NationStates Jolt Archive


Our "reality" and it's construct

Stone Bridges
17-03-2006, 22:47
I've always heard of the theory that all of life, ourselves, the weather etc. Can be put into a mathamatical equations. Is this true? Can our life, can our reality really be explained by a math equation? If it could, I think the equations would be so complex that we, as humans, would not understand it. However, if one day we could understand the equation that regulate our reality, would we be able to change some variables to affect the reality that we are in?
Dancing Tree Dwellers
17-03-2006, 22:51
I think eventually this'll be proven and as everyday and as fundamental a fact as knowing the planets spin round the old sun over there.
Willamena
17-03-2006, 22:52
If it's so complex we can't understand it, then who is going to write it down? :eek:

;)
Stone Bridges
17-03-2006, 22:54
Hmm, heres another question, is the equation so complex that we won't be able to understand it, OR, is it actually so simple that we wouldn't have thought about it?
Dancing Tree Dwellers
17-03-2006, 22:56
If it's so complex we can't understand it, then who is going to write it down? :eek:

;)

The same applied to Newton's equations and Mr Einstein's. Once these things are discovered or realised and then the information is simply taught and knowledge obtained. The real work is to be able to think differently, to be able to think in a way that hasn't been thunk and do the brain-warping initial discoveries, after that we find it easy to communicate this knowlegde and go on from there.
Europa alpha
17-03-2006, 22:58
The meaning of life.

Money + Sex-Taxes + commitment = X.

Vodka + Bisexuality - Hangover + Stds = Y.

X+Y=Paradise.
Stone Bridges
17-03-2006, 23:01
It would be kinda cool to mess with the math that defines our reality. I wouldn't mind messing with mine lol.
PsychoticDan
17-03-2006, 23:35
Your OP is unclear. I think what you meant to say is that there is a theory that says that everything in the universe can be measured mathmatically. That's not a theory. Everything in the universe can be measured in a myraid of mathmatical ways. You, for instance, have a height, weight and density that can be expressed mathmatically. You have an age that can be expressed mathmatically. You can use these same measurements for every object in the universe. Volocity, dirtection, mass, everything in the universe has these attributes and they can be expressed mathmatically. Your post seemed to imply that there is a theory that everything in the universe is made out of math. That's no more true than if I said everything in the universe is made out of tuesday. I had a teacher who put it this way: nature speaks math.
PsychoticDan
17-03-2006, 23:36
It would be kinda cool to mess with the math that defines our reality. I wouldn't mind messing with mine lol.
You can't mess with it. All you can do is change the things it measures. If you change the equations all you do is make them false.
Stone Bridges
18-03-2006, 00:44
You can't mess with it. All you can do is change the things it measures. If you change the equations all you do is make them false.

But what if I change it so that it's still true, but it has diffrent variables?
PsychoticDan
18-03-2006, 01:19
But what if I change it so that it's still true, but it has diffrent variables?
Then you haven't really done anything. You can change your height to your tallness, but that won't put the top of your head any further from the ground. I'm 6'2". Wether I say my height is 6'2" or my tallness is 6'2" doesn't really change th fact that I'm in the upper half of average for an American male in terms of how far the crown of my head is from the bottom of my feet when my body is stretched out as much as it can be.
Stone Bridges
18-03-2006, 01:24
Then you haven't really done anything. You can change your height to your tallness, but that won't put the top of your head any further from the ground. I'm 6'2". Wether I say my height is 6'2" or my tallness is 6'2" doesn't really change th fact that I'm in the upper half of average for an American male in terms of how far the crown of my head is from the bottom of my feet when my body is stretched out as much as it can be.

Ahh, intresting.
PsychoticDan
18-03-2006, 01:28
It actually really is. Especially when you get into chaos theory and quantum mechanics.
Free Mercantile States
18-03-2006, 02:53
I've always heard of the theory that all of life, ourselves, the weather etc. Can be put into a mathamatical equations. Is this true? Can our life, can our reality really be explained by a math equation? If it could, I think the equations would be so complex that we, as humans, would not understand it. However, if one day we could understand the equation that regulate our reality, would we be able to change some variables to affect the reality that we are in?

Of course. Simplified to lowest terms, the universe is a mathematical construct built upon a basic informatic substrate. Hacking it should eventually be possible.

It is my theory that in deep time, the computationally based pure-information descendants of some intelligent species will reengineer reality - collapse the false vacuum or induce a flop transition - in such a way so as to create a reality maximally suited to computation - like computronium is to matter, so the new realities that have perhaps already been born and are racing toward us at lightspeed from wherever they were created, will be to our current one. We'll bypass the Beckenstein bound, and reset it to the true, absolute bound, the maximum informational density achievable in the set of all possible realities.

It'll just be a math problem, or perhaps closer to a computer science one, though that's also a form of math. Of course, that's also assuming that we actually exist in a truly independent universe, and not as a massive historical simulation of our future selves' past, as one part of a simulation of all the possible paths to sentience, as some sort of universe-within-a-universe running on the hacked computational substrate of another surrounding universe, etc. etc.
Stone Bridges
18-03-2006, 02:58
Of course. Simplified to lowest terms, the universe is a mathematical construct built upon a basic informatic substrate. Hacking it should eventually be possible.

It is my theory that in deep time, the computationally based pure-information descendants of some intelligent species will reengineer reality - collapse the false vacuum or induce a flop transition - in such a way so as to create a reality maximally suited to computation - like computronium is to matter, so the new realities that have perhaps already been born and are racing toward us at lightspeed from wherever they were created, will be to our current one. We'll bypass the Beckenstein bound, and reset it to the true, absolute bound, the maximum informational density achievable in the set of all possible realities.

It'll just be a math problem, or perhaps closer to a computer science one, though that's also a form of math. Of course, that's also assuming that we actually exist in a truly independent universe, and not as a massive historical simulation of our future selves' past, as one part of a simulation of all the possible paths to sentience, as some sort of universe-within-a-universe running on the hacked computational substrate of another surrounding universe, etc. etc.


If what you are saying is true, then let's say we do manage to hack into our reality construct one day, how will that affect our reality? I mean we as a species have a habit of once we gain new information, we try to spread it as quickily as we can. With the internet, it'll spread throughout Earth in mere seconds. Once everyone has the hacking ability, then won't that cause our reality to become unstable?
Free Mercantile States
18-03-2006, 03:07
If what you are saying is true, then let's say we do manage to hack into our reality construct one day, how will that affect our reality? I mean we as a species have a habit of once we gain new information, we try to spread it as quickily as we can. With the internet, it'll spread throughout Earth in mere seconds. Once everyone has the hacking ability, then won't that cause our reality to become unstable?

Sorry - I was unclear. At this point, we're no longer the human species. We're no longer biological, our mental architectures can no longer be considered that of Homo sapiens, the entire concept of individuality v. multiplexity v. society/group will be almost meaningless in present-day terms, and every....being or beings or whatever will be unique to a degree members of the same species aren't. Members of the same family or order, for that matter. We'll be weakly god-like, purely digital intelligences, in some ways utterly alien intelligences operating on massive scales, mental transformation and/or descendants of humans who in some cases might sort-of-remember being human.