Lorraine Ford
Even the bible bashers seem to believe that the current wars in the world were foretold by the ancient texts in their bible. But then there are the physicists, philosophers and mathematicians who believe that current events, all events, are inevitable, given the deterministic laws of nature. And now we’ve got a more advanced form of deterministic lunacy: the nerds who believe that a type of computer program is running the world, and determining every event that happens, in the same way that a computer program is deterministic.
Clearly, the equations and numbers of physics can’t represent a standalone viable system on their own; these equations and numbers can’t “fly” (1) on their own; to more correctly represent a standalone viable system, one needs to add the type of logical connective symbols used in computer programs.
Basically, computer programs represent symbolic ways of analysing and responding to symbolic representations of current situations, where “current” situations are situations that are symbolically found to be “TRUE”.
The whole computer program concept was devised by people, and the concept was implemented by people. So, it is no accident that computer programs are analogous to people, and other living things, who respond freely, in a more or less considered way, to current situations that they consciously feel to be true.
But computer programs, once written and uploaded to computers, are deterministic, and respond deterministically to every data input. The human computer programmers, i.e. the masterplanners who wrote the computer programs, are the only free aspect of a computer program.
So, is the world, that we see and experience, the result of an externally devised, deterministic computer program; OR are we inside the system and, in effect, freely writing our own computer program on the spot, as we go?
Can physicists, philosophers and mathematicians move on from their primitive beliefs in the magical power of equations and numbers, and start to look at SYSTEMS in a more rational way?
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- Apparently, the late physicist John Archibald Wheeler once said to his students: “You see, these equations can’t fly. But our universe flies. We’re still missing the single, simple ingredient that makes it all fly.” https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/John+Wheeler