> Every adaptable system evolves to adapt to a changing environment by detecting "modes" (categories) and adapting to each mode. Then we start noticing categori

> Every adaptable system evolves to adapt to a changing environment by detecting "modes" (categories) and adapting to each mode. Then we start noticing categories come in instances. There's a tree, there are more trees. So now it's useful to count them... I really like this part of the explanation, although not all adaptive systems are intelligent. E.g if I add a grain of salt on a heap of salt and it suddenly collapses, that is an adaptive system but not as a result of intelligent modeling of how it should behave. > Not because numbers are fundamental to the universe. Rather they're fundamental aspect of intelligently adapting to (i.e. thinking about and making predictions about) the universe. Here the problem is assuming intelligent adaptivity and the agent that has it is something separate from the universe. Being able to have a model of the universe inherently requires internally resembling the structural functional organization of the universe, a mutual conformity if you will, and therefore if numbers, counting, modes, categories etc are fundamentally useful constructs, I think they also at least resemble a fundamental part of the universe.