John Wheeler saw the tear in reality • Hacker News Board

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#111

Post by ricksunny » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

PTOB wrote: post #75

ricksunny wrote: post #48

It's interesting we have such receptivity in the HN community here on physicist-proposed metaphysics (yay!), yet in an entirely similar light - an article covering physicist Roger Penrose's 'microtubules' on HN a couple days ago, we get the reflexive "but experts say this is bunk' treatment. Personally I don't know from Sam on either hypothesis. I'm just wondering for all things seeming equal, when do we get receptiv…

The real question - which I do not intend to answer - is, "Are the same HN users who are receptive to the metaphysics here also providing the 'experts disagree' retorts?" If we were to categorize the different mindsets of HN users and study their reactions, we might be able to treat the whole as an organism and the different groups as organelles. Then we poke it with sticks for science!

I certainly like the organism / organelles metaphor, referencing it (in response to an adjacent comment about whether the community could be treated as a monolith or not). 'meta-ganism'?

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#112

Post by ricksunny » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:36 AM UTC

szvsw wrote: post #88

meowkit wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the other comments point out... most things are dynamical systems that respond to chaos theory (small inputs, big divergence in output). Many of the possible states can be reduced down to two or so poles (e.g. skepticism vs acceptance vs outrage vs indifference in our potential responses) Trying to determine when or why a dynamical system like this goes to a specific state is Sisyphean if I put a word to it. Novel…

This is probably one of the better descriptions of forum interaction (mid-size and up - ie past the point where you recognize some meaningful percentage of handles in any given thread)/social media that I have ever read. Much better said than my sibling comment! It does seem like there are often strange attractors (loosely speaking), steady-states, collapse states etc that the heterogenous commenting population displ…

I also really like that description of forum interaction. Sisyphean it might be to get to the bottom of it all, but isn't this the sort of thing marketers spend a pretty penny to attempt to accomplish? One could prepare a battery of A|B tests around articles covering a ceratin concept, change things like time of post, quality of formatting), maybe space them out over the course of a year to avoid repetitious exposure, and see which pole the comment base gravitates to.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#113

Post by joquarky » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:37 AM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #76

qingcharles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I have a totally unhinged belief that it might be possible to emulate the universe inside the universe itself.

It's frankly not all that clear what this even means. When cosmologists talk about the "universe," the generally mean the observable universe, which is all events that have ever happened in the past light-cone of the observer. Since space is expanding, that is constantly changing, with the expectation being that at some point, from the perspective of anything in our current galactic supercluster, everything else will…

There's no point simulating a universe that lacks agents. When the last agent dies, the simulation should halt.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#114

Post by gnz11 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:45 AM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #37

ricksunny wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken some gaming physics engines work this way too, am I mistaken? Something akin to avoiding calculating the details of a voxel until it is observed by the gamer?

Which raises the question, if a tree falls in-game, but only non-playable characters are there. Does the falling tree make a sound when it hits the ground?

Sound is only perceived, it’s not intrinsic to the event itself.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#115

Post by joshuamcginnis » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:53 AM UTC

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

4. This cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial.

5. To create the universe, this cause must possess intentionality and decision-making capabilities.

6. Therefore, the cause of the universe is a personal, immaterial being: God.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#116

Post by Vecr » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:57 AM UTC

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #115

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 4. This cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. 5. To create the universe, this cause must possess intentionality and decision-making capabilities. 6. Therefore, the cause of the universe is a personal, immaterial being: God.

Well, if you accept the argument it only gets you to an infinite or at least very large number of objects that meet the stated requirements. Not one object in particular.

And here "object" is quite vague, I would assume almost all of the specifications would be unrecognizable as such to a human.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#117

Post by saulpw » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:59 AM UTC

hcarnot wrote: post #68

The source of his confusion is believing that all observers must share a single reality. This is not the case: as an observer of event A=a, you only share the same reality as all other observers who also measure A=a (or anything downstream of A=a). If some observer comes along and measures A=b, they split away from your reality. Only the version of that observer that saw A=a stays with you. There is no "remote synchr…

Does this make the Law of Attraction valid, then? That what we focus on determines the reality that we traverse.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#118

Post by joshuamcginnis » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:59 AM UTC

Vecr wrote: post #116

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #115

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 4. This cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. 5. To create the universe, this cause must possess intentionality and decision-making capabilities. 6. Therefore, the cause of the universe is a personal, immaterial being: God.

Well, if you accept the argument it only gets you to an infinite or at least very large number of objects that meet the stated requirements. Not one object in particular. And here "object" is quite vague, I would assume almost all of the specifications would be unrecognizable as such to a human.

I'm more than willing to volley these ideas with you but I'm not following. I didn't once use the word "object" so I don't follow your refutation here. Could you elaborate? Are you saying that my conclusion collapses to a single "cause" (which I'm calling God and you're calling an object?)

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#119

Post by perryizgr8 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 2:00 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #9

> It is not a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. It’s more palatable when we consider not the observation, but the information that was collapsed out of the superimposed states at the time of the observation. The universe uses lazy evaluation, and things only happen when they have effects on other things, and what we see as past depends on what we observe now, as both need to be consistent with each other…

> The universe uses lazy evaluation

That's a crazy assertion to me. Is this something proven using experiments or your conjecture? I would think a pebble floating in deep space, not interacting with anything, would still exist. If you go out there you would see it having a position and velocity. That information has to be preserved and processed continuously to ensure that an observer after 10000s of years still sees a consistent state.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#120

Post by Vecr » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 2:05 AM UTC

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #118

Vecr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you accept the argument it only gets you to an infinite or at least very large number of objects that meet the stated requirements. Not one object in particular. And here "object" is quite vague, I would assume almost all of the specifications would be unrecognizable as such to a human.

I'm more than willing to volley these ideas with you but I'm not following. I didn't once use the word "object" so I don't follow your refutation here. Could you elaborate? Are you saying that my conclusion collapses to a single "cause" (which I'm calling God and you're calling an object?)

No, by the Principle of Multiple Explanations, every "object" that satisfies your conditions is equally viable, everything being equal.

You can slap a hypercomputational simplicity prior on that if you want, but that probably militates against the object being God, because I wouldn't expect God to be "simple" under that definition.