I have never been good at math and a high percentage of content discussed here is over my head. However, I am hoping this does not exclude me from a sincere attempt to grasp the general concepts and discuss them as best I can. In other words, I'm hoping my enthusiasm makes up in some way for my total ignorance.
My take on this is that, within a mathematical equation, if a specific variable does not have a discernible impact on the resulting value, it is irrelevant to the equation. Such a variable may exist merely as a conceptual "comfort" to the human method of perceiving the universe, but that doesn't mean it serves any meaningful/rational purpose within the equation. If pure rationality is the ideal, then all "truths" should be reduced to their absolute smallest value. In other words, trim the fat no matter how damn tasty it is.
If all possibilities exist at all times as variable probabilities, I can begin to grasp the irrelevance of time as being necessary to arrive at meaningful insights about the universe. If time always exists as an infinite quantity, it may as well be zero because along an infinite timeline, all possibilities, even those with extremely finite probability, will exist.
I am wholly new to all of these concepts and as I stated, math might as well be a rapid-fire auctioneer speaking a foreign language. The above thoughts are the best I could solidify and I would love to know if I'm even in A ballpark... not THE ballpark, but at least A ballpark that is somewhere near relevant.
if a specific variable does not have a discernible impact on the resulting value, it is irrelevant to the equation. Such a variable may exist merely as a conceptual "comfort" to the human method of perceiving the universe, but that doesn't mean it serves any meaningful/rational purpose within the equation.
The variable may be meaningful but redundant. A database programmer would say that you don't have to keep a value in a column of the table, if you can calculate it from the other columns.
...If all possibilities exist at all times as variable p
Today's post, Timeless Beauty was originally published on 28 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Timeless Physics, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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