tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post7634544878562547278..comments2024-03-28T03:22:24.202-04:00Comments on The Multiverse According to Ben: Yverse: A New Model of the UniverseBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743597120529571571noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-58549963582493348442021-05-12T16:10:36.537-04:002021-05-12T16:10:36.537-04:00I haven't communicated with you for awhile, bu...I haven't communicated with you for awhile, but I was wondering just now if you are familiar with Kazimierz Dąbrowski's 1970 book, ( <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mental-Growth-Through-Positive-Disintegration/dp/0901342106" rel="nofollow">Mental growth through positive disintegration</a>(that links to Amazon). I seem certain that you are, but I have never seen you reference the guy! I'll link to two interesting papers:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/331652348_The_Order_out_of_Chaos_Non-Equilibrium_Thermodynamics_of_Positive_Disintegration" rel="nofollow">The Order out of Chaos: Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics of Positive Disintegration</a>; this lady is a physicist specializing in non-equilibrium systems in astrophysics who decided to apply her knowledge base to psychology,<br /><br /><a href="http://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01291/full" rel="nofollow">Understanding Mental Health Through the Theory of Positive Disintegration: A Visual Aid</a>; this lady is a faculty member in the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Department at the Oceans Graduate School in Australia.<br /><br />Okay, that's that. Here's something for your good buddy Hugo:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.quora.com/What-mathematical-reasoning-seems-correct-to-you-but-is-not-in-reality/answer/Wes-Hansen-1" rel="nofollow">What mathematical reasoning seems correct to you but is not in reality?</a><br /><br />You know, I shared a few of your blog posts on the Parapsychology space, but I didn't realize it would make you stop posting! <br /><br />Anyway, hope all is well with you. I still think you're a little nutty, having a new child at 54 years of age. I'm 52 and can't even imagine having a friend, let alone a child. I don't see how you do all that you do and still have time for relationships . . . better manager than I. Of course you probably have much better resources as well.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-24697338942533259852010-04-03T00:14:58.532-04:002010-04-03T00:14:58.532-04:00So do we live universe Aleph naught then, or are w...So do we live universe Aleph naught then, or are we just one of the uncountables?The Irrefutable Foolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07847911075305244021noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-11643176016810420432008-04-16T23:56:00.000-04:002008-04-16T23:56:00.000-04:00A universe simulation running inside a universe si...A universe simulation running inside a universe simulation<BR/><BR/>"What we don't know may exist, you can't rule out the possibility. Anything and everything may exist." one can say. But if these things have no observable influence on anything in this universe, they are nonexistent for all practical purposes. Yet they may exist. <BR/><BR/>But if they do exist and can't influence this universe, does it matter? <BR/><BR/>Some smart aliens create a universe simulator, US 1. They can change its code and affect it directly. Then they settle for version 7.1 Service Pack 3, that seems to run smoothly. Some time later, another universe simulator starts running inside it, US 2 (though the guys inside call it US 1).. That's our universe. Even if they wanted to, they can't change US 1 anymore without affecting US 2 and more importantly they can't affect US 2 without changing US 1. They have to work through their own simulation. So they can't really have a say in our universe if they wish to keep their universe running like it is. For us, for all practical purposes those smart aliens are nonexistent, they're completely unfalsifiable, yet without their existence we wouldn't exist.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-17430836432950949592008-01-27T23:38:00.000-05:002008-01-27T23:38:00.000-05:00Ben, there are many, many people who have set out ...Ben, there are many, many people who have set out to "explain" quantum theory by saying "it's just classical probability theory, changed in some way". But the problem is always that the proposed change ruins the comprehensibility of the classical theory. To take the very simplest example, it is possible to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of quasiprobabilities which are negative as well as positive. A pseudo-explanation which then used this as a launchpad would say, "Quantum mechanics is now understood! It just means that probabilities can be negative as well as positive." And if one were to say, "But what the hell is a negative probability?", the response would be, "That's just how nature is. We just have to accept that there is such a thing, even though it is contrary to our primate intuitions" - blah blah blah. Saul Youssef's work, so far as I can see, is all about explaining quantum theory as a Bayesian theory of complex probabilities, and is therefore completely subject to this criticism - it is a purely formal pseudo-explanation, unless he can say what a "complex probability" is. People become so wrapped up in formalizations and axiomatizations that they forget that a formalization is only as good as its fidelity to the thing represented. Altering a comprehensible formalism to a new one which represents we know not what, and then saying everything is now explained, gets it all backwards.Mitchellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10768655514143252049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-49958980560661629552008-01-25T23:00:00.000-05:002008-01-25T23:00:00.000-05:00Hi Ben,What probability do you assign the possibil...Hi Ben,<BR/><BR/>What probability do you assign the possibility of psi phenomena being real?<BR/><BR/>Also, can you outline how you think using complex probabilities would ever give better answers than real-valued probabilities? And wouldn't this violates Jaynes' proofs?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-6607933397586691892008-01-25T21:37:00.000-05:002008-01-25T21:37:00.000-05:00I followed the Amazon link to Damien Broderick's b...I followed the Amazon link to Damien Broderick's book pn PSI, and copied this blurb:<BR/>"He concludes that while the evidence for various kinds of psi phenomena is strong, there are unknown (and possibly unknowable) factors that make classical, reductionist methods of testing it unpredictable and irreproducible (the reason, he suspects, that the CIA gave up on such research in 1995)."<BR/><BR/>This actually dovetails with what I suspect about the interaction of our consciousness with the Multiverse. (Though I don't know the form or forms the Multiverse or Verses may take, I have taken Multiverses to be a reality for well over twenty years; seems to me the writing was on the wall long before it was widely taken seriously).<BR/><BR/>Where PSI, remote viewing, ESP, or whatever Magick may be concerned: I myself have had no irrefutably Unexplainable experiences; however, certain people I trust completely have reported such experiences; yet it's not as if they could vouchsafe watertight evidence to me. I strongly suspect some aspects of an observer-created universe do in fact exist. However, I think that severe causality violations are inherently private, as in Tegmark's Quantum Suicide thought experiment. We, in other words, have some control over what universe we experience. How much control? That is to be discovered by experiment; but the results may be available only to you. This also accords with the observations of millennia of sages: 'the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao.'<BR/><BR/>Suppose that there are a certain subset of universes that contain the pattern corresponding to your brain in its present state, including all your beliefs and memories and sensory experiences. If you deliberately alter what is in that pattern, does this affect what subset of universes you could actually inhabit? If the Multiverse or Y-Verse, or what have you, is indeed a pattern of information or a data field in some sort of running simulation, why wouldn't you have some ability to navigate within it?<BR/><BR/>I keep coming back to the question of what ultimate field all this transfinite shuffling could happen on. Even if we could experimentally verify various aspects of Multiverses, we must hit a wall somewhere; the analogy I keep thinking of is that we are like stick men drawn on a chalkboard. Even once we have learned everything we can about the chalk and slate and we've decoded everything written on the board, there we are: unable to jump off the board and discover where chalk and slate come from, or anything else about this very complex world outside our chalkboard.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11168555.post-48008932291985199452008-01-25T20:13:00.000-05:002008-01-25T20:13:00.000-05:00Ben, I am OVERJOYED to discover that you have a bl...Ben, I am OVERJOYED to discover that you have a blog and, better yet, that you are a frequent poster! I have just added it to my rss feeds!<BR/><BR/>Your concept of defining consciousness as a capacity to go back-and-forward in time (supposing that I got it :) is intriguing. Somehow it makes me remember of those conjectures by Penrose about consciousness being the capacity for beyond-Turing computation. I feel that I have to think about what happens to a Turing Machine if it "knows" future states of itself. (Or google the work of someone who thought about that. :)Dr. Omnihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11046760383604539018noreply@blogger.com