last edit on
11/27/2022 10:01:05 AM
A scientist deserving this name endeavors to extract the most correct belief from a given experience and to gather the most appropriate experience in order to establish the correct belief regarding a given question.
George Polya, Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning
Chris Langan said:What I am going to argue now is that what we know about quantum gravity — what we have seen in earlier posts — is telling us that the Scientific Method itself is perhaps the fundamental ‘metaequation’ of physics. To see what I have in mind, consider playing chess but forgetting or not being aware of the rules of chess (perhaps because you learned them at a very early age). Then as you play, you experience the reality of chess, the frustration of being checkmated and so forth. In this sense the joining of a club, the acceptance or rules or constraints ‘creates’ a bit of reality, the reality of chess.
What if Physical Reality is no different, created by the rules of looking at the world as a Scientist? In other words, just maybe, as we search for the ultimate theory of physics we are in fact rediscovering our own assumptions in being Scientists, the Scientific Method?
To explain why I think so, we need to think about the nature of representation. Imagine a bunch of artists gathered around a scene X, each drawing their own representation of it from their angle, style and ethos. Any one bit x of the scene is represented by the artist f of the collection as maybe a fleck of paint on their canvas. Now, the amazing thing — and this is possibly the deepest thing I know in all of physics and mathematics — is that one could equally well view the above another way in which the ‘real thing’ is not the scene X, which might after all be just a useless bowl of fruit, but the collection, X* of artists. So it is not bits x of X being represented but rather it is the artists f in X*. Each point x of the fruit bowl can be viewed as a representation of X* in which the artist f is represented by the same fleck of paint as we had before. By looking at how different artists treat a single point x of the fruit bowl we can ‘map out’ the structure of the collection X*.
What this is is a deep duality between observer and observed which is built into the nature of representation. Whenever any mathematical object f represents some structure X we can equally well view an element x of X as representing f as an element of some other structure X*. The same numbers f(x) are written now as x(f). In mathematics we say that X and X* are dually paired. Importantly one is not more ‘real’ than the other.
So within mathematics we have this deep observer-observed or measurer-measured duality symmetry. We can reverse roles. But is the reversed theory equivalent to the original? In general no; the bowl of fruit scene is not equivalent to the collection of artists. But in physics perhaps yes, and perhaps such a requirement, which I see as coming out of the scientific method, is a key missing ingredient in our theoretical understanding.
Thrall to the Wire of Self-Excited Circuit.
Chris Langan said:What I am going to argue now is that what we know about quantum gravity — what we have seen in earlier posts — is telling us that the Scientific Method itself is perhaps the fundamental ‘metaequation’ of physics. To see what I have in mind, consider playing chess but forgetting or not being aware of the rules of chess (perhaps because you learned them at a very early age). Then as you play, you experience the reality of chess, the frustration of being checkmated and so forth. In this sense the joining of a club, the acceptance or rules or constraints ‘creates’ a bit of reality, the reality of chess.
What if Physical Reality is no different, created by the rules of looking at the world as a Scientist? In other words, just maybe, as we search for the ultimate theory of physics we are in fact rediscovering our own assumptions in being Scientists, the Scientific Method?
To explain why I think so, we need to think about the nature of representation. Imagine a bunch of artists gathered around a scene X, each drawing their own representation of it from their angle, style and ethos. Any one bit x of the scene is represented by the artist f of the collection as maybe a fleck of paint on their canvas. Now, the amazing thing — and this is possibly the deepest thing I know in all of physics and mathematics — is that one could equally well view the above another way in which the ‘real thing’ is not the scene X, which might after all be just a useless bowl of fruit, but the collection, X* of artists. So it is not bits x of X being represented but rather it is the artists f in X*. Each point x of the fruit bowl can be viewed as a representation of X* in which the artist f is represented by the same fleck of paint as we had before. By looking at how different artists treat a single point x of the fruit bowl we can ‘map out’ the structure of the collection X*.
What this is is a deep duality between observer and observed which is built into the nature of representation. Whenever any mathematical object f represents some structure X we can equally well view an element x of X as representing f as an element of some other structure X*. The same numbers f(x) are written now as x(f). In mathematics we say that X and X* are dually paired. Importantly one is not more ‘real’ than the other.
So within mathematics we have this deep observer-observed or measurer-measured duality symmetry. We can reverse roles. But is the reversed theory equivalent to the original? In general no; the bowl of fruit scene is not equivalent to the collection of artists. But in physics perhaps yes, and perhaps such a requirement, which I see as coming out of the scientific method, is a key missing ingredient in our theoretical understanding.
I am sympathetic to this kind of metaphysics.
This view is very similar to that of Hofstadter. Given Hofstadter was trained in traditional academia he is far easier to read than Lagan, so I can see Lagan getting a bad rep given he has created his jargon in isolation thereby making him more obscure.
Both of them are rediscovering old ideas however. Christian mysticism and neoplatonism details this idea of theory being shaped by a metaequation. While for Lagan its method and linguistic assumptions for old mystics and philosophers of Christianity its the intelligibility via forms.
Form what I have been reading today I am very skeptical of his metalanguage being functional but I find him a great gateway to very old ideas that moderns should pay much more attention to.
Honestly, only by understanding something like Lagan is saying can you really begin to grasp ancient religion beyond the contemporary materialistic view.
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more they will hate those who speaks it."
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"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act"
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- George Orwell.
If only those on the receiving end of the truth were open to listening...
If only.
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