How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#21

Post by jerf » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #14

I'm not a physicist, nor a philosopher, and certainly not a mathematician - so maybe what I'm going to write will seem both naive and probably wrong, but I'm doing it anyhow. In this Quanta interview, Amanda Gefter writes: "Leibniz argued (against Newton) that there’s no fixed backdrop to the universe, no “stuff” of space; space is just a handy way of describing relationships. This relational framework captured Smoli…

The "six degrees of separation" arises because the graph has a particular shape that gives it that property, such as the mostly-power-lawish shape that human relationships have. It is not a general characteristic of graphs. While we know this model is too stupid-simple to be the whole story, if you imagine the universe as a naive 3d grid graph with nodes at evenly-space intervals where everything takes place, there is no "six degrees of separation" effect; distances between one node and another would be the Manhattan distance, with no N-node shortcut to another point available on average. (Already we see why this graph can't be our universe; our universe does not use the Manhattan distance metric for distance.)

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#22

Post by newsoul2019 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

mitchty wrote: post #20

newsoul2019 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence? If so, does the perception require consciousness? Is consciousness constrained to the universe, or orthogonal to it?

No, all you need is to observe things. Be it a simple detector or conscious observer, you've extracted information from the environment. The observation implies existence, what observed it is inconsequential.

So is entropy really about energy, or information? Or is there any difference.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#23

Post by state_less » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

newsoul2019 wrote: post #9

inopinatus wrote: post #5

All matter is information, all information is functional, and perception is therefore the lazy evaluation of the universe.

Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence? If so, does the perception require consciousness? Is consciousness constrained to the universe, or orthogonal to it?

> Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence?

If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it. So there was existence and no perception. Perception appears to have evolved out of existence. The story of the big bang is sort of neat. It looks like many fundamental particles didn't exist until the time was right for them to come into being.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#24

Post by jonmc12 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

> But if your goal is to discover new, deeper laws, you need to mix with philosophers again.

Some reading in this direction:

"How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find Special Relativity", Norton

"Range", Epstein. Ch 1 discusses Bool's influence on Shannon for the discovery of information theory. Ch 5 includes anecdotes and research for "Thinking Outside Experience", including the methods of analogy used by Keppler regarding theories of planetary motion.

> Then there was this pragmatic turn, where the dominant mode of physics became anti-foundational, anti-philosophy.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#25

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

state_less wrote: post #23

newsoul2019 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence? If so, does the perception require consciousness? Is consciousness constrained to the universe, or orthogonal to it?

> Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence? If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it. So there was existence and no perception. Perception appears to have evolved out of existence. The story of the big bang is sort of neat. It looks like many fundamental particles didn't exist until the time was right for them to come into being.

> If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it.

That would depend on the definition of perception. Does a nail perceive being struck by the hammer? To say otherwise would presume that humanity's form awareness is somehow special, and not simply a more complicated interaction between ourselves and the universe than is the nail's with the hammer.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#26

Post by criloz2 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

I have been working the past two years trying to understand how would be possible to create a simulation of the universe and a lot of what Lee Smolin says resonates with some of the conclusion that I have got at the moment

for example, he says that the wave function describes an ensemble of possible states of a system, example an electron, and this is equal for all the other electrons of the universe, I will more specific and say that there is a Functor that describes all the possible states of the surface of any observable system and it behaves as a wave function when that system tends to the stability. (this can be related with holographic theory)

Lee Smolin that the universe is looking for maximum variability, which I think is not correct, the universe is looking for maximum stability in all matter hierarchies because it allows describing any possible surface with a Functor, and makes the simulation more easy to carry.

this is big because it means that is not necessary to simulate every electron on the universe to create a good simulation of itself, or every atom, or every molecule, or even so every planet, imagine the natural numbers, we don't need to create all the sets of the natural number in memory in order to use them and we can peek at any moment at any region of the natural numbers, while the memory support it, and we will be able to make any computation over them, so why the electron can not work like that, or any kind of matter?

those functors, are passed between two systems when a system observe to another system using what we have called photons. also when the universe can't describe the surface of the system with a functor that can easily be transported to the observer, this system appears as a black hole.

I am 100% sure that we live in a simulation, not necessarily made by "gods", but it could be a fundamental way in which the universe behave

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#27

Post by the8472 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #14

I'm not a physicist, nor a philosopher, and certainly not a mathematician - so maybe what I'm going to write will seem both naive and probably wrong, but I'm doing it anyhow. In this Quanta interview, Amanda Gefter writes: "Leibniz argued (against Newton) that there’s no fixed backdrop to the universe, no “stuff” of space; space is just a handy way of describing relationships. This relational framework captured Smoli…

That sounds like the configuration-spaces in barbour's timeless physics

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#28

Post by state_less » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #25

state_less wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the universe require perception in order for there to be existence? If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it. So there was existence and no perception. Perception appears to have evolved out of existence. The story of the big bang is sort of neat. It looks like many fundamental particles didn't exist until the time was right for them to come into being.

> If you use big bang theory, the universe existed prior to observers perceiving it. That would depend on the definition of perception. Does a nail perceive being struck by the hammer? To say otherwise would presume that humanity's form awareness is somehow special, and not simply a more complicated interaction between ourselves and the universe than is the nail's with the hammer.

I suspect you might be right, but it could water down the term. In such a case, everything is perceiving all the time.

I was using the more traditional definition of perception.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#29

Post by motohagiography » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

Kind of an interesting limit question though. Like what could we know about an instrument from a tune played on it, or from a collection of sheet music that may or may not have been written for it?

The instrument can be thought of very loosely as representing a monad where force, reason, intent and all these other things go in and then "phenomena of type music" comes out. If the universe were monadic the way he describes, there is probably some information theory-meets-ontological limit that has to do with whether you can ever get "upstream" of these monads, of which our universe is the effect.

Other than perhaps being able to discover and reproduce them.

Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

#30

Post by consumer451 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #10

consumer451 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Numberphile YT channel managed to get a rare interview with Mr. Simons. https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0

That’s the same link I posted.

I'm sorry, I should have checked. I would delete my comment if there was not another interesting child.