What can we know of reality?

[Doctordick]

No Qfwfq, you clearly misunderstand what I am doing. The fact that you would even consider making the comment,

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

I would be somewhat interested in knowing how it could attack the riddle, given an available source of kosher answers to chosen numbers.

You are clearly concerned with finding epistemological solutions and not at all concerned with the issue that Anssi and I are talking about. I am talking about an undefined ontology and the problem of interpreting what it means: i.e., defining concepts convenient to understanding it. Essentially this is the central issue of establishing language comprehension; an issue normally left almost entirely to “intuition” (we can do it so why worry about how in can be done).

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

That depends on what you mean by "assumptions"; in a story (or fictitious example) the truth is what is posited as such.

The moment you posit anything, you are stepping across the problem I am talking about. Did you ever see that movie “Betelgeuse”? It's a ghost story and in it some comments that the living cannot see ghosts because they ignore them. There is a question here which everyone just seems to ignore.

You present stories to explain your point; how about you let me present a hypothetical story to explain my point. Suppose you die and go to heaven (for the sake of the story, we will just assume the common man's idea of heaven is valid). Now you are going to be there a long time so, since you have the time, you ask God to explain to you how he created the universe. He agrees to your request but specifies that he does not like wasting his time and there will be a timed test when he finishes and, if you fail the test, you're off to hell. The problem is that God is the greatest in every way; in fact, he is the greatest bore ever conceived and you fall asleep in his first lecture even before he gets through the introduction. You wake up just as he concludes the final lecture. (Have you ever had the dream that the test is tomorrow and you forgot to go to class all year? Well think of this as the extreme case of such a thing.) Now you have to take the test .

The test is as follows: he will create a universe which has never existed before and place you in it. You will remember everything you know but it will be remembered as if it were a dream and he guarantees that none of it will have anything to do with what happens in that universe. The rules of that universe (what he uses to set it up) will be the most complex thing he can conceive of, designed to make the test as difficult as possible. Knowing what you know, what preparation for that test could you make? How would you approach such a problem?

I'll even give you a hint. It certainly makes no difference what that universe is or how god made it, after you are placed in it you will be confronted with something (if there is nothing, there is nothing to explain). What it will be you cannot know, but, whatever it is, it could be thought of as undefined entries in a ”what is”, is “what is” table: i.e., you can use the concept of such a table to think about what it is you have to understand without knowing what it is. And you probably won't be aware of everything immediately as then the solution is trivial: “it is what it is” and there is nothing more to know.

How would you attack that problem?

Have fun -- Dick

[Buffy]

Which simply begs one of my original questions here: if you refuse to apply your model to anything, how is it going to have any "profound implications?"

If anything, in this latest post you seem to be saying that you are modeling a model--yes, understanding that its a second level of abstraction--that is not only undefined but that cannot in fact *be* defined.

I think we get the fact that your math needs to impose no constraints on the ontologies in your truth-probability-vectors, but I don't see how you can refuse to at least entertain us with a practical application in a specific case. Such a specific example could be quite enlightening, as your own example does indeed point to! But it would be nice to get a specific mapping rather than making a game out of it with which to taunt people. (I could say the same for Q's story here too, but he's not the one proposing the model....)

I thought that your example of anti-commutative systems being self-consistent was very helpful in enunciating what you're talking about (even though I'd really gotten that point before), and I don't quite understand why you don't exercise the use of example more given the "trouble" most of us are having in "getting" what you're talking about.

I share Q's general concern with your tendency to simply say "you just don't understand" to questions asking for clarification: I don't think you're ever going to get anyone to understand it if you continue to do this. Anissi may in fact really get what you're talking about while the rest of us don't, however without any of us being able to follow your model or what it *means* or even come up with a mathematical translation for it, its just plain hard to tell!

Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs,
Buffy

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Buffy

Which simply begs one of my original questions here: if you refuse to apply your model to anything, how is it going to have any "profound implications?"

In a nutshell, it applies only to itself. It is the solutions of that equation which are so facinating.

Originally Posted by Buffy

If anything, in this latest post you seem to be saying that you are modeling a model--yes, understanding that its a second level of abstraction--that is not only undefined but that cannot in fact *be* defined.

In many respects, that is quite true. On the other hand, I do define things as I progress but only those things which can be defined without knowing what is being referred to. For example, I have defined time as an index on the ontological elements available to us, essentially what we know of the reality we are trying to explain. As you say, it is a second level of abstraction in that we do not actually have these indices; they will arise only when we have an epistemological solution to model.

The problem with Rade, Qfwfq and I suspect you is that you all want something to apply the model to: i.e., an actual epistemological solution whereas the problem is to maintain the generality of the model so that any absolutely any epistemological solution to any possible reality (which I have defined to be the same thing as a collection of valid ontological elements: what, as far as I know, exists). The issue is, is there anything I can say about reality before knowing anything about that collection of possible ontological elements. Well, I can define time; the past being the reality available to us to create epistemological solutions (the collection of valid ontological elements available to us), the future being the reality not available to us (the collection of valid ontological elements not available to us) and the present as the boundary between the past and future. Since the present only becomes available to you as it becomes available, the past can be thought of as a closed set (the boundary is part of the set).

Originally Posted by Buffy

I think we get the fact that your math needs to impose no constraints on the ontologies in your truth-probability-vectors, but I don't see how you can refuse to at least entertain us with a practical application in a specific case.

The issue here is absolute objectivity and you all want to examine a case where we both know objectivity is being laid aside. My only conclusion is to presume that you do not understand what I am doing.

Originally Posted by Buffy

I don't quite understand why you don't exercise the use of example more given the "trouble" most of us are having in "getting" what you're talking about.

For the very simple reason that my central purpose is “getting you to understand what I am talking about”: a truly objective approach to the problem. Do you really believe objectivity is an issue to be avoided?

Originally Posted by Buffy

But it would be nice to get a specific mapping rather than making a game out of it with which to taunt people.

Buffy, please believe me that I am not trying to taunt anyone here. I am trying very hard to direct your attention to the issue of being absolutely objective.

Originally Posted by Buffy

Anissi may in fact really get what you're talking about while the rest of us don't, however without any of us being able to follow your model or what it *means* or even come up with a mathematical translation for it, its just plain hard to tell!

That translation you are talking about is a translation to an nonobjective perspective and that is the real problem here.

Have fun -- Dick

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

The problem with Rade, Qfwfq and I suspect you is that you all want something to apply the model to: i.e., an actual epistemological solution whereas the problem is to maintain the generality of the model so that any absolutely any epistemological solution to any possible reality (which I have defined to be the same thing as a collection of valid ontological elements: what, as far as I know, exists). The issue is, is there anything I can say about reality before knowing anything about that collection of possible ontological elements.

I won't speak for the others, but for me, this "application of the model" is an aid to learning what the model does. It *might* assist in validating some limited application of the model, but that is not the *goal*: I definitely realize that any such justification would be an instance of the model and not the model itself, and thus not be relevant to your main goal.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

The issue here is absolute objectivity and you all want to examine a case where we both know objectivity is being laid aside. My only conclusion is to presume that you do not understand what I am doing.

I think that's only because you jump to the conclusion that by using an example at all, we don't understand that the application of the example is not what you're after, and that is quite mistaken.

Just because we want to try an application to better understand what the thing means does not mean that we have to use that application as an *additional non-ontological assumption*.

I argue that its somewhat akin to saying "in order to *really* understand blue, it must be explained abstractly, and if you insist on seeing an example of the color blue, you will never understand what color means."

Its also true of course that we might stumble upon a specific application that that contradicted a *specific instance* of reality, although if "we didn't understand what you were doing" the argument that that showed a weakness in your model could be dismissed rather easily, so I can see the motivation for framing the lack of understanding in that way....

So when you ask:

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Do you really believe objectivity is an issue to be avoided?

I say most definitely no! But my question is by avoiding examples as a learning mechanism separate and unrelated and--most importantly--unusable as a foundational element of the model itself, you are making it much harder to explain what you're trying to do!

Slow, but learns a lot faster by example,
Buffy

[Kriminal99]

I feel like only one simple assumption must be made in order to start the process.

That is, if something has happened frequently in the past, it is likely to happen again.

In other words, inductive reasoning.

I feel like the fact that our minds have evolved to be fundamentally dependent on this concept means that it is useful thus we need not argue for it.

I also feel like we cannot reason without it, so we our only options are not to think or assume it is true.

Not that we really could decide to reject it anyways, since our subconsious reasons based on it, which is not under our conscious mind's direct control.

I feel like deductive reasoning is just something that we see is always the case thus is a subset of inductive reasoning in our mind and requires no specific faculty.

And I feel like between the two a simple system could explain all human knowledge.

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I won't speak for the others, but for me, this "application of the model" is an aid to learning what the model does.

At this moment, in this conversation, the model is not yet complete. The model is the equation; the issue is that there must always exist an interpretation of any flaw-free explanation which satisfies that equation. The “application of the model” is finding applications of the solutions to that equation. But, before we can start down that road, there are a couple of subtle issues with regard to that equation which must be addressed. Those issues concern the fact that though the number of “valid” ontological elements (what we know of reality) must be finite, there is no such constraint on the “invalid” ontological elements as they are mere figments of our imagination which are required by that epistemological construct (our explanation of reality).

Originally Posted by Buffy

It *might* assist in validating some limited application of the model, but that is not the *goal*: I definitely realize that any such justification would be an instance of the model and not the model itself, and thus not be relevant to your main goal.

Essentially, there is no “limited” application of the model. There is no way to interpret what the terms of the equation represent (i.e., relate it to reality as we perceive reality) without knowing something about the solutions. Looking at the equation from a physicists perspective, it is essentially a many bodied equation and we all should be well aware of the difficulty of solving such things: particularly when the number of variables are sufficient to represent the whole of even the most simple problem you can conceive of. We are talking here about the internal consistency of the whole.

As I have said before, I concluded the equation had to be valid when I was still a graduate student (sometime around 1966) and I didn't manage to drag out my first solution until some ten years later. I only kept occasionally trying to solve it because it seemed the solution ought to have an application somewhere. The main thing I am trying to do right now is convince someone that there must exist an interpretation of reality which obeys that equation (i.e., there exists a perspective of the problem of understanding reality, or any collection of ontological elements, within which that equation has to be valid). In my head that is a simple issue as it only has two essentially very trivial parts.

First, that any representation of reality (the symbols used to express what we know or think we know) are free parameters invented by us and thus can be altered in any way without invalidating the epistemological solution we are looking for. I have shown that such a fact implies shift symmetry must be a characteristic of any valid epistemological solution (and no one should find that disturbing). Second, there exists no way to separate valid from invalid ontological elements (if there were, you could prove solipsism to be false). Thus the “invalid” ontological elements are totally free creations invented by us. It is via these entities through which the “rule” (that flaw-free epistemological construct we have also invented) is to yield expectations consistent with our past (see my definition of “the past”). There is quite clearly a relationship between what exists and what the rule has to be. You can almost always trade one off against the other. I have used that freedom to show that there will always exist a collection of “invalid” ontological elements which will allow the rule, , to constrain the entire collection of “valid” ontological elements to whatever they happen to be.

I then use a mathematical trick to put those four constraints into a single equation. This procedure is nothing if not trivial and yet absolutely everyone fights me tooth and nail to deny its validity. It reminds me very much of a cartoon I saw in the “American Scientist” one time. It showed a child standing in front of his teacher (I think there was some mathematics on the black board). The caption was “I burned my math book because there was no mention of God in it!” No one wants to think about that equation unless I can relate it to their beliefs.

What examples do you want? The differential constraint? For all practical purposes, that is the same constraint arising from shift symmetry in standard quantum mechanics and will generate something analogous to conservation of momentum. Or maybe you want an example of the trade off between what exists and the rule. Well, a very common example would be religion. If what exists includes the Gods, and the rule is “what happens is what they want to happen”; that is a pretty flaw-free explanation of reality. The only problem with it is that is that it isn't very valuable as a prediction device unless you have someone who “knows the mind of god” and that's a hard thing to be sure of. Another good example of the trade off between what exists and the rules, one which I would really prefer to avoid because I know it will just boil the blood of physics authorities, is electromagnetic theory and photons. Try to prove photons exist without using any aspects of the theory. I am not saying that electromagnetic theory is flawed, what I am saying is that its validity is a belief set.

Look at the history of physics; it's chock full of changes in “rules” and “what exists”. I have just proposed a new paradigm and done a pretty good job of defending the ability of that paradigm to be binding on reality. When you tell me it's not applicable to reality you should tell me why not. Now if you were to say "so what", it doesn't seem to say anything of significance I wouldn't argue with you; it certainly doesn't seem to contain any earth shaking propositions. Certainly the common interpretation of what those constraints seem to imply is pretty well expected.

Originally Posted by Buffy

I argue that its somewhat akin to saying "in order to *really* understand blue, it must be explained abstractly, and if you insist on seeing an example of the color blue, you will never understand what color means."

And you will never understand what my equation means until after you have examined some of the solutions. I would like very much to begin showing how I managed to find solutions to the equation and what I think those solutions mean but I certainly will not start down that path until I have some consensus on the objective validity of my deduction. So long as it is held to be a frivolous hypothesis, I have no intention of going forward. I have been there many times and I won't go there again. The fact that the equation is purely deductive (no inductive steps) is a very important issue here.

Originally Posted by Buffy

But my question is by avoiding examples as a learning mechanism separate and unrelated and--most importantly--unusable as a foundational element of the model itself, you are making it much harder to explain what you're trying to do!

I am trying to convince someone that there always exists an interpretation of reality which obeys that equation. That the deduction is valid under the terms I have defined.

I am sorry if my attitude puts you off but I am an old man with a lot of bad memories of authoritarian attitudes. Perhaps a little kindness might be effective. I would really like to communicate what I have discovered before I die; but I really do not like authoritarian attitudes.

Have fun -- Dick

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

You are clearly concerned with finding epistemological solutions and not at all concerned with the issue that Anssi and I are talking about.

No, that wasn't my query. Given those pairs of numbers, How would you build the "what is is what is" table and then proceed to use it for expectations of the most likely correct answer to the next number?

Originally Posted by Doctordick

I am talking about an undefined ontology and the problem of interpreting what it means: i.e., defining concepts convenient to understanding it.

You seem to mean that your model is good for any ontology. Fine. Desn't this mean it should be valid for the one of my example?

Originally Posted by Doctordick

The moment you posit anything, you are stepping across the problem I am talking about.

Not really, it's called examining a specific instance of problem you are talking about.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

How would you attack that problem?

I asked YOU how YOU would attack the spy's problem.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Essentially, there is no “limited” application of the model.

What does this mean? It's valid in general, but not in any specific case? Is it valid in the specific cases you set, such as God's test, or the flashing light in the cave?

[Kriminal99]

Sounds like he is talking about the plurality of coherentism. Can't be sure since he isn't a minimalist and I don't feel like wading through all his posts...

In other words, for any given set of beliefs defined by certain constraints, there are infinite variations where things that do not logically contradict the given constraints vary.

If simple arithmetic was a set of beliefs, then talking about it in different languages, different number bases etc would all be such variations.

However, to relate it to skepticism, some of those variations may invalidate the original belief set without contradicting them. These would consist of reasons why the original belief set was really an illusion. The number of such invalidating variations is also infinite, and they are not necessarily all ridiculously far fetched.

Our only defense is that the beliefs are probably valid for the group of experiences we considered in the past, so if the invalidating variation requires a large change in experiences we can simply define the belief set as referencing the original set of experiences.

Example: Simple arithmetic is really false because this is all a VR program for angels and outside it math is much more complicated. Response: Then math is defined for use inside the VR program, or more generally in the world we exist in.

Sometimes however invalidating variations are capable of creating undesired results for something we thought the original belief set applied to. Which of course is the whole reason we brought it up, and is related to skepticism.

Example: Your brother's friend Mackenzie who is a high level executive in a major company is coming in town and your brother asked you to hang out with "Mackenzie" for one night while he is at a previous engagement. You decide to take the person out to a local sports bar to see a big football game that is coming on, reasoning that most guys like football. However when Mackenzie gets there, she turns out to be a woman.

[Doctordick]

Qfwfq, what part of “undefined” do you not understand? I get the definite impression that we are back to that “I burned my math book because it had no mention of God” thing.

As I said, except for the fact that Rade at least accommodated the “undefined” issue your example is quite similar to his except for the fact that you haven't even acquiesced to that issue. I will try to show you what I am talking about.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Given those pairs of numbers, How would you build the "what is is what is" table and then proceed to use it for expectations of the most likely correct answer to the next number?

Your comment is that all I know of reality is “three pairs of numbers” or, if one includes post #90 you could add three more pairs. That means the information consists of twelve valid ontological elements. Since you have apparently decided that the order of the pairs and the order of the exchange is known (i.e., the information on which to build your model has increased), there exists but one element in each plane. The only rational conclusion is that there will probably be another down the road. My analysis needs to be working with “all of the information” available and the problem you have presented contains such a dearth of information that practically no conclusions of value can be arrived at. There isn't even enough information there to conclude those ontological elements are numbers. This is exactly what I was talking about when I said, “Your example is chock full of assumptions (presumed valid ontological concepts) which you take no trouble to explicitly list (because the size of such a list would probably be beyond accomplishment)”.

You actually mentioned, “a spy”, “is sent”, “to gather”, “intelligence”, “for”, “planners”, “attack”, “against”, “a castle”, “they”, “need”, “to know”, “how”, “fake”, “patrol” “guard”, a “patrol commander”... . If you want to include all the ontological elements you mentioned as part of the universe being explained, we still only have about ten or twelve entries for “reality” and most of them in different planes. It's still a virtual dearth of information.

However, you are clearly working with an epistemological construct as you have given multiple occurrences of the same element “the spy” for one “the patrol” for another. And you came to this epistemological construct with no more information than what is explicitly listed in the paragraph? I think not; I think there are massive amounts of information behind your epistemological construct which you simply have failed to list. The only conclusion I can come to is that you have utterly no idea as to what I am talking about.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

You seem to mean that your model is good for any ontology. Fine. Desn't this mean it should be valid for the one of my example?

Your example is not “an example” because it is based on information not present. As I said, you have omitted a vast quantity of information for the very simple reason that the size of a valid list of the information (in the form of undefined ontological elements) would probably be beyond physical accomplishment. That is why we can only talk about these things in the abstract; the quantity of information necessary for even the very simplest example would be far beyond anything you could physically manage to actually list.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

What does this mean? It's valid in general, but not in any specific case? Is it valid in the specific cases you set, such as God's test, or the flashing light in the cave?

It's valid when the sum is over the entire universe of information available to you! You omit any information possibly standing behind that epistemological construct is supposed to model and the interpretation of your epistemological construct which I say exists may still exist but it may very well be a misinterpretation of what you meant.

The point you all miss, over and over again, is that all I am saying is that “there always exists an interpretation of any flaw-free explanation of reality which will obey my equation. And, everyone fights me tooth and nail to deny that possibility.

Originally Posted by Doctordick

What examples do you want? The differential constraint? For all practical purposes, that is the same constraint arising from shift symmetry in standard quantum mechanics and will generate something analogous to conservation of momentum. Or maybe you want an example of the trade off between what exists and the rule. Well, a very common example would be religion. If what exists includes the Gods, and the rule is “what happens is what they want to happen”; that is a pretty flaw-free explanation of reality. The only problem with it is that is that it isn't very valuable as a prediction device unless you have someone who “knows the mind of god” and that's a hard thing to be sure of. Another good example of the trade off between what exists and the rules, one which I would really prefer to avoid because I know it will just boil the blood of physics authorities, is electromagnetic theory and photons. Try to prove photons exist without using any aspects of the theory. I am not saying that electromagnetic theory is flawed, what I am saying is that its validity is a belief set.

Or, what is dark matter if it is not something we need to exist so we won't have to change the rules. All I am saying is that, if you include the entire universe, there exist an interpretation (a paradigm if you will) where my equation is valid. What in that do you find so untenable, that shift symmetry is not a characteristic of symbolic representation? Or that the existence of shift symmetry does not imply a conservation law of some kind? Do you seriously hold that conservation of momentum, if you include the whole universe is a crock?

Or I suppose you can't believe that the rule together with the freedom to create “invalid” (imaginary) ontological elements is capable of yielding exactly what is observed? If that is the case, go read my comments to Anssi.

This whole exchange is nothing if not tiresome. You all seem to think that I am saying something that I am not saying; you are all looking for applications of my ideas within your personal paradigm. All I ask is that you admit that it appears to be a true representation of reality under my definitions: i.e., there exists a paradigm where my equation is a valid representation of certain specific constraints on reality.

Have fun -- Dick

[AnssiH]

Haven't had a lot of time in the past days to contribute, but reading the latests posts I thought I'd make a quick comment.

I don't think Qfwfq is so much doubting the validity of your attack as he is trying to figure out what it "is", i.e. what does it do and why expect that it works, as a construct. I suspet that's not scepticism as much as it is trying to find out if this topic is worth spending time with. Internet is full of interesting topics after all

Even if one recognizes that their worldview is chocked full of "arbitrary" choices (as far as how did we define various "things" to exist and what properties do we consequently attach to them etc.), they do have to use that worldview to understand new ideas, as painful as it may be (Yes Buffy, I know what you are saying also)

Typically when we try to understand reality, we, in our mind, break it into specific "things" that behave in specific ways (i.e. we define their characteristics), and if our expectations are met by our observations, we decide we struck the nail on the head (for time being). E.g. relativity was a new way to define "time" (and gravity). Need I mention QM?

All the contributors to this thread seem to understand the philosophy that says; one always has many equally valid ways to define the reality around us. I.e. given all the observations we have accumulated, there are many possible (internally coherent) worldviews we could adopt. Just like you can interpret relativity and QM in many different ways ontologically. Each worldview or model functions by us having first defined its components, without having any idea about what is the "real way" to define reality into components (or rather, without having any reason to believe reality actually is, ontologically speaking, a set of components) Well this issue goes very very deep and has to do with any perception we could ever have about anything at all, so let's skip onwards.

Now Doctordick has defined that x, tau, t -plane and few other things. Their purpose is not to give you a way to make "absolutely best predictions possible". I.e. it does not give you the correct number to shout at the guards, and it doesn't even give you the probabilities for all the numbers you know.

EDIT: Let me reiterate, it doesn't give you the probabilities in that the probability function has not been defined. It is not important what kind of function we might devise or how did we choose to break reality into "ontological elements". What is more important is "what requirements the probability function must meet if it is part of a self-coherent worldview?" I.e. what is common to ALL logically viable probability functions. The definitions (x,tau,t etc) are given only because with them we have a way to express those constraints. Obviously it would be possible to express the same constraints with different definitions, there is nothing magical about them.

All it gives you is a way to express some constraints that need to be met by any internally coherent worldview you could ever make about reality (when that worldview is expressed in the form of the x, tau, t-plane).

I.e. it is not an attempt to specify an ontology; it does not claim reality is made of an "x, tau t"-plane. And strictly speaking, it is not even an attempt to give ontologically ambiguous model of reality, since the issue to be stressed is NOT how one would express reality in the "X, tau, t" -plane, but what necessary (but not readily obvious) constraints there are when you do.

I did not have much time to write this post so I hope it is not too confusing. Nevertheless I think I understand what the confusion is and I can probably explain what is going on, if this post didn't clarify things already

As an amusing (albeit perhaps irrelevant) side-note, I thought this was fascinating (and just goddamn funny) case of self-conflicting worldview:
Verizon Wireless Has Trouble With Math video

Apparently (and this was news to me) there is a meme where people word something like $0.01 as "point zero 1 cents". The logic being it is less than a dollar, so instead of saying "dollars" in the end they say the sum is cents. It would be possible to communicate sums that way otherwise, except in our number system it causes internal conflict. In this case the conflict is readily obvious. Is it always?

Anyway, I'll try to get back to the math soon... (And be more competent than the Verizon customer support

-Anssi