Peter

It is far beyond me to untangle the mysteries of the universe with Propositional Dynamic Logic. It looks like another epistemologically tangled swamp. My suspicion is that the recursive feature of our inherited mindset leads us in circles when we address ultimate questions such as free will, realism – idealism, the direction of natural selection, information, consciousness, random...

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Peter

It is far beyond me to untangle the mysteries of the universe with Propositional Dynamic Logic. It looks like another epistemologically tangled swamp. My suspicion is that the recursive feature of our inherited mindset leads us in circles when we address ultimate questions such as free will, realism – idealism, the direction of natural selection, information, consciousness, random – determined, unobservable entities, (fields, wave functions, Laws…) Our inherited mindset has worked astonishingly well developing closed system technology. But the big questions, i.e. the essay theme, remain unresolved after centuries of debate. Relativity, quantum mechanics, and inflationary multiverse theories (all of which I believe in) all go to show something is screwy with common sense. The essay theme is full of unquantifiable interpretations. A choice is necessary. “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics … is something we neither understand nor deserve”. (Wigner) I choose to believe the Universe is a self-aware conscious being with apparent constraints. I could choose to believe God (the Universe) is a mermaid but I will never prove it without opinionated interpretation. However, I suppose one could argue an explanatory and predictive mathematical theory of a mermaid Universe. 1=1 is an expression of the “Law of identity”. If we can’t agree on that, we’re hopeless. Still I see your point. I’ll accept and rephrase your assertion: “only particular things exist”. A fine example of a recursive argument since it is a general truth. It’s a paradox. I don’t understand it, I simply accept it. We have chosen to believe it. My pet theory is a (unity) Superposition of reality. The choices and distinctions we make are resolutions of this Superposition. The opposite (reciprocal) to this is a reality composed of unique individual parts. To believe that every electron is unique is to resolve this Superposition extremely. However we’ll never agree on the extent to which these individuals behave stochastically or act in concert. Unless we agree that the mindless random behavior and teleology are simply two interpretations of the same thing, or that the answer is observer dependent i.e. relativism. In case it’s not obvious enough; my essay tramples all over realism as I suppose it to be a choice of belief. Notice that I deftly avoided the question of whether mathematics is actual or mental. I went far out on a philosophical limb to find the “rudimentary equality”. I don’t expect most to take this seriously. I followed one particular path out into a vast field of choices. My dance is an exhibition of an uncountable number of possible dances. I really don’t know anything at all!

I am grateful for your comments.

Vik

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Vik,

Great essay, unique in its approach to the difficult theme given us by the organizers. Toungue-in-cheek funny, a few good serious pokes at the orthodoxy, and your own view of deity dancing around in the background.

To build your approach around the Munchausen Trilemma is brilliant. Would like to see MT used in an attempt to undermine MUH as well as support it.

Your...

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Vik,

Great essay, unique in its approach to the difficult theme given us by the organizers. Toungue-in-cheek funny, a few good serious pokes at the orthodoxy, and your own view of deity dancing around in the background.

To build your approach around the Munchausen Trilemma is brilliant. Would like to see MT used in an attempt to undermine MUH as well as support it.

Your arguments regarding the applicability of the first two lemmas of MT seem reasonable.

Regarding the third lemma, your 'rudimentary equality' seems to me to lack a good definition. My impression is you found it necessary to introduce this idea and its associated proof (which I find at least a little questionable) to support your view that "...physics was not designed to be a circular argument in the first place."

However, the last sentence of your essay reads

"Suppose we choose to believe that this Grand Mathematical Superposition is intelligent. What could it be? Hmm."

To my mind this suggests the opposite, that in your allusion to the possibility of a 'creator' and a 'creation' one can perhaps consider that physics was indeed a circular argument to begin with.

It is a characteristic of viable networks that they are in some sense self-supporting, an emergent property. A consequence of the interactions that sustain the network. There is a closure, a circularity, a circulation in that web of interactions, both in the networks of ideas that comprise our physical models and the physical reality they seek to describe. To me this suggests the possibility that the circular argument lemma is satisfied without the need for your questionable proof.

I like the bit of a sidestep in the way you bring in emergence, tying it to the rather ambiguous 'rudimentary equality'. I'm surprised that Tegmark seems to ignore it in his MUH paper. I don't see how he can make his argument tenable without addressing emergence.

Many thanks for this essay. It is clever, very funny, and horribly twisted. Unique and powerful its own special way.

And given that a google search for rudimentary equality gave only reference to a legal technicality, can see where you get the notion that being a lawyer is appropriate when considering the absurdity of the universe.

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Pete

I’m very grateful for constructive criticism.

Deity is a transcendent model. We can imagine information as being something separate from the matter, but I suspect you know this leads to philosophical debate. I equally accept immanent models.

I erred in the introduction of the “Rudimentary equality” before defining it. It amounts to nothing more than the Law of...

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Pete

I’m very grateful for constructive criticism.

Deity is a transcendent model. We can imagine information as being something separate from the matter, but I suspect you know this leads to philosophical debate. I equally accept immanent models.

I erred in the introduction of the “Rudimentary equality” before defining it. It amounts to nothing more than the Law of Identity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity

The phrase “Law of Identity” didn’t sound mathematical enough, so I coined “Rudimentary equality”. My fault.

I erred again in presenting the third option of the trilemma as an unequivocal proof. I failed to make clear that one can choose to believe such a thing and even provide the mathematical rigor to back it up. I further imply that explanatory and predictive science is still effective in spite of such a belief. I frame my argument from the assumption that the Cartesian–Newtonian foundation was not originally intended to be circular or tautological. However the later realization of the mass-energy equivalence completes the circle. We could just as well suppose the Law of Identity is a tautology and so the basis of understanding is indeed circular. I can spin this anyway I choose.

The last sentence is intended to imply that mathematics = intelligence. I don’t think intelligence can be defined as something independent of intention. We believe that we behave intentionally and that the rest of the “inanimate” matter does not. I choose to believe this is an artificial distinction. Many people believe natural selection in no way exhibits intention, and science proves as much. I disagree. That the Laws of nature are “blind” is like asserting that fishing has nothing to do with any intention to catch fish. Somehow God’s statistical approach to creation disproves itself. Many believe natural tendency toward organized, self-replicating, complex, intelligent beings does not equal intention since such beings are nothing more than a temporary side effect of entropy. I’ll concede that one can choose to believe such a thing, but such an interpretation is disruptive to the evolution of our species and wisdom chooses to forward the intention of life. We proliferate as cooperative societies dependent on the belief that we are part of some system larger than ourselves. (Just to point out the obvious). This in spite of our generally selfish behavior. Alternatively we could drop out of the biosphere and believe ourselves to be accidental side effects doomed to ultimate entropic heat death and wallow in hopeless meaninglessness. May as well kill myself. Our proliferation as a species has everything to do with what we choose to believe. What else depends on what we choose to believe? What are we doing here? We are searching for the truth. Is not a search a random activity within lawful bounds? I choose to believe searching is an intelligent activity. I choose to believe the big bang initiated this search. These essays are a manifestation of the search. You are a manifestation of the search. The Laws of nature are a manifestation of the search. This is why we search. We are the search!

RE viable networks; so you buying the circular argument? No doubt there is utility in circular arguments e.g. I could argue that force and mass define each other. But I point out that if we take circularity to be generally true we are left with the recursive proposal: “ all arguments are circular”. Failing this we are left to sort out which aspects of nature are circular and which are foundational. Good luck with that. Or else just live with the paradox.

We say “it is what it is” or we say “it is what you think it is” and either way the realist maintains the external reality that has nothing to do with thought. Few of us are actually willing to consider the idealist perspective where “it is actually what we think it is”. Conventional thinking will scoff at such idealistic worldview. Some quantum interpretations grant this. One may argue that science cannot disprove this. To accept such a view requires one to dismiss the “separateness” of self (ego) and the rest of the universe. I choose a relativist view, where one chooses their own worldview. To me the realist and idealist views are menu selections. But this comes at a cost. My choice disagrees with both the realist and the idealist. Hence no consensus. My choice to believe reality is a menu selection, is itself, a menu selection. Therefore I have failed to “rise above” the controvertible worldviews. I am trapped in recursion. To believe that: “The truth is that there is no truth” is to wallow in contradiction. To accept this trap is to relinquish sense of reason. Anthropic conceit denies universal contradiction. My intent in this essay contest is to find out how few, if any, of my fellow human beings actually relate to my swamp.

Vik

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Ben

Guilty as charged. Trying to blow smoke up Tegmark’s ass. I wonder if he read it. Maybe get an irate message from him for massacring his nice theory. He begins with the external reality Hypothesis and with the implicit assumption that math is objective reality. A statement of abject realism that is (only) one expression of my broader application of what I mean by “baggage”. Guilty...

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Ben

Guilty as charged. Trying to blow smoke up Tegmark’s ass. I wonder if he read it. Maybe get an irate message from him for massacring his nice theory. He begins with the external reality Hypothesis and with the implicit assumption that math is objective reality. A statement of abject realism that is (only) one expression of my broader application of what I mean by “baggage”. Guilty again for excessively terse presentation of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. Copied and pasted that from wikipedia. Smart huh? You wish I spent more time on what? Are you referring to the part about: “the set of all possible essays affirming and/or denying the emergence of “aims and intentions from mindless mathematics”? I wrote that to try to articulate the idea of superposition in a general way. But the idea has quantum to cosmic scope from wave function to multiverse. It’s a really big idea. Too big for this space. The general idea is that perception and calculation are resolutions of the Superposition (God).

I notice you spent an inordinate number of keystrokes examining the meaning of intention like the good semantic philosopher that you are, whereas I did not. That’s because it’s all intention. Everything from the Laws that determine the structure of the periodic table to my intention to write this irritating response. The smoke screen is in the statistical way the universe goes about finding the evolutionary tendency toward self-organizing systems. You note well in your (excellent) essay than intention initiates random search e.g. hunting and that intentions may run counter to goals. Insightful stuff. I enjoyed reading your essay and did find some things to take away. But my overall impression is neither of us has managed to prove anything beyond the inadequacy of traditional reasoning. I just loved the phrase: “deterministic free will” as it appeals to my paradoxical view of the universe. Thanks for the valiant effort to sort out intention, choice, want, tendency, aims, and a host of other epistemological and ontological fodder. But you went off the rails and I drowned in a swamp. Still worthy attempt to solve the puzzle.

One must read between the lines to appreciate my essay, or step back far enough to see the pathetic essay writers writhe in their mental straightjackets. Tegmark is laughing his ass off as we all struggle in different directions with our (superior) baggage. A bunch of crackpots conducting serious business.

But seriously, your underlying frustration with me is warranted. The theme is the variety of choices we have to establish a belief system, actual reality, faith, model, whatever one chooses as a relationship between self and the rest of it. After all that’s what it’s all about: our relationship with each other and the rest of it. I crashed and burned, so the question is whether the driver failed or did the car fail, or was the road diabolically designed. Obviously the variety of essay approaches bears witness to a variety of landscapes. Are we all looking at the same landscape? It seems that none of us knows how to navigate this.

It took me 10 days to write that. Every day I wrote it over. I didn’t want to come off like Socrates espousing truth because I don’t know. I just can’t take myself that seriously. On the tenth day I arrived at the point of disgust. So I submitted it. So I just drove into the landscape anyway, knowing I would crash. We all crash. It cracks me up. Obviously the truth is not obvious. If it were then we would all know it. I tried to make clear the choices I made to present the argument. Is there some unequivocal incontrovertible argument that stands apart from any choice, assumption, opinion, interpretation, observer… Why don’t we see it? It’s the message in the bottle. Who can read it. Can you? The implication is that our current level of analytical ability is limited. The recursion thing is (I think) a clue. The futility of philosophy is a clue. The MUH is a clue. The swamp is a clue. You are a clue. The universe is a puzzle some of us are naïve enough to attempt. My essay is intended to present that puzzle as perceived from crazytown. (How did you know I wear bananapants?) Another general observation I have is that the conventional sense of reason, which obviously works well to conduct the business of everyday living, fails us when we address the big philosophical questions such as the “arising of aims and intentions”. I took the approach of simply accepting the recursive paradoxes that rear up when we address the big questions. Philosophers suppose to evade the paradoxes with much convoluted reasoning, resulting in no incontrovertible systems. Consider the following recursive proposition: “All belief systems require at least one assumption”. But this statement is itself an assumption. I choose to discard the realism and believe that mathematical physics is an art as much as science. The universe is an articulating actor. Actually my views are much more theological than this but I don’t see any hint of that in your work. As far as prize money goes I have no expectations or desire to “win”. My only intention is to estimate the extent of my audience toward the end of writing a book on the reconciliation of science and belief systems. I will refrain from posting on your page and invite your reply.

Vik

P.S. Banter is welcome here.

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