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>strong, overbroad statements that amount to "everything affects everything," Perhaps the author did not mean to include abstractions as "things" in this conte

>strong, overbroad statements that amount to "everything affects everything," Perhaps the author did not mean to include abstractions as "things" in this context? I think you're discussing metaphysics and I don't see the connection to the article. I guess gravity doesn't affect faith, hope, or charity, but is that news, or actionable?

dsizzle 5y ago
First, I'd say it'd be an impoverished scientific worldview that excludes algorithms just because it's not a "thing" per se! But I could have just as well chosen a "thing"-ier example. For example, do quarks/the strong nuclear force affect the melting point of metals? There's probably a large "parameter space" where it literally has zero effect (in some part of parameter space atoms cease to exist, so it is a leaky abstraction!). But you can have melting phenomena in substrates that don't even have quarks. In fact, to bring it back to software, you can get melting phenomena in a pure algorithm like the Ising model. (I won't comment on what the author meant to include -- he responded to me earlier, and maybe he'll respond to this too.)
- perl4ever 5y ago
  You sound like you are champing at the bit to get into the argument about whether there is a difference between rain in "reality" and rain in a simulation. All I have to say about the question of whether there is a difference between physics and metaphysics is to quote "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away". Which is really the same thing as Samuel Johnson kicking a stone: "I refute it thus." Whether or not you like the distinction, it remains. And while only the author can say what they intended, I didn't see any hint in the article of this topic.
  - dsizzle 5y ago
    Conversely you now seem focused on getting into an argument about simulations -- I gave an example of what I meant that doesn't involve simulations and is purely physical but you didn't comment on that. It's true I've focused on something that wasn't the meat of the original post -- but it's also true that I challenged a direct quote that is arguably the most profound claim in the post, and that's what I'm most interested in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >Conversely you now seem focused on getting into an argument about simulations I gave a definition of reality, and definitions can't really be debated; thus, I don't see them as encouraging argument. >I gave an example of what I meant that doesn't involve simulations and is purely physical I'm uncertain what that was. Do you mean your "thing-ier example"? That compares simulated melting with actual melting?
      - dsizzle 5y ago
        Yes to your first question: the example was that quarks (sub-nuclear particles) can be justifiably ignored completely in understanding/predicting some physical properties of matter, like the melting point of metals (even though metals are composed of quarks). Or more generally, quantum chromodynamics mostly has no effect on solid state physics -- and these are both sub-branches of physics! When you consider all of science/reality there are many such levels where phenomena appear at only some levels. I don't really understand where you're going with the metaphysics/reality discussion. It seems you consider software part of metaphysics? The laptop I'm typing this on is real in Johnson's sense, as are the patterns of photons projected from the screen, and these can't be understood much of the time without having some understanding of the software it's running. Just to establish some common ground: I agree that metaphysics is different from physics. I also agree that a thing is different from a simulation of the same thing. I get that software is more abstract than the particle interactions described in the article, and that that is perhaps a distracting difference in the example I first used, as you pointed out. If there's an interesting discussion/disagreement here it's somewhere in the neighborhood of the question: "is math part of reality?" That's something of an open philosophical question https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/289138 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/289138. I think that's even more tangential than my original comment though.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        You seem to be arguing that "everything affects everything else" is false because, moving to a concrete example, if Kristin Kreuk is beautiful, then she's beautiful in an objective sense that can't be affected by the motion of space dust. But this doesn't matter, because every time her beauty is assessed, the assessment itself is affected by space dust. Her objective, Platonic beauty is only relevant in that it affects how often she is assessed to be beautiful. But this is precisely the statistical description that the OP argues for. In the world of things that happen, everything affects everything else.

dsizzle 5y ago

First, I'd say it'd be an impoverished scientific worldview that excludes algorithms just because it's not a "thing" per se! But I could have just as well chosen a "thing"-ier example. For example, do quarks/the strong nuclear force affect the melting point of metals? There's probably a large "parameter space" where it literally has zero effect (in some part of parameter space atoms cease to exist, so it is a leaky abstraction!). But you can have melting phenomena in substrates that don't even have quarks. In fact, to bring it back to software, you can get melting phenomena in a pure algorithm like the Ising model. (I won't comment on what the author meant to include -- he responded to me earlier, and maybe he'll respond to this too.)

perl4ever 5y ago
You sound like you are champing at the bit to get into the argument about whether there is a difference between rain in "reality" and rain in a simulation. All I have to say about the question of whether there is a difference between physics and metaphysics is to quote "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away". Which is really the same thing as Samuel Johnson kicking a stone: "I refute it thus." Whether or not you like the distinction, it remains. And while only the author can say what they intended, I didn't see any hint in the article of this topic.
- dsizzle 5y ago
  Conversely you now seem focused on getting into an argument about simulations -- I gave an example of what I meant that doesn't involve simulations and is purely physical but you didn't comment on that. It's true I've focused on something that wasn't the meat of the original post -- but it's also true that I challenged a direct quote that is arguably the most profound claim in the post, and that's what I'm most interested in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >Conversely you now seem focused on getting into an argument about simulations I gave a definition of reality, and definitions can't really be debated; thus, I don't see them as encouraging argument. >I gave an example of what I meant that doesn't involve simulations and is purely physical I'm uncertain what that was. Do you mean your "thing-ier example"? That compares simulated melting with actual melting?
    - dsizzle 5y ago
      Yes to your first question: the example was that quarks (sub-nuclear particles) can be justifiably ignored completely in understanding/predicting some physical properties of matter, like the melting point of metals (even though metals are composed of quarks). Or more generally, quantum chromodynamics mostly has no effect on solid state physics -- and these are both sub-branches of physics! When you consider all of science/reality there are many such levels where phenomena appear at only some levels. I don't really understand where you're going with the metaphysics/reality discussion. It seems you consider software part of metaphysics? The laptop I'm typing this on is real in Johnson's sense, as are the patterns of photons projected from the screen, and these can't be understood much of the time without having some understanding of the software it's running. Just to establish some common ground: I agree that metaphysics is different from physics. I also agree that a thing is different from a simulation of the same thing. I get that software is more abstract than the particle interactions described in the article, and that that is perhaps a distracting difference in the example I first used, as you pointed out. If there's an interesting discussion/disagreement here it's somewhere in the neighborhood of the question: "is math part of reality?" That's something of an open philosophical question https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/289138 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/289138. I think that's even more tangential than my original comment though.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        You seem to be arguing that "everything affects everything else" is false because, moving to a concrete example, if Kristin Kreuk is beautiful, then she's beautiful in an objective sense that can't be affected by the motion of space dust. But this doesn't matter, because every time her beauty is assessed, the assessment itself is affected by space dust. Her objective, Platonic beauty is only relevant in that it affects how often she is assessed to be beautiful. But this is precisely the statistical description that the OP argues for. In the world of things that happen, everything affects everything else.