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I would raise the following objections. First, you place a lot of emphasize on perception. What if we kill - or lets say remove - all humans and animals and al

I would raise the following objections. First, you place a lot of emphasize on perception. What if we kill - or lets say remove - all humans and animals and aliens from the universe so that we are only left with rocks and gas clouds and other stuff we would not usually link to perceiving the universe? Do you really think removing the last entity perceiving the universe would fundamentally change what is going on with all the rocks and gas clouds? What about the moment the first entity perceiving the universe came into existence? Or do you mean perceiving in a more general sense, like in quantum mechanics, where we talk about interactions and - possibly unfortunately, again due to the association with conscious agents - measurements? Second, you do not seem to be talking about the universe in its entirety, you seem to be talking about a universe evolving in time with time being outside of that universe. This is the very point the article argues - and I think rightly so - against, ultimately there can be nothing outside of the universe, not even time, hence the universe in its entirety must be a - for the lack of a better word - static object not evolving over some time external to it.

inopinatus 7y ago
> Or do you mean perceiving in a more general sense Yes. I'm using it to mean evaluation as the fundamental causal process. I don't believe consciousness is orthogonal to the universe, ergo it must emerge from the processes within it. Sorry, the term perception is a bit loaded in this regard. But here's the thing: I also don't want to exempt a complex emergent arrangement of functions from evaluating its neighbours. Which is to say, I don't want to be excluded from looking at things. > Do you really think removing the last entity perceiving the universe would fundamentally change what is going on It's a good question. To me this scenario only occurs when nothing exists. > the universe in its entirety must be a static object Do you mean the conclusion that the universe is a rigid block of spacetime? I used to accept that as an undergrad, eventually rejecting it for the most common reason of all: the denial of free will, justifying this to myself on the grounds it conflicts with the halting problem. Unfortunately the problem then arises, "what fucking axioms do you believe then?". Here's the thing I like: if the universe is functional, then its laws may evolve as it evaluates, including the laws by which it evaluates. That provides an irreversible causal arrow, which is incompatible with a block universe. Not actually sure I could glean that from this article though. In the Greg Egan edition of this theory, the speed of light then emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe, and new forms of consciousness are encountered living within the Lisp machine of the cosmos.
- danbruc 7y ago
  Do you mean the conclusion that the universe is a rigid block of spacetime? Yes. You on the other hand try to place time outside of the universe and that means for me you are not talking about the entire universe. It is like talking about one frame of a movie, but one frame is of course not the entire movie. And while there is change from frame to frame the entire movie is static. Equally the universe in one moment is not the entire universe. Not to mention that the universe in one moment is - to put it mildly - a problematic idea as relativity teaches us that there are no such things as a universal time or universal simultaneity. I used to accept that as an undergrad, eventually rejecting it for the most common reason of all: the denial of free will [...] There are several different things that people may mean when they talk about free will but those fall into two categories. The first category contains variants of free will that do not require that the future is indeterminate, for example understanding free will as just doing what one prefers. The second category contains variants of free will that do require that the future is indeterminate but the problem is that those variants of free will are not logically consistent or not worth being labeled free will to begin with. [...] justifying this to myself on the grounds it conflicts with the halting problem. Would you mind elaborating this point? [...] if the universe is functional [...] What does this actually mean? What precisely distinguishes a functional from a non-functional universe? [...] then its laws may evolve as it evaluates, including the laws by which it evaluates. Give that I do not know what exactly you mean with a functional universe, this may go totally into the wrong direction, but at least naively I see no problem for the rules to simply change in any kind of universe. On closer inspection it is of course not that easy because it is pretty easy to end up with something inconsistent but those details aside, why would it be impossible for the gravitational law to become an inverse cube law tomorrow? Finally this raises all kind of new questions, for example just how many layers of laws describing change in the layer below are there? Is there a ultimate static layer that does not change? And over what time dimension do those laws change? [...] the speed of light then emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe [...] Are you talking about the value of the speed of light or its existence? The value is arbitrary, the digits of c are of course just an artifact of the units we use. And even the value is inconsequential, i.e. whether c is c or 5c or 100c or 0.1c, you can just rescale it and call it one as physicists often do. The only thing that matters is whether the speed of light is finite or not.

inopinatus 7y ago

> Or do you mean perceiving in a more general sense Yes. I'm using it to mean evaluation as the fundamental causal process. I don't believe consciousness is orthogonal to the universe, ergo it must emerge from the processes within it. Sorry, the term perception is a bit loaded in this regard. But here's the thing: I also don't want to exempt a complex emergent arrangement of functions from evaluating its neighbours. Which is to say, I don't want to be excluded from looking at things. > Do you really think removing the last entity perceiving the universe would fundamentally change what is going on It's a good question. To me this scenario only occurs when nothing exists. > the universe in its entirety must be a static object Do you mean the conclusion that the universe is a rigid block of spacetime? I used to accept that as an undergrad, eventually rejecting it for the most common reason of all: the denial of free will, justifying this to myself on the grounds it conflicts with the halting problem. Unfortunately the problem then arises, "what fucking axioms do you believe then?". Here's the thing I like: if the universe is functional, then its laws may evolve as it evaluates, including the laws by which it evaluates. That provides an irreversible causal arrow, which is incompatible with a block universe. Not actually sure I could glean that from this article though. In the Greg Egan edition of this theory, the speed of light then emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe, and new forms of consciousness are encountered living within the Lisp machine of the cosmos.

danbruc 7y ago
Do you mean the conclusion that the universe is a rigid block of spacetime? Yes. You on the other hand try to place time outside of the universe and that means for me you are not talking about the entire universe. It is like talking about one frame of a movie, but one frame is of course not the entire movie. And while there is change from frame to frame the entire movie is static. Equally the universe in one moment is not the entire universe. Not to mention that the universe in one moment is - to put it mildly - a problematic idea as relativity teaches us that there are no such things as a universal time or universal simultaneity. I used to accept that as an undergrad, eventually rejecting it for the most common reason of all: the denial of free will [...] There are several different things that people may mean when they talk about free will but those fall into two categories. The first category contains variants of free will that do not require that the future is indeterminate, for example understanding free will as just doing what one prefers. The second category contains variants of free will that do require that the future is indeterminate but the problem is that those variants of free will are not logically consistent or not worth being labeled free will to begin with. [...] justifying this to myself on the grounds it conflicts with the halting problem. Would you mind elaborating this point? [...] if the universe is functional [...] What does this actually mean? What precisely distinguishes a functional from a non-functional universe? [...] then its laws may evolve as it evaluates, including the laws by which it evaluates. Give that I do not know what exactly you mean with a functional universe, this may go totally into the wrong direction, but at least naively I see no problem for the rules to simply change in any kind of universe. On closer inspection it is of course not that easy because it is pretty easy to end up with something inconsistent but those details aside, why would it be impossible for the gravitational law to become an inverse cube law tomorrow? Finally this raises all kind of new questions, for example just how many layers of laws describing change in the layer below are there? Is there a ultimate static layer that does not change? And over what time dimension do those laws change? [...] the speed of light then emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe [...] Are you talking about the value of the speed of light or its existence? The value is arbitrary, the digits of c are of course just an artifact of the units we use. And even the value is inconsequential, i.e. whether c is c or 5c or 100c or 0.1c, you can just rescale it and call it one as physicists often do. The only thing that matters is whether the speed of light is finite or not.