The Descent of Math by Sara Imari Walker

Great art in your writing.

Smiles

- Sincerely,

Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan

Dear Sara, I hate to burst your thesis, but my friend Ken Garst was talking about you thesis 20 years ago and developed the mathematics to justify the evolution of biological systems. So the idea is not really new. The other comment I have is that the argument is not as profound as the one developed by Ken Garst. Finally, I don't see the connection to the essay topic.

Dear Sara,

I admire your essay;most especially,your inclination to thrive in the use of philosophy as a via-media for unravelling the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.

Your conclusion,which sees the coefficiency between maths and physics as far from being an anomaly but a natural part of the structure of reality converges with my assertions on the subject matter.

I hope you can read;make comments and rate my essay.

Keep on flourishing,

Lloyd Tamarapreye Okoko.

FYI:My Essay 2408 error corrections @

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Dear Sara,

I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.

All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.

Joe Fisher

Sara,

Time grows short, so I am revisiting essays I've read to assure I've rated them. I find that I rated yours on 3/30, rating it as one I could immediately relate to. I hope you get a chance to look at mine: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2345.

Jim

Dear Sara,

It's not every day that I get to read a completely original idea and one that is so ambitiously attempting to answer the same question that gave birth to the weak anthropic principle which you mentioning as a motivation to your approach. I enjoyed the thought that the connection density within a system is increasing the probability that the system will end up in that specific state or nearby. I hope you do receive the right support for your work and will continue to develop the approach you sketched here. I rated your essay accordingly and I hope this can help your research being completed, at least in the tiniest way. Should you have the time, please do take a look at my essay and let me know what you think.

Warm regards,

Alma

Sara,

I liked your essay and I think that is your main ideas can be connected to what I try to show in my essay, although it s not so explicit in my essay.

I argue, that the increasing of entropy means, that the number of potential information ie. the number of possible states knowing the macro state increases. This makes that in a multilevel system, also the number of possible substructures increases, which can be read as an increasing of actual information. In that sense I belief, that the increasing of entropy supports the increase of complex structures up to life.

In quantum mechanics, the interaction is in that way, that it supports the entanglement (connectivity) between the structures (particles). The unitary dynamic of an isolated system is only possible under a very specific environment.

In biological evolution then there is a shift from reacting from outside information the imagination of acting. And from perception of outside structures to the perceptions of inside structures (imagination of structures), meaning awareness.

I hope you get the chance to read my essay and comment on it.

How are time reversible dynamics connected to your special kind of dynamic. Do you have to replace the known law of nature?

Best regards

Luca

Hi Sara,

Thank you for your kind remarks on my essay and for the very interesting question that you posed. That's a very fascinating distinction you made regarding self reference manifesting at an instant of time as opposed to being distributed through time, especially considering the effect of self reference on causality. I'm going to address it in a different comment, but for now I wanted to comment and rate your very excellent essay.

Your points are clearly presented in a stimulating and compelling manner and touch on many foundational topics, including the influence of information on physical systems, ergodicity, the second law of thermodynamics, and the state dependent nature of biological evolution. I like how you addressed the deeper anthropic argument of why the universe seems comprehensible and why beings like us are here to comprehend it, and how you addressed it by analyzing the path dependent nature of biological systems. And I see the insightful connection of formulating it this way to information systems and to computation, and thus the connections you made with my essay. This is a brilliant perspective, one that should inspire a lot of fruitful research. Your conclusion that the most commonly visited states are those that are most highly connected agrees with models of information network systems, and I like how you developed this idea to distinguish physical systems that contain information encodings such as mathematics, art, and language. This is a very refreshing contribution that approaches the forum topic thoroughly and goes further by relating other fields as well. I gave it the highest rating.

Best regards, and thanks again for seeking out my essay.

Steve Sax

Hi Sara,

(Thanks for your very fascinating questions that you posted on my page, which as mentioned just above I'm addressing in a separate comment here).

That's an excellent distinction regarding requiring the self-reference to be manifest at a given instant versus allowing it to dynamically distribute through time. Since a system can be analysed from the perspective of other observables besides time, perhaps a way to generalize this distinction then is to consider whether the self-reference applies to a specific state, or instead manifests as an emergent phenomena throughout a distribution of states and their paths. The former scenario can be more active; that is a self referential 'operator' can be applied to a given state, and this physically can be accomplished by a specific physical event like the half pulse of laser light shining on the rubidium atom. Looking at it that way - from instantiating self reference at a given state - quantum superposition lends itself as a compelling description because it can explain efffects that we observe. The latter scenario (emerging through a distribution of states and paths) seems more passive, but need not necessarily be the case. In a path dependent multi-state system like that described in your paper, perhaps the particular state path (which may be nonlinear, as your paper suggests) in which a self reference emerges can be looked at as one macrostate M. The key would be what defines the self reference for such a macrostate, and what physical phenomena led to it. Did it evolve and if so is there any way to predict or assign probability to it happening? Could it be 'pushed' or 'tweeked' to emerge that way from an added physical event? That macrostate M applied to itself would be a NOT function of itself, but there would be many possibilities in a path dependent system that could satisfy NOT [M]. It may be that if such a self reference were interpreted to yield a quantum superposition, or a system of superpositions of the particular microstates involved, then it would have to be so complex that the observable effect yielded could perhaps be inferred as many discernible effects. This could be difficult if they in some way interfere with each other or are not fully addressed depending on the measuring environment. Even more revealing is if together they could indeed be perceived as one phenomena or concept. I'm thinking out loud at this point and would need to consider this much more, but needless to say your question has been very inspiring! It's an intriguing suggestion that self reference is a defining feature of living systems. I approached it from the idea of consciousness and its connection to causality, and this is a good example where the specific consideration of time (i.e. self reference manifest at an instant in time versus distributed in time) would especially apply. The analysis in this discussion here adds yet another dimension; perhaps there are environments in which the complex macrostate superposition mechanism described would yield phenomena that yet triggers other self referencing. If so, a modifed defining feature of life could be not just self reference, but a framework in which self reference is constantly or iteratively being invoked in a coordinated manner, (for example such as by these complex mechanisms).

Thanks again Sara for some very thought provoking questions; these are just some of my thoughts on it, and I definitely want to explore this distinction of instant versus emergent self reference much more!

Kindly, and best regards,

Steve Sax

Sara,

I simply love the way that you deduce that "life itself" is the key to unlock information unification. Recall that I posted "Unification of Life and Information" ie., http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/DiCarlo_Tony_DiCarlo_rev7.pdf. This was my attempt as a physicist to express what you imply biologically!

This may imply that ALL living things that "measure" physical information to appropriate physical knowledge should be the focus of our studies that correlates everything back to the physics/chemistry/etc., constituting all life's physical, information makeup (ie., all the measurables) that living things make (whether in a conscious or unconscious state). This living model for the entirety of ALL MEASURES of the universe could then be crunched to deduce things like making physical DNA measures that predict autoimmunity that is coded within. This implies that each individuals DNA sequencing would provide a key (like a projection operator) that unlocks the information contained within the "living model." With shape dynamics, we answer why a kidney is shaped as such... a heart with independent chambers... and of course a brain that contemplates all of this!

Again, your essay was a most pleasant read!

Tony