On The Origin Of Time

[John Clark]

I recently read the book "On the Origin of Time, Stephen Hawking's Final Theory"  by Thomas Hertog,  and I thought it was pretty good, but I did write to the author with the following comment. I have not received a reply. 

==

Hello Professor Hertog

I read your book "On The Origin Of Time" and enjoyed it a great deal, however I do have a comment. At one point you say the trouble with anthropomorphic reasoning when used for cosmology is that it claims to be able to predict what "we" should expect to see but does not make clear exactly what "we" means. In this context I would say that "we" means any stable structure that is able to process information intelligently. So somewhere in the multiverse there could be a universe without DNA or atoms or even electrons but can nevertheless support structures made of some sort of stuff that can process data intelligently by using laws of physics that are radically different from anything we know about because they don't exist here. And by using the exact same anthropomorphic reasoning that we do, these observers should expect to find that the fundamental physical constants that have produced their world allow for the existence of their form of life, but just barely. So even there the illusion that life has been fine tuned would exist despite the fact that life worked completely differently there than the way it operates here; the only thing we do have in common is both universes support structures that can process data. 

I believe data processing is important because I think consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. As for "intelligence" I can't give a definition but I can give something more fundamental, an example; after all examples are what gave lexicographers the knowledge to write their dictionary. Einstein was intelligent, Donald Trump is not. 

Best Wishes

 John K Clark.   johnk...@gmail.com 

==

  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

tdn

[Brent Meeker]

You write that a lot, John.  But I don't think it's true.  You must know
about the Poincaire' effect, which is actually common and is a direct
contradiction of your theory.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2024 at 2:34 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

 > You must know about the Poincaire' effect

 

Nope, never heard of it. Do you mean the Poincaré conjecture? Or the Poincaré recurrence? Or do you mean something else entirely, the man did a lot of stuff.

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

mpl

[Brent Meeker]

I'm surprised.  All mathematicians have experienced it, but it's named after Poincare' because of this essay.  It's well worth reading all of it, but the relevant part is pp 326-329.

https://archive.org/details/jstor-27900262/page/n9/mode/2up

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kdHN7iXg7Pr_Pr9tu%3DYEw2ONhoF95MC%2BFY0vFuYBwRg%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2024 at 6:17 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm surprised. 

Why? Neither google nor GPT knows what the "Poincaire' effect" is in I don't either.

 

> All mathematicians have experienced it,

That depends on what "it" is. Just tell me what you're talking about and why it contradicts some thing that I said. 

> it's named after Poincare

 

 A lot of things were named after Poincare.

 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

pee

[Russell Standish]

I'd never heard of that called the Poincare effect either. Nor it seems does Wikipedia nor Google.

IIUC, it is the phenomenon that after working fruitless on some
problem for a while, taking a break, sleeping on it, etc might
suddenly produce the solution. As I've often said - the 10 minutes
walk from my desk to the cafe to get my cup of coffee is often the
most productive time of my day.

Cheers

> everything-list/e3868a6b-c499-4dc7-b075-38119a465606%40gmail.com.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------