Fumfer Physics 27: Intuition & the Universe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/25

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner probe whether math is built-in or invented, and how intuition can automate physics. Rosner casts math as conceptual shorthand that scaffolds understanding—like words such as “schadenfreude”—with estimation and repetition training intuition. They argue the universe does not “calculate”; laws emerge from interacting fields, while math mirrors structure within finite information, not Platonic perfection. Subjectivity arises as a “statistically disambiguated” layer—distinct yet embedded—analogous to centrifuged strata. Skills span a continuum from embodied physics (a basketball arc) to formal tensors, converging as fluency. Information demands context; existence is a web of relations, and models refine correspondence.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In theory, if something is living in the universe and there’s a union between how the world works and how their mind works—if they’re able to form a mental map of it—then theoretically there should be no limit to how much of that correspondence could be automated. The perception of the mechanics of the world could become intuitive for an organism.

Rick Rosner: That makes sense. Our perception of three-dimensional space, for example, is intuitive. We’ve lived in it and moved through it long enough that we understand perspective instinctively. We don’t need the equations of perspective or formal explanations—we move through space naturally. So you’re saying we could eventually develop enough cognitive “modules” to interpret the universe intuitively, built from advanced theoretical understanding. We wouldn’t need math—it would just exist in our minds as a model of the world.

Jacobsen: What’s intuitive for us isn’t what’s intuitive for an ant. There’s a scaling difference—you can get much functionality at different cognitive levels. And who says we’re the limit? 

Rosner: Within practical limits, of course, you can’t build—at least not yet or in the foreseeable future—a brain the size of a planet. But as technology evolves, there’s no reason to think we couldn’t surpass even that someday.

Jacobsen: So your question is whether math itself is a kind of construct?

Rosner: Right. Is math even math? Math is really a set of languages that act as both numerical and conceptual shorthand. You plug values into equations, and you get results—numbers or symbols—that mean something. They inform your understanding. They help you build the kind of intuitive grasp you were describing earlier. Math, to some extent, is just a way of propping up understanding.

You see a flock of birds, and if you’re Kim Peek, you might instantly say there are 85 of them swirling in the sky. I can do it for maybe 20 birds on a streetlight. That kind of estimation, after repeated exposure, builds intuition. Most people don’t go around counting flocks of birds, but if you do, eventually you develop an intuitive sense of quantity—it’s tied to having done some counting at some point. So math and intuition, or innate understanding, reinforce each other.

It’s a form of shorthand—the exact way words are shorthand. Not the same way, but close. We can think without words; animals feel without words. But it’s much more cumbersome because they lack that linguistic shorthand. Once you name something, it exists as a manipulable concept—you can move it around in your mind as a symbol instead of as a long, descriptive thought.

Take the word schadenfreude: happiness at another’s misfortune. Once you have that word, you can analyze or recognize that feeling much faster—it becomes a tool of cognition. Especially in Hollywood, it’s a useful one.

I’ve got a book on my stairs called How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The author explains physics for laypeople by imagining his dog is very smart—able to understand words but not math. He tries to explain physics in language simple enough for a bright dog to follow. Others have had similar ideas: translating the brutal, equation-filled side of physics—blackboards full of symbols, fifty-page technical papers—into plain language descriptions of what those equations describe.

Which brings me back to another question for you: Does the universe know how to do math? And if the universe were some being—if the information within it were a model of both its external environment and its internal “memories,” the way we carry models in our own minds—then obviously something as vast as the universe would seem to have some kind of mathematical understanding. But does that mean there’s an actual mathematical understanding built into the universe’s physical operation?

I’d say no. The universe doesn’t calculate. It’s a collection of forces and fields that behave according to the principles of existence, from which the laws of physics emerge. The universe isn’t sitting around computing outcomes; things happen because of the interactions and forces acting on them.

Jacobsen: So the question becomes whether math is in our heads, a tool we’ve invented, or something woven into the universe itself. Probably all three. It’s an extension of what we were talking about earlier—intuition. Intuition is basically a kind of calibrated automation of experience and thought. Over time, the mind tunes itself so that some responses—like catching a ball, walking, or sensing someone’s mood—become instantaneous. Those are intuitions working at high speed.

If you stretched that time scale—say, slowed down thinking by a factor of a hundred or a thousand—the distinction between conscious thought and intuition would blur. At that level, thought and intuition are probably the same process, just operating at different speeds. So, when we talk about correspondence—the mind matching its internal calculations to the external world—it’s that correspondence that gives rise to truth. The math we do with tools mirrors the structure of the world, but the world’s “math” isn’t infinite.

Rosner: People often think of math as existing in some perfect Platonic realm—outside of reality, immutable and pure. But you can also see math as something emergent, a convergent conspiracy of forces working together to define quantities. Counting numbers, for instance, feel infinitely precise—each whole number is followed by an infinite string of zeros past the decimal point. That infinite precision is an assumption we make; it’s a human construction.

In a universe with infinite information, such precision might exist. But our universe is finite, so everything in it is incompletely defined—there’s only so much information to go around. We declare numbers to be infinitely precise because our mathematical rules allow us to do so. And that works beautifully as long as we stay in the realm of abstraction. But once you translate numbers into the physical world, you have to deal with fuzziness again—uncertainty, approximation, and the limits of finite information.

The way we define things in the real world and in mathematics might actually follow similar processes. The difference is that in math, we’re allowed to pretend we have an infinite amount of information available to define things precisely. In the real world, we don’t. I don’t know how that helps anything, but there you are.

Jacobsen: The distinction between math as pre-thought and math as thought is probably artificial. Math in the world is something the world does. If you take that naturalistic view and see the laws of nature or physics as mathematical, then we ourselves could be thought of as mathematical objects in motion—dynamic mathematical processes.

The flip side of that, though, is that the universe may not be aware. I know you and I differ on that—especially with the IC idea. You’ve got an object universe with no inherent awareness, but on this planet, there’s a sort of froth where consciousness emerges—subjectivities built from recursive information processing. Through enough layers of recursion, integration, and goal-directed behaviour, you get what we call a “self.”

Rosner: I don’t think the universe itself is conscious, but I do believe the information within it behaves as if it were processed by something conscious. That information could pertain to an information-processing entity that exists in a larger, more fundamental world—an “armature world,” a level of hardware that allows our universe of matter, space, and time to exist, much as our brains enable our minds to exist.

Jacobsen: All universes in the IC model are finite—arbitrarily large, but still finite in stability. So minds, by derivation, are also finite. For perception to occur and for us to form accurate conceptions of the world, there must be a correspondence between the larger finite structure and the internal processing of that subjectivity. But given the enormous scale difference, the internal models of these subjectivities rarely achieve perfect fidelity with any particular aspect of the larger universe.

Rosner: So when I say that information processing in the universe is “subjective,” I mean that subjectivity belongs to the entity doing the processing. To us, that manifests as space, time, and matter—what we call objective reality. We evolved to model that objective reality as accurately as possible to survive moment to moment. But that modelling itself is subjective because it happens within each individual, from their perspective, and pertains uniquely to them.

So then we can argue about what “subjective” even means. Our brains strive to model the world objectively—without bias—but since each brain’s perspective is unique, the modelling is still subjective. You could call it objective because it tries to be accurate, or subjective. After all, it’s always filtered through individual cognition. Once we make judgments about what’s going on, those judgments are inherently subjective. 

Jacobsen: So when you talk about subjectivity and objectivity, you have to define your terms very carefully. Once you do, it’s actually quite straightforward. There’s nothing mystical about it. I’d say that subjectivity in an objective universe is statistically disambiguated—it emerges as a probabilistic byproduct of nature.

Rosner: Say that again without the word “disambiguated.” What do you mean?

Jacobsen: You know those spinners used in labs—centrifuges? They separate substances by weight or density, forming layers as they spin. I think the universe is like that, metaphorically speaking. Subjectivity works the same way: never entirely separate, still sticky, because we’re part of nature. We come out of it, but our sense of self is distinct enough to exist as its own layer in the mix. In that sense, our subjectivity is pretty well defined—each brain models reality for one person.

“Pretty well” is the key phrase. Not absolutely. That’s what I meant earlier by “statistically disambiguated.” Subjectivity is distinct enough to function independently but still arises from the same integrated substrate.

Rosner: So “statistically disambiguated” means what, exactly?

Jacobsen: It’s like saying that a brain’s information—this vast, entangled mass of data—produces a distinct entity the way a macro-object like an apple emerges from particles. An apple is clearly an apple because, statistically, it’s separated from everything else in the universe. It’s coherent.

So applying that same principle to consciousness—scaling it up from classical physics. In classical physics, objects are defined by their scale and their separability. The same logic can apply to less tangible things, such as the sense of self. Consciousness and selfhood emerge as bounded systems from the larger “object universe.”

That ability to predict, perceive, and integrate with the universe—that’s the union ancient traditions talk about. People joke about yoga as stretching, but yoga literally means “union.” If you had no union with the universe, you wouldn’t perceive anything at all. The stickiness —the inseparable connection —defines experience. Evolution gives each species a specific way of interfacing with the world. Your nervous system, your body, your history—all of that encodes the range and type of experience you can have. As systems evolve or degrade, those parameters shift.

Rosner: As our information-processing abilities expand, our understanding of the universe should grow more inclusive. Bugs, for instance, miss almost everything. An aphid can’t conceive that it’s orbiting a star in one galaxy among hundreds of billions. But as our brains evolve—or as we augment them with technology—we’d hope our comprehension becomes more complete.

Jacobsen: Here’s a trick question to sharpen the point: what’s the real difference between catching a ball—an intuitive act—and doing matrix-based math? Time and effort. One is learned subconsciously through repetition; the other requires conscious training to restructure how the mind processes information. But conceptually, both are learning processes that map onto a multidimensional space of cognition—how we acquire and express knowledge.

Shooting a three-point shot and mastering the tensor equations of general relativity seem worlds apart, but both can be plotted in the same cognitive space. The axes represent factors such as time investment, abstraction, sensory feedback, or error correction. Some skills feel more intuitive—like the basketball shot—but both involve the brain learning to model and predict outcomes within structured systems.

So even physical intuition—like a basketball player’s sense of trajectory—could be seen as a kind of embodied physics.

Rosner: My brother’s best friend in junior high was one of the two best basketball players at their school. His dad was a physics professor, and he used to try to mathematicize basketball—to translate the arcs, velocities, and rotations into formal equations.

So my brother’s friend’s dad—the physics professor—once tried to mathematicize basketball. Ignoring air resistance, he explained that if you release the ball with the same force at different angles, the most significant horizontal distance comes from a 45-degree angle. That’s the classic projectile-motion result. In theory, that should help: less force means better accuracy, so a 45-degree release seems ideal.

But in practice, the ball’s entry angle into the hoop matters. At 45 degrees, it approaches the rim at a shallow trajectory, making the rim appear narrower. You probably want a slightly steeper arc—around 51 or 52 degrees—to make the target “larger” from the ball’s perspective. He did all that math, and it was probably less helpful than just shooting thousands of baskets.

People learn athletic skills by doing. You can theorize about angles all day, but experience tunes intuition better than equations. Still, at the elite level—say, Olympic athletes—analysis becomes useful. That’s when you go to Colorado Springs, put motion-capture dots on your body, and let the biomechanics lab break down your movement. They’ll map muscle activation sequences, timing, and energy transfer. It’s science applied to intuition.

Everything exists along a spectrum of learning. Some skills feel intuitive—others demand structured analysis. Take flying a plane: I’ve tried flight simulators at Dave & Buster’s, and even there, it’s hard as hell. You think it’s intuitive—tilt the rudder, bank the wings—but in reality, it’s a complex coordination of forces and control surfaces. That’s why pilots spend hours in classrooms and simulators.

Every discipline has its own learning geometry. In physics, for instance, problem sets in electromagnetism could take an hour apiece. That’s what I hated about physics. I never got to general relativity—those problem sets must be brutal—and only scratched the surface of quantum mechanics. Eventually, though, you reach fluency. The symbols stop being symbols and start behaving intuitively, the way musical notes do for a composer. For the truly brilliant, that intuition might exist from the start.

So learning styles are like different points in a cognitive space—each discipline sits somewhere between the intuitive and the analytical. 

Jacobsen: Which leads to more profound questions. People like to ask, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” But that assumes “nothing” is the natural state. The IC answer flips it: Why wouldn’t there be something? Statistically, existence is far more probable than pure absence. The exact inversion applies to math. We keep asking: is math “out there,” in the universe; “in here,” in our heads; or just a tool we’ve built?

All three may be the wrong frame. Once we understand what information actually is, the puzzle changes. Subjectivity—the sense of self—probably arises from a symmetric relationship between what’s happening in the information processor and what’s happening in the external world it evolved to mirror. That symmetry—between internal representation and external structure—is where both math and consciousness meet.

Rosner: And the more immediate stuff—the kind of processing that doesn’t require complete conscious thought—it’s the same principle when I say information isn’t information without context. We haven’t fully developed an understanding of information because we take context for granted. For all the information in our heads, we are the context. We provide the framework.

There are information systems beyond us—like the universe itself, which quantum mechanics implies is an information system. But we don’t yet know what that information is, how it functions, or what it’s relevant to. Our understanding is incomplete until we grasp the context of information, just as our grasp of existence is incomplete without understanding the context of everything.

The naive idea of “stuff” is that things exist by virtue of being things. But the deeper we look, the more we see that existence itself is a kind of cosmic conspiracy—a web of interrelations among vast numbers of processes across immense time scales, all reinforcing one another’s consistency. You can’t remove the rest of the universe and still have an apple. The apple vanishes. Everything depends on everything else.

Our comprehension of context and interrelatedness remains crude. Even our understanding of entropy is parochial—it’s local. We think the universe has increasing entropy because closed systems inevitably do. But on the universal scale, we have no clear picture of how information flows over cosmic time, or even what counts as information. Until we understand that, all our other inquiries will remain fragmentary.

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