Comp, Chance and Necessity, the large and the small

[Roger Clough]

 

 

1) In his classic work on evolution, Chance and Necessity,

Jacques Monod describes this natural process as consisting

of a combination of chance mutations (contingency), which are blind

but free, and necessity, which knows what it is doing but can

do no other.

 

If that is a basis for modellin the mind or the world, I would

think that comp should also contain these two elements:

 

Platonia= necessity and lawful

Contingia= probabilistic but blind.

 

But to my knowledge, although there are very good algorithms for simulating

randomness, there is no such thing as a means of generating pure randomness

with a computer program. However, if appearances will do, a computer can

emulate reality, if reality follows Monad's model.

2) Some have asked if Platonia can also rule the contingent. I don't know

if Monod gets into this issue in his book, but probability theory says that,

in the large, chance must follow certain laws or rules, so that in the large,

chance is not entirely blind.

 

To my mind, Leibniz however did express a similar idea i his book

The Principles of Nature and Grace, wherein in perception, we see the

many in the one. This indicates that  Platonia is capable of guiding

the many contingent operations of this world (chance) in the large,

in terms of certain laws (necessity). 

 

If I may add a theodical observation, this also appears to be the way God

acts in this world, in terms of the many, which one might call Providence,

instead of the one (me personally).  He would order the Isreaelites to

kill an entire family. men women and children. Or in the Flood, kill

everybody in the world except Noah and his family. And he let the

rain fall on the good as well as the evil.

 

 

 

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/19/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 06:03:03AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:
>
>
> 1) In his classic work on evolution, Chance and Necessity,
> Jacques Monod describes this natural process as consisting
> of a combination of chance mutations (contingency), which are blind
> but free, and necessity, which knows what it is doing but can
> do no other.
>
> If that is a basis for modellin the mind or the world, I would
> think that comp should also contain these two elements:
>
> Platonia= necessity and lawful
> Contingia= probabilistic but blind.

Add heritability, and you have evolution!

>
> But to my knowledge, although there are very good algorithms for simulating
> randomness, there is no such thing as a means of generating pure randomness
> with a computer program.

Take a look at HAVEGE. It's perfectly possible to generate true
randomness, if by computer you mean the sorts of machine we use to
exchange emails. BTW, HAVAGE's algorithm is baked into the Linux kernel!


--

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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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[Roger Clough]

Hi Russell Standish

 

According to a web page, havege is probably the

best random number generator known, but it still

is not a "true" random number gen.  There must be

ways of testing for true randomness statistically.

But that doesn't really bother me if we are only talking

about apparent randomness.

 

Anyway, I looked up your "theory of nothing"

book on wikipedia and find it very interesting.

As far as I can see, it "creates" a mathematically

structured world.

 

Two possible ways of creating actual objects out of nothing

 

1) Brian Greene (or my imagination) gets  close to the idea

of the creation of spacetime objects in one of his string

theory books, where, in my imagination at least, the

nonphysical stuff of kant's intuitive "space" gets

twisted in certain ways, as I suppose, into the outlines

of strings.  Then something magical happens (perhaps such as

colliding them with kant's intuitive nonphysical strips of time)

to convert them into vibrating, physical strings.

 

2) Leibniz's theory of monads generally simply models

actual objects rather than creating them,
but his theory of mechanical collisions recreates

the resultant collided objects through an

interaction involving the position of a body before,

the position afterwards, and the Supreme Monad,

which allows this to happen.

 

Since the position afterwards can possibly be thought

of as the creation of a new object (at least physically)

   

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/19/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Russell Standish

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-19, 06:24:09

Subject: Re: Comp, Chance and Necessity, the large and the small

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, November 19, 2012 6:03:08 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

 

Platonia= necessity and lawful

Contingia= probabilistic but blind.

 

For any universe in which we could participate, there is also:

Preference = Neither necessary nor blind nor completely lawful nor completely random.
Presence = Improbable necessity.

Craig

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 07:20:45AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Russell Standish
>
> According to a web page, havege is probably the
> best random number generator known, but it still
> is not a "true" random number gen. There must be

They are probably being modest. What they have is as close to a true
random number generator as is physically possible. It beats
radioactive decay and lava lamps by several orders of magnitude.

> ways of testing for true randomness statistically.

There are, but all of them are only partial tests. Just as it is
impossible (short of exhaustive enumeration) to know if one has the
shortest program giving a particular sequence, it is impossible to
know for certain if a given sequence is truly random (wrt a reference
TM), as that requires knowing there is no program shorter than the
length of the sequence iteself generating that sequence.

> But that doesn't really bother me if we are only talking
> about apparent randomness.
>

HAVEGE is as random as the real world. Sure, it is possible that the
real world is utterly deterministic, but then QM is not a true
description of reality.

> Anyway, I looked up your "theory of nothing"
> book on wikipedia and find it very interesting.

Wikipedia only has passing references to it, mainly from the Library
of Babel article. You probably landed on my website :).

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

 

God's preference ?

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/20/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-19, 16:35:56

Subject: Re: Comp, Chance and Necessity, the large and the small

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[Roger Clough]

Hi Russell Standish

 

I did land on your website or look up your book.

You do have some radical assumptions, one of

them puzzling to me-- that time is an "external" variable.

External to what ? mind ? the physical world ?

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/20/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Russell Standish

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-19, 18:56:44

Subject: Re: Two possible ways of creating actual objects out of nothing

[Russell Standish]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 08:31:05AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Russell Standish
>

> I did land on your website or look up your book.
> You do have some radical assumptions, one of
> them puzzling to me-- that time is an "external" variable.
> External to what ? mind ? the physical world ?
>
>

That's not an assumption I make. The TIME postulate is that observers
process distinct observations selected from an ordered set (eg a
timescale). It is certainly not external to anything, as it is very
much observer relative. See the discussion on pages 64-65.

Cheers

[Roger Clough]

Hi Russell Standish

 

Sorry, my mistake, I remembered wrong. It was somebody else.

 

 

[Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net]

11/21/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

 

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Russell Standish

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-11-20, 19:00:51

Subject: Re: Re: Two possible ways of creating actual objects out of nothing