Perplexed comments on A note on the description complexity of physical theories - Less Wrong

19 Post author: cousin_it 09 November 2010 04:25PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 11 November 2010 04:41:47AM 0 points [-]

Personally, I suspect that we really need to think of reality as something other than an experience generator. What we can extract out of reality is only half of the story. The other half is the stuff we put in so as to create reality.

This is not a fully worked out philosophical position, but I do have some slogans:

  • You can't do QM with only kets and no bras.
  • You can't do Gentzen natural deduction with rules of elimination, but no rules of introduction.
  • You can't write a program with GOTOs, but no COMEFROMs.

(That last slogan probably needs some work. Maybe I'll try something involving causes and effects.)