On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 01:04:02PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>
> The "dovetailer" keeps sounding like a powerful idea. I do remember that it has often been mentioned here, but somehow I failed to pick up a sense of what it was really about. Was there a message to the Everything-List in which it was explained so that non-experts can understand it? I'm not asking you to track that message (or series of messages) down, but if you or somebody remembers around which month it was, that should be enough for me to find it. Or is there a link to a Webpage with such an exposition?
Do a Google search, or a search on the everything list archives eg
Google "everything list dovetailer".
>
> Level III varies across quantum branchings. Level II varies across times and places along a single quantum branch in such a way that its features come out the same as Level III's features.
This is not my reading. Level II universes vary their fundamental
physical constants, eg G, alpha and so on.
Level I universes merely vary in time and space, but sufficiently
separated as to be causally independent.
...
>
> But I haven't noticed anybody here talking about variational principles or optimizational equations in any connection, much less in relation to Level IV. (While there is an obvious echo of optimization in applying Occam's Razor to Level IV's mathematical structures, this doesn't seem to involve any application of mathematical extremization, variations, Morse Theory, etc., so it seems not really the same thing. It's certainly not the only echo between a mode of inference (present instance: surmise, simplest explanation) and a mathematical formalism (extremization, shortest paths, etc.).)
>
Extremum principles come up mostly in Roy Frieden's work. No-one has
managed to integrate Frieden's stuff into the usual framework of this
list, so little mention has been made of it, but I do mention it in my
book. The hope is that some connection can be forged.
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Received on Tue Jan 17 2006 - 01:12:49 PST