M. Gupta -

Thanks for your comment. Yes, Godel apples to any consistent theory that has sufficient complexity to express arithmetic, which a cosmological model would have to be.

I have read your essay and found it offers some good advice but no explanation I could follow for what the "Dynamic Universe Model" actually is. In English, the acronym is somewhat unfortunate.

This comes to mind:

Would you that spangle of Existence spend

About THE SECRET--quick about it, Friend!

A Hair perhaps divides the False from True--

And upon what, prithee, may life depend?

Regards - George

Thanks, Georgina -

I also enjoyed reading your essay and found the elephant allusions to be quite hilarious. I also found it quite unpredictable, which will stand it in good stead in this contest.

I was unable to find any elephants in the Rubaiyat for you, but I did find a lion:

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:

And Bahram, that great Hunter--the Wild Ass

Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.

Peace - George

11 days later

Dear George Gantz

Continued from my forum.

I appreciate the optimism in your essay.

(1) - "Why do mathematical laws apply to the physical world;"

My short answer is -discovered mathematics.

(2) How does the physical world give rise to conscious minds;

My short answer is - like everything else through mathematics and closer through the driving forces of attraction and repulsion.

(3) How can those minds perceive mathematical truths.

My short answer is - Using your time to understand the greats of 18th and 19th century philosophy of nature.

Mathematics is "unreasonably effective in the natural sciences ..

I disagree, math is reasonably effective in the natural sciences ..

I appreciate your conclusions and I can add that I see the universe in three frames:

1 - Exp (i * pi) - which is a known quantum physics

2 - Exp (2 * pi) - which is my original discovery and expresses matter and radiation

3 - I do not know so far.

"Yet they are fundamentally interconnected and behave as a whole."

I call my theory: The unity of the whole and the parts.

Regards,

Branko

    Branko -

    Thanks for your comment. I appreciate your enthusiasm.

    I did enjoy your essay and its commitment to the standardization of dimensionless units as a solution to much of the confusion in the understanding of science. At the same time, you assiduously avoid dealing with the confounding issues at the heart of this essay contest - incompleteness, undecidability and non computability. All of which, by the way, do relate to the tangles you allude to regarding infinity.

    XXIX. Into this Universe, and Why not knowing

    Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;

    And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

    I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

    Best - George

    Dear George

    If we have 100% of the problem and we can solve 95% with 5% power and rest 5% with 95% power we first choose to solve the more productive part.

    So - incompleteness, undecidability and non computability didn't bother me to come up with predictive formulas at the end of my essay.

    Regards,

    Branko

      Branko -

      There are problems worth solving to the 90% level, and the 95% level, etc - particularly the challenges of prediction or estimation. And then there are problems for which and answer must be 100% or it is no answer at all. This contest is, I think, focused on these.

      Best - George

      7 days later

      George,

      An essay full of wisdom that does justice to the ambiguities and challenges of the topic imposed on us. The many challenges and mysteries we face have the time limit of humankind's existence on this planet, the period of consciousness we have to solve these problems. I also speak of the capabilities of the autonoetic consciousness you speak of regarding the thought experiments of Einstein and how such cognitive abilities, coupled with quantum computing could enable us to solve our problems if there is no limit set by our early demise. I'm surprised so few ratings for a superior essay. Mine is your 4th. Hope you have time to read mine: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3396.

      Jim Hoover

      Thanks, Jim. I will do so. I appreciate your kind remarks and a new score!

      For you -

      Come fill the cup, and in the fires of Spring,

      The Winter garment of repentance fling,

      The bird of time has but a little way

      To flutter, and lo, the bird is on the wing.

      Cheers - George

        George,

        Someone bombed you with a 5th rating. My 4th rating left you with a 6.8.

        Jim

        Hi Jim - I try not to pay attention to the ratings and simply tell it like it is. The scores I give are consistent with how I read the relative merits of each essay in responding to the FQXi challenge.

        Regards - George

        Dear Mr. Gantz,

        Your essay is clear and interesting. You focus on the role of human consciousness as a self-recognizing agent, using a term "autonoetic" that I was not familiar with.

        In my own essay, "The Uncertain Future of Physics and Computing", I take the novel view that consciousness is due to specific computational architectures in the brain, and that the internal sense of consciousness provides direct clues to the structure of these architectures. The key aspect is that neural networks may be configured to match patterns not only in space, but also in time. Recognition of temporal correlations provides the basis for recognizing agency and the self, which is the core of consciousness.

        I further argue that these can be emulated by artificial neural networks of the not-too-distant future. I might envision an autonomous vehicle with a level of consciousness comparable to a horse, for example.

        Alan Kadin

          Alan - Thanks for the kind words. I agree conscious states are likely to exhibit a sophisticated computational architecture in the brain (both space and time), but I also think this will fail to answer the philosophical questions - including the Penrose mysteries and the tangled conundrums of Turing and Godel - these will remain unanswered until the end of time (so to speak).

          I will read your essay next!

          -George

          What, without asking, hither hurried whence.

          And, without asking, whither hurried hence?

          Ah, contrite heaven endowed us with the vine

          To drug the memory of that insolence!

          Dear George,

          Glad to read your work again.

          I greatly appreciated your work and discussion. I am very glad that you are not thinking in abstract patterns.

          "This essay addresses that challenge by exploring features that the physical world and mathematics share with consciousness. Self-reference, entanglement and purposeful agency are key features of autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness. They are also found in physical and mathematical systems and are manifest at the limits of knowledge that FQXi is exploring. These autonoetic features serve as gatekeepers limiting our understanding of the world we live in, but they also make living in this world so marvelously interesting and beautiful".

          While the discussion lasted, I wrote an article: "Practical guidance on calculating resonant frequencies at four levels of diagnosis and inactivation of COVID-19 coronavirus", due to the high relevance of this topic. The work is based on the practical solution of problems in quantum mechanics, presented in the essay FQXi 2019-2020 "Universal quantum laws of the universe to solve the problems of unsolvability, computability and unpredictability".

          I hope that my modest results of work will provide you with information for thought.

          Warm Regards, `

          Vladimir

            Thank you Vladimir - nice to see you again, as well!

            I will head over to read your essay - yes COVID is certainly a preoccupation for us right now. I believe that an entangled, purposeful and self-referential world argues for greater compassion, empathy and action to alleviate suffering than fear, anger and selfishness.

            Cheers - George

            Dear George,

            Thank you for reading my essay, you really grasped its essence which I tell you is rare and remarkable. But my lesson from it is that I have to expand it greatly to present concepts with utmost clarity.

            Your essay is well written and obviously it touches absolutely fundamental problems. When looking into the relation between consciousness, physics and mathematics I see consciousness as total enigma. We know much more about physics and mathematics which makes that it is very hard to connect all these three areas.

            I also looked into your 2015 essay, I see now what you mean by hole in the center of creation. About paradoxes I suggest reading brilliant essay by Hippolyte Dourdent here.

            Personally my taste is not to refer to any religion since this is very subjective topic as there are so many of them, some claim Asian religions grasp aspects of consciousness better than others and that would mean cultural bias is entering our thinking which does not sound good.

            I wish you to continue you fruitful investigations.

            Br,

            Irek

              Thanks Irek -

              Yes, consciousness is an enigma - and so is the relationship between math and physics and the foundations of each.

              Yes, my 2015 essay took a step too far in highlighting a particular religious tradition. At the same time, the theological roots of all religious traditions provide context for humans to fathom the unfathomable. These FQXi questions take us to core beliefs and suppositions that have been addressed poetically or mythologically in the various traditions. Science may have helped free us from empirically unfounded and irrational dogmas inherited from religious traditions - but on the frontiers it has come face-to-face with its own. That was the subject of my 2017 FQXi essay - Faith is Fundamental.... https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3045

              Cheers - George

              • [deleted]

              • Post #23

              The door that has no key, as well as walls without any doors of predigital linguistic perceptions have effectively been transformed to the frame work of mathematical, self noetic and physical as you have outlined. All three of those as well have been further condensed to Minkowski spacetime, ad Sitter and Ad Sitter. In my view the self and the non-self effectively permeate the realities for the foreseeable future.

                Bela - Thanks for the comment. Yes,. One could say that the self and the non-self are staring at each other - and both are blind. Omar Kayyam has a verse that reaches to that:

                Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind

                The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find

                A lamp amid the Darkness; and I heard,

                As from Without--"THE ME WITHIN THEE BLIND!" XXXIV

                Cheers - George

                Hello George,

                I greatly enjoyed how you applied the poem of Omar Khayyam to the problem of the limits of knowledge.

                This line in particular:

                "Self-reference leads inevitably to the limit of incompleteness. Entanglement implies that the whole cannot be understood solely through an understanding of its parts. Additionally, since we are ourselves entangled in the world, we can never truly observe the whole."

                I believe with all of my heart.

                Best of luck in the contest!

                Rick Searle