What is Reddit's opinion of Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>Can I ask what your scientific education is?

It's been almost thirty years since school but I've covered enough math and physics courses to, theoretically, work on tactical air defense systems, it's just not what I chose to do with my life. My maths and physics scores were also highest among other subjects.

>Good god, you're completely wrong. Natural laws are models for what occurs in reality

No no no no - natural laws is what governs the reality. Our theories about them are models. These theories are never complete descriptions of reality, as you say, but better and better approximations and the closer we get the more math is there.

>Why on Earth would you expect me to provide explanations for why the universe is the way it is?

That's what science does, and it finds math everywhere.

>Nobody has ever demonstrated math to be inherent in the universe

Really? How about Tegmark? Why do you use words like "nobody" after saying that "science is full of diametric views"?

I haven't read that book, btw, it just something that is still in my browser history.

String theory at this stage is nothing but math, too. It's your view that math is only a human invention that is an oddity, I'd say.

>Science is a methodology that accounts for our own limitations...

I generally agree with the thrust of that paragraph. Science demonstrates accurate predictions in some cases but is totally irrelevant to other areas like spiritual pursuits. It's scientism that tries to explain all areas of human endeavor and all our experiences through physics.

Interestingly, the ideas you propose here are consistent with the writings of physicist Max Tegmark, which you perhaps may already know. However, he does not go so far as to suggest that it is a phenomenon that can be tested and/or manipulated. I.e. he proposes that the basic substance of our universe is a sort of mathematical object, but stops there and does not make the final step to equating that object with the Akashic Record.

Love the book. The "dust" theory he talks about is expounded upon in Max Tegmark's recent book Our Mathematical Universe. I have been pondering it for years and years and think that "something like it" is probably correct but there are still lots of holes.

Kurweil, however, just strikes me as someone who gets a lot of press for making provocative statements.

I think Egan's work in general is overly optimistic about how easy it will be to digitize a brain, let alone how easy it will be to beneficially modify afterwards. But, it's high-concept science fiction, so some hyperbole is allowed. It may not even represent his actual prediction.

Certainly! I recommend this book (He is partial to Everett - but that is neither here nor there):

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809

Of course the entire discussion revolves around the measurement problem in Quantum mechanics. But one thing is clear. 'Measurement' requires that data/information has leaked from the system and is available to an observer. That was the whole point of the Schrodingers Cat thought experiment.

Uh,ok?

That still does not take away 4555 omega,what does a type 4 multiverse have to do with this. True type 4s contain everything

Some things true type 4s contain.

Platonism on steroids: Welcome to the Level IV multiverse. You can think of what I'm arguing for as Platonism on steroids: that external physical reality is not only described by mathematics, but that it is mathematics.

Culmination of philosophical, cosmological, mathematical theories: Rather than signaling much of a metaphysical lineage, Tegmark’s claim to Plato might instead have something to do with the foundational place that Plato occupies in the history of Western mathematics, philosophy, and cosmology, for, as far as Tegmark is concerned, his own Mathematical Universe is the consummation of all these fields of knowledge.

Hierarchy of multiverses is contained in it: After all, Tegmark’s multiverses are arranged in what he himself calls “the multiverse hierarchy”: Level I is nestled within Level II; Level III brings Level I into infinite dimensional space; and the landscape describes them all. But the great chain of kosmoi does not end here. Having walked his readers up this steep mountain of multiverses, Tegmark announces that Level IV, which is to say his own mathematical multiverse, is the highest level imaginable—even higher than the landscape,

Every multiverse governed by self-consistent laws is a part of type IV (exists as a mathematical structure) and therefore every universe is inside it: for although, in the words of Helge Kragh, “10^500 universes are a lot, the number is infinitesimal compared to the number of possible universes.”A multiverse that comprises all mathematically possible universes “brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses,” Tegmark claims, “because any self-consistent fundamental physical theory can be phrased as some kind of mathematical structure.”

Neoplatonism, and absolutness is in it: His claim might also have something to do with the Neoplatonic notion of a progressive cosmic “hierarchy,” a ranked Chain of Being that extends from rocks and worms to animals, humans, angels, archangels, and finally to the Absolute itself.

More about different kinds of diverse multiverses possible here: This is the reason that Brian Greene calls Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis the “Ultimate Multiverse,” and Davies calls it a “multiverse with a vengeance.” To wit, there is room in this multiverse for everyone: room for quilted multiverses and inflationary multiverses, room for Atomists and Stoics, room for Thales’s water and Anaximenes’s air, room for “one boring pair of cymbals clashing out the same old song.”

In the compendium of all possible universes, some worlds will be stacked like slices of bread, and some will fly down the throat of a Calabi–Yau manifold: “A universe governed by Newton’s equations and populated solely by solid billiard balls … is a real universe; an empty universe with 666 spatial dimensions … is a universe too.”

“How about a universe that obeys the laws of classical physics, with no quantum effects?” asks Tegmark. “How about time that comes in discrete steps, as for computers, instead of being continuous? How about a universe that is simply an empty dodecahedron? In the Level IV multiverse, all these alternative realities actually exist.” So some worlds will be linear, and some will be cyclical; some will be singular, and some will be plural; some will be infinite, and some will be finite; some will branch forward, and some will branch back. Some worlds will be manufactured, and some will be simulated; some designers will be kind, and some will be cruel, some capable and some all but incompetent.

And, presumably, some of the set of all possible worlds will have a creator-god who breathes over primordial waters, who separates the seas from dry land.

How on earth did we get back here?

Even absolute nothingness is part of type IV: Curiously, Nozick noted that within his multiverse there’d be a universe that consists of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not empty space, but the nothing that Gottfried Leibniz referred to in his famous query “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Not that Nozick could have known, but for me this was an observation of particular resonance. When I was ten or eleven, I came upon Leibniz’s question and found it deeply troubling. I’d pace my room, trying to grasp what nothing would be, often with one hand hovering behind the back of my head, thinking that the struggle to do the impossible—see my hand— would help me grasp the meaning of total absence. Even now, to focus on absolute true nothingness makes my heart sink. Total nothingness, from our familiar vantage point of somethingness, entails the most profound loss. But because nothing also seems so vastly simpler than something—no laws at work, no matter at play, no space to inhabit, no time to unfurl—Leibniz’s question strikes many as right on the mark. Why isn’t there nothingness? Nothingness would have been decidedly elegant. In the Ultimate Multiverse, a universe consisting of nothing does exist. As far as we can tell, nothingness is a perfectly logical possibility and so must be included in a multiverse that embraces all universes. Nozick’s answer to Leibniz, then, is that in the Ultimate Multiverse there is no imbalance between something and nothing that calls out for explanation. Universes of both types are part of this multiverse. A nothing universe is nothing to get exercised about. It’s only because we humans are something that the nothing universe eludes us. More explanation about nothingness [source]: And here we return to our mathematical universe hypothesis in accordance with which nothingness would exist. And not only would it exist, but a universe, consisting of nothing, must also be included in our Multiverse since its existence is logically consistent. There would not be imbalance between something and nothing in this model; universes consisting of both something and nothing would be parts of this all-embracing conglomerate. Every multiversal theory is a part of type IV and you can't go higher (if you take an ensemble of mathematical structures, it's just another mathematical structure) [source]: This argument also makes assumption 2 more appealing, since it implies that any conceivable parallel universe theory can be described at Level IV. The Level IV multiverse, termed the “ultimate Ensemble theory” in Tegmark (1997) since it subsumes all other ensembles, therefore brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, and there cannot be say a Level V. Considering an ensemble of mathematical structures does not add anything new, since this is still just another mathematical structure.

Every mathematical structure exists in physical form in some universe: As a way out of this conundrum, I have suggested that complete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical structures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure corresponds to a parallel universe.

Platonic concepts and Rudy Rucker's infinities exist in it, as well as existence of all/every mathematical structures (mathematical modal realism): As a way out of this philosophical conundrum, I have suggested) that complete mathematical democracy holds: that mathematical existence and physical existence are equivalent, so that all mathematical structures have the same ontological status. This can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, asserting that the mathematical structures in Plato’s realm of ideas, the Mindscape of Rucker, exist “out there” in a physical sense, casting the so-called modal realism theory of David Lewis in mathematical terms akin to what Barrow refers to as “π in the sky”.

Entire physical reality (TOE) is described purely using mathematics: Taken together, this implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, i.e., that the external physical reality described by the ToE is a mathematical structure. So the bottom line is that if you believe in an external reality independent of humans, then you must also believe that our physical reality is a mathematical structure. Nothing else has a baggage-free description. In other words, we all live in a gigantic mathematical object—one that’s more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names such as Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today’s most advanced physics theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical— including you. Universe is physically real if self-aware beings perceive themselves to live in physical reality : Given a mathematical structure, we will say that it has physical existence if any self-aware substructure (SAS) within it subjectively, from its frog perspective, perceives itself as living in a physically real world.

Every TOE is a mathematical structure: A second argument supporting assumption 1 is that abstract mathematics is so general that any TOE that is definable in purely formal terms (independent of vague human terminology) is also a mathematical structure. For instance, a TOE involving a set of different types of entities (denoted by words, say) and relations between them (denoted by additional words) is nothing but what mathematicians call a set-theoretical model, and one can generally find a formal system that it is a model of.

Sources: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.1283.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646.pdf https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf https://societyofmodernastronomy.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/the-ultimate-multiverse/ https://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809 https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Cosmos/dp/0307278123 https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Without-End-Lives-Multiverse-ebook/dp/B00I2G76QK

It's a good explanation, though, obviously, I still find reading about it in the novel itself to be more rewarding.

In fact, Dust Theory is analogous to Tegmark's MUH. This computational perspective of us existing as minds in a timeless soup of abstract relations also seems to align with Open Individualism.

On a closely related topic, see this paper by Arnold Zuboff: "Moment Universals and Personal Identity".

Sorry sourcing a book as a link (https://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809?tag=space041-20) There are some papers on google scholar but too high level for my comprehension.

Maybe you'd like the ideas of Max "Mad Max" Tegmark. https://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809

> This field has actually further cemented for me the similarities between the machine's mind and man's mind.

Ha! And for me the opposite.

>If consciousness is just an inherit property of our universe, then it makes sense that what binds a consciousness to a thing is the information about what that thing is. So, if the information is identical, it would seem the consciousness would also be identical.

Indeed. Like I say, the major counterargument to my position is panpsychism.

If correct, then yes. I'd imagine that you could say that any time information is exchanged a "subjective event" has taken place. There WOULD be something that it is to be like a photon. Virtual particles and such? Very, very rudimentary perception at work. Free will? What appears to be randomness is only-pseudorandom and some very minute and mysterious selection process is taking place in all matter.

To put it poetically, you and I (and everyone and everything else) are the same being, the same consciousness, with our individual lives as different "dreams" effectively. Our individual existences would be simple waves, on the ocean of being. Death would then be as meaningless as when you wake up and dream characters vanish. Just as we only notice gravity in the presence of mass (a particular configuration of quantum information), we only notice consciousness in the presence of an information processing device capable of manifesting it's more unusual aspects - ie subjective experience. Consciousness = Information processing in this model.

>If consciousness truly lives outside the universe, no manner of distance in the universe would matter.

You could go even further and tie in platonism (at least of a mathematical sort) and argue that if the world is just the dream of a single entity, then the simulation hypothesis is correct - but there doesn't need to be an "outside" computer - the spacetime structure IS the computer. Occams razor - then you don't need any extra entity like "god" or "higher dimensions". There's no actual "distance" etc, of course just the simulation space. Plato's One basically.

The upshot and why this is relevant (if correct) is also then that I'm totally wrong about the uploading thing, and the clone is me after all! In fact, my position becomes meaningless, like asking where dreams go when you wake up.

There's a nice thread here about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3waiyo/the_hard_problem_of_consciousness_panpsychism/

The article is good as well. I simply lurked, I don't have a good counter to any points raised!

While it all sounds like religion (the main reason I remain suspicious), maybe the reason people keep arriving at something approaching that belief is simply that it's correct. Now that it's being stated more formally than "like, dude, we're all one!" I'm keeping an eye on things.

The biggest issue is falsification - how would you even test this? It's suspiciously close to a God of the Gaps argument for my taste.

If correct though, I guess I'd expect that you'd see that in even apparently random events there's be a general tendency towards developing systems of greater complexity, beyond what we'd expect to see. I'll leave that to any physicists who find the theory compelling to figure out!

Edit: Oh yeah, I read this a while ago, you might like it. It's by the same guy who debunked the quantum computing Neurons theory. Turns out his own theory is somewhat MORE radical, and that he's a monist - but not the material kind. And here I thought he was just another boring skeptic like me haha: http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809

In that case I would also recommend http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1436717221

Max Tegmark thinks the universe is actually mathematical. Its an interesting idea but im not sure how i feel about it. He's definitely going beyond the mainstream with his ideas. He has a book and some youtube talks.