Re: Fabric of Reality

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri Oct 8 03:57:06 1999

Russell Standish:
>In any case, the most important message is that to construct a TOE, we
>need to jump out of the physics perspective.

I agree so much. See also "laws without laws" by J. H. Wheeler.
There is an interesting (but wrong IMHO) answer by Deutsch.


>However, I don't believe
>that the four strands he picks (QM, Church's thesis, Evolution and
>Popperian falsification) are the correct components. I suspect we have
>a better integration in this mailing list. Definitely QM is in,
>likewise information and computation theory (not just the
>Church-Turing thesis),

Deutsch present his "Church Turing principle" as a physical version
of Church's thesis. This is terribly misleading even for someone who
believe that physical science is fundamental.
>From now on I will always say "Deutsch thesis" for his "Church Turing
principle". Deutsch thesis is intrinsically very interesting but is
completely independant (a priori) from Church's thesis.
I suspect that Church's thesis could very well entails the falsity of
Deutsch thesis.


>I suspect that evolution is a second order
>phenomena (in the sense that hydrodynamics is a second order theory of
>molecular dynamics). I don't really see where Popperian epistemology
>fits in, except as a theory of evolution about knowledge - almost a
>third order theory??.

Remember that with Pure COMP (as opposed to Mallah's Physical COMP), in
some sense Psychology is O-order and particules Physics is very
high-order.

Bruno.
Received on Fri Oct 08 1999 - 03:57:06 PDT