Wandering Towards Physics: Participatory Realism and the Co-Emergence of Lawfulness by Marc Séguin

Dr Seguin,

Your comments indicate that you have not read my essay, but have only extracted brief passages that you then misrepresent.

I never said "the problem of consciousness will actually turn out to be irrelevant." Nor did I say that I find "analysis of 'information, emergence, or teleology' quite 'tedious'" (even if it often is!).

Why do you put words in my mouth and twist what I say to suit your own agenda?

As for the Rotonian conception of gravity, the whole point is that this hypothetical civilization sees fit to QUESTION the "Earthian" concept of potential. They emphasize the fact that, with regard to gravity-induced motion through the CENTERS of gravitating bodies, this concept has never been TESTED.

Instead of rolling with the Rotonians' inquisitive, playful spirit, your remarks seem to reflect a closed-minded smugness in the ASSUMED correctness of standard ideas about gravity even in the unexplored, yet accessible regime right under our noses where these ideas have not yet been TESTED.

Surely the spirit of Galileo would have us conduct the experiment before pretending to know its result. Surely Galileo would have at least had a sense of humor about exploring the nature of gravity.

Richard Benish

Marc,

Those are brilliant comments and I really thank you for delving so deeply. What you haven't seen is my cosmological paper presenting comprehensive predictions of the model, answering your questions above and coherently resolving a tranche of unknowns and anomalous findings, i.e. It causally shows precisely how complex galaxy bars can be produced, which emerges from the first actual temporal cycle of galaxy 'type' evolution, producing satellites 'dwarfs' etc, the halo 'counter rotations' still not otherwise explained, the role & mechanisms of AGNs', ALL the major asymmetries in the CMB found in WMAP and Planck, mass growth, even 'dark matter' (nothing exotic required), pre 'BigBang' condition, and a whole host of other things that all just 'appeared' like when a great jigsaw puzzle suddenly comes together. It's not something I've 'tried' to do, it just all started emerging on cracking SR and trying to falsify that solution. I've been desperately trying to falsify an ever bigger model ever since but it just keeps throwing solutions back at me!

Sure much of it demands fundamental re-thinking of some long held assumptions (though nothing that's proven) which is why it took me so long (40 years!) and why so many in cosmology will struggle to penetrate it. It's a slightly 'different language'! It also seems to cover ALL physics

I now struggle to refer back to 'current beliefs' so desperately need help if it's to be presented and understood by those with old doctrine embedded. On QM, I have a good dialogue going with Stefan on my blog that better explains the detail, but perhaps you may look closer at the cosmology and destroy or help with that?

The main 'Cyclic Model' paper now needs some updating. Of course the MNRAS and AJ ran a mile but it's published in the HJ; DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4540.5603 or; Academia archive link

I have done a bit of 'drip feeding' DFM solutions in manageable morsels in many papers on arXiv, viXra and Academia. Pick your favourite anomaly and I'll tell you in my own words what the model has to say on it!

I see I hadn't applied a score to yours so have now done so as it seemed to be languishing far too low. Very many thanks yet again.

Peter

Dear Marc

I rather enjoyed the first part of your essay where you present the hard problem of lawfulness, but I got lost in the second half with all the possibilities you presented as solutions. Too much philosophy based on physics I find fault with. Let me explain: in my intuitive naive way I have come to believe that an observer-based physics, although great for computing actual experimental results, prevents a fundamental understanding of our Universe and complicates physics as we know it today.

The issue is further complicated by quantum probability and the whole bizarre question of collapse of wave equation, leading as it does to multiverses etc. In order to clear the board a lot of Einstein's and QM premises have to be abandoned, and for reasons I give in my fqxi essay. I would be honored if you have a look.

In my Beautiful Universe Model I have outlined a physics based on an absolute universe made up of self-assembling nodes that need no observer whatsoever to do their thing and perhaps the HPL will be swept away of its own accord. Or perhaps that is my solipsist dream in my old age, driving by your green billboard!

With best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Marc,

I think that in an expanded version of your essay both the "Problem of measure" and the "Hard problem of consciousness" should be included. Like the other problems that you list, they are both difficult and systematically important. You probably are aware that Max Tegmark in his book "Our Mathematical Universe" refers to the measure problem as "the greatest crisis in physics today." And it's not just a problem for physics, but for epistemology and ontology as well. I don't know that it is the greatest problem, but it is surely no less a problem than the others.

As you point out, it is difficult to know how to organize and classify the basic positions (which appear in your columns). In my view, positions like the modal realism of David Lewis and the principle of fecundity discussed by Robert Nozick stand apart from the rest. According to these positions, all possibilities are actualized. All other systems try to establish some principle which differentiates actualities from unactualized mere possibilities. Ideally, this principle might in some way explain actuality, but it could at least delimit actuality. I think that even the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis and Computational Universe Hypothesis try to limit actuality in this way, because many possibilities are not computable and not even mathematical.

There certainly is a lot to discuss, and perhaps we will be able to continue the discussion.

Laurence Hitterdale

Dear Marc,

Vey good essay! Perhaps I am biased by the fact that we share some common points of view, but I enjoyed it very much. Among the things I liked are: the creative reasoning along Wheeler's ideas and Tegmark's MUH, the emphasis of mathematics, of subjective experience associated to consciousness (in a way far from being understood yet), the "strange loop", the "hard problem of foundations", the attempt to found everything on "nothing", the further development of your theme of the "maxiverse", "ISAAC". I liked the "co-emergence hypothesis", and I think that maybe because this and other parts resonate to some of my own views. Long time ago I tried to understand how different parts of the universe, which apparently should not care about one another, manage to be part of the same universe. I imagined a very large set of sheafs, in fact the set of all local sheaves (as in sheaf theory), and a consistency principle which connects the sheaves in global sheaves which are of course consistent. Any two random sheaves are usually inconsistent with one another, but for each sheaf, there are other sheaves with which it is consistent, and which are mutually consistent, and together they patch into an universe. This universe is thus selected out of the "chaos" of all sheaves. This was the starting point of my essay World Theory, where I explained that any kind of mathematical structure that may be used to described our universe can be described in terms of sheaves. It is also at the basis of my "Zero axiom" and the idea of global consistency as a puzzle in my essays The Tao of It and Bit, and And the math will set you free. I think what you wrote resoneates with these. I had much fun with your "plurisoloverse"! I wish you good luck in the contest!

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

The Tablet of the Metalaw

Dear Marc,

I think your essay contains a unique accomplishment, and not only in this contest. I mean your Table 1, which is definitely a seed of a great book! Its bird view on the hard problems of philosophy motivates to resolve them in a coherent way, implying also that this might be impossible. Of course, Lev and I have our favorite column, which is God or Absolute Mind. Following great philosophical traditions, we do not consider God complex as you are suggesting; on the contrary, He is the Unity, the One, where everything specific and complex is rooted. Emergence of good and beautiful things, by the creative power of mind, is mysterious, which is true both for its divine and human aspects. Creativity is inexplicable in principle; any theory attempting its explanation either explains nothing or leads to an inner contradiction. Co-emergentism is not an exception in this respect. In principle, co-emergentism, as we see it, is a variant of what we call chaosogenesis; it has all the drawbacks of the latter, and is refuted by the same arguments. One of these arguments you clearly expressed in your essay with the reference on our "Pythagorean Universe"; many thanks! Notwithstanding this disagreement and criticism, I am rating your composition high for its unique good points.

Good luck in the contest,

Alexey Burov.

Hello Marc,

Wow thank you for such a lively, insightful and interesting read - I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. Your essay touches the foundations of physics, which is always fun to read. Since I first heard about the mathematical universe hypothesis, I've been intrigued but hesitant (maybe by lack of understanding) by to what extent (mathematical) abstractions could be considered physical.

When preparing our essay with my coauthor, we were intrigued by Wheeler's participatory realism that you mention when trying to figure out why we don't say a particle flying from a collider that I study by day has any goals. The second component of what you call 'co-emergentism' touches on the reality of fundamental structures, which resonated with a question we mentioned (but sadly decided not to tackle) in ours about to what extent we consider (simplifying/emergent) abstractions we use as scientists such as atoms to trees to social classes as real. It was really interesting to read how you put those two ideas together that we mused on.

Our work stays relatively clear of addressing these foundational, even metaphysical questions, as we chose a different stance of the natural sciences. But as you have thought about this with great clarity, I wonder what your thoughts are as to why we usually say a living organism as a collection of particles is a physical 'real' entity, whereas a political factions as an abstraction of many individuals' thoughts might not be considered real in the same sense?

Best,

Jesse

Marc,

Thanks for an interesting read. QBism is new to me. It sounds like a form of art like Dadaism or something. The co-emergence stuff is interesting too. The figures you present are useful in getting across your meaning. They helped me at least. The table you present is a nice summary of the pros and cons of the major ideas ... or at least it gave me some thoughts I had not previously had.

So, if I understand you correctly, the physical universe did whatever it did to be like it is ... and we observers did whatever we did to get here. The only reason we are here and aware is because we can resonate with the universe as it presently is. The temporal paths taken by the physical universe and the observers within it could have been totally different. The universe might have even been waiting on us to catch up to it to observe it as it was. Or maybe the universe cannot advance until it is observed ....

BTW, have you read Dr. Klingman's essay:-)

The variation on 20 questions is clever ... it allows the solution to emerge as a result of the answers provided but not as a result of the questions asked. What would happen if someone misremembered what was previously stated or if one of the people answering the questions could not think of a word that satisfied the question history? It seems to me that this analogy requires an intelligence outside of the observer. Since you mention the number 42 in your essay, I will assume that you have read "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". So you are familiar with the mice and the bias they put into experimental science. Damn clever those mice.

I will ask a couple of questions here ... is there any way to test such a hypothesis? Does this hypothesis make any predictions? If so, how do they compare to the predictions of other hypotheses? I'll bet that the hypothesis makes no predictions and is not falsifiable.

BTW, ISAAC is a clever acronym.

Solipsism gives me a headache. Besides ... I'm the only one in the universe.

Having read some of the comments above in your forum, would you care to revisit your observation regarding delusional physicists? If there are an infinite number of both delusional and non-delusional physicists, can you determine the ratio between them? If you don't have a falsifiable hypothesis, how can you tell the two groups apart?

Since you made a small reference to a work of literature, I will do so too ... "Check your premises Mr. Rearden." It is very possible that homo-sapiens does not have the necessary structure to comprehend the universe. We could simply be a failed experiment waiting for an extinction event. Or we might simply be waiting for the right mutation to give us that next little bit of structure so that we can more completely resonate with the universe.

I noticed your post in another forum regarding scoring ... You presently have a score of 4.7 with 14 votes. Frankly, from where I sit you don't have much to complain about. FYI, I have received 8 one-bombs and 3 two votes ... all as down votes with no comment. You have 14 votes total. I have almost that many (11) down votes. You are correct in a sense though, the one-bombs hit when you break the 5.0 mark.

Now we will conduct a little experiment. It is 1:58 AM 3/31/17 Houston time. I am about to score you with a 10. Let's see how long it takes for you to be one-bombed.

Best Regards and Good Luck,

Gary Simpson

Dear Marc,

While I certainly have not nearly thought about these issues as much as you have, it is really interesting hearing your stance on the reality and physicality of structures, including what I may intuit as abstract such as political factions or the like.

Thank you for you very kind comments on our essay - my coauthor and I really appreciate it.

Best of luck to you too,

Jesse

Dear Marc,

The idea of " "God or Absolute mind emerging out of chaos" is incompatible with the trust to God as a foundation of fundamental science as we tried to show quoting Descartes and Einstein.

All the best,

Alexey Burov.

Hi Marc,

You've done a remarkable job here. The scope of the essay is amazing; you touch on every idea I've ever come across on cosmic foundations and give us an insightful assessment in each case, and it's wonderfully readable. Unfortunately, the ideas you settle on are hard for me to appreciate philosophically.

First, the notion of a Maxiverse of all possible abstract structures doesn't seem relevant to me, because our universe is the opposite of abstract. It evidently instantiates many different kinds of mathematical structures, at many levels. But as I wrote in a comment to Cristi Stoica's fine essay, while mathematical abstraction lets us make explicit the general patterns in the way things operate, it's the unique instances of these patterns that constitute our empirical universe.

In a previous FQXi essay, I tried to make clear that there's even an essentially non-mathematical aspect in the language of physical equations. A quantity of energy is different from a quantity of momentum, or mass or electric charge. The fact that all the dozens of distinct observable parameters in physics can be represented by abstract symbols in equations doesn't make physics equivalent to pure mathematics.

My own interpretation of the fine-tuning of our fundamental physics is that it serves specifically to support the possibility of measurement. Gravity and electromagnetism and nuclear physics all help make possible the existence of stable material structures, without which there would be no "clocks and measuring rods," nor any way to measure any physical parameter. Without the finely-tuned cooperation of all these different mathematical structures, the universe would indeed be "nothing" - nothing observable or physically determinable.

In my current essay, I describe measurement as a form of random natural selection, creating new facts that help set up other situations in which new facts can become determinate. But my point here is that however the so-called "collapse" occurs, the particular result of a quantum measurement is not mathematically determined. To me, this seems to make the concrete facts established by accidental events more basic than the mathematical structures that arise from their statistics.

So that's one issue I have with your argument. The other is that I don't like treating "consciousness" in the old Cartesian fashion, imagining it as somehow emerging separately from the material universe... or even co-emerging with it. There is no doubt something that transcends materiality in human consciousness, but as my essay shows, I think it can be understood well enough through evolutionary processes. And again, I don't think the concept of "abstract structure" captures what's essential to the uniqueness of each person's mind, any more than it does what's essential to our unique universe.

But though I disagree with your philosophical preferences, I admit that the scheme of co-emergence is an ingenious and imaginative solution to a "hard" problem you've considered carefully from many angles - so it ranks high above the general trend of speculation in these contest essays.

I think you came closest to the truth at the beginning, with the idea of a "strange loop" approach to foundations, as an alternative to "straight chain" explanation. This captures the recursive character that I take as the key to foundational processes in physics, as well as in biology and the human mind... none of which seem to be built on a "self-evident, rock-bottom" kind of foundation.

Also at the end, you make a nice statement - "It is as if physics is trying to tell us that the world arises out of the point of view of single observers, even if they do in the end form a community that observes a single unified reality." This also relates to my discussion of human consciousness. If I may quote myself: "Each human consciousness evolves its own universe... I emphasize this, because unless we recognize how isolated we are, in our own minds, we can't appreciate what our communication software does, or how remarkably it works."

Thanks for an excellent and well thought-out contribution -

Conrad

Dear Marc,

i just read your essay and it is quite interesting, since you name the main problems when trying to identify the fundamental level of reality.

An additional problem is to explain where the necessity of logic does come from. Surely, in the MUH, it comes from maths - or the other way round i would say. Since logic's main ingredient is consistence, the main relation between mathematical relationships being able to facilitate conscious observers and the ability of these observers to contemplate abstract concepts such as 'consistency' at all, should be again, consistence. Is this a strange loop or just a tautology? It seems to me that it could be both, if we only could identify which mathematical relationships that are consistent, must necessarily lead to conscious observers.

I liked your remark that all of maths has zero informational content. This surely must be understood as an epistemological statement, since conscious observers aren't able to contemplate all of maths - they are finite entities. So it seems to me that the notion of zero informational content hinges on the use of infinities. Moreover, if physical worlds and conscious observers co-emerge, so has maths (towards infinity?). If maths is an atemporal realm of all abstractions, it leaves the question open of how its main ingredient, namely consistency can be defined globally as its main ingredient, but not only locally. Surely, not all of maths must necessarily be consistent, but if so, how can we call these inconsistent parts of ultimate reality furthermore 'maths'?

"Could it be that, when we worry about the proliferation of deluded observers, we try to push our reasoning too far away from our observed reality, into a realm where it no longer applies? In the same way, could the dead-ends we have been encountering over the past decades in fundamental physics (the failure to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, the proliferation of solutions in the landscape of M-theory) be interpreted as signs that we are nearing the edge of our patch of lawfulness in the space of all possibilities?".

Interesting point of view, one that i myself adopt in my essay. Furthermore in several comments of mine i emphasize that although we are nearing the edge of our patch of lawfullness, due to principal considerations on consistency, logic and the assumed rationality of nature we should not conclude that right beyond these edges the most fundamental level of reality is revealed. One has to ask further where chaos and randomness comes from. If it exists, did it spring into existence 'randomly' from nothing - thereby self-confirming itself as the ultimate reality? This can't be the case, since this would presuppose logic and its main ingredient - namely consistency. So, if we assume randomness, coming from nothing, as the ultimate level of reality, we end up with the exact opposite, namely not randomness, but the necessity of consistence (and therefore logic). Furthermore, there has to be some law that determines what can be possible and not (to at all speak about the full space of possibilities).

I prefer a picture of ultimate reality where our known logic is just a subset of other meaning-producing realms. In plain text, one could describe the main realm there as God, equating him with zero information, since epistemologically *and* ontologically, there could well exist things about we even do not know that we do not know them.

I'll give you a high rating for having mentioned several hard problems instead of ignoring them and instead just facilitating a consistent explanation scheme without the latter having the property of necessarily meeting reality.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Hi, Marc,

I have read your essay (twice by now) and feel truly grateful. I am not sure I see the connection with the topic of "goal oriented behavior", other than conceiving intentionality as one out of many properties of conscious observers. But I got a wonderful ontological view of the world, that gives me a lot of substance to entertain my thoughts - which is even better! I have been cogitating about these ideas for a few days now. I would like to share my thoughts with you, so you can tell me whether I got something wrong.

1) I tend to think that our minds evolved in a world that obeys the laws of physics. The co-emergent hypothesis is compatible with such a picture in which minds and the laws of physics evolved together. It seems, however, that it does not require evolution, at least, not as an indispensable necessity. Out of all the possible ensembles of computations, co-emergence postulates that it is possible to cut out a system that can give rise to a compatible pair of observer(s)+physical laws. The existence of this pair, however, is not obliged to emerge through a gradual build-up process, like Darwinian evolution. In fact, Darwinian evolution postulates first the laws of physics (be them our laws, or different ones), and only after (if possible) the emergence of observers. I cannot help imagining, however, that within the co-emergent hypothesis almost all pairs of observer(s) + physical environment are closed loops with no build up history. They can well exist right from the start (with no evolution), as Escher's mutually drawing hands. Does this make sense?

2) Let us assume that we (as we are) and our physical world (with the specific laws we are familiar with) co-emerged throughout evolution. The emergence process could well have happened at a given level, which is fairly macroscopic, and could be, up to a certain degree, independent of the details of what happens at truly microscopic levels. Could this be an explanation why quantum mechanics is so weird? Could one argue that it does not really matter how things behave down there, we can still emerge as observers, and our perceived world can still emerge as the observed reality? Under this premise, the blurryness of the quantum level would reflect the fact that our existence does not depend on decisions taken so far beneath us, so it is ok if just anything happens down there (within certain bounds, of course, because we need to ensure the emergence of the proper macroscopic level). This is probably the same thing you state at the end of page 7, I just rephrase it here... because I would like to know whether I got you right.

3) At a certain point you state "our world is just too regular" for the maxiverse. I also have the feeling that it is too regular for the co-emergence hypothesis. All these theories have one truly elegant aspect: they are founded in irrefutable truths. And they also have a disappointing aspect: they explain little of the characteristics of our world. The co-emergence may explain more than the maxiverse, but at least as I get from your essay, the properties of our world do not seem to be a necessary consequence of co-emergence. Our world seems to rather be only one out of many worlds compatible with co-emergence, and the size of the compatible set of worlds is unclear. I guess that in order to make progress we need to

a) make up our minds on what we expect of a theory. Indisputable grounds, and generic properties of the derived worlds? Or capricious grounds, and narrow properties of the derived worlds?

b) work out the requirements that observers have on their universes, and universes have on observers, to determine more narrowly the characteristics of the pairs observer(s) + physics that can co-emerge. It would be fantastic if only our universe were possible, leaving only room for arbitrary things to happen at truly tiny or truly huge scales - explaining our confusion at these levels!

Thanks for the good read!

inés.