Essay Abstract

It is argued that the undecidability, uncomputability and unpredictability issues are relevant to the formal models of reality only, rather than to the physical world itself. Scientists are the ones who model and calculate, but Nature does not calculate anything at all.

Author Bio

The Author got his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Silesia, Poland. He is appointed now as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology, at the same Alma Mater, and is active in the fields of quantum theory and computer science.

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10 days later

Great point about how Nature doesn't seem to have to worry about finding efficient algorithms, or solving differential equations, or whatever---it just happens. I still wonder, though, whether Nature does compute (in some sense) or not. I don't think it's a question that can ever be answered.

I like your idea about analog computation. Regardless of the underlying model possibly being mathematically intractable (whether because of chaos, undecidability, or something else), we can do the experiment and watch what happens: Nature did the tough calculation for us!

Here's a question, though. Imagine doing an experiment watching balls fall through a pachinko machine. It's hard to predict what will happen mathematically because of (classical) chaos, but it's easy to send many balls through and just watch what happens. What can we learn from this? Yes, we can watch many balls, but can we understand what they're doing just from watching? In my view, mathematical modeling is important for human understanding.

John

8 days later

Dear Joachim,

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

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