How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#32Typo: The linked paper [1] refers to Monodology and Monadology
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#33I'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…
There is a very good introduction - 20 lectures of 45 minutes - to loop quantum gravity by Carlo Rovelli [1] who worked together with Lee Smolin on that topic. In a nutshell loop quantum gravity is about triangulating space with tetrahedra, then representing this triangulation as a graph - one vertex per tetrahedron, one edge between every two tetrahedra sharing a face - with the edges labeled with SU(2) transformations describing the change in orientation due to spacetime curvature as one moves from one tetrahedron to a neighboring one, and of course the dynamics of this description. I hope I got this right, I am totally not a physicist. There is also a very good talk for the general public focusing on the nature of time by Rovelli [2] in case the lecture series is to long or technical.
Well, I initially started writing this comment because of the quote »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.«. According to Rovelli - he talks about this in the lecture series mentioned above - Newton was fully aware [3] that his notion of space and time are just abstract notions and that space and time are fundamentally relational. But due to the success of using abstract space and time in science and engineering this got somewhat forgotten and those abstract notions were and are considered much more fundamental than they are. This in lectures two (space) and ten (time) which both provide an overview about the philosophical evolution of the concepts and should be - at least the first part of the lectures - accessible without [almost] any background.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp4fpwl9loQ&list=PLwLvxaPjGH...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6rWqJhDv7M
[3] I just skipped a bit through the second lecture on space and I may have somewhat overstated Newton's awareness but I will leave this as first written. It is more like he was aware that we only have access to relational space and time but we can infer from that a true abstract notion of space and time. I really recommend to just watch the lecture for a more nuanced picture, it starts out very non-technical and this very discussion.
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#34I 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 spe…
I will extend me a little and say that this is also important for AI, a good AI should be able to detect those "systems" and automatically transform then in wave functions
example when we walk, we tend to transform our walk patterns to a wave function, till some unexpected change in the ambient appears, this frees our brain and allow us to think in another thing. try to walk with a pattern that does not tend to stability, while that you will never be able to use your brain to do another task, just like you brain wants stability the universe also want it.
this phenomenon not only happens when we walk, we do this all the time at multiples level in the hierarchy of the mental models that we use for describing the world or our actions, which some times result in bad predictions but allow us to the think in other complex problems on a higher level of abstractions.
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#35I 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 spe…
Trying to make sense of that last sentence. Putting words in your mouth, but you mean that we live in a simulation, for some definition of 'simulation' that we don't yet fathom?
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#36Maybe one of the laws of the universe is that, one should never understand “it”.
Perhaps we should just enjoy what we have.
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#37I 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 spe…
Trying to make sense of that last sentence. Putting words in your mouth, but you mean that we live in a simulation, for some definition of 'simulation' that we don't yet fathom?
yeah, I think that simulation is the closest word that we have right now for describing it, like many other times a word tend to be overused to describe multiples related things, till a new word is invented
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#38I 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 spe…
another interesting thing about black holes
gravity functor is very easy to communicate, it depends on an accumulator of mass, and it tends to stability, if the black hole is alone, it will be the mass of the black hole or is the black hole is eating matter, the mass of the black hole can be described as a wave function, just to be clear a wave function is any function which only domain is time (the independent variable)
while light needs to interact with a mass in a very complex way (reflection), if the inner system of a black hole is so unstable that the reflection cannot be collapsed to a wave function that will explain black holes
so if you believe me the functor that communicates the light will disappear, but the functor that communicate the gravity will be still there
can this mean that there is a system where the gravity functor is not stable?
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#39All matter is information, all information is functional, and perception is therefore the lazy evaluation of the universe.
While this sounds profound, I'm unable to figure out what it actually means. Can you explain more?
Your comment reminded me of Reggie Watts’ TED talk where he impersonates an intellectual TED talk by stringing together random big words in a British accent.
Re: How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
#40I'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…
Didn't Leibniz also say something about our brains/consciousness encompass a special type of Monad?