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> It's a CS fantasy that evaporates as soon as you start doing experiments The interesting bit (pun) is that this seems to be a recurring pattern. Whenever the

> It's a CS fantasy that evaporates as soon as you start doing experiments The interesting bit (pun) is that this seems to be a recurring pattern. Whenever there is a intellectual revolution that establishes new ways of thinking / acting, there is a tendency to apply its toolkit to everything in sight, including "the big questions". So it was with the industrial revolution and the hordes of related engineers: the universe was invariably seen as "a machine". With the digital revolution and the hordes of computer engineers, the universe is invariably "a computer". Effectively just a glorified version of the law of the instrument [1] "to a person with a hammer everything looks like a nail". The controversial question (and one that cannot be dismissed easily) is whether the universe is in some broader sense "mathematical". The huge success of mathematical descriptions around certain corners of the universe makes people think there might be something to it. But maybe mathematics too, is just our hammer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument

flawsofar 2y ago
Perhaps the irreconcilibility of 3 weird mathematical theories is a sign that the universe isn’t mathematical? but what would be the alternative?
- openrisk 2y ago
  Its possible that we simply havent evolved yet the mental faculties to reconcile them. After all none of these theories were around even like 200 years ago - we had in fact no clue whatsoever about any of that stuff. Mathematics is an evolving process and it can make leaps. The current knowledge might be like distinct coordinate patches on an underlying manifold that we will asymptotically cover with a consistent collection. On the other hand it may indeed be a remarkable feature of the human mind that it can "make mathematical sense" of subsets of reality, but there is no overarching system and no reason to expect that we will be able to make simultaneous mathematical sense of "everything". It might take a long time to collect sufficient such "metadata" to help tilt the balance.
RetroTechie 2y ago
> The controversial question (and one that cannot be dismissed easily) is whether the universe is in some broader sense "mathematical" A similar question: does time evolve in discrete steps, or is it continuous? The passage of time can only be established by comparing with physical phenomena that evolve over time. Even if that comparison would suggest "discrete steps", that doesn't exclude the possibility of time evolving continuously, but instrument / experiment too 'crude' to see between steps. Right up there with "are we living in a simulation?", and "does $DEITY exist?". As long as you can't break into a deeper layer (assuming that exists!), it's undecidable, and a philosophical rather than a scientific question, imho.

flawsofar 2y ago

Perhaps the irreconcilibility of 3 weird mathematical theories is a sign that the universe isn’t mathematical? but what would be the alternative?

openrisk 2y ago
Its possible that we simply havent evolved yet the mental faculties to reconcile them. After all none of these theories were around even like 200 years ago - we had in fact no clue whatsoever about any of that stuff. Mathematics is an evolving process and it can make leaps. The current knowledge might be like distinct coordinate patches on an underlying manifold that we will asymptotically cover with a consistent collection. On the other hand it may indeed be a remarkable feature of the human mind that it can "make mathematical sense" of subsets of reality, but there is no overarching system and no reason to expect that we will be able to make simultaneous mathematical sense of "everything". It might take a long time to collect sufficient such "metadata" to help tilt the balance.

RetroTechie 2y ago

> The controversial question (and one that cannot be dismissed easily) is whether the universe is in some broader sense "mathematical" A similar question: does time evolve in discrete steps, or is it continuous? The passage of time can only be established by comparing with physical phenomena that evolve over time. Even if that comparison would suggest "discrete steps", that doesn't exclude the possibility of time evolving continuously, but instrument / experiment too 'crude' to see between steps. Right up there with "are we living in a simulation?", and "does $DEITY exist?". As long as you can't break into a deeper layer (assuming that exists!), it's undecidable, and a philosophical rather than a scientific question, imho.