Moved Another step towards answering the question of life's origins - religion

[Jarhyn]

As I say I’ll have to reread it, but the Level IV mathematical multiverse really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It says, as I recall, that every mathematical structure instantiates a real world. Why should we think that? As far as I can tell, it would mean, for example, that Potelemy’s geocentric system really does exist in some Platonist realm of a mathematical multiverse. Of course, that would also be consistent with Lewis’s modal multiverse.

Not to mention that until the system hits a meaningful differentiation, especially given the mechanics of simulation/host divisions, that there are infinite settings wherein this universe is being simulated, in addition to one where it is as "base" as possible.

If every equation, if every relationship of math is somehow real, then there are infinite copies of any finite structure splayed across it.

As a thought experiment, imagine a PERFECT simulation of our universe. And I mean PERFECT -- every neuron is simulated, every microtubule or molecule within that neuron is perfectly simulated, etc. If we experience emotions or consciousness in our real universe, so would the corresponding creatures in the perfectly simulated copy, no?

Now imagine that a very similar universe is also being simulated PERFECTLY. Perhaps a universe VERY similar to ours, except that Al Gore became President in 2001. The creatures in that simulated universe would ALSO experience the same emotions as they would were that alternate universe "real."

If you followed this so far, and agree with it, it's only a small step further to conclude that every describable universe is just as real as ours!

More, every "described" universe, not merely "describable".

For those things to actually be "real" they have to actually be instantiated, not merely implied as to instantiability.

And note that perfect simulations are incredibly compute intensive.

Don't I know it! Then, all simulation is computation and all computation is simulation, I think? Not entirely sure on that one TBH but I suspect it's true, and that "simulation" is just the framing of a different set of logistical concerns around "computation" than "computation" discussions generally handle.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Key idea is that in a PERFECT simulation of our universe, beings are just as conscious as us in the "real" universe. And no "simulation" is necessary.

I'm not arguing, but I think the word "simulation" is a bit loaded and ambiguous, perhaps even not well-defined. When you modify it with the word "perfect" it might mean different things to different people or converge on something different.

My thoughts on simulations are that they mimic something else and so are not the thing and so we must consider what does that mean, i.e. can we break it down? I think we can. If we look at the components of a simulation, it might be the case that the simulation is incomplete with respect to the thing it is simulating....incomplete in such a way that ordinary measurements and ordinary observations are unable to distinguish the differences between the simulation and the thing. But it may be that further examination, perhaps with technology, are capable of observing the difference. Another kind of simulation might be one in which components are incorrect rather than incomplete but superficially resemble the components of the thing so again observation doesn't realize it...until it does. And along those lines, an incorrect set of components might even deliberately be used as long as participants don't mind and want to use their imaginations to pretend that the simulated thing is the actual thing, i.e. that it is close enough.

Perhaps you don't agree. I am unsure. Next anyway, what would it mean to be "perfect" in any of these senses? Are the incorrect components being eliminated and the incomplete components being filled? If so, the thing becomes a copy it seems.

Finally, if all this is really to try to conceive conceptualizations of parallel universes, why bring simulations into it, given their baggage?

 

[Swammerdami]

I am NOT good at explaining things. The idea of "simulation" was just a thought-experiment hoping to move reader gradually toward the viewpoint. In fact, NO simulation is needed -- a mathematical universe just IS

It's been years since I skimmed Tegmark's own explanation, but I'm sure he explains it much better than I. (I just like putting things im my own words.)

 

[Swammerdami]

Introducing the concept of "simulation," hoping to develop the hypothesis in steps, was clearly a mistake!

HOWEVER I do not take ALL the blame. I wrote:

it's only a small step further to conclude that every describable universe is just as real as ours!

[Write axioms and atomic primitives with pencil on a sheet of paper and -- presto! -- that complete mathematical system exists whether a conscious being derives the theorems or not. Furthermore, actually writing with pencil and paper is a needless diversion.

To be clear, Tegmark supposes that any mathematical universe IS REAL. There is no need to actually describe or simulate it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Introducing the concept of "simulation," hoping to develop the hypothesis in steps, was clearly a mistake!

HOWEVER I do not take ALL the blame. I wrote:

it's only a small step further to conclude that every describable universe is just as real as ours!

[Write axioms and atomic primitives with pencil on a sheet of paper and -- presto! -- that complete mathematical system exists whether a conscious being derives the theorems or not. Furthermore, actually writing with pencil and paper is a needless diversion.

To be clear, Tegmark supposes that any mathematical universe IS REAL. There is no need to actually describe or simulate it.

The problem is the work you are putting on "exists", I think.

There is a clear difference in the intent of exists in terms of "is consistent with rules of logic that seem to bind all things".

I think at long length about liminal spaces, but those liminal spaces as they exist only exist as objects bound to the apparent accident of the consistent structure and rules of the universe.

I posit that the very nature of the statement "is real" is no different from the statement "is implemented", and there is another weaker concept that is not "physically real" but is rather "possible within reality".

If the universe is "normal" with respect to its infinitude, all things possible of reality and math exist in this universe, as features of it, without the need to step outside into a multiverse, and all extensions are somewhere selected.

 

[bilby]

Why is every possible mathematical structure being instantiated in some version of reality simple, or even an explanation of anything at all? To me, maths are just descriptions. Some of those descriptions match reality, others do not, like Ptolemy’s mathematical description of a geocentric system. If we believe, as Tegmark holds, that every mathematical structure is isomorphic with some actual version of events, we have to believe that somewhere in the mathematical Platonist multiverse there really is such a geocentric system. But such a system would, among other things, have to have a radically different laws of physics, so that the sun, though much larger than the earth, would have to have an orbital barycenter with the earth that lies much closer to the earth than it does to the sun. Gravity would have to work totally differently in such a universe and it’s not at all clear that any such physics can be consistently made to work.

The Sun could just be much smaller. Indeed, in another, equally real, universe, it would have to be dramatically smaller, so as to pass between the feet of the turtle each night.

I too have no particular issue with the truth or falsity of the hypothesis (that everything we can imagine, or some subset of the things we can imagine, is real); But I also question its utility in the absence of any interactions with our own reality.

It's not really important whether it is true, when it is demonstrably irrelevant to literally everything we can ever hope to observe.

As an hypothesis it would be dramatically more interesting if there were to be a real-world observation that cannot be adequately explained without it. Should such an observation occur, I would revisit the idea with interest. But I am not holding my breath.

In short, I neither consider Tegmark's idea obvious nor ridiculous, but rather uninteresting and time-wasting, while it continues to lack a useful connection to the reality we inhabit.

 

[pood]

Tegmark does mention in his paper as I recall that the mathematical multiverse is falsifiable, but I’ll have to reread that section to recall his reasoning.

 

[bilby]

Why is every possible mathematical structure being instantiated in some version of reality simple,

The traditional question is "Why does OUR universe exist rather than some other universe?"
But that question disappears if ALL universes exist! Simplicity!

. . . Gravity would have to work totally differently in such a universe and it’s not at all clear that any such physics can be consistently made to work.

Tegmark imposes some restrictions on the mathematical structures which "exist." (I think it may be SIMPLER to minimize such restrictions.)

It requires a rather ideosyncratic definition of "simpler", to apply it to the process (or the consequence) of multiplying the universe by infinity.

 

[pood]

The Platonist multiverse seems to have a lot in common with the modal multiverse mentioned earlier. In both all logically possible structures are actually realized; so far as i know no maths allow for logical inconsistencies, so in this regard the modal and mathematical multiverses would be identical. But Lewis cites very strange consequences of the modal multiverses; there are worlds actual to their inhabitants (just not our world, of course), where donkeys talk, pigs fly, and the ancient Greek gods are literally real.

 

[Swammerdami]

Questions I hear:
* 1. What does "exists" mean? Is it the same as "is real"?
* 2. Doesn't the universe have to be at least "viewed" to come alive?
* 3. If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it, did it make a sound?

Answers:
* 1. exist, and "is real" are meaningless. Everything, every possible mathematical object is equally real and unreal.
* 2. No. See below.
* 3. YOU decide before reading ahead.
(Anyway, for any g in the hyper-Grothendieck, we might write f(g) to imply a viewing! )

Everything, every possible mathematical object is equally real and unreal.
Quite a dictum. Whatever its faults MIGHT be, it does rather maximize simplicity I think.

Note that
* Physicists hope that our universe is describable in principle. (If Uncertainties need to be introduced, fine; call it some sort of probabilistic universe.)
* Our universe is intricately complex. BUT given a complete system of equations and informed (or super-informed) of a boundary condition, the universe is defined.
* such a state can be framed as a mathematical object, a specific instance of an algebraic hyper-field.
* in this way we hope the Universe is expressible like some sort of hyper-manifold.
* Immediately we can jump to the space of all such hyper-manifolds; . . .
* and beyond that to some sort of Grothendieck Universe of all mathematical objects.

If such a mathematical object has creatures saying "Cogito Ergo Sum", that will be uttered in any "instance" of that object, whether "real" or not.

We inhabit such an object, which we call "the universe." In that universe we say "Cogito Ergo Sum" and think we mean it. That universe EXISTS equally whether it's "played out on the holodeck" or not.

"Real" and "unreal" have no meaning
Everything, every possible mathematical object is equally real and unreal.
Simplicity Supreme.

The problem is the work you are putting on "exists", I think.
I posit that the very nature of the statement "is real" is no different from the statement "is implemented", and there is another weaker concept that is not "physically real" but is rather "possible within reality".

Occam's Razor Rules. Ontology completely disappears as a philosophical question {given Swammi's interpretation of Tegmark MM_IV. "Exists" becomes both a pleonasm and an oxymoron. I inhabit a universe in which I might say "Cogito Ergo Sum" and mean it. I assume each of you reading this is in a similar or the same universe. Is this the special real universe? Or is it just a mathematical object among uncountably many? I claim that if we were NOT in a "special" universe, we would think we are anyway!

 

[Jarhyn]

Everything, every possible mathematical object is equally real and unreal.

Rejected. Under what shared premise or axiom?

I reject this under that axiom that something must be capable of being spatially navigated to and interrogated to be "real", and that which cannot be is not meaningfully "real".

In this way, there is "real", "possible", and "not possible", wherein possibility and reality differ in any case that the observable system is "normal"

 

[bilby]

Everything we can imagine is real, sure. But things we can both imagine and observe are far realer than things we can imagine but not observe; And things we can manipulate, and observe, and imagine are realer still.

This is easily demonstrated by the difference in effects of stubbing your toe on each class of object.

 

[Jarhyn]

Everything we can imagine is real, sure. But things we can both imagine and observe are far realer than things we can imagine but not observe; And things we can manipulate, and observe, and imagine are realer still.

This is easily demonstrated by the difference in effects of stubbing your toe on each class of object.

No, everything we DO imagine is real, in the context of the simulator in our brains simulating it. Whether it is real elsewhere is exactly a function of whether something else instantiates that identity.

The problem is the proposition that just because something has an identity, that that identity must be instantiated somewhere.

If that was the case, though, there is, somewhere in the mathematical multiverse, an example of this universe being created by ME and so I am God.

Or, we can just recognize that the consistency and reportability of some mathematical identity does not imply the reification of that identity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As I say I’ll have to reread it, but the Level IV mathematical multiverse really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It says, as I recall, that every mathematical structure instantiates a real world. Why should we think that? As far as I can tell, it would mean, for example, that Potelemy’s geocentric system really does exist in some Platonist realm of a mathematical multiverse. Of course, that would also be consistent with Lewis’s modal multiverse.

Not to mention that until the system hits a meaningful differentiation, especially given the mechanics of simulation/host divisions, that there are infinite settings wherein this universe is being simulated, in addition to one where it is as "base" as possible.

If every equation, if every relationship of math is somehow real, then there are infinite copies of any finite structure splayed across it.

As a thought experiment, imagine a PERFECT simulation of our universe. And I mean PERFECT -- every neuron is simulated, every microtubule or molecule within that neuron is perfectly simulated, etc. If we experience emotions or consciousness in our real universe, so would the corresponding creatures in the perfectly simulated copy, no?

Now imagine that a very similar universe is also being simulated PERFECTLY. Perhaps a universe VERY similar to ours, except that Al Gore became President in 2001. The creatures in that simulated universe would ALSO experience the same emotions as they would were that alternate universe "real."

If you followed this so far, and agree with it, it's only a small step further to conclude that every describable universe is just as real as ours!

More, every "described" universe, not merely "describable".

For those things to actually be "real" they have to actually be instantiated, not merely implied as to instantiability.

And note that perfect simulations are incredibly compute intensive.

 

[Lion IRC]

 

[Jarhyn]

As I say I’ll have to reread it, but the Level IV mathematical multiverse really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It says, as I recall, that every mathematical structure instantiates a real world. Why should we think that? As far as I can tell, it would mean, for example, that Potelemy’s geocentric system really does exist in some Platonist realm of a mathematical multiverse. Of course, that would also be consistent with Lewis’s modal multiverse.

Not to mention that until the system hits a meaningful differentiation, especially given the mechanics of simulation/host divisions, that there are infinite settings wherein this universe is being simulated, in addition to one where it is as "base" as possible.

If every equation, if every relationship of math is somehow real, then there are infinite copies of any finite structure splayed across it.

As a thought experiment, imagine a PERFECT simulation of our universe. And I mean PERFECT -- every neuron is simulated, every microtubule or molecule within that neuron is perfectly simulated, etc. If we experience emotions or consciousness in our real universe, so would the corresponding creatures in the perfectly simulated copy, no?

Now imagine that a very similar universe is also being simulated PERFECTLY. Perhaps a universe VERY similar to ours, except that Al Gore became President in 2001. The creatures in that simulated universe would ALSO experience the same emotions as they would were that alternate universe "real."

If you followed this so far, and agree with it, it's only a small step further to conclude that every describable universe is just as real as ours!

More, every "described" universe, not merely "describable".

For those things to actually be "real" they have to actually be instantiated, not merely implied as to instantiability.

And note that perfect simulations are incredibly compute intensive.

The perfect simulation of the additional progression of the 3 integer modulo using binary computation is incredibly computationally simple: x=(x+1)%3;

And yet this requires a vast series of switches to implement.

As I've said elsewhere I rather think that there is no boundary between the fundamental idea of "computation" and "simulation". All computations are simulations, all simulations are computations.

 

[Elixir]

All computations are simulations, all simulations are computations.

I can see all computations as simulations, but simulations can simulate badly, invalidating them as calculations.

 

[Jarhyn]

All computations are simulations, all simulations are computations.

I can see all computations as simulations, but simulations can simulate badly, invalidating them as calculations.

Computations with error are still computations.

 

[pood]

I can’t help but suppose that Tegmark’s mathematical multiverse is probably an example of being Lost in Math, the title of Sabine Hossenfelder’s recent book, but I haven’t read it yet so only have reviews to go by.

ETA: Actually, the book is not so recent, already? Where does the time go? Maybe that will be the subject of her next book.

 

[Elixir]

All computations are simulations, all simulations are computations.

I can see all computations as simulations, but simulations can simulate badly, invalidating them as calculations.

Computations with error are still computations.

Then all communications can be considered such.
But material stuff, not so much.