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Thread: Cosmology

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    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    I don't think that would interfere with duality. Duality is independent of the spelling of the numbers one uses to define it.
    I don't understand what "duality" has to do with this. One could probably construct a countably infinite number of binary order relations on the integers. Start with 0 and then use the axiom of choice to pick the next integer making sure it does not agree with the one in a previous order relation. It looks like there might even be an uncountable number of such possible relations.

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    It seems much more simple after all to ask: How much is it possible for home arithmetics to differ in other universes from our own?
    I think we need a definition of "home arithmetics" to continue this. The term doesn't make sense to me.

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    No doubt mathematics could be approached in different ways. Requiring rigorous proofs (our way) would be only one way to proceed.
    My suspicion is that mathematics requires proofs or it is not mathematics. Our way would be the only way to do it.

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    Does mathematics always end up in the same palce, no matter where it starts? It is not the same even among human cultures. Yet mere counting is at the heart of all mathematical beginnings that I know of. Must that itself be so? I find it difficult to imagine how a civilization might come upon the arithemetic of matrices first and then develop our normal arithemetic as a strange alternative. Could our fundamental arithemetic seem strange to them but operations on matrices seem completely normal and natural? Not sure how that could happen, or if it could. How would such a universe support that view?
    I don't think the universe needs to support this except to allow consciousness to exist, but that brings me back to a previous question: is it possible to have a universe without consciousness?

    Edit: Godel showed that mathematics couldn't be both complete and consistent. All we can hope for is that it is consistent. What that means to me is that if we start with the same assumptions we should reach the same conclusion, otherwise I would have to doubt whether mathematics can be consistent or not. I don't see how this depends on the kind of universe we are in.
    Last edited by YesNo; 09-13-2015 at 11:57 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    is it possible to have a universe without consciousness?
    Can you go into some more detail as to why this question comes up for you? Interesting discussion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I don't understand what "duality" has to do with this. One could probably construct a countably infinite number of binary order relations on the integers. Start with 0 and then use the axiom of choice to pick the next integer making sure it does not agree with the one in a previous order relation. It looks like there might even be an uncountable number of such possible relations.
    Tricks do not mean it could support a universe. We are getting beyond this.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I think we need a definition of "home arithmetics" to continue this. The term doesn't make sense to me.
    Home arithemetic is exactly the fundamental principles of counting we learned in early grade school. That is the system which is normal and intuitive to us. Systems that ignore or counter-define any properties of that system are legitimate in some sense, but counter-intuitive to us. They came later in our development as mathematicians.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    My suspicion is that mathematics requires proofs or it is not mathematics. Our way would be the only way to do it.
    A famous mathemetician, maybe Barrow who wrote Pi In The Sky, envisioned a system of math from a civilization which did not require proofs for propositions to be defined as true. A quadrillion examples without a counter example appearing was rigorous enough for them. They were able to perform other operations with perfect confidence (for them) that no counter examples would ever crop up. They could assume, for instance, that there are infinite pairs of twin primes, and base further calculations on this "fact," from which they might glean other "facts." This mathematics would be philosophically different from ours, yet easily capable of existing.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I don't think the universe needs to support this except to allow consciousness to exist, but that brings me back to a previous question: is it possible to have a universe without consciousness?
    A wonderful question. I am not sure how the machine hybrids which will supplant us are going to feel about that kind of question. Their own particular origins will not be in as much dispute for them as our own are to us.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Edit: Godel showed that mathematics couldn't be both complete and consistent. All we can hope for is that it is consistent. What that means to me is that if we start with the same assumptions we should reach the same conclusion, otherwise I would have to doubt whether mathematics can be consistent or not. I don't see how this depends on the kind of universe we are in.
    Anyone who cannot love Godel cannot love a mad scientist. The biggest stars of the mathematical universe often come out of nowhere. In the end it wasn't the Great Hilbert or the mighty Bertrand Russel or Peano who got the final say, it was freaky little Godel. He crushed the hopes and years of work from them all in a few pages. One of Einstein's famous quotes goes that he himself was irrelevant anymore but he still went in to work everyday at Princeton for the privilege of walking home with Godel. On Einstein's birthday (70th?) Godel presented him with a gift perhaps no other could have--a legitimate manipulation of Einstein's own equations pointing to a universe where time travel would be possible. Now that was a cool gift.

    We might had better learn somewhere along the way that human intuition can be both a brilliant and a false guide to what is possible. We would hate to fall into a similar trap as poor Kant, whose legacy will forever bear the blemish of his postulation of Euclidian space as an a priori truth. Kant thought this view of space was on unassailable grounds. Another view of space did not occur to him. Euclidian space was a necessary truth, not a contingent one. He rested his case.

    By the time Kant was nearing his deathbed the teenaged Gauss had already recognized non-Euclidian space, as proven by entries in his notebooks when he was thirteen. He never published his discovery. When Gauss made ripe but few his motto, he really meant it. If he had published even half of what he knew, instead of waiting for his students and later mathematicians to discover his secrets, mathematics might be fifty years ahead of where it is now. Wouldn't we love to know what frontiers it will have broken in fifty years? If only Gauss had possessed a few more of the gracious personality traits of Euler and fewer of the anal retentive ones of Newton.

    Anyway, whether universes are possible which we can only imagine to be impossible, is very tricky if one lets it run. I feel the answer might lie at a higher meta-logic but not our current level. What we can imagine, expands forever like the arms of a graphed curve. We don't even know if such a curve has asymptotes. There goes that imagery bug again. Metaphors are rather hard to defend scientifically.

    Like yourself, I am happy to leave it for now that some axiomatic logical propositions are independent of the kind of universe we are in. It was an important first distinction to make. Otherwise it would keep clouding the issues later on in various contexts and guises. It still might anyway, but we have cleared the way of enough philosophical boulders for modern cosmology to begin without constant interference from the galleries of ourselves.
    Last edited by desiresjab; 09-13-2015 at 11:40 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    Tricks do not mean it could support a universe. We are getting beyond this.
    What trick? Why does mathematics have to "support a universe"? What I am trying to probe is what I see as a confusion between a particular model (mathematics) and reality (whatever it is).

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    Home arithemetic is exactly the fundamental principles of counting we learned in early grade school. That is the system which is normal and intuitive to us. Systems that ignore or counter-define any properties of that system are legitimate in some sense, but counter-intuitive to us. They came later in our development as mathematicians.
    That doesn't mean our home mathematics could not be something else in the same universe.

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    A famous mathemetician, maybe Barrow who wrote Pi In The Sky, envisioned a system of math from a civilization which did not require proofs for propositions to be defined as true. A quadrillion examples without a counter example appearing was rigorous enough for them. They were able to perform other operations with perfect confidence (for them) that no counter examples would ever crop up. They could assume, for instance, that there are infinite pairs of twin primes, and base further calculations on this "fact," from which they might glean other "facts." This mathematics would be philosophically different from ours, yet easily capable of existing.
    That sounds like a physics rather than a mathematics.

    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    A wonderful question. I am not sure how the machine hybrids which will supplant us are going to feel about that kind of question. Their own particular origins will not be in as much dispute for them as our own are to us.
    John Searle's "Chinese Room" argument has put an end to the AI dream.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eupalinos View Post
    Can you go into some more detail as to why this question comes up for you? Interesting discussion.
    I don't think a universe can exist without consciousness. One of the reasons for thinking this is to examine what we mean by "agents". These would be parts of the universe that can make a choice. Agents have enough consciousness to make a choice. We would be examples agents.

    Agents are not totally free to act. Their choices can be predicted. For example, given a choice between vanilla and chocolate ice cream on a certain day the probability distribution of my choice might be 30% for vanilla and 70% for chocolate. Now consider an electron with its choice between spin up or spin down. That choice could also have a 30%-70% probability distribution. Based on this behavior, could the electron not also be considered an "agent" with enough "consciousness" to make a choice?

    There are people who would claim that consciousness doesn't exist at all, being some kind of illusion of something still unknown, or it is an ephiphenomenon generated by unconscious matter that functions through determinism and randomness. Mathematics would be the model that patterns that determinism and randomness. But, given the uncertainty in quantum physics, is it possible for "unconscious matter" to even exist? If it is not, then no universe can exist without consciousness.
    Last edited by YesNo; 09-14-2015 at 11:33 AM.

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    This is not a theory of agency I had encountered before and it's intriguing. In this scheme is there a worthwhile distinction to make between a consciousness that thinks about its choices and one that has no potentiality of self-reflective thought? Or are the evolved forms of thought unimportant?

    The word consciousness would seem to have attached to it through common usage 'awareness' -- is there evidence that awareness might be attributed to an electron? Maybe our perceived awareness is illusory? I'd be curious to learn more if you can point me in a certain direction of texts. (Also interested in your explanation.)

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    What trick? Why does mathematics have to "support a universe"? What I am trying to probe is what I see as a confusion between a particular model (mathematics) and reality (whatever it is).

    That doesn't mean our home mathematics could not be something else in the same universe.
    I have to disagree. I think our home arithemetic has to be what it is in the universe we are aware of. Sure there have been primitive societies who only counted 1, 2, and went from there to many. That is still an abbreviation of fundamental counting. It contradicts it in no way. Beings in our universe should develop the natural way of counting before anything else. I absolutely cannot see any being or civilization developing matrix algebra first and coming to fundamental counting later, which would make fundamental counting, then, an alternative algebraic structure to those beings, and matrix algebra their home arithemetic. Maybe that is possible to say in words. But how could it happen with live beings in a universe? I say that it cannot happen in the universe as we currently understand it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by desiresjab View Post
    I absolutely cannot see any being or civilization developing matrix algebra first and coming to fundamental counting later, which would make fundamental counting, then, an alternative algebraic structure to those beings, and matrix algebra their home arithemetic. Maybe that is possible to say in words. But how could it happen with live beings in a universe? I say that it cannot happen in the universe as we currently understand it.
    But of course we now know again that we understand so little of our universe that the phrase anything is possible, seems apt from the point of view of pure wonderment. Still, from what is known, I do not see how it could happen.

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    Chong: “One day I took some acid and played Black Sabbath at .78 speed.”
    Cheech: “Yeah? And then what happened?”
    Chong: “I saw… GOD!

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    Quote Originally Posted by HCabret View Post
    Chong: “One day I took some acid and played Black Sabbath at .78 speed.”
    Cheech: “Yeah? And then what happened?”
    Chong: “I saw… GOD!
    It applies.

    Most people are used to contemplating the negative philosophical implications of Godel's theorems. Godel proved that mathematics has infinite complexity, but that under one roof it can never resolve all contradictions or settle all disputes from its axioms. Theoretically, under the new set of axioms of a higher meta logic the old disputes could all be settled, but they would only give rise to new and more advanced disputes not decideable under that new axiomatic system. This process could go on ad infinitum, always allowing us greater understanding but never completing that understanding.

    Infinite complexity cannot necessarily capture any possible reality, but maybe it could. Of which order is the infinite complexity of mathematics--Aleph nought or the continuum? Aleph nought could not give rise to all possibilities along the continuum. This is a conjecture which surely has to be true.

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    I like starting my universe with infinite mathematical complexity. A result of finite complexity would have been crushing.

    It will probably now require some time to make an acceptable definition of consciousness. It is a whole family of functions or a gradient of one complex function. If we grant a mosquito consciousness along with ourselves in our scheme, we have to acknowledge vast differences in the two types, though we are stating that at one level of abstraction there is some property they hold in common which is more fundamental to an understanding of them than their differences.

    If consciousness is a gradient from ameoba to mosquito to porpoise to man to..., then we are allowed the liberty of arbitrary demarcations along that gradient, such as the numbers on a number line, until at some point in the future we might actually know where the important points along that curve lie and what those points represent. An attempt at an intuitional arithemetic of consciousness. The naiive version.

    I propose as minimal that undefined but understood level of consciousness necessary to catch one's self thinking as the qualification for what I call super-consciousness. Thinking about thinking is the critical threshhold I arbitrarily select as the beginning of true consciousness, we have named super consciousness. If you cannot think about what you are thinking about, then you are not super conscious, though indeed you are conscious and thinking.

    Since it is only the super conscious beings that can consider themselves and formulate mathematical laws, if I must make a demarcation, I make it here.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eupalinos View Post
    This is not a theory of agency I had encountered before and it's intriguing. In this scheme is there a worthwhile distinction to make between a consciousness that thinks about its choices and one that has no potentiality of self-reflective thought? Or are the evolved forms of thought unimportant?
    Yes, the consciousness implied in an electron because of the choice it makes between being spin up and spin down is very primitive compared to the consciousness that we enjoy. We don't even see it as conscious which I think is part of the motivation for dualism. Intuitively we view the world around us as composed of real, animate agents such as people, pets and so on as well as inanimate reality such as sidewalks, stones, water and so on. The inanimate part looks as if they are not agents at all. Hence the dualistic split between agents and supposed non-agents.

    This is only one way to approach the question of whether a universe is possible without consciousness. I am primarily motivated with finding a justification for Thomas Nagel's panpsychism (see his essay in Mortal Questions) which implies that consciousness would have to permeate the universe to the lowest levels in order for our consciousness to eventually appear at all. I see this as a justification for reductionism given that consciousness (ours) exists.

    What I am trying on here is philosophy, not physics. I limit physics to positivism as the Copenhagen interpretation does. When physicists start doing philosophy it seems to me they get intuitively caught up with a mathematics mysticism since they are used to using mathematical models. That is what I want to avoid. This leads them to ideas of "determinism" and "randomness" neither of which I think are part of reality, but are part of their models. It also leads some of them to project mathematical structures such as the superpositions of trig functions in the Schrodinger's wave function onto reality with each superposition being one of the "many worlds". My view is that reality is more interesting than these mathematical models.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eupalinos View Post
    The word consciousness would seem to have attached to it through common usage 'awareness' -- is there evidence that awareness might be attributed to an electron? Maybe our perceived awareness is illusory? I'd be curious to learn more if you can point me in a certain direction of texts. (Also interested in your explanation.)
    I don't think the electron is aware only conscious enough to make a choice, but I don't know. It has a disposition and it appears to make "choices" when subjected to experiments. This leads to a different view of causality from the ideas we typically assume today which can be traced to David Hume. One book that I have found fascinating is Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum's Causality: A Very Short Introduction.
    Last edited by YesNo; 09-15-2015 at 10:58 AM.

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    Multiverse. ( Theory of many universes)

    Quantum theory’s application results predict the presence of multi universes, overlapping our universe-- parallel universes existing with our universe, un-detective but affecting human mind & destiny. To us these look strange, with their other worldly properties of many dimensions, physical properties without postulates of atoms & our kind of energy. All our scientific laws of time, gravity, electromagnetic forces my not apply there.
    Not only physical but mental realities may have different properties over there. Newtonian laws, Einstein conclusions, Bohr’s theories are true only in a limited field but may be unable to hold in other universe, ushering in a much wider context in physical structures.
    Any laws of ours put reality under deterministic mode as to satisfy scientist’s egos and make it something static and dead but Life is more dynamic, with movement and change. Scientific theories are based on laws of logic as proven by their long winded equations and cover a very limited field into dead entity.
    Moreover, Einsteinian theories predicted much more energy in the universe then in that of visible matter and detectable energy. There must be more matter that we can detect as to support time and space & which is termed as The Black matter/energies and according to their estimate, these can count for up to 90 % in our universe. We are only dealing only with 10% of our visible universe. Our established scientific laws and properties may amount to very tiny portion of our intrinsic universe.
    In Buddhist scriptures it is mentioned that Buddha visited three thousand other universes to give his sermons. Guru Nanak stated that there are stars upon stars, planets upon planets, universes upon universes and human mind gets tired of applying its intellect in thinking about.
    Both science and religion indicate that reality is far vaster than our logical minds can grasp.

    Durlabh Singh© 2015

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    Quote Originally Posted by durlabh View Post
    Any laws of ours put reality under deterministic mode as to satisfy scientist’s egos and make it something static and dead but Life is more dynamic, with movement and change.
    I hadn't thought of ego being an explanation for the love of determinism.

    Quote Originally Posted by durlabh View Post
    Moreover, Einsteinian theories predicted much more energy in the universe then in that of visible matter and detectable energy. There must be more matter that we can detect as to support time and space & which is termed as The Black matter/energies and according to their estimate, these can count for up to 90 % in our universe. We are only dealing only with 10% of our visible universe. Our established scientific laws and properties may amount to very tiny portion of our intrinsic universe.
    I wonder if there is any dark matter or energy. Maybe we just need to revise the laws of physics or find a way to take better measurements.

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    Some scientific theories have names that are irrestible to the public. Relativity, Chaos theory, String theory, Disaster theory and now Mulit-verse. Is there a human being alive who does not want to believe this? I want to believe in multiverses. But my own standards prevent me from subscribing to theories with no empirical evidence.

    As I undertrstand it multiverses were postulated because our cosmological constant was so finely tuned that it seemed to impliy a deliberate action on the part of an intelligence. Multiverses were posited to provide an end run around the notion of a designer. Our strange cosomological constant is not so strange if there are up to 10^500 other universes lurking somewhere out there.

    I think there is no evidence for multiverses other than this flimsy excuse for a theory. I wish it were otherwise. I suppose I could be convinced.
    Last edited by desiresjab; 09-15-2015 at 10:58 PM.

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