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Do Our Questions Create the World?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#51

Post by techbio »

I immediately became lost in quest to trace the source of a quote near the top of the article, and returned to bookmark this piece to read thoroughly, but here is the fruit of my almost instantaneously easy etymology search:

The quote "" “Unitarianism [Wheeler's nominal religion] is a feather bed to catch falling Christians” (Darwin); "" is from not one, but two Darwin's.

Here is Charles Darwin quoting Erasmus Darwin in his own slant: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00115-00015/5

The source is a Charles Darwin ancestor, Erasmus Darwin. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/566632-the-life-of-era...

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#52

Post by sideshowb »

rags2riches wrote: post #36

I can't claim to understand the first thing about quantum mechanics, but whenever I read about it I always come to think of lazy evaluation. Then I want to know if it's there simply for performance reasons or if it's to enable an infinite universe.

If you were simulating the universe it certainly doesn't help performance having to simulate an exponential quantity of interfering states rather than a single classical one. It's anything but lazy evaluation.

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#53

Post by laumars »

dang wrote: post #32
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #17

>Quantum theorist John Wheeler’s “it from bit” hypothesis anticipated ongoing speculation that consciousness is fundamental to reality Flagged for pseudoscience.

The article is obviously on topic for HN. Accounts that flag like this eventually lose flagging privileges.

Theres so much abuse of flagging and downvoting on this forum that I honestly think it does more damage to the community than the benefits it's supposed to bring. And that's even with all the heuristics you use to catch abuse.

So often you see unpopular yet perfectly valid (sometimes even technically correct) comments voted into oblivion and then whole arguements arise because if it. Sometimes technically incorrect comments based on popular myths deserve "air time" if they're followed by an intelligent rebuttal, but those comments get lost in the ether meaning nobody learns anything.

It just feels there is so much lost content and bad will generated by the current state of peer moderation.

I say this as someone who has a very healthy "karma" so please dont take this as a whinge post. More just my opinion and observations.

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#54

Post by crooked-v »

rellui wrote: post #26
s-shellfish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'. Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How d…

Whenever anyone asks me: why do you live? Where do we come from? I just ask back: why do you care?

> The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

> For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question "How can we eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?", and the third by the question "Where shall we have lunch?"

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#55

Post by carterehsmith »

sideshowb wrote: post #52
rags2riches wrote: post #36

I can't claim to understand the first thing about quantum mechanics, but whenever I read about it I always come to think of lazy evaluation. Then I want to know if it's there simply for performance reasons or if it's to enable an infinite universe.

If you were simulating the universe it certainly doesn't help performance having to simulate an exponential quantity of interfering states rather than a single classical one. It's anything but lazy evaluation.

I remember when the "proceduraly generated" games first showed up - 30 years ago?

You could get a billion different scenarios, each one involving a million locations.

None of them existed before you started playing the game. And generating all of them in advance would be a) impossible, given the memory requirements and b) a huge waste, considering that 99.99999% of the players never needed to experience 99.99999% of the scenarios.

So what they did, they only presented up what is "observable" to you, the player.

So there is some saving there.

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#56

Post by Bromskloss »

s-shellfish wrote: post #16
Tiki wrote: post #5

Towards the end of the article was the question I had all along reading it: "Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? He nonetheless bravely offers us a lovely, chilling paradox: At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see,…

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'. Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How d…

> loneliness (sophistry?)

Solipsism?

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#57

Post by s-shellfish »

Bromskloss wrote: post #56
s-shellfish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'. Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How d…

> loneliness (sophistry?) Solipsism?

That's the one I intended, thank you!

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#58

Post by bpchaps »

rellui wrote: post #26
s-shellfish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'. Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How d…

Whenever anyone asks me: why do you live? Where do we come from? I just ask back: why do you care?

Because it's interesting, dammit!

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#59

Post by gowld »

opportune wrote: post #23
Tiki wrote: post #5

Towards the end of the article was the question I had all along reading it: "Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? He nonetheless bravely offers us a lovely, chilling paradox: At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see,…

I agree, it’s not profound except at face value. Just strikes me as extremely vague and hand-wavy metaphysics This is the reason that a lot of people don’t like philosophy - because people hide behind verbal tricks which have little meaning beyond sounding “deep”. Green ideas sleep furiously

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deepity#English

Re: Do Our Questions Create the World?

#60

Post by gowld »

sideshowb wrote: post #52
rags2riches wrote: post #36

I can't claim to understand the first thing about quantum mechanics, but whenever I read about it I always come to think of lazy evaluation. Then I want to know if it's there simply for performance reasons or if it's to enable an infinite universe.

If you were simulating the universe it certainly doesn't help performance having to simulate an exponential quantity of interfering states rather than a single classical one. It's anything but lazy evaluation.

That's not an answer to the concern. Classical mechanics has no foundation -- it's a large castle floating in the air. Quantum mechanics tries to start from much less less assumed "something from nothing structure", which is puts much more complexity in sight (instead of just hiding it in axioms) that needs to be managed somehow.

If you want purely high-performance model of the Universe, nothing performs better than "everything you observe is simply invented the moment you invent it", be it classical or quantum.

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