Is Music Maths?

[FindailsCrispyPancakes]

Speaking of universal truth...

You can model music with math, but music is not affected. It has no requirement to be mathematical. It just is.

I'm in complete agreement. As deep universal truths go, that's definitely one of the biggies.

Before I came online I had the atlas out and i was looking at the 2 dimensional oval shaped Mercator projection of the 3 dimensional Earth (yes, I really am that boring).

It's the same technique as Einstein used for GR. Changing the co-ordinate system to describe an object that's difficult to describe in your regular co-ordinate system.

It's analagous to the arbitrary choice of using Centigrade or Farenheit to measure temperature, or choosing between notes on a stave or numbers to represent music.

It doesn't matter what system/translation you use to describe the object, it makes no difference whatsoever to the object itself.

[Skyweir]

Brilliant .. makes perfect sense.

[wayfriend]

Well then Sky, the only thing to do in that case is argue the other side!

Music, unlike the motions of the planets or the decay of an isotope, is not a natural phenomenon. It's a human construct. We have selected a set of tones which we find appealing, and have arranged them in ways we find appealing. The selection and the arrangements are utterly arbitrary, based on human conceptions of harmony and melody.

Long after the fact, we have come to understand that the relationship between the tones, while arbitrary, has been guided by a phenomenon of 'resonance', which is indeed a mathematical relationship, but one which our brains universally find pleasant to hear. Our selection, nevertheless, was guided by the pleasantry, not the math. Which suggests that their may be other mathematical relationships involved, ones between sound and our brains.

Still, it remains that we are compelled to ask: is music math because we made it that way? Was music conceived in such a way that the math was imposed upon it, and it is not inherent to music at all?

[Vraith]

In order to partially falsify the statement 'nature is quantized'

You misread what I said. I specifically did not say nature isn't quantized...it looks right now like that's highly probable.
I said that quantization is a physical property, not a mathematical one. The math has a semi-descriptive relationship...but no causal or determinate or metaphysical/hierarchical/containing/constraining/defining one.

The nature of math does not cause the universe to work, the nature of the universe causes the SOME kinds/aspects of math to apply descriptively [to the extent it does so] to SOME properties of the universe.

WF, you said " has been guided by a phenomenon of 'resonance', which is indeed a mathematical relationship"
But even at a simple level that's only kinda/sorta true.
Say you have a note at 200. Perfect 5ths are 3/2 [in this case, 300] octave double [400].
If you tune a whole instrument, all the notes, in those perfect ratios it will sound like total shit/out of tune very quickly. Perfect mathematical notes/tuning make perfectly hideous music. [[if you limit to few notes and/or narrow ranges, you can get away with it---even do some interesting things. But it is extremely restrictive, excludes almost the entirety of music. ]]

[wayfriend]

If you tune a whole instrument, all the notes, in those perfect ratios it will sound like total shit/out of tune very quickly.[/color]

I'm not sure I believe that. But regardless, the western eight-note scale is based on those ratios.

[Vraith]

If you tune a whole instrument, all the notes, in those perfect ratios it will sound like total shit/out of tune very quickly.[/color]

I'm not sure I believe that. But regardless, the western eight-note scale is based on those ratios.

It's true, though.
The tuning is approximate, not perfect.
If you tune "perfectly" you end up with either dissonances or adjustments all over the place.
[[NOT tuning perfectly does some of that, too...there are compromises. Because the world isn't mathematical.]]
Different keys...say C major and D major have different tunings done just...IIRC, and I think I do, this means, for instance---the letter/notes [though not the sequence, of course] of C major and G major are identical except for F, which becomes F#. BUT just tuned, some [[maybe all? it's been while]] of those notes will have different frequencies. The A in the C major will be slightly different than the A in the G major.
With fretless strings and voices, you can adjust on the fly to stay in tune. [[if your ear and technique are good enough]].
Not so with any instrument with set pitches [flutes, oboes, pianos, etc, etc, etc.]
Though there are people who hate equalizing...some guy wrote a book with a title like "How Equal Temperment Ruined Harmony Forever" or somesuch [it's not that, but it's not far off from that...]
And a lot of people with perfect pitch hate it.
And I THINK [it's been a long time since I dealt with this stuff] that just creates more notes than we actually use, if you follow the math exactly.
And there are lots of different tunings/scales/temperaments.

And there's a whole bunch of what you're used to involved.

But, even given all that...
The fact that certain things sound "good" to us isn't CAUSED by the math/ratio. It's caused by the physical properties.
A string in vibration has physical overtones...at an octave, a fifth higher than that....more. [they aren't exact, different materials differ, that's one of the many many things that contributes to timbre]
So, if you play a second string that is a fifth higher, it's in a good, simple ratio...AND it agrees with a natural overtone of the first.

And we musn't fail to note that it is dissonance as much [or more than] consonance that makes music interesting/pleasing.

And that doesn't even touch rhythm.
A good drummer nails the beats/tempo...a meaty bodied metronome....
A GREAT drummer plays with/within that perfect time to create better timing. It's how/where/when s/he is "off" that makes him/her a musician, not a clock/mechanism.

[Zarathustra]

Lot's of things to unpack here . . .

Why can we say "silly" but not "dumb?" Is there a list of safe insults? I think the distinction is rather arbitrary. For instance, where does "that's a ridiculous suggestion normally made by people who watch too much Star Trek and have no idea what a wormhole (Einstein-Rosen bridge) is" fall on this spectrum? Surely it goes beyond "silly," approaching the "dumb" side of the scale? And yet no action was taken by our moderator. Are there rules here, or merely whims?

Anyway . . . I happen to agree with Findail that the universe is mathematical, but I don't get there the same way. I don't think that just because something can be quantized that it's necessarily mathematical--at least not in the way we usually mean this term in this context. It's not enough that you can count entities in the universe. Sand on the beach wouldn't be any more "mathematical" than a (hypothetical) homogeneous, indivisible substance; knowing their number could not give us any more knowledge into their nature than knowing there is one homogeneous, indivisible substance. Counting grains of sand in no way explains their arrangement, no more than counting molecules in the atmosphere explains how hurricanes develop. In fact, we can understand the latter while completely ignoring the quantity of air molecules.

And that is because our explanations/knowledge of the world happens at a level much higher than the individual quantities. There will probably never be a mathematical formula that could predict the motions of every water molecule in a pot boiling on the stove. And yet, we can have lots of knowledge of it. The laws of thermodynamics, for instance, deal with emergent properties that completely ignore the individual molecules.

It's not the individual quantized elements themselves that is mathematical (in terms of a mathematical explanation), it's their relationships and properties. A collection of quantized elements could have very well have been utterly chaotic, with no patterned relationships between them whatsoever. In this case, we wouldn't call the universe, "mathematical." In that case, there could be no science at all (much less scientists).

Now, for Vraith's point: the fact that emergent properties/phenomena in the universe can be described by math is neither a coincidence nor a human convention. It's not like seeing faces in the clouds where our pattern recognition is running away from us. We're not imposing order upon reality when we develop precise mathematical formulas to describe/predict how it unfolds, we're discovering it. And this order *is* mathematical. It makes no sense to say that it merely appears mathematical, when we're talking about the nature and form of that order itself (distinct from the entities which are ordered). What else is it besides mathematical? If math is just modeling that order--and not identical to it--then what is it on its own aside from this description? You can't describe it. You can't refer to it at all, because it only manifests as a mathematical entity. Naming/modeling/describing it is identical to disclosing/discovering/knowing it. It otherwise would remain unknown.

This is because getting the precise mathematical formula that describes how phenomena connect, unfold, and take shape is the same as explaining their nature. This is not mere description, this is explanation. This is insight into reality. It is penetration into the truth, not a dalliance with appearance.

Therefore, if the universe has inherent order (not merely imposed or interpreted order), and this order has a mathematical form, this is the same as saying that the universe *is* mathematical. What else could it possibly mean?

[Lazy Luke]

... if the universe has inherent order (not merely imposed or interpreted order), and this order has a mathematical form, this is the same as saying that the universe *is* mathematical. What else could it possibly mean?

... that you are deviating from the question. Saying the universe "is" mathematical isn't an explanation as to why music is mathematical.

As for the rudeness of the administrator, I did not write "dumb",
I wrote, "actually rather dumb". A form of dumbing down.
What I had hoped for was a response like, "Well I too compose music ..."
or "the guitar is actually rather like a ruler, (as 1 octave is divided into twelve frets").
Or, "metre in poetry goes hand in hand with music" ...

[wayfriend]

If math is just modeling that order--and not identical to it--then what is it on its own aside from this description? You can't describe it.

That is the meat of it.

But arguing from "you can't describe it" gets you no where. No one can describe ANYTHING except in terms of how we perceive it and the patterns we see in it. It is a fundamental aspect of existence.

But this doesn't worry me. The answer is, it doesn't matter, in a tautological way. Can we know something beyond what we know? No. Can we perceive something beyond what we perceive? No. We can imagine it, and model it, and test our model. But that's it.

Gravity just pulls. We see a pattern of mass times acceleration squared. But gravity just pulls. There's nothing in gravity that tries to be that pattern. Pull, pull, pull. If all the thinking beings in the universe disappeared, there would be nothing to notice any pattern. But it would still pull.

The source of the phenomenon that we perceive as a pattern is just being what it is, and being what it is consistently. Nothing else. Pull, pull.

[Zarathustra]

If math is just modeling that order--and not identical to it--then what is it on its own aside from this description? You can't describe it.

That is the meat of it.

But arguing from "you can't describe it" gets you no where. No one can describe ANYTHING except in terms of how we perceive it and the patterns we see in it. It is a fundamental aspect of existence.

But this doesn't worry me. The answer is, it doesn't matter, in a tautological way. Can we know something beyond what we know? No. Can we perceive something beyond what we perceive? No. We can imagine it, and model it, and test our model. But that's it.

Gravity just pulls. We see a pattern of mass times acceleration squared. But gravity just pulls. There's nothing in gravity that tries to be that pattern. Pull, pull, pull. If all the thinking beings in the universe disappeared, there would be nothing to notice any pattern. But it would still pull.

The source of the phenomenon that we perceive as a pattern is just being what it is, and being what it is consistently. Nothing else. Pull, pull.

I get what you're saying, but it's more than "pull, pull." It's actually a curvature of space. And that curvature has a specific "shape." This "shape" is mathematical in its form, such that the "pull, pull" falls off with the square of the distance between two masses. That is the actual reality of the situation, not the pull. In fact, the "pull" is an illusion; this is the part that is added by observers, a parochial misunderstanding. There really isn't a force of gravity. There's just a mathematical shape to space-time, which is altered by mass, and through which objects travel in ways that makes it seem like they're being pulled.

The curvature is real. Forget about space-time. Think about something smaller and mundane. A curve in the road. What is it, aside from the road itself? It's a shape. What's that shape? Aside from the material making up the road, it is pure form. That form is not merely describable with math, it is itself mathematical. That's what a curve *is.* It differs from a straight line only in a geometrical sense. Even without human observers, it would still deviate from a straight line in precisely this manner. The description adds nothing to it that it doesn't already possess. The description is our minds making an epistemological connection to an ontological reality. But the fact that our description is mathematical doesn't mean that the math only resides in the description. If that were the case, then the description wouldn't be connecting with anything real, and wouldn't provide knowledge of the road (e.g. the coefficient of friction that would be necessary to maintain traction at a various speeds on that particular surface given the radius of that curve). Our description of this curve isn't like saying ice cream is yummy. Ice cream wouldn't be yummy in the absence of people who enjoy it. It's not inherently yummy. But a curve is inherently not a straight line. This is a fact that can be stated in ordinary language or in math. Either way, it's a true statement about a real, objective feature of the world. To say that a curve isn't mathematical (or that this particular curve doesn't have this particular radius) would be just as false as saying that a curve is straight. The language doesn't matter. The mathematical properties of the curve (i.e. its radius) would still be true whether there were people around to measure it or not.*

*[Well, unless you want to get into a discussion of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics . . . but in that case, the role of observers is vastly more important to the nature of reality than mere "describers."]

[Lazy Luke]

Gravity just pulls. We see a pattern of mass times acceleration squared. But gravity just pulls. There's nothing in gravity that tries to be that pattern. Pull, pull, pull. If all the thinking beings in the universe disappeared, there would be nothing to notice any pattern. But it would still pull.

It's very interesting what Alex Delarge (A Clockwork Orange) had to say about gravity,
in relation to Ludwig Van:

Oh, bliss!
Bliss and heaven!
It was gorgeousness and
gorgeosity made flesh.

It was like a bird
of rarest spun heaven metal.
Or like silvery wine
flowing in a spaceship ...

...gravity all nonsense now.

As I slooshied,
I knew such lovely pictures.

[Vraith]

Why can we say "silly" but not "dumb?" Is there a list of safe insults? I think the distinction is rather arbitrary

It could be arbitrary cuz I'm the boss and I don't like dumb, and silly amuses me.

Or it could have just been I thought it was funny, and you could lighten up.
L-L is a bit quirky in case you've never noticed, and Fin doesn't seem exactly fragile, and I thought they'd probably notice the arbitrariness you so helpfully pointed out.


But, short single thing since I'm short on time:
The "form" or "shape" of things isn't mathematical. The shape or form is itself. There is math that can describe certain forms/shapes---but really only a tiny fraction of the shapes that can/do exist.
The order of the universe is physical. Order isn't mathematical, but order is the reason that math works in the purely partial way that it does.
I'm not sure I've seen anything "explained" by math...except for math. Applied maths are descriptive...though they may "explain" in a limited sense relations/events, they don't explain what things are...and they can't.

Whether a curve is a straight line or not depends utterly on the shape of the universe you live in, and the perspective/context you are using to examine it. [[the straight line from the North pole to the equator is a curve...IF we lived in a curved universe, ALL straight lines would be curves and the only way to "straighten" them would be either in abstract space OR somehow "breaking" or exiting the space of the universe.]] SOME kind of math would work there...to an extent, just like here...but it would be different math because the physical order would cause different math to apply.

It is the nature of things that causes math to work as much as it does...not the nature of math that causes the universe to be what it is.

[Skyweir]

On your first

On your second I think I agree. To my non mathematical mind, this makes sense ... math is a language we have developed to express the relationships between things, and describe objects, how they move, what they do.

Very interesting explanation

[Zarathustra]

The "form" or "shape" of things isn't mathematical. The shape or form is itself. There is math that can describe certain forms/shapes---but really only a tiny fraction of the shapes that can/do exist.

Why can math describe the forms/shapes of things? If things aren't mathematical, why are orbits ellipses? Why do projectiles follow parabolas? Why do galaxies spiral? Why is all mass in the universe subject to Einstein's equations for gravity? Why are all electromagnetic phenomena subject to Maxwell's equations?

You get the point. All of reality can be described with math. How is that possible if the universe isn't mathematical? Everywhere we look, at every scale (big or small), the universe follows mathematical forms. Just a coincidence?

How do you *know* the universe isn't mathematical--with such certainty to be so adamant about it? You know a deeper truth about nature than science itself? What's this knowledge based on? Where do you get it? How do you have the ability to perceive truths about reality that go deeper/beyond our mathematical understanding of it?

It wasn't until we started finding mathematical descriptions of reality that we truly started understanding it. Is that a coincidence, too? Just a historical anomaly? Will we one day form understandings of reality that don't involve math?

The order of the universe is physical. Order isn't mathematical, but order is the reason that math works in the purely partial way that it does.

How can order not be mathematical? Just because it's physical? Is this the sole basis of your insistence? That because math isn't physical, then physical reality can't be mathematical?

The fact that math works "partially" is irrelevant. That only means that our knowledge is still incomplete. You cannot prove that the parts which we haven't described yet won't be explained with a mathematical formula at some point. So again: where does your certainty come from? Our continuously progressing success at finding ways to describe reality mathematically seems to indicate otherwise. Your argument here resembles a "god of the gaps" argument against science being able to explain everything.

I'm not sure I've seen anything "explained" by math...except for math. Applied maths are descriptive...though they may "explain" in a limited sense relations/events, they don't explain what things are...and they can't.

So why does every single explanation that we have in science involve a mathematical description? Doesn't e = mc2 explain something about the nature of matter and energy that we didn't know previously? This is not merely a description. It's a revelation of the deep connection between matter and energy that relates at a very specific numerical quantity--the square of the speed of light. Why the square? Why a nice round number like that? It could have been anything . . . 1.837 times the speed of light, 14836.607 times the speed of light, etc.--at which point we really couldn't say that they're related to the speed of light at all. It is the very fact that it's related to c in a "nice round number" that allows us to say they are related in virtue of c! Only this! That *is* the relation!

Whether a curve is a straight line or not depends utterly on the shape of the universe you live in, and the perspective/context you are using to examine it. [[the straight line from the North pole to the equator is a curve...IF we lived in a curved universe, ALL straight lines would be curves and the only way to "straighten" them would be either in abstract space OR somehow "breaking" or exiting the space of the universe.]] SOME kind of math would work there...to an extent, just like here...but it would be different math because the physical order would cause different math to apply.

So what? How does this show that the universe isn't mathematical?

It is the nature of things that causes math to work as much as it does...not the nature of math that causes the universe to be what it is.

That's just another way of saying that the nature of things is mathematical!

I'm not saying that the nature of math causes the universe to be the way it is--it's not necessary for the basic observation that this is simply the way the universe is. However, it does beg the question: why is the universe conducive to a mathematical description? Something caused the universe to be this way. If there is not a deep connection between math and physical reality, there would be no reason to expect math to be so applicable.

[Zarathustra]

On your first

Yes, inconsistent rules applied with whimsy by those in power, based on their personal sense of humor, is hilarious. I guess if you're witty and colorful enough when you call someone dumb, it's okay. [Granted, I actually *do* think it's okay, but I also think it's okay to call some questions dumb--as even Vraith admits in his list of questions that are okay to call dumb: basically, those that question things that he takes as facts, and which are sometimes debated in a political context, such that the "dumb" insult is aimed at his political opponents. Then it's okay.]

On your second I think I agree. To my non mathematical mind, this makes sense ... math is a language we have developed to express the relationships between things, and describe objects, how they move, what they do.

Math is NOT a language we have developed to express the relationship between things. Math is an abstract formal system that we have developed in its own right, which we have learned--to our astonishment--just so happens to accurately describe things in the real world. It's a conjunction so surprising, it would be like discovering that planets move according to the rules of chess! (Which, as should be obvious, wasn't invented to describe the motions of planets.)

Kepler didn't invent ellipses to "describe" planetary orbits. We knew about this purely mathematical shape for centuries prior to that discovery. This is important: we don't first know the distinct "shape" of things and then go out trying to invent a mathematical description of this "shape." Knowing that "shape" of things occurs simultaneously with discovering its mathematical rendition. That's what discovering the shape *is:* rendering it in mathematical terms. Our knowledge of that shape only emerged from the data when we discovered which mathematical entity correctly predicted the position of the planets (i.e. the data).

There are real patterns in the universe, real order. Vraith calls it "physical" order. Fine, it manifests in distributions of matter. But we wouldn't "see" that order if not for the mathematical description. Why would that be, do you think? If that order is real, and it's physical, why isn't there something about it to "see" (or know) besides it's mathematical "shape?" And if we can't see it without the mathematical description, how does Vraith know it's there??? Before Newton discovered the laws of universal gravitation, no one else on earth knew about this order. But somehow Vraith knows things that the rest of humanity didn't even suspect!

Let's consider that order. We'll use a simplified version of the equations (i.e. Newtonian):

F=G[m(1)*m(2)]/r2

F is the gravitational force acting between two objects, m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects, r is the distance between the centers of their masses, and G is the gravitational constant. The order here--the "shape" of the relationship between the two masses--is literally the mathematical way those masses are related: directly proportionate to the product of the masses and inversely proportionate to the square of their distance of separation. Without that mathematical description, all we have is WF's vague "pull, pull," which tells us nothing about the underlying order, which Vraith admits is there.

This is why the knowledge of this order occurs simultaneously with finding the appropriate mathematical description. Until you know that equation, you don't know that order.* And if reality didn't have real properties which matched that mathematical "shape," then the mathematical description would be useless. It would be like saying that mountains are taller than trees, when this actually wasn't the case in the real world. But mountains are taller than trees. The fact that this sentence in the English language is true corresponds to a real fact in the world. Sure, we can say that the English language was invented by humans to describe things in the world, and that the world isn't English. But that doesn't change the fact that mountains are taller than trees! This is a physical fact, no less real than the existence of trees and mountains themselves. Likewise, it is a fact that gravity increases proportionate to the product of the masses and inversely proportionate to the square of their distance. "Square of" is no less real than "taller." Height doesn't possess more reality than distance considered as a multiple of itself (i.e. squared). These are simply two different ways to consider different quantities of space.

These patterns/structures are real features of the world. Saying that they're not mathematical is the same as saying that they don't exist. They are nothing if not mathematical. That is their order. "The square of the distance" is nothing else than "the square of the distance."

*[Granted, it's possible to know that order with greater precision, as Einstein showed us in revising Newton's equations, but that doesn't mean the order which Newton "saw" wasn't real. Newton's equations can be viewed as a special case of Einstein's more general equations.]

[Vraith]

with such certainty to be so adamant about it?

It is the nature of things that causes math to work as much as it does...not the nature of math that causes the universe to be what it is.

That's just another way of saying that the nature of things is mathematical!

I'm not saying that the nature of math causes the universe to be the way it is--

If there is not a deep connection between math and physical reality, there would be no reason to expect math to be so applicable.

On the first...
I'm certain and adamant?? Maybe...but given that, this little pot says "Right back at ya, King Kettle!"

On the second, not it is not the same thing at all. I'll get back to that in a second.

On the third---I'm glad you're not saying that...but it sure LOOKS like you're saying that quite often.

On the last...and I'm not saying mathematics isn't a totally amazing, fucking AWESOME, fantastically useful tool. But it's not at all surprising. Not much more surprising than the fact that we took the fact of sound and our ability to make it and fashioned meaningful languages from it. [[though not much LESS surprising, either...it is, after all, our minds that put the information to work, and created meaning...and minds are pretty surprising things]].

So...
A thing, let's call it an electron...[and let's ignore the strangeness of thingliness/duality that it can exist in...it's still real in a sense that is not wholly abstract/immaterial]...has these physical properties such as mass, spin, charge. Intrinsic in its bare existence. BECAUSE these properties are consistent, set, innate we can ENCODE that information in numbers/symbols. BECAUSE a property, negative charge for instance, has physical cause/effect/interactions, we can observe behaviors. BECAUSE all electrons all have the same properties, we can use the encoding, the math, to describe those behaviors---create equations.

But it is the consistency/coherence of physical properties---all particles of like kinds have the same intrinsic attributes is a HUGE one---that make the encoding possible.
The gravity equation works because mass is a property that can be encoded, velocity can be measured and encoded. Distance can be measured and encoded. Those physical things cause orbits....the encoding can be used to calculate/describe the shape...more or less elliptical, depending on the precise relationship...but MOSt of the relationships don't lead to orbits...the lead to merging or escape.

We're apparently mostly debating different interpretations/definitons of what "is" is.
I fully accept one kind: the adjectival/descriptive:
"Vraith is adamant" [exhibits a psycho-behavioral property [[which may or may not be intrinsic/definitive]] somewhat similar to highly committed or stubborn]]
But not another:
"Vraith is adamant" [a literal, I believe, and old French IIRC, definition "is [or is composed of] diamond."

The map is not the territory, a correspondence is not an identity.

As a side note, a lot of what you're saying seems odd in that much as you abhor material reductionism, several of the arguments here look like, if followed all the way out, a sort of mathematical reductionism.

Second side note, there is actually a book that goes deep [and often deeper than I could follow the implications of back then, and probably many I couldn't now] into the mathematics/science relationship.
It's been a long time, I had to look it up...ended up finding it mentioned on the wiki page on mathematical philosophy. Science without Numbers.

Last note...questions/statements here by you, me, and others are way the fuck far from settled issues. Just glance at the Wiki on Philosophy of Mathematics for an intro to some of the relevant stuff [and not particularly on topic, too]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph ... ctionalism

[Zarathustra]

V, sure, we're both adamant. But you have no evidence for your position, which makes your certainty strange. You say there is order in the universe, but how do you know? The only way we know about this order is by discovering its mathematical form. Until then, it's not known as order. So there is no knowledge of order beyond mathematical explanations that correctly capture this order. And, I believe, that is because this order is fundamentally mathematical. In fact, I don't see how it can be order and not be mathematical in it's form.

I do think I understand your resistance to this idea (though I think it's a misconception). Let me try to capture your position with an analogy, and you tell me if I've captured it accurately.

Analog vs digital music production. On the one hand, sound is analog waves. It is not binary bits of 1s and 0. And yet, we can approximate an analog wave by "slicing" it into smaller and smaller pieces, and digitizing the amplitude of this wave at any particular point. The higher the sampling rate (i.e. the smaller the slices, or the more tightly packed they are), the more accurately we'll reproduce the original wave.

But digital doesn't ever fully capture the analog wave. That's why we seek higher and higher resolution. Hi-rez audio. It's awesome, but apparently not as good as a really good record player. And all this is because at its root, sound is not digital.

So far so good? Ok. The analogy comes in by saying that "sound is not digital" is analogous to saying "the universe isn't mathematical." In digitizing anything--whether audio or visual--we're turning parts of the world into bits of code. I suspect that you see mathematical description of the universe in this way, especially with your use of the word "encoding."

As far as that analogy goes, I agree with you! Digitizing or encoding reality imposes an interpretation on it that is not inherent in reality itself. It's a copy. A reproduction. And at its core, that reproduction is entirely alien to the reality it is trying to reproduce.

It seems that you are saying math is like this.

However, mathematical explanations are not like this. Digitized representations of audio or video don't explain those things or capture their nature. A sound wave does actually have a mathematical description: wavelength = wave velocity divided by frequency. This completely captures the entire analog nature of a wave, rather merely a digital approximation.

Damnit, my battery is dying. More later . . . .

[Vraith]

I appreciate the analogy, not because it is what I meant, but because I can at least follow the path of inference that led you to make it, and it makes sense, AND it's a smooth move to bring music back into the thread about music.

Of course math has order.
And any ordered system will be describable by SOME kind of math.

I'm kinda bored with this topic for now. I'll just make a note that in a structural/form way I'm making a SIMILAR type of argument to that which YOU love in the consciousness discussions.
You kept saying that the content of it MUST be immaterial for various reasons. The pure physics [as we understand it now, anyway] cannot explain/contain it.
I'm saying that all the math is surface/behavioral/descriptive---that the things it is talking about have existance/nature/instantiation that the math not only DOESn't contain/explain, it CANNOT do so. Not only that, those things aren't even relevant to the math---but they ARE relevant, definitive, essential to things, including beings.

I'm not quite as certain as you think, though pretty certain...because I have a universe full of evidence. You do know that pretty much all the Math-Quantum FAILED until peeps said "Well, shit, let's dump these mathematical values for a bunch of things that the math says they SHOULD have, and treat them like real properties not just abstractions with no physical meaning, and sub in the measured ones, and lets set a limit where we stop calculating cuz stuff gets impossible after that."

[Zarathustra]

I appreciate the analogy, not because it is what I meant, but because I can at least follow the path of inference that led you to make it, and it makes sense, AND it's a smooth move to bring music back into the thread about music.

I'm saying that all the math is surface/behavioral/descriptive---that the things it is talking about have existance/nature/instantiation that the math not only DOESn't contain/explain, it CANNOT do so. Not only that, those things aren't even relevant to the math---but they ARE relevant, definitive, essential to things, including beings.

What are those "things" that are beyond math? When we discover that e = mc2, is this just the "surface" of matter and energy? No, it's a glimpse into their deepest nature. The fact that they can be converted into each other, and that the conversion can quantified in relation to the speed of light, surely isn't just a "description."

Also, if the universe isn't mathematical, and you think that consciousness is reducible to matter, then how is it that consciousness can do math? If there is no connection between matter and math other than "description" or "surface," how is it that the laws of physics and chemistry produce arrangements of matter that produce math? If consciousness is reducible, then math literally comes from matter. But how can this be if the universe is not mathematical? How does it produce instantiations of this thing (math) that you're saying isn't involved in its instantiations? If math is purely abstract and has no connection to matter, then the real question is: how does matter produce things that are purely abstract and immaterial?

Clearly, math happens. And it happens in the physical universe, rather than some Platonic realm. So there must be something about the physical universe that is not inherently inimical to abstraction. It clearly has a level to it that is abstract, and we have direct access to that level itself. It happens within us.

Now, what's amazing is that we can redirect this abstract level back upon matter itself, and learn previously unknown truths about matter. But we wouldn't know those truths if they didn't manifest in ways that are inherently dualistic: concrete and abstract. Matter isn't just instantiations of stuff. It is also instantiations of order/relations that are themselves mathematical. The square of the speed of light isn't some object in the universe, and yet, it is a real relation between matter and energy. Matter and energy embody this abstraction (paradoxically) in their deepest nature. They would not be what they are without it.

[Lazy Luke]

Why can we say "silly" but not "dumb?" Is there a list of safe insults? I think the distinction is rather arbitrary

It could be arbitrary cuz I'm the boss and I don't like dumb, and silly amuses me.

Or it could have just been I thought it was funny, and you could lighten up.
L-L is a bit quirky in case you've never noticed, and Fin doesn't seem exactly fragile, and I thought they'd probably notice the arbitrariness you so helpfully pointed out.

Safe insults! Quirky!
Well I guess you should really be listening to the
music in order to dig the verse:


Ludwig Van Beethovan

Oh, bliss!
Bliss and heaven!
It was gorgeousness and
gorgeosity made flesh.

It was like a bird
of rarest spun heaven metal.
Or like silvery wine
flowing in a spaceship
gravity all nonsense now.

As I slooshied,
I knew such lovely pictures.

- Alex Delarge