A theory that proves everything (E) — Agent Smith

First of all, an explanation is not a proof. You changed the wording from the title.
"God did it" is arguably an explanation, but it isn't presented as a proof of anything. The statement makes absolutely zero predictions, so hardly qualifies as a theory.
An explanation is not a theory. A theory is not a proof. A theorem is a proof, but you rarely see a theorem in physics.

A better example is the long list of various quantum interpretation, which at least do make predictions. Problem is, they all make the exact same predictions, so they too do not qualify as theories, but again only as explanations.

A theory that proves everything (E) has to be compatible with both P and ~P — Agent Smith

Where do you get this nonsense? A theory of everything would make a prediction about everything, but any given prediction would be P or ~P, but not both.

Another example from quantum theory (not interpretations this time). The theory predicts probability of observing certain events. No perfect theory of everything would do better than that. An atom will decay with half-life such and such, but a theory that predicts exactly when a given atom will do so will be quickly falsified,.

For any system S, any complete simulation of S, S', must be more more complex than S — hypericin

Agree, but a virtual reality (BIV) only needs to provide one artificial feed of experience to the experiencer in the vat, so to speak. It doesn't require an inordinate amount of resources. I'm not suggesting I support such a view, but the complexity argument doesn't seem to shoot this one down directly.

Most of the Brain-in-Vat theorists presume that the experiencer is somehow still a brain (a pink wet gloppy thing with some wires). There is zero evidence of that. There is zero evidence of anything for that matter if the experience it is being fed is all lies.

You seem to be answering the argument, "How can a computer be so powerful as to simulate the whole universe, when the computer is a part of the universe?" I am not making that argument.

This is apparently about an actual simulation (as opposed to a VR premise), and it presumes that the simulation is being performed by a universe with the same rules as the one being simulated. There's no reason to assume that since there's no evidence for it.

I mean, our physics can be simulated at best down to the classical level, not the quantum level. To do that, you need something with more capability, with completely different rules.

You only have to simulate enough to fool the sentient beings — hypericin

How would a physics simulation know when a particular state of simulated material qualifies as a sentient being requiring being fooled? It means the physics must change depending on what is measuring it.

Most people would agree that there are objects with a location in space and time and exist independently of conscious beings. — Hello Human

That's a classical intuition, and is loosely a statement of realism, not materialism. I personally don't accept this since I prefer the principle of locality (another classical intuition), and it has been shown that they cannot both be true.
Neither principle has anything to do with 'conscious' things, which is why I say 'loosely'.

Consciousness does play a role. A conscious being can only observe a universe with conscious beings in it, or artificially be given a point of view into a universe without such a being.

René Descartes’ famous quote: “ I think therefore I am”, expresses an idea that is often used to support the idealists’ position: we cannot doubt our existence. — Hello Human

Fallacious conclusion on several points, and he wasn't pushing idealism, and it doesn't seem to refute materialism in any way. Materialists also suggest that they both think and exist.

As far as I know, materialism suggests that material is objectively fundamental. Everything is made of it in some way or the other. I think quantum field theory has pretty much made a hash of the position because try as them might, they've never found any actual material.

In other words, if I were to simulate a quantum universe, I would start with a wave function of the universe that spans all of 'simulated time' and then as an external observer, I would make a measurement at some particular simulation time to reduce the wave function to a definite state at that instant. — keystone

That would be supernatural interference with the universe. The Wigner interpretation suggests something like that.

Such a measurement constrains the simulated reality in a way that I can deduce aspects of the history preceding that simulated moment. In this sense, the history follows the measurement, not the other way around.

Maybe try RQM instead. It doesn't involve supernatural causation, but it does involve reverse ontology such as you suggests. A measurement of an object defines its existence relative to the measurer, and the object measured is in the past light cone of the measurement, thus a sort of reverse causality where the existence of things is dependent on future measurement.

Not sure how you'd go about simulating a wave function in this way. There is no objective collapse, and even the simplest system would defy computation by classical means.

It's even what a strict standard interpretation tells you. — Landoma1

Which interpretation do you consider 'standard'?

Measurement doesn't affect anything in the past. — Andrew M

It does in some counterfactual interpretations like Bohmian mechanics. That's a pretty major interpretation.

I assume that massless photonic energy is part of the 32% matter you mentioned. I think I just got sidestepped by the label 'matter' placed next to the 32% as I assumed matter to mean 'has mass.' — universeness

We seem to be talking past each other. 'Matter' has mass, and is the Magenta line in the pic I posted a few posts up. A sixth of that matter is Baryonic matter, which means, via mostly the EM effect, you can see and feel it. The rest of it is dark matter which you can neither see nor feel since it does not interact with the EM field.
I don't know what you mean by 'massless photonic energy'. Perhaps you mean the radiation (the blue line in the pic. It arguably has mass since it has momentum. If it goes into a black hole, it stays there and adds its energy to the black hole's mass.

Ok, I just didn't understand the significance of 'cosmological frame.'

I'm speaking of a different coordinate system. Inertial frames can be used, but technically the laws of inertial frames only apply to Minkowskian (flat) spacetime, and on the whole, the universe isn't Minkowskian.

Cosmological coordinates, as I'm using them, typically refers to comoving coordinates with proper distances, as opposed to comoving coordinates with comoving distances, which is yet another way of assigning values to distant events.

I can get into more detail, but let's just pick an example of the most distant known galaxy *: In inertial coordinates, (in Earth's inertial frame) that galaxy cannot move faster than c (per special relativity) and is moving away from us at about 0.98c. The light we see was emitted from about 6 billion light years (GLY) away, and it is currently about 13.5 GLY away.
In comoving coordinates (an expanding metric), that same galaxy is currently about 31 GLY away, is receding at about 2.3c (technically a rapidity, not a velocity), and the light that we see now was emitted only about 2.5 GLY proper distance from here.

You see all kinds of distances to super-distant objects posted on the web, but in the absence of a coordinate system or some other statement of in what way the quoted figure was computed, the statement is meaningless. Clue: Distances to things is often not expressed in either of these methods called light-travel time, which is not a valid method at all. There's been articles written why that's the worst possible choice.


* I suspect J-Webb telescope is going to break the record for spotting an even more distant object. CMB doesn't count, it not being an object.

if 68% is undetectable dark energy — universeness

Dark energy is detectable, else it would not be part of our theories. It isn't directly detectable, but neither is any other force/energy by that argument.

where is the detectable energy like electromagnetism? Not part of the 32% matter I assume?

Part of the 5% baryonic matter, the only energy that participates in EM.

New 'matter' is also created is it not? new stars, new galaxy formations, does this not also add to the density per unit area of space or is it balanced by star deaths etc?

Birth and death of stars doesn't create or destroy matter. Stars are made of pre-existing matter. Trivial amounts of matter are formed by processes like pair production, but such matter isn't long lived.
Matter is definitely destroyed (converted to radiation) via nuclear combustion.

I know what you mean but I think science makes a great effort to explain what IS, and rightly so. This will always be demanded of science imo.

Agree. That's why I'm here, and not just on the science sites. I'm a moderator on one science site, but I mostly have to deal with cranks and spammers.

"in a cosmological frame, ... a moving rock will slow over time"
— noAxioms
Surely this is not true in a frictionless vacuum, like space. — universeness

I had to put back the context you took out. Newton's laws (the rock moves at the same speed forever, what Carroll is talking about) works in an inertial metric, but not an expanding one. It's why no galaxy has a peculiar velocity (speed relative to the cosmic frame) much greater than a couple percent of c, despite the fact that they usually have something pulling (accelerating) them in some preferred direction. Virgo cluster is our most significant influence, and our peculiar motion (the motion of our local group relative to that cosmic frame) is indeed in that direction, but that motion is slowing as Virgo grows further away. Our local group will never reach even that, let alone the bigger masses like the Great Attractor or the much more massive Shapley Attractor, all in more or less the same direction, or the Dipole Repeller in the opposite direction giving us a push. All that force in the same direction and yet we're slowing (relative to that cosmic frame).

So does the dark energy effectively add to the positive 'push' of the 5% matter content of the universe? So that the totality of energy from the vacuum > 0.
There is also the issue of dark matter? Does that proposed 95% of all 'matter' not also not add to the positive push and gravitational pull of the vacuum? — universeness

The numbers, as I know them, is 68% dark energy, 32% matter and a smidge of radiation. Of that 32% matter, about a sixth is normal matter and the rest is dark matter.

As Landoma1 says, dark energy doesn't dilute with expansion, but matter does, so as we expand, the density of matter drops, as does its total percentage.

About 6 billion years ago the dark energy and total matter balanced and expansion was linear. It has been accelerating from that 'stop' ever since.

And no, I'd not be able to explain vacuum energy better than the sites you visit.

Wayfarer's advise and post this as a question on quora.

I hesitate to use quora since they've no mechanism to propagate better answers to the top. There is a lot of very wrong info on quora. I look things up on say physics stack exchange, but don't have an account there.

I’m no authority on physics but I’m interested in the philosophical implications. — Wayfarer

That's pretty much my purpose in delving into the phyiscs. I want to know it well enough to glean the implications, but not so well that it's critical that I learn tex.

science does not know what energy is. — universeness

Science is in the business of predicting what something does, and not so much declaring what something is.

That the total energy is not zero. — Landoma1

No so sure that is meaningful. For one, most kinds of energy are not conserved in a cosmological frame. In the absence of a net force, a moving rock will slow over time. Light energy drops as expansion stretches out its wavelength. But negative energy also tends towards zero, so you can't know if total energy is on the rise or not, or maybe is always zero.

That's because physics forum gives short shrift to anything the classify as philosophy. I've posted there a bit. — Wayfarer

They have a whole subforum for quantum interpretations, and yes, it's all philosophy in there. But they have standards for what constitutes an authoritative source, so say Everett's paper on Relative State Formulation is an authoritative source, but the wiki page on MWI is not. The latter is much easier to understand, and actually gets it reasonably correct.

If you don't know what relativity of simultaneity (RoS) is, then you don't have the tools to assess the validity of my criticism of the wording used in the article.
— noAxioms
To do with reference frames and the relativity of time of measurement, I guess. — Wayfarer

It does, but you seem to be on thin ground to be agreeing with a pop site written for the lay public instead of say grad students. Argument from authority doesn’t help. These PhDs write differently for different audiences.

Per RoS, there is no unambiguous meaning to ‘instantly’ at a distance. Relative to a local measurement event, there are different times at the distant location, each simultaneous with the measurement event, but relative to different frames. That’s RoS in a nutshell.

If one asserts objective time and space (there’s only one time on say Mars that is actually simultaneous with a given moment on Earth), it is a rejection of Einstein’s theory which posits only that all frames are equally valid and speed of light is c in any inertial frame. Neither of those is true if one posits an absolute frame, which necessarily implies light speed being something other than c in any other frame.

That’s all besides the point of this entanglement topic. The point I’m really trying to get at is the implied assumption of Bohmian mechanics in the article. Only in Bohmian mechanics are the asserted statements true, and indeed, in that interpretation, locality is (and must be) violated. For the PhD to never explicitly call this out is bad form. There are other interpretations, including many well known that hold to the principle of locality.

I can only get information from popular science, like Quanta Magazine and PBS Space Time, but the writers in those media are qualified in physics, in fact both have PhD's in the subject. Nowhere have you referred to any sources, so I'm inclined to believe them over you.

Such articles are not accepted as evidence at a site like physicsforums.com . A college level textbook is, but most college courses teach quantum mechanics theory and barely touch on the interpretations, which is not theory.

Choose between what principles?

Principle of locality and principle of counterfactual definiteness, the latter being summarized in wiki thus:
In quantum mechanics, counterfactual definiteness (CFD) is the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed (i.e., the ability to assume the existence of objects, and properties of objects, even when they have not been measured).

The articles you quote all speak meaningfully of unmeasured things, and rightfully drive that to demonstration of contradiction of locality.

The Copenhagen interpretation are philosophical speculations about what it means.

Agree, but the other interpretations are specific speculations about what it means. I’m saying there’s not one speculation that is the official Copenhagen speculation. With the other interpretations, one can point to one paper that defines the initial (and sometimes revised) view.

It is my understanding that the Copenhagen Interpretation is not a "philosophical speculation." It represents a refusal to speculate. Metaphysics pared down to a minimum. — Clarky

This sounds close to the mark.

The video you provided talked about the violation of realism versus the violation of locality. According to the narrator, if realism is violated, but locality isn't, there is no superluminal causality or communication. Or is it the other way around. Please don't ask me to explain, — Clarky

I didn’t watch any videos, but that sounds right: CFD vs locality. Yes, if locality isn’t violated, there isn’t superluminal causality. That’s what locality means.
With CFD, there’s not only superluminal causation, there’s reverse causation, with effect demonstrated years before the cause.

It is meaningless to assign reality to the Universe in the absence of observation.
— Neils Bohr

This is a rejection of CFD, but if CFD is accepted (as your articles do), then that’s a different speculation. CFD can’t be proved, but neither can it be falsified.

Here, it is explained, "object permanence" is being questioned. It is typical of the 'copenhagen interpretation'. — Wayfarer

Copenhagen indeed does not typically list CFD as a premise (on wiki say), but I went hunting for an article you might like, and they all say different things, and the vast majority of the articles I found made meaningful statements about unmeasured things.

Quantum entanglement—physics at its strangest—has moved out of this world and into space. In a study that shows China's growing mastery of both the quantum world and space science, a team of physicists reports that it sent eerily intertwined quantum particles from a satellite to ground stations separated by 1200 kilometers, smashing the previous world record.

They put a beam splitter in space. Is that so remarkable? There is no maximum distance to entanglement, so ‘smashing’ some kind of distance record seems news worthy only to the lay public. I’ve seem similar claims of smashing the speed record, which, per RoS, is utterly meaningless.

So, you're disputing that this is evidence of 'spooky action at a distance'?

Yes, for the reasons I posted, not one of which has been refuted by somebody who understands the basics.

I don’t deny the correlation at a distance. I deny that this is necessarily any kind of ‘action’, which would constitute a falsification of, among other things, all of relativity theory. There are several interpretations that ‘speculate’ local physics that account for the correlation. None of them presume CFD (yet again, with a single loophole exception, which is superdeterminsim)

Why can't reality be non-local? — Landoma1

It can be. Nobody has proven locality. It just hasn’t been falsified.

I don't believe so. You haven't read the evidence about it. If it was as trivial a matter as you're suggesting, then there would be nothing to discuss. — Wayfarer

I'm talking about relativity of simultaneity (RoS). If you don't know what that is, then you don't have the tools to assess the validity of my criticism of the wording used in the article. If you do know what it means, then you know that the article wording implies absolute simultaneity, something often done in pop articles but not science papers. This is why you don't get your science from pop articles, despite the credentials of the author.

The instantaneous nature of the correlation is precisely the point at issue.

The correlation of the measurements is simultaneous (very different from instantaneous) in a few frames and not in most. The absence of a frame specification renders the assertion meaningless, and even if they did supply the frame specification, they've still only demonstrated simultaneity of correlated measurements, not action-reaction.

Whether the measurement of one changes the state of the other is another point at issue.

That of course has not been demonstrated. If for instance the measurement of one collapsed the state of the other, the abrupt cessation of superposition of the remote particles could be measured and that would constitute FTL communication and it would be news indeed. But no such thing has ever been demonstrated.

Copenhagen ...
— noAxioms

I'm not a physicist, but based on the plain English accounts that I've read of this matter, of which there are quite a few, I don't think this is so. If you would like to validate your interpretation with some sources (other than technical physics papers), please do.

Copenhagen was originated as an epistemological view: Back in the early days, quantum physics defied classic description, so they came up with a set of rules about what could be known about a system. You could have two people standing next to each other and one would know the result of a measurement and the other not. No metaphysical interpretation would suggest that the superposition of the measured system itself was collapsed for one of the two people and not the other simply pending verbal communication.

So Copenhagen was perhaps a poor example because there is now much writing about it, and many contradictory metaphysical assertions all bearing the same name. Metaphysically, I don't think there is one accepted version and no one accepted author of the interpretation. I don't think there is an accepted scientific paper that IS the Copenhagen interpretation. As for articles written in understandable language, you can find ones that support just about any assertion you like just like the Bible can be used to justify whatever evil you have in mind today. So I'll not link to one that supports my locality assertion since you can equally find one that asserts otherwise.

Perhaps for a start you could explain why Einstein objected to the suggestion of entanglement with the word 'spooky'.

Einstein was a realist and very held to the principle that there was an objective state of the universe even in the absence of measurement. But his theory of relativity strongly suggests he held to (heck, he defined) the principle of locality, that cause must precede effect. Bell showed that you must choose between the principles. No valid interpretation of QM can postulate both of them, and many postulate neither.
All the articles I've seen linked from this topic contain language that assert the objective reality, which of course must contradict locality, but to disprove locality, one must do so without begging the objective reality since none of the local interpretations list it as one of the premises.

The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment. — Clarky

Ah, but the spooky-action folks are not claiming communication, they're claiming FtL action-reaction. But if there was a (remote) empirical test for this having actually happened at the reaction side, a message could be sent via this test, so it would constitute communication. So despite all the assertions, they've not falsified locality.

So making a measurement here creates an outcome there without any apparent means for that information to be transmitted - because it's instantaneous, then it is faster than the speed of light which is the upper limit for any actual transmission. — Wayfarer

The 'Bell inequalities' experiments confirm that the correlation between the two particles that occurs at the measurement of one of the pairs is instantanous. — Wayfarer

This wording suggests that there is a concept of 'instantaneous', or absolute simultaneity, which is an entirely naive wording.
What they have is two measurement events of these entangled particles and those two events are separated in a space-like manner. That means that there exists some frames where those two events are simultaneous, and many frames where one occurs first, and many where the other occurs first.
But the wording in the above statements suggests that there is but one measurement that somehow 'instantaneously' changes the state of the other particle, even in the absence of it being measured, which is exactly begging not only absolute simultaneity, but also that there is an objective state of reality independent of measurement. Begging the latter assumption voids any falsification of locality. Local interpretations cannot presume an objective reality (again, with that one loophole exception), per Bell.

Did the action at a distance take place at a rate faster than the speed of light? — T Clark

Faster than light yes. Into the past even in the case of delayed choice experiments, which have been performed with cause occuring years after the effect.

The thing that locality denies is not the faster than light relationship between measurements, but the 'action' part. No local interpretation suggests that anything changes at the far particle when the near one is measured. Copenhagen is about as local as it gets, and it being an epistemological interpretation, all it says is that a measurement here causes knowledge here of what the other measurement will be when we learn of it. Other local interpretations word it differently, but none suggest any FTL action.

And said spooky action has never been demonstrated,
— noAxioms

Wait - wasn’t the Bell inequality, and its subsequent validation by Aspect and Zellinger, precisely a demonstration of that? — Wayfarer

By 'spooky action', I'm referring to cause and effect events being separated by a space-like manner, in other words, faster than light. If such a thing (or reverse causality) could actually be demonstrated without begging additional postulates, that would be a falsification of all local interpretations.

Quanta Magazine has an explainer called How Bell's Theorem Proved Spooky Action at a Distance is Real, in case there is any question about that.

It seems to be pop-science nonsense. All of relativity would crumble if locality was falsifiable.

Some clues: "Bell demoted locality from a cherished principle to a testable hypothesis".
Bell did no such thing. The article also seems to presume that Bell's theorem demonstrates this violation of the principle of locality, when it fact it demonstrates that (with the exception of one loophole) one of two principles must be false, the other being the principle of counterfactual definiteness.

"correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously". This wording suggests absolute simultaneity, evidence of a naive writer, or one simply pandering to a naive reader. I mean, when they take the two widely separated measurements, which measurement is the cause of the result (effect) of the other? Which way does the action 'go'?

"Hidden variable theories can explain why same-axis measurements always yield opposite results without any violation of locality"
This is opposite of what I know, that the hidden variable interpretations (Bohm in particular) are the ones that deny locality, while the local interpretations (MWI or RQM or even Copenhagen) do not require hidden variables. Once again, either the author seems uninformed, or Bohm has been spinning his view in a new way.

The article seems very much to assume something like Bohm's interpretation since the assume the electron already has a spin along a certain axis before it is measured. But that assumption doesn't invalidate the local interpretations.

"Let’s now assume the world is described by a local hidden variable theory, rather than quantum mechanics."
HVT (as they're calling it) is an interpretation of QM, not a theory separate from it. QM theory doesn't describle what's going on, but rather specifies what will be measured. It is an empirical theory, while HVT is metaphysical conjecture with zero empirical predictions.

"both labs will obtain the same result 75% of the time. This exceeds Bell’s upper bound of 67%.
That’s the essence of Bell’s theorem: If locality holds and a measurement of one particle cannot instantly affect the outcome of another measurement far away, then the results in a certain experimental setup can be no more than 67% correlated."
What bell actually demonstrated is that entanglement cannot be explained by classic means.
A classic entanglement is to split a coin edge-wise. If you look at one half here and see heads, you know the other guy has the tails, but it doesn't mean any faster-than-light action took place. Quantum correlations are stronger than that and cannot be a function of classical physics. This article totally misrepresents that conclusion and begs a principle that local interpretations do not.

I'm not claiming to be an expert on all this, but this article seems to be asserting things that Bell did not.

This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work.
— John Stewart Bell, quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein — Wayfarer

Yes, that's the Einstein I've grown to know. When it came to putting together special relativity, several others were working on similar theories, but he was able to see what was needed and not let old biases get in the way of drawing a very unintuitive conclusion.
The first thing you do is the simple train thought experiment which trivially (without equations even) demonstrates the Relativity of Simultaneity (RoS), which even today many people cannot accept. Lorentz was one of the others and had a significant head start on the work, but 'buried his head in the sand', attempting to get a workable theory that didn't embrace RoS.

Teleportation has been demonstrated at least a decade ago
— noAxioms

The article I referred to was not about teleportation but about using the principles of entanglement for secure communications.

That comment was an admittedly poorly placed reply to the OP which suggests that entanglement is a form of teleportation, which it isn't. The teleportation of which I speak is real, but it doesn't work faster than light.

As for the secure communications, yes, entangled particles are used for that, although I could not describe how it works exactly without looking it up. It has nothing to do with fast messages, but it can be used to tell if the message had been seen/copied between source and destination. It sort of works like the self-destructing messages in Mission Impossible except the message isn't destroyed, but a detector says that the recipient isn't the first recipient.

"In their first experiment, the team sent a laser beam into a light-altering crystal on the satellite. The crystal emitted pairs of photons entangled so that their polarization states would be opposite when one was measured."

So their polarization states would be opposite when both were measured. Not sure what you're quoting, but it implies the unmeasured one has a determined state, which is demonstrably false. But the quote says how they manage to deliver an entangled pair to very different locations without having to 'mail' one of them.

"They found the photons had opposite polarizations far more often than would be expected by chance"

Better than random. That's all? I would have hoped for better reliability than that.

--------------

Einstein's worldview didn't allow for spooky action at a distance - it just didn't gel/jibe with his other ideas, whatever they were. — Agent Smith

And said spooky action has never been demonstrated, so his 'other ideas' (principle of locality, or cause before effect as you put it) is quite safe. Only a non-local interpretation like Bohmian mechanics posits said spooky action, and also the effect-before-cause that comes with it. They've demonstrated effects caused by decisions that were made years into the future. A local interpretation would deny that description of the same experiment.

Last I checked, quantum entanglement was, for some reason, not communication-apt i.e. we can't use to transmit info. I was wrong then and so was Einstein. Too bad!

Did Einstein ever suggest otherwise, that entanglement could be used for communication? If so, then there really would have been falsification of locality, a principle which has never been falsified. Einstein was not wrong about that one, but he hasn't been proven right either, and never will. These things are simply interpretation dependent and not provably right or wrong. If they were, they'd be actual theories, not just interpretations.

"A change in the state of one quantum system instantaneously affects the state of another, distant one. — Jackson

If this is a quote from the story, it's pop nonsense.
Entanglement doesn't mean that you do something to one end and it can be measured at the other. Information could be sent faster than light with such a mechanism, and this is what they seem to be claiming here.
Entangled particle behavior isn't action at a distance, but only correlation of measurement at a distance.

Einstein clung to the realist view. He absolutely believed that the Universe was just so, independently of anything the observer did. — Wayfarer

He would not have liked what Bell contributed to it all. Einstein was very much a realist (the universe in a state independent of measurement) which sort of suggests a Bohmian attitude, but Einstein also clung to locality (that effect cannot precede cause) and Bell proved that you have to choose between the two principles. I prefer the locality principle, but my preference doesn't invalidate the strict realist (counterfactual) view. Poor Einstein couldn't have his cake and eat it too, but I don't think lived long enough to know that.

Teleportation has been demonstrated at least a decade ago, but it wasn't done faster than light. When asked if it was the same physical matter at the source and destination, they replied "does it matter?". The original object was destroyed in the process, similar to Star Trek transporter. It wasn't a cloning booth which is necessarily limited by Heisenberg.

How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? — schopenhauer1

Why is it unacceptable? It doesn't beg the answer desired?

I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one.

Justice being defined in terms of the adjective 'just' does not constitute a circular reference, especially since 'just' doesn't typically reference 'justice' in its definition.
It doesn't seem tautological either since the words mean different things, especially with the negative sense being called out.

You put this topic in Logic section like it's the logic of the definition and not the language question that concerns you. In the end, all words must use other words to define them, and thus is circular in the end. Be interesting to find an alien dictionary and work out the language just from that, with no pictures or anything.

We are talking about your proposition that "X exists" is a relation. — Harry Hindu

It’s a definition, not a proposition.

What are the components of this relation if not X and the one making the statement about X existing?

In classical mechanics, the components are simply the two systems, the one measuring and the one being measured. In quantum mechanics, the thing measured (X) is a physical variable, or quantum event, and then only if the state of the measuring system becomes a function of the measured variable of the measured system.

There is also the relation between some scribbles and the state-of-affairs it represents ,as in " "X exists" is a relation".

An identification of a relation doesn’t seem the same as a description of a state of affairs. No physical state of affairs is described by your example comment. I suppose it is context dependent. In your context above, ‘X’ might be a state of affairs, but “X exists” is not, but the scribble “X exists” is a state of affairs which happens to represent an action having been taken, arguably not a state of affairs. At the end of last post you showed a scribble that didn’t represent anything. Similarly, some scribbles are meaningful but are not necessarily an expression of a state of affairs.

Why would "I exist" be any different than "X exist"?

In QM, a measurement collapses the wave function of the measured thing, but no thing (the cat say) can collapse its own wave function, at least not relative to anything not-cat, so the statement seems not to represent any sort of measurement other than one expects any system to be in a self-consistent state. The dead cat doesn’t measure live cat components and v-v.

What does the scribble, "X exists in relation to me" refer to

That scribble refers to language.

Are you trying to communicate a truth of reality

I’m trying to communicate a view of the universe (which I’m reluctant to call reality). I’m not asserting it to be any kind of necessary truth.

What is your intent in putting these scribble on this screen if not to communicate some state-of-affairs, or some truth about reality?

To communicate a consistent view, minimizing unresolved issues. Sorry, but I’m not some troll insisting that his pet view must be the truth.

What is the difference between the relations between Steve and the unicorn and me and the unicorn?

Both measure Steve, but neither you nor the unicorn measure each other. So you’re related through Steve, but not through measurement.

I have no idea what you are talking about when you say that the unicorn and I exist on Earth in separate worlds.

Well both measure Steve who lives on Earth, so in that sense both you and the unicorn measure a common Earth, even its only a prehistoric one. Calling them worlds is an MWI term. Other worlds exist in MWI. They don’t in a relational view since you can’t measure other worlds by definition. Those worlds can’t measure you either.

Are "collapse interpretations" a state-of-affairs?

No, it’s a category of quantum interpretations that posit collapse of a wave function upon measurement. RQM technically isn’t a collapse interpretation, but the classic version of it (one that has meaningful persistent objects) is.

If abstract lions have no relation with specific lions, then what leads you to make statements about how lions take down their prey?

You asked about how scribbles, and the language to which the relate, relate to states of affairs. This example (of how a lion typically takes down its prey) gets little further than the relation to the concept. The lion itself relates in the way a particular relates to a universal. 2+2=4 is sort of a universal statement, not a particular one.

If you can talk about concepts like you can talk about specific lions, then what is the difference between the two if not some measurement?

Part of the mental realm is that it only deals with concepts. The potential correspondence of those concepts to hypothetical or actual states of affairs is I believe part of the philosophy of mind. Different topic I’d say. I prefer my measurers to be rocks and such so that one doesn’t have to deal with such epistemological sidetracks.

I'm not interested in what is possible, only in what is actual so maybe we should stick to lions and not unicorns

No, because you very much used ‘actual’ there as a property and not a relation. If discussion is confined to things that you’ve personally measured, then the view cannot be conveyed. It necessarily must involve things that you’ve not measured, be they distant particular stars or hypothetical creatures that are only fictional to us.

If the mug is in front of both of us then are we measuring the same mug?

In a classical sense, yes, but the same thing can be said of Steve instead of the mug. The difference with the mug is that we mutually measure each other, but only in a classical sense.

If we both say, "the mug is in front of me" are we talking about the same relation or the same mug?

Only in a classical sense. If we get down to the physical variable level, then no since for instance we cannot both detect the same photon coming from the mug system. I’m trying to mostly keep the discussion at the classical level.

How can you talk about measurements or decoherence that you are not aware of?

Talking about stuff requires something akin to awareness, but decoherence of a system doesn’t involve talking or awareness at all. A rock can do it as much as any person.
It seems very difficult to drive home the point that humans or consciousness is not special in physics. Are you capable of grasping such a thing?

Is awareness a relation?

I don’t see how it could be otherwise. The very word implies sensory input, and not just the concept of sensory input.

If so, then in what way is the relations of awareness and existence different.

Existence of X relative to Y doesn’t require either X or Y to be aware.

You've used the word, "worldline" at least a dozen times just on this page alone while at the same time asserting that you are not talking about abstractions.

Worldlines are physical, at least at the classic level. That I have a word that abstracts to my concept of one doesn’t mean that a rock doesn’t have a worldline in the absence of anything abstracting it.
All communication is done necessarily via abstractions, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that it’s the abstractions being discussed. Classical physics is emergent from more fundamental things which don’t have classical properties like worldlines. A classical named thing (like you, me, a rock, Earth) are admittedly pragmatic abstractions. Physics doesn’t recognize them as systems with boundaries and identities, but they operate as if they did, even in the absence of language and abstraction. When I want to explicitly call out a classical object, I might call it a worldline. It implies a persistent classical identity, but no persistent quantum thing holds to the law of identity in the view I’m describing, as well as other interpretations. People are often averse those views because one’s identity is a strong bias and people don’t like having their biases challenged.
Parfit did a lot of exploration showing how classical identity is inconsistent, but also unimportant. In my case, and dropping to B mode: noAxioms of May 10 (called noax10) cannot measure noax20, but noax20 can measure noax10. If noax10 and noax20 are the same thing, then how is one measurable and the other is not? It would be existing and also not existing, a contradiction.

Concept and abstraction are synonyms. You just described a worldline as an abstraction and then now say it's not a concept.

Words are concepts/abstractions. I agree with the synonym. But such concepts also have physical counterparts. I have a physical mailbox, despite the word mailbox initially invoking a mailbox concept. Concepts sometimes relate to physical states of affairs. Worldline is one such example, even if it falls apart outside the classical level.

These "physical systems states" seems to be what I've been talking about when I use the phrase, "state-of-affairs" and "what is the case". And your use of the phrase, "some physical process is generating your ends of this discourse" is what I mean when I use the term "causation". This discussion is having of problem of moving forward because you seem intent on moving goalposts and disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.

But I’m trying to discuss the ‘state of affairs’ and it seem to me that you keep steering things towards the mental representations of those states and not the states themselves. This is what I’ve seen pas reventing progress. I’m not trying to disagree for its own sake. Sometimes if you push for details, the goalpost does move, such as discussion of a physical thing (like a bridge) really isn’t a ‘thing’ at all on close inspection but is rather a series of physical variables which doesn’t sound much like a bridge at all.

I’m not trying to convolute things. At the classical level, if you leave epistemology out of it, then Y measures X and thus X exists (and continues to exist even) to Y. That’s not really the heart of the view (the 2+2=4 gets closer to the heart), but it’s as far as we’ve managed to get. The one-line description above seems to be how our physics works, but I’ve examined other kinds of physics and most of them don’t work that way. Existence of things might be relative to the structure (the universe in question), but not at all relative to measurement. They exist independent of measurement. That’s not true in most interpretations of quantum mechanics, so I needed to start with a view defining existence through measurement. That part is hardly new, but we can’t seem to get past it.

I'm saying that the absence of anything to quantify is what prevents the sum of two and two from being four.

Just asserting this or would some contradiction result?

In rejecting it you are making a positive claim that there are ways of demonstrating two and two being four independent of categories and the quantity of members that form that category.

OK. Think of say a pair of complex numbers. Complex arithmetic works despite the lack of any quantity of members that form that category.

I've asked you several times now what that would look like. To reject it means that you must have some other idea of what "four being the sum of two and two" is.

It seems that any attempt to suggest ‘what it would look like’ reduces it from a fundamental thing to it being instantiated by a more fundamental abstractor or observer.

Tegmark doesn't say what the math structures are made of — Hillary

Because he proposes they’re fundamental. If they were made of something, they’d not be fundamental. He makes no mention of precision issues AFAIK. But I don’t agree with his ontology.

In nature, there are in fact very few instances of exact mathematical shapes, apart from straight lines and spheres. All mathematical exact special functions are rarely seen and appear only in strict experimental set-ups. — Hillary

I cannot think of a single ‘exact mathematical shape” even in a ‘strict experimental set-up’, especially since all matter shapes are comprised of seemingly a finite number of dimensionless points with only probabilistic positions.

You dont necessarily need to specify a relation if it is implied. — Harry Hindu

Only if the implication is obvious, which it often isn’t in this discussion. So with the unicorn, it’s not implied. One often has to be explicit such as when you ask if the earth and moon exist without humans which explicitly excludes the implied reference of ‘relative to that which asked the question’.

It seems to me that "X doesn't exist" would be a relation between X and the one making the statement.

Yea, but then one gets careless and says something like “I exist” which is tautologically meaningless (per Rovelli). My ontology is pretty straight-up Rovelli’s relational view, so most of what I’m repeatedly explaining is that.

If you really cannot accept the name ‘unicorn’, then just think of it as some word arbitrarily assigned to some creature on a different evolutionary future than the ones with humans. — noAxioms

Where is this creature in relation to me?

It isn’t in relation to you, at least not in the Y-measures-X sort of relation. Both you and the unicorn measure Steve (the stegosaurus, remember him?), so you’re related to each other (a bi-directional relation) in that sense. Bryce DeWitt (coiner of term ‘MWI’) would have said that you and the unicorn exist on Earth in separate worlds with Steve being in the common history of both, neither existence being more preferred than the other, but MWI doesn’t define existence as a function of measurement. Only collapse interpretations do.

Doesn't "X exists (in relation to the one making the statement)" and "X doesn't exist (in relation to the one making the statement)" describe two different kinds of relations? If so, then what is the difference? What other types of relations are there besides "exist/not exist"?

The ‘measures/exists’ relation is a strange one and I’m hard pressed to find other examples of it. It seems to be a product of a tree structure, like ‘X is a parent node of Y’ but Y is not necessarily ‘the one child’ of X, just ‘a child’, so at best, Y is a potential child of X. Most of asymmetric relations imply a mirror relation, like 3 being less than 5 implies 5 being greater than 3. There is a one-way relation of ‘is a member of’, such as I am a member of the universe, a relation between different categories (set/member). The unicorn is also such a member, so we have a relation of ‘fellow member of set U’ relation with the unicorn and the universe, which is a 3-way relation (Y and Z are members of U). There are, as you point out, negative relations. I am not an integer, a relation that I have with the set of integers.
I would probably do better if I had formal set theory training and spoke the language more correctly. I did read a condensed summary of ‘Law of Form’ which is incredibly insightful. It seems more fundamental than mathematics, and despite my comment above to Hillary about mathematics not being made of anything, if it was, LoF would be a description of how this could be so.

It's not about the name by itself. It's about the name's relation to what it references, and whether or not it actually references something or if we just believe that it does.

Well, language references concepts, and thus it’s about the concept’s relation to some physical entity or not. I mean, I might talk about how a lion takes down its prey, but I’ve not identified a specific lion, so the comment pretty much associates the word ‘lion’ with the lion concept and little more. Similarly I can talk about the nearest start to a point exactly 100 billion LY north of Earth (a point on a line of the Earth’s spin axis). That’s a very specific point in space that’s real relative to us, but again references only a concept, not a particular entity. Sure, were something to be at that particular point, it would indeed measure some closest star, but relative to us there’s no fact to the matter, at least not in a universe with local physics. I didn’t identify Steve exactly. He’s some hypothetical real (measured by us) stegosaurus just like the lion. So am I referring to the actual creature, or only the concept? I certainly have the option of picking a real one like the one in museum X whose bones have been found. If that’s Steve, then there’s very much a specific physical entity corresponding to the concept brought up by the word ‘Steve’. But I’m not doing that. He’s real (measured), but not specific. The distant star is not measured and exists to me no more than does the unicorn.

Can we say the same for the name, "god"?

Sure, why not? The name refers to a concept, and like the distant star, doesn’t correspond to anything that I’ve measured.

Can there be relations that we aren't aware of and therefore cannot talk about?

My physical ontology has nothing to do with epistemology. You’re talking about relations between language and shared mental states, something on which I’ve not expended a great deal of effort.
Concepts that have never been conceived would seemingly not have words to describe them, but the word-concept relation perhaps is still valid. This word potentially corresponds to this concept, except we know of neither, so cannot speak of either. They don’t exist to us is all.

What about the infinite number of creatures that have no name?

They’re not part of human epistemology, or maybe they are but we’ve never bothered to name them. You’ve already named them ‘creature’, so that already binds it into language to an extent.

What if I were to say, "there is no relation between X (me) and Y (unicorns/god/Harry Potter)"?

But there is since in all three cases I’m at least loosely aware of the shared concept connected to those words. If you say there’s ‘measured’ relation between you and them, I’d agree with all three. But I personally suggest the unicorn is a plausible creature of our physics that the other two are not, which in my opinion makes it (just like the distant star) a bit more related to you than is Harry Potter, but not a relation of ‘exists’. Still, more related than Harry Potter since nothing exists relative to both you and the distant star, but something does exist (Steve) to both you and the unicorn.

If "X exists" and "X doesn't exist" are both relations, then what use of language describes no relation?

One answer is that itself is a relation of sorts. Another answer is that it’s like the nameless thing, something which cannot be referenced, not even categorize as ‘thing’, which we’ve already done here. Again, I’m more concerned about the physics than how language and concepts and abstractions fit in, but I’m answering as best I can since these things seem of more importance to you.

What use of language describes a relation between X and Y, a relation between Y and Z but no relation between X and Z?

Don’t know. If there’s language to describe it, there is a relation, no? I mean, I relate to some number that is my age. Something completely incomprehensible to me (not part of this universe) also finds meaning in that same number, perhaps a number of dimensions of its functionality. But that thing (which isn’t even so much as a ‘thing’) seems fairly unrelated to me.

What do you mean by it being a reasonable creature vs the version that has rainbows blowing out of its butt?

The latter doesn’t seem a possible outcome of Earth evolution any more than does Harry Potter’s abilities. Maybe I’m wrong about this. I can take a garden hose and produce a fine spray in which a rainbow is visible. If that qualifies as a rainbow being blown out of the hose, then I’m sure any creature that expels spray from its butt can do it. It was the supposed supernatural magic to which I was actually trying to reference with the rainbow thing.

But you said that X doesn't exist in relation to Y is a relation. So there is a bidirectional relation.

Right, but that relation (say between the unicorn and I) isn’t a relation of ‘is in the causal history of’. It is instead a mutual relation of <has Steve in our causal history>.

It seems to me that in saying that X (me) does not exist in relation to Y (Steve) is to say that there is no relation at all. Only this way can there be a unidirectional relation because there is no relation rather than a different relation.

OK, so maybe instead of unidirectional, I should say ‘identical’. If X exists to Y and Y doesn’t exist to X, then the relation isn’t identical, but each is related to the other. My grandchild doesn’t exist to me today, but I exist to my grandchild. I’m willing to qualify that as a two way relation.

Or, there could be no direction at all to relations, which seems to make more sense.

Well the asymmetry needs to be expressed somehow, and that asymmetry defines a direction of sorts. The arrow of existence seems to point backwards actually. If Steve exists to me, it’s my measurement that makes him exist, so existence seems to be caused by future measurements, not past causal states. That seems to be an unintuitive property of existence being defined by measurement instead of classical causation such as you have with the GoL where existence is a function of past states, not future ones.

Then are you talking about the mug in front of you or your idea of the mug in front of you.

I’m talking about the mug but must necessarily utilize shared concepts to do so. The existence of the construct that I’ve happened to qualify with the word ‘mug’ is dependent on my measuring it, not on my concept or awareness or naming of it.

But I wasn't aware of your existence, nor were you aware of mine, until our first interaction.

Measurement is about decoherence and has zero to do with awareness. People/conscious entities are not special in this regard. I’ve said this repeatedly.

Is awareness a relation? If so, then in what way is the relations of awareness and existence different?

Awareness is a relation which seems to relate epistemological states to sensory input. It has nothing to do with the sort of existence I’m describing.

A "worldline" would be another relation, no? What is a "worldline" a relation of?

A worldline seems to be an identity, which in turn seems to be an abstraction only. It consists of a series of what are effectively events (states) related by this abstract identity, and in particular, the identity of the terminal state of the worldline. I see papers by Rovelli talking about terminal states and beables and such, the former identifying a unique worldline, and the latter identifying an observable.

I'm not asking about our interaction. I'm asking about your "worldline" prior to our interaction, which is just an exchange of scribbles on a screen.

An exchange of scribbles is communication, not a worldline. I’m talking about sets of physical system states, not the concept of them. Sure, you potentially are not human, but some physical process is generating your end of this discourse, not just my concept of these posts. Said process, if not human, I suppose would have a less clearly bounded worldline than would a human one.

If X (some state of affairs) exists in relation to Y (you) and X (some state of affairs) exists in relation to Z (me), then how do we know that X is the same state of affairs that we are talking about?

If we measure each other, then it cannot be otherwise. If I measure a dead cat and you measure a live one, then we cannot measure each other.

There must be some reason you are communicating with me - what is that reason if not to share one's ideas about a state-of-affairs that exists for both of us?

That’s right. Did I suggest otherwise?

Does this conversation exist just for us, or for others who might come along and read our posts? Is it the same conversation for us - the participants as it is for non-participating readers?

It is the same for everybody that we measure, per the logic above.

Are both of us and readers suppose to find our conversation useful?What would it mean for some conversation to be useful?

Seems irrelevant to the points being made.

If you are older, then in what way did I measure you prior to our interaction?

Interaction is measurement, so you interacted with me from the first moment. I am part of the cause of your existence, so there is no way I was ever in a state of nonexistence to you. Decoherence works very quickly most of the time and it takes extreme efforts to prevent it.

I had no information on "you" until we met.

I’m talking about measurement, not knowledge. None of this is about epistemology. A rock measures me as much as you do.

I've only met scribbles on a screen. You could be a computer program and not a human. Until I actually meet you in person, then your scribbles are all that exists in relation to me.

No. Some entity (human or not) made the scribbles, and you’ve measured that, and the scribbles is only one way you’ve made that measurement, and certainly not the first.

then there is some state-of-affairs that makes you you that I am not aware of, or haven't measured.

What you’ve measured and that of which you are aware are entirely different subjects. I’m only talking about the former.

If you are not writing about some state-of-affairs that I can measure in the same way that you have, then how do we know that our ideas are about the same thing?

Our ideas and understanding have nothing to do with your measurement of the state of affairs, an almost unavoidable occurrence. If you don’t understand what I wrote, you can ask for specific clarifications. I was contrasting quantum interpretations that hold to the principle of counterfactual definiteness vs interpretations that hold to the principle of locality vs interpretations that hold to neither principle. I’m in the 2nd camp. The two principles are mutually contradictory so they can’t both be true.

Where is this alternate mammal species in relation to the scribble, "unicorn" and where is this different evolutionary history in relation to the scribble, "different evolutionary history"?

It doesn’t exist relative to the scribble.

The problem with this though is that it requires a measurer for any state-of-affairs to be the case, but then who measures the measurer? It's measurements all the way down.

Or all the way up, yes. I see this as a solution, not a problem. My ability to measure past states of affairs is not a function of my existence (or lack of it) relative to some future state of affairs.

If you and I disagree about the nature of some state-of-affairs, then are we taking different measurements of the same state-of-affairs and talking about our measurements and not the state-of-affairs that is being measured?

You seem to be talking about epistemology again. It is physically impossible for us to take different measurements and still subsequently communicate. It would be a contradiction.

Usually there are several (4 to hundreds) of instruction streams running at once. — noAxioms

Maybe I’m not getting your usage of ‘at once’, which I’m probably incorrectly equating to ‘at the same time’. — Harry Hindu

I mean at the same time. There are many instruction streams being executed at the same time in a modern game. Sure, there was one back in the old pacman days, but things have moved on. I’ve spent most of my career writing code that has to operate correctly even in the face of other processors accessing and changing the same data that I’m using. This all seems kind of off-topic to me. Where was this going?

All potential actions by a player are constrained by the code. A player can't use a baseball bat in the game if there is no code for a baseball bat in the program.

What if he builds one? The code won’t know it’s a bat, but the player can still use it if the physics of the game is sufficiently versatile. Admittedly, most games these days are still astonishingly crude and are for the most part constrained in the ways you indicate.

Then how do we know that we are talking about the same thing?

We’re often not. But the word ‘rock’ means something fairly similar to both of us, a consensual usage of the term, enough for pragmatic purposes.

I'm trying to understand the relation between your use of scribbles and what they reference, and how that relation would be useful to me if to me it is a different relation than it is to you.

OK, I think I already answered that. Scribbles reference language. Language references concepts. Concepts sometimes reference physical things. One can directly discuss the scribble in the absence of its relation to language. Here’s a scribble: W
Where is that scribble? Is the one on my screen the same as the one on yours? Does it go away if I close the tab? Does it have a worldline? Does the scribble exist to you before I post this reply? Does any of this have anything to do with the scribble referencing something?

If "X exists in relation to you" and "X exists in relation to me", are you talking about the relations or X?

I’m talking what I suspect is a view that is more self consistent than most people’s choices of view, but it would help if inconsistencies were identified.
To directly answer the question, when saying statements like the ones above, I’m probably talking about X, and the rest is implied.

If you're talking about the relation, then how can I ever understand the relation between you and X when I am not you

If we can talk, then my relation to X is effectively the same as yours. This is assuming a pragmatic definition of ‘me’ and ‘you’.

The same goes for any scribble, like words. I don't understand what you mean by mathematics working even without humans to utilize them. It seems that for something to work, it needs to be utilized.

Well I’m not postulating that necessity.

How would the sum of two and two equal four if not by there being a quantity of some thing, and for there to be a quantity of some thing ...

Let me put it this way. What prevents the sum of two and two from being four in the absence of anything to quantify? You have to demonstrate that the postulate above (the one I’m rejecting) is necessary, else I’m free to reject it. I’m not making a claim other than the negative claim of the necessity of the postulate.

Scribbles are not abstractions. Is, "alhg;alhdjlshtjh;ajhj;thjk b:Jbfjht" an abstraction?

Granted, scribbles are not necessarily meaningful language and hence don’t necessarily correspond to abstractions.

The dot moves at far faster than c in any direction at your choosing. — noAxioms

So the red dot "moving at (an) arbitrarily high speed(s)" (faster-than-light) is nonphysical! Hasta be, oui? — Agent Smith

Depends on your definition of 'physical' I suppose. It is very arguably not an object, but if it has a name, it also arguably is an object.
The dot cannot be used to transfer information faster than light.

A moiré pattern also can move at well over light speed without the need to stand a million km from it.

It would be interesting to work out exactly what the cat would see as the faster-than-light red dot approached it and then passed it by. Just like you can't hear a supersonic jet coming, you also cannot see the dot coming as it outruns the light it emits.

Well, Craig also says that by creating time, became a temporal being. — Relativist

This is what I was talking about when I said that language cannot express this. Creation implies a temporal event: The thing exists, and it didn't earlier, but if there's no earlier, it isn't really a creation, or a 'becoming' for that matter. We haven't language (or any valid logic) to describe an act or thought being performed by a non-temporal entity. The assertion seems to bury any counterargument behind this haze of self-contradictory language.

So he does not consider time to merely be a dimension of spacetime, and he absolutely rejects block-time. — Relativist

OK, you said otherwise earlier:

Craig says the past is finite (his KCA depends on it), and God chose to create spacetime — Relativist

so I assume that was said in error. God created or fired-up time, and then created a 3D universe (space, not spacetime) in that time. This goes pretty much along the lines of him playing to the naive audience who expect confirmation of their biases, and not to science. It is a rejection of Einstein, but I doubt he has openly suggested that Einstein (his postulates right down to the 1905 ones) was wrong, especially without an alternate theory to replace it except something pathetic like neoLET which only says all of Einstein's equations are to be used despite them being derived from premises that are false. Craig knows his science and knows that there are real flaws to be exploited by the naturalist view, but rather than attacking those flaws, he chooses to state his case using mostly arguments from incredulity and such. The paying audience eats that stuff up and they'd not understand the stronger argument.

In terms of special relativity, God has a privileged point of view.

SR does not forbid such a POV. Out of curiosity, does Craig ever mention which quantum interpretation jives best with the God view? I mean, it all sounds entirely classical, but it has been shown that our universe cannot be explained in classical terms.
If locality is abandoned, then some effects are caused by events that have not yet happened, which doesn't work well with presentism. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find an interpretation that is compatible with presentism, but I haven't looked for articles on it.

Yes, Craig says the past is finite (his KCA depends on it), and God chose to create spacetime, and to become temporal himself. — Relativist

First of all, my mistake. I read your comment from last week to say "Craig believes the past is infinite", which would have contradicted what I've heard.

OK, but if God created spacetime, that's a structure of which time is a part, not a structure in time. A created thing is only applicable to a thing contained by time, which spacetime by definition isn't.

I'm just wondering what Craig actually says. Kalam certainly didn't word things that way since the concept of spacetime was unknown then. I've seen Craig do his debates, and he seems to deliberately use fallacious naive reasoning (incredulity against a straw man) rather than stronger arguments. I suspect he doesn't believe his shtick at all but knows very well from where his paycheck comes. So he plays to his audience in preference to playing to his debate opponent, and he excels at that. The audience hired him and wants rationalization, not rational reasoning.

Bottom line is that to propose the creation of a spacetime structure, one has to posit a 2nd kind of time that is entirely separate from the time that is part of the structure.

To 'become temporal' is pretty self contradictory. God wasn't temporal (there was no time), and 1) later on there was time (a self contradiction), and 2) God 'became temporal', which also implies a time before which God wasn't temporal, and that God seemed to choose this limitation, to be contained.
Maybe that's just all the inability of language to speak of concepts outside our normal sphere of existence. I'm not trying to disprove a god here, but the argument certainly seems fallacious on several levels.

Why needs time to be created? Thermodynamic time is an emergent property. Before TD time, another kind of time existed, without cause and effect. — Hillary

I pretty much agree with this. The time that we know (part of spacetime) is only applicable within, and creation is only defined under the physics of it.

Because (according to Craig) everything is created, except for God). — Relativist

Isn't it easier to say that everything is created except the universe? But no, that again commits the fallacy of categorizing the universe as a 'thing'. Saying it is created is not even wrong.

Just some comments.

The speed of light is the universal speed limit for everything that exists in the universe, we can say "Whatever exists in the universe has a speed limit of the speed of light". Is this then true for the universe itself? The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, if the speed limit for the universe was the speed of light, the size of the universe would be at most 27.6 light-years across. the observable universe is however 93 billion light-years across. — Magnus

One issue here is that universe expands faster than speed of light.
How is FTL possible? — SpaceDweller

The rate of expansion is not a speed. It has different units (m/sec/mpc) than speed (m/sec)

Speed of light is only c in a vacuum in Minkowskian spacetime relative to an inertial frame.
The rate of recession of some distant galaxy isn't specified relative to an inertial frame, but rather relative to the cosmological (or comoving) frame, which is a different sort of coordinate system. Under (approximate) inertial coordinates, that galaxy is not receding faster than c.
Neptune moves faster than c relative to the frame of Paris, but Paris is stationary only in a rotating reference frame.

Wayfarer quoted Ethan Siegel along the same lines:

The restriction that "nothing can move faster than light" only applies to the motion of objects through space. The rate at which space itself expands — this speed-per-unit-distance — has no physical bounds on its upper limit.

I mostly agree with Ethan here, but not quite right. I can put a mirror on the moon and time the light going round trip and it will exceed c by a little bit despite it very much being the rate 'through space' as he puts it. The reason for this is the non-Minkowskian spacetime (a change in gravitational potential) between here and there.

Another illustration: Put up a circular wall of radius 1 million km with you at the center. Use a laser pointer to shine a red dot at it, to the excitement of your relativistic cat. You can flick your wrist and send the dot moving at arbitrarily high speeds around the screen. The dot moves at far faster than c in any direction at your choosing.

Not saying I disagree with your conclusion in the OP, but the speed of light thing isn't a valid counter to the KCA. For one, it would have to be meaningful for the universe to have a speed, and for that you need to give it a location at different times.

You also need to define universe. What did the god supposedly create? Just the visible universe? Everything since the big bang? What about the stuff beyond the bang which arguably caused it? Our spacetime is just part of a larger structure, so it is very much arguably caused. Just not by the deity.

think the idea is that there is an inductive conclusion which is the first premise: "X is true for every thing". Then , "the universe is a thing". Therefore X is true of the universe. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, premise 2 is a category error, and Michael points out that classifying the universe as a 'thing' is not how the KCA is worded.

Bear in mind that Craig believes the past is finite. — Relativist

He says that? Then God didn't create time? How unomnipotent of him.

About premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. This is apparently not so. For instance yttrium-90 begins to exist by the un-caused decay of strontium-90. That's kind of thin since the existence of the strontium is admittedly a potential waiting to happen, just not a direct cause.

"Exist" is not well defined. — Jackson

I personally agree with this, but most people kind of take the standard realist meaning. The KCA does beg this definition, and thus is dependent on it. Any additional premise, even unstated, weakens the argument since it only works if the premise is true.

In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible — Joshs

Non-sequitur. A simple counterexample of different physics is Conway's game of life which is entirely deterministic yet not reversible. There's no way to determine the prior state from a given one.

With our physics, classic physics is time reversible, but our universe is not fundamentally classic.
Determinism at the quantum level is interpretation dependent and some of the deterministic interpretations (including all the ones typically discussed) are not time symmetric. The reversible ones have the causes of any given event as likely to be in its future as in its past, and need to abandon both locality and counterfactuals to do it.

Dr. Hawking argued that the Psychological Arrow was controlled by the Thermodynamic Arrow — Joshs

That kind of makes them different manifestations of the same arrow, not two different arrows.

But the direction of the Cosmological Arrow depends on whether the universe is expanding.

Interesting. If the mass density of the universe was high enough, this would eventually be the case. Once the maximum expansion had been reached, the arrow would reverse. How is this suddenly a certain kind of time going the other way just because distant galaxies are now getting closer?

Could you describe for me what time moving in the other direction would look like in everyday experience, or would it look just the same as it already looks to us, given that life is a bubble of resistance to entropy? — Joshs

This seems to be a question for Hillary, but meanwhile, it seem to be a 4th arrow of time being referenced which is none of the three (memory, entropy, and expansion) Hawking listed. It is strictly a philosophical arrow of time with no empirical tests, which is probably why Hawking didn't bother to list it. That said, an opposing position was given, as expected:

You would feel like an unwinding poppet with a key clockwork, being pulled along, instead of being in control. — Hillary

Interesting response. It seems to suggest dualism coupled with some kind of growing block interpretation, where the free-willed mind/spotlight is suddenly reft of its undetermined future and is instead forced into the determined part (by way of already existing) of the (now shrinking) block. Memory is part of the immaterial mind, not the physics of the situation.

This thread seems to have died a month ago, just when things were getting interesting.
It's apparently online now sufficiently for something like this:

The title makes it look like WISE is older than Spitzer, but it's a wide survey instrument and is simply smaller.

Doesn't time move forwards because it was set in motion forwards? Time could have run backwards. — Hillary

I dont think time is flowing. — Hillary

You seem to contradict yourself. Is time something that flows/moves or not? If it is, then it isn't what clocks measure since two clocks can measure different durations between the same two events.
The topic title obviously presumes the former, since it asks why it moves, and not if it moves.

motion is time. — Hillary

Different interpretations of time both define motion as change in location over time, so this doesn't really distinguish which interpretation you're suggesting, or whether 'time is real' or not. I forget which interpretation is associated with 'time is real' since it seems quite real either way despite being a very different thing.

The problem in MWI is shifted towards the branching points. — Hillary

I am not promoting MWI, but if I was, I am unaware of it positing ‘branching points’ at all. It is a common misconception that “at certain magic instances, the world undergoes some sort of metaphysical “split” into two branches that subsequently never interact”. That seems closest to what I suspect you’re referencing.

Tegmark's view suffers from the question what math structures are made of of approximations. — Hillary

While I’m definitely adopting a good chunk of Tegmark’s MUH, I am unaware of this issue with approximations. A reference might help clarify.

I can't complain too much as this forum is far better than any interaction you can have on Twitter or FB — Harry Hindu

I do notice a lot of terse replies in most threads, but that’s more like a conversation over a table with continuous interaction. I’m frequently not around for hours (days?) and must reply in full to all points necessary. I do try to keep my reply shorter than the post to which I’m replying, but I’m failed at that lately. I mean, who actually wants to read a long post like this?

First, I need to understand what you mean by "exists". You contradict yourself by saying that there is no meaning in using the phrase, "X doesn't exist", and then you go on to say that that to the unicorn, you don't exist.

I don’t exist relative to the unicorn. It’s expressed as a relation. “X doesn’t exist” is meaningless because no relation is specified.

If you really cannot accept the name ‘unicorn’, then just think of it as some word arbitrarily assigned to some creature on a different evolutionary future than the ones with humans.

Some relations are bidirectional. X and Y are both members of some common structure and are related in that way. So the unicorn seems to relate to us as both being part of the same structure, the structure perhaps being expressed as a universal wave function. So I’m typically pitching the unicorn as some alternate evolutionary path on this same planet. It’s a reasonable creature (minus the rainbow blowing out of its butt) and it would be dang unlikely that it’s not a valid future of Earth state from say 100 million years ago.

Some relations are unidirectional such as Y measures X, meaning Steve the stegosaurus exists to me but I don’t exist to Steve. This sort of relation seems only to work with structures with a Hilbert space going on, such as the chess states example, but not with the GoL example. Nothing measures anything in GoL. There’s no ‘wave function’ collapse, meaning measurement has nothing to do with the existence of related states. GoL is entirely deterministic in one direction, so in that sense, relative to any given state, all future states are determined and thus they relate to that given state. Future states exist relative to it, but past ones do not since GoL doesn’t have a unique history property like our universe, so prior state cannot be determined. It’s sort of the opposite of our physics in that way.

It seems to me that the unicorn's existence is dependent on your existence to imagine it's existence.

This is expressed without a relation. It very much exists relative to anything that gets gored by that horn. I’m not suggesting that imagination/abstraction has any causal powers beyond creation of ideas. I’m talking about the unicorn, not the idea of a unicorn, but I necessarily must use ideas to discuss it just like I necessarily must use ideas to discuss the mug in front of me.

If the term, "exists" is the problem and is what is causing this contradiction, feel free to use a different term that captures your meaning.

Plenty of philosophical views redefine words like ‘exists’ and ‘universe’ to mean different things, but I get your point. What other word conveys to me that we can interact, that it is not possible that you are not in the world I see, or more in particular, that some part of your worldline is within my past light cone? I don’t have a word that better expresses that, except it has to include the relation: You exist to me. You don’t exist to the unicorn, but Steve probably does (yes, the very same Steve).

In what way did you exist before you and I had our first interaction? Did I exist?

Let’s say I’m older. If you qualify ‘me’ and ‘you’ as unique worldlines, then no part of your worldline was in the past light cone of my younger moments, so you didn’t exist to me then, but some part of my worldline is in the past light cone of your first moment, so I always exist to you, even if I die first, just like Steve exists to us despite the termination of its worldline.

Did you exist prior to our first interaction?

Our first interaction took seconds. Quantum decoherence occurs incredibly quickly, especially when there’s no vacuum separating us. It has nothing to do with being human or any kind of say deliberate information transfer. Remember one of my few axioms: Nothing special about humans or even life.

If so, in what way did we exist?

After that decoherence, each of our states is a function of the state of the other. But the state of the unicorn is not a function of our state.

If you'd like, for the purpose of this discussion, we can say that existence, or exists, is just a state-of-affairs, or what is the case.

Only if you say ‘the state of affairs relative to X’ since the state of affairs is technically different for every event X. The wording implies a moment in time, and so far I’ve avoided that by talking about worldlines instead of events at specific times along those worldlines.
Having thought about it, we can replace ‘X exists relative to Y’ with ‘Y measures X’. This identifies a unique relation that seems to apply only to a very limited number of structures. The ‘fellow member of some structure’ relation is different. Then perhaps we could avoid the word ‘exists’ altogether.

X and Y are each separate state-of-affairs

Neither a worldline nor an event along a worldline is especially a state of affairs, but there is a state of affairs relative to it. I am not ‘war in Ukraine’, but there is a state of war in Ukraine relative to me (a system at say the time of posting this). On the other hand, I, as a system at a specific time, constitute the state of that system, and thus am a local state of affairs. By identification of a time, I’ve dropped down to speaking of events instead of worldlines, which opens up a different can of worms about identity of those events.

If there can be two states-of-affairs prior to any relation (potential vs. actual)

If a measurement has been taken, then that measurement makes the measured state actual to the measurer. If not, then none of the potential states exist relative to that non-measurer, just like neither the dead state of cat nor the live state of cat exists relative to the exterior of the box. There I go using ‘exists’ again, but it seems trivially tautological to say “If not, then none of the potential states are measured relative to that non-measurer”. Ontology in this universe is measurement. To say something exists in the absence of measurement is to assert the principle of counterfactual definiteness, a principle which necessarily must reject locality and thus accept things like cause significantly (years) after its effect.
Maybe we’re talking past each other, but that’s how I’m best able to work in your wording into a relational description.

If X exists in relation to Y, then what are X and Y independent of the relation? Just because I had no information about you prior to us meeting, does that mean that you didn't exist until I did?

Our meeting had nothing to do with it. You had information on me, which is what decoherence does. Technically, X existing to Y means X is some ‘state of affairs’ in the past causal cone of Y, which is approximated by a light cone, but in special circumstances where information transfer is totally inhibited (Schrodinger’s box), can be a smaller subset than that.

Does this mean that there are not parts of the world that have changed as a result of you being in it independent of my first meeting with you?

Meeting has nothing to do with anything. I (worldline) exist relative to the state of affairs of this planet today (event), therefore it has measured me (worldline).

This is what I mean by exists - that it is a relation of causation.

It seems to be a relation of non-counterfactual wave function collapse, a relation unique to non-counterfactual physics that support it. A universe counterfactual physics such as GoL or Bohmian mechanics, the definition doesn’t work since these models posit existence that is not a function of measurement. Causality in GoL is straightforward, but really complicated in Bohmian mechanics where the state of a system might be determined by causes in the far future. I’m not concerned with this since my model holds to locality for this universe. No reverse causality.

Are you saying that X and Y are states-of-affairs prior to the state-of-affairs of existing in relation to each other? Does one come before the other?

X is prior (earlier in time) to Y in this case. The relation is a way of expressing that the state of affairs Y is causally a function of the state of affairs X. Not sure if you’re using ‘prior’ to mean something else like ‘more fundamental than’.

I've been saying that unicorns exist as well as us because they are both causal.

Again, I’ve not been talking about abstractions. I’m talking about an alternate mammal species on Earth in a world with a different evolutionary history. I’m using it as an illustrative device.

So all the components of a structure are related as being a member of the whole, which is very different from the concept of an ‘existence’ relation which involves measurement and only applies to temporal structures with causal physics.
— noAxioms
I don't see how. You're simply talking about spatial relations in the components being a member of a whole.

It’s not necessarily spatial. How does 3 relate to 5? One doesn’t cause or measure the other, so it isn’t that sort of relationship, but more of a ‘members of set of numbers’ kind of sisterhood, an equal relationship. We have a similar relation with the unicorn, a different relation than the 1-way ‘measures’ relationship. OK, there is a sort of spatial relationship between 3 and 5. The chess example (a tree structure) has no immediate spatial relationship between the various states. Two states might be related by how long a tree walk would be between them, but would only have a causal relationship if that walk was one way, that the one state was a parent node of the other. The members of the Mandelbrot set are just complex numbers, relating to each other by little more than ‘fellow member of the set’ and such.

I don't believe in any fundamental scale of reality independent of some view of reality. Wholes and members of wholes are the products of different views (measurements) of the same thing.

I couldn’t understand that. Perhaps an illustrative example would help.

If they don't exist (have a causal relation) relative to the Earth, then how did humans on Earth come to contemplate it or know about it?

Each of them follows from some theory, principle, or interpretation. A level one multiverse results from the cosmological principle among other things that assume that Earth is not the exact center of a universe. Level II is from inflation theory, which otherwise leaves unexplained the ‘fine tuning’ of our universe. Each level results from a rejection of geocentrism in a different way.

How do physicists and philosophers come to talk about this? How did you come to talk about such things?

Because it is painfully difficult to explain empirical observations with geocentric interpretations. This is what I’m doing. I’m rejecting the bias that our universe (the spacetime in which we find ourselves) is preferred, even at the ontological level.

[relations] only property of Y? If so, then it seems that Y is dependent upon the there being an X to measure, but then what is X?

Dependent for what? In a causal structure, if Y measures X then Y is dependent on X to be ‘caused’, but I’m not equating ‘caused by’ with ‘exists relative to’. The relation here is one way, so Y doesn’t exist to X. It’s only a possibility to X, or to be precise, Y is a valid solution to the evolution of X’s wave function (or rather the wave function of the environment including X since X is not a closed system), but so is ~Y.

What you seem to be saying is that there is X and Y and Z is the relation (existence) between them. My question is what is X and Y independent of this relation, as in you and I before we ever met.

There’s two ways to answer that. Assuming the pragmatic view that natural language presumes, the view that you’ve taken with your question above, X and Y are worldlines of persistent systems (systems with identities), such as you and I or a brick.
But the pragmatic view can be driven to contradiction in a more universal context, and thus to be technically accurate, X and Y are events, not worldlines. They represent the ‘state of affairs’ of a specific system at a specific time. Natural language then fails and one must resort to something akin to B-speak where references to meaningless persistent identities are avoided similar to how B-speak avoids references to the meaningless present. Then X and Y have have a relation of ‘measures’ or they don’t.

I'm not sure if this is an adequate example, but think of a 3D open-world game installed on your computer.

I’m old enough that I had to look up the term ‘open world game’.

Before you run the game, the game is just a program written in some computer language stored as an executable file on your hard drive. All the events within the game have already been written. The past, present and future events within the game all exist at once within the program. The programmer already knows what will happen and has happened before running the program, but the player does not.

Not sure what you mean by this. You make it sound like a movie, a story with all the events pre-planned (determinism) and no choices to be made by an outside entity (the player). The programmer certainly doesn’t know how the game will progress. There are more possible events than there is code.

It is only in playing the game - of living the life of one of the characters in the game - that time's passage becomes apparent, but outside of the game there is no time as all the causal events of IF-THEN-ELSE in the code happen all at once.

Not following. Outside the game the code doesn’t ‘happen’ at all, and during the game, groups of instructions are indeed executed in sequence. Usually there are several (4 to hundreds) of instruction streams running at once.
Maybe I’m not getting your usage of ‘at once’, which I’m probably incorrectly equating to ‘at the same time’. This is sort of the language used to describe a block universe, a completely self-contained structure containing time, but without change to the structure itself. It is said that all moments of this block exist ‘at once’ and don’t ‘happen’, which is different than saying that the events are at the same time, which would be wrong as saying they’re all at the same place.

If any interaction is a measurement and humans/lifeforms are not special in this role, then the Moon and Earth existed prior to humans as a measurement?
-- Harry Hindu
Relative to what? Question is meaningless without that.
-- noAxioms
Relative to each other.

Yes, the Moon and Earth on which humans eventually evolve existed relative to each other. My MWI digression was due to my confusion as to which Earth and which moon since some worlds have a moonless Earth.

You know that you exist.

Rovelli would disagree, and I'm with him on that point. He says a system cannot measure itself (cannot collapse its own wave function) and thus cannot meaningfully assess the state of its own existence just like inability of the cat in the box to determine what the observer outside the box will observe upon opening the box. It was the reading of Rovelli on which much of my view is based. He’s the one that defines existence (at least in this universe) as a measurement relation. I’m driving it a bit further I think.

What is the nature of the thing that you are referencing and how is it different than the state-of-affairs of referencing, or what is the case of referencing?

It is the difference between a physical rock made of protons and such, and the abstraction (or the referencing) of a rock, consisting of mental process and discourse. I’m not talking about abstractions. A rhino is almost a unicorn, if only it leaned more on the equine side. Surely unicorns are a possible future of some fairly recent state of Earth’s biological history. The unicorn of which I speak probably doesn’t look completely like the abstraction I have in mind, but that’s also true of say you.

Then "real" and "existing" are dependent on each other - you cannot have one without the other?

Depends if you define them in ways that they’re synonymous or not. I’m defining ‘exists’ as a relation the way Rovelli does. I’m keeping ‘is real’ as the property so as not to take away all my vocabulary for that concept. As a non-realist, I don’t have to explain the reality of whatever I assert to be real, which removes a significant issue with any view that does. Per Rovelli’s arguments, there seems to be no empirical test for being real. Nobody seems to be able to design a device that behaves differently only when its real. That reduces ‘being real’ to an interpretational choice, and I’ve chosen to discard it as superfluous.

But scribbles are concrete things as well

But I’m not talking about scribbles or abstractions. You keep attempting to drive things there. I’m not disagreeing with your discussion of abstractions and scribbles, but it’s not on topic.

If they are numbers, then they represent something.

It is admittedly harder to think of numbers being things in themselves and not just abstractions, but imagine if mathematics worked even without humans or other life forms to utilize them. Imagine the sum of two and two actually being four and not only being four when some calculator executes the computation.
I know, it’s like asking you to imagine something independent of an imaginer.

Which my response was that they wouldn't represent anything. They'd be scribbles.

No, they’d not be scribbles, which is an abstraction. I’m not talking about abstractions or any instantiation of the numbers. I’m proposing that mathematics is more fundamental than the scribbles that allow us to abstract it.

This discussion started out with a relevant comment about a priori knowledge that 2+2=4 or some such, and while that point is still on the table, things have certainly evolved into a side discussion (for which I’m massively grateful since you’re at least trying to hear me out). I don’t know if mods here are in the habit of splitting off side discussions. I see such sidetracks happening in many lengthy threads, so I suspect it isn’t site policy to split. Some sites split topics given even a hint of discussion not directly related to the OP.
I see little evidence of active mod activity on this site, but I also see a delicious absence of true trolls here, so maybe I’m just not privy to the silent but deadly actions being taken.
I’m a mod myself on another forum (not a philosophy site) and have split my share of topics, and that site indeed seems to be a troll (and spam) magnet.

Sorry for the long post, but more details are needed to answer at least the one question.

But how can you talk about something that doesn't exist? — Harry Hindu

I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I said that there is no meaning to ‘X exists’ or ‘X doesn’t exist’. It puts us and the unicorn on equal footing. To the unicorn, I don’t exist, so all nice and symmetrical.
Continuing to use language that presumes realism is inhibits the ability to discuss a view that doesn’t. I looked at nihilism, but it seems to give meaning to such a property, but asserts that nothing has it. So it gives meaning to ‘exists’, but then says nothing exists. So I’m not a nihilist. I cannot find a reference to what I’m describing.

It is the thing itself and "unicorn" the word is the representation of the abstraction.

Agree with that.

unicorns only exist as abstractions.

Under a relational view, this statement is not even wrong. It references a realist bias (that there is a property of ‘exists’ and we have it and unicorns do not, making us real and not the unicorn). Step one is to drop that bias, because the view needs to be driven to contradiction without resorting to it.

If you want to get down and dirty, the relation seems to depend on the nature of the structure defining X and Y. So for instance, in this universe it seems that quantum decoherence defines X to Y: Y measures X when information of X leaks to Y.
— noAxioms
Then the structure for defining X and Y is prior to the relation of X and Y? How does this structure exist as a relation to what? — Harry Hindu

Much better question. Yes, it is a structure, and if that’s what you mean by infinite regression, there isn’t infinite regression. The structure, if not a sub-structure of something deeper, doesn’t exist relative to anything.
The view is a mix of Tegmarks mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH, mathematical structures being fundamental, but without the ontology suggested), Everett’s relative state formulation (RSF, also known as MWI: one universal wave function, making it a mathematical structure) with no wave function collapse, and Rovelli’s relational view (RQM), which is mostly just RSF with different ontology including collapse. RSF has a single postulate: “All isolated systems evolve according to the Schrodinger equation”. This doesn’t mention ontology at all, but somehow MWI evolved into somethings that suggests the existence of the universal wave function. MUH similarly suggests that various mathematical structures ‘exist’, and heated discussions ensue over exactly what ‘breathes the fire of existence’ into one structure and not another, which is exactly the sort of problem I'm trying to avoid.

I bring all this up for terminology purposes. Level 1 is universes separated by physical distance (visible universes). Level 2 comes from inflation bubbles that have different physical constants like multiple dimensions of time and field strengths that don’t allow particles to form and such. Level 3 is other worlds per MWI. Level 4 is unrelated structures, of which I have a few choice examples. All of these ‘universes’ are inaccessible to us, hence (in relational terminology) don’t exist relative to our Earth.
The first three of these levels are part of the same quantum structure, so that one structure encompasses all these different components.
I think that’s an important point since the relation between them is more like the relation between 3 and 5 and not a relation of Y measures X. So all the components of a structure are related as being a member of the whole, which is very different from the concept of an ‘existence’ relation which involves measurement and only applies to temporal structures with causal physics.

Some of my pet examples:
1) The Mandelbrot set is an oft-cited example of a non-temporal two-dimensional structure in the complex plain. It is complex, beautiful, but not being a causal structure, there’s no measurement going on. I’d say that Mandelbrot discovered the set, not that he created it. It can be independently discovered by anybody without any specific empirical observation, hence is a priori knowledge. The parts of the set relate to each other in a member-of relationship. Value X is a member of the set. Value Y is not.

2) The set of all possible chess states, including move history. This is not in any way to be confused with a game being played. This is a temporal structure and serves as a wonderful analogy to wave function collapse. The structure is finite: There is a maximum length possible game something on the order of 5 thousand moves. It is temporal: It starts at some initial state, and time is measured by half-moves (one move is a move by both white & black). Each state has one prior parent state and several child states. This is thus a causal structure of sorts. Each state can only be caused by its parent. Relative to any position Y1, the parent X exists but the sibling states (Y<n>) do not exist, so each move effectively collapses the ‘wave function’ of how the game can possibly further proceed, all very much like alternate futures disappearing from our existence into other worlds under MWI. All the states still relate to each other with the ‘member of the structure’ relation, which I think I’m going to need to name.

3) Conway’s game of life (GoL) is a fairly classic and crude analogy to our physics. It has one dimension of time and two of space (there are versions with more), a speed of light, and causality. It is a counterfactual structure unlike quantum physics, so it is unclear how a ‘measures’ relation might be expressed. It is complex enough to simulate itself, which is more than I can say about our physics. It lacks a specific initial condition, so each initial state defines a different structure.

And when I ask how does it exist, I'm asking how does it have causal power as in causing a relation between X and Y?

Causal powers are inherent in the structure properties. It’s real obvious in the GoL example. Any defined state defines all the subsequent state in the same way that 2+2 determines the sum 4 despite the lack of any calculator instantiating the sum.

Do relations exist?

There are views that are realist about relations. I’m trying to avoid being realist about anything, so no, it is not meaningful to discuss the existence of relations except as relations to its relata. Yea, I suppose ‘measures X’ can be thought of as a property of Y.

the Moon and Earth existed prior to humans as a measurement?

Relative to what? Question is meaningless without that. — noAxioms

Relative to each other.[/quote]
Think MWI here. The moon seems a direct result of a specific Theia event. So some worlds have a moon, and yes, it orbits what can be named Earth. Some worlds have a different Theia event leaving a much different Earth any different moon or no moon. Relative to a world where the Theia impact did not occur, there is probably still something that is the future version of what had become our Earth in our world. Some (most) worlds don’t have our solar system at all. Some worlds have unicorns on them, but probably not human maidens to adopt them. The ones with unicorns (evolved from the same primitive live as did we) very much have a moon in their sky. The exact same Theia event exists relative to the unicorn as it does to us. The branching of worlds that cumulated in those two states most certainly occurred. It’s like two very different chess game states (one with (horny) knights still on the board, one with only bishops) both sharing a common first dozen moves.

So for the Moon to exist it must have a relation with something, say the Earth, and this relation existed before humans, right?

Yes, our prehistoric Earth is related to our prehistoric moon. They very much measure each other, in a Bang-Ding-Ow way (I hope you get that reference).

If humans are not special in this role then you don't necessarily need an observer for quantum decoherence. You just need other relations, no?

With the exception of one (Wigner) interpretation that was so unpopular that it was abandoned by its creator, decoherence or wave function collapse has absolutely nothing to do specifically with humans or consciousness of any kind.

There’s only finite stuff that exists relative to me for instance, all of it in my past light cone.
— noAxioms
Yeah, but that stuff exists relative to other stuff, not just you. — Harry Hindu

That it does. Some of it exists relative to the unicorns, as I spelled out above, but nothing particularly recent.

It also existed before you and will continue to exist after you, no?

Relative to say my mailbox after I’m gone, stuff that was in my past light cone will be in its past light cone, so yes. I assumed the name noAxioms, but I do hold a few axioms that are not necessarily self evident or true, but without which no progress can be made. These include that my sensory input is not a lie. If I’m being fed fiction (evil BiV scenario), then I have zero knowledge and cannot help getting it wrong, sort of like the N Koreans. (Two Korean references in the same post, wow). I also assume humans are not in any way special. That path leads to a different dark hole.

Or are you saying that all other relations of things other than with you do not exist when you don't? That would be solipsism.

Yea, it would. The Wigner interpretation mentioned above can be driven to solipsism, which is why Wigner abandoned it.

But I am a realist. So now what?

Now you punch holes in my idea.

You like to postulate other universes when you don't believe that there actually are.

Same with the unicorns, but I don’t postulate their existence, I just reference them. Yet again, it is meaningless to talk about if they actually are or are not. Lacking the meaning of the property, the other universe is on no more or less stable ground than this one. That’s the beauty of it.

Is it so hard for you to pretend that maybe you're not an anti-realist? You say 'real' has no meaning and then go on to categorize your beef as being real and existing as a relation with you.

Which is different than any of that just existing.

Our conversation is unraveling quickly. What is meaningless is your use of language.

I’m trying. Part of the problem is that most basic assumptions are part of the language, such as all the verb tenses that presume presentism. It’s all very pragmatic, but not so useful when it gets in the way of understanding a different point of view. So other than my continued nattering about using existence, ‘is’, or being real in an objective way, please point specific points out where my language gets in the way.

That is the difference between what makes a scribble a number or word and not just a scribble. So are 2 and 4 scribbles or numbers?[/quote]I’m talking about the latter. What is written down is a representation, an abstraction of sorts, not the thing.

If they are numbers, then they represent something.

Well, that goes against my original question of if they needed to represent anything. I think somebody working in pure mathematics (not applied) would still say that 2+2=4.

Welcome to TPF!

’m only very new to philosophy, but immediately I was attracted to the question, “what is humanity’s purpose?” — Laila

Personally, the first thing I would ask is 'purpose to what?'. A thing might have different purposes to different things. A leaf might serve the tree's purpose of gathering light energy, but the same leaf might serve the purpose of food to a bug, or shade to something else. It serves a purpose to X if it meets a goal of X, so first steps are to pick an X and determine its goals.

One could say that the meaning or purpose of life is up to the person or that it’s something like happiness but in my opinion the reality is probably harsher than that. That’s not to say you can’t have some kind of motivation or have something you feel is your purpose, but I think saying it’s the entire reason you were born is incorrect.

You're suddenly switching from purpose of humanity to your own purpose as an individual. I doubt they serve the same purpose to various things.

Take humans away and life and the world flourishes.

You recognize humanity as a sort of pandemic to the ecosystem. It is predicted that the Holocene extinction event will claim perhaps 85% of all species. This has happened before, arguably not with negative long term consequences, depending again on what bar is used to measure goals being met or not. But I agree, that most recent/current species would be better off had humanity never come along.

Well first of all, how is everything made in such a perfect way?

It isn't perfect, even before humans. Perfection would arguably not involve extinctions anymore, but even that can be driven to calamity.

So, it is possible that humanity is the death side of the coin.

Death of all things is inevitable, with or without humans helping.

I really didn't grok the fishbowl analogy.

It comes down to what you mean by "exist". — Harry Hindu

Well under the relational view, it’s defined as a relation. Pretty sure I spelled that out before. X exists relative to Y. If you want to get down and dirty, the relation seems to depend on the nature of the structure defining X and Y. So for instance, in this universe it seems that quantum decoherence defines X to Y: Y measures X when information of X leaks to Y. But quantum rules hardly apply in a system without quantum mechanics, or even causal physics, so for instance 3 is less than 5 and thus 3 and 5 mutually exist in relation to each other. That one is not a temporal relation.

The difference between an known thing and an imagined thing is that one is understood to represent things whose existence is not dependent on a mind and the other's existence is completely dependent upon a mind.

The point of the unicorn example was to show that expression of such relations is commonplace. I picked a unicorn because it exemplifies a thing lacking the property of existence. I’m talking about a unicorn, and not the abstraction or representation of one.

This is the really mind-bending part. In what way does some system exist independent of it being measured?

Your wording uses ‘exist’ as a property, and is thus meaningless in the relational view. In short, using quantum rules, a thing doesn’t exist relative to Y if Y hasn’t measured it, and thus there is no existence relative to Y in the absence of measurement. A photon ‘in flight’ for instance isn’t measured by anything. It is probably the number one example of a counterfactual. Existence of an unmeasured photon is denied pretty much by any non-counterfactual interpretation of physics. Not so with a classical pulse of light, but such a pulse has been measured.

If any interaction is a measurement and humans/lifeforms are not special in this role, then the Moon and Earth existed prior to humans as a measurement?

Relative to what? Question is meaningless without that.

Are you saying that it is measurements, or relations, all the way down, and are what is real or exists?

Relations all the way down, yes. Exists no, since that isn’t a relation. No, I’m not saying relations are ‘real’.

Any system is a relation between its constituents and the constituents are also systems. It seems like an infinite regress

Not infinite. There’s only finite stuff that exists relative to me for instance, all of it in my past light cone.

Is your beef against realism a real state-of-affairs that can be explained?

Not being a realist, my ‘beef’ does not have the property of being real, but it’s real to me.

So, am I correct in my assumption that your explanation is of a real state-of-affairs (that you have a beef with realism) that is true despite if you had explained it or not, or even if I believed your explanation or not?

It being categorized as ‘real’ is meaningless (not even wrong). It is real to me, and also to you regardless of my having explained it or not. Explaining it just changes some epistemology, but the measurement was unavoidable since there’s no practical way for the two of us to isolate from each other.

What is the relationship between the scribbles. 3.600517 and 12.8119 and 16.412417? Why is there a relationship at all? There must be something going on inside the calculator that forms a relationship between them that is more than just the rearranging of scribbles.

I don’t like the talk of scribbles since I’m not in any way suggesting that the numbers require representation in any way in order for them to relate in this way. To sink the view you’d have to show that the relationship is necessarily only formed by some process in the calculator or some other instantiation, and I don’t think that can be demonstrated. Lack of ability to demonstrate this doesn’t prove the view, but most views such as this are interpretations, not provable theorems.

Your goal doesn't perform the calculation. It determines what kind of values and the calculations, or measurements that you will use, as well as how specific you need your measurement to be successful in achieving your goal.

Nothing needs to calculate or quantify anything. This is sort of an exercise in logic, finding a view consistent or somehow self-contradictory.

The success or failure of your goal is dependent upon those values and calculations being representative of some actual state-of-affairs or not, and not just being some scribbles being rearranged in your head at whim.

Both cases seem to constitute instantiation. If a state of affairs is actual (real), then the sum seems contingent on that reality. If it is just scribbles, then it is contingent on being represented somewhere. I want the sum to be what it is without any of this, for the sum to be objectively this one value, not contingent on anything. I don’t see why 2+2 isn’t 4 until being instantiated, so I consider the suggesting of it being an objectively true relation isn’t immediately falsified on logical grounds.

If it were just a language thing, then I can simply rearrange quotes, and some of your posts would be mine. What is plagiarism?

I say it is just a language thing, without which there would be no defined ‘you’ to rearrange quotes. Indeed, there is no meaning to plagiarism in physics without definitions of system boundaries.

Doesn't the fact that I can design a physical device that isn't a human being but possesses sensors like a human being that can determine the boundary of a cat in the same way a human can, mean something?

It’s actually pretty hard to do. Closest I can think is a self driving car which needs to glean objects and then sort out which ones are potentially mobile. The cars still get it wrong sometimes.

Mostly...
— noAxioms
If the rational part is fine with the goals, then the rational part must share the goals because the rational part must realize that the boss and itself are part of the same being that the outcomes of their behaviors affects them both. — Harry Hindu

Mostly...

Then the rational part doesn't seem rational at all if it doesn't at least attempt to overthrow the boss when it determines that the boss is making the wrong decision that will impede their natural and social fitness.

Well that’s what it’s there for, so of course.

Hmm. It seems strange to say that you are not a realist when you've been engaged with me in this conversation for some time now. — Harry Hindu

Realists are not the only ones who claim the ability to communicate.

Keep in mind that I am expressing a view, not a belief. I'm not asserting that my way is the truth, and thus technically I am not asserting that all of the things I qualify as 'lies' are actually false. But they have serious problems that seem more substantial than with alternative views. So I'm not evangelizing my pet theory, but rather looking for feedback to help find the holes in it. In that capacity, this conversation is a big help. I suppose to fully describe what I've worked out, it would need to be explained in more detail and these posts are just a pragmatic rough sketch. The details are harder to discuss in natural language since a sort of B-speak would be necessary which avoids not only references to the present, but also to persistent identity, and that gets cumbersome. So anyway, the rudiments of a relational take on things:

You exist relative to me. It’s a relation born of measurement, at least in this universe. It is not a function episemology. There are billions of people I don't know which nevertheless exist relative to me.
Being a non-realist means that the property of being real (existence) is undefined. Relations are not affected by the meaningless property. There is precedent. People have no problem saying a unicorn has a horn on its head despite the lack of existence of the horn, or running a simulation of a car hitting a wall to measure its safety properties despite the lack of existence of the car. The unicorn horn exists relative to the unicorn despite their lack of the meaningless property. I don’t exist to the unicorn since it doesn't measure me.

It’s something like the Rovelli view, except I’ve seen it expressed that it implies a sort of momentary ontology where a system exists only at the moments in which it is measured, and not between, but the moon is quite there (relative to us) when not being looked at. For one thing, it is pretty impossible to not continuously measure the moon, and for another thing, you can’t un-measure a thing, so the moon once measured exists to all humans, even humans that might not exist relative to me say in some other world.

Humans/life forms play no special role in this. It isn’t about epistemology. You always existed relative to me long before either of us posted on any forum. We exist relative to my mug since it too has measured us, despite the fact that the mug doesn’t know it. Any interaction whatsoever is a measurement, so the only way to avoid it is by isolation by distance or Schrodinger’s box and such.

Simple exercise: With begging the opposing view that being real is necessary for A to relate to B, design a device that can detect if it is real or not. It’s kind of similar to asking the presentist to design a device that measures the rate of advancement of the present, an absolute clock of sorts. Thing is, there’s no empirical difference between the rate changing by say a factor of 100, or stopping altogether. Absent an empirical test, assertions about the reality of the posited thing (the present) is superfluous. Likewise, being real seems to be superfluous to empirical observations, so dismissing it opens different options for consideration.

You're the one that brought other universes into the discussion, no?

But I hopefully didn’t go so far as to suggest that these other universes exist. I'd have expressed that our universe doesn’t exist relative to them, and they don’t exist relative to us.

Is 2+2=4 a realist statement? Is it conditionally true only if either quantity is real or there are real things that can be quantified, or is it unconditionally true even without there being anything real to count?
— noAxioms
Now I'm not really sure by what you mean as "realist". I am a direct realist when it comes to the mind and an indirect realist when it comes to the world. Our minds are of the world and about the world, thanks to causation (information).

For one, that’s more specific than the typical description. ‘Realist’ is an adjective of sorts and the word on its own doesn’t say what you’re realist about. My big beef against realism is how one explains the reality of whatever one considers real. So the deist types just add a layer to the ‘cause of the universe’ but fail to explain the existence of the deity vs the nonexistence of same.

OK, about the 2+2=4 thing: This is probably the shakiest part of my view: Is the sum of (just to pick a non-counting example) 3.600517 and 12.8119 objectively equal to 16.412417 or is it contingent on instantiation of those values somehow somewhere, on say a calculator adding those specific values. The latter would require the thing performing the calculation to be more fundamental (it would exist, relative to the sum) than the sum of the value. I propose otherwise. I suggest the sum is 16.412417 even in the absence of anything calculating that particular operation or two objects of those dimensions somehow being combined, or in particular, even in the absence even of the meaning of something being objectively real (e.g. ‘nothing’ is a meaningful objective state of reality, so I don’t suggest ‘there is nothing’). From this premise (that mathematics doesn’t require instantiation to be valid), I can build our universe. There are other hurdles, but that’s been one that bothers me.

As you pointed out, math problems like dividing by three gives you an infinite regress answer.

That’s just a decimal representation of a third. A number is a number, regardless of the impossibility to express that number precisely in any conceivable representation. I mean, pi is a number expressible with a single character, but most real numbers cannot be expressed exactly. This doesn’t affect the number itself, it just affects the ability of it to be physically represented.

Our present goal in the mind determines how many significant digits we use (how close the approximation needs to be) to accomplish that goal. Is the goal to divide the last piece of pie among three people equally, or is the goal getting a spacecraft to Mars?

My goal doesn’t involve anybody or anything actually performing a calculation. That would make the truth of 2+2=4 contingent on the thing doing the adding. A simulation does such calculations, and yes, they’d be approximate. I’m not talking about a simulation, which is just a sub-structure implemented on a deeper structure, all very much like the deity-universe relationship.

So we can't determine whose posts are whose on this forum?

On what statement of mine did you conclude something like that? Done correctly, the quotes are signed.

there is surely a difference between a cat and a fish that does not simply exist in our minds.

I wasn’t talking about the difference between a cat and something similar to a cat. I’m talking about the boundaries of a specific cat or river or whatever. Which atoms belong to the cat and which do not, and precisely when does that designation change? Physics doesn’t care about it. It is just a language thing. But build a physical device that say cleans a cat and you’ll have to define the boundary to a point so it doesn’t waste it’s time grooming the carrier or something.

There is something that we are naming and the naming refers to the similarities of particular organisms. I don't think the similarities and differences are products of our minds.

With organisms, not, it isn’t just a mental thing. Two eukaryotic organisms are the same species if they can produce fertile offspring together. It gets harder to distinguish different species of organism that reproduce via mitosis.
We are getting seriously off topic here.

If you are able to say that they are lies, then you obviously know what the truth is is yet you are still able to survive. How is that?

Because the part in charge doesn’t believe the ideas that the rational part comes up with. The boss very much believes the lies and the rational part is fine with the goals that come from them. Mostly...

It seems to me that the ability to adapt to a wide range of environments is a result of our our rational side (science and technology).

No immediate argument, but * rant warning * I do notice that we rationally can see the environmental damage being done, but the parts in charge do not. For all we pride ourselves in being this superior race, we act less intelligent than bacteria in a limited petri dish of nutrients. The bacteria at least don’t see the problem. We do and we (temporarily at least) have all this technology at our disposal, and don’t do anything different than the bacteria. * end rant *

Being able to survive in a wide range of environments, and potentially all environments, is about as fit as you can get.

Being able to sustain that ability would make us far more fit. So far, from the point of view of the planet, we’re just another pandemic, an extinction event. The first one (Oxygen Catastrophe) never went away and resulted in astonishing complexity that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred. If I could name a goal for the human race, it is to do that sort of thing again. Move to the next level instead of collapse back down to pre-bronze-age conditions.

In order to lie you must know the truth.

I suppose, yes, but it's still a falsehood despite lack of deliberate deceit by any willed entity.

It's like saying that in one universe there is only one universe, when there are actually many. How would you acquire the truth if not by leaving this universe and going to another? — Harry Hindu

Acquisition of what amounts to a measurement of an unmeasurable thing is of little concern to me. Not being a realist, I don’t give meaning to realist statements like “there are X many universes”, be X 0, 1, some other number, finite or otherwise. My universe is confined to a limited distance. That’s a relation relative to any given event (physics definition) in my life.

Very late edit:
Is 2+2=4 a realist statement? Is it conditionally true only if either quantity is real or there are real things that can be quantified, or is it unconditionally true even without there being anything real to count? I can make it a little harder by picking a non-integer since it eliminates the relevance of just counting things.

What qualifies a universe to be a universe, or part of the category, "universe"?

Tegmark listed four different ways to do that. His first is the kind I referenced above, a set of finite sized hyperspheres that overlap, separated only by distance. That’s four different ways to define a cat.
I’m the first to admit that defining a word is a human language thing. It isn’t a physics thing at all. What delimits the cat from the not-cat? At exactly what point does the cat and food system become just cat?
In Dr Who, a character had a teleport device strapped to his wrist. Hit the button and you’re suddenly somewhere else. My immediate (no hesitation) reaction to that was to ask how it knew what was you and what wasn’t. In terminator it was a nice define sphere and if your foot was outside that line, it doesn’t go with you. But the wrist device needed to know apparently that the clothes needed to go with you, but not say the post against which you’re leaning, despite the post being closer to the device than many of your body parts. It really bothered me, never mind the whole impossibility of the device in the first place, which I readily accept as a plot device.

So the question is, do (mental) categories exist independent of minds? Are categories objective features of reality?

I’d have said that abstract is abstract and there is no cat until something names/models it. The word cat is strictly a mental construction. So are atoms if you come right down to it, but at least atom has a physics definition that the cat lacks. I’m not asserting anything here, just giving my thoughts.

It's more likely that your self-contradictory beliefs have no bearing on your goal to survive, which is why you can hold them and still survive.

The lies have a huge bearing on my ability to survive. So it must be the rational beliefs, far more likely to be true, that have no bearing. I’d say they do, but the rational side isn’t in charge, but instead has a decent advisory role for matters where the boss hasn’t a strong opinion. Fermi paradox solution: Any sufficiently advanced race eventually puts its rational side sufficiently in charge to cease being fit.

When you actually apply those beliefs to goals that they have an impact on, then you will find that your goals cannot be realized.

I have to admit that the rational side is like an engineer, not having goals of its own, but rather is something called upon to better meet the goals of its employer, even in cases where the goals are based on known lies. But I’m not sure whose goals you think are not being realized. They’re working on ‘live forever’.

That's the thing that we need to iron out. Is our goal to feel warm fuzzies and cope with the reality of life, or is to acquire true knowledge of reality?

OK, there’s a rational goal, since I rationally want to do the latter. Surprisingly, there are warm fuzzies on that road as well, despite the denial of that possibility from the theists, who assert oblivion as the only alternative to eternal orgasm in the sky.

Yes Human brains have the capacity for numerical and moral judgments, grammar etc. After all we are the evolutionary product of billion of generations interacting empirically with their environment and its rules. — Nickolasgaspar

We've been modern humans for only a short time. Our current morals are only a few generations old. Yes, there are some crude rules built into our instinct, but siblings regularly do some pretty cruel things to each other, so it's a stretch to say the morals are an evolutionary product instead of a product of society, and a rapidly changing one at that.

Just wanted to say thanks for the dialog. You’re one of the single digit of posters whose feedback I’d not lightly dismiss, even if I’m in total disagreement with a few of them.

Your profile says you're Indonesian, not an "American white guy".

If there is more than one universe then are we not already acknowledging that there are a number of universes, and that there might be different universes where there are two universes in which 2+4=4 and 2 in which 2+2=7, but there are 2+2=4 total universes? — Harry Hindu

That would be a meaningless question if the sum of two and two is not objectively meaningful. You’re asking an objective question there, not one related to a particular set of laws.
You said that 2+2=4 is true in our universe, which I’ll call U0. So U0 → 2+2=4
But I’m going for a relation in the other direction: 2+2=4 → U0, U1, etc.
If mathematical law holds objectively and not just relative to our universe, then I can explain the existence relative to us of our universe. That’s why I’m interested in it being objectively true. It has been a weak point in my argument.

Would it make any sense at all to say that we can add 2 universes to 2 other universes to get 4 universes yet 2+2 does not equal 4 in a certain universe?

I suppose in the universe where 2+2=7, there would objectively be 7 universes, but we’d count only 4. That sounds like a contradiction since it is an objective quantity being discussed, not a quantity of anything that is part of one universe or another. That’s fair evidence that 2+2 objectively is 4, but I’ve not enough of a formal mathematical background to assess the validity of that argument.

You misunderstood what I wrote then. I was trying to illustrate why the ‘why am I me’ question is baffling only if dualism is assumed.
— noAxioms
Because you are assuming that there is an I that is separate from the individual (dualism).

The question assumes that, yes. Hence I rationally reject the question as either meaningless or begging. The question “why is there something and not nothing” is similarly meaningless/begging, and is why I abandoned the realism that it begs.

Dualism is indoctrinated at an early age with the introduction of religion (soul vs body).

I might agree with the solipsism thing, but my suspicion is that language is what then introduces the dualism, just like it introduces object identity and reinforces presentism, something that babies/animals already have. Religion (organized religion at least) is just a parasitical entity evolved to prey on these beliefs and the natural resistance to death.

Rationally, I’ve rejected all those things, even fear of death. But just rationally. I obviously hold multiple self-contradictory beliefs. As I said, the lies make you fit, and I’d not survive the day without them.

The notion that you can exist independently of your body is a delusion created as way to deal with the knowledge of your death.

Yes, warm fuzzies so you can sleep. Most people rationalize the lies rather than rationally analyze them, but most people don’t give a philosophy forum a second thought.
I’ve watched my mother rewrite her memories as a method of holding on to the warm fuzzies. It’s harder to see yourself do it, but it’s a necessary coping mechanism. Humans are excellent at rationalizing, but incredibly poor at rational thought. I struggle to be otherwise, and maybe even fool myself into thinking I’m on some kind of right track, but deeper down I realize that’s probably a rationalized conclusion. Go figure.

There is no lottery. There is no luck.

Agree, but you expressed incredulity about the bug, so I thought I’d explain from where that idea came.

It always puzzles me whenever an attempt is made to transplant a head. Recently, they had transplanted mice heads. It lived for a day. But there's also a procedure done on monkey decades ago. The monkey survived for hours. — L'éléphant

I'd have said that it was a replacement of everything below the neck, not above it. You didn't get a new head. The head got your body. You're gone.

Continuity of phenomenal self-awareness is personal identity, — 180 Proof

I fall asleep and my personal identity survives, even if I've been unconscious indefinitely. A full replacement with a mechanical brain that was somehow loaded up with all the memories would be no different in principle than just waking from anesthesia. In practice, while I have no problems with the mechanical thinker being conscious, it just wouldn't feel the same. You'd have to rig it up to react to all the chemical changes and such, and not just be a bunch of digital circuits.

As for the OP:

If someone told me they were going to duplicate and replace my brain with a mechanical one (and dispose of the organic one), I would consider that death. — RogueAI

Lots of games to play here. Would you consider a star-trek style transporter to be death? The machine takes you apart down to the atom and rebuilds an identical one somewhere else. The memories are there, but is it you? What if it's a copy and they don't destroy the original. Is the new one you now?

As I said, the sum of two and two is true in this universe. Whether it is not true somewhere else is irrelevant. — Harry Hindu

Philosophy is irrelevant then, so I disagree. It actually matters a lot to me. OK, it being true in this universe is enough for a priori knowledge, but I’m interested in it being objectively true.

Something else would be true in the other universe, like 2+2≠ 4

That would be a disappointment, but barring an example, I suspect otherwise.

:brow: Seriously? You really think that there was ever a chance that you could have been a bug?

You misunderstood what I wrote then. I was trying to illustrate why the ‘why am I me’ question is baffling only if dualism is assumed.

Anyway, the 'I' in that question is the self again, and if you deny the existence of it, the improbability goes away. — noAxioms

I said I (the self) could no more be a bug than it could be me. I denied its existence. There is nothing ‘being’ me.
The point of the example was to illustrate that everybody knows what Paul Simon meant by those lyrics. People have a dualistic instinct, a lie that is pretty much impossible to disbelieve.
Without it, the lyrics don’t make any sense since X is X (a tautology) and cannot be Y. But it makes sense to suggest the experiencer of X were to experience Y instead.

Yes, given dualism, there are a lot more non-human things to be (bugs being one example) and thus odds of winning the ‘human lottery’ are suspiciously low. Some get out of this via anthropocentric assertions, that humans are special this way. Questioning the lie is often not an option.

Your Paul Simon quote isn't saying anything other than "I wish that I could be a different I".

Even that makes no sense. How can say a cat be a dog? A thing is what it is and cannot meaningfully be something else.

Why am I me? Because a unique arrangement of half of my mother's genes and a unique arrangement of half of my father's genes were fused together to make the unique me. We are all unique outcomes of different halves of our mother's and father's genes.

That’s why your physical appearance is what it is, which wasn’t the question. The question asks why you look out of Harry’s eyes and not the eyes of another. The question makes no sense outside of a dualistic context since under monism it is tautological that a creature looks out of its own eyes (exceptions to robots with bluetooth).

Using an omnipotent god as an example is quite a stretch — Harry Hindu

Well, I'm questioning if the sum of two and two is objectively four (a priori truth), and I need to stretch pretty far to do this. The god isn't the point. The point is the possibility somewhere different where that sum is seven or something, or better, a universe utterly devoid of 'quantity', thus reducing 'two' to a meaningless thing where any sum of two and two is at best not even wrong. That's still a stretch. 2+2=4 is sort of a symbol of a priori knowledge, even if humans would probably not figure it out without experience.

So it seems to me that any benefit to the species is also a benefit to the individuals

This gets back to my suggestion that 'reproduction is beneficial' might be a lie. Sure, reproduction makes a species fit, but is being fit beneficial? So say smallpox goes extinct (just to pick something the extinction of which you personally are not likely to mourn). On the surface it would appear that it would not be beneficial for the smallpox species, but only if smallpox actually has a goal. It's evolved to be fit, but doesn't actually have a goal to be that way. Is any purpose actually not served by its extinction? Nature doesn't care. No smallpox 'individual' cares in any way we humans can relate.
Smallpox also doesn't have a belief/instinct that reproduction is beneficial, so maybe my example reached too far away. It doesn't reproduce to fulfill an irresistible urge. So maybe I need to illustrate with a more relatable pestilence like a tapeworm or something.
I usually take a relational view of almost everything, so I'd ask: What is the goal of a given species? Reproduction seems only a means to that goal, but the goal itself seems missing. Extinction is inevitable, so the goal is somewhere prior to that. Did any species now extinct ever meet its goal?

What is the difference between an individual and a self? Do individuals exist?

"Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory" -- Paul Simon
The 'I' in that line is the self, and 'Richard Cory' is an individual. The line only makes sense if they're different things, and the self wants to 'be' a different individual than the impoverished employee in the factory. The related question is: "Why am I me?". It seems baffling. There's so many other things you could be like a bug or perhaps even a dust mote. There's so many more of those other things, so why am I not only a human (top of most food chains), but one with the leisure to be pondering philosophy on a forum during the 2nd gilded age of Earth. What sort of lottery have I won?

Anyway, the 'I' in that question is the self again, and the improbability goes away if you deny the existence of it. Nothing won the lottery. Of course the gilded human would ask this and the bug would not. There's no improbability occurring. It's why dualism makes so much sense to my lying intuitions, but makes zero sense to my rational thought.

Does the individual (Richard Cory say) exist? That's a question of persistent identity, which gets into all sorts of trouble as described by Parfit. But he also says it is unimportant. Our sense of identity (not the sense of self this time) is very pragmatic and allows us to function. Anyway, the current Richard Corey doesn't seem to be able to demonstrate to my satisfaction being the same individual as an hour ago. The law of identity seems open to violation, rendering it a mere language convention and not something real.

The hard problem of consciousness is resolved by abandoning dualism and physicalism.

Well I'm neither, so perhaps I'm doing something right.

Y'all seem to be in a sort of chicken/egg thing with the bridge subject. I assure you that the bridge came before the first one purposefully created by humans, and any preconception of the creation of the first built ones most certainly drew on the experience of prior bridges.
Even ants engineer a bridge when there isn't one already there. It's hardly a unique human accomplishment.

I think maybe you're overusing the word "instinct." — T Clark

Maybe so, but besides the point, which is: there are falsehoods which we believe and find intuitive. Some are deep enough that I know they're wrong, yet still believe them, which sounds oddly contradictory.

[2+2=4] would be true in any universe in which there are categories and a quantity of things within that category. — Harry Hindu

OK, but if it was an a-priori truth, it would be true even in a universe without meaningful countable anything. I mean, imagine the sum of 2 and 2 was 4 because an omnipotent god said it was, and had it decreed that the sum was seven instead, then it wouldn't actually be four. I mean, what's the point of being omnipotent if you can't do stuff like that? Would the sum be actually 7 then, or only 7 because 'the god says so'?

Again, what is beneficial and comfortable is dependent upon the goal we're talking about.

Being fit, probably as a species. If a species is not fit, it gets selected out. It's not a purposeful goal, but being fit is definitely an emergent property of things that evolve via the process. As an individual, reproduction is arguably optional. The species often benefits from the members that are not potential breeders. Yes, the individual benefits one way or the other depending on the goal via which the benefit is measured, but for a species, it's being fit, and little else. I don't thing the human species is particularly fit, but that's just opinion.

At a much deeper level, one's feeling of personal identity is fantastically instinctual, and yet doesn't hold up to true rational analysis. It is probably a complete lie compliments of evolution (over 650 million years ago when it was put there), and it makes us fit as an individual, a pragmatic benefit at best. Assuming being fit equates to a benefit over not being fit, this makes the truth of the matter harmful, and the lie beneficial.
— noAxioms
Nah. I don't think that alpha males and females and the individual in which an DNA copy "error" occurred that provides the benefit from which is then propagated throughout the gene pool is an instinctual illusion. Those are real things. If not there from where do beneficial genes come from if not individuals within a gene pool?

I'm sorry, but we seem to be talking past each other. This doesn't seem to be a relevant reply to my comment, which I left up there. I'm talking about one's sense of self. The lie makes you fit, but the analysis of the belief seems to lead to all sorts of crazy woo to explain something that was never true in the first place. It leads to the hard problem of consciousness, something that is only a problem if you believe the lie, which everybody does, even myself.

It seems to me that reasining itself is instinctual and only realized through experience. — Harry Hindu

Well yea. You brought up the 2+2=4 thing, but I'm confident that a human would never figure that out in the absence of experience. Humans are exceptionally helpless at birth, but several instincts are there, like the one to draw breath despite never having the experience of needing to do that before.

I actually question everything, even 2+2=4. Is it objectively true, or is it perhaps only a property of the physics or mathematics of say this universe, and doesn't work in another one? I cannot think of a reasonable counterexample, but that very issue seems to be one of the weakest links in my goal of finding a self-consistent view of how things are.

For something to be beneficial, or useful, there must be some element of truth involved, or else how can there more or less efficient ways of using something - like intuitions? — Harry Hindu

I can think of several exceptions. On the surface, how about "reproduction is beneficial"? It certainly doesn't benefit the individual. There are plenty of humans living more comfortable lives by becoming voluntarily sterile, but for the most part, reproduction is quite instinctual which is why the above goal can rarely be achieved via just abstinence.
At a much deeper level, one's feeling of personal identity is fantastically instinctual, and yet doesn't hold up to true rational analysis. It is probably a complete lie compliments of evolution (over 650 million years ago when it was put there), and it makes us fit as an individual, a pragmatic benefit at best. Assuming being fit equates to a benefit over not being fit, this makes the truth of the matter harmful, and the lie beneficial.

Intuition is often not about knowledge. As my handle implies, I attempt to question everything that most find 'obvious', and it turns out that most obvious truths lead to self contradictions. Our intuitions are not there for the purpose of truth. That's a pretty easy one to figure out if you think about it.

One question about intuition is whether or not it is based on experience or reason. My strong opinion, based on introspection, is that it is mostly, maybe completely, based on experience. — T Clark

Agree. I find that intuitions are almost never based on reason, but rather instinct or experience. Many of those intuitions are not true, but don't confuse truth with beneficial.

Creation usually implies an object contained by time being caused to come into existence: The object is nonexistent at an earlier time, and then something happens that causes the existence of it, for a while at least. The depression on the cushion doesn't meet the definition. It may be caused by the ball, but if it was always there, it was never created.
As another example, the universe (by most definitions anyway) probably isn't an object contained by time, but rather is something that contains time. So it seems a category error to suggest it is a created thing.

Physics does allow temporal loops and backwards causation. They're valid solutions to the equations, so in theory, something could create itself, but there's the loop then. In a loop, while the arrow of time might be defined, all moments are both before and after other moments, so it is unclear what comes before what else.
As for backwards causation, that's one of the interpretations of experiments like the quantum eraser setups, some of which have been interpreted as having caused effects arbitrarily far (years) into the past. But while effects might occur in the past, information cannot be thus passed, and usually the creation of a thing involves information transfer.

I touch particular keys and lo! the corresponding character appears on the screen (to take only the most simple of examples). It appears seamless but in reality the appearance of those characters is the result of predictable causal chain which generally operates with extremely high degrees of consistency; I don't press P and get Q, not unless there's a fault or configuration error. — Wayfarer

Just a side note, since I am perhaps personally involved in that P getting to the screen. The engineering of those tiny computer components needs to go to substantial lengths to get that P consistently on the screen. It takes what is essentially a random process (say electrons tunneling across a barrier) and walks the tight wire between sufficient dice rolling to get a consistent behavior, and reducing the number of dice rolled to get sufficient performance. It has to work all the time, but not more than that. This is sort of an effort to hammer out hard predictable causal behavior from randomness.
Just saying that the seemingly causal behavior of your machine is not necessarily the result of any fundamental causality, but rather a lot of effort to make it so. Per Wittgenstein quoted in your OP, it is useful for hypothesis.

I can see saying that my finger caused the P to show up — T Clark

It's arguably one of the many causes. I mean, the thing probably wouldn't have shown up there just then had your finger not pressed that spot just then. But per my comment above, fundamentally the two are not directly connected. It's just really useful to make that connection.

In any physics, a force is required to change a state.. — Metaphysician Undercover

Quite a ridiculous assertion. A thrown rock (in space say, no significant forces acting on it) is just beyond the reach of the hand that threw it. A second later it is meters away, a changed state. It is also likely facing a different direction after that second since it's really hard to throw a rock without any spin.

From Wikipedia: "In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object." So, in physics, a "force" is what what would change the state which exists at "a given moment". .

Changing the motion is not the same as changing the state. The thrown rock is still heading in the same direction after a second (unchanged motion) and has the same spin (unchanged motion) but has a different location and orientation (both changed states). Yes, force is required to change its linear and angular momentum, per Newton's 2nd law, and is that to which your wiki quote refers), but no force is required to change its location, orientation, temperature, etc, all of which are part of its classic state.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the falsification of deterministic physics. Why are you going on about this?