5 ms·

Reaction before actually reading the paper - no, it doesn't, at least not its fundamental laws. If the universe is not static, then its state must evolve from S

Reaction before actually reading the paper - no, it doesn't, at least not its fundamental laws. If the universe is not static, then its state must evolve from S[n] to S[n + 1] = evolve(S[n]). evolve() may not be deterministic, it may be discrete or continuous, but it must be fixed. If it was not fixed, then there would be a more fundamental level that governs how evolve() itself evolves. Non-fundamental laws on the other hand could very well appear to undergo a learning or adaptive process. EDIT: After skimming through the paper, the paper more or less agrees. They focus on a specific layer in a hierarchy of laws and are not concerned with the bottom of the hierarchy. More generally, we adopt the useful idea that the world can be analyzed in terms of a hierarchy of levels; the degrees of freedom and the regularities described at each level appear to observers there to be stable and unchanging or slowly changing. At the same time, when expressed in terms of the degrees of freedom and laws of a lower level, they may seem emergent and variable. We can then be agnostics as to whether there are fundamental, timeless laws down at the smallest scale.

TuringTest 6y ago
> but it must be fixed. If it was not fixed, then there would be a more fundamental level that governs how evolve() itself evolves. Nice hypotheses. How would you go testing it to check its validity?
- danbruc 6y ago
  Does it actually need checking, isn't it a tautology? Either the value of a variable is fixed or there must be some function [1] that describes the evolution of the value of the variable? And this either has to end at some level with a fixed value or you have to have some infinite decent where there is always another level below, something I glossed over as an option in the original comment. [1] This makes no assumptions whether you can know or compute or whatever this function, just that there exists some function from one state to the next.
  - Tistron 6y ago
    In my mind, the fact that you could find functions describing all past states doesn't necessarily imply that there's a function, in some ontic sense, that produces or predicts future states. Saying that implies a preexisting belief in determinism, and this perspective seems to rather imply learning and/or exploring.
    - Dudeman112 6y ago
      If we went from a non deterministic belief from the beginning, it would change from a function that predicts future states to a probability distribution function. Which would still be learning and/or exploring. I'm not particularly agreeing or disagreeing with anything, mind you. Just that the universe being probabilistic wouldn't change the argument
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  > Nice hypotheses. How would you go testing it to check its validity? That’s more of an axiom.
amelius 6y ago
> but it must be fixed. If it was not fixed, then there would be a more fundamental level that governs how evolve() itself evolves The rules themselves can be non-deterministic?
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> The rules themselves can be non-deterministic? Then what rules govern the dice? What determines when they are rolled? A lot of ideas can boil down to the universe is a static construct. Adding randomness in the "unfolding over time" might just mean replaying it could lead to different outcomes. But in both cases I think the key question is Why do we perceive the passage of time?
  - danbruc 6y ago
    Why do we perceive the passage of time? I think we are not actually perceiving the passage of time but things changing. So what does it take to perceive change? Let's say there is an object changing color from red to blue and back every second or so. To perceive this change one must extract two bits of information from the current state of the universe, if they are different a color change occurred. The rest is in a certain sense a matter of belief. One has to believe that the first bit extracted from the current state of the universe reflects the current color of the object. So this bit could come from the wavelength of a photon hitting the eye or a camera sensor in a certain spot together with some belief of how the universe works with regard to the way light behaves and interacts with matter. For the second bit one has to believe that it reflects the color of the object some time ago. This bit would probably come from your memory or in case of the camera from some memory in the connected computer. This essentially requires all the same believes as for the first bit in order to determine the color of the object. But in addition it requires the believe that things change over time and that the memory stored and preserved information about the color of the object from some time ago. So somewhat interestingly the perception of change and in turn the passage of time doesn't fundamentally require something to change at all, it just requires a current state of the universe and a lot of assumptions or believes about the working of the universe and how this lead to the current state. This is good enough for philosophical zombies, conscious experience and qualia and so on might require some additional ingredients. Unfortunately I am not sure what this tells us about the universe. I guess the laws must at least allow the existence of some kind of memory, but that seems a low bar, anything with a delay can make a form of delay memory. The working of the universe must be stable to a certain extend across certain timescales, otherwise one couldn't rely on the memory. One could still perceive change but the change might not be real if the memory is not reliable. More interesting is probably what kind of options this allows for the evolution of the state of the universe, but I have no real idea what to say about that. But I guess as the perception of time is only dependent on the current state of the universe, the evolution could be quite different from the linear passage of time we perceive.
robertk 6y ago
Why are you assuming that S[n+1] takes S[n] as an input, rather than being completely unaffected by S[n]? Is n here a discretization of time or a "meta-time" that captures state progression? If the former, then you are treating time as a primitive, whereas the representation or even existence of time can be part of state and vary over state changes, so this does not work. If the latter, are you assuming S[n] is an input because a universe where that is not the case and state "transitions" are completely independent from each other is indistinguishable from a multiverse with inaccessible sub-universes and should be called as such? In the latter, you are also assuming linearity and discreteness of state changes, whereas it could be a DAG or more complex structure. Edit: On further reflection, I think you are proceeding with the standard post-Renaissance assumption that a universe must always be governed by fundamental rule(s) at the "lowest level," rather than a more chaotic or unstructured universe that behaves more like a disjoint set than an orderly structure. I think it makes sense to constrain to that assumption as departing from it makes reasoning difficult but it is worth stating explicitly as an axiom.
- hctaw 6y ago
  Not GP but I feel your analysis here doesn't follow. > rather than being completely unaffected by S[n]? Is n here a discretization of time or a "meta-time" that captures state progression? It would be remarkable if the "next state" of the universe did not depend or was so correlated to the "current state" that symbolically we represent it as a dependency. A ball only rolls downhill because it was once uphill, after all - one of the few things that unites various models of the universe was the existence of causality. > If the former, then you are treating time as a primitive, whereas the representation or even existence of time can be part of state and vary over state changes, so this does not work. This is interesting but I feel reductive. the "nth" state is not the state at time n, but the state that follows n-1 - it is dimensionless, but one might express it in spacetime if that is convenient. Nothing suggests it is uniformly sampled or even computable. > completely independent from each other is indistinguishable from a multiverse with inaccessible sub-universes and should be called as such No idea what this implies, but in a non-deterministic state machine there are multiple S(n + 1) for any given S(n). > you are also assuming linearity and discreteness of state changes, whereas it could be a DAG or more complex structure. GP does not suggest evolve(S) is linear or discrete (they suggest either continuous or discrete, actually). Neither of these imply anything about topology so I'm not sure what that has to do with a DAG. State transitions can encapsulate arbitrary topologies (and vice versa). They are duals. > rather than a more chaotic or unstructured universe that behaves more like a disjoint set than an orderly structure I feel GP covers this base by mentioning that state transitions may not be deterministic. Just because a system is chaotic or unpredictable does not imply we cannot formulate the nature of its chaos or unpredictability symbolically.
zzbzq 6y ago
There is no evolve(). All phenomena that can be measured, calculated, or conceptualized by humans are in fact governed by capricious gods who behave non-deterministically an cannot be described as a function. The appearance of any phenomenal consistency resembling natural laws is merely a coincidence caused by the capricious gods being in a mood. My point here is that scientists are stuck in a box where everything must be a law. Those questioning fixed laws are still substituting meta-laws by which the laws evolve. To me, it's wishful thinking. Of all the possible universes I can imagine, I contend that those with fixed laws OR meta-laws would both be in the minority. The most likely case is that there's nothing to discover but happenstance.
- danbruc 6y ago
  Can you describe a universe without fixed laws to me? I am pretty much unable to imagine one. What would it mean to have no fixed laws, wouldn't that imply absolute randomness? Is that even a consistent idea to have no fixed laws at all? If it is not absolute randomness, then there is some law, at the very least something is correlated or distributed in some way and one can at least statistically say something about the universe. But even if it is absolute randomness, if every variable might take on every possible value at every time [1], doesn't this also imply a law, everything is uniformly distributed? I really have a very hard time to imagining something about that you can essentially not make any true statement. Because that is what it kind of boils down to, if nothing is fixed in the universe, then more or less no statement about the universe is true. [2] On the other hand, if you can make a true statement about the universe, that implies some regularity, some law the universe follows. [1] For simplicity I assume the universe has some state that evolves over time, which is certainly not the most general imaginable universe. [2] This is a bit handwavy, one can make all kinds of true statements - the universe is red or it is not the case that the universe is red. But I hope the gist of the argument is clear, if nothing is fixed then also statements like the universe has three spatial dimensions or the universe contains electrons or opposite charges attract each other all become false.

TuringTest 6y ago

> but it must be fixed. If it was not fixed, then there would be a more fundamental level that governs how evolve() itself evolves. Nice hypotheses. How would you go testing it to check its validity?

danbruc 6y ago
Does it actually need checking, isn't it a tautology? Either the value of a variable is fixed or there must be some function [1] that describes the evolution of the value of the variable? And this either has to end at some level with a fixed value or you have to have some infinite decent where there is always another level below, something I glossed over as an option in the original comment. [1] This makes no assumptions whether you can know or compute or whatever this function, just that there exists some function from one state to the next.
- Tistron 6y ago
  In my mind, the fact that you could find functions describing all past states doesn't necessarily imply that there's a function, in some ontic sense, that produces or predicts future states. Saying that implies a preexisting belief in determinism, and this perspective seems to rather imply learning and/or exploring.
  - Dudeman112 6y ago
    If we went from a non deterministic belief from the beginning, it would change from a function that predicts future states to a probability distribution function. Which would still be learning and/or exploring. I'm not particularly agreeing or disagreeing with anything, mind you. Just that the universe being probabilistic wouldn't change the argument
hprotagonist 6y ago
> Nice hypotheses. How would you go testing it to check its validity? That’s more of an axiom.

amelius 6y ago

> but it must be fixed. If it was not fixed, then there would be a more fundamental level that governs how evolve() itself evolves The rules themselves can be non-deterministic?

phkahler 6y ago
>> The rules themselves can be non-deterministic? Then what rules govern the dice? What determines when they are rolled? A lot of ideas can boil down to the universe is a static construct. Adding randomness in the "unfolding over time" might just mean replaying it could lead to different outcomes. But in both cases I think the key question is Why do we perceive the passage of time?
- danbruc 6y ago
  Why do we perceive the passage of time? I think we are not actually perceiving the passage of time but things changing. So what does it take to perceive change? Let's say there is an object changing color from red to blue and back every second or so. To perceive this change one must extract two bits of information from the current state of the universe, if they are different a color change occurred. The rest is in a certain sense a matter of belief. One has to believe that the first bit extracted from the current state of the universe reflects the current color of the object. So this bit could come from the wavelength of a photon hitting the eye or a camera sensor in a certain spot together with some belief of how the universe works with regard to the way light behaves and interacts with matter. For the second bit one has to believe that it reflects the color of the object some time ago. This bit would probably come from your memory or in case of the camera from some memory in the connected computer. This essentially requires all the same believes as for the first bit in order to determine the color of the object. But in addition it requires the believe that things change over time and that the memory stored and preserved information about the color of the object from some time ago. So somewhat interestingly the perception of change and in turn the passage of time doesn't fundamentally require something to change at all, it just requires a current state of the universe and a lot of assumptions or believes about the working of the universe and how this lead to the current state. This is good enough for philosophical zombies, conscious experience and qualia and so on might require some additional ingredients. Unfortunately I am not sure what this tells us about the universe. I guess the laws must at least allow the existence of some kind of memory, but that seems a low bar, anything with a delay can make a form of delay memory. The working of the universe must be stable to a certain extend across certain timescales, otherwise one couldn't rely on the memory. One could still perceive change but the change might not be real if the memory is not reliable. More interesting is probably what kind of options this allows for the evolution of the state of the universe, but I have no real idea what to say about that. But I guess as the perception of time is only dependent on the current state of the universe, the evolution could be quite different from the linear passage of time we perceive.

robertk 6y ago

Why are you assuming that S[n+1] takes S[n] as an input, rather than being completely unaffected by S[n]? Is n here a discretization of time or a "meta-time" that captures state progression? If the former, then you are treating time as a primitive, whereas the representation or even existence of time can be part of state and vary over state changes, so this does not work. If the latter, are you assuming S[n] is an input because a universe where that is not the case and state "transitions" are completely independent from each other is indistinguishable from a multiverse with inaccessible sub-universes and should be called as such? In the latter, you are also assuming linearity and discreteness of state changes, whereas it could be a DAG or more complex structure. Edit: On further reflection, I think you are proceeding with the standard post-Renaissance assumption that a universe must always be governed by fundamental rule(s) at the "lowest level," rather than a more chaotic or unstructured universe that behaves more like a disjoint set than an orderly structure. I think it makes sense to constrain to that assumption as departing from it makes reasoning difficult but it is worth stating explicitly as an axiom.

hctaw 6y ago
Not GP but I feel your analysis here doesn't follow. > rather than being completely unaffected by S[n]? Is n here a discretization of time or a "meta-time" that captures state progression? It would be remarkable if the "next state" of the universe did not depend or was so correlated to the "current state" that symbolically we represent it as a dependency. A ball only rolls downhill because it was once uphill, after all - one of the few things that unites various models of the universe was the existence of causality. > If the former, then you are treating time as a primitive, whereas the representation or even existence of time can be part of state and vary over state changes, so this does not work. This is interesting but I feel reductive. the "nth" state is not the state at time n, but the state that follows n-1 - it is dimensionless, but one might express it in spacetime if that is convenient. Nothing suggests it is uniformly sampled or even computable. > completely independent from each other is indistinguishable from a multiverse with inaccessible sub-universes and should be called as such No idea what this implies, but in a non-deterministic state machine there are multiple S(n + 1) for any given S(n). > you are also assuming linearity and discreteness of state changes, whereas it could be a DAG or more complex structure. GP does not suggest evolve(S) is linear or discrete (they suggest either continuous or discrete, actually). Neither of these imply anything about topology so I'm not sure what that has to do with a DAG. State transitions can encapsulate arbitrary topologies (and vice versa). They are duals. > rather than a more chaotic or unstructured universe that behaves more like a disjoint set than an orderly structure I feel GP covers this base by mentioning that state transitions may not be deterministic. Just because a system is chaotic or unpredictable does not imply we cannot formulate the nature of its chaos or unpredictability symbolically.

zzbzq 6y ago

There is no evolve(). All phenomena that can be measured, calculated, or conceptualized by humans are in fact governed by capricious gods who behave non-deterministically an cannot be described as a function. The appearance of any phenomenal consistency resembling natural laws is merely a coincidence caused by the capricious gods being in a mood. My point here is that scientists are stuck in a box where everything must be a law. Those questioning fixed laws are still substituting meta-laws by which the laws evolve. To me, it's wishful thinking. Of all the possible universes I can imagine, I contend that those with fixed laws OR meta-laws would both be in the minority. The most likely case is that there's nothing to discover but happenstance.

danbruc 6y ago
Can you describe a universe without fixed laws to me? I am pretty much unable to imagine one. What would it mean to have no fixed laws, wouldn't that imply absolute randomness? Is that even a consistent idea to have no fixed laws at all? If it is not absolute randomness, then there is some law, at the very least something is correlated or distributed in some way and one can at least statistically say something about the universe. But even if it is absolute randomness, if every variable might take on every possible value at every time [1], doesn't this also imply a law, everything is uniformly distributed? I really have a very hard time to imagining something about that you can essentially not make any true statement. Because that is what it kind of boils down to, if nothing is fixed in the universe, then more or less no statement about the universe is true. [2] On the other hand, if you can make a true statement about the universe, that implies some regularity, some law the universe follows. [1] For simplicity I assume the universe has some state that evolves over time, which is certainly not the most general imaginable universe. [2] This is a bit handwavy, one can make all kinds of true statements - the universe is red or it is not the case that the universe is red. But I hope the gist of the argument is clear, if nothing is fixed then also statements like the universe has three spatial dimensions or the universe contains electrons or opposite charges attract each other all become false.