Thursday, October 30, 2014

you are a work of art (poem)

You are a work of art


I am Luna, reflector of light
I am the roiling, dark water below, glistening fluid
I am the pitch black clouds that seek
to bring chaos through blindness
I am the work of art of the Crafter
Who sees below all seas
I am a pawn on God's 17-dimensional chessboard
The 17!

the abstract contains the concrete, so it is said

"It really reminds me of the concepts abstract and concrete.  Why would concrete be any more real than abstract?  Because abstract can only be perceived by the mind?  Our brain is a perceptive organ, like the eyes and skin...Just that it perceives things about the mindscape which includes the abstract."

The importance of 10 and other musings

In the base ten system, 10 is ten.


In the base two system (binary), 10 is two.


In the hexadecimal (base 16) system, 10 is 16.


In fact, in every base b system, 10 is b.


In the base pi system, 10 is pi.  Note that 10 is an integer with respect to the base pi system.


So what makes an irrational number irrational?

I feel like I'm in a dark room with a few candles, one of which is math.  I have selected to focus on that candle but have so far found only very disturbing things by investigating this candle which I used to think illuminated the whole room; sadly, I don't think it does.  It is just another tool with its own set of applicability and limits.

If you're trying to understand reality in whole or in part, would you want to know "the truth" if it is so disturbing that it makes a significant percentage of people who "know" that "truth" have mental breakdowns?  In essence (though I loathe these terms) would you trade all of your sanity in order to learn this truth?  You might be set free by truth and maybe not but if you're insane (whatever the hell that means)but know the truth is that worth it?

Perhaps the process of becoming free, in mind at least, involves, or can involve, what some might call insanity.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Prococreators

Keeping in mind things like QM and some of its counterintuitive theories, what religion tells us, what mythology tells us, what spirituality tells us, what common sense tells us (and doesn't tell us), and the possibility of math being a creation of humans instead of discovered by humans, do we create reality?  A nightmarish scenario at times to be sure but then again nightmares are also dreams, the artwork of the subconscious, ghoulish as that might be.  Do we create reality?  Who created us, then?  The primal cause?  Maybe we are the primal cause if we create reality.  Who else can create reality and why hasn't someone who can create reality left us evidently alone?  Why hasn't such a someone destroyed reality, or at least all possible worlds with us in it?  I suppose if you can answer that, you might have an answer to the question "what is the purpose of humanity."  If we create reality, we are procreators, and if all (or most) humans create their reality, then reality is our prococreation.

Monday, October 13, 2014

We will never have a TOE in the Tegmarkian sense by a simple counting argument

This post is meant to argue against a Tegmarkian TOE which he calls a complete description of reality.  Towards finding a complete description of reality, one might just try a list of properties of this TOE such as its length and such as its descriptive power.  Are there zillions of concepts and experiences that we just haven't encountered so we have no words for them?  Could a zillion new words be added to the dictionary?

How about infinitely many new words?  Can reality ever be completely described if the dictionary is infinite?

Here is how I think of part of it: I believe that reality is infinite.  There are a few ways to prove that, depending on what we'd like to assume to make the argument go through.

I believe numbers exist in an abstract sense (i.e., for the sake of this argument, this is an axiom).  If you spend much time studying infinity, you at least get introduced to the smallest and next smallest transfinite numbers.  The smallest transfinite number is called Aleph Null or Aleph Zero and it is how big the set of all natural numbers is.  The next transfinite number is that of the set of real numbers (under the right side-axioms).  That means that in Hilbert's Hotel of infinite rooms, if each room had a natural number designation (or "address" (think computer memory)) AND if each room is filled, there is no way to accommodate the bus load of new patrons, each indexed by a real number.

The set of all natural numbers is said to be countably infinite.  The set of real numbers is said to be uncountable, as is every type of infinity beyond this.

The kicker is that, without going too much into formal systems, there are more real numbers than there are descriptions of all real numbers.  A description is a finite quantity but since there is no length limit inherent with descriptions, there are infinitely many different descriptions but only the countable type of infinity, that of the natural numbers.  Since there are more real numbers than that, (recall it is uncountable while the set of natural numbers is countably infinite), there are more real numbers than can ever be described.

If reality is at least as infinite as the set of real numbers, then we are done: we will never have a complete description of reality, no TOE.  It may be less obvious in the other cases: (1) If reality is finite then since you can add infinitely many neologisms to describe a finite reality, and most descriptions of reality won't even be needed, given that there are finitely many real things.  Finitely many things can be completely described.  (2) if reality is infinite, then it is possible that reality can be completely described and it is possible that reality cannot be completely described.  If the latter, we are done again since that would imply there is no TOE.  The trickiest case as I see it is what happens with when reality is infinite and can be completely described. Then a TOE would exist, although it may take eons to understand to even write it down, like Graham's number.

So I'm basically saying that a simple counting argument torpedos the notion of a usable TOE defined as a complete description of reality.  Sad to say it but that's where the investigation goes.  I still maintain hope that a TOE can not only exist but translated into more normal speech.

nth operation

n-th operation.  The successor function outputs a natural number that is one greater than the input (n=1).  Addition is repeated use of the successor function (n=2).  Multiplication is repeated addition (n=3).  Exponentiation is repeated multiplication (n=4).  Towers of powers are repeated exponentiation (n=5).  ??? are repeated towers of powers (n=6)?  ??? are repeated ??? (n=7)?

The number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be 10^80 atoms.  The required computation would involve just the level of exponentiation.  So it boggles the mind how the numbers involved get so big so fast.