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It's been a long time since I last read Permutation City and I was browsing its Wikipedia page to refresh my memory and I loved this description: "there is no d

It's been a long time since I last read Permutation City and I was browsing its Wikipedia page to refresh my memory and I loved this description: "there is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

Xerox9213 3y ago
Isn’t that referred to as the Dust Theory? I just finished Permutation City for the first time since it’s come up on HN a few times so I thought I’d give it a read. (Mild spoiler alert) I found that once everything was in the autoverse I stopped caring about the characters’ copies. Maybe that’s an intended perspective, or maybe it says something about me.
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
As the Wikipedia page alludes, Egan, and this book in particular, was surely the inspiration for Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis; the notion that all logically/mathematically consistent structures exist on some level, our universe among them. (Though in truth the Pythagoreans of 2500 BC -- those adherents to what can rightly be called the first universalizing European religion -- believed much the same thing. Egan and the Pythagoreans, but not Tegmark, also considered the nature of time in such a scenario; eternal recurrence was a Pythagorean idea.)
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  For that matter, all inconsistent structures ought to also "exist" — they're just indistinguishably boring, for inconsistency leads to triviality?
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    Everything that you can imagine, no matter how trivial, is a consistent notion that can be expressed mathematically as a true logical proposition. This includes an empty room, a Platonic solid, physical entropy, whatever. As Wittgenstein once noted, "logically consistent statements which are a priori true are possibilities which ensure their own truth." What stands in opposition to this? The logically nonsensical – the incomputable. This includes anything discrete that can't be simulated, even in principle. These things cannot exist even in an infinite mathematical universe; for everything in such a universe is emergent, but such things cannot emerge.

Xerox9213 3y ago

Isn’t that referred to as the Dust Theory? I just finished Permutation City for the first time since it’s come up on HN a few times so I thought I’d give it a read. (Mild spoiler alert) I found that once everything was in the autoverse I stopped caring about the characters’ copies. Maybe that’s an intended perspective, or maybe it says something about me.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

As the Wikipedia page alludes, Egan, and this book in particular, was surely the inspiration for Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis; the notion that all logically/mathematically consistent structures exist on some level, our universe among them. (Though in truth the Pythagoreans of 2500 BC -- those adherents to what can rightly be called the first universalizing European religion -- believed much the same thing. Egan and the Pythagoreans, but not Tegmark, also considered the nature of time in such a scenario; eternal recurrence was a Pythagorean idea.)

082349872349872 3y ago
For that matter, all inconsistent structures ought to also "exist" — they're just indistinguishably boring, for inconsistency leads to triviality?
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  Everything that you can imagine, no matter how trivial, is a consistent notion that can be expressed mathematically as a true logical proposition. This includes an empty room, a Platonic solid, physical entropy, whatever. As Wittgenstein once noted, "logically consistent statements which are a priori true are possibilities which ensure their own truth." What stands in opposition to this? The logically nonsensical – the incomputable. This includes anything discrete that can't be simulated, even in principle. These things cannot exist even in an infinite mathematical universe; for everything in such a universe is emergent, but such things cannot emerge.