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ArisKatsaris comments on The Apparent Reality of Physics - Less Wrong
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Of course it would, though it's underlying reality wouldn't be what we expect. (it might be a pointer in some program, instead of a collection of atoms)
Unless we're talking about amplitude of everett branches I don't know what it means for something to "exist" more. As far as I know from any given perspective, existence is a binary quantity, something either is or isn't.
I don't see why. In Object-Oriented Programming, there's Classes which are a description of the instantiated objects, and there are the objects themselves, which you can do different things with than with the classes.
Again, how do you know there's no XML tag attached to the mathematics of our universe?
You seem to me to be arguing in circles, stating as evidence that which you desire to prove. The Tegmark IV hypothesis is exciting but I don't see how it's supposedly so self-proving as its proponents suggest. That seems to me a huge map-territory confusion... Perhaps map and territory are indeed inexorably linked at the deepest levels of reality, but this can't be proven by just claiming it...
Good objections, but I think they all have answers:
But a pointer is information. At the physical layer, it's a configuration - when you say char *p=malloc(1); you haven't created an electron to sit in &p, rather you've configured existing electrons so as to have a pattern that is meaningful to one of your higher-level maps, but as a good reductionist you know that your higher maps don't represent anything ontologically basic about the territory.
That's the point - I'm showing that the belief that 'existence' results from physical manifestation reduces to the absurdity that more physical manifestations of something means it exists more, which is nonsensical.
Does this make String("5") exist twice as hard? No; it doesn't even change whether it exists or not. It may be an object rather than a class, but it's still just a collection of information, which can be represented once, many times, or not at all, without ever changing the value of String("5").toInteger().
I don't know it, but such a tag would be epiphenomenal, and therefore it makes sense to assume it doesn't exist. If you're so sure that physical reality is manifest/instantiated, then how do you know, and why does it happen to follow regular mathematical laws? I think that believing in manifest physical reality is like believing in p-zombies (or, which comes to the same thing, dualistic consciousness).
It's not self-proving - at least, I don't claim it so - it's just simpler (shorter message length) to say "{equations}" than to say "mass-energy and space and time, which follow {equations}", and thus in the absence of evidence for the existence of manifest reality (which evidence I do not believe to be possible) a Bayesian, taking an Occamian prior, should conclude that the former is more likely than the latter. The only reason we mostly believe the latter is that, like Copenhagen, it came first.
EDIT: also, my views are distinct from (and were formed before I read) Tegmark IV; in particular his paper makes no mention of the concept of instantiation (and seems to me to be assuming that all Tegmark worlds are physically instantiated), and he wants to limit his hypothesis to computable structures, which I consider unnecessary and unjustified - I'm happy with the existence of structures so transfinite we can't even imagine them, perhaps because I'm a mathematician rather than a physicist.
I know that -- because as a good reductionist I recognize that my map is a different portion of the territory, that portion of the territory which resides inside my head and which is merely correlated to the actual territory outside of my head.
But tsn't that the opposite of what you and Tegmark IV are saying: namely that the maps we call "equations" represent something ontologically basic about the whole of the territory?
I'd be careful what I'd call "nonsensical" when your argument instead must lead to the conclusion that things must exist even when they don't exist... This would be called nonsensical by many others.
Epiphenomenalism is usually referring to something conceptual or cognitive (e.g qualia or consciousness or subjective experience) that doesn't have an influence on physical states.
You're instead talking about physical existence not having an influence on conceptual entities (namely the mathematical equations).
Yes, once you have the physical reality of a mouth and a keyboard (which happen to require mass-energy) to be able to say those equations, you can just say the "{equations}" --- namely you can transform a portion of the territory into an accurate map of the whole of the territory. But it still doesn't conclusively explain how the territory came to be.
But the actual-territory is not (or at least, need not be) causally influenced by the territory inside your head that's implementing the map.
I can't speak for Tegmark, of course, but what I'm saying is that "equations" are the territory, and the stuff that looks to us like rocks and trees and people and the Moon is just a map.
On the contrary, the conclusion is that things must exist even when they don't "exist" - where that quotation refers to some silly little savanna-concept we have in our brains, about rocks and trees and people and the Moon. Which don't exist.
That's because (in my model) the conceptual entities are the bedrock of the hierarchy, and physical existence is strongly analogous in this model to qualia in a physical-realist model. After all, "{equations}" and "rocks following {equations}" both give the same result for "value of X at time T", so the existence of rocks is epiphenomenal to the equations.
But a simulated me, existing only as information represented by electrons in a computer, could say "equations" just as loudly. So why couldn't a purely informational me, existing as unrepresented information, say "equations" too? Physical reality is a burdensome detail which doesn't add any explanatory power to your model; the claim that information needs to be represented in order for conscious entities contained within that information to exist seems to me to have no evidence backing it up, nor indeed to be capable of having such evidence, and therefore Occam demands that we frame our model in such a way as to make that claim inexpressible. It's rather like moving from configuration space to relative configuration space; unmeasurable claims become unreal.
It doesn't need to "come to be"; 'time' and 'causality' are parochial notions, concepts we can use to model things within our universe. Expecting the multiverse to obey them seems to me to be a Mind Projection Fallacy. A block universe just is.
Thanks for the insightful critique, by the way - it's helping me to understand the arguments better and see weak points that I wouldn't have noticed myself. I'm still not sure whether my theory is circular, nor whether I should care if it is.
When actually run, it makes two pieces of the territory change so that they contain a pattern that we would recognize as "5".
What does it mean for information to exist while not being represented at all, anywhere? Can you give an example of information with that property?
Right, but it doesn't attach little "<exists intensity="200%" />" tags to that pattern.
Well, trivially not, because by giving the example I create a representation. But, does a theorem become true when it is proven? That seems to me to be absurd. Counterfactually, suppose there were no minds. Would that prevent it from being true that "PA proves 2+2=4"? That also seems absurd. I can't prove it's absurd, but that's because a rock doesn't implement modus ponens (no universally compelling arguments).
If X will happen tomorrow, then it is a fact that X will happen tomorrow, even though (ignoring for now timeless physics) tomorrow "doesn't exist yet", and the information "X will happen tomorrow" needn't be represented anywhere to be true; it inheres in the state of the universe today + {equations of physics}. Information which can be arrived at by computation from other, existing information, exists - or perhaps we should move the 'other, existing information' across the turnstile: it is an existing truth that (Information which can be arrived at by computation from foo) can be arrived at by computation from foo. Tautologies are true.
I said information, you said theorem-- I don't think it's the same.
I was expecting you to say something like "the 3^^^3rd digit of pi", and then I was going to say something, but now that I think about it, I think it's time to taboo "exist".
"Theorem Foo is true in Theory T" is information. Though the 3^^^3rd digit of pi is good too; I want to hear what you have to say about it.
Ok... "exist" doesn't have a referent. Any attempt to define it will either be special pleading (my universe is special, it "exists", because it's the one I live in!), or will give a definition that applies equally to all mathematical structures.
I was going to say, it {can be calculated}-exists, but it does not {is extant in the territory}-exist. It certainly has a value, but we will never know what it is. No concrete instance of that information will ever be formed, at least not in this universe. (Barring new phyisics allowing vastly more computation!)
Thanks, I think that's the clearest thing you've said so far.
I think my own concept of "exist" has an implicit parameter of "in the universe" or "in the territory", so it breaks down when applied to the uni/multiverse itself (what could the multiverse possibly exist in?). Much like "what was before the big bang" is not actually a meaningful question because "before" is a time-ish word and whatever it is that we call time didn't exist before the big bang.
But then, how do you determine whether information exists-in-the-universe at all? Does the number 2 exist-in-the-universe? (I can pick up 2 pebbles, so I'm guessing 'yes'.) Does the number 3^^^3 exist-in-the-universe? Does the number N = total count of particles in the universe exist-in-the-universe? (I'm guessing 'yes', because it's represented by the universe.) Does N+1 exist-in-the-universe? (After all, I can consider {particles in the universe} union {{particles in the universe}}, with cardinality N+1) If you allow encodings other than unary, let N = largest number which can be represented using all the particles in the universe. But I can coherently talk about N+1, because I don't need to know the value of a number to do arithmetic on it (if N is even, then N+1 is odd, even though I can't represent the value of N+1). Does the set of natural numbers exist-in-the-universe? If so, I can induct - and therefore, by induction on induction itself, I claim I can perform transfinite induction (aka 'scary dots') in which case the first uncountable ordinal exists-in-the-universe, which is something I'd quite like to conclude.
So where does it stop being a heap?
I'm not saying my universe is special just because it's the one I live in, in fact I can accept the reality of lots of Everett branches in which I don't live in.
More to the point I believe that the reality of those Everett branches preexisted your mathematical models of them, or indeed the human invention of mathematics as a whole. Mathematical structure were made in imitation of the universe -- not vice versa.
Ok, now taboo your uses of "reality" and "preexisted" in the above comment, because I can't conceive of meanings of those words in which your comment makes sense.
The thing about tabooing words, is that we find it easy to taboo words that are just confused concepts (it's easy to taboo the word 'sound' and refer to acoustical experience vs acoustic vibrations), and we find it hard to taboo words that are truly about the fundamentals of our universe, such as 'causality' or 'reality' or 'existence' or 'subjective experience'.
I find it much easier to taboo the words that you think fundamentals -- words like 'mathematical equations', namely 'the orderly manipulations of symbols that human brains can learn to correspond to concepts in the material universe in order to predict happenings in said material universe'
To put it differently: Why don't you taboo the words "mathematics" and "equations" first, and see if your argument still makes any sense
I tabooed "exist", above, by what I think it means. You think 'existence' is fundamental, but you've not given me enough of a definition for me to understand your arguments that use it as an untabooable word.
I'd say that (or rather 'mathematics') is just 'the orderly manipulations of symbols'. Or, as I prefer to phrase it, 'symbol games'.
That's applied mathematics (or, perhaps, physics), an entirely different beast with an entirely different epistemic status.
Manipulations of symbols according to formal rules are the ontological basis, and our perception of "physical reality" results merely from our status as collections of symbols in the abstract Platonic realm that defines the convergent results of those manipulations, "existence" being merely how the algorithm feels from inside.
Yup, still makes sense to me!