Uh, most of these are demonstrably false, so the koan does not seem overly useful.
The list of rules has been growing awfully quick, and there is no guarantee that it is finite. Here is the latest list of the basic rules, already quite compressed. And it does not even describe any macroscopic phenomena, which have their own rules, some more ad hoc than others. Thus there is no indication that “the territory” can be fully described by a map with “a short list of simple rules”, though some subsets of it certainly can.
If you think that the above is simple, I shudder to think what you consider complex.
“exceptionless rules” is either vacuous or false. We observe plenty of phenomena we don’t know the rules for. If the koan means that “but the rules are still there even for these exceptions, we just don’t have them on the map yet”, this meta-model seems to contradict 1.
Uniformity across space and time does seem to apply, roughly, to the observed universe, but plenty of models in the modern high-energy physics suggest that the laws and values we observe and deduce might be an accident of some local false vacuum state, or just one of many options in the chaotically inflating multiverse.
Local determinism is only saved in QM by postulating that “everything possible happens, even if we can never observe it”, and even this locality is severely challenged by the EPR/Bell. Even if “the cosmos” were deterministic, it is still not necessarily predictable, both due to chaotic effects and due to potential inherent Knightean uncertainty related to the uninteracted parts of the Big Bang.
Anyway, I agree that the “weird rules” are there first to explain the (weird and non-weird) observations, but I disagree with the narrow interpretation in the wiki
The purpose of a theory is to add up to observed reality, rather than something else
The purpose of the rules is actually to change reality, at least as we perceive it. While we are not (yet) able to change some “fundamental” laws, we certainly affect reality by learning (and changing) some of the others.
Nearly all possible lists of rules would be too lengthy and complex to be encoded in a space the size of the observable universe. By comparison, our universe’s rules seem likely to be able to be written on a t-shirt or two, especially when you consider how many of the rules are structurally similar. So, yes, I consider that simple. Simple to build into a universe simulator, if not simple for a human to inutit. (I’m not sure what you mean by “macroscopic phenomena… have their own rules”.)
I shudder too! There may be simpler possible rules, but the number of sapience-permitting rules much simpler than ours is probably very small. (And it’s certainly vanishingly small relative to the number of sapience-permitting rules more complex than ours.)
For now, we can combine ‘exceptionless’ with ‘uniform across space and time’, unless someone has a thought about how to distinguish the two.
Yes. My expectation is that we live in a bubble of simplicity within a more complex structure. I think the koan is meant to be a generalization about our own observable universe (hence its temporal character), not speculation about our world’s metaphyical substrate. Though it’s obviously at least a clue.
I agree there are costs to saving local determinism (and serious unsolved questions in the neighborhood), but it’s still an extremely plausible model. And when you combine it with non-local determinism, we’ll have accounted for all the plausible hypotheses. Determinism rather than locality is the point I want to emphasize, since it only requires that we deny Collapse interpretations.
EPR doesn’t challenge MWI-style local determinism. (Though it does limit the usefulness of that knowledge, since we don’t know which part of the wave function we’re in.)
The purpose of the rules is actually to change reality, at least as we perceive it.
I’m not seeing why that disagrees with the wiki. One goal is just more proximate than the other, and more specific to the case at hand. The purpose of a hammer is to improve human life; but the purpose of a hammer is also to put nails in stuff.
The lagrangian in that PDF is about three transformations away from the most compact specification of the SM, which would be “the most general renormalizable field theory with these local symmetries and with fermions transforming in these representations”. If you then wrote down the lagrangian immediately implied by that specification, then changed field variables to incorporate the effects of the Higgs, and finally chose a gauge and included “ghost” fields, then you could get that long expression.
That doesn’t appear to be a list, or a rule, or anything meaningful, since it has no equality or inequality symbols.
Your main point seem basically correct. I think RobbBB is trying to get at something meaningful, but is heading in the wrong direction with his demand for definitive, exceptionless, deterministic rules. It’s all about information, and information accommodates exceptions and non-determinism.
That doesn’t appear to be a list, or a rule, or anything meaningful, since it has no equality or inequality symbols.
Yeah, sorry, this is just the Lagrangian of the Standard Model of particle physics, it’s used to calculate probability amplitudes. That’s where you get the equal sign.
Uh, most of these are demonstrably false, so the koan does not seem overly useful.
The list of rules has been growing awfully quick, and there is no guarantee that it is finite. Here is the latest list of the basic rules, already quite compressed. And it does not even describe any macroscopic phenomena, which have their own rules, some more ad hoc than others. Thus there is no indication that “the territory” can be fully described by a map with “a short list of simple rules”, though some subsets of it certainly can.
If you think that the above is simple, I shudder to think what you consider complex.
“exceptionless rules” is either vacuous or false. We observe plenty of phenomena we don’t know the rules for. If the koan means that “but the rules are still there even for these exceptions, we just don’t have them on the map yet”, this meta-model seems to contradict 1.
Uniformity across space and time does seem to apply, roughly, to the observed universe, but plenty of models in the modern high-energy physics suggest that the laws and values we observe and deduce might be an accident of some local false vacuum state, or just one of many options in the chaotically inflating multiverse.
Local determinism is only saved in QM by postulating that “everything possible happens, even if we can never observe it”, and even this locality is severely challenged by the EPR/Bell. Even if “the cosmos” were deterministic, it is still not necessarily predictable, both due to chaotic effects and due to potential inherent Knightean uncertainty related to the uninteracted parts of the Big Bang.
Anyway, I agree that the “weird rules” are there first to explain the (weird and non-weird) observations, but I disagree with the narrow interpretation in the wiki
The purpose of the rules is actually to change reality, at least as we perceive it. While we are not (yet) able to change some “fundamental” laws, we certainly affect reality by learning (and changing) some of the others.
Nearly all possible lists of rules would be too lengthy and complex to be encoded in a space the size of the observable universe. By comparison, our universe’s rules seem likely to be able to be written on a t-shirt or two, especially when you consider how many of the rules are structurally similar. So, yes, I consider that simple. Simple to build into a universe simulator, if not simple for a human to inutit. (I’m not sure what you mean by “macroscopic phenomena… have their own rules”.)
I shudder too! There may be simpler possible rules, but the number of sapience-permitting rules much simpler than ours is probably very small. (And it’s certainly vanishingly small relative to the number of sapience-permitting rules more complex than ours.)
For now, we can combine ‘exceptionless’ with ‘uniform across space and time’, unless someone has a thought about how to distinguish the two.
Yes. My expectation is that we live in a bubble of simplicity within a more complex structure. I think the koan is meant to be a generalization about our own observable universe (hence its temporal character), not speculation about our world’s metaphyical substrate. Though it’s obviously at least a clue.
I agree there are costs to saving local determinism (and serious unsolved questions in the neighborhood), but it’s still an extremely plausible model. And when you combine it with non-local determinism, we’ll have accounted for all the plausible hypotheses. Determinism rather than locality is the point I want to emphasize, since it only requires that we deny Collapse interpretations.
EPR doesn’t challenge MWI-style local determinism. (Though it does limit the usefulness of that knowledge, since we don’t know which part of the wave function we’re in.)
I’m not seeing why that disagrees with the wiki. One goal is just more proximate than the other, and more specific to the case at hand. The purpose of a hammer is to improve human life; but the purpose of a hammer is also to put nails in stuff.
The lagrangian in that PDF is about three transformations away from the most compact specification of the SM, which would be “the most general renormalizable field theory with these local symmetries and with fermions transforming in these representations”. If you then wrote down the lagrangian immediately implied by that specification, then changed field variables to incorporate the effects of the Higgs, and finally chose a gauge and included “ghost” fields, then you could get that long expression.
That doesn’t appear to be a list, or a rule, or anything meaningful, since it has no equality or inequality symbols.
Your main point seem basically correct. I think RobbBB is trying to get at something meaningful, but is heading in the wrong direction with his demand for definitive, exceptionless, deterministic rules. It’s all about information, and information accommodates exceptions and non-determinism.
Yeah, sorry, this is just the Lagrangian of the Standard Model of particle physics, it’s used to calculate probability amplitudes. That’s where you get the equal sign.