Re: Provable vs Computable

From: jamikes <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 15:25:50 -0400

> Juergen Schmidhuber wrote:
> > Which are the logically possible universes? Max Tegmark mentioned
> > a somewhat vaguely defined set of "self-consistent mathematical
> > structures'' implying provability of some sort. The postings of Bruno
> > Marchal and George Levy and Hal Ruhl also focus on what's provable
> > and what's not.
> > Is provability really relevant? Philosophers and physicists find
> > it sexy for its Goedelian limits. But what does this have to do with
> > the set of possible universes?

scerir writes an enjoyable version on the last part of the quote.

Let me address the first part about "possible universes". Of course Juergen
was
cautious and included "logically" in his phrase.
 "Logically" most likely refers to human (on this list: even mathematical)
logic.
Do we really think that human (math) logic is the restrictive principle for
nature?
What we see (what we want to see?) seems to point to that, but do we see'em
all?
Isn't "possible" what we don't see or understgand or realize?
Didn't our horizon (logic, math) increase over some time? Are we at the end?
In considering plenitude/multiverse, does it make sense to select part of it
(maybe a small, unimportant segment only)?
Even if we cannot develop "knowledge" about the rest, we should not deny its
"possibility" of existence. The farthest from this list would be a closed
mind!
John Mikes
Received on Fri May 04 2001 - 13:05:00 PDT