Knowledge From Practical Experience

[Kasper]

Which statement ? Do you really believe that he proved that god exists without assuming anything ?

I highly doubt that Ray Peat think CTMU is true. I don't know any scientist that takes CTMU seriously, do you know of any ?

 

[Such_Saturation]

I doubt Ray Peat knows about that text, however Ray Peat is for "intelligent design" (stupid name) and the CTMU defines "intelligent design". I don't know of any scientists that have proven to understand the CTMU. This would involve getting fired for most of them since most of our science is Neo-Darwinian. I haven't seen any with these two characteristics. Also scientists are never interested in putting science in context with reality, neither are mathematicians, both find ""philosophy"" (that's what they think it is) boring.

You are right to doubt the "existence of god", but the CTMU just suggests that the universe CAN be seen as the mind of a god.

<<For example, certain properties of the reflexive, self-contained language of reality – that it is syntactically self-distributed, self-reading, and coherently self-configuring and self-processing – respectively correspond to the traditional theological properties omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. While the kind of theology that this entails neither requires nor supports the intercession of any “supernatural” being external to the real universe itself, it does support the existence of a supraphysical being (the SCSPL global operator-designer) capable of bringing more to bear on localized physical contexts than meets the casual eye. And because the physical (directly observable) part of reality is logically inadequate to explain its own genesis, maintenance, evolution or consistency, it alone is incapable of properly containing the being in question.>>

Or, equally:

<<the CTMU shows that reality possesses a complex property akin to self-awareness. That is, just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question "whose mind?", the answer turns out to be a mathematical and scientific definition of God. This implies that we all exist in what can be called "the Mind of God", and that our individual minds are parts of God's Mind. They are not as powerful as God's Mind, for they are only parts thereof; yet, they are directly connected to the greatest source of knowledge and power that exists. This connection of our minds to the Mind of God, which is like the connection of parts to a whole, is what we sometimes call the soul or spirit, and it is the most crucial and essential part of being human.>>

Please understand that the only thing he "assumes" is the cognition with which he cognitizes. Also half of the work is him building a superior form of logic and hinting at a superior form of meta-mathematics. This is why it seems strange. However many of the issues that moved him to do so, a child could also recognize.

P.S. You remind me of people who ask "If Ray Peat is so right, why isn't everyone talking about it?".

 

[Kasper]

Also scientists are never interested in putting science in context with reality, neither are mathematicians, both find ""philosophy"" (that's what they think it is) boring.

I'm a mathematician, and I find philosophy very interesting... That gives a contradiction with your statement.
Besides, scientist are never interested in putting science in context with reality ?? Have you ever written anything of Albert Einstein ?

Please understand that the only thing he "assumes" is the cognition with which he cognitizes. Also half of the work is him building a superior form of logic and hinting at a superior form of meta-mathematics. This is why it seems strange. However many of the issues that moved him to do so, a child could also recognize.

That is the only thing he assumes ? I really doubt that. I've seen some interviews and I've read some forums where is debating his ideas with mathematicians and scientist. I can't help having the idea that his main interest is showing the world how smart he is. That seems to be the thing he likes to talk about most. He says that he measures someone else intelligence by how well they understand his theory, how narcistic is that ?

Well, he undoubtedly has studied a lot of different concepts. You much have at least a bachelor degree of mathematics to even only understand the terminology he uses. I don't have that degree (yet), but people that have studied that and more, all of them I could find, think that this theory is full of mistaskes:

This still does not explain why we should equate the "rate of conspansion" with the speed of light, other than that it is convenient to do so, since we know that the speed of light is invariant, just as the "rate of conspansion" is meant to be. Moreover, the speed of light is not a "metavelocity": it is a speed, plain and simple. Also, Langan calls the "rate of conspansion" a "time/space conversion factor". The speed of light is not that: it is the distance that light moves in a given time interval ("conspansive duality" be damned). Finally, SR has a very specific mathematical structure, giving rise to the light cones and hyperplanes of simultaneity and all that, which is derived from the Lorentz transformations. It is not proven in the CTMU that this "rate of conspansion", or "syndiffeonesis" gives rise to an identical formulation to the Lorentz transformations; also, the speed of light is not just any invariant, but Lorentz invariant: has this been proven for "conspansion"? It cannot, of course, be done, with appeal to "conspansive duality", but this would probably involve using the Lorentz transformations as a "given", which doesn't cut it. Most of Asmodeus' argument in his point 46, though, is just bluster, and if one looks at it carefully, one point does not actually follow from the next. And the statement "in order to distinguish a ratewise difference between any pair of physical processes, we need a form of processing which distributes over (embeds, carries) both subprocesses, i.e., which is coherent with respect to them and thus transpires at one distributed rate" is tantamount to the assertion of the "infocognitive" equivalent of an aether theory, mutatis mutandis (particularly when coupled with the "scaling" of "absolute size" of objects, in as much as that has any meaning at all, be it physical or metaphysical, other than a change in Planck's constant related to the "size" of the universe - this can only be avoided if Planck's constant is a ratio between the "size" of a quantum and the "size" of the universe, but this doesn't work because "size" here is not well defined, and an undefined concept cannot have properties, since the ascription of any property is tantamount to a definition of sorts: in short, this part of the CTMU paper, and Asmodeus' defence of it, is a stream of unmitigated conceptual confusion).

...

Vertices in graph theory are not "unary relations". Unary relations are properties: in maths, they are often Boolean-valued expressions, i.e. having a true or false value. The arity of a relation refers to the number of arguments it has: a unary relation has one, binary relation two, etc. In graph theory, we can specify a graph in two main ways: adjacency and incidence. Either we treat the vertices as basic objects and use the edges as a means of specifying adjacency relations between these objects, or we treat edges as the basic objects and use the vertices as a means of specifying incidence relations between edges. In the former case, vertices are objects, not relations. In the latter case, vertices are relations, but are not necessarily unary: there can be any number of edges incident on a given vertex. And not even in all graphs are edges binary relations: in a hypergraph, for example, edges can be incident on any number of vertices (this latter point is a little too general, perhaps, since we can restrict ourselves to graphs proper, but the vertices gaff clinches it). So "vertices and edges corresponding to unary and binary relations respectively" (which is what Asmodeus said) is indeed bollocks. And, let us not forget that Asmodeus tried to explain that the notions of duality in projective geometry and vector spaces are the same thing by making an inspecific but verbose appeal to category theory, in which he confounded the commutative diagrams used in category theory with graphs (while it is conceivable that theorems from graph theory may help in deciding whether a given diagram commutes, chances are that the principles of category theory itself will be more helpful). About the only common strain that runs through all mathematical notions of duality, Asmodeus, is that the dual of (the dual of an object) is the object itself. But this has no perfectly general category theoretic expression, simply because not all the mathematical objects to which duality is applied form categories (category theory is not a licence to generalise freely: on the contrary, it gives us the set of rules for deciding whether or not a generalisation is appropriate, and there are some very specific requirements that a set of objects with their morphisms must meet in order to be called a "category"). I would also dispute that only a "mathematical ignoramus" could be ignorant of category theory: I am not a mathematician, but I happen to be extremely interested in category theory, and use it for my work...and I am certain that many actuaries, for example, who are not mathematical ignorami, do not even know what category theory is. Finally, appealing to abstract nonsense and other manifestations of pseudo-erudition does not work as a tactic against me, or any other vaguely competent person. I would have thought you'd realised this by now. If you are interested in learning more about category theory, since you seem to know so little and understand less, I can recommend this primer, which is written by a mutual acquaintance of ours, none other than the sentient software agent itself. Repeatedly having to explain very simple concepts from first principles is tiresome work, so I'll let a .pdf do it for me.

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Mathematics, philosophy, physics and formal logic all make use of quite a bit of terminology. This terminology is not just there to make whoever is using it sound knowledgeable or impressive. It is there because each word carries with it a very specific meaning, and if one does not use these words in the manner in which they are generally used, one is bound to make mistakes in one's work.
Let's look at the M=R phenomenon a little more closely. What you are essentially saying is that there are perceptions, things which pick up on and process perceptions, which you call percipients, and things which are perceived, i.e. percepts. Fine: that is straightforward. You say, then, that there is a "non-empty intersection" between perceptions and percipients. First, a non-empty intersection, as you ought to know, is not expressed by an "equals" sign, which is usually used to denote identity. Next, the objects of reference of mind and reality are not the same. Let's denote by "m" the things which can be said to be a part of mind, and "r" the things that can be said to be a part of reality.
Now, we can devise a relation, let's call it "N", which maps states of "m" into states of "r"...a sort of "epistemic naturalisation function", we could say, since ultimately our minds are based on our brains, which are simply lumps of warm, wet matter. Any content held in our mind must, a little bit of common sense tells us, be expressible as a state of matter, unless we wish to embrace some sort of horrid dualism. An interesting question, as it turns out, is what kind of relation this "N" is: is it one-one, onto, etc.? Can multiple states of mind be represented by a single state of matter? Can a single state of mind be represented by multiple states of matter, etc.? Importantly, the answers to those questions are not trivial.
However, we must be careful here. You see, the objects in the domain of this relation are not in the same group as the objects in the codomain of the relation...because that is precisely what the relation does, is take objects from one group and map them into objects from another.
The moral of the little story above is this. Your argument, Asmodeus, about empiricism, percipients, perception, etc., tells us very little besides the fact that this relation must exist. It is even something with which I agree 100%. What your argument does not do, however, is show in exactly what way this is a "logical necessity" in the sense that (P or not-P) is. Nor does it show how this "intersection" between mind and reality is an inevitable semantic offshoot of the common meanings assigned to "mind" and "reality". Nor does it tell us anything about the nature of this relation. Nor does the CTMU paper do any of that.
You see, I am prepared to grant that this "non-empty intersection" is a sound philosophical position. But I cannot grant that it is a "tautology", either "semantic" or "syntactic". It is contingent on too many other assumptions to hold this distinction. Calling it "tautologous" amounts to the assertion of the triviality, or possibly even non-existence, of the relation "N", which is simply an untenable position. After all, in a sense the SPSCL would appear to be an exploration of the properties of this relation, one might say.
So, I understand Langan's compulsion to claim for the SPSCL the status of "absolute and necessary truth". But simply because we "cannot have a perception without a percipient" does not mean that "mind=reality" tautologically (and I use "tautologically" here as a synonym for "as an irrefutable analytical consequence"). It is, in fact, a category mistake of the archetypical variety to do so.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Albert Einstein was a very different kind of scientist from the hordes of post-doc slaves and masters that we have today.

Richard Feynman:
<<People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not…>>

I find math very hard personally, and I don't understand the CTMU very well, but its terminology is very hybrid so the better you are at math, the more you will hate the CTMU. Also I am not bothered by people who are full of themselves, I certainly understand them.

"if one does not use these words in the manner in which they are generally used, one is bound to make mistakes in one's work."

Then I assume he wants the "general usage" to remain the same forever.

"Moreover, the speed of light is not a "metavelocity": it is a speed, plain and simple."

I don't know what Asmodeus said there, but seems like it was open to interpretation. CTMU goes from the "bottom of the barrell" so it is hard to make it meet with common physical theories, although there would be a lot to explore. Light is just taken as evidence here for the speed at which this infocognition process is taking place, I think. Just trying to show why things don't go any faster. Langan also talks about quantum effects being a manifestation of these principles.

"You say, then, that there is a "non-empty intersection" between perceptions and percipients. First, a non-empty intersection, as you ought to know, is not expressed by an "equals" sign, which is usually used to denote identity. Next, the objects of reference of mind and reality are not the same."

The syndiffeonic medium takes logical priority over mind and reality and it is equal to itself. "The dissolution of this distinction can be viewed as a reduction." <<Because diffeonic relands are related to their common expressive medium and its distributive syntax in a way that combines aspects of union and intersection, the operation producing the medium from the relands is called unisection. The synetic medium represents diffeonic potential of which the difference relationship is an actualization.>>

"unless we wish to embrace some sort of horrid dualism."

If he is being ironic, then he is still living in the 1800's. If he's not being ironic, he's just another neo-darwinian mechanist.

"But simply because we "cannot have a perception without a percipient" does not mean that "mind=reality" tautologically"

I cannot understand how he can say this. Perhaps he puts more faith on the existence of his consciousness than on the existence of what he experiences, or vice-versa? Idealistic.



<<Note that while this seems to imply that the 3 M’s are “axioms” and therefore independent, the premise of axiomatic independence is itself a rather flimsy concept. These principles are actually rather strongly related in the sense that they can to some extent be inferred from each other in a reality-theoretic context. >>

Check this out:

http://ctmublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/2 ... -triality/

It is important to keep in mind that trialities are "native" in the CTMU "mathematic".

 

[Kasper]

Albert Einstein was a very different kind of scientist from the hordes of post-doc slaves and masters that we have today.

maybe you have met the wrong kind of scientists...

I find math very hard personally, and I don't understand the CTMU very well,

But how can you believe that the CTMU is true, if you don't understand it welll ?
Is this just blind-faith in Chris Langan ?

but its terminology is very hybrid so the better you are at math, the more you will hate the CTMU.

Chris Langan claims that is whole theory is based on logic and mathematics.
He also claims to be the smartest mathematician out there, so he must hate his own theory the most ?

Also I am not bothered by people who are full of themselves, I certainly understand them.

The problem is with this guy, it's about him, not about his theory. If he makes a mistake, he will never ever admits this, he is too full of himself.
The only thing he wants is to show the world that he is smart, and that everybody else is dumb.

"But simply because we "cannot have a perception without a percipient" does not mean that "mind=reality" tautologically"

I cannot understand how he can say this. Perhaps he puts more faith on the existence of his consciousness than on the existence of what he experiences, or vice-versa? Idealistic.

It just doesn't follow mathematically or logically. Chris Langan is very aware how mathematics or logic works, so he must understand that this is not the way you prove something.

"if one does not use these words in the manner in which they are generally used, one is bound to make mistakes in one's work."

Then I assume he wants the "general usage" to remain the same forever.

Of course not. That is not the problem at all. The problem is that this guy uses new terms and doesn't define them. That is the problem.

For example, he uses the term "set" in a different way that used normally in mathematics, but he doesn't tell you that. He will only tell you that in a debate, and then try to make fun of you ... Oh you don't understand the difference between "set" and "set theory" kind of things. Google it. It is ridiculous. If you use terms in a new way, you must define that specifcally and precise, every mathematician knows that.

But he doesn't. That gives him a way to go every direction he wants, if his ideas are attacked in a debate.

 

[Such_Saturation]

In the amount that I have explored various theories it makes the most sense. It doesn't burden the reader with mathematical foundations that don't exist or that I "couldn't understand". Making me go through years of school without telling me how an infinite number of points can form a finite line. That is calling me stupid, not what Langan does on the internet after he is assaulted by fifty kids who try to prove he is stupid. He isn't a mathematician, not what other people call a mathematician. It's a new thing and one paper in eleven years is surely not enough, but he is writing a book.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I have recently learned that Hameroff has written a review of Pollack's book on Amazon. Also in the last interview Ray Peat talks about a certain orchestration of moments of consciousness and a fundamental difference between a digital A.I. and the brain.

As you can see I haven't invented anything, I'm just making correct predictions.

 

[Luann]

I'm not that ambitious, as to demand that people do something as hard as thinking. I think it'd dramatically change just if vegetable oils are demonized and coconut oil and ghee are considered health foods in the public mind. That will help them to think as well.

This sounds, oddly enough, pretty right. A lot of us "thought" a lot before we came to Peat, but that led down the wrong road. Sometimes stumbling on the right path is the work of a moment, not of a lot of thinking. And yeah vegetables oils impair cognition.