5 ms·

> Hey, it's not better or worse than any other way to guess. Saying this is a kind of relativism that closes you off to receiving criticism for this view. Her

> Hey, it's not better or worse than any other way to guess. Saying this is a kind of relativism that closes you off to receiving criticism for this view. Here is some disagreement from the philosopher of information Luciano Floridi, "Against Digital Ontology": http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4076/1/ado.pdf http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4076/1/ado.pdf and its sister paper "A Defence of Informational Structural Realism": http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.135.5500 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.135... You might to be tempted to ignore this paper for being too technical, but it would be technical only because these are real issues that become difficult when put under serious reflection. If you can stomach it you will be rewarded with deeper understanding.

whatshisface 7y ago
That's a paper about ontology, I'm talking about the actual physical reality of "the multiverse," you know, the one with the meta-landscape of all possible string theories, and all the different spidermans.
- bordercases 7y ago
  In what way can statements about a multiverse not be ontological? Are you committing to modal realism, Platonic realism, or are you just pulling my leg? If you commit to the multiverse being physical, by extension you're making claims about ontological concerns, since all physical claims require there to be a notion of something existing, even if you're wanting to claim that something counterfactually exists. Then that gets into modal realism etc etc. Likewise you can't be fully confident in multiversal theories since no physicist endorses a multiversal theory without also accepting it as interpretative, as no experiment has been performed to anoint multiversal theories as being correct. So you're still postulating something worthy of criticism even if there was nothing ontological involved.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Each universe gets its own version of Spiderman, and we live in the universe with the fictional Spiderman. That's one theory that matches our observations. Since basically every theory matches our observations, including the theory that there isn't a physical multiverse, every argument is equally specious and aesthetic.
    - bordercases 7y ago
      Every theory matches observations given interpretations of those theories, and it's impossible to engage in discourse without additionally engaging in interpretation. So some theories are going to be eliminated from view given one perspective or the other since interpretations must be chosen over others. I think where you're wrong is thinking it's possible to evade this and make the claim that all arguments are specious without simultaneously gesturing that you don't want to engage in the discourse anymore: it's a self-defeating claim. Notice that none of this prevents there from being a singular subject that we can talk about, but there can still be substantial disagreement as to the nature of the thing be discussed. If we are disputing whether or not there is a multiverse I would just ask you, what are your grounds for accepting that we occupy a multiverse and what brought you to do so?
      - thegagne 7y ago
        He watched Spiderman, and it was cool.
        bordercases 7y ago
        Oh fuck I forgot about that part.
      - calf 7y ago
        > So some theories are going to be eliminated from view given one perspective or the other since interpretations must be chosen over others. I'm not familiar with this point; is this a reference to model theory? Can you explain or provide a reference to this stuff?
gowld 7y ago
That article isn't particularly relevant. It argues that reality is not fundamentally digital. The article seems to argue that since a digital system can simulate an analog system (through a DAC), reality cannot be either digital nor analog. But that doesn't matter, since as long a reality can simulate digital or analog phenomena, it can simulate the digital phenomena and create Turing machines. The link to "A Defence of Informational Structural Realism" is broken.
- bordercases 7y ago
  I interpreted the OP as implying a strong relationship between the laws of physics and computation. It's trivial to assert that there is a relationship between the laws and physics and computation because there are computers. But saying that the laws of physics specifically lend themselves to computers involves finding reasons that this may be so. Yet if there is no inherent computational property in physical nature (like say that the laws actually reflect cellular automata, or are fully deterministic and are not nominal), then we ought to be skeptical that Turing Machines are somehow essential to physics or physical constraints, or that we should be surprised if Turing Machines are common. Maybe Turing Machines are common just because the definition of a Turing Machine is syntactically weak.
  - unkulunkulu 7y ago
    Do you think the same (i.e. syntactical weakness) about evolution? Otherwise you must admit Turing Machines could be just fit?
    - bordercases 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by your second question, but even though the set of postulates required for natural selection is compact, each concept that supports it is quite rich. More general statements about evolution (the kind that I'm guessing Universal Darwinists endorse) would be uninteresting to me because they begin to eliminate details about the system which would render the claims less trivial to talk about... although, I know that there are serious theorists of self-organization that might be better equipped to understand how to talk about fundamental truths of this kind (like Stuart Kauffman). I'd be less combative in this thread if there were discussions about the ways in which Turing-Completeness come about in the different realizations of the machine, or if comparisons were made between these machines. But so far there hasn't been a lot to prove.
krastanov 7y ago
I have not read the paper in detail, but a paper on "digital ontology" that does not mention computational complexity, the quantum Church-Turing thesis, or the fact that analog computation leads to unphysical "hypercomputation" makes any other claims in the paper extremely questionable. How can one take a philosopher of information seriously if they do not address the most typical arguments in computational complexity (you know, the actual science of processing information). Edit: page 7 discusses some of the points I complained about, but it does not seem particularly convincing to me (it only brushes them off, without explaining them). Admittedly, the language of philosophy is frequently unconvincing to me, so maybe the problem is in me.
irq 7y ago
Your second link is dead. Might you be able to fix it? I'd really like to read it. Thanks!
- burkaman 7y ago
  Here's a (legal) free version: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3144/1/adoisr.pdf http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3144/1/adoisr.pdf I recommend this extension: https://unpaywall.org/ https://unpaywall.org/

whatshisface 7y ago

That's a paper about ontology, I'm talking about the actual physical reality of "the multiverse," you know, the one with the meta-landscape of all possible string theories, and all the different spidermans.

bordercases 7y ago
In what way can statements about a multiverse not be ontological? Are you committing to modal realism, Platonic realism, or are you just pulling my leg? If you commit to the multiverse being physical, by extension you're making claims about ontological concerns, since all physical claims require there to be a notion of something existing, even if you're wanting to claim that something counterfactually exists. Then that gets into modal realism etc etc. Likewise you can't be fully confident in multiversal theories since no physicist endorses a multiversal theory without also accepting it as interpretative, as no experiment has been performed to anoint multiversal theories as being correct. So you're still postulating something worthy of criticism even if there was nothing ontological involved.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Each universe gets its own version of Spiderman, and we live in the universe with the fictional Spiderman. That's one theory that matches our observations. Since basically every theory matches our observations, including the theory that there isn't a physical multiverse, every argument is equally specious and aesthetic.
  - bordercases 7y ago
    Every theory matches observations given interpretations of those theories, and it's impossible to engage in discourse without additionally engaging in interpretation. So some theories are going to be eliminated from view given one perspective or the other since interpretations must be chosen over others. I think where you're wrong is thinking it's possible to evade this and make the claim that all arguments are specious without simultaneously gesturing that you don't want to engage in the discourse anymore: it's a self-defeating claim. Notice that none of this prevents there from being a singular subject that we can talk about, but there can still be substantial disagreement as to the nature of the thing be discussed. If we are disputing whether or not there is a multiverse I would just ask you, what are your grounds for accepting that we occupy a multiverse and what brought you to do so?
    - thegagne 7y ago
      He watched Spiderman, and it was cool.
      - bordercases 7y ago
        Oh fuck I forgot about that part.
    - calf 7y ago
      > So some theories are going to be eliminated from view given one perspective or the other since interpretations must be chosen over others. I'm not familiar with this point; is this a reference to model theory? Can you explain or provide a reference to this stuff?

gowld 7y ago

That article isn't particularly relevant. It argues that reality is not fundamentally digital. The article seems to argue that since a digital system can simulate an analog system (through a DAC), reality cannot be either digital nor analog. But that doesn't matter, since as long a reality can simulate digital or analog phenomena, it can simulate the digital phenomena and create Turing machines. The link to "A Defence of Informational Structural Realism" is broken.

bordercases 7y ago
I interpreted the OP as implying a strong relationship between the laws of physics and computation. It's trivial to assert that there is a relationship between the laws and physics and computation because there are computers. But saying that the laws of physics specifically lend themselves to computers involves finding reasons that this may be so. Yet if there is no inherent computational property in physical nature (like say that the laws actually reflect cellular automata, or are fully deterministic and are not nominal), then we ought to be skeptical that Turing Machines are somehow essential to physics or physical constraints, or that we should be surprised if Turing Machines are common. Maybe Turing Machines are common just because the definition of a Turing Machine is syntactically weak.
- unkulunkulu 7y ago
  Do you think the same (i.e. syntactical weakness) about evolution? Otherwise you must admit Turing Machines could be just fit?
  - bordercases 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by your second question, but even though the set of postulates required for natural selection is compact, each concept that supports it is quite rich. More general statements about evolution (the kind that I'm guessing Universal Darwinists endorse) would be uninteresting to me because they begin to eliminate details about the system which would render the claims less trivial to talk about... although, I know that there are serious theorists of self-organization that might be better equipped to understand how to talk about fundamental truths of this kind (like Stuart Kauffman). I'd be less combative in this thread if there were discussions about the ways in which Turing-Completeness come about in the different realizations of the machine, or if comparisons were made between these machines. But so far there hasn't been a lot to prove.

krastanov 7y ago

I have not read the paper in detail, but a paper on "digital ontology" that does not mention computational complexity, the quantum Church-Turing thesis, or the fact that analog computation leads to unphysical "hypercomputation" makes any other claims in the paper extremely questionable. How can one take a philosopher of information seriously if they do not address the most typical arguments in computational complexity (you know, the actual science of processing information). Edit: page 7 discusses some of the points I complained about, but it does not seem particularly convincing to me (it only brushes them off, without explaining them). Admittedly, the language of philosophy is frequently unconvincing to me, so maybe the problem is in me.

irq 7y ago

Your second link is dead. Might you be able to fix it? I'd really like to read it. Thanks!

burkaman 7y ago
Here's a (legal) free version: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3144/1/adoisr.pdf http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3144/1/adoisr.pdf I recommend this extension: https://unpaywall.org/ https://unpaywall.org/