We need more discussion of Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis

[James R]

Sarkus:

Perhaps not at the moment, but the principle is that those absolute laws can be expressed exactly with mathematics. Whether we have the full understanding of the laws at present is neither here nor there, I'd suggest.

What you just said is more a statement of faith than one based on evidence. You think (or wish, or hope) that "absolute laws", when and if they are discovered, will be expressible using mathematics. But there are no guarantees of that.

Sure. And how many of these are non-mathematical? All improvements are still mathematical - i.e. can be expressed exactly as understood by maths.

It would be a little strange to expect that a physicist who deliberately goes looking for mathematical theories will find something other than mathematical theories, would it not?

But let's dispense with what our understanding of them is, and look at the objective laws. The principle is that these laws can still be expressed exactly by mathematics.

Whose principle? The principle of the physicists who have been trained to use mathematics and to couch their theories in mathematical terms?

Is that contentious?

Yes, but your view is very common and held by a lot of people.

What would be an alternative?

An alternative would be that the workings of our universe, at least in some respects, might not lend themselves to a mathematical description. For instance, they might not be calculable. Or, more likely, there may be some details of the workings of our universe that only ever lend themselves to approximate mathematical descriptions - perhaps to better and better approximations, but always with some "unexplained" or "unpredictable" cases or exceptions.

Arguably, even today's quantum theory has that problem. Sure, it can give us lots of useful results, but only in probabilistic terms. It cannot predict the outcome of measuring the spin of an electron as up or down, for instance.

 

[James R]

But they are always mathematical in essence.

Your claim is that physical laws are always mathematical in essence. But is that because human beings express them using mathematics, or because maths is somehow at the bottom of the stack when it comes to the basic constituents of the universe? You and Tegmark assume the latter. It's still a mystery as to whether you actually understand that Tegmark takes one more step than you do.

We are not talking about Human mathematics.

What else is there? Non-human mathematics?

We are talking about generic Universal mathematics and they don't change.

"Generic universal mathematics" is a nonsense term that you made up. You can't even define it.

You are talking about human mathematics and its incompleteness. But humans do not run the universe. The Universe runs us.

Where is this complete mathematics you claim exists in the universe, then?

Humans need to learn universal mathematics, not the other way around.

How does a human go about learning this mysterious universal mathematics of yours? Have you learned any of it?

And what exactly is irrelevant about universal mechanics?

It's irrelevant until you can define it. Until then, it remains useless word salad.

The POVs I present on this subject are not my own but in support of one or more accredited scientists.

Like who? Tegmark? It turns out you have failed to grasp the difference between what you have been espousing, uncontroversially, and what Tegmark is espousing. Your conversation with Sarkus shows that.

Are these POVs irrelevant?

Which POVs? Irrelevant to what?

If you have any questions I will answer them as best I can.

No you won't. You typically ignore huge swathes of objections to what you write, including many direct questions that are put to you. Stop pretending.

At least James has done me the courtesy of asking for clarification on occasion, which I always have endeavored to answer and to my knowledge never been proved wrong in my interpretation, except for a minor detail here or there.

I have observed that you cherry pick what you think are the easy questions and respond to those - often with irrelevancies - while ignoring all the pointed and/or hard questions.

Sarkus now (grudgingly), seems to be very much in agreement in principle on the issue of Tegmark's mathematical universe.

That's not what I'm seeing.

Do you understand the distinction that Sarkus has carefully tried to explain to you at least twice, between your uncontroversial view about mathematics and Tegmark's controversial one? Can you summarise that difference in a sentence or two, in your own words?

I don't think you will, because I don't think you can.

 

[Write4U]

t's all "natural" you are getting confused with natural philosophy.

And Natural philosophy is not pertinent to the discussion?

Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis) is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
Natural philosophy - Wikipedia

There is word salad then there is 1000 island dressing.

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

 

[Write4U]

Your claim is that physical laws are always mathematical in essence. But is that because human beings express them using mathematics, or because maths is somehow at the bottom of the stack when it comes to the basic constituents of the universe? You and Tegmark assume the latter. It's still a mystery as to whether you actually understand that Tegmark takes one more step than you do.

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?

What else is there? Non-human 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.

"Generic universal mathematics" is a nonsense term that you made up. You can't even define it.

I believe I just did.

Where is this complete mathematics you claim exists in the universe, then?

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

How does a human go about learning this mysterious universal mathematics of yours? Have you learned any of it?

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?

In mathematics and logic, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A theory is a consistent, relatively-self-contained body of knowledge which usually contains an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems.
Axiomatic system - Wikipedia

Mathematics is such a system.

It's irrelevant until you can define it. Until then, it remains useless word salad.

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

Like who? Tegmark? It turns out you have failed to grasp the difference between what you have been espousing, uncontroversially, and what Tegmark is espousing. Your conversation with Sarkus shows that.

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?

Which POVs? Irrelevant to what?

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

No you won't. You typically ignore huge swathes of objections to what you write, including many direct questions that are put to you. Stop pretending.

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

I have observed that you cherry pick what you think are the easy questions and respond to those - often with irrelevancies - while ignoring all the pointed and/or hard questions.

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

That's not what I'm seeing.

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

Do you understand the distinction that Sarkus has carefully tried to explain to you at least twice, between your uncontroversial view about mathematics and Tegmark's controversial one? Can you summarise that difference in a sentence or two, in your own words?

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.

I don't think you will, because I don't think you can.

Give it a rest.

 

[James R]

Write4U:

We don't just explain physics through mathematics we create physics with mathematics.

I have no idea what you mean by that.

Could we ever have produced a Higgs boson without Peter Higgs' mathematics?

I'm not sure what you're asking.

Are you asking whether the Higgs boson is a particle that would still exist if Higgs himself didn't exist? I say it would, with or without the mathematics.

But maybe are you asking whether Higg's mathematics was necessary to plan an experiment to search for the Higgs bosons using the Large Hadron Collider? In that case, I would say that we'd have no reason to suspect that the Higg boson was a thing, without Higgs (or somebody else) postulating its existence. We wouldn't know what to look for.

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.

Please give me two specific examples that showcase different "generic natural values (ratios)".

Why is the modifier "generic" important? Are there non-generic natural values (ratios), too? Can you give me any examples of those?

And these generic natural values of yours are all ratios, are they? So, none of them have any units, then? Is that correct?

Why aren't these generic natural values part of human mathematics? Can humans say anything about them, then?

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

You believe that your generic universal mathematics is "enfolded" into "spacetime geometry", do you?

Can you explain how that works, exactly? Can you give me an example showing how a specific generic mathematical value is enfolded into spacetime geometry?

What causes a generic mathematical value to "unfold"? You say "relational mathematics"?

So, if I understand correctly, you have at least three different types of mathematics: (1) generic universal mathematics, (2) relational mathematics and (3) human mathematics. Do these overlap at all, or are they completely separate types of mathematics?

How can "relational mathematics" cause generic universal mathematics to unfold? What's the process by which the relational mathematics acts on the physical universe?

It seems that natural mathematical guiding principles are readily observable in action and expression.

Can you give me a specific example of a natural mathematical guiding principle that is observable in action and expression?

What's the difference between a thing being observable in action and it being observable in expression? Can you give me an example?

It seems axiomatic.

Does that mean you're just assuming all this is correct, without any proof, then?

We are discovering the mathematics of the Universe.

Are we? How do you know?

Why is mathematics an axiomatic system?

Did you need to look that up?

Really?, I think that my perspective is very much in line with Sarkus. His only gripe is that my arguments lack sophistication.

I don't think that's his only gripe with you. But he can talk to you about it himself.

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

I said that "universal mathematics" is a useless concept unless you can define it. That's the first step. The next step is to show that it exists in reality. The final step is to show that it's useful in reality. So far, you've made some progress towards achieving step 1, on that.

For the purposes of a discussion about Tegmark's ideas, your universal mathematics is irrelevant until you can show, at least, step 2. Step 3 would be a nice extra.

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

Yes and no.

You're posting too much information that is irrelevant and not nearly enough that is relevant.

Failing to answer direct questions that probe what you think you mean when you post your word salad is a case of giving too little information, not too much. We'll see how you go with the questions I have put to you in this post.

There are questions I do not feel qualified to answer.

Do those include questions about what your word salad is supposed to mean?

That does not necessarily mean I don't understand the concept.

Correct. It doesn't necessarily mean that. But it's strongly suggestive. It is reasonable for readers to conclude that you don't understand, because if you did you could probably explain.

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

The matter of whether Sarkus agrees with you or not does not depend on any prejudices I might have.

He will no doubt either confirm that he agrees with yourself and/or Tegmark, or he will say that he does not agree with one or both of you. If the latter occurs, then my assessment will be proven correct and yours will be proven wrong. We'll see what happens.

Please tell me what is so controversial about Tegmark's mathematics.

What mathematics? You've never discussed any of Tegmark's mathematics. But probably you meant Tegmark's MUH.

You've been told previously why Tegmark's MUH is controversial, not just by me but by several other people here. If you don't trust us on that, you could have conducted a basic google search at any time, to find out for yourself what Tegmark's critics have to say about him.

Why haven't you done that? And why haven't you engaged with what we have told you about Tegmark's MUH? Did you simply forget what we told you? Or what?

What did you not understand about what I posted back in post #180 of this thread?

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.

That is not what Tegmark's MUH says. That is entirely your own hypothesis, which - as far as I can tell - is ill-defined and incoherent.

Give it a rest.

You proved my point. You were unable to articulate any differences between your position and Tegmark's, despite claiming at one point in this discussion that you don't agree with everything Tegmark says.

Remember when I asked you, directly, which parts of Tegmark's MUH you disagree with? Remember how you completely ignored that question and didn't reply? No? You don't remember that?

What's the matter with you, man?

 

[Pinball1970]

And Natural philosophy is not pertinent to the discussion?

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.

 

[Write4U]

But maybe are you asking whether Higg's mathematics was necessary to plan an experiment to search for the Higgs bosons using the Large Hadron Collider? In that case, I would say that we'd have no reason to suspect that the Higg boson was a thing, without Higgs (or somebody else) postulating its existence. We wouldn't know what to look for.

Exactly.

 

[Write4U]

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.

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

In physics alone there is a multitude of potential natural phenomena; think of celestial mechanics (solar and lunar eclipses), thermal physics (glaciers, freezing and thawing, geysers), acoustics (thunder) electromagnetism (lightning and auroras) to optics (rainbows, halos, glories, mirages…), and many more.

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

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

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

How was this exchange disruptive?

 

[Pinball1970]

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?

 

[Sarkus]

What you just said is more a statement of faith than one based on evidence.

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?

You think (or wish, or hope) that "absolute laws", when and if they are discovered, will be expressible using mathematics. But there are no guarantees of that.

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

It would be a little strange to expect that a physicist who deliberately goes looking for mathematical theories will find something other than mathematical theories, 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.

Whose principle? The principle of the physicists who have been trained to use mathematics and to couch their theories in mathematical terms?

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.

Yes, but your view is very common and held by a lot of people.

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.

An alternative would be that the workings of our universe, at least in some respects, might not lend themselves to a mathematical description. For instance, they might not be calculable.

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?

Or, more likely, there may be some details of the workings of our universe that only ever lend themselves to approximate mathematical descriptions - perhaps to better and better approximations, but always with some "unexplained" or "unpredictable" cases or exceptions.

Arguably, even today's quantum theory has that problem. Sure, it can give us lots of useful results, but only in probabilistic terms. It cannot predict the outcome of measuring the spin of an electron as up or down, for instance.

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.

 

[Sarkus]

I am not sure where you got that analogy from. I have supported and have been chided for my consistency in advancing Tegmark's concept of Reality.

Frankly, I see no difference between your concept of a MU and Tegmark's concept of a MU. Once his MU is accepted, the rest falls in place.

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.

I have never seen a "3" in the universe, but I have seen triangulation in both Nature and in Human geometry,
...
manner.

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.

Disruptive?
Am I screaming too much, pounding my fists on the table? What on earth are you talking about? My words are disruptive? In what way? another POV? At least they are NOT ad hominem. I don't disparage anybody's intellect and I don't call anybody wrong. I just present my POV of what I believe is closest to the truth.

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.

My delivery? I believe it deserves perhaps a little deeper interpretation than it has been afforded, until just recently when the subject was given some serious consideration. I have yet not seen any serious refutation of Tegmark's MUH.

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.

 

[C C]

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?

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/​

_

 

[Write4U]

Again, unfortunately, none of this is relevant to the discussion on Tegmark's MUH, only to your misunderstanding of it.

We'll see.

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.

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.

When was the term "mathematics" first used?
By the second century, in the Almagest, Ptolemy provides a modern conception of "mathematics" as a "science":
"Mathematics' ... is an attribute of all existing things, without exception, both mortal and immortal: for those things which are perpetually changing ... it changes with them, while for eternal things ... it keeps their unchanging form unchanged"
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/239372/when-was-the-term-mathematics-first-used#

 

[Write4U]

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.

I am impressed with Plato.

Plato

The Pythagorian school influenced the work of Plato. Mathematical Platonism is the metaphysical view that (a) there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us, and (b) there are true mathematical sentences that provide true descriptions of such objects. The independence of the mathematical objects is such that they are non physical and do not exist in space or time. Neither does their existence rely on thought or language. For this reason, mathematical proofs are discovered, not invented. The proof existed before its discovery, and merely became known to the one who discovered it.[13]

In summary, therefore, Mathematical Platonism can be reduced to three propositions:

• Existence. There are mathematical objects.
• Abstractness. Mathematical objects are abstract.
• Independence. Mathematical objects are independent of intelligent agents and their language, thought, and practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematicism

 

[Pinball1970]

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

Yes birds and frogs...

I am impressed with Plato.

Plato

Idiot. More off topic pasting?

 

[C C]

I am impressed with Plato.

Plato

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.
_

 

[Pinball1970]

I am impressed with Plato.

Plato

Reported for yet more off topic nonsense. This is BAD for a serious science site IMO

 

[C C]

We need more discussion of Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis

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.
_

 

[gmilam]

Let me check my own reading comprehension here...

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.

AKA - Predetermination?

 

[C C]

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

- - - - - -

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

- - - - - -

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

- - - - - -

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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