We need more discussion of Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis

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And Natural philosophy is not pertinent to the discussion?

Yes, a salad with specific vegetables and and a combination dressing becomes a 1000 Island salad. An algebraic equation?

 

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We don't just explain physics through mathematics we create physics with mathematics.
Could we ever have produced a Higgs boson without Peter Higgs' mathematics?

Yes, I call it "generic natural relational values".
Human maths uses symbolic numbers to represent generic natural values (ratios). The functions are the same, except humans have named them whereas nature just uses them.

I believe I just did.

It is inherent (enfolded) in the spacetime geometry and becomes expressed (unfolded) via relational mathematics.

It seems that natural mathematical guiding principles are readily observable in action and expression. It seems axiomatic.
We are discovering the mathematics of the Universe, not creating them.

Why is mathematics an axiomatic system?

Mathematics is such a system.

As Tegmark observes, the difference between a salad and a person is the pattern arrangement of the same component quarks and atoms (mathematical values).

Really?, I think that my perspective on Tegmark is very much in line with Sarkus. His only gripe is that my arguments lack sophistication. I like to stick with basics. That's how it all began, no?

Hey, those are your words. You explain why they are irrelevant.

I am posting too much information? Well, ain't that a crock.

There are questions I do not feel qualified to answer. That does not necessarily mean I don't understand the concept.

Perhaps you are looking at my posts from a prejudicial perspective.

Please tell me what is so controversial about Tegmark's mathematics. That everything in the Universe as well as the universal fabric itself has a mathematical aspect, that expresses itself as generic mathematical relational values and self-organizing patterns and regularities.

Give it a rest.

 

That is not what you posted, you wrote "natural physics" which is a nonsense term. This is the problem, you post something that is nonsense word salad, someone explains why then you reply addressing something irrelevant.
I KNOW what natural philosophy is, I was trying to work out what on earth you could possibly mean by what YOU posted.

This is what I mean and also Sarkus/James by disruptive.

 

Exactly.

 

OK, this will explain,
What are the examples of natural physics?

Focus on Physics in Nature - European Journal of ... - IOPscience

Have I identified potential phenomena that can only be expressed via mathematics?

How was this exchange disruptive?

 

Because it's nothing to do with Tegmark, the topic of thread.
The thread was created because you cannot stay on topic.
This thread is also not staying on topic because posters are continually having to correct your use of scientific terms.
Did you mean "natural philosophy?" Maybe "naturally occurring phenomena?"
Who knows? Why let a thread topic get in the way of endless digressions?

 

As are all metaphysical issues. But we're talking about science, and my understanding is that science limits its relevance to where it holds... i.e. it relies on the repeatability of the observation, and anything that is repeatable can be expressed mathematically, surely?

I would posit that anything that does not fit such a view would fall outside of science, would it not?

Absolutely. I raised this issue of selection bias (?) earlier. However, I think if we're talking specifically about science then it holds.

The principles of science. Repeatability, for example. Is there anything that can be repeated that can not ultimately be expressed in mathematical terms? Sure, if we hop outside of physics then such may not be the case.

What are some of the contentions within the remit of science? Again, just to be clear, at no point am I saying that maths is real. I think we agree that it is descriptive of what is going on.

I am referring to science, to physics (i.e. physical laws) and not to things that might be outside of science. Can you give an example of such a thing that might not lend itself while still being within the remit of science/physics?

Probability is mathematical, though. We can accurately describe the result probability of a perfect dice, can we not? And the inability to predict single occurrences does not mean that the whole is not still perfectly described by the mathematics.

 

It is the difference between maths as a description, and maths as having independent reality. My concept is that all of physical reality can be described by maths, but is not itself maths. If I throw a ball in a vacuum then the trajectory can be described by maths. But the trajectory has no independent existence. The shape of the ball can be described similarly. But it requires the physical for something to be real. Tegmark does not make this distinction. That is the difference.

Again, unfortunately, none of this is relevant to the discussion on Tegmark's MUH, only to your misunderstanding of it.
You are again bleating about how maths can describe things. That is not, and has not been, disputed. Move on from there, please, to discuss what Tegmark's MUH is actually arguing for: that there is nothing but maths.

A child that walks onto a stage in the middle of a performance is disruptive. Someone who starts counting while others are trying to discuss Shakespear's plays is disruptive. There need be no screaming, no pounding of fists. Here your disruption manifests in seemingly unabated irrelevancy such that threads get derailed.

That's because we're still trying to understand his argument in support of it. One can't just shout "X is true! Prove me wrong!!" You should be aware of that, surely.

 

Antimatter was inferred and predicted from formulation, but in terms of human independent existence, antimatter was already there. But (retrospectively) "particle physics" was arguably extended by the former in itself, due to the fact that today we have superstring theory and other quantum gravity enterprises prospering in and influencing the discipline despite no evidence for them.

Tegmark is fundamentally a "parallel universes" buff. Probably has been since adolescence. That includes a "many worlds"[1] interpretation of QM, not just the multiple universes that fall out of one version of cosmological inflation, and so forth. ([1] But sans any version where an observer might still play a role, as in CI)

With respect to philosophy of time, he also favors an eternalism perspective. --> Presentism, the Growing-Past, Eternalism, and the Block-Universe (IEP)

And that's where this fixation with the universe being a "mathematical structure" comes in. A simplistic block-universe model, which is at least amenable to being visualized when stripped of one dimension, cannot accommodate the complex topology of his plural level "multiverse". Though physical, only abstract description could accurately represent his proposal. (The same could be said of what his "bird and frog" allegory of ordinary block time is trying to capture, but despite any imprecision it is again much more convertible to an intuitive "picture".)

The point I'm trying to make here is that because of Tegmark's preference for eternalism, his so-called venture into mathematicism is not compatible with other Platonistic or Pythagorean metaphysical speculations that might regard the universe as a process regulated by some prior-in-rank nomological stratum of mathematical "laws" or "forms" or "generative principles" or whatever. The latter seem to be crouched in a presentism view of time (wherein only our specious "now" is the extent of how the universe exists).

Even when he dabbles in a simulation allegory (like below), it radically departs from the usual simulation buff's conception of computation. There is no literal action or procedural routine of changes taking place where one step appears and is then destroyed/replaced by the next. All the differences or steps of the process co-exist in Tegmark's context.

Max Tegmark: [...] Suppose that our universe is indeed some form of computation. A common misconception in the universe simulation literature is that our physical notion of a one-dimensional time must then necessarily be equated with the step-by-step one-dimensional flow of the computation. I will argue below that if the MUH is correct, then computations do not need to evolve the universe, but merely describe it (defining all its relations).

[...] The temptation to equate time steps with computational steps is understandable, given that both form a one-dimensional sequence where (at least for the non-quantum case) the next step is determined by the current state. However, this temptation stems from an outdated classical description of physics: there is generically no natural and well-defined global time variable in general relativity, and even less so in quantum gravity where time emerges as an approximate semiclassical property of certain “clock” subsystems. Indeed, linking frog perspective time with computer time is unwarranted even within the context of classical physics.

The rate of time flow perceived by an observer in the simulated universe is completely independent of the rate at which a computer runs the simulation. Moreover, as emphasized by Einstein, it is arguably more natural to view our universe not from the frog perspective as a 3-dimensional space where things happen, but from the bird perspective as a 4-dimensional spacetime that merely is.

There should therefore be no need for the computer to compute anything at all — it could simply store all the 4-dimensional data, i.e., encode all properties of the mathematical structure that is our universe. Individual time slices could then be read out sequentially if desired, and the “simulated” world should still feel as real to its inhabitants as in the case where only 3-dimensional data is stored and evolved. In conclusion, the role of the simulating computer is not to compute the history of our universe, but to specify it.

[...] This paper has explored the implications of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our external physical reality is a mathematical structure (a set of abstract entities with relations between them). I have argued that the MUH follows from the external reality hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independently of us humans, and that it constitutes the opposite extreme of the Copenhagen interpretation and other “many words interpretations” of physics where human-related notions like observation are fundamental.

In Section III, we discussed the challenge of deriving our perceived everyday view (the “frog’s view”) of our world from the formal description (the “bird’s view”) of the mathematical structure, and argued that although much work remains to be done here, promising first steps include... https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646/​

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We'll see.

I'm sorry, but are completely misunderstanding my POV.
Human maths are descriptive. Tegmark's non-human Universal maths are real. The way I see Tegmark's "nothing but maths" stems from the fact that everything has a quantitative or qualitative relational "value". Values interact via mathematical functions.

I have never claimed that human maths are used by the universe. Humans use their symbolic representation of Universal maths.
And human maths do a good job of approximating the real universal maths they are trying to describe.
Universal maths exists everywhere and is effective without the necessity of human explanations Humans need human maths to describe (symbolize) Universal maths.

 

I am impressed with Plato.

Plato

 

Yes birds and frogs...

Idiot. More off topic pasting?

 

Plato himself arguably combined the temporal stances of Heraclitus (proponent of presentism) and Parmenides (proponent of eternalism). The forms of his intelligible world were immutable, but the contigent and ever-changing shapes or configurations of things in the sensible world, that they governed, were not.

But Tegmark does not seem to be endorsing a dualist situation like that. The mathematical structure of his multiverse would embrace all of the incremental developments, each of which human experience would (erroneously) interpret as only briefly existing in a particular moment rather that perpetually co-existing as part of a higher-dimensional assemblage.

A "nomological stratum" like Plato's and possibly others is superfluous for Tegmark's conception, where existence literally is "material" rather than a sequence of temporary, ephemeral states outputted by an other-level process (whether computational or magical). Thus, it does not appear compatible with that particular school or category of speculation.
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Reported for yet more off topic nonsense. This is BAD for a serious science site IMO

 

Regardless of the "yay or nay" answer to a topic title lacking a question mark, such a discussion should transpire either in philosophy or a On The Fringe subforum. If the focus isn't going to remain on MUH itself and its peripheral subject area, but drift far, then probably the already anomalous nature of Fringe.
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Let me check my own reading comprehension here...

AKA - Predetermination?

 

"Predeterminism" would be rubbing shoulders with issues of free will and possibly even theology. I mean, such can arise in philosophy fisticuffs, but that's not Tegmark's provenance for it. And since he advocates a multiverse rather than the "simple" block-time view of one universe, it might be a nightmare sorting out how that affects whatever one's position is on free will.


Paul Davies: Physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety - a timescape, analogous to a landscape - with all past and future events located there together .... Completely absent from this description of nature is anything that singles out a privileged special moment as the present or any process that would systematically turn future events into the present, then past, events. In short, the time of the physicist does not pass or flow. --That Mysterious Flow

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Robert Geroch: "There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as 'moving through' space-time, or as 'following along' their world-lines. Rather, particles are just 'in' space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." --General Relativity from A to B

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Paul Davies: "Peter Lynds's reasonable and widely accepted assertion that the flow of time is an illusion (25 October, p 33) does not imply that time itself is an illusion. It is perfectly meaningful to state that two events may be separated by a certain duration, while denying that time mysteriously flows from one event to the other. Crick compares our perception of time to that of space. Quite right. Space does not flow either, but it's still 'there'." --New Scientist, 6 December 2003, Sec. Letters

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Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
https://nautil.us/why-the-flow-of-time-is-an-illusion-237380/

INTRO: In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s issue of Nautilus, which looks at the concept of flow through various portals in science, we revisited our 2014 video interview with Tegmark.

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Hermann Weyl: "The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science
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