Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 191 posts

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#141

Post by jblow »

whatshisface wrote: post #87
kybernetikos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even encoding schemes themselves have an information theoretic entropy level regardless of universe. Encoding schemes with less entropy can be considered more 'natural' - it's possible to come up with a measure of the 'naturalness' of encoding schemes in a pure mathematical sense without having to take into account entities beyond the mathematical realm.

If my understanding is right, a bijective function won't change the entropy of the strings it acts on. So, as long as I can find enough states in my grain of sand (quite possibly undoable, so imagine I'm talking about a few photons in space instead!), I can map them on to my universe and be no worse-off, from an information entropy standpoint.

A mapping is a computation.

If your mapping is very complex compared to the ostensible simulator, then the mapping is actually doing most of the simulation. So the simulation is not mostly running when the ostensible simulator runs, it is running when you perform the mapping.

If you are inside the universe being simulated and think you can do that mapping, it seems unlikely that there exist enough time and space for it.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#142

Post by westoncb »

naasking wrote: post #135
westoncb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact remains that no entity can successfully prove to another entity that it has inner experience, so how would proving you have subjectivity to _your own mind_ work? If you are trying to 'prove' subjectivity, in the sense of providing an argument for it, then you are missing the point: you already experience it directly by definition, so there is nothing to prove. > This is a bizarre and unsupportable statemen…

> If you are trying to 'prove' subjectivity, in the sense of providing an argument for it, then you are missing the point: you already experience it directly by definition, so there is nothing to prove. I can also perceive that glasses of water magically break and reconstitute pencils, in what we now know to be an optical illusion. "Self-evident" observations stand only so long as they are consistent with all other o…

> The premise that subjectivity exists is not consistent with everything else we know without introducing additional structure to the universe that has no purpose but to stroke our egos.

We must be using different definitions of subjectivity. I'm just referring to whatever one experiences at some point in time. Do you experience anything? Then you have subjectivity.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#143

Post by m3kw9 »

Meaning everything can be predicted if you know the equation and have enuough processing power. Problem is doing the calculation in the same universe where you are also predicting it also disrupts the calculation. Something in the line of the uncertainty principle

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#144

Post by iainmerrick »

I don't think any of this stuff is very meaningful or useful, but the title seems particularly cheeky.

The whole point of that catchphrase "shut up and calculate!" was supposed to be "stop speculating about things we can't prove or disprove and wouldn't have any direct impact on us if we could; focus on crunching the numbers and figuring out what's effective."

This whole "mathematical universe" thing seems like practically the definition of premature speculation! It's no more useful than ancient Greek philosophers speculating on the nature of the elements. Those other people over there drawing circles in the sand, now, they're getting somewhere.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#145

Post by westoncb »

naasking wrote: post #137
westoncb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (the universe is 'made' of math) seems to me like the most egregious error in the general outlook of contemporary scientifically-minded people—and one I made myself for many years. 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…

> 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. What does it really mean to "exist" at all? It's equally undefined. This question is…

> What matters for existence is the relationships between mathematical structures.

Well, that's what Structuralism is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(philosophy_of_s... —but it would be running in circles to say that Structuralism is the correct approach here since it would only be the correct approach if the universe is in fact made of mathematics (in other words, it would be assuming your conclusion in your argument).

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#146

Post by nurettin »

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…

I like the approach of declaring maths as the ultimate construct through which the universe can be modeled and understood. At best it will approach towards truth, such as Eratosthenes's calculation of Earth's shape and dimensions or Copernican derivations for the solar system, at worst it will help enlarge the definitions and constructs within mathematics.

So shut up. And calculate.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#147

Post by [deleted] »

yorwba wrote: post #139
goatlover wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get anything other than likely correlation from "Predictive coding in the interoceptive and control networks of the brain", and what does it have to do with physics or math? At most, you've provided a biological basis for consciousness. But why would any of that result in color, pleasure, etc?

How would anybody ever get anything other than likely correlation?

[deleted]

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#148

Post by naasking »

westoncb wrote: post #142
naasking wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are trying to 'prove' subjectivity, in the sense of providing an argument for it, then you are missing the point: you already experience it directly by definition, so there is nothing to prove. I can also perceive that glasses of water magically break and reconstitute pencils, in what we now know to be an optical illusion. "Self-evident" observations stand only so long as they are consistent with all other o…

> The premise that subjectivity exists is not consistent with everything else we know without introducing additional structure to the universe that has no purpose but to stroke our egos. We must be using different definitions of subjectivity. I'm just referring to whatever one experiences at some point in time. Do you experience anything? Then you have subjectivity.

> We must be using different definitions of subjectivity. I'm just referring to whatever one experiences at some point in time. Do you experience anything? Then you have subjectivity.

We are, because an ontology that takes subjectivity as primitive/irreducible is different than an ontology that reduces apparent subjectivity via third-party objective facts. You subscribe to the former, I subscribe to the latter. It is precisely this distinction that differentiates materialists and dualists in the philosophy of mind.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#149

Post by naasking »

westoncb wrote: post #145
naasking wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What does it really mean to "exist" at all? It's equally undefined. This question is…

> What matters for existence is the relationships between mathematical structures. Well, that's what Structuralism is ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(philosophy_of_s... —but it would be running in circles to say that Structuralism is the correct approach here since it would only be the correct approach if the universe is in fact made of mathematics (in other words, it would be assuming your conclusion…

> (in other words, it would be assuming your conclusion in your argument).

To be convincing, it's not necessary to claim that any particular position is definitely true, I should only need to demonstrate that said position solves open problems that have not or cannot be solved by other positions while being of comparable complexity, conceptually.

This is indeed the case for something like the mathematical universe over naturalism. There may yet be a comprehensive, unproblematic account for mathematics in naturalism, but we certainly don't have it yet. That's a huge, gaping wound in our fundamental knowledge.

The mathematical universe, by contrast, easily grounds mathematics and matter by encompassing both in the former.

Re: Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

#150

Post by justinpombrio »

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…

> Remove the colors and how would you know about shape, extension, mass?

The same way that blind people do?

> Colors, smells, pains, etc. are not part of the mathematical or physical description, so you can't simply dismiss the problem of qualia by labeling it as dualism. Where do the colors, tastes, feels come from?

I'm curious: what is a concrete answer that you would find satisfying? Even if it's unrealistic, or would only work in a different universe, what sort of answer are you looking for?

Post reply on HN