From: Tennessee Leeuwenburg (tennessee@tennessee.id.au)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2006 - 18:35:17 MST
On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 01:14 +0000, Dirk Bruere wrote:
>
>
> On 3/8/06, Tennessee Leeuwenburg <tennessee@tennessee.id.au> wrote:
> Simulation or whatever.
>
> We can suppose our universe (reality, whatever) to bear the
> same
> relation to ourselves as a simulation might bear to a
> simulated
> intelligence.
>
> This is a reasonable abstraction.
>
> However, we can't really know anything concrete about that. It
> can never
> be more than speculation, because it's invalid to make an
> inference from
> an unknown. By definition, that which is outside of our
> universe is
> unknown, and that which is known is inside of our universe.
>
>
> Not entirely true unless the 'external reality' cannot be descibed
> mathematically.
> However, it is a reasonable assumption to make that mathematics and
> logic apply in all spheres. Hence we could certainly model a variety
> of external realities to a degree even if we did not know what it was
> specifically. Of course, one might suppose that an external reality
> that could only be modelled using uncomputable numbers might screw up
> that option a bit...
Reality doesn't conform to maths. We use maths to describe reality.
Reality doesn't give a damn about maths.
It's an article of faith that reality is describable by logic and
mathematics. I don't normally bother to harp on this point, because it's
obvious how much success we've had applying science and maths to reality
so far. But even to date, we have mathematical difficulties explaining
all phenomena.
Reality could be fundamentally different in lots and lots of ways. We
can apply high-level abstractions to thinking about what might be
outside our container, but not (I would argue) low-level ones.
We could use a computer to simulate a number of near-realities, and also
a number of realities which we can conceive of. But we can't model that
which we can't imagine.
That's why I think "outside-in" reasoning about what can be modelled is
flawed. It makes sense to us in our reality that we could model our own
reality (to some extent) or at least capture its rules. I'm fairly sure
it's provably impossible to *actually* simulate our reality in our
reality. (i.e. hard information limits)
Cheers,
-T
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