you've got a proper predictive system in there at all.

Whenever I try to cut you open and get at it, you keep yelling about qualia and human-rights violations.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#128

Post by eli_gottlieb »

goatlover wrote: post #126
titzer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. Do they? Everyone is entitled to their unquestioned assumptions as long as they state them outright and describe their parameters. I have yet to see dualists (which ultimately is at the base of this whole line of argumentation) admit that they posit subjective experience _without evidence_, since they equate asking quest…

Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences? Here's another problem. You know about the physical/mathematical properties of the world by abstracting away from our experience of a world with color, sound…

>Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences?

Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain, actually. Sure, it doesn't explain everything, but it pretty well dispels the intuition that makes p-zombies conceivable and explains the vast majority of the empirical and phenomenological facts to be explained.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#129

Post by westoncb »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #127
westoncb wrote: post #49

It baffles me that people ignore the fact that they have subjectivity when making these claims. It makes a certain amount of sense since science itself aims to remove any taint of subjectivity in its practice, so folks who want to be thoroughly 'scientific' in other aspects of their lives (e.g. their personal philosophies of reality) carry over over this ideal. But it's also a contradiction since science scientific m…

Look, as far as I know, I definitely have an actively inferring predictive-coding central nervous system, so I know I'm in here. But you keep insisting you're a ghost, so I can't really be sure you're not a zombie. After all, I only get access to your behavior, so I can't see that you've got a proper predictive system in there at all. Whenever I try to cut you open and get at it, you keep yelling about qualia and hum…

> But you keep insisting you're a ghost

I think there has been some miscommunication if what you got from my comment is an insistence that I (and others) are less than what's suggested in the article. What I'm speaking of is strictly addition. If anything, the ghost metaphor what be more applicable to someone claiming 'we are only' abstraction X (e.g. mathematics). Or Maybe I'm not following your intention there.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#130

Post by westoncb »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #128
goatlover wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences? Here's another problem. You know about the physical/mathematical properties of the world by abstracting away from our experience of a world with color, sound…

>Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labelling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from? What sort of math would result in those experiences? Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain, actually. Sure, it doesn't explain everything , but it pretty well dispels the int…

> Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain, actually. Sure, it doesn't explain everything, but it pretty well dispels the intuition that makes p-zombies conceivable and explains the vast majority of the empirical and phenomenological facts to be explained.

Could you point to something related to predictive coding and control networks explaining anything phenomenological (or give an argument)? From what I can tell the two are completely orthogonal.

Edit: I should add that my suspicion is you are mistaking a system which is isomorphic to relationships between phenomenological entities with something which could account for the presence of the entities themselves.

I would recommend checking out the comment here from user 'theoh' on the "relations are what matters" perspective.

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