Exploring the Physical Reality of Math

[disregardthat]

Mathematics is not "arbitrary noodling", it is more correctly described as "how to calculate", and calculation must accede to formal rules. There is no such thing as an informal calculation. Mathematics is surely and as you certainly will agree arbitrary in the sense that we can freely choose what to calculate, but what we want to calculate is however often not arbitrary. It's a simple point really, but not relevant to the status of mathematics itself.

(How does it make sense to be intrinsically arbitrary? It seems quite meaningless to me.)

Mathematics is not at any rate modeling, and must not be confused with the physical model in which it is utilized. We can set up a mathematical framework for a model, but the conclusions about reality will never be mathematical. The problem is that people have too many conceptions about what mathematics is, as if it somehow transcends its usage to a language of something abstract or even a language about reality itself. It does not however describe anything in the ordinary sense of the word describe. The description, or representation, is an interpretation depending on context, and is very much arbitrary, but not mathematical.

(R^2, the real plane, is used for limitless representations, but as a mathematical object it has no particular connection to either of these things)

What a mathematician may have in favor in this issue is that he can see the possibilities, and not get too entrenched in some particular usage of mathematics only to be tricked into believing that there is a deep connection to be found (as if mathematical statements about R^3 somehow were statements about space).

The main issue here is that the questions themselves are wrong. If it still makes sense to ask whether reality itself is mathematical (or as I translate your wording: territory) one has to backtrack ones thoughts about what mathematics actually is, and not confuse oneself into believing its various usages are part of it as a concept.

Don't think of intuition or visual imagination of mathematics as in any sort of conflict with the formalities of mathematics. The reality of the issue is that our intuition is exactly intuition of the mechanics of the mathematical rules. Much like intuition in chess. Reading your last post, I would like to give the following example: Does chess-players frown upon having a vivid imagery of what e.g. their following moves should be? No. (does it conflict with the rule-governed aspect of chess?)

 

[petm1]

Math can never be physically real for a mathematical expression is at best a static representation of one moment in time.

 

[Ken G]

And the trick is indeed to shrink that semantic cool person as small as possible so as to maximise the syntactical range of mathematical machinery. So it is no surprise that the necessity of semantics remains so well hidden from the casual gaze.

Yes. Another way to frame the OP is the question, "why is it possible to shrink that cool person so small that we no longer notice it?" Is this because it really is a small cool person, or is it just that we spent most of our formative years learning how to not see it, in exchange for being able to calculate?

 

[Varon]

Fellows. Supposed the Holographic Universe hypothesis were true.. meaning we are living in a 2D surface as the following article shows and experimental tests ongoing with initial good positive results. Does it mean that all the maths occur in the 2D holographic surface or would the mystery remains how math and holographic reality is related? Check the following site first.

http://refreshingnews9.blogspot.com/...thesis-of.html

Do you know that the GEO600 has detected a fuzzy, grainy interference, entirely consistent with Beckenstein's theory and calculations? In fact, he had predicted in advance that the cosmic projections from the surface of our universe would cause the precise patterns that are now being formed. Last year. Craig Hogan and his team of physicists at Fermilab near Chicago are designing a 40 meter-long "holometer" to test Beckenstein's theory, in an attempt to confirm and measure this fuzzy "interference" more precisely. If indeed, this and other research supports this theory, it could lead us to the inevitable conclusion that it is our eyes, ears, and touch that makes sense of this information, converting it all into a tangible reality. What would be the ramifications in the foundation of quantum theory and relativity for example?

In the case of the quantum. Would it mean that in the double slit in between emission and detection, reality is being processed using math in the 2D surface and calculations of electron path occur there and only when measurement is done that the particle is projected back into 3D? Is this possible? Would this solve math connection with reality? Or not?

 

[Ken G]

To me, a holographic interpretation just underscores the idea that what we think of a the "reality we are studying" is actually our own mental construct of the reality we are studying, and all the "physical attributes" we give to that reality are part of the construct not part of the reality. This means that ironically, "The Matrix" has it somewhat backward-- there's little value in imagining that the physics we study is actually just a kind of program that is actually being run in some different but similar type of reality, because if the program is embedded in any reality with similar physical attributes to the one we are studying, then we may as well take it to be the reality we see and interact with, for all the difference it would make. However, there may be considerable value in imagining that physics is an attempt to build "the Matrix"-- we are the ones writing the program that generates the "false reality" in which we live, and the laws of physics are simply the rules of what kind of program can successfully run on whatever is the machine we are testing the program on.

 

[lowing99]

Hi Kevin

I think maths is the programming language for the universe, yes I'm with the virtual Universe crew:)

In computer code you could write a program that works within itself and is free of error but it might present you with nothing of value or substance in the end product, similarly you can use maths to model 17 universes but it doesn't mean they have to exist.

Cheers

Colin

 

[lowing99]

In fact, he had predicted in advance that the cosmic projections from the surface of our universe would cause the precise patterns that are now being formed. Last year. Craig Hogan and his team of physicists at Fermilab near Chicago are designing a 40 meter-long "holometer" to test Beckenstein's theory, in an attempt to confirm and measure this fuzzy "interference" more precisely. If indeed, this and other research supports this theory, it could lead us to the inevitable conclusion that it is our eyes, ears, and touch that makes sense of this information, converting it all into a tangible reality.

Hi Varon

I saw a programme recently on this, I did chuckle somewhat at the notion, not so much that we were a hologram, but the fact that after 1 million years man kind finally found out it was just an exe program in a vast supercomputer modelling a universe.

Wait for the cry in another hundred years when we discover that we all occupy the same point in space and time and the universe is still held within the singularity, that reality is actually only there when we are looking at it because this conserves memory space.

Imagine everyone you love only there when you can percieve them, a universe only as large as the limit of our perception, when we don't look, it winks out of existence, to be stored as 1/0 on a mainframe.

Is that bleak or liberating? bleak in so much as it means I am downstairs at the moment and my sleeping child upstairs, isn't in her bed sleeping because she doesn't exist, liberating in as much as it basically proves a creator of sorts and takes that age old question, what is the meaning of life? and replaces it with a new more defined question, what is the purpose of life, to which the answer in my view is simple to live your life and collect as much data as possible before you return it to the core.

Hey it's late :)

Best

Colin

 

[Varon]

Hi Varon

I saw a programme recently on this, I did chuckle somewhat at the notion, not so much that we were a hologram, but the fact that after 1 million years man kind finally found out it was just an exe program in a vast supercomputer modelling a universe.

Wait for the cry in another hundred years when we discover that we all occupy the same point in space and time and the universe is still held within the singularity, that reality is actually only there when we are looking at it because this conserves memory space.

Imagine everyone you love only there when you can percieve them, a universe only as large as the limit of our perception, when we don't look, it winks out of existence, to be stored as 1/0 on a mainframe.

Is that bleak or liberating? bleak in so much as it means I am downstairs at the moment and my sleeping child upstairs, isn't in her bed sleeping because she doesn't exist, liberating in as much as it basically proves a creator of sorts and takes that age old question, what is the meaning of life? and replaces it with a new more defined question, what is the purpose of life, to which the answer in my view is simple to live your life and collect as much data as possible before you return it to the core.

Hey it's late :)

Best

Colin

If we were really inside a computer problem and the world were really equivalent to year 1,000,000 A.D. now. I bet the sky of the real world is orange color. You know why I said this. Because there are numerous fringe reports of these so called alien abductees who saw grey aliens poking at them on the table. What if these abductees or people are actually temporarily awake to the real world and in the midst of the real inhabitants (the Greys). It's like in the movie Matrix where sometimes maintenance need to be done and the hybernating people have to be awaken or accidentally awaken. Then they would see themselves surrounded by arrays of living beings in vats. In those fringe reports, people who saw Greys also saw vats of beings and fetuses. Maybe these fetuses were our children in the real Matrix world. They also all consistently report of orange sky and two suns when they were outside.

This is just another perspective of looking at them. Of course we normally think they were just crazy. Anyway. In case it were true. Perhaps the saying in Matrix "Ignorance is Bliss" is useful. Because we would all just be depressed if we knew we were merely prisoners in the virtual interactive dreamworld.

Lol. Time to review the Matrix movies. :)

Note that I don't believe this though. Just mentioning all this as food for thoughts in this possible math and computer generated dreamworld connections..

 

[Ken G]

Or, maybe it is a well-documented cultural phenomenon that appears over and over again throughout history, except they are only "greys" in our cultural period-- they are something else in the other ones, and will be something else a few decades from now when different cultural experiences control these kinds of reports.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I think this thread has gone off the deep end.