In reply to Eckard Blumschein's "objection to the neglect of the distinction between past and future" as he asked in another thread.

I agree there is indeed such a distinction to make between the past which is fixed and the future which is not determined yet, as I did in my essay.

The problem was to specify the source of this distinction that gives the concept of time its special substance, and what role it plays. As I explained, I see 2 kinds of time which are independent but similar to each other. One is in the foundations of mathematics, and the other is in consciousness which is the source of existence of the physical universe. Only the latter is related to the time of physics but it only parallels it, not being directly involved in its fundamental laws.

In your writings, you presented this as a topic of divergence between (for example) Einstein who ignores this subtlety of time, and Shannon who takes it into account. In my viewpoint there is no real opposition here, only the fact that not the same concept of time is relevant to different aspects of reality. Both Shannon and Einstein are right in their respective fields of study.

Einstein focuses on fundamental physics. In fundamental physics, time only appears as a geometric dimension among others indeed, with no need of any distinction between past, present and future. Why would it be a problem ? The amazing success of theoretical physics shows that there is no problem with its block model of time. But this "only" concerns theoretical physics, which does not account for all aspects of reality.

The time of thermodynamics and information theory, considered by Shannon, belongs to another aspect of reality, outside the strict scope of theoretical physics. It is a time of finite mathematics, which is rebuilt at a higher structural level of the universe (away from its foundation) from a combination of finite mathematical data (physical states) and conscious time. See the diagram on page 7 of my essay to see what I mean.

    "different aspects of reality"? Doesn't reason compel us to trust in the uniqueness of the reality of just one universe? I cannot blame somebody who is at the beginning of his life in science if he at least pretends trusting in G. Cantor, Einstein, and possibly God. Incidentally, I already distrusted Stalin. To me being a reality is a reasonably conjectured property that we may attribute to the entity of something particular, even to a feeling, a thought, a chance, and a risk. While an existing plan of a building must not be confused with the building itself, both may belong to reality but not to different aspects of it.

    We are already agreeing on that past and future are reasonable notions. I repeatedly added that the present is not a state in between, and I hope you will agree on this too although the idol spoke of "past, present and future".

    I don't belittle the distinction between past and future as just a subtlety. I agree on "2 kinds of time which are independent but similar to each other". I disagree if you are attributing one of them to "the foundations of mathematics" and the other one to "consciousness which is the source of existence of the physical universe". I don't see any justification for the latter speculation. What about the foundation of mathematics, I dealt with many facets of the belonging history of paradoxes and got aware of brutally ignored deficits. Even if most mathematicians hesitate admitting these deficits; the putative foundations of mathematics are only partially self-consistent. Comprehensive self-consistence is obviously still missing in mathematics and consequently in speculative physics, too.

    You are using the notion "fundamental physics" instead of theoretical or mathematical physics. Some prudent experts compared mathematics with a solid building that apparently levitates. They meant set theory did not contribute to the work of those including Cauchy, Galilei, Gauss, Kant, Leibniz, and Newton who were listed by Cantor himself as enemies of his actual infinite and nonetheless distinguishable from each other numbers. We may add the contributions by Archimedes, Euclid, Euler, and virtually all other important ones who definitely did also not use set theory.

    Aren't measurement and compelling reasoning the true foundation of physics? My distinction is quite clear; only past time can be measured.

    You seem to belong to those who still consider scholastics as foundational. Otto de Guericke's attitude led to steam engine and electricity.

    Eckard

    7 days later

    I'm not sure what you mean by "abstract". Some people use this word to qualify what they don't understand and are not familiar with, and thus want to dismiss as unreal because it seems to them unreal, far from their universe.

    A universe of pure feelings would clearly be different from the universe we are in. Therefore, we aren't familiar with it, so that, simply for this reason, this sort of universe does not seem concrete to us. But I don't see here any point to qualify it as "abstract" as if it made objective sense.

    You can describe what you see as real using your usual human language. An animal hearing your story will not understand it, and will thus dismiss it as "abstract" and "unrealistic" because it is "incomprehensible" to him.

    Out of deference to American English Dictionaries, I try my best to use the correct definition of the word "abstract" included in one of them whenever I can. Abstract is an adjective and it means "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence."

    You do not know what the word means. I am a real person and I used the word correctly. Only abstract people could abstractly use the word "abstract" to abstractly qualify what they did not understand or were abstractly unfamiliar with and thus wanted to dismiss as unreal because it seemed to them unreal, far from their universe. If I did not know what the word "abstract" meant, or if I was unfamiliar with it, why would I qualify it?

    Because you do not know what the word "abstract" means, you cannot possibly know anything about reality.

    All the best anyway,

    Joe Fisher

    You are still not getting away from my objection. You are making imaginary sense of a word that you fictionally define by playing with synonyms which have the exact same problem of lack of definiteness as what your pretend to define. Indeed what do you mean by "physical" or "concrete" ? I challenge you to make any objective sense of these words, that would not ultimately come down to "being familiar to you personally", or "looking like what you usually find in your universe". (In my text I only call "physical" the precise things we happen to call this name in our universe, but this concept can become irrelevant, together with the word "abstract" in another very different universe). If what you find in this universe seems concrete to you, then what inhabitants of another universe find in their universe, will seem "concrete" to them as well, no matter that it does not seem concrete to you. And they would equally dismiss as "abstract" the things that you call "concrete" because it is not familiar to them.

    I described a similar psychological flaw in another text.

    • [deleted]

    • Post #13

    I am not fictionally defining the word abstract. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it the way I used it. The Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary defines it that same way as does every edition of Websters Dictionary. Please stop deluding yourself.

    Patiently yours,

    Joe Fisher

    The job of the Oxford English Dictionary is to provide a vocabulary describing the way things usually look like and that is good enough for common people to discuss everyday life, not the way things ultimately are according to the top modern scientific understanding, which is actually very different. It is not its job to make its vocabulary in perfect agreement with the discoveries of modern physics on the nature of reality, nor to specify how things in completely different universes can be qualified. Your way to qualify things indicates that you remain stuck to the physical realism of classical physics, which the paradoxes of quantum physics refuted. You need to initiate yourself to these paradoxes.

    Dear Sir,

    We thoroughly enjoyed your excellent essay. Here are certain elaborations of your concepts.

    The halting problem (what can/cannot be computed) arises due to a wrong question: "How long are you willing to wait"? We are familiar with irrational numbers, which are mostly non-computable. Yet, we know that they hover around a limited range. We choose as precise a value we want and proceed with it. Thus, the right question should have been: "How precise we want to be"?

    The other problem is equating language to a set of strings over an alphabet. In our essay in this forum, we have defined language as the "transposition of information to another system's CPU or mind by signals or sounds using energy (self communication is perception). The transposition may relate to a fixed object/information. It can be used in different domains and different contexts or require modifications in prescribed manner depending upon the context". In our 2013 essay, we had said: "In perception, these tasks are done by the brain. Data are the response of our sense organs to individual external stimuli. Text is the excitation of the neural network in specific regions of the brain. Spreadsheets are the memories of earlier perception. Pictures are the inertia of motion generated in memory (thought) after a fresh impulse, linking related past experiences. Voice is the disturbance created due to the disharmony between the present thought (impulse) and the stored image (this or that, yes or no). Video is the net thought that emerges out of such interaction. Software is the memory. Hardware includes the neural network. Bytes and bits are the changing interactions of the sense organs (including sound that produces words - strings) with their respective fields generated by the objects evolving in time." The problem arises when we treat the language as a set of strings. The elements of a set have fixed value. But the words in a sentence can have various meanings depending upon the context.

    The unpredictability of behaviors arises from our method of measurement, where we can measure only limited aspects over limited time, even though everything perpetually evolves in time due to interconnectedness and interdependence of everything with every other thing. Because of these limitations, a physical universe has to be described by a probabilistic law. You are correct also regarding past and future. Please note that future is strictly ordered in a sequence based on present. But past can be related to present in various random ways. This signifies the arrow of time. Your reference to the bigger set is interesting. We have also used the same concept along with Russell's paradox in our essay in this forum.

    You have correctly described that mathematics is only the quantitative description of Nature, whereas physics describes its qualitative aspects. You are also absolutely correct that "Consciousness can explore mathematics, but mathematics cannot describe consciousness".

    However, there are many problems with relativity and there is no standard interpretation of quantum physics. Many of its interpretations are contrary to observation elsewhere. Thus, there is a need for introspection and review of the present theories based on the presently available information. Unfortunately, most papers are building on "established theories" even though the latest observations prove it to be not true.

    The points you raise at page 7 are interesting and important. We can explain it all. But this is not the forum for that. Just to give one hint: pain may be in the legs or hands, but it is experience in our brains just like a tiger may be confronted in the jungle, but fear in our mind induces reactions in our body. Thus, the cognizer is different from the physical cause. The content of cognition as "I know ..." remains invariant in all cognitions. That it is universal is proved from the fact that language conveys the same information to the other. By this we are not talking about religion or God, though we are hinting at a universal meeting point which you may call Scientific God.

    Regards,

    basudeba

      I am a common real person. Would you care to provide me with the contact information of one of the top modern real scientist who would have a different understanding of the word "abstract" than the one I, and the Oxford English Dictionary offered?

      Cheers,

      Joe Fisher

      6 days later

      Dear Sylvain,

      I have not read your essay but I saw your comment elsewhere and I suspect it would have a geometric flavor. It is therefore a must read for me in the next one or two days. Then intellectual missiles may follow :)

      Regards,

      Akinbo

        You wrote : The halting problem (what can/cannot be computed) arises due to a wrong question: "How long are you willing to wait"?

        This is not a wrong question. At first sight it may look not very serious, like the liar paradox or the Berry paradox, but further examination of the foundations of mathematics shows that it is crucial and cannot be eliminated. Namely, once added up Goedel's completeness and incompleness theorems, we discover that the provability of some formulas happens to be undecidable, as the question of their provability, that is the "existence of a finite proof", begs the question "what is finiteness ?" which cannot be defined in the absolute as there are mathematical "universes" where a given formula (that we can write !) is "provable" but the length of its shortest "proof" is a nonstandard number, that the system mistakes as finite according to its definitions but which is actually infinite. In this universe, the proof "exists" but "the time we need to wait" to find it is infinite. If we wait long and do not find it, it may be because the time we need to wait has non-standard length, i.e. is infinite, so that we are right to stop searching and conclude we have no proof (as we are sure to do it before non-standard times) instead of taking the abstract "existence of a much longer proof" as meaningful, whose truth value in a non-standard universe does not conform to the real truth about provability.

        Then, your remark about irrational numbers and precision is a particular of computation that does not answer the halting problem in its generality, in case we were interested with the halting problem in its generality.

        The precise properties of quantum physics refuted since long ago the naive classical expectations that unpredicability only came from the limited precision of measurements. Such explanations cannot account for the precise form of quantum randomness which turned out to be irreducible in such terms.

        "mathematics is only the quantitative description of Nature, whereas physics describes its qualitative aspects" This is not what I meant. I mentioned the hypothetical concept of a universe with only qualities and no quantities, but this is not the one where we live.

        "there are many problems with relativity" : it depends. There are many people who imagine much more problem with relativity than there really are because they failed to understand it.

        "there is no standard interpretation of quantum physics. " If you paid attention to my text you would have seen that I offer a precise interepretation of quantum physics, which seems to me by far the most coherent, and in agreement with observations.

        I have ideas in geometry indeed and how to use it to understand theoretical physics, but this was not the topic of my essay, as I had more important and on-topic things to put there instead. You can find in my site some of my ideas on geometry and its axiomatization, and how to understand Special Relativity and quantum physics in geometric terms. There are also algebraic aspects of geometry, such as more deeply using duality in linear algebra, seen as a particular case of a much more general concept of duality in algebra involving the concept of polymorphism, and giving a clean introduction to the formalism of tensors. Long ago I also wrote other things on geometry in French (on affine, projective and conformal geometries, and geometries with a constant curvature). Unfortunately, I am still far from completing and cleaning up all things I wish to write on the topic, as I had many other things to write on, such as in the foundations of maths and in philosophy.

        Dear Sylvain,

        I was thinking the focus of your essay would be geometry based on your comments elsewhere. A thought provoking piece destined to do well in the competition.

        Just one question based on the essay's focus: Is very, very, very high probability the same as certainty? If not, i.e. if 99.9999% is not 100% then should this not be of some relevance in mathematics and physics?

        Is it very, very, very probable that 2 3 = 5 or is it a certainty?

        When adding 2 and 3 apples together, can any of the apples perish as you go about doing your summation to see what you get?

        When adding 2 quantum particles to 3 of same, is it more or less likely the results you will get will be same as for apples? Give this a thought.

        All the best in the competition.

        Regards,

        Akinbo

          Dear Sylvain,

          your essay contains a number of stimulating ideas, although after a first reading they are still poorly ordered in my mind, leaving me still doubtful about your main intended message. In particular, I find the closing part as more related to the topic of the 2014 Essay Contest (on the future of humanity). I hope I'll have the time to read it again anyway, to better grasp the flow of your reasoning.

          I like very much the idea to start by asking how a non-mathematical world would look like. In this respect, I have a remark on your attributing a low mathematical content to an algorithmic world . My view is that an algorithmic world may well have islands of (deterministic) randomness, mixed with islands of complex but mathematically accessible phenomena (e.g. particle interactions), mixed with very regular structures, easily described in math. So, imaginative tips may help shortcut a non trivial portion of the computation, I believe.

          Another point I found very interesting is the responsibility you assign to consciousness to give substance to a part of the mathematical world - I point I also tackle in my essay, although under a totally different, humorous narrative key. Consciousness illuminates a portion of the mathematical world, making it 'real'. Then, I wonder what is your take on the three interconnected spheres (platonic ideas, material world, consciousness-thought) in the opening chapter of Penrose's Road to Reality - did you see that? Maybe you could have yourself provided a drawing of that sort, that would have helped summarising your view?

          (Penrose presents actually two variants of that figure - I can't point to the page number unfortunately, since I do not have a copy of the book at hand.)

          Best regards

          Tommaso

            "Is very, very, very high probability the same as certainty?" : it all depends on context and how accurately we need to discuss. For example in a star, colliding atoms have every time a very low probability of undergoing some nuclear reaction, however there are so many collisions and each reaction releases so much energy that it suffices to provide the power of stars. Similarly, the chance of winning at Lotto is very low, but so many people are playing that the chances of existence of a winner becomes significant. Also, as free will operates by deviations from physical probabilities, it can make happen some possibilities that had very low "probability" as defined by quantum physics.

            "Is it very, very, very probable that 2 3 = 5 or is it a certainty? When adding 2 and 3 apples together, can any of the apples perish as you go about doing your summation to see what you get?"

            Of course, the formula 2 3 = 5 is a certainty but what is uncertain is whether its correspondence with apples is a valid one, in case an apple might perish.

            "When adding 2 quantum particles to 3 of same, is it more or less likely the results you will get will be same as for apples?" Again, it all depends on the specific kind of particles you work with; and on the time passing between when you introduce the particles and when you count how many are still there. We cannot seriously go anywhere with such childish pseudo-examples. It is of course very easy to "prove that science isn't valid" by introducing some ridiculously naive way of pretending to do some experiment and apply a mathematical model, and victoriously failing to do so properly. The validity of mathematical theories to describe physics has been verified with an amazing degree of accuracy, but of course this requires to have done the very hard and professional work of finding out which theories are applicable and in which conditions. And generally I don't buy any "argument against reason" such as "it is possible to victoriously fail to reason (or experiment something) correctly, thus all reasonings (or experiments) must be incorrect as well". More comments on this topic here.

            "Give this a thought." Do you think I waited for your invitation to do so ?

            Hello. By "lowly mathematical" I meant "of a low mathematical kind" though it remains 100% mathematical. Moreover, not all algorithmic worlds are equal. Some, like Conway's Game of Life, have a low density of interesting possible behaviors lost in an ocean of chaotic ones, as I once verified by systematically testing hundreds of initial configurations, so that imaginative tips are most often impossible.

            Indeed I concentrated here lots of ideas, so it may be hard to follow. It may look clearer reading the longer exposition of my interpretation of quantum physics from which the main ideas here are extracted, and maybe other texts on other aspects (introduction to quantum physics, problems with other interpretations, foundations of maths)

            The last part touches last year's contest that I missed as I was busy trying to get people implement my project (but I actually failed to do so). But I stayed here at such a level of generality that I still see it on-topic: rather cosmological and related with the rest of ideas of the essay, without entering the details of how things can work. But for last year I am not sure what I could have explained in 9 pages. Maybe just a few key ideas and cases of functions, longer explained in my site. As a substitute, I undertook in the last few weeks to write a much longer comment on many ideas found in other essays of that contest.

            About the relation between the "spheres" of the mathematical, the physical and the conscious, I think I was clear already in the title, and more details are expressed for example by the diagram on page 7.

            "Time and tide waits for none"

            is exceptionally perceived and written by you in this work.

            Yet the probabilities and questions still remains unanswered.

            Sincerely,

            Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan

            11 days later

            My title, "Duality, the War for Existence:" identifies the "mysterious connection" as panpsychism. My expertise in swimming, geometry, and thermodynamics are merged to construct a model to guide "all wars". It focuses the chaos of my 2012 submission, "To Seek Unknown Shores".

            Sorry, meant to compliment you on considering "panpsychism". Therein is the mysterious connection between "all things" , hidden centrally and only viewed distally.

              Sorry, while my view may be considered not far from panpsychism, it is different.

              I may admit the idea of panpsychism as an a priori possibility, maybe true in other universes, but I do not see it compatible with the facts of our universe, namely the data of quantum physics which admits the presence of material systems that keep quantum superpositions as they are not observed, and are thus totally unconscious. As I explained, I consider the deep nature of such systems as not "material" but mathematical ; still they "are something", in the sense that they occupy space as we usually conceive it, they have mass, undergo physical reactions, etc.