Is The Universe a Closed System.

[Vraith]

Remember that weird thread we had where we discussed the thing about nothing being able to be said that was gramatically correct that did not have meaning - well this is the same, but with maths; surely with Universes the difficult is done at once, the impossible just takes a little longer .

Heh...strangely, I don't recall that thread/discussion at all.
Did I say there that it is absolutely possible to create perfectly grammatically correct sentences that contain no meaning? Cuz it is, so I should have.

Concepts/descriptions/content/context/etc. will always have some relationships with each other---but there will also always be spaces/gaps/intrinsic disconnections. Things within each field that are beyond impossible in the others. Even WITHIN fields there are such. How many different kinds of mathematics are there? [I don't know---but there are a lot, and probably always more to come.] And many of them, while still being useful and knowledge-full, are irreconcilable with other forms.

And I think I've said before: Math/Feynman diagrams may not care about the direction of particles in time---but that doesn't mean the material universe[s] don't care.

H---in the Deutsch book several of us read, he actually said that if something about our material universe [I can't recall what it was now, I'd have to go look] turned out to be true, the 'branes/multiverses/etc. wouldn't have to exist---because the laws in our single universe would be different in different sectors. Roughly. Something like that. Maybe peter recalls more accurately.

[[I always forget where that quote comes from...it's the slogan of a Corp in some Heinlein book, right?]]

[peter]

Physics and epistemiology really do seem to cross swords at these extreme edges of the Universe don't they. It would be a damn usefull thing for all Cosmologists/Atomic Physicists to have a good grounding in this discipline - it could really introduce some clarity into the area [and that would be a first for philosophy except perhaps in the case of Theology ].

I do remember Deutsch saying that V. - but not to the extent I could elaborate upon what you say. I [like Hashi I think] have trouble envisioning a Universe where it's law's fail to be constant across it's whole expanse [as opposed to different Universes having different Law's which does not seem to be such an assault on my reasoning]n- but if D. says it could be so then hey - it's his area not mine.

[re the Grammer thing, I'll dig up the example I gave once before that is a thing of true beauty and then we'll see what we see ]

[peter]

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23095&highlight=colorless

Off topic I know but try that V.

[Vraith]

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23095&highlight=colorless

Off topic I know but try that V.

Ah, yes, now I recall. That Chomsky is famous in the field.
But look at what you have to do to make the meaning [and I'm not opposed to making meaning...much of poetry for at least a hundred years includes that aspect/process].
The sentence strikes us as if it SHOULD have meaning. Partly cuz it is grammatically correct, partly cuz it is aesthetically pleasing [at least to me].

So, unlike a normal sentence, which refers to some frame/fact/situation---and can be measured as true or not, as descriptive/related to the "real," or not, many other judgments, in the case of THIS sentence, and those like it, we have to create/invent the reality/frame/context in which it becomes meaningful.

There's always a little bit of that construction in all communication I think...but the distance of the reference, the contortions we have to go through matter.

Like: Abe Lincoln has been a popular dude lately.
So, there's the factual [or as close as can be] biographies/histories.
Within the last 5 years or so, there's been at least one by a Lib, and one by a Con. Abe comes across as reasonably the same in both---but so much is different.

Then there's the recent film. That verges sometimes closer to what peeps are calling "creative non-fiction." [[Selma film did that, too]].
We have to cross more "gaps" in the second than the first. More abstraction/metaphor work.

Then there's the one where Abe is a vampire hunter or somesuch.
At this point, Abe isn't much of Abe---he's becoming symbolic/metaphorical himself. Grammatically, "Abe Lincoln was a Vampire hunter." is perfect. It just happens to be false.
[[here's a question that pops up in my head: can a false statement be meaningful? I'd say not by itself.]]
But we can make it carry more meaning [and be true] by shifting to the frame of the film [which some of my friends say was pretty good.]

And the next step [and another reason I chose Abe]---at one point, I had an idea for a piece in a book, where Lincoln27 "turns" to Einstein17 and cracks a joke about the food. [[both of them are brains in a bottle created from DNA samples. Lincoln really is the 27th of him, E the 17th. E17 goes crazy, BTW.]]

Distance, reference, gaps...and Chomsky is just further down that road.

And, in a way, this IS topical. [even if I didn't mean to go on like that, or get to here when I started typing]

Because I think it's possible, perhaps, that these gaps, this recurring reference shifting, the way systems/thoughts/concepts are both entangled/overlapping AND disparate/mutually destructive [which is true of math as well as ordinary language]...this kludge nature of knowledge, that is apparently inherent, may be a hint that the system is not closed.

[peter]

Thats a very interesting post V. That sort of 'rippling out' from a central core of ....mmm......[struggling to put this] unknowable 'isness' [ie what actually 'is' as opposed to what we think 'is' or percieve as 'is'. We could call this unknowable 'isness' Truth.

[Example; who am I? Am I who I think I am; Am I the sum total of what all the people who know me and see me think I am [ie a cumulative 'profit and loss' balance sheet of opinions about who I am; Am I some other thing unknowable except to the being who can see the true [Platonic form like] 'isness' of what is.]

As you say - everything is contextual in respect of it's meaning and some constructions require more work to unfold their meaning - and perhaps this is what gives them their beauty [again the similarity to mathematical constructions is there]. Truth is like a diamond - it can be viewed from the perspective of many different facets, but the trick is to see them all as one.

So much [if not all] of life is like this isn't it - this 'kludge' of overlapping understanding/seeing/percieving/knowing/existing. No reason why physics should be any different!

[Vraith]

Thats a very interesting post V.

That sort of 'rippling out' from a central core of ....mmm......[struggling to put this] unknowable 'isness' [ie what actually 'is' as opposed to what we think 'is' or percieve as 'is'.

We could call this unknowable 'isness' Truth.

First, thanks. It was fun.

Second, yea...the ding and sich has been a problem for a while, and will be likely forever [unless we actually do ascend/transcend to some crazy meta-realm]. Kant was the main guy/first guy to "name" it, I think---but it was lurking in thought long before that, bugging a fair number of deep thinkers in many areas.
It's even one of the reasons that underlie what Deutsch kept saying: that science isn't about proof, it is about good explanations.

As a quibble, I wouldn't call it Truth, though. Truth has too much baggage, and too much misuse. And some inaccuracy, partly due to the baggage and misuse.
For instance, if you see 1+1=2 and 1+1=3...do you think one is true, the other false? Kinda sorta, maybe---but most peeps most of the time don't think that. They think the first correct, the second incorrect. They think in terms of mistakes. And the mistake isn't in the thing written there. The mistake is in the process somewhere.

But as soon as you start talking about Truth---now you're in the realm that yields tyranny, war. And, historically, folk have gone to war for things at least as trivial as the mistake in that addition.

[peter]

The placing of items on the alter table in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem being a case in point I believe.

On which rather topical note I head off to start a thread on a couple of worrying little articles I read last night pertaining to the Crimea and South China Sea and activities occuring currently therein.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I'll have to go pull out Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstedter when I get home this evening and turn to the chapter on meaning and messages. In his example, we send a record player with a recording of Bach on it to an alien world. They receive the package and can probably figure out how to make the record player work--they know that a message has been sent--but they may not be able to figure out the meaning of the message: will Bach's music mean anything to them?
Chomsky's sentence hits upon another topic closely related to this that the two of you mention: just because a message has been sent and you know that a message has been sent does the message have to have any meaning? One trick the old cryptographers used to keep a code unbroken--and I have no reason to suspect that they don't still do this today--was to send a gibberish message. Even if the code had been broken successfully when the recipient decodes the gibberish he will think he has made a mistake. Of course, this only works until the code is definitely broken--if you decode a string of actual messages then you receive gibberish you double-check yourself to make sure you haven't made a mistake but you can probably guess that it was meant to be gibberish.

It is easy to make the statement "1 + 1 = 3" true if you alter the meaning of "+". Rather than the standard addition operation on integers, if you redefine "+" so that the operation now says "a + b = a + (the usual addition operation) 2*b" then assign a = 1 and b = 1 you will find that 1 + 1 = 3 is a true statement.

[peter]

A book I must read hashi, at the earliest opportunity! I'd entirely forgotten it's existence and a significant hole in my reading list to date!

[Vraith]

It is easy to make the statement "1 + 1 = 3" true if you alter the meaning of "+".

Yea...cuz the truth/meaning isn't in the symbols per se [though agreed upon symbols can communicate information]...its in the processes. Which, by definition, means in relationships/relative. And also/still in construction/reconstruction.
That applies in part to the Aliens getting Bach. It may be [most likely will be] meaningless at first...or they may have a different psycho/sensory/aesthetic history, so it is offensive/ugly/displeasing.
[[heh, there was some book that had aliens that thought we were weird because most of us humans really only "get" and care about positive integers...and they considered positive integers just a minor quirk, pretty much not worth bothering about. Which is true, in its way. IIRC, a fringe-religious group among them considered the whole numbers IMMORAL in some way/for some reason....]]
BUT---in time, and especially with contact/communication, they can LEARN to get it, through understanding the processes---construction and reconstruction.

peter: you absolutely do have to get that book. I absolutely have to get a new copy and re-read it, too.

[peter]

Got it being delivered to my local library in the next day or two V., and will be [no doubt] brining my own particular slant on it to the Watch in short order thereafter!

[Ur Dead]

Open-closed
An open system within an expanding closed sphere.
Or open ended system.
Could be we are a universe within something else's fireworks show.
A dust speck on a policeman uniform about to be casted off.
The answer is 42.