Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
No, that is not what I asked you, that was my reply to Yazza
I asked you what do you know about Tegmark's thesis besides "the universe is mathematics."
We need more discussion of Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis
- Thread starter James R
- Start date
I asked you what do you know about Tegmark's thesis besides "the universe is mathematics."
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Let me count the ways....
For more on his research, publications, and students, or his fun articles, goofs, and photo album, please visit Personal home page.
https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/
Did you see his Cambridge lecture on consciousness? This is really very interesting and certainly reasonable.
In case you missed it.
p.s. do you see my interest in the MT networks (patterns) in the brain?
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I'm not telling you that you're wrong, so please don't misrepresent what I have said. Speaking of which, nor I have I said the the SH is important to the MUH, as you have otherwise implied me to have said (see your post #99). As stated, I don't know Tegmark's arguments sufficiently to be able to say that he is committing a category error, although I have agreed that it intuitively seems like that. But intuition isn't sufficient.
Similarly, thanks.
Blind leading the blind? I do think that if you start with the assumption of category error when diving deeper then that is all you will find. So maybe not start with that assumption, even if based on your initial assessment at a high level? Then see where you get.
Yes. Our universe.
Yes, it is consistent. Our universe is mathematics in the SH - or at least programming that is analagous.
What is a "1" and "0" if not part of mathematics?
Surely they are nothing but 1s and 0s interacting according to the program that they follow? What else do you think they are? If you're thinking of the screen, then this is just our means of observing it. Switch off your monitor and the game is still running, is it not?
Why not? What if they reach the same conclusion that they are inside a simulation, and thus nothing but mathematics/programming, just as some have done in suggested to be the case for our universe? Why is there a "should not conclude"? Is that not simply asserting the correctness of your view a priori?
That is irrelevant to the universe in question. The universe that those people experience as "our universe" is purely programming/mathematical. If it is a simulation then the physical substrate exists whether the program is running or not, right? Unless you think your computer disappears when you switch it off? As such, the universe is not the substrate. The substrate is irrelevant to the universe being experienced.
As for the thinking that the SH just pushes the issue a layer up/down, think about whether a simulated universe could simulate a universe, and that simulated universe simulate another universe... "it's turtles all the way down!"
But, as stated, if you don't find this a helpful analogy, there's no need for you to pursue it, especially if you find it a distraction. And that is all I'm saying it is: helpful. Not important to the MUH. Just helpful in understanding the idea that a universe can, at least in some analagous way, be mathematical.
If you say so, but note that at no point have I asserted it, or implied it. Clever people aren't always able to understand everything thrown at them. Don't assume that just because you can't understand something means you're being called stupid. As and when I think you are being stupid please rest assured that I will let you know.
I'm sure you think you do.
This does smack of Write4U claiming to understand what Tegmark says by posting videos of him talking. Be careful.
I understand very little of it, to be honest. About as much as you, I'm guessing.
I'm still trying to understand how his MUH would enable us to consider something as "physical" while still being a mathematical structure. I'm not dismissing it as a category mistake, though, or asserting that there is necessarily a distinction. For example:“I think that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways.” ― Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
Here he sstates that consciousness is simply a property of information being processed. i.e. it is itself an emergent property of information. If we couple this with the idea that what we think of as "matter" and what is deemed "physical" are just interpretations from our consciousess, then you might be able to see a path where his MUH possibly survives cries of "category error". But perhaps not. I'm still playing around with it, though.
I have little doubt he understands the issue, and that he feels his MUH, once understood sufficiently, answers it (or perhaps shows it to be moot). It is possibly frustrating for many reviewers that he has not come out and explicitly responded to it in a manner that they can understand, though. Maybe he can't.
I strongly doubt that Tegmark will sit down with anyone here and address our questions, or confirm our understandings. But we live in hope, eh.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
No! I don't need a paste or a video.Let me count the ways....
For more on his research, publications, and students, or his fun articles, goofs, and photo album, please visit Personal home page.
https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/max-tegmark/
Did you see his Cambridge lecture on consciousness? This is really very interesting and certainly reasonable.
In case you missed it.
p.s. do you see my interest in the MT networks (patterns) in the brain?
I am asking YOU if YOU have investigated Tegmark's thesis on the mathematical universe ONLY.
Other than the videos as that says next to nothing.
You have already told me you have not bought/read the book.
Less than ten dollars on Amazon.
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Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
I have downloaded his paper and I will read through it this weekend.I'm not telling you that you're wrong, so please don't misrepresent what I have said. Speaking of which, nor I have I said the the SH is important to the MUH, as you have otherwise implied me to have said (see your post #99). As stated, I don't know Tegmark's arguments sufficiently to be able to say that he is committing a category error, although I have agreed that it intuitively seems like that. But intuition isn't sufficient.
Similarly, thanks.
Blind leading the blind? I do think that if you start with the assumption of category error when diving deeper then that is all you will find. So maybe not start with that assumption, even if based on your initial assessment at a high level? Then see where you get.
Yes. Our universe.
Yes, it is consistent. Our universe is mathematics in the SH - or at least programming that is analagous.
What is a "1" and "0" if not part of mathematics?
Surely they are nothing but 1s and 0s interacting according to the program that they follow? What else do you think they are? If you're thinking of the screen, then this is just our means of observing it. Switch off your monitor and the game is still running, is it not?
Why not? What if they reach the same conclusion that they are inside a simulation, and thus nothing but mathematics/programming, just as some have done in suggested to be the case for our universe? Why is there a "should not conclude"? Is that not simply asserting the correctness of your view a priori?
That is irrelevant to the universe in question. The universe that those people experience as "our universe" is purely programming/mathematical. If it is a simulation then the physical substrate exists whether the program is running or not, right? Unless you think your computer disappears when you switch it off? As such, the universe is not the substrate. The substrate is irrelevant to the universe being experienced.
As for the thinking that the SH just pushes the issue a layer up/down, think about whether a simulated universe could simulate a universe, and that simulated universe simulate another universe... "it's turtles all the way down!"
But, as stated, if you don't find this a helpful analogy, there's no need for you to pursue it, especially if you find it a distraction. And that is all I'm saying it is: helpful. Not important to the MUH. Just helpful in understanding the idea that a universe can, at least in some analagous way, be mathematical.
If you say so, but note that at no point have I asserted it, or implied it. Clever people aren't always able to understand everything thrown at them. Don't assume that just because you can't understand something means you're being called stupid. As and when I think you are being stupid please rest assured that I will let you know.
I'm sure you think you do.
This does smack of Write4U claiming to understand what Tegmark says by posting videos of him talking. Be careful.
I understand very little of it, to be honest. About as much as you, I'm guessing.
“I think that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways.” ― Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
Here he sstates that consciousness is simply a property of information being processed. i.e. it is itself an emergent property of information. If we couple this with the idea that what we think of as "matter" and what is deemed "physical" are just interpretations from our consciousess, then you might be able to see a path where his MUH possibly survives cries of "category error". But perhaps not. I'm still playing around with it, though.
I have little doubt he understands the issue, and that he feels his MUH, once understood sufficiently, answers it (or perhaps shows it to be moot). It is possibly frustrating for many reviewers that he has not come out and explicitly responded to it in a manner that they can understand, though. Maybe he can't.
I strongly doubt that Tegmark will sit down with anyone here and address our questions, or confirm our understandings. But we live in hope, eh.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Yes it is. Applied mathematics like mechanics can analyse a canon ball fired in the air and falling to the ground. Watching it fired from a grassy knoll and landing with a thud is real. Representing the knoll as x the ball fired at angle α reaching height h and distance s with velocity v are abstract.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Executing it is a mathematical physical action. The trajectory is a mathematical object, no? The mathematics of gravity are expressed in the trajectory.
Parabolic Motion of Projectiles
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
You will read his words, but you won't listen to his voice? Curious.
Halc
Registered Senior Member
In QM, measurement has nothing to do with volition, intention, etc. The Wigner interpretation might be an exception to that, but water doesn't measure the duck in that interpretation, and even Wigner abandoned it himself due to implications he couldn't accept.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
The video was 45 minutes and I listened to all of it.
He said next to nothing about his thesis, did you not watch it?
I have stated this at least three times.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
No it isn't.
X y and z are representations of a physical situation but they do not have to be.
Mathematics is not empirical.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
No, it is universal.
Can you tell me any aspect of the universe that does not exhibit mathematical relative values and relations, such as regularly recurring self-forming patterns?
I see these things as axiomatic. When the concept of mathematics is taken from its widest scope to its smallest, you can see it all around you.
Fractals are mathematical objects. Fractals are observable everywhere. The universe is filled with regular patterns.
I don't see a valid reason to refuse to give mathematics its due. It is absolutely neutral in function, but it appears intelligent in the maintenance of the most elegant patterns in nature and the universe.
Every scientific equation we have to explain certain natural phenomena is proof that the universe employs a form of mathematics at its most fundamental level..
I call mathematics a quasi-intelligent expression of a logical principle that governs knowable and predictable pattern formation in our dimensional reality.
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Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Straight from the Deepak Chopra book of bullshit for beginners.
You have already told me you do not understand mathematics so I do not know why you are coming out with this nonsense.
Try and stay on point. If you decide you totally believe Tegmark's thesis without A. Understanding Mathematics or physics B. Reading Tegmark's actual thesis, then this means you will believe absolutely anything.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
No I don't believe anything. And I do understand the principles of mathematics. And it is mnore than adding and subtraction. It is an expression of Logic.
System Modeling: Understanding Logical and Physical Architecture
https://www.datasciencecentral.com/system-modeling-understanding-logical-and-physical-architecture/
And no, I do not totally agree with Tegmark.
You can huff and puff, but you have no better answers than anyone else. So cool it and come up with something useful.
Telling someone they are wrong does not make you right. Try harder.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Answer me this.
Does an observer have to be conscious or does the wave function just collapse when encountering something physical?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...blue-and-bed-red-of-measured-a_fig3_303578213
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Yah, Tegmark's MUH seems to be affiliated with or crouched in it.
But based on the first items below, MUH might arguably sport an eternalism view of time. Whereas W4U may independently be drifting into a presentism or "procedural outputting of short-lived nows" view, what with it sounding like his proto-intelligent mathematical "principles" are regulating such a process of changes or how the universe behaves through those incremental developments.
Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
https://nautil.us/why-the-flow-of-time-is-an-illusion-237380/
INTRO: In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s issue of Nautilus, which looks at the concept of flow through various portals in science, we revisited our 2014 video interview with Tegmark...
Max Tegmark (from a SciAm article published in the early 2000s): A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity... If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape.
Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime --the bird perspective-- these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog [perspective] sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti.
If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta --a mathematical structure.
The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds (in its view) to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this [non-multiverse, single block-universe] example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds. --Parallel Universes
https://nautil.us/why-the-flow-of-time-is-an-illusion-237380/
INTRO: In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s issue of Nautilus, which looks at the concept of flow through various portals in science, we revisited our 2014 video interview with Tegmark...
Max Tegmark (from a SciAm article published in the early 2000s): A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity... If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape.
Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime --the bird perspective-- these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog [perspective] sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti.
If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta --a mathematical structure.
The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds (in its view) to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this [non-multiverse, single block-universe] example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds. --Parallel Universes
Back to the structural realism issue...
Ontic Structural Realism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(philosophy_of_science)#Ontic_structural_realism
"Max Tegmark takes this concept even further with the mathematical universe hypothesis, which proposes that, if our universe is only a particular structure, then it is no more real than any other structure."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(philosophy_of_science)#Ontic_structural_realism
"Max Tegmark takes this concept even further with the mathematical universe hypothesis, which proposes that, if our universe is only a particular structure, then it is no more real than any other structure."
RELATED:
Cat Gillen advocating structural realism (article)
https://iai.tv/articles/hossenfelder-vs-goff-do-electrons-exist-auid-2681?_auid=2020
--> video link ... Cat Gillen (guest) discussion about scientific realism
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Halc
Registered Senior Member
I never mentioned the word 'observer'. But again you reference Wigner interpretation, the only one which posits that consciousness has anything to do with ontic wave function collapse. It is a solipsistic interpretation, meaning other minds do not exist.
All that said, wave functions are not objects that 'encounter' things.
This whole topic was opened by James R seemingly to get a real discussion about MUH going, but people (well, James at least) seem to shy from actual discussion and would seemingly prefer just to rag on you about your assertions of understanding things that you clearly don't. I guess you really do constitute the entertainment around here. One does not assert an understanding of a subject, one demonstrates it. So your posts continue to confirm the accusations against you.
Pretty picture posted, but there's no duck, so is it relevant?
Well, there's two issues at play here. One is the actual subject of Tegmark's MUH. I would have thought that if James R's aim was for an actual discussion of that he would have split this into one of the other sub-forums than "Site Feedback". "Alternative Theories", or "Physics & Maths", or possibly even "Philosophy". Putting it here is almost as if he's asking the question of whether we should have more discussion on it or not, not necessarily to actually discuss it.
The second issue is pretty much an effort to address Write4U's approach to "discussion". I use the term loosely here, as it's open to debate whether what transpires with him is an actual discussion, or whether it is just an exercise in him never addressing the questions you ask while appealing to science videos and links as if they answer them. Oh, and the "Tegmark!!1!" and "microtubules!!11!1!" fixation he seems to have. In their place, not an issue. Everywhere else, well, we get this.
He also has the habit, as above, of posting links and images as if they are relevant. I mean, we all know what a wave is, right? His question refers to wavefunction, so he posts a picture of a wave (okay, sure, whatever) but then some added irrelevancies of types of waves. "Ooh. It's shiny!" and "Look, ma! I know how to post pictures!"
Anyhoo - I would actually suggest that this thread has been answered - in that there do seem to be people willing to have a fuller and sensible discussion on the MUH, and as such the actual ongoing discussion be split off from here into a new thread in the Physics&Maths, Philosophy, or whichever thread is deemed appropriate - or merged into an existing one if more sensible. I'm not sure "Site Feedback" lends itself to sticking to the actual MUH.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
What if the wave function collapse appears to be from superposed outcomes is merely the expression of a chaotic (probabilistic) event..
One look at the above pictures clearly shows the chaos of wave interference in these "breaking" collapsing waves, distributing the effects throughout the system. Collapse of the wave function is a chaotic event.
One look at the above pictures clearly shows the chaos of wave interference in these "breaking" collapsing waves, distributing the effects throughout the system. Collapse of the wave function is a chaotic event.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Anyhoo - I would actually suggest that this thread has been answered - in that there do seem to be people willing to have a fuller and sensible discussion on the MUH, and as such the actual ongoing discussion be split off from here into a new thread in the Physics&Maths, Philosophy, or whichever thread is deemed appropriate - or merged into an existing one if more sensible. I'm not sure "Site Feedback" lends itself to sticking to the actual MUH.
Yes, keep it fractured instead of trying to puzzle it together. I look for common denominators, to paint a landscape.
That is after all the way the brain itself works.