Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 16:46:49 -0500

Hal Ruhl wrote:
>
>>OK, since I don't really understand your system I should have said
>>something more general, like "you're justifying the idea that the All is
>>inconsistent in terms of your own theoretical framework, not in terms of
>>inconsistent axiomatic systems".
>
>Do you grant that the All which contains all information contains a
>completed axiomatized arithmetic?

No, because Godel proved that no axiomatic system can generate the set of
all statements that would be true of our model of arithmetic (at least not
without also generating false statements).

>> So, again, you don't have any way of showing to a person who doesn't
>>share your theoretical framework in the first place that "everything",
>>i.e. the All, need be inconsistent.
>
>I expect that this is a common problem for anyone's ideas.

Not really, usually when people try to convince others of new ideas they
appeal to some common framework of beliefs or common understanding they
already share--that's why people are capable of changing each other's mind
through reasoned arguments, rather than everyone just making arguments like
"if you grant that the Bible is the word of God, I can use passages from the
Bible to show that it is indeed the word of God."

>>>I do not believe in TOE's that start with the natural numbers - where did
>>>that info come from?
>>
>>I don't consider that to be "information" because it seems logically
>>impossible that a statement such as "one plus one equals two" could be
>>false.
>
>Why? Is there no universe [state] wherein the transitory meaning assigned
>to these symbols makes the sentence false?

I intentionally wrote the statement out in english words to convey the
notion that I was making a meaningful statement about our model of
arithmetic, rather than quoting a string of arbitrary symbols which can be
mapped to the model in a certain way but don't have to be. There is no
logically possible universe where the *idea* I am expressing in english when
I say "one plus one equals two" is false, although of course we can imagine
a universe where a non-english-speaker might use that particular string of
letters to mean something different, like "my thorax is on fire" (as we
would translate the meaning of his statement in english).

>
>>You might as well ask, "where do the laws of logic come from"? Do you
>>consider the laws of logic to be "information"?
>
>The "Laws of Logic" [at least as we have assembled them in our little
>corner of our multiverse] establish a process designed to discover the
>information compressed into a system. A process takes place in a dimension
>we call "time". Thus "time" is a hidden assumption in the "Laws of Logic".

I disagree. "X AND Y -> X" does not imply that first you have "X AND Y" and
then it somehow transforms into X at a later date, it just means "if it is
true that statements X and Y are both true, then statement X must be true".

>> If you don't think the laws of logic can be taken for granted, you could
>>just solve the information problem by saying it is simultaneously true
>>that there is "something rather than nothing" and also "nothing rather
>>than something", even though these facts are contradictory.
>
>There would still be the information contained in the existence of the
>contradiction which divides it from systems that are not contradictory.

No it wouldn't, because if you abandon the laws of logic you can say that it
is also true that this system is not contradictory--in other words, although
it's true that both these contradictory statements are true (so the 'system'
containing both is contradictory), it's also true that one is true and one
is false (so the system containing both is not contradictory). Of course,
you can now say the meta-system containing both the statements I just made
is contradictory, but I can apply the exact same anti-logic to show this
meta-system is not contradictory. And you can also use anti-logic to show
that every statement I have made in this paragraph about the implications of
anti-logic is false, including this one. Once you abandon the principle that
if a statement is true, its negation must be false and vice-versa, then
anything goes.

Jesse
Received on Sun Dec 12 2004 - 16:49:07 PST