Re: Horgan's Heros

[Ralf Stephan]

First, I've no problem with an interesting discussion coming from a
remark showing my poor understanding of the Horgan --- that's why 
I wanted to reread it ;)  But thanks for preserving the other bit.

Miles Parker: 
> >RS>On another note, if there are errors that are more likely to be made
> >by all human modelers (be it from quantum brain wiring or such), then
> >surely all fitting models at least represent human understanding of
> >the topic better than only one would?  Isn't this very similar to how
> >scientic progress happens, in nat.sci anyway?  Several models are built
> >until there's more data to kill the unfit ones.
> 
> Yea, this is probably why Horgan's book touched a chord at all. He sort of 
> took advantage of our semi-concious view of scientific discovery as like 
> painting a room; at some point you have everything done but just a little 
> touch up work around the corners..and then you're left with the big 
> unexplainable world outside that science will never touch. 
> 
> The problem with this view is that we may well keep making the same mistakes, 
> and those mistakes become reinforced instead of challenged, until someone 
> comes along and completely blows a hole in them...then you discover that 
> you've just been toying around with an illusory model of the room, and then 
> you discover that its not a room at all...I think we may well be poised for a 
> breakthrough on that kind of level, but who knows..

I'll quote from John Baez' This Weeks Finds ín Mathematical Physics 146
in case it is no longer readable at
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html

----><8----------
     Paper in white the floor of the room, and rule it off in one- foot
     squares. Down on one's hands and knees, write in the first square a
     set of equations conceived as able to govern the physics of the
     universe. Think more overnight. Next day put a better set of
     equations into square two. Invite one's most respected colleagues
     to contribue to other squares. At the end of these labors, one has
     worked oneself out into the doorway. Stand up, look back on all
     those equations, some perhaps more hopeful than others, raise one's
     finger commandingly, and give the order "Fly!" Not one of those
     equations will put on wings, take off, or fly. Yet the universe
     "flies".
     
     Some principle uniquely right and compelling must, when one knows
     it, be also so compelling that it is clear the universe is built,
     and must be built, in such and such a way, and that it could not be
     otherwise. But how can one disover that principle?
     
   John Wheeler was undoubtedly the author of these words, which appear
   near the end of Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's textbook "Gravitation",
   published in 1972. Since then, more people than ever before in the
   history of the world have tried their best to find this uniquely
   compelling principle. A lot of interesting ideas, but no success yet.
   
   But what if Wheeler was wrong? What if there is *not* a uniquely
   compelling principle or set of equations that governs our universe?
   For example, what if *all* equations govern universes? In other words,
   what if all mathematical structures have just as much "physical
   existence" (whatever that means!) as those describing our universe do?
   Many of them will not contain patterns we could call awareness or
   intelligence, but some will, and these would be "seen from within" as
   "universes" by their inhabitants. In this scenario, there's nothing
   special about *our* universe except that we happen to be in this one.
   
   In other words: what if there is ultimately no difference between
   mathematical possibility and physical existence? This may seem crazy,
   but personally I believe that most alternatives, when carefully
   pondered, turn out to be even *more* crazy.
   
   Of course, it's fun to think about such ideas and difficult to get
   anywhere with them. But tonight when I was nosing around the web, I
   found out that someone has already developed and published this idea:
   
   1) Max Tegmark, Is the "theory of everything" merely the ultimate
   ensemble theory?, Ann. Phys. 270 (1998), 1-51, preprint available as
   gr-qc/9704009.
   
   Max Tegmark, Which mathematical structure is isomorphic to the
   universe?, http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/toe.html
   
   3) Marcus Chown, Anything goes, New Scientist 158 (1998) 26-30, also
   available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/toe_press.html
   
   As far as I can tell, most of the time Max Tegmark is a perfectly
   respectable physicist at the University of Pennsylvania; he works on
   the cosmic microwave background radiation, the large-scale structure
   of the universe (superclusters and the like), and type 1A supernovae.
   But he has written a fascinating paper on the above hypothesis, which
   I urge you to read. It's less far-out than you may think.
-----><8--------

ralf
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