CATEGORY:
Trick or Truth Essay Contest (2015)
[back]
TOPIC:
GENESIS OF A PYTHAGOREAN UNIVERSE by Alexey and Lev Burov
[refresh]
Login or
create account to post reply or comment.
Author Alexey/Lev Burov wrote on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 15:20 GMT
Essay AbstractWide range, high precision and simplicity of the fundamental laws of nature rule out the possibility for them to be randomly generated or selected. Therefore purpose is present in their selecton.
Author BioAlexey Burov, PhD, is a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (USA). He has numerous publications in professional journals, and he also is an organizer of Fermi Society of Philosophy and the Russian Chicago Philosophy Forum. Lev Burov is an amateur philosopher and a software developer, focusing on work with start-up firms, currently, Scientific Humanities of San Fransisco, CA.
Download Essay PDF File
John C Hodge wrote on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 16:39 GMT
A universe of nested, negative feedback loops would result in the required universe of fine-tuned constants and physical laws. Because feedback loops are another explanation, the use of ``…the only…”” is not supported.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Feb. 28, 2015 @ 03:31 GMT
Without an engineer, any feedback is a part of the laws of nature. With or without them, the question of the fine tuning remains the same, John.
Efthimios Harokopos wrote on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 17:15 GMT
Well-written essay with some good references. Maybe the following statement needs a bit more clarification. To be honest I do not udnerstand it and it may be because it is beyond my grasp:
" In other words, the existence of the Platonic world of elegant mathematical forms structuring the physical world is scientifically confirmed, and the accuracy of this confirmation is many orders of magnitude better than that of any specific statement of physics."
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Feb. 28, 2015 @ 03:45 GMT
Dear Efthimios, thanks for your good words.
As we are showing in the essay, the laws of nature, described by beautiful mathematical forms, do exist objectively, as a logical structure of the universe. They are comprehensible only as elements of the mathematical world, or, at least, a sufficiently big part of it. It means that the mathematical world do exist as a special reality, the Platonic world. That's it.
Demond Adams wrote on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 18:58 GMT
Dear Alexey,
Thank you for posting an interesting essay. You presented many questions I believe we should further consider in the discussion of discovering a unified theory describing nature.
The fact the universal laws were well constituted, established, and in practice billions of years before humans were cognitively/consciously capable of developing symbols to describe...
view entire post
Dear Alexey,
Thank you for posting an interesting essay. You presented many questions I believe we should further consider in the discussion of discovering a unified theory describing nature.
The fact the universal laws were well constituted, established, and in practice billions of years before humans were cognitively/consciously capable of developing symbols to describe and interpret them suggests our involvement in the theoretical/calculable discovery of these laws plays an insignificant (if not minimal) role in their fundamental purpose, function, and prevailing existence. This clearly suggests we are only capable of deriving various tools and methods of communicating physical phenomenon by observation for contemplation among our own human kind using a preferred but limited practical method of describing the logic of reality - mathematics and physics. In other words, the moon and other planets existed before we were capable of observing, discovering, and offering them their descriptive names for identification and definition as planet and moon. The universe however, observes a celestial body, humans, during our limited methods of understanding, tend to classify these observations for identification which leads to interpretation and confusion regarding the fine tuning of an equitable definition of the observation itself. We are fundamentally at fault for our own chaotic misconceptions in our attempts to understand quantitative observations.
Chaos is not without structure, it is however a calculable distinct derivation of a “defined” ordered state. We may never discover or possess the experimental capacity to confirm definitely the existence of conscious intellectual beings residing in the opposite sides of our universe (as they may simply assume we do not exist), but we may speculate their existence without confirmation just as we may speculate the undiscovered laws governing nature must exist, but is currently undiscovered or recognized and therefore appears unfathomably possible from our limited progress of exploratory pursuits. Perhaps, it is likely, we have been looking in the wrong direction while utilizing the many available tools at our disposal. This does not suggest the tools are useless from being derived by our own conception, the impossibility of a unified theory describing nature is nonexistent, or complication from chaos plays a pivotal role in its evasiveness. It simply means we have not looked in the appropriate direction when attempting a discovery of what we assumed cannot be found. Furthermore, humans are often flawed by our own distractions of self, we may only need to pursue this discovery with our eyes and minds open to alternative methods of discovery not yet considered and contemplated by conventional means. But regarding a unified theory if it exists, we will find it to be self-evident, self-explanatory, and independent of any other supportive methods conceived by our human applied interpretation, therefore it will remain unbounded yet simple.
Best Regards,
D.C. Adams
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Feb. 28, 2015 @ 04:06 GMT
Dear Demond, thanks for your attention to our essay.
A part of it is to show that "self-evident, self-explanatory, and independent of any other supportive methods" unified theory (taking "theory" in scientific sense) cannot exist.
Regards,
Alexey Burov.
adel sadeq wrote on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 20:26 GMT
Dear Alexey,
Your essay is something of a mystery. You spent 80% proving that there is one universe. Then telling us the obvious that the laws of nature is mathematical. Then you suddenly switch and say it is all mysterious. In what way it clarifies the relation between mathematics and reality.
Thanks
report post as inappropriate
Sujatha Jagannathan wrote on Feb. 26, 2015 @ 16:59 GMT
You're a true fundamentalist.
Best regards,
Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Feb. 28, 2015 @ 04:10 GMT
Dear Sujatha,
In a sense, this is true :)
I am taking the fundamental science as the most fundamental fact.
Thanks for your wit remark!
Alexey.
Vladimir Rogozhin wrote on Mar. 1, 2015 @ 17:18 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
I read with great interest your essay. I think we are going in the same direction. You write and bring important conclusion A.Vilenkin: "Because the logical structure of our universe can not be explained by chaos, and because it can not explain itself, we are left with only one possible explanation remaining, that it was conceived and realized by a mind. A. Vilenkin prefers to formulate this apparently inevitable conclusion about the cosmic Mind as a question: "... the laws should be" there "even prior to the universe itself. Does this mean that the laws are not mere descriptions of reality and can have an independent existence of their own? In the absence of space, time and matter, what tablets could they be written upon? The laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations. If the medium of mathematics is the mind, does this mean that mind should predate the universe? "
As for the "Penrose triangle", I believe that his model of "three worlds" - a splitting of the triune world. Cosmogony of Pythagoras as the unity of the "limit" and "infinite" (thesis and antithesis) give access to the three-pronged synthetic structure, based on the absolute state of matter. The concept of "structure" in Russian - a structure that is «s-
troe-nie», give a direct hint to build generating structure of the Universe as a "three in one", the measure of being whole, primordial structure of harmony generating "unity" and "plurality".
Kind regards,
Vladimir
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 1, 2015 @ 20:37 GMT
Dear Vladimir,
thank you for your interest and good words in the address of our essay.
In fact, Vilenkin expressed the old Platonic vision, the realism. Then Linde questioned about a possibility for the laws, with all their simplicity/elegance, still to be anthropically selected. What we tried to show in our essay, is that this Linde hypothesis by no means can be true. For that, we counted those orders of magnitude gap between the anthropic requirements and the accuracy of the elegant laws of nature.
The Penrose Triunity is a good idea to contemplate about possibility of burbakian "La Structure mere". Apparently, they are not compatible, are they?
Vladimir Rogozhin replied on Mar. 3, 2015 @ 13:37 GMT
Okkam's razor has to be very sharp. But I am sure that the unified basis of knowledge can be constructed only on the simplest triangle is "a heavenly triangle" of Plato which sum of invariants represent both structures of the physical world and mathematical structures ("les stuctures mere"), modern and future, still the unknown.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 13, 2015 @ 15:19 GMT
I do not see what would be a thought, the mental world, in that sort of basis of knowledge, Vladimir. Don't you consider a creative thought as a mathematical structure or physical phenomenon, do you?
Vladimir Rogozhin replied on Mar. 14, 2015 @ 09:18 GMT
Alexey! When you build a primordial generating structure, then the question arises: what it holds? This ontological (structural, cosmic) memory. Matter is that from which everything is born, and the ontological (structural) memory is what gives rise to all. Ontological (structural) memory - the measure of being of the whole, "the soul of matter", qualitative quality of the absolute forms of existence of matter (absolute states). Ontological (structural, cosmic) memory - the core of the world picture of Information age.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 15, 2015 @ 19:18 GMT
Vladimir, if I understand you correctly, you are following Plato's vision that the new knowledge is in fact nothing else but reproduction of what atemporally is in the "ontological (structural, cosmic) memory." Is it correct?
Vladimir Rogozhin replied on Mar. 16, 2015 @ 10:09 GMT
Yes, Alexey, such an interpretation is possible. But it's not just new knowledge. The main thing is the process of generating new material structures in Nature. Ontological (structural) memory - something that generates, keeps, maintains and develops. It permeates all levels of Universum. Remember the "Matter and Memory" Bergson. But Bergson's a lot of psychology and little ontology and no dialectic, at least in the spirit of Cusa - "coincidence of opposites." In fundamental physics and cosmology must enter ontological standard along with an empirical justification.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
susanne kayser-schillegger wrote on Mar. 2, 2015 @ 03:16 GMT
Dear Dr. Burov,
your philosophical essay is so full of good ideas that it is easy to loose track of them. It would have helped if you added some examples where math has led physics astray.
Your descriptions of Pythagorean truth are excellent. No wonder that the Pythagoreans were for hundreds of years a secret society that had to meet in lonely caves.
Please continue your quest for truth
Best
Lutz
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 3, 2015 @ 02:36 GMT
Dear Lutz,
Thank you for your encouraging words in our address! Your suggestion to "add some examples where math has led physics astray" could give a new extremely interesting essay. At the moment, I'd like to mention just one important case in this respect. Perhaps, you know this story, but still I wish to mention it here for the sake of your wonderful question.
Copernicus was convinced that the planet orbits must be nothing but circles, as the most perfect, most symmetric among figures, corresponding to the symmetry of the Sun's attraction. The idea was beautiful, reasonable,—and still wrong. As a result, Copernicus was forced to introduce his own epicycles, and his heliocentric system was not as beautiful as he expected. Most likely that was why he held over with the publication. It required a genius of Kepler to solve this problem and to prove the heliocentric idea is correct. This was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of science, I am sure. Seeing the failure of Copernicus, Kepler still believed in the beautiful mathematics underlying the world. As well as Copernicus, he was Pythagorean/Platonic, but his field of search of the mathematical beauty in the sky was wider, and he was heavenly rewarded!
Many thanks and all the best,
Alexey Burov.
Frank H Makinson wrote on Mar. 4, 2015 @ 05:48 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
As I noted in a reply to a statement about my essay, The Geometric Core of Spacetime, various mathematical types were created to solve a problem. We do not know which problem many of them were originally developed to solve, but this is not mysterious, we simply have incomplete information.
My essay is about simple geometry and how it can be used to identify specific characteristics of a physical law. You were much bolder in your title stating we have a Pythagorean Universe. I cannot prove that we have a Pythagorean Universe, but I did demonstrate a Pythagorean link to one of the physical laws of the universe.
What is mysterious is that our essays are juxtapositioned next to each other, as though they were meant to support each other.
report post as inappropriate
Lev Burov replied on Mar. 12, 2015 @ 01:54 GMT
Dear Frank,
Thank you for your comment. I have read your essay. What we mean by our universe being Pythagorean is reflected in "Starting with Pythagoras, it was a matter of faith for sparse groups of few people and lonely individuals that 'fundamental laws of nature are described by beautiful equations.'"
It's not the fact that the laws of nature are expressed by mathematics that's most mysterious, but that they're "rather simple in presentation and extremely rich in consequences," and that the Pythagoreans somehow knew that!
report post as inappropriate
George Gantz wrote on Mar. 5, 2015 @ 23:43 GMT
Alexey and Lev -
Thanks for the excellent essay! I was delighted to read a strong defense against the prevailing metaphysical winds of physicalism and reductionism so evident in most essays. I, too, find mathematical order to be a fundamental organizing principle quite apart from the action of the physical world itself. Moreover, those positions cannot address what I refer to as "The Hole at the Center of Creation" - only consciousness and purpose can provide the answer. As you say: "Since the laws of our universe are not picked randomly, they can only be purposefully chosen."
Thanks for a great essay and good luck in the contest. - George Gantz
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 10, 2015 @ 05:24 GMT
Dear George,
It's delightful to get so inspirational response as yours! Scientism, a deadly shadow of science, is indeed so prevalent in this contest, that it makes a special pleasure to be recognized by a likeminded thinker. Good luck to you too, dear friend!
Alexey.
Sylvain Poirier wrote on Mar. 17, 2015 @ 21:26 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Congratulations ! I found your essay to be among the few best in this contest. I already rated it 10 last week (but did not take the time to comment it then). I find it terrible to see that the best essays get so low rates, while nonsensical ones are rated among the highest, because the majority of authors here giving ratings are ignorant about science and the wonders of physical theories and they will only approve views that please their ignorance.
Please don't give these materialists the honor of having their position called "Scientism", as if their attitude was anyhow a scientific one. I just wrote an
exposition of the conflict of ideologies in this contest, where I classify you among scientists, and the materialists in the opposite category of obscurantists. I also put there a list of essays I found most interesting, so as to help the authors of intelligent essays to find each other.
You are welcome to comment here my page, so that we can reach a sort of agreed view, such as completing the list of best essays (I will keep exploring essays, so I may update this list later).
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Mar. 18, 2015 @ 13:59 GMT
Dear Sylvain,
Thank you for your high esteem of our submission.
I’d like to present a somewhat different point of view on the usage of the term scientism. It was coined by Hayek and defined as a misapplication of the scientific paradigm toward humanities. Later the definition was broadened to an absolutization of science to be the most fundamental knowledge. This absolutization can not be scientific because the claim that “science is the the most fundamental knowledge” is no longer a scientific but a metaphysical one.
In this manner, scientism is no longer a scientific attitude, to use your phrase, but a “deadly shadow of science,” to use Alexey’s. Seen this way, it doesn’t seem to matter whether one is an accomplished scientist or someone who can’t prove the Pythagorean theorem; as long as one is convinced of the omnipotence of a scientific explanation, one is under the irrational spell of our scientistic zeitgeist.
Alexey has made a series of lectures devoted to the subject, titled Faith of Fundamental Science, which I think you could appreciate. I recommend watching the latest one:
Value of Fundamental Science, which is a sort of summary of scientism and that which it is a shadow of.
Thanks also for your careful review and organization of the other essays, it will certainly help us not to miss the important ones, including yours.
Lev
Sylvain Poirier replied on Mar. 19, 2015 @ 20:03 GMT
About this use of the term "scientism", I want to distinguish between what a term should mean, i.e. when it is the best term to name a real concept that deserves to be considered, vs. what it may accidentally happen to mean at a given time, due to its misuse.
Actually, while I consider consciousness as fundamentally non-algorithmic, I still consider the scientific method (as inspired from...
view entire post
About this use of the term "scientism", I want to distinguish between what a term should mean, i.e. when it is the best term to name a real concept that deserves to be considered, vs. what it may accidentally happen to mean at a given time, due to its misuse.
Actually, while I consider consciousness as fundamentally non-algorithmic, I still consider the scientific method (as inspired from my familiarity with maths and physics) to be relevant to some parts of humanities, but of course, just like in maths and physics, a great care is needed to avoid any misapplication. It is possible that some claims of applications happened in a misguided manner, which could lead to the general rejection of any try to do so under a label of "Scientism" which thus became pejorative. I'm sorry that I did not actually look at what such attempts could be. What I know of course is that the "skeptic" movement with its materialistic prejudices (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) has badly misrepresented science, with its methods and views that claimed to be scientific but actually weren't.
But my concern is not to claim or deny in the abstract any abstract claim such as “science is the the most fundamental knowledge”, but to go to effectively do my own rational exploration of a number of issues of humanity's problems, and I consider that I had some success in rationally understanding a number of human problems and possible solutions, including with the use of some mathematical concepts.
For example you can look at all the elements of rational analysis which I exercised in my philosophical sites of
criticism of religion and
some social injustice, as well as
how to built optimal online political and monetary systems, and
humanity's failures to steer the future properly. I even see some mathematical concepts needed for the optimal design of an online dating system to be included in my project of decentralized online social network.
So I reach a concrete version of the claim, that is "Can it be efficient to use rational intelligence to understand some crucial problems and solutions about psychological, economic or political issues" that is no more a metaphysical claim but a genuinely scientific claim that can be directly verified by the experience of succeeding in such investigations.
I'm sorry I cannot watch any videos now, do you have any text version ?
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Sylvain Poirier replied on Mar. 19, 2015 @ 23:14 GMT
All right I just read your slides "Value of Fundamental Science" and I noticed that you have nothing to say here beyond what I'm used to : all your opposition to "scientism" remains contained in the bubble of obscurantist Christian propaganda which you just blindly admitted, without any care of reality check. That is, pretty much what I would classify in the category "Religion" of my table, thus in the column of obscurantism. Do you not know how terrible can be this
Christian anti-scientism propaganda that can even turn
physicists into idiots ?
To understand what is wrong with this propaganda, I would recommend, first my
criticism of essentialism, then, well, much of my anti-spirituality site, but also things by other authors, I would particularly recommend
Fundamental misconceptions of science and Greta Christina's
Atheists and anger article and
video. Would you also ignore that
science refuted the Biblical story ?
report post as inappropriate
Lev Burov replied on Mar. 20, 2015 @ 13:25 GMT
The term scientism was coined, defined, and traced through history by F Hayek as the “abuse of reason” and “counter-revolution of science.” In the articles that you’ve liked his name isn’t mentioned, which leads me to believe that the requisite material to discuss this subject has not been researched. I recommend reading Road to Serfdom and The Counter-revolution of Science if you’d like to know more about scientism.
report post as inappropriate
Sylvain Poirier replied on Mar. 20, 2015 @ 14:44 GMT
I consider that the real abuse of reason is to discuss an ideology that is entirely coined and defined not by any supporter but purely by its opponents, without any concrete reference of who are the supporters of the ideology they are opposing, who would actually formulate and defend the claims of that ideology.
Moreover I dismiss all this "debate" you talk about as absolutely futile, thus not worthy any attention. Indeed I consider economic systems as something that go their own way, and that any proper or improper methodology that some economists may have adopted in the history of that discipline is just an insignificant, imaginary problem that only concerns what is in the heads of that very small minority of people who study economics, and has most of the time no significant impact on reality because most people just go their own business without caring about any ideology. Instead, I develop my own understanding of economics independently of anything ever taught in academic circles.
Or when some ideas have an impact on reality because the "large masses of people" happen to follow an ideology, then I can consider it, but it is a different situation. In particular for the Soviet Union, that resulted from
Marxism, I regard it as a religion just similar to Christianity. And I have good reasons for this.
report post as inappropriate
Sylvain Poirier replied on Mar. 22, 2015 @ 10:55 GMT
In particular I saw 2 absurdities in your anti-scientism slides.
The first absurdity is that you claim the impossibility to rationally understand or analyze consciousness, and at the same time you claim to bring rational arguments to draw some conclusions about consciousness, in particular issues of "cognitive dissonance". These 2 claims contradict each other.
The other absurdity is...
view entire post
In particular I saw 2 absurdities in your anti-scientism slides.
The first absurdity is that you claim the impossibility to rationally understand or analyze consciousness, and at the same time you claim to bring rational arguments to draw some conclusions about consciousness, in particular issues of "cognitive dissonance". These 2 claims contradict each other.
The other absurdity is that your rational approach to psychological issues remains a purely theoretical speculation disconnected from any care of observational check of the conclusions of your abstract reasoning. In particular you claim the ability to conclude that the belief in chaosogenesis would be a cause of cognitive dissonance. For such considerations in such subtle matters of psychology to not be purely speculative and possibly completely wrong (or fall into the fault of ridiculous irrelevance), would require that this possible cause of cognitive dissonance, as you present it, was observationally confirmed to be the main cause (or at least the main ideological cause) of cognitive dissonance that can be observed in real life. But where are your observational confirmations of this claim ? The actual facts are:
As explained in the article and video by Greta Christina I referenced in a previous post, atheism does not lead to any nihilism, as there are many atheists finding full sense of life and not coming to any nihilism. This may be a mystery to you but it is nevertheless a fact and thus has to be accepted as such.
My own experience (as I have been evangelical Christian in the past) points to the opposite conclusion to yours, which is that among ideologies that may cause cognitive dissonance, Christian faith can be devastating, much worse than any atheism. As a personal experience, it would be senseless to try arguing in theory whether it is correct or not, and no philosophical treaty can change anything to this reality. No amount of arguments could convince me of the non-existence or impossibility of my own life. Now as a fact, it can also be explained, as you can see other authors doing, following
my links "About the psychological damages of Christian faith".
In conclusion, your own victorious failure to make correct theoretical guesses about psychological issues, still does not suffice to validate your belief in the impossibility of any rational understanding in this field. Now why should I be interested about treaties that you read and that led you to such absurd standpoints as you are putting forward ? Such treaties are likely to be quite misleading. A real abuse of reason and a serious source, maybe not of cognitive dissonance, but at least dissonance between beliefs and reality. Thus, no thanks.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Member Marc Séguin wrote on Apr. 1, 2015 @ 00:57 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
I really enjoyed your essay, and it helped further my own thought processes about the consequences of Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. I liked the identification you make between the totality of mathematical forms and "some sort of mind, but a mind totally indifferent to the forms it contains".
I like the way you frame the issue of "chaosogenesis" within the context of "fine-tuning":
"Does the universe indeed have no clear signature excluding any possibility of it having been randomly selected from the totality of all possible structures?"
Your distinction between "minimal observers" and "cosmic observers" is interesting: our world indeed seems "theoretizable", and I agree with you that if we can show that the laws of our universe are much, much more regular than the "minimally stable" laws that could support our kind of observers, it would seriously undermine the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (or make it necessary to think about possible selection factors that make universes with regular laws have a higher "measure" than universes with fluctuating laws). Your arguments convinced me (contrary to what I state in
my essay) that the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (in its simplest form) does make predictions, and can be considered a scientific hypothesis.
I agree with you when you say that "chaosogenesis, being limited only by the anthropic principle, is the only option for a completely scientific solution to the problem of cosmogenesis". You say that chaos and mind are opposites, but maybe Ultimate Mind, being the sum of all modes of existence, contains by itself zero information, and is somehow equivalent to Ultimate Chaos...
In my opinion, your essay is one of the most thought provoking in this contest, and I hope your make it to the finals. Good luck!
Marc
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 1, 2015 @ 03:08 GMT
Dear Mark,
First of all, many thanks for such an inspiring response!
Your pondering about a deep relation between Ultimate Mind and Ultimate Chaos reminded me the first lines of the Hegelian "Science of Logic":
"Pure Being and Pure Nothing are the same, and yet absolutely distinct from each other. This contradiction is resolved by their immediate vanishing, one into the other. The resultant movement, called Becoming, takes the form of reciprocal Coming-to-Be and Ceasing-to-Be."
The Ultimate Mind is not just a "sum of all modes of existence", but rather an inexpressible potentiality of being, where each constituent is granted its own special significance, whereas chaos grants no significance to anything. An example of such significance, as we underlined in the article, is theoretizablilty of the laws of nature.
I'd like to also note that, in contrast to our article, you are reserving some uncertainty as to the theoretizability of the Universe, saying that it only
seems to be. We are pointing it out as a fact.
As to the "possible selection factors", I'd like to stress here as well, that such a factor cannot be just one more law, as for example the law of measure you mentioned. In that case the question of John A. Wheeler would remain unanswered. That selection can only be based on something above all the laws.
Alexey
Joe Fisher wrote on Apr. 3, 2015 @ 16:29 GMT
Dear Dr. Burov,
I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.
All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.
Joe Fisher
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 9, 2015 @ 02:32 GMT
Dear Joe,
I am considering your post as a warning for myself. Thanks.
Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Apr. 11, 2015 @ 21:25 GMT
Alexey & Lev,
Excellent essay.
It seems, though, that
we are on opposite sides of Max Tegmark's hypothesis -- though for much the same reasons. To explain:
You approach chaos theory as if it were dependent on the disorder of random events. In fact, though, chaos is deterministic -- and while I agree with you that on any particular scale of activity, chaotic behavior is "limitless and structureless," in a hub-connected network in which local information is distributed laterally (theory of multi-scale variety ~ Bar-Yam), rather than hierarchically, self-organized global order is evident.
We agree fully on the important point: randomness is not a fundamental property of the universe.
Highest mark from me, and I hope you get a chance to visit my essay.
Best,
Tom
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 01:22 GMT
Dear Tom,
Many thanks for your highest mark, which is especially impressive in view of our disagreements. It is very generous from your side indeed. I agree with you that in a sense Tegmark's Multiverse IV is determinisitic. What is random in his picture is our incarnation in this specific universe. With his 'mathematical democracy' hypothesis, everybody might find himself in any anthropic universe with the same probability. Since this conclusion contradicts to our (humanity) success as
cosmic observers, we conclude that his multiverse hypothesis is refuted.
Many thanks and all the best,
Alexey.
adel sadeq wrote on Apr. 11, 2015 @ 22:22 GMT
Hi Alexey,
Several years ago I came up with my theory without knowing about Tegmark and upon checking the net(I couldn't believe what I have discovered) by googling "reality math" the search came up with MUH. I was so exited, contacted Tegmark and he replied favorably. However since, I have developed my theory and have arrived at many results BUT he refuses to comment. I think he is either not convinced of my system or the results look too grand and he does not want to be associated with a "crackpot".
Checking your Bio I see that you are a physicist with programming background and you believe in MUH. You should be the perfect candidate for reviewing my theory. Please do not get discouraged by the claims, spend some reasonable time running some of the simulations, I hope you will see that I am not making up the results, the results are just coming out of the simulations and I have no control as such.
It is also interesting that my theory is similar to Armin's in this contest but he still has hard time connecting both of us, understandably so.
Maybe you have browsed my essay but I hope you spend more time on it, I think toy will like it, in general at least.Any comment is appreciated.
“Reality is nothing but a mathematical structure, literally”Thanks and good luck
P.S. please read some of the first comments in my thread for more information on running the programs. the running times are indicated on the programming pages which you can go to by clicking on the "program links" at the end of the sections.
report post as inappropriate
adel sadeq replied on Apr. 11, 2015 @ 22:31 GMT
I hope that Lev will help in the running of the simulations. Thaks Lev.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 02:49 GMT
Dear Adel,
I cannot say that I believe in MUH of Tegmark. On the contrary, in our essay we refute it. However, I still appreciate his 'mathematical democracy' as a clear and distinctive way to explain the origin of the laws of nature in scientific manner. I will have a look at your essay and write you in return.
All the best and good luck!
Alexey.
adel sadeq replied on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 20:38 GMT
Dear Alexey,
I was hoping you and Lev find explicit mistakes in my system in the spirit of the contest. But of course I do understand if you do not find the time or the inclination.
Thanks and good luck to you.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 20:54 GMT
Dear Adel,
All my experience tells me that philosophical mistakes can only be found by your own thought. Here is a difference between philosophy and science.
Thank you and all the best,
Alexey.
adel sadeq replied on Apr. 13, 2015 @ 00:31 GMT
Dear Alexey,
I am an engineer by trade with interest in physics, not a philosopher or anything fancy. I Just took a good guess which was very similar to other people's guesses like Wolfram(NKS), Conway and others, However my guess was just very successful in my opinion. This is exactly the lesson people could draw from the "effectiveness of math". It is for other people to evaluate my system and consider it as useful or not as it stand. There is also the possibility of improving it so it maybe more convincing, or somehow I would discover that the system is trivial and I would be happy to kill it and use my time to make more money :-) Sorry for wasting your time.
Thanks and good luck.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Lawrence B Crowell wrote on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 12:18 GMT
Dear Alexy and Lev.
Your paper is well argued. I will admit to being very agnostic about these sorts of ideas. In particular I am very agnostic about Tegmark’s hypothesis, which seems not mathematically provable, nor scientifically testable. Even string theory is only at best indirectly testable, but Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis seems impossible to test.
A...
view entire post
Dear Alexy and Lev.
Your paper is well argued. I will admit to being very agnostic about these sorts of ideas. In particular I am very agnostic about Tegmark’s hypothesis, which seems not mathematically provable, nor scientifically testable. Even string theory is only at best indirectly testable, but Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis seems impossible to test.
A couple of points I mention first. The WAP as I understand it is the statement that the universe observed must be of sufficient complexity and structure to permit such observers. It does not mean that any cosmology that exists must admit observers. I think that is the strong AP (SAP). The other point is that chaos, at least within the meaning of Hamiltonian chaos or strange attractor physics, means that a system can execute a vast number of complex dynamics, all of them separated by very small initial conditions. This means that phase space is specified to a very small fine grained detail. Given this is cut into N boxes or pieces, and in each is one of the possible states (0, 1), the degree of complexity is 2^N = e^{S/k}. This is the dimension of the Hilbert space corresponding to this classical setting and the entropy S = k ln(2)N = k ln(dim H), H = Hilbert space. Chaos then in fact implies a high level of complexity.
I did not make much mention of this in my essay. It could be said that mathematics has a body and soul. The body concerns things that are numerically computed and can in fact be computed on a computer. The soul involves things that involve infinitesimals and continua. These tend to be at the foundations of calculus with limits and related arguments. Even though my essay discusses homotopy, this is argued on the basis of continuous diffeomorphisms of loops or paths. However, in the end this is not what we directly compute in mathematics. We are interested in numbers, such as indices or topological numbers, and in physics that is much the same.
If you crack open a book on differential geometry or related mathematics you read in the introduction something like, “The set of all possible manifolds that are C^∞ with an atlas of charts with a G(n,C) group action … .” The thing is that you are faced with ideas here that seem compelling, but from a practical calculation perspective this is infinite and in its entirety unknowable. This along with infinitesimals, or even the Peano theory result for an infinite number of natural numbers, all appears “true,” but much of it is completely uncomputable. This is because the soul of mathematics touches on infinity, or infinitesimals.
The soul also involves things that quantum mechanically are not strictly ontological. These are wave functions or paths in a Feynman path integral. The existential status of these is not known, for the standard idea of epistemic interpretation is now found to be not complete. This differs from classical physics, where the physics is continuous, with perfectly sharply defined paths and energy values and so forth.
I am somewhat agnostic about the existential status of the soul of mathematics. In some sense it seems compelling to say it exists, but on the other hand this leads one into something mystical that takes one away from science. So it is not possible as I see it now to make any hard statement about this. We seem to be a bit like Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noir, “At the tenth floor of the Atlas building on a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, one man searches for answers to life’s persistent questions, Guy Noir private eye.”
I will give your essay a vote in the 7 to 10 range. I have to ponder this for a while.
Cheers LC
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 18:11 GMT
Dear Lawrence,
Thank you so much for your generous compliments to our essay. As you see, we are showing there how Tegmark's MUH is refuted on the scientific ground. Yes, it goes against the dominating opinion of the community of cosmologists (and your own), that the full-blown MUH is unfalsifiable, but our refutation looks very solid for me.
About your 'couple of points'. First, your distinction of WAP and SAP fully agree with the conventional one, as I may judge. It isn't clear to me what point you were trying to make about them. Second, we use the word "chaos" in its ancient meaning, as we stress it when this word is used the first time, pointing there to Platonic philosophy. This meaning sometimes is expressed by such words as "nothingness" or "nothing". This formless entity, chaos/nothingness, is a source of pure accidental, random, causeless factors. It has little to do with the mathematical concept of "dynamical chaos" you mention, which assumes certain mathematical forms already given.
Your ideas about "the soul of mathematics" sound very interesting to me, and I would very much wish to discuss them with you in much more detail than this specific place and occasion allows. You know how to find my email. Please be assured that I would highly value communication with you on these and other questions.
All the best,
Alexey.
Anonymous wrote on Apr. 12, 2015 @ 18:05 GMT
Dear Lawrence,
Thank you so much for your generous compliments to our essay. As you see, we are showing there how Tegmark's MUH is refuted on the scientific ground. Yes, it goes against the dominating opinion of the community of cosmologists (and your own), that the full-blown MUH is unfalsifiable, but our refutation looks very solid for me.
About your 'couple of points'. First, your distinction of WAP and SAP fully agree with the conventional one, as I may judge. It isn't clear to me what point you were trying to make about them. Second, we use the word "chaos" in its ancient meaning, as we stress it when this word is used the first time, pointing there to Platonic philosophy. This meaning sometimes is expressed by such words as "nothingness" or "nothing". This formless entity, chaos/nothingness, is a source of pure accidental, random, causeless factors. It has little to do with the mathematical concept of "dynamical chaos" you mention, which assumes certain mathematical forms already given.
Your ideas about "the soul of mathematics" sound very interesting to me, and I would very much wish to discuss them with you in much more detail than this specific place and occasion allows. You know how to find my email. Please be assured that I would highly value communication with you on these and other questions.
All the best,
Alexey.
report post as inappropriate
Member Noson S. Yanofsky wrote on Apr. 13, 2015 @ 04:48 GMT
Dear Alexy and Lev,
Thank you for an interesting essay.
You write that there is no reason for the rules to be selected. In my essay I explain why some of the rules related to some of the phenomena are, in fact, selected.
Thanks,
Noson
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 13, 2015 @ 23:47 GMT
Dear Noson,
Thanks for the compliment to our essay.
We never say that "there is no reason for the rules to be selected". As you may read in our abstract, we rule out "the possibility for them to be randomly generated or selected". In fact, we are refuting the full-blown MUH of Tegmark on the grounds of the mathematical elegance, large scale and high precision of the already discovered laws of nature.
You are saying that in your essay you "explain why some of the rules related to some of the phenomena are, in fact, selected." Your essay stresses the role of symmetry both for physics and mathematics. This is true, of course, but this truth tells nothing to the question why the laws of nature are symmetric and logically simple. Your essay does not even ask this question.
Regards,
Alexey.
Sylvain Poirier wrote on Apr. 13, 2015 @ 20:44 GMT
Dear Alexy and Lev, I keep reviewing other essays, expanding my
list of the best essays I found, and now I would like to recommend you the essay
Was there a choice? by William Nelson, which I found to have interesting common topics with your own, even if their reasoning is different.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 13, 2015 @ 21:22 GMT
Dear Sylvain,
Thank you so much for your contest reviews and reading advices. I really appreciate your help.
Alexey.
Author Alexey/Lev Burov wrote on Apr. 15, 2015 @ 03:45 GMT
Even though the argumentation of the essay is clear, we find that many have a difficulty understanding it. Alexey has presented it at the Society of Philosophy in Fermi National Laboratory and recorded it on video. Slides and video are available
here. Comments and questions are welcome there as well.
Lev
Peter Martin Punin wrote on Apr. 19, 2015 @ 13:05 GMT
Dear Alexey,
Dear Lev,
I have carefully read your essay and I agree completely, with your chain of reasoning and all details.
First of all, we never underline sufficiently that the mere presence of laws of natures taking mathematical forms does not explain anything. Within papers or discussions belonging to this contest, we can often read that mathematical truths are deducted from physical experience. But this, as you notice it rightly, does not explain how/why natural phenomena “behave” in the way that their “behavior” matches given laws. Hence there must be “something” doing that physical phenomena “behave” “law like” and not anyhow.
I particularly appreciate your proof framework: On the one hand, the configuration of natural constants compatible with the emergence of life characterizes already itself by a probability infinitely close to zero. On the other hand, the finesse of fine the tuned universe is not fine enough to allow any experimental justification of phenomena satisfying WAP conditions. So, instead of formulating far-fetched hypotheses, it is better to see in more-than-fine-tuned-universe related phenomena the confirmation of this Pythagorean/Platonic faith which in turn had guided the approach of many physicists being at the origin of modern and contemporary physics.
Your essay is courageous, very clear, well written and documented. I have just given it the highest rating.
I would like to stay in contact with you even after the end of the contest to continue exchanges of ideas, knowing that there is still a lot of work in this domain.
Good luck, best regards,
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 19, 2015 @ 17:30 GMT
Dear Peter,
I am glad to see your agreement with our essay; many thanks for its highest rating! My email can be found from my bio, so please write me any time you like to discuss something.
Good luck and cheers,
Alexey.
Laurence Hitterdale wrote on Apr. 19, 2015 @ 20:38 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my essay. As you indicated, I agree with your view that chaosogenesis (to use your term) must be rejected. Let me try to advance the discussion by mentioning three points.
First, about the argument (on page 7 left column): “Because the logical structure of our universe cannot be explained by chaos, and because it...
view entire post
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my essay. As you indicated, I agree with your view that chaosogenesis (to use your term) must be rejected. Let me try to advance the discussion by mentioning three points.
First, about the argument (on page 7 left column): “Because the logical structure of our universe cannot be explained by chaos, and because it cannot explain itself, we are left with only one possible explanation remaining, that it was conceived and realized by a mind.” What about another alternative, namely, that the logical structure and indeed the existence of our universe cannot be explained at all? On this alternative, the universe simply is, and nothing more can be said. In recent years a number of writers have advanced theories which amount to chaosogenesis in one form or another. As the weaknesses of such theories become more and more obvious, many of these people will probably retreat to this position of fundamental inexplicability. The conclusion that you present (i.e., “that it was conceived and realized by a mind”) is, I think, preferable to the alternative of no explanation at all, but the interesting question is how to formulate the arguments.
Second, the argument on page 3, left column, is important, and I believe it deserves to be elaborated. I refer to the argument from the forms to their unity and then to absolute mind. As you point out, Tegmark does not bring up the matter, and when I read some of Tegmark’s writings, I never thought of anything like what you say here. I think you are saying something like this: The mathematical forms are real. If a form is real, then it must be self-consistent. But self-consistency of each individual form is insufficient to guarantee the reality of the total realm of forms. If there is a mathematical universe, then all the forms in that universe must be mutually consistent. But what constitutes that over-all consistency of the mathematical universe, and for what reasons do we believe the mathematical universe to be consistent? (In my view, these are two separate questions, although related.) The ground of the self-consistency of the mathematical universe cannot itself be a formal proof or other mathematical structure. We can see why that will not work. So, the ground and guarantee of mathematical consistency has to be something outside the network of mathematical structures. Considerable additional argument is required to show that the external something is a mind or at least mind-like. You state that the logical terminus of the argument is absolute mind. As I said, your ideas on this point are new to me, but I am inclined to agree with you. I am sure that we should not simply take mathematical structures as the unproblematic starting point.
Third, in this same place on page 3 you assert that Tegmark’s mathematical absolute has “total indifference to the forms it contains.” This contrasts with your position that Ultimate Mind (or Absolute Mind) grants to each of its constituents “its own special significance”, as you say in a comment above. I think this contrast is important. I believe you would also maintain that, from the actual contents and order of nature, we can infer something about the primal valuations which are intrinsic to what you call “the inexpressible potentiality of being”. Here I am inclined to agree more with you than with Tegmark. In any event, you have brought forward an issue that has been too much neglected. Perhaps in the future you will say more about it.
Best wishes,
Laurence Hitterdale
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 19, 2015 @ 23:57 GMT
Dear Laurence,
Without any exaggeration, you gave us one of the most profound responses we ever had for this text. Thank you so much for your deep attention, and, of course, for your high rating of the essay. Below I am giving our response to your points.
1. “What about another alternative, namely, that the logical structure and indeed the existence of our universe cannot be...
view entire post
Dear Laurence,
Without any exaggeration, you gave us one of the most profound responses we ever had for this text. Thank you so much for your deep attention, and, of course, for your high rating of the essay. Below I am giving our response to your points.
1. “What about another alternative, namely, that the logical structure and indeed the existence of our universe cannot be explained at all?”
We fully agree that this option must be properly considered. I think though that in fact we reflected this way of reasoning just after the citation of Wittgenstein:
“Here Wittgenstein criticizes a silent acceptance of a composite and special mathematical structure as the ultimate explanation of the world. Such explanation barred from further questioning and not subject to reasonable ground of its own existence is an affirmation of unreasonableness of this ground. In other words, it is an acceptance of absurdity as the ultimate foundation of existence. Such superstition destroys the meaning of fundamental science by undermining the importance of reason, subjected by this superstition to the absurd.”
Your comment shows us that this option has to be outlined one more time on p.7.
2. “the ground and guarantee of mathematical consistency has to be something outside the network of mathematical structures. Considerable additional argument is required to show that the external something is a mind or at least mind-like.”
I like that you are stressing this point, Laurence, and we would be happy to see any additional argument in this direction. However, I think our argument, why this “something” can be only mind, is solid (same p.3):
“This unity must not only somehow bind every one of them [i.e. the mathematical forms] together but it has to guarantee their self-consistency. The forms though are mental entities. They are not thinkable without a mind which contains them as truly self–consistent [and so guarantees their self-consistency]. Thus, we have to conclude that this unity, the terminus of Tegmark’s being, is an absolute mind, even if it is not mentioned at all. ”
3. “Third, in this same place on page 3 you assert that Tegmark’s mathematical absolute has “total indifference to the forms it contains.” This contrasts with your position that Ultimate Mind (or Absolute Mind) grants to each of its constituents “its own special significance”, as you say in a comment above.”
It is the implicit transcendental mind of Tegmark’s multiverse, which is indifferent, Laurence. As we wrote:
“the terminus of Tegmark’s being is an absolute mind, even if it is not mentioned at all. What makes this mind special and distinctive from its various platonic versions is its total indifference to the forms it contains. That is what Tegmark calls “the mathematical democracy”. ”
The absolute mind of Tegmark cares about one and only one thing: mathematical consistency. After that, all forms are “democratically equal” for that mind. We are showing that this hypothesis is inconsistent with physics. To be consistent with that, we have to conclude that the absolute mind is not that indifferent; at least it cares about mathematical elegance as well.
Finally you say, “In any event, you have brought forward an issue that has been too much neglected. Perhaps in the future you will say more about it.”
I fully agree. We think that this essay, among a few other works, sheds light onto that new field of philosophy where physics meets none other than theology in a very rigorous way. The people who are capable of such a level of discussion are rare, which makes your current and, hopefully, future thoughts on this subject most desirable.
Cheers,
Alexey Burov.
view post as summary
Laurence Hitterdale replied on Apr. 22, 2015 @ 17:14 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
I think the three points which we are discussing here are related. I find particularly insightful your criticism of indifference or chaos as the ultimate ground for existence. The way you formulate the issue is helpful to me, and I tend to believe your opinions and arguments are correct. As you state, many contemporary writers maintain in one way or another that chaos is the ontological foundation. Until I read your discussion, I had not interpreted Tegmark’s theory this way, but you are right about his position. More importantly, I think you are also right that the chaosogenesis or primal-indifference view contradicts current knowledge in physics. On this comments page for your essay, you include a link to some of your presentations at the Fermi Society of Philosophy. I have not studied that material yet, but I look forward to following your work there and perhaps in other writings and presentations also.
Sincerely,
Laurence Hitterdale
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 22, 2015 @ 19:18 GMT
Dear Laurence,
They definitely are related, and it seems their relation in this discussion is centered on the opposition of significance and indifference. That significance is a fundamental quality of being has been discussed by many philosophers and mystics in various ways. As you know the Good was the terminus for Plato, and what is “good” but a synonym of significance, especially in this context? To take this a bit further, I think that the mistake many contemporary authors make ultimately reduces to this philosophical contradiction: they are trying to deduce significance, meaning from the insignificant – the absurd.
Alexey has presented a
series of historical lectures for the
Fermi society, which are the core of his work there. Those links should save you some time in digging through the material. You are also very welcome to discuss the lectures on the society’s blog-space, and we are very excited to hear your philosophical ideas there.
Kind Regards,
Lev
Neil Bates wrote on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 01:10 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Very good essay. To repeat my reactions for the sake of readers here: The writing was excellent, in the sense of being both technically apt as well as readable to a general literate audience (it reminds me of Penrose's writings, and in outlook as well.) I think you have an acute grasp of conceptual foundations and issues (like, the problem of existential asymmetry for...
view entire post
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Very good essay. To repeat my reactions for the sake of readers here: The writing was excellent, in the sense of being both technically apt as well as readable to a general literate audience (it reminds me of Penrose's writings, and in outlook as well.) I think you have an acute grasp of conceptual foundations and issues (like, the problem of existential asymmetry for specially-selected possible worlds.) Well put. First, I agree with you that physics is more than math, and that our world is not a math structure. Math
by itself cannot tell us more than about its own contents (like, why there "are" five Platonic solids in that sense). However, as you well argue, the math we find in the universe can tell us much more. You correctly note the flaw in the argument that observed fine-tuning can be adequately explained (in Bayesian terms) as no more than a self-selection effect. True, if that were so, then the precision and elegance of the world would probably be less. (However, let's all admit that with continua we do have a measure problem. Still, even without enumerable sets to compare, the relative "areas" of numerical ranges give us a rough idea of what we should expect.)
Actually I think the problem is even worse. If we really consider the full range of math structures, then we have to include inconsistent ones like e.g. the splicing together of y = x
2 with y = x
4. In that case, rules would not even be consistent over time etc. There are many more possible messy worlds than orderly ones, a problem noted about David Lewis' modal realism.
These foundational arguments are fascinating and important, but I am particularly proud of my novel (in its broad execution at least) argument for why space had to be three-dimensional. It constrains possible worlds more than previously realized, although as I noted: only to the extent that we expect lawful consistency in "worlds" in the first place. And what really makes "worlds" different from mere structures of math? I basically agree with the sentiments pleaded by Roger Penrose (whose diagram is borrowed for your essay). Quote:
"One can argue that a universe governed by laws that do not allow consciousness is no universe at all. I would even say that all the mathematical descriptions of a universe that have been given so far must fail this criterion. It is only the phenomenon of consciousness that can conjure a putative 'theoretical' universe into actual existence! ... Yet beneath all this technicality is the feeling that it is indeed 'obvious' that the conscious mind cannot work like a computer, even though much of what is actually involved in mental activity might do so. This is the kind of obviousness that a child can see--though that child may, in later life, become browbeaten into believing that the obvious problems are 'non-problems', to be argued into non-existence ... ."
- Roger Penrose, in The Emperor's New Mind (1988), pp. 447-448.
Finally, I invite readers to look at my own
essay. It is one of a few that directly presents specific new physical insights (in this case, for why space has three large dimensions.)
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 03:17 GMT
Dear Neil,
Thanks again for your thought–provoking and multi-dimensional comment. Your comparison of our text to Penrose’ is deeply flattering. Your note that “there are many more possible messy worlds than orderly ones, a problem noted about David Lewis' modal realism.” invites me to underline that our essay, refuting Tegmark’s multiverse, refutes Lewis’ one even more. We write:
“Our universe is special not only because it is populated by living and conscious beings but also because it is theoretizable by means of elegant mathematical forms, both rather simple in presentation and extremely rich in consequences. To allow life and consciousness, the mathematical structure of laws has to be complex enough so as to be able to generate rich families of material structures. From the other side, the laws have to be simple enough to be discoverable by the appearing conscious beings. To satisfy both conditions, the laws must be just right. The laws of nature are fine-tuned not only with respect to the anthropic principle but to be discoverable as well. In other words, the Universe is fine–tuned with respect to what can be called as the Cosmic Anthropic Principle: its laws are purposefully chosen for the universe to be cosmically observed.”
Cheers,
Alexey.
Aleksandar Mikovic wrote on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 08:42 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
It was a great feeling when I discovered that you share the same ideas on metaphysics. I enjoyed reading your essay and gave it a high grade. I have a couple of comments, which can be thought of as suggestions for a further research.
The Godel theorems in logic imply that there is no a TOE, which has a profound implications for a platonic metaphysics. This fact...
view entire post
Dear Alexey and Lev,
It was a great feeling when I discovered that you share the same ideas on metaphysics. I enjoyed reading your essay and gave it a high grade. I have a couple of comments, which can be thought of as suggestions for a further research.
The Godel theorems in logic imply that there is no a TOE, which has a profound implications for a platonic metaphysics. This fact is also consistent with the fact that beside the mathematical ideas (concepts and structures) exist non-mathematical ideas (also called by Tegmark as non-computable structures). As I described in my first FQXi essay, "Temporal Platonic Metaphysics", one needs the idea of passage of time, as well as of consciousness (observer) in order to obtain a more realistic metaphysics than the one proposed by Tegmark. In your essay you raise a very interesting question concerning the multiverse, i.e. which universe is realised and why is it realised. From my point of view, an abstract Universe is realised if it is temporal. It is clear that our universe is temporal and it contains cosmic observers, i.e. us. You also raise a deeper question, which is which abstract universe is realised, and you use the arguments related with fine tuning to justify the existence of universes with observers. I think that the deeper question is why our universe is temporal, i.e. real, since there is an infinity of abstract mathematical universes. You correctly identify that there are two logical possibilities: it is God who decides or all mathematical universes are temporal.
I also liked that you mentioned the 3 worlds: platonic, mental and material. I would like to point out that in my aforementioned essay, I described a relationship between them: the mental and the material worlds are subsets of the platonic world of ideas. The material world consists of mathematical ideas immersed in time, while the mental world consists of nonmathematical and mathematical ideas bundled together in our brain.
Best regards,
Aleksandar
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 12:52 GMT
Dear Aleksandar,
Thank you for your very interesting comments and the high grade. However, something has gone wrong with your vote, and instead of a high rating, we’ve received from you a very low one, a 1. We’ve documented our ratings and vote counts before and after your vote, so this discrepancy is definitely the case. Perhaps the easiest way to correct it would be for you to contact administration, or if you want I can do that for you. For that you can send me an email to levburov@gmail.com, which I can then forward on with the request.
Kind Regards,
Lev
Neil Bates replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 13:06 GMT
I think the same thing might have happened to me. I admit I didn't check that carefully, but my score surprisingly went down after a compliment, so it might have. Is FQXi Admin checking on this?
BTW, I usually don't say much about particular ratings, or even if I already rated an essay or not, just to stay out of those concerns. I don't mind hearing from others, I just want to keep my own talk of it to a minimum. I do think, that anyone giving a low rating (3 or less) should explain or discuss first and not just take a drive-by potshot.
report post as inappropriate
Neil Bates replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 21:30 GMT
I just thought of something that may cause confusion about voting, if it's based on looking at comment times (may or may not be relevant to the above worries in particular.) The comment times are shown in GMT, which someone looking may forget to take into account (like, when trying to compare favorable comment with rating change.) Just passing it on FWIW. Actually, I want to see some kind of post-verification so voters can be more sure, and that's something political voters need more of too.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 23:34 GMT
After an exchange of emails with Aleksandar, thanks to his patience, I realized that my interpretation of my rating jumps was not correct. It is too easy to be confused by the time delay between the voting and the related comment, and by accidental coincidences between the comment and unrelated rating. Everything appears to be right in my case. I apologize to all whom I confused. As a result, I am concluding do not bother any more to check anything and trust the system. To comment on Neil's reasonable idea "to see some kind of post-verification", I would suggest a bit more: it would be helpful to see for every essay not only its average rating, but the entire list of its ratings. I do not see any reason why this should be unavailable.
hide replies
Peter Martin Punin wrote on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 10:26 GMT
Dear Alexey,
I cannot find your email adress in your author bio; perhaps it had been suppressed by organisators.
Here is my own personnal adress:
peter.punin@wanadoo.fr
Please could you just return a blanc mail to this adress to establish contact?
On the other hand I have consulted the home page of the Fermi Society of Philosophy. Is there a possibility to join it not only on forum discussions but as an active member?
Best regards
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Neil Bates replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 13:02 GMT
The Burovs asked me also, to write to their email. Note to them and all: my email address is at the top of my essay.
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 19:21 GMT
Dear Peter, dear Neil,
I just sent an email to the both of you from my personal account fi******t@gmail.com
Thanks and cheers,
Alexey.
James Lee Hoover wrote on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 15:33 GMT
Alexey and Lev,
This is a very impressive essay. Your analysis of "order-from-chaos -- explanations is quite incisive with a laser focus. For example, Tegmark's "totality of mathematical forms," you immediately focus on deficiencies and logic of the view, questioning the unity of "these forms."
I avoid the profundities of explaining the why and how of thinking and try to connect the mind, math and physics in the stellar achievements of science showing their successful connections in quantum biology, mapping DNA and trying to simulate the BB: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2345
Thanks for your clear and crisp writing and an erudite analysis of important scientific thinkers.
Jim
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 20, 2015 @ 19:38 GMT
Dear Jim,
Many thanks for your generous compliments! You are catching the very core of our approach, when pointing to our "questioning the unity of "these forms."" To give some reasonable comments on your essay, I have to read it with sufficient attendance and think a bit after that :). I'll try.
Cheers,
Alexey.
Cristinel Stoica wrote on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 10:45 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
I found great depth in your essay and good argumentation. It’s a very interesting idea that the source of order in the universe cannot be limited to the fine tuning of the constants but must be extended to a “right choice of the fundamental principles of physical laws”. Another striking point that you make is the distinction between the types of observers and the theoretizability of the world. My main take away from your essay is the uniqueness of the laws. Another very interesting exercise you make is the deduction of the consequences of noise in a universe with semi-stable laws of nature.
Cheers,
Cristi
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 16:08 GMT
Dear Cristi,
Thank you so much! It is a true pleasure to be highly appreciated by one of the experts!
You underline that your “main take away from your essay is the uniqueness of the laws.” I cannot help but quote our related conclusion:
“Our universe is special not only because it is populated by living and conscious beings but also because it is theoretizable by means of elegant mathematical forms, both rather simple in presentation and extremely rich in consequences. To allow life and consciousness, the mathematical structure of laws has to be complex enough so as to be able to generate rich families of material structures. From the other side, the laws have to be simple enough to be discoverable by the appearing conscious beings. To satisfy both conditions, the laws must be just right. The laws of nature are fine-tuned not only with respect to the anthropic principle but to be discoverable as well. In other words, the Universe is fine–tuned with respect to what can be called as the Cosmic Anthropic Principle: its laws are purposefully chosen for the universe to be cosmically observed.”
Maybe, our laws are not unique, but they definitely belong to a very special and narrow set of mathematical structures, much more narrow than Tegmark’s multiverse suggests. In other words, our laws are truly beautiful in that deep meaning of mathematical beauty which was professed by Pythagoreans of all times, from Pythagoras and Euclid to Kepler and Newton and to Einstein and Dirac.
In that light your statement that, “Mathematics is already there, eternal and unchanging. What we invent is the discovery of mathematics,” is revealed as having an even deeper meaning than it may at first seem.
Cheers and good luck,
Alexey and Lev
Mohammed M. Khalil wrote on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 15:57 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
An absolutely brilliant essay. I agree with you in many points such as your opinion on Tegmark's hypothesis. I especially liked the section "The condition of Elegance". Your essay deserves the highest rating. I would be glad to take your opinion in my
essay.
Best regards and good luck in the contest.
Mohammed
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 16:04 GMT
Dear Cristi,
Thank you so much! It is a true pleasure to be highly appreciated by one of the experts!
You underline that your “main take away from your essay is the uniqueness of the laws.” I cannot help but quote our related conclusion:
“Our universe is special not only because it is populated by living and conscious beings but also because it is theoretizable by means of elegant mathematical forms, both rather simple in presentation and extremely rich in consequences. To allow life and consciousness, the mathematical structure of laws has to be complex enough so as to be able to generate rich families of material structures. From the other side, the laws have to be simple enough to be discoverable by the appearing conscious beings. To satisfy both conditions, the laws must be just right. The laws of nature are fine-tuned not only with respect to the anthropic principle but to be discoverable as well. In other words, the Universe is fine–tuned with respect to what can be called as the Cosmic Anthropic Principle: its laws are purposefully chosen for the universe to be cosmically observed.”
Maybe, our laws are not unique, but they definitely belong to a very special and narrow set of mathematical structures, much more narrow than Tegmark’s multiverse suggests. In other words, our laws are truly beautiful in that deep meaning of mathematical beauty which was professed by Pythagoreans of all times, from Pythagoras and Euclid to Kepler and Newton and to Einstein and Dirac.
In that light your statement that, “Mathematics is already there, eternal and unchanging. What we invent is the discovery of mathematics,” is revealed as having an even deeper meaning than it may at first seem.
Cheers and good luck,
Alexey and Lev
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 16:10 GMT
Dear Mohammed,
My apologies for a mis-post. I'm working on my answer to you.
Cheers,
Alexey
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 21, 2015 @ 17:41 GMT
Dear Mohammed,
Your compliments are especially important for me, since we disagree in our answers to the Wigner’s question. Your high rating shows a valuable and rare ability to estimate an approach contradictory to your own. Thank you so much! As you stress in your abstract, you “try to explain the reason for this effectiveness based on the view that mathematics is invented.” Our point is that such invention would not be possible without very special objective properties of our universe:
“Such a special universe deserves a proper term, and we do not see a better choice than to call it Cosmos or to qualify it as Pythagorean, in honor of the first prophet of theoretical cognition, who coined such important words as cosmos (order), philosophy (love of wisdom), and theory (contemplation).”
Gratefully accepting your compliments, I still wish to mention that we do not think that we just expressed an “opinion on Tegmark’s hypothesis”. I think we clearly refuted it on the scientific ground.
In the time remaining, I’ll try to read your essay attentively and let you know what else will come in my mind.
Good luck in the contest and cheers,
Alexey.
Steven P Sax wrote on Apr. 22, 2015 @ 21:46 GMT
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Your essay presents a very intriguing philosophical argument backed by empirical considerations and I appreciate that. I like how you went deeper into the analysis of the anthropic principle and ascertained tests for MUH (Mathematical Universe Hypothesis) using the fine tuning and accuracy of fundamental constants. My essay, though focusing on other topics, also discusses checks on MUH in light self-referential considerations. Your narrative is very well written, and I also appreciated the historical context. I particularly liked the balance you formulated in developing the Cosmic Anthropic Principle "to allow life and consciousness,... To satisfy both conditions, the laws must be just right. The laws of nature are fine-tuned not only with respect to the anthropic principle but to be discoverable as well." I also discuss anthropic ideas relating causality and consciousness. I've seen different perspectives on these issues, and your essay is an excellent contribution to this very interesting forum topic. I rate it very highly.
Please take a moment to read and rate my essay as well. Although are focuses may be different, I think we both overlap in ways that are supportive.
Best regards,
Steve Sax
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov wrote on Apr. 22, 2015 @ 22:04 GMT
Dear Steven,
It is a special pleasure to meet somebody you never new appreciating your philosophy! Thank you so much for your compliments and, of course, for the high rating. In the time remaining I'll try to read your essay and respond.
Cheers and good luck!
Alexey.
Eckard Blumschein wrote on Apr. 26, 2015 @ 05:15 GMT
Dear Burovs,
While I don't feel obliged to comment on mysticism, I would just like to ask you whether the following utterance is correct:
"all great theories, from Copernicus, Kepler and Newton to Einstein and Dirac happened as guesses on the grounds of some fundamentally simple ideas like symmetry, conserva:on, or equivalence."
I am rather aware of the Church having caused Copernicus to revise the calendar which led him to reinvent an ancient observation, etc.
The Pythagorean guess "anything is number" has proven wrong by the discovery of incommensurables.
For such reasons, I would like to defend the role of observation and reasoning instead of putting unwarranted questions that didn't prove useful. Engineers have first to look for a relevant problem and then to describe the elements of how their invention may solve it. What problem do those like you intend solving, and is there any idea how to succeed?
Of course, Otto de Guericke dealt speculatively with the problem of what is holding the world together. Steam engine and electricity arose from the experiments that he created.
Can you tell me likewise convincing results from the belief in purpose and soul?
Darwin's approach didn't rest on religious belief in a mystic purpose.
While the consistency of theories in physics can be checked to some extent by experiments, guesses in mathematics may be confirmed if they are logically flawless and useful. I consider set theory failing both.
Sincerely,
Eckard Blumschein
report post as inappropriate
Neil Bates replied on Apr. 27, 2015 @ 00:52 GMT
Dear Eckard,
Of course we must
accept what observation shows us, but meanwhile: we need a guiding intuition about what to look for, how to look, what to expect etc. These intuitions might be wrong and needing of later revision, but there's nothing wrong with
trying them out.
Purpose and soul: "Purpose" is hard to get a handle on, but thinking the universe is geared to the development and usability of intelligence, motivates even thinking it is lawful in the first place, etc. And soul? It's IMHO not not a religious concept. If there is something more "whole" about a person than momentary fluctuations and passing on of memories and typical patterns of though, then we can more easily justify the basic rational philosophy of choices based on "your self" still being there in the future. My brain changes around, my mental contents do too, what then persists into successive years, to validate ordinary economic-type utilitarian reasoning? We take that for granted, but study of philosophical paradoxes about Star-Trek style duplications (what if the original is not destroyed, who is "the real you" etc?) shows that we need a deeper concept of self than just sheer continuity of process in a body.
I am not saying that process violates physical law or should be taken as it is revealed in religious claims (and they conflict yet claim to be absolutes to be taken for granted - neither science nor rational philosophies can work like that) - but nature then, has to make some kind of more-than-sum-of-parts out of us, for our future planning to be intelligible. And yes, quantum issues of wholeness and interrelation could well play a role in that (especially after the find that it does play a role in photosynthesis and even the sense of smell.)
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov wrote on Apr. 26, 2015 @ 13:02 GMT
Dear Eckard,
It’s great to see that our essay evokes interest to such fundamental questions. It seems, though, that yours are best answered by the fathers of science themselves. You can of course do your own research, but there is quite a body of respected scholarly work on the subject in existence. Alexey has created a
series of lectures that through quotations of the aforementioned scientists reveals the story and content of the Pythagorean faith, which makes up the core of fundamental science.
Also I highly recommend books by Kitty Ferguson, a historian of science who is also a consultant and biographer of Steven Hawking.
The Fire in the Equations and
The Music of Pythagoras are engaging and accurate narratives on this topic.
Kind Regards,
Lev Burov
Sylvain Poirier wrote on Apr. 30, 2015 @ 09:24 GMT
As I said I appreciate the general ideas of your essay, as a logical argument against some widespread conceptions, but still I have remarks. That is, what does the landscape of logically possible laws of physics, look like. Of course as you explained we can abstractly consider any ugly arbitrary law as a "possible law", and in this vast chaotic landscape of "possible laws", find many possibilities...
view entire post
As I said I appreciate the general ideas of your essay, as a logical argument against some widespread conceptions, but still I have remarks. That is, what does the landscape of logically possible laws of physics, look like. Of course as you explained we can abstractly consider any ugly arbitrary law as a "possible law", and in this vast chaotic landscape of "possible laws", find many possibilities of biological evolution similar to what happened on Earth, with the difference that the fundamental laws would not be intelligible. However it seems to me (and maybe I read from other sources) that, among all "possible laws" able of biological evolution, our particular laws (quantum field theory, the standard model) differ from the rest of this landscape not just by their intelligibility, but also in other ways : something like, apart from modifying the values of physical constants, they are not so much modifiable in the small details of their consequences without destroying all their mathematical coherence.
Namely, while we can conceive of possible variants (such as was hypothesized as alternatives to the Higgs boson, some supersymmetric models now refuted, etc), they are not so many (if we want to restrict the study to simple ones, thought the motivation for this restriction may be questioned, e.g. for its links to intelligibility). For example, there are not so many conceivable kinds of particles that are mathematically coherent in quantum field theory. The Higgs boson was predicted because there are not many logical possibilities of what may give a mass to particles. We may see it as a beauty of mathematics (a restriction on the number of possibilities, and some of the most elegant ones are actually realized).
More importantly, there are not many logically conceivable alternatives to quantum physics that behave in a roughly similar manner. It is even doubtful whether there is such a logical possibility at all. An important search for such things is the spontaneous collapse theories, however usual attempts of such theories violate both relativistic invariance and the conservation laws, even if very slightly. But a violation of conservation laws, even a very slight one, is something that (when formulated in proper terms) General Relativity dismisses as absolutely impossible. Thus, when trying to conceive logical alternatives that would also lead to a biological evolution, they may have to either be very different from how things go in our universe (very different chemistry, etc), or be of the form "These laws do not always apply, they are sometimes broken", but still in ways that do not result in breaking the whole Universe apart (as "breaking conservation laws" would logically imply), that would be... very odd kinds of laws.
But what I see remarkable about the trouble in trying to locate our laws of physics in a landscape of logical possibilities, is not only the lack of phenomenologically similar possibilities (beyond variations of the values of physical constants) but also that it is questionable whether the laws we found of our universe (quantum physics) may meaningfully be considered as a logical possibility at all. Because if we strictly look at them as a logical possibility, then it logically drives us to the Many-worlds interpretation. But, how can a many-worlds universe be considered as a real universe at all ? It does not look like one ; it is questionable (and a metaphysical question) whether we can make sense of "probabilities" in it, unlike the effective role of probabilities (the Born's rule) in our physical reality.
And, in connection with what I explained in my essay, I see all this as not a trouble, but as the simple consequence of the fact that the whole discussion, as followed by Tedmark and other scientific circles, is usually expressed in the wrong terms. Because if the question is about the possibilities of real universes, then it has to involve an ingredient of "reality" beyond mathematical existence, i.e. beyond pure logic, and this ingredient is consciousness. Since, due to its non-mathematical nature, this ingredient cannot be located in any mathematical landscape of possibilities, the very expression of "logical possibility" is not applicable to it.
For more details, see my notes on
spontaneous collapse and the
Many-worlds.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on Apr. 30, 2015 @ 19:16 GMT
Dear Sylvain,
It is a special pleasure to answer your interesting questions as a way to express our gratitude for your numerous posts motivating people to read our essay.
I see two important issues in your post above.
1. “they [the laws] are not so much modifiable in the small details of their consequences without destroying all their mathematical coherence.”, also “a...
view entire post
Dear Sylvain,
It is a special pleasure to answer your interesting questions as a way to express our gratitude for your numerous posts motivating people to read our essay.
I see two important issues in your post above.
1. “they [the laws] are not so much modifiable in the small details of their consequences without destroying all their mathematical coherence.”, also “a violation of conservation laws, even a very slight one, is something that (when formulated in proper terms) General Relativity dismisses as absolutely impossible.”
Mathematical self-consistency, being a certain limitation for the full set of the laws of nature, still allows an infinite (or practically infinite) number of variations from our laws. You may add to the existing laws nonlinear terms, higher order derivatives, etc. The requirement that these additions must not break the self-consistency of the entire set of equations still leaves enormous freedom for these variations. I’d like to stress, that at that level of consideration,
all the fundamental principles are considered as variable. To answer the question “why the laws of nature are specifically these?” we cannot point to any one of them. All of them are under question, and an attempt to answer by invoking conservation laws, symmetry, General Relativity, or some other specific principle would be a logical mistake, namely, circular logic.
2. “it has to involve an ingredient of "reality" beyond mathematical existence, i.e. beyond pure logic, and this ingredient is consciousness. Since, due to its non-mathematical nature, this ingredient cannot be located in any mathematical landscape of possibilities, the very expression of "logical possibility" is not applicable to it.”
In principle we agree with that. We also appreciate a similar statement in your essay, “Consciousness can explore mathematics, but mathematics cannot describe consciousness.” However, our essay is limited to the scope of the proof it presents. When we mention the possibility of life and consciousness, we aren’t talking about a logical possibility of consciousness per se (although its primacy is a consequence of the proof), but rather its embodiment in the material world. In this context there is no difference between life and consciousness, as we are essentially just talking about organic chemistry and other very basic requirements for life as we know it. This is also what is usually meant by “possibility of consciousness” in the context of the fine-tuned universe. What is important here, is that this chemistry would remain the same provided that its perturbations are kept within the anthropic width, which is not smaller than 10^-3 or so, as we discussed in our paper.
Alexey, Lev
view post as summary
Sylvain Poirier replied on May. 3, 2015 @ 10:01 GMT
On your reply to 1. I agree that your argument on the infinite variability of the laws seems perfectly logical and even necessary, but only from the viewpoint of those who reason like science philosophers (who discuss and understand science like children understand war by playing with plastic soldiers) developing their naive expectations about the panorama of logically conceivable laws of physics,...
view entire post
On your reply to 1. I agree that your argument on the infinite variability of the laws seems perfectly logical and even necessary, but only from the viewpoint of those who reason like science
philosophers (who discuss and understand science like children understand war by playing with plastic soldiers) developing their naive expectations about the panorama of logically conceivable laws of physics, having some notions of classical physics of course (being introduced to the seemingly arbitrary formulas expressing macroscopic laws of classical physics), but without deep enough understanding of the known laws of
modern physics (General Relativity, quantum field theory, gauge theories). For example if the laws of physics looked like an arbitrary computer program (as the laws of biology actually look like, and as is the ordinary conceptual framework for the naturalist conception of the development of consciousness as emerging from biological evolution) then of course there would be no logical difficulty in considering the possibility to modify this program by arbitrary modifications of the instructions, adding of terms to formulas, etc.
However I maintain that all these natural expectations fall down when trying to apply them to the specific laws that we found in modern physics. Namely, while (as I expressed in my essay) I do believe that the fundamental laws should be algorithmically expressible in a sense, it is however not an arbitrary algorithm that may receive arbitrary modifications, but a very remarkable one (for its way of defining probabilities, the dissociation of the time of its possible computations from physical time...) ; but I understand that this very statement itself seems absurd for those who don't actually know these laws, as this is a very incredible property of a law indeed, the property of being almost not modifiable in logically consistent manners. Therefore, I see no sense of arguing further that this property may hold in principle, but the meaningful question will instead be the following : how well do you actually understand General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics, so as to be entitled to make claims about what is logically conceivable around them ? Among essays, Aldo Filomeno is trying to argue on your side, but I think he overrates his points, and already what he could bring there as a panorama of possibilities does not look as vast as what you seem to assume. For example we can say there is an infinity of possible Lie groups to serve for gauge invariance, however only a finite number of them have dimension lower than any given finite number.
Now let us focus on a very specific point, to make the argument precise:
General Relativity and the conservation laws. You wrote "
all the fundamental principles are considered as variable (...) All of them are under question, and an attempt to answer by invoking conservation laws, symmetry, General Relativity, or some other specific principle would be a logical mistake, namely, circular logic. ". I'm sorry for you but this view is just wrong in the case of General Relativity and conservation laws: if defined properly, we can find that conservation laws are not an assumption but a theorem of curved geometry (in curved space-time), so that any violation of them is a logical impossibility. Your way to dismiss this idea, suggests to me that you are actually ignorant about General Relativity. Aren't you ?
And for another point that I already mentioned : the difficulty of finding a possible formula (law) of spontaneous collapse that respects the conservation of energy. If you think that it should be easy to invent "logically possible laws of physics" by arbitrarily making up formulas with additional correction terms so as to roughly behave similar to a given phenomenon, then you are welcome to provide your help to the community of physicists who try to conceive models of spontaneous collapse, by making up a candidate formula for spontaneous collapse that would be logically coherent, does not break any mathematical theorem such as the geometric theorem of conservation I just mentioned about curved space-time so as to not bring plain logical contradictions between quantum physics and general relativity as approximate descriptions of aspects of a common universe, and compatible with what is known. I think it will make you famous.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Sylvain Poirier replied on May. 3, 2015 @ 20:10 GMT
As for the question whether the known laws constitute a logical possibility at all, there is for example in Tim Maudlin's interview (that I quoted in my review): "Properly speaking, there is no such thing as “quantum theory” (...) What is called “interpreting quantum theory” is really a matter of constructing clear and precise physical theories that return these same predictions, or...
view entire post
As for the question whether the known laws constitute a logical possibility at all, there is for example in
Tim Maudlin's interview (that I quoted in my review): "
Properly speaking, there is no such thing as “quantum theory” (...) What is called “interpreting quantum theory” is really a matter of constructing clear and precise physical theories that return these same predictions, or nearly the same". So it is not as if there were many known logical possibilities that roughly look like what we observe; rather, it is doubtful whether there is such a logical possibility at all. At least we could not explicitly find anyone yet. What we have instead, quantum field theory, is some very successful almost-mathematical concepts that play in practice the role of a theory, but somehow aren't one in a strict logical sense. And it is remarkable that, even though quantum theory is only a non-theory and mathematically ill-defined, it is still very elegant mathematically, and probably much more mathematically elegant than anything that can be genuinely called a "logical possibility" behaving roughly the same.
So, your arguments do apply, not so well to anything near the laws of physics as they were actually found to be, if we can ever find such possibilities, but rather to the abstract framework of some range of "all logical possibilities" which naturalists usually assume as if our physical universe was inside this range, though it actually isn't. Namely, if a "range of possibilities" was found that admits a multitude of expressible mathematically coherent alternatives which behave roughly the same in practice, then in between these many expressible coherent alternatives there would also be some non-intelligible possibilities (such as obtained as the limit of a series of more and more complex versions). But the real problem which physicists face is not any excess of logically coherent candidates between which we have troubles to discern the right one, but the lack of any coherent nearby logical possibility at all.
I was rather puzzled at some time when I attended a seminar of philosophy of science, discussing the theoretical possibility of determinism, focusing the arguments not on any logical verification of what may be compatible with our effectively found laws (quantum physics), but, instead, on a certain "range of all possible laws" to wonder what kind of law, assumed to be expressed by some kinds of equations (such as differential equations), may turn out to be deterministic or not. For example, he pointed out that some differential equations may have non-deterministic consequences depending on their regularity class. Somehow I understand the necessity to adopt such a line of research, precisely because the found laws of quantum physics do not look like laws of physics at all, so that it is hard to reason on this seemingly incoherent basis. Like the story of the man looking for his keys below the lamp not because he lost them there but because he sees there more clearly... However, while such kinds of reasoning may superficially look rational and open-minded to a wide range of possibilities, if this "wide range of all possibilities" cannot include any possibility anywhere near what was actually found to be the case, then the relevance of the whole discussion about such a range remains dubious.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Author Alexey/Lev Burov replied on May. 3, 2015 @ 20:11 GMT
You adopted two mistakes, Sylvain: circular logic and wrong attitude.
Goodbye,
AB.
Sylvain Poirier replied on May. 4, 2015 @ 17:42 GMT
I have neither circular logic nor wrong attitude, I just bring some precise and rigorous remarks to the topic, however, since you are deciding to dismiss the remarks without any proper reply, and calling something "circular logic" when I rigorously explain to you why it is not so, thus refusing any progress to the understanding of the topic, then you are the one having the wrong attitude, so that you are obliging me to remove my support to you.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Login or
create account to post reply or comment.