RE: Devil's advocate against Max Tegmark's hypothesis

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon Jul 5 06:41:16 1999

Hi Alasdair,

James told me:

>An ancient greek (I forget who) said that the world is supported on the back
>of a turtle. When asked what supported the turtle he said 'It stands on
>another turtle' When asked what that Turtle stood on, he said It's "Turtles
>all the way down".

Thank you, James.

So I recall and make more precise my answer and my questions to you
(Alastair Malcolm):

Malcolm's question was

>>Does anyone happen to have an idea about how to respond to this challenge
>>to Tegmark's hypothesis?

My answer was that I don't see how Tegmark can make this challenge
effective because the collection of mathematical structures is
not definable in mathematical terms.

Here are my questions:

>Could you tell us if you agree that Schmidhuber "great programmer"
>approach
>should also met the flying rabbit challenge ?
>
>And could you explain more precisely the 'turtles all the way down'
>accusation against Schmidhuber Great programmer?

Thanks to James I interprete it as a suspicion of infinite regress.
But the "great programmer" is a well defined mathematical object (even
without Church's Thesis CT).
With CT it is even the most effective general mathematical object ever
defined.
(on a trivial par with the Universal Machine).
It is the most effective way to define "everything".

So I think the only challenge which remains is the "white rabbit"
challenge.
At least, with the Schmidhuber great programmer (or the UD, ...), it is
possible to tackle the "white rabbit" challenge mathematically. Do you
agree ?

Bruno.
Received on Mon Jul 05 1999 - 06:41:16 PDT