Quick question

[Joseph Knight]

True or False: COMP implies that any fundamental physical constant is non computable?

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 04:15:54PM -0700, Joseph Knight wrote:
> True or False: COMP implies that any fundamental physical constant is non
> computable?
>

I would say false, unless you can say that pi is _not_ a physical
constant. Another example that springs to mind is the magnetic moment
of the neutron which is definitely physical, but maybe not fundamental.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Joseph Knight]

Sorry for the vagueness of my question; I would not count pi as a physical constant. I would count the empirically determined circumference:diameter ratio for a circle in our observed curved spacetime as a physical constant.

The reason I asked is because Bruno has repeatedly claimed that COMP=>"noncomputability of physics" but I'm wondering what exactly this would mean in practice.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/53ZNGv7qPpo/unsubscribe?hl=en.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 07:15:00PM -0500, Joseph Knight wrote:
> Sorry for the vagueness of my question; I would not count pi as a physical
> constant. I would count the empirically determined circumference:diameter
> ratio for a circle in our observed curved spacetime as a physical constant.
>
> The reason I asked is because Bruno has repeatedly claimed that
> COMP=>"noncomputability of physics" but I'm wondering what exactly this
> would mean in practice.

IIUC, it means that what he calls "first person indeterminancy" will
manifest itself as genuinely random phenomena, which is by definition
uncomputable. An example of such phenomena might be the timing of beta
decay of atoms, which is widely believed to be truly random.

Cheers

[meekerdb]

On 3/30/2013 5:15 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
>
> Sorry for the vagueness of my question; I would not count pi as a physical constant. I
> would count the empirically determined circumference:diameter ratio for a circle in our
> observed curved spacetime as a physical constant.
>
> The reason I asked is because Bruno has repeatedly claimed that COMP=>"noncomputability
> of physics" but I'm wondering what exactly this would mean in practice.
>

Good question. I had assumed he referred to indeterminancy. The trouble with asking about
physical constants is that they are only measured as rational numbers.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Mar 2013, at 01:15, Joseph Knight wrote:

Sorry for the vagueness of my question; I would not count pi as a physical constant. I would count the empirically determined circumference:diameter ratio for a circle in our observed curved spacetime as a physical constant.

The reason I asked is because Bruno has repeatedly claimed that COMP=>"noncomputability of physics" but I'm wondering what exactly this would mean in practice.

In practice it would mean that some phenomena are not predictible or computable. Russell and Brent are right, it comes from the FPI (first person indeterminacy) which introduces "genuine randomness" in the first person experience.

In fact that randomness might be so great as leading to the "white rabbits", and with comp it is astonishing that the world around us seems so much computable. But the redundancy of the UD, and the constraints of correct self-reference add much structure, and if comp is true, that should be enough. The non computable sequence will still have computable distribution, like with QM, when, for example, we send a sheaf of electron is the 1/sqrt(2)(up + down) on a up/down Stern-Gerlach analyser. From the first person perspective, this leads to uncomputable sequence of events (even incompressible strings of up and down), but statistically, with Avogadro-like numbers of particles, the electronic sheaf will just split in symmetrical halves, like the big number statistical laws predict.

It is an open problem if there are non computable constants in nature, as it is an open problem if some oracle might play a role in the development of the appearance of physical laws in the UD (or in arithmetic). That seems unlikely, but who knows? As Brent says, that would be hard to test, but it might make some sense from theoretical assumption, both in comp-physics, and in theoretical physics.  Note that it is easy to build a non computable solution to the SWE (something like Ae^ikHt, with k a non computable number, but it is impossible to test the non computability of such wave in case they occur. Machines can prove only the individual incompressibility of a *finite* number of strings.

Bruno

On Mar 30, 2013 6:53 PM, "Russell Standish" <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 04:15:54PM -0700, Joseph Knight wrote:
> True or False: COMP implies that any fundamental physical constant is non
> computable?
>

I would say false, unless you can say that pi is _not_ a physical
constant. Another example that springs to mind is the magnetic moment
of the neutron which is definitely physical, but maybe not fundamental.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/53ZNGv7qPpo/unsubscribe?hl=en.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--

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 post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Clark]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013  Joseph Knight <josep...@gmail.com> wrote:

> True or False: COMP implies that any fundamental physical constant is non computable?

I still don't know exactly what "COMP" means but about 1860 Maxwell computed the speed of light and that is certainly a fundamental constant, not only that but his mathematics said that computed speed of light would always be the same regardless of the speed of the observer or of the source of the light. But of course Maxwell didn't start from zero, he had to know what the values of the magnetic constant and the electric constant are, and as far as we know those numbers can only be obtained from experiment. At the time electricity and magnetism didn't seem to have anything to do with light but Maxwell showed that they did.

  John K Clark

[meekerdb]

I thought the speed of light was 1.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Mar 2013, at 16:16, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013  Joseph Knight <josep...@gmail.com> wrote:

> True or False: COMP implies that any fundamental physical constant is non computable?

I still don't know exactly what "COMP" means

It is the hypothesis that there is a level of description of your brain such that your consciousness (or first person experience) would remain unchanged in case your brain, or body, is replaced by a computer emulating it at that level, or below.

It is the idea that your brain is a machine, even if natural and physical.

but about 1860 Maxwell computed the speed of light and that is certainly a fundamental constant, not only that but his mathematics said that computed speed of light would always be the same regardless of the speed of the observer or of the source of the light. But of course Maxwell didn't start from zero, he had to know what the values of the magnetic constant and the electric constant are, and as far as we know those numbers can only be obtained from experiment. At the time electricity and magnetism didn't seem to have anything to do with light but Maxwell showed that they did.

Getting number by experiment does not provide information on the computability issue of some possible constant occurring in physics.

Most mathematical constants are computable or reductible to computable functions on the non negative integers, and individual non computable object occur mainly in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. 

Bruno

  John K Clark

--
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 post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

Lol.

But even with the unities making the speed of light equal to 1, we cannot be sure that in the next theory, to accommodate some unexpected particles, we might need to accept that the speed of light is the constant 0.9999999999999999999999996779435210033012878856... as measured by some technology. And the question remains, is that computable (algorithmically generable)? 

With comp we can expect bad news, like it will take 400,000 years for solving that problem, and showing that the speed of light is determined by some constants appearing in the distribution of the twin primes number, say. That would show that in some theory, the speed of light is computable. But in the year 898,675,908, that theory will be disproved, by measurement, making the question of the computability of the speed of light still unsolved. 

We can hope for the simple, but we can expect surprises and complexities, and a growing ignorance awareness, proportional to a deepening in the fundamentals. I think.

Bruno

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 post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Telmo Menezes]

Hi John,

I'm curious about your views TOE-wise. This is a honest question. What
is reality according to John K. Clark? What is consciousness?

Cheers,
Telmo.

> John K Clark

[Joseph Knight]

So is physics best understood as a computer program with access to a random oracle? (Coming from 1-indeterminacy.)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Jul 2013, at 23:01, Joseph Knight wrote:

So is physics best understood as a computer program with access to a random oracle? (Coming from 1-indeterminacy.)

That is possible but should remain to be proved. A priori, physics emerges from all computations, and the mixing of computability and non computability might be non equivalent with computable + a random oracle. I suspect it not, both empirically and theoretically with computationalism.

Bruno

PS I will have to put my computer in a box, as I am moving, so I will be disconnected for awhile. Thanks for being patient for a possible answer to your next possible comment.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/