Kaboom

From: <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 10:45:50 +1000

The various 'laws' of quantum mechanics, in the minds of those involved in their study, have been discovered, as opposed to invented. In the quest to explain their power in prediction of the behaviour of the natural world I can make the following observation:

Let's say we do science on football. We observe the players from 100,000 light years away with nifty telescopes. We send probes out to interfere with football matches and we form QF, the quantum theory of football. In fact it is just the rules of football, which we are not privy to except by experiment. Those rules of QF are powerfully predictive. Within all the random darting about and obscurity of the behaviour of the players and the ball....all manner of behaviour of the footballers can be predicted.

So we write the rules of QF down and then we think: "wow, these rules work _so well_! What sort of circumstances must exist in order that these rules come about?". So we start to think... and we come up with a set of multi-footballs. Rules for Irish football, grid iron, soccer, aussie rules, rugby flavours A and B..... and so on. We then postulate that within a country the rules coalesce into their national sports through the choice of the observers.

We invent the most incredible series of amazing scenarios that might provide the underlying incredible reality of these sets of rules as observed. How can the observers do such a thing?
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Spot the problem?

There is an attribution. An assumption. That assumption is that the universe of football, in being described by the rules of football, that the rules of football exist and are the goal we seek and are the quintessential reality of the footballing world.

I posit this as a fatal mistake. Fatal in the sense that the idea of the "multi-footballs" is telling us anything useful about reality. The real answer, which is there all along: is to start talking about the footballers. For it is they who are displaying the behaviour so well characterised by the rules of QF, not literally driven by the rules of QF. What is actually driving the footballers is a whole gamut of social imperatives! The rules are incidental.

The lesson here? That the natural world can contrive to behave in a manner depicted by a set of rules in no way necessitates that those rules are driving the natural world.

Isn't it time to look at the natural world as mathematics instead of the other way around?

I have real trouble with this list because I can even get to square 1 because of all the unnecessary assumptions driving the whole discourse. No multiverses are necessary.... study as I might I can't make any sense in any corner of physics where the 'rules'/'laws' are taken so literally. To go down this path is to ascribe without foundation that the rules are driving the universe.

I can't even get past the axioms of COMP. They just don’t hold unless I delude myself that the universe is driven by some mechanism implementing the underlying 'ruleness' we observe. Instead I can contrive a whole class of universes that coalesce to approximate various mathematics in a certain contexts that will 'appear' to behave according to the rules we observe.

So frustrating. When are we going to stop interpreting the symbols of these apparent laws and start dealing with the underlying reality? Somebody justify why all the various interpretations are worth thinking about? Chew on this instead: "as soon as you pick up a pen and write one symbol you have failed". "The natural world is its own and only perfect describer. All else is an approximation". Useful approximation? yes. Predictive and poweful approximation? yes. -but- literally capturing the natural world? -no way!

Understanding consciousness is my goal and playing around with human generated symbols symbols seems to be diverting good thinking away from the thing that is actually responsible for consciousness - the natural world. How about we fit in with it instead of the other way around. Just for a change... pick a natural symbol and see if you can make a calculus with it. I can. Please... someone else try... pretty please?

I think I'll be off to lose myself in some neuroscience for a while.....maybe a rest will help!!

:-)

Cheers

Colin Hales
Received on Tue Aug 23 2005 - 20:47:35 PDT