Born to do Math 119 – Forms of Order: No-Nothing Three-Point Shots, Defaulting to Something
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/05/08
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The whole argument is “why is there something rather than nothing?” But the real argument is “why wouldn’t there be something?” [Laughing]
Rick Rosner: But then we go back to another form of that question, can the universe exist without a support structure? The simplest analogy that comes immediately to mind is the score of a basketball game as seen on a scoreboard.
The rules of basketball are consistent. So, you see or you can follow the basketball game by following the scoreboard. It makes sense. It is not as exciting as actually watching the game. I am thinking of the old scoreboard that doesn’t show video. It just has numbers and lights.
Jacobsen: Red bulbs.
Rosner: Right. That’s a perfectly consistent system within the rules of basketball. But you can’t have that system. Either the series of scores on a scoreboard throughout a game or the scoreboard, it implies a scoreboard is there to keep score and that there is a game that the scoreboard reflects.
You can’t really have the scores in just a free floating way. Unless, there is some kind of structure to provide the scores. It is a terrible analogy. Because you have both the support structures that include the game being played and the scoreboard that shows you the score of the game at various moments.
Also, your consciousness that registers what is going on. But still, the idea that there would be this free floating and consistent series of scores rolling without forms of external support or external correlates that those scores reflect doesn’t make sense.
So, if the matter in our universe is some sort of thing of the universe keeping score, then that implies there are some structures that pertain to and are relevant to the score. The universe, itself, at any given moment is a score.
Does there have to be a scoreboard to show the score to physically support it? Does there have to be a reality that is reflected in the score? A game that is being played. Both of which refer to this world that is external to the universe.
But the universe is a model of or an information processing model in the same way our mind is a model of the world around us.
Jacobsen: Take some of the aforementioned terms, the idea of 3D spatial relations, the idea of colour, the idea of fairness, with in-built systems.
Rosner: Yes. Anyhow, that is a larger question than we’re discussing now.
Jacobsen: It is important, though.
Rosner: Yes, it is one of the central questions. But right now, we want to find out if micro events, e.g., whether or not I have toe fungus, and I do…
Jacobsen: Thanks.
Rosner: Mmhmm.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: …have some informational meaning to the overall computational structure that is the universe. It is a computational structure. Even if, it is supported externally. To put it in scoreboard terms, do my fungus toenails register on the scoreboard that is the universe?
Jacobsen: You don’t mean the casual way people are imagining this. I don’t mean the gross way they’re imagining this. I mean registering via photons hitting an apparatus and being registered on an information processor, even pain registering generally.
Rosner: The state of my toenails is definitely registered by the wider universe. There is a model of my foot right here in the room we’re sitting. But that model is 8 years old. It is the actual size of my foot. It might be slightly bigger, as it is made out of silicon. I forget if it ends up bigger or slightly smaller.
Jacobsen: Why is your second toe so big?
Rosner: That’s just the way my toes came out. That’s the reason that model exists because my foot is grotesque.
Jacobsen: It looks like your second toe and your big toe went “hey, let’s trade places for this life.”
Rosner: [Laughing] It is horrifying.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: That’s why somebody decided to make a model of it and turn it into an ashtray and hand it over to my boss.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: My boss had had enough of it after 8 years, 10 years and said, “Do you want your foot back?” I am like, “Hell, yeah.” To some extent, the state of my toe is reflective in the outside world. But is it reflected in the ongoing game that is the universe’s computations?
That is, the scoreboard of a basketball game, an old school scoreboard, does not tell you whether one player shoved another player, one player for one reason gets a boner in stressful situations like basketball games, where he is not only trying to play basketball but also hoping that people don’t see that he gets a boner.
The scoreboard only represents the most general information about the game, like the score and the number of fouls. It doesn’t reflect the minutiae. That there is a girl in the audience that has a crush on the center. Or the school colours that are there.
The question is if the minutiae of our lives have informational meaning to the universe itself.
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