/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15227148
>current year's popular abstractions precede the reality they were abstracted from
The unscientific anti-human religion of nonsentients.

>>15227148
Norbert Weiner, a rare peer of von Neumann also embraced this view of reality, probably the first to fully articulate it even though Wheeler often gets credit.

It offers the potential to describe phenomena from quantum scales to complex systems like economies and ecosystems. The cost is that any "distinct object," cannot be described by its constituent parts. But this already holds in QFT where the part ("particle") is only explainable in the context of the whole (field).

This creates an ontology that is somewhat like formalism in mathematics. A thing is what it does.

It's also a view more in line with the reality of local becoming instead of block universe models that fly in the face of experience, it allows a Liebnitzean view of time over a Newtonian one.

The dynamics of creation through opposition also recall thinkers like Hegel, which was previously a bad thing, but is actually exciting now that mathematics has come far enough to begin to formalize those sorts of Boehme style intuitions about difference. You see a precursor of this idea way back in Aristotle, also in Bohm's work on the implicate order. It is neat to see them all come together.

Note though that while most information ontologies are finitist/discrete, they don't actually have to be.

>ontology
Subjective untestable pseud gibberish

>>15227149
How is it unscientific?

Trying to exorcise ontology from physics has just meant that anyone who doesn't study advanced physics just learns a reductive materialism based on ancient corpuscularism, where relations are set by unchanging, eternal, Platonic "laws of physics," that exist as brute fact. This isn't a thing confirmed by empiricism, rather it is Newton's theology and conception of a clockmaker God just uncritically absorbed into the scientific mainstream.

People who don't study quantum foundations just end up subscribing to Copenhagen logical positivism without questioning it. They think they are being "unbiased" but are actually just repeating Carnap.

The largest paradigm shifts in the natural sciences in the last centuries have all been philosophical shifts based on challenging assumptions: relativity (Newtonian philosophy of space and time being let go), QM (materialism/corpuscularism being let go), chaos theory (being willing to look at difficult differential equations instead of ignoring them as "noise," a philosophical concept itself), and information theory (which radically changed biology, economics, and physics, helped explain phase transitions, genes, communications, etc.)

>>15227169
Newton's laws were falsified almost immediately. We didn't jettison them, we posited unobserved planets, which we later found.

Falsification isn't how science actually works or else quantum tunneling experiments would knock over the speed of light as a constant.

All science relies on philosophy, if you try to ignore it you just gulp down the philosophy of your predecessors.

For example, information theory is huge in physics and biology, it has helped solve long standing problems like Maxwell's Demon, but you can't define information without philosophy. Paradigm shifting scientists all do philosophy and pure maths.

>>15227173
Creating scientific models and discussing their implications and the limits of their applicability has nothing to do with philosophy.

>>15227148
Pseud nonsense. I'm 100% certain that you also regularly post consciousness threads on /sci/.

>>15227148
Personally I dont care for them. Information doesn't exist. It's a model or a linguistic shorthand we use to describe systems. It's basically an abstraction.
Also, reality is continuous not discrete so any Turing machine idea for the universe is wrong.

>>15227156
>The cost is that any "distinct object," cannot be described by its constituent parts.
Yeah, physics has a hard time realizing that the very idea of distinct objects is a construct of the mind to make an overwhelming reality somewhat manageable, essentially a useful data structure. Not that we can truly *think* without it (like we can't visualize higher dimensions etc) but it doesn't mean it's something inherent to the world. Kant's philosophy seems to have made that point at least implicitly.
Overall it's surprising that the information-theoretic approach isn't pursued much more in physics, although people seem to come around, like Rovellis relational QM and others... but I believe we have not quite figured out all of info theory itself yet and what information really means. You mention Hegel who, I think, had a lot of far-sighted ideas on it and should be appreciated more by scientists indeed.

>>15227170
>How is it unscientific?
Unfalsifiable fantasy. Does not belong on the science board. Either way, it's a nonstarter because information is an abstraction, abstractions aren't real and by definition cannot precede whatever they are abstracted from, and thus cannot be the cause of it.

>>15227169
>>15227184
>>15227182
You guys aren't smart

Some pseud buzzwords to watch out for ITT, a guide for the /sci/ newfag:

Ontology
Finitist
philpapers
SEP
non-locality
Hegel
Bohm

>>15227208
>seething

>>15227208
You are the pseud though

>>15227196
You better brace yourself: a point-particle is also an abstraction. As are waves, or energy. Any elementary concept physics can possibly come up with will be an abstraction by necessity.

>>15227212
>>15227213
t. philosophy fans

>>15227221
>Any elementary concept physics can possibly come up with will be an abstraction by necessity.
Yes. Concepts are abtractions. Models are models. The map is not the territory. Did you have a point?

>>15227231
You are straight-up subhuman for seething about philsophy. Make sure you mention this in every thread you participate in, so that no one mistakes you for a human and reads anything you write.

>>15227257
Go out and touch some grass, loser.

>>15227170
Okay, we get it... you abstracted logic out of you

>>15227234
You dismissed the information-theoretic approach because information is 'an abstraction', as if we had something better than abstractions to do physics with. 'Cause' is an abstraction too btw.
And if your whole point is that physics deals with models and not some thing in itself, there's nothing whatsoever that contradicts that in OPs post.

>>15227271
>You dismissed the information-theoretic approach because information is 'an abstraction'
Yes. Did you have a point, you profoundly retarded animal?

>>15227182
>Asking how well an abstraction actually models reality isn't science.

By that definition all of quantum foundations isn't science. Bohr, Everett, Bohm, etc. all spent much of their careers not doing science.

But of course, saying models are only tools, and science only creates predictive mathematical tools that predict outcomes based on the operationalized data plugged into them is:

A. Still doing philosophy because it is making a positive claim about what science is and the limits of knowledge, i.e. epistemological claims.

B. Not what 99% of science does. Go open any text book on biology, neuroscience, statistical mechanics, etc. and you will see efforts at explanations. "Things are like this because of this." Claims to the effect of "we thought the world was like this, but really it seems more like this," or "it is better to conceptualize the phenomenon of X like this." They don't just say, "here is a mathematical model that predicts X phenomena given data collected via Y methods."

In fact, it is pretty much impossible to imagine actually doing science in that way because you can't generate new models and ideas for experiments to vet them without taking into account the way you think things are.

But for some sort of radical bare bones science you need to claim that external objects existence is unknowable. Data and models to predict and retrodict them is all there is.

But again, this bare bones take is still making epistemological statements, and pretty large ones.

>>15227193
>It's a model or a linguistic shorthand we use to describe systems
agree
>reality is continuous not discrete
proof?

>>15227203
Smarter than you though.

>>15227282
I did, but it seems your mind is a bit too clouded to follow a train of thought. Go to sleep maybe

>>15227257

>>15227287
You opened your post with a strawtranswoman. I never said this. You made it up. Not gonna read the rest. You're talking to yourself instead of responding to my argument.

>>15227193
Sure, but all components of scientific models are abstractions.

How is a "fundemental particles" or wave any different? Wilzek, one of the pioneers of QCD say in The Lightness of Being that with quarks, the it appears to be the bit.

As to discreteness and continuity, this is an open question. There are experimental results to support either position and nothing conclusive on either side. Many phenomena down to the smallest scales can now be modeled using discrete systems, it's just often more difficult and uses newer mathematics.

If there is a level at which continuous differences become indistinguishable from one another, not just in practice, but for all possible natural observers, then what makes the universe continuous in that case? Anything that can be said about it can be said in discrete terms. You might as well posit an unobserveable partical, the nullon, that permeates all space time but can never be seen.

If it is impossible for a thing to make a difference to any observer/system anywhere, then its being and non-being are co-identical, so in what way does it exist? You'd have to posit such a things existence as a brute fact not subject to any falsification or confirmation.

That's where the route to discrete universes lies, but it's an open question.

>>15227305
You did? Then where is it? You've already conceded that information is some nth level abstraction on top of something that is already questionable as an onthological basis.

>>15227194
Basically the point this makes.

There has been a Hegel renaissance of sorts in the natural sciences, so it's coming around. Russell's ability to seem incredibly confident and hostility to Hegel because he got filtered at a young age cut him out for a while, but that's finally broken down.

There is a big connection between Hegel and information theory in a number of ways, the most obvious being the Pierce was heavily influenced by Hegel and biosemiotics was born of Pierce's work. Also, precursors to Shannon explicitly reference Hegel on the logic of negativity in their work.

>>15227196
>Abstractions aren't real
>So recessions aren't real
>But somehow in 2008 millions of construction projects suddenly stop. Factories in China stop producing so much that air quality changes dramatically across a huge region, resulting in major population recoveries in wild life.
>All these physical changes are the result of an abstraction.

Sounds like dualism. If information isn't real how the fuck does DNA work in evolution and how can we write JPGs and text to DNA and read it off onto a computer? How does language result in physical changes in how people act?

>>15227331
>Sounds like dualism
I see that your post is motivated by angry obsessions and mental illness and therefore does not warrant consideration.

>>15227325
>There has been a Hegel renaissance of sorts in the natural sciences
No there isnt. Basically everyone in science is a logical positivist, or maybe a post-positivist if thats the thing that talks a lot about falsifiability. Its been that way for a while, and will be there basically forever, despite philosophy grads half smirking half desperately screaming about quine. Everyone still runs off of a clockwork universe baby, we're just listening for the ticking

>>15227336
>veryone still runs off of a clockwork universe baby, we're just listening for the ticking
Education level: American public highschool physics.

>>15227339
Physics postgrad from the lands of not america. Most scientists if they arent knee deep in QFT like to make deterministic experiments to get deterministic outcomes, they've just factored probability into the equation via the use of cross sections and interaction rates.

>>15227343
Your clockwork universe dogma died in the early 20th century. Call me back when you get an actual education and no longer have to lie to me about your education.

idealism has never, nor will ever amount to any kind of technological or humanitarian progress. it's just a fantasy which makes certain people feel better about themselves.

>>15227347
Rent-free.

>>15227346
So you are just accusing me of lying. Good fucking rebuttal. Most scientists dont think too much about the quantum woo if they can avoid it, and they, as I said, try to mitigate the quantum woo with big experiments over long periods of time using interaction rates as statistical averages. They try to turn the weird quantum shit into a clockwork mechanism with their experiments, like WIMP dark matter detection experiments etc.

>>15227350
>Most scientists dont think too much about the quantum woo if they can avoid it,
They don't think too much about your clockwork dogma, either. Those who do think about it, usually end up finding out how and why it died with the advent of modern physics.

Philosophy is dead. Deal with it. Science and math made philosophy obsolete.

>>15227357
Seems more like that cripple is dead while philosophy is having a renaissance

>>15227357
Nice quote. Here are some more:

Niels Bohr:
>I felt ... that philosophers were very odd people who really were lost, because they have not the instinct that it is important to learn something and that we must be prepared really to learn something of very great importance. There are all kinds of people, but I think it would be reasonable to say that no man who is called a philosopher really understands what one means by the complementary description.

Paul Dirac:
>I tried to appreciate it, but I did not get very much success in trying to appreciate philosophy. I feel that philosophy will never lead to important discoveries. It’s just a way of talking about discoveries which have already been made.

Richard Feynman:
>I rapidly learned that philosophy, as far as I was concerned, the philosophers who were respected were really quite poor and rather stupid people — at least, from the modern point of view. It seems to me that there were trivial errors in logic which were obvious. Very poor, it seemed to me.

Steven Weinberg:
>After a few years' infatuation with philosophy as an undergraduate I became disenchanted.
>I know of no one who has participated actively in the advance of physics in the postwar period whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers.

Stephen Hawking:
>Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge

>>15227356
>They don't think too much about your clockwork dogma, either. Those who do think about it, usually end up finding out how and why it died with the advent of modern physics.
They dont think about it at all, they just assume it, its implicit in all scientific measurements and discussions. The idea that the world is just a big clock with a massive chain of cause and effect of physical matter, and that this chain can be uncovered by use of logic and empirical evidence is the bed rock of modern science. Its implicit in literally everything scientists do.

>>15227363
>They dont think about it at all
Thanks for conceding.

>>15227365
Turns out that philosophers dont know what the word "implicit" means, or cannot fathom that some assumptions and ideology runs so deep people dont even think about it they just do it.

>>15227208
People make ontological claims constantly in scientific discussions. They just don't make them explicit. Things like "x isn't real," or "y isn't real, it's just a name for z," or "z is just an abstraction."

Every time a neuroscientist refutes the Cartesian theater, a popular punching bag because the laity still buy into it even though it's been badly BTFO, they are making an ontological claim.

Claims like "there is no 'before' the Big Bang," are also ontological claims. If Black Hole Cosmology turns out to be true, there will be things causally prior to the Big Bang for instance. Saying such a question is incoherent is actually writing off competing scientific models that have their merits.

>>15227370
I don't know why you're sperging off about philosophers, but you've conceded that most scientists don't care or even think about your dead 18th century dogma and I'm satisfied with that.

>>15227362
Based. Philosofags BTFO. They will never recover.

>>15227376
I didnt concede anything. The literal next few words in the sentence that you have clung on too like a methhead and his next fix were "they just assume it". Its an unspoken assumption that underlies all actions and thought processes scientists make. Its not on the forefront of peoples mind because it is drilled in through years of reports and grading and exercises that rewards thinking along certain positivistic lines

>>15227382
>I didnt concede anything.
You did concede that they don't care or even think about it. The rest is your speculation about how they all subconsciously agree with your dogma. Laughable.

>>15227336
Logical positivists are radical empiricists who think science is only about experience claims.

Most scientists don't get too into this stuff and are much more in line with naive realism, generally the reductionalist materialism of the 19th century. The exception is physics because 19th century materialism has been sort of killed on both empirical and philosophical grounds.

Most scientists say "I study X which is a set of real external objects in a real external world," rather than being so radically empirical.

While people do often get exposed to some Popper and pass on the topic, they don't actually embrace Popperian falsification in how their work is done. Work is done in accordance with the pressures of the job market and employers.

Also, a lot of people want to be Kuhn's paradigm shifters, even if they don't get that Kuhn isn't really compatible with Popper.

This says less about the merits of any one system and more about the problem in being able to get a grad degree in science without ever being exposed to a single class on applied epistemology or what science is. You generally don't get anything on probability theory either, or the main camps there, i.e. frequentism vs Bayesian, vs propensity vs logical.

This actually has real consequences for research. Part of the replication crisis is that people get no real understanding of what statistics is, just how to run data through programs and which programs to use for which questions.

Unfortunately, mathematics books like pic related aren't taught, and large disagreements just passed over to get to methods.

>>15227385
>You did concede that they don't care or even think about it.
Scientists dont care about philosophy in general, so no hegelian renaissance sorry, they just perform the scientific method, a method that is filled with implicit materialistic assumptions about how the world works. The scientific method is a positivistic dogma, people dont think about it but they still do it.
Having been though a fucking science education lol its very easy to look back on every

>>15227380
Where do you think logic courses are taught? What departments do you think run logic PhDs?

>>15227382
Agreed. But it's really not a good thing. Previous examples of similar indoctrination ended up delaying advances in science for years.

>>15227392
>reiterates his speculation about how everyone subconsciously agrees with him
Ok. Let's take your proposal on board and suppose that most scientists "agree" with you in some tacit way because they are brainwashed into a certain mode of thought and never question it or even reflect on its assumptions. You're telling me the people who agree with you, do so because they're mindless drones. Now what?

>>15227392
woops. Easy to look back on all of the training process and realise exactly what thought process and assumptions underlie it.

>>15227388
In general yes scientists are naive, not naive like ignorant, they just choose not to care in order to get more work done on their specific field of interest, instead of spending lots of time pondering life the universe and everything and or navel gazing.

"Logical positivism" is a poorly constructed strawtransperson. It's a silly caricature made up by pseuds who fail to cope with the metaphilosophical fact that most of philosophy is useless language games. Calling someone a "logical positivist" is nothing more than an intellectually empty knee-jerk reaction triggered by your own cognitive dissonance when being confronted with the intellectual, aesthetic and moral inferiority of your world view.

>>15227394
>Where do you think logic courses are taught? What departments do you think run logic PhDs?
Math and CS departments.

reminder that indeterminist and idealist "theories" are anti-science and will only ever get in the way of true understanding. they don't want you investigating how material causes produce effects. they want the world to rot in permanent ignorance, because they get off on the suffering which that produces.

to idealists and indeterminists, i say: good luck achieving anything with pure "will" or "imagination", lol.

>>15227396
They think like it because it is a very effective way of generating empirical and mathematical knowledge, which is what scientists care about, and because most scientists would father focus on their little corner of science and accept whatever model a bunch of smart theoreticians have come up with than try to overthrow the foundations of knowledge every 20 minutes. Division of labour basically.

>>15227405
>They think like it because it is a very effective way of generating empirical and mathematical knowledge
You are on record specifically stating that they think like it because they're simply brainwashed into it and they never reflect on it.

>>15227406
If you ever decide to finish reading one of my posts before commenting that would be really nice. What I said immediately after was that most scientists dont want to get bogged down in foundations of knowledge and just want to work on their specific field of interest, and so they remain willingly naive about why they think and act the way they do. They just do

>>15227411
That's just a confirmation of the post you're replying to.

>>15227413
>Science people are drilled into thinking this one particular way
>science people dont reflect on it because they just want to work on their particular field of interest instead of getting bogged down in epistemology and the way they do things seems to work
Nothing is contradictory. Not sure what the fuck your post is supposed to mean about confirmation

>>15227418
>Nothing is contradictory.
I didn't say anything about any contradiction. I'm just reminding you of where we stand: you are telling me people who agree with you, do so unconsciously and only because they are brainwashed and never stop to reflect.

>>15227419
This irritating "confirmation" makes it seem like you are preparing some masterful gotcha moment or you are feeling very smug as though I have just shot myself in the foot with a self own. This is not so, what I am saying is not news to anybody and noone really cares, myself included.

>>15227428
> it seem like you are preparing some masterful gotcha
No, I'm just summarizing what you are saying: people who agree with you, do so unconsciously and only because they are brainwashed and never stop to reflect. Are we on the same page?

>>15227148
Philosophy is so retarded, holy shit. That's a full page of pure mental wankery that somehow manages to say nothing at all.

>>15227398
Right. The problem is that they should focus on these things, at least a little bit, because it can actually impact their work.

It's pretty damn hard to understand genetics fully in terms of 19th century reductive materialism, but people end up banging their heads against issues because they do this and can't understand how their peers have developed new ways of looking at the phenomena.

This might be most true in computational neuroscience, when people just swap out "little balls of material stuff," in their heads for "bits," and don't get that corpuscularism and information theoretic views are actually quite different. The attempts at reduction keep failing, arguably because they understand the phenomena with philosophical blinders on that they've never actually reflected on.

>>15227404
WTF does information ontologies have to do with idealism?

>>15227438
The paper is actually mostly maths wankery after the first page, but same thing lol.

>>15227448
>Right. The problem is that they should focus on these things, at least a little bit, because it can actually impact their work.
People only focus on them when the errors start piling up and you have enough experimental evidence for philosophical ponderings to be considered worth it in framing a new model, basically laziness is the root of the "paradigm shift". Its just a lot easier to work in someone elses already accepted model and prove results that you will be rewarded for than it is to speculate on things.

>It's pretty damn hard to understand genetics fully in terms of 19th century reductive materialism
I don't think genetics is pretty difficult to understand in a materialist perspective.

I have no real knowledge of neuroscience, but the main problem with neuroscience is that as the brains functioning is not entirely understood on a deep level it is hard to translate electrical impulses into information in the same sense that you can with computers. So people just go "a brain is kind of like a computer as it can do reasoning and it sends electrical impulses to make things move so we'll just handwave a brain into a computer".

>>15227453
a lot. idealists very often appeal to 'information' as a fundamental thing in their ideas. if you think information is fundamental and immaterial (as i suspect you do), then you seem to have arrived at idealism.

>>15227509
>what obsessive delusional seething looks like

>>15227523
>that's true, but now you have exposed me so i must lash out

>>15227527
>i've heckin' exposed you
I'm not an idealist, and apparently neither is OP. You are doubling down on demontrating your delusional mental illness.

>>15227533
so you're a materialist? there is no third option, by the way. no sneaking out of this one.

>>15227538
>so you're a materialist? there is no third option
Delusional mental illness intensifying.

>>15227541
>dodges when confronted
classic.

>>15227543
Dodging what? Materialists are cretins. I'm just highlighting further evidence of your delusional mental illness:
>so you're a materialist? there is no third option
Like this.

>>15227533
>I'm not an idealist, and apparently neither is OP
Does it really matter when both of you are mentally ill?

>>15227561
Call me back once you've taken your meds and internalized the fact that the idealist boogeyman is mostly living in your head and that there is no need to lash out at it constantly in every thread. lol

>>15227567
I'm not the anon you were talking to, I'm just pointing out your mental illness

>>15227552
>i'm neither, im le special third option
embarrassing intellectual blunder

>>15227574
I'm no longer talking to you, animal. Simply waiting for you to spew your mentally ill lines and highlighting them. Do you have any other gems? I want you to top this:
>so you're a materialist? there is no third option

>>15227572
The only thing you're pointing out is that you are losing your mind with impotent rage.

>>15227580
I suggest you get off this website and ask your handlers to admit you into a mental ward. This can't be good for you.

>>15227577
this is so basic, yet you can't get it right.

>>15227583
See >>15227580

>>15227584
>so you're a materialist? there is no third option
Any other gems of overt delusion? Why did you lose your confidence? Shit out some more.

>>15227591
it's funny because you know there no third option. notice how you have no case to make for one. you're clearly just an idealist who hides from being identified as such. pure cowardice

>>15227509
>immaterialism = idealism
Than most of modern physics is idealist given energy has proven to be more fundemental than matter.

>>15227623
>energy has proven to be more fundemental than matter.
lmao, how did you come to that ridiculous conclusion?

>>15227622
Yes, we've already covered this aspect of your delusion. I want something fresh.

>no one wrote a single equation in this thread
peak pseud, shut up and calculate!

>>15227631
IDK, just a crazy idea peddled by Noble laureates like Wilzek or big names like Davies.

Same with OP's idea. Ridiculous. Clearly no one of esteem like Bohr's big protegee could endorse something like that. It's all 19th century materialism, never changed.

Obviously non-sense

>>15227149
>The unscientific anti-human religion of nonsentients.
That's actually a very good description of philosophy.

>>15227661
2+2=5

>>15227741
at any rate, placing energy as fundamental would still be a type of materialism.

>>15227148
My problem with using information theory for physics is that information as defined in information theory is meaningless if it doesn't encode anything, so it can't be fundamental. A one time pad is just a random string of characters without the key. A one time pad doesn't even contain any information if the key is lost.

>>15227763
Your meds ASAP.

>>15227148
>What does /sci/ think of "It From Bit," ontologies that suppose that information, not matter or energy, are ontologically basic, that is, matter and energy emerge from information?
Information cannot explain qualia or the collapse of the wave function. Both are proven to be non-informational. Since anything else is already explained in terms of matter, energy etc, a switch to information doesn't yield more insights.

>>15227800
>Both are proven to be non-informational
what does that mean?

>>15227803
That they can't be accounted for in terms of information.

>>15227800
Qualia is easier to explain in terms of informational ontologies, where the whole is not defined by its parts, then by reductionalist ontologies that have to explain how mind arises by stacking unminded components together "just so."

Information ontology can be consistent with multiple interpretations of QM.

I would say the bigger problem is explaining how, if information arises from difference, where does this difference come from. Is it the result in contradictions being resolved? Brute facts? Is the information emergent from the differences (and thus not basic) or differences themselves?

>>15228106
>Qualia is easier to explain in terms of informational ontologies, where the whole is not defined by its parts
if you don't explain a whole in terms of its parts, but instead try to explain a whole in terms of its whole, you're really saying nothing. it's a non-explanation. it's just "x is x"

>>15227808
that is false.

>>15228118
This makes you seethe, evident by your animal impulse to shit out a reply with no content.

>>15228124
it's not at all clear that qualia or wave function collapse can't be accounted for in terms of information. in fact it isn't even clear what it means to "account for something in terms of information". is that just a pretentious and way of saying it can't be reduced or explained? if so, it isn't clear that such things cannot be explained. our failure to do so thus far doesn't constitute proof that they cannot.

>>15228106
>Qualia is easier to explain in terms of informational ontologies, where the whole is not defined by its parts, then by reductionalist ontologies that have to explain how mind arises by stacking unminded components together "just so."
Tononi's IIT doesn't explain qualia. It's merely another flavour of functionalist cope baselessly asserting some weak correspondence between some equation and qualia. "Dude, qualia is integrated information, you just gotta believe me, okay?"

>>15227148
Information theory is wrong. Just gibberish disguised in vague mathematical formalisms. It's time for them all to admit they were just wrong about the Æther and the experiments "disproving" the Æther were just due to them being mistaken about what exactly its properties are.

>>15228154
>it's not at all clear that qualia or wave function collapse can't be accounted for in terms of information.
It is very clear to anyone who isn't a massive dumbfuck.
First of all, qualia is by definition the private subjective component of experience as opposed to the objective informational component. This is highlighted impressively by the zombie thought experiment demonstrating that an informationally isomorphic structure doesn't necessarily have qualia.
The collapse of the wave function necessarily has to be non-informational because of quantum entanglement. If information was transmitted by the collapse this would violate relativity. Furthermore, the question of whether the wave function has been collapsed previously cannot be captured by information as a consequence of no-communication and no-cloning theorem.

>>15228115
First, if that is true, how are "fundemental particles" possible to describe? They supposedly have no parts.

Obviously they can be contrasted with other wholes though.

You can also explain parts in terms of the whole, this is done all the time in biology and in QFT.

You can also describe a whole in terms of its past, present and future.

This avoids problems with going the other way, describing wholes in terms of their parts.

If I make a statue, S1, out of a lump of clay, L1, then the statue is made out of the clay and the two are the same. But if I smash down the statue into a lump, it no longer exists, but the clay does.

What if I removed some clay from L1 and add some from a second lump L2, and th recreate S1, down to the molecule. Is it a different statue because the history of the parts has changed?

And since human beings replace the vast majority of all atoms in their body over the course of a year, is biology totally wrong in talking about lifespans? The identity of the parts keep changing so the identity of the whole must too?

Rather than reject reductionalism, people have instead opted for the view that the passage of time and motion are illusory. "Becoming must not exist because otherwise my propositions refer to nothing and X won't equal X because it is always changing." This seems silly.

The denseness argument against becoming is doesn't hold water because there is a discrete ordering to local events. Arguments for the non-existence of time's passage from relatively are almost always based on bungling what proper time is and how it works. Becoming is local, not absolute, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Time cannot "flow," it is simply the dimension in which change is measured. In this dimension a whole can be contrasted with itself.

Just like a whole be contrasted with its parts or other wholes.

You don't need to describe the molecules making up a knight piece in Chess to describe how it moves in terms of the board.

>>15228165
I agree with that. It's not a silver bullet for dealing with the Hard Problem by any means.

>>15228180
Dunning-Krueger coming out hard. You think guys like John Wheeler didn't know about entanglement.

What you're referring to is the fact that information cannot travel faster than light, which has nothing to do with the question of information being ontologically basic. You're fundemental misunderstanding one of the things here and I can't tell which.

Does wave function collapse even occur? That's an open question, see MWI. But "It From Bit," was created with entanglement and wave function collapse in mind, see Wheeler's original paper that OP posted.

>qualia
Gosh, I just FUCKING LOVE CONSCIOUSNESS

>>15228180
>p-zombies are real
proof?
>qualia will never be broadcast-able
proof?
>conflating entanglement with wave function collapse
buddy...

>>15228197
>Dunning-Krueger coming out hard. You think guys like John Wheeler didn't know about entanglement.
Speaking of Wheeler: His delayed-choice experiments are another great example of showing that you cannot gain consistent information about whether a wave function has been collapsed.

>What you're referring to is the fact that information cannot travel faster than light, which has nothing to do with the question of information being ontologically basic.
The no-go theorems I mentioned do not require relativity.

>You're fundemental misunderstanding one of the things here and I can't tell which.
Sounds like Dunning-Kruger on your side then.

>Does wave function collapse even occur? That's an open question, see MWI. But "It From Bit," was created with entanglement and wave function collapse in mind, see Wheeler's original paper that OP posted.
I might read it tomorrow but I'm fairly certain that all interpretations denying collapse are bullshit. My guess before reading it: He's philosobabbling around the notion of information, arbitrarily giving his definition enough freedom to work on untestable magic.

>>15228219
>>p-zombies are real
>proof?
Look in the mirror.

>>conflating entanglement with wave function collapse
>buddy...
Nothing was conflated. Spooky action at a distance simply constitutes a particularly interesting edge case of collapse highlighting its conceptual difficulties.

>>15227331
You're confused. When a lot of businesses experience negative growth rates, and consumers lose purchasing power, and this situation is sustained for at least two quarters, that's what's called a recession.
Recession does not cause businesses to go under; "recession" is just the single word that's used to name the situation.

Do you perhaps believe that a "house fire" is what causes the contents of a house to rise in temperature and oxidize quickly? It's not the cause, it's just a name,

>>15228181
>how are "fundemental particles" possible to describe?
posit a particle which is indivisible and has no cause.
>You can also explain parts in terms of the whole
specific example?

>>15228227
Explain why you think the no cloning theorem has any relevance here?

>>15228237
The function of a heart only makes sense in terms of a body.

Female sex only makes sense in terms of there being a male. In fungi where two individuals can mate without sex we don't use the terms male/female. Chess pieces are much easier described in terms of the board and the whole rules of the game of Chess.

>>15228299
the utility of a heart is realised with reference to a body, but how it functions isn't.

>>15228310
Sure, but try explaining why hearts or organisms should evolve based on quarks and leptons alone.

Dicks make no sense without their context in a larger emergent system. You could analyze a trillion dicks from the molecular level on up and if all you observed was dicks you have no idea why dicks came to exist or their function in the species.

>>15228292
Assume the no-cloning theorem didnt hold. Alice (amab) and Bob share an entangled qubit. Alice wants to share a classical bit of information by letting Bob know that "she" collapsed the wave function on her side. Bob clones the state on his side n times. If Alice collapsed the wave function Bob will measure the same result n times with 100% certainty. If she didn't collapse it Bob will measure n times the same result only with probability 2^(-n). By making n large enough he can make the error rate smaller than any classical channel.

>>15229138
So your grand fucking thesis is that because you can't create two identical separate states information is somehow the basic thing of everything. This is why lots of physicists have no patience for philosophers because you willfully will twist and abstract anything in physics to the point where you can make any physical theory say what you want it to say. The no cloning theorem is concerned with spin states of particles, not information. People use the word information because you can detect the spin state and apply some meaning to it. So you'd have to deliberately stretch super fucking hard to interpret the no cloning theorem as some profound statement on the abstract concept of information

>>15229184
>So your grand fucking thesis is that because you can't create two identical separate states information is somehow the basic thing of everything.
No, that's OP's thesis and I'm arguing against it.

>So you'd have to deliberately stretch super fucking hard
Just say "dilate" ;)

>to interpret the no cloning theorem as some profound statement on the abstract concept of information
The no-cloning theorem is just one of many examples (others have been mentioned ITT) of how the collapse of the wave function cannot be reconciled with information theory.

>>15229192
I think I am arguing with the wrong points with the wrong person

>>15229192
Why do you think wave function collapse isn't compatible with information theory?

Do you have any idea how dumb that sounds? Decoherence, the most popular way of viewing "collapse" (collapse/non-collapse being more the simplified, early 20th century view) is a theory created using information theory.

Do you mean to say "wave function collapse isn't compatible with the idea that the universe is essentially informational?"

I don't know why that would be, but that's at least a claim that doesn't seem to totally misunderstand the basics of the field. One of the chief applications of IT to physics, probably the biggest outside of understanding thermodynamics is literally to wave function collapse lol.

>>15229138
Ok, what does this have to do with "disproving information theory?"

What exactly do you think information theory is?

Yes, applying classical bivalent IT to QM doesn't work. That is why there is quantum information theory, just like there is quantum logic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information

>>15229415
>>15229420
Decoherence is not the same as collapse. Of course quantum information / von Neumann entropy is a great way to describe decoherence and has a lot of relevance in quantum computing. But the spontaneous collapse is a completely different event. Depending on your choice of interpretation you can argue about its cause (stochastic jump, conscious observation, objective gravitational collapse etc) but the instaneous instantiation of a random variable is an epistemological and ontological problem not addressed by information theory.

>>15228237
>posit a particle which is indivisible and has no cause
It neither has extent, nor relation, nor member. Its interaction among peers are superficial exchanges of internal signs, a mimicry or dance. With no extent, it has no motion and so when I say its trajectory, I mean in the large sense of being. As a rock makes quite a crazy journey sitting around doing nothing on earth for thousands of years. Its trajectory is that of an etch-a-sketch.
This is the dilemma of monad, just like atoms. Material objects are infinitely permeable to causeless actors. Causeless actors bend to captured or capturing wills. It's inescapable. Monads are summoned to keep me from remembering I am completely alone in here, beating my dick, calling it creation.

>>15229454
meds. now

>>15227149
fpbp

>>15227169
You're a gay retard

How's that for an ontology

Philosophy is obsolete.

>>15229446
Yes it is. Quantum information theoretic models of quantum mechanics that predict observations identically with Copenhagen have been around since 2007.

Wave function collapse is a hypothesis for explaining the observed behavior of quantum systems. Decoherence is another hypothesis. MWI includes the hypothesis that the wave function doesn't collapse, there is GRW and CLI.

There are multiple hypotheses around because none have been falsified.

Copenhagen, with its hard division between the classical and quantum worlds, has been falsified to a degree and is arguably incoherent. That it and it's spontaneous collapse remain so popular has more to do with it being first and a well document effort to ruin the careers of and expel anyone who questioned it (Everett was asked to rewrite his thesis when Bohr's circle didn't like its heterodoxy, Bohm was exiled, etc.).

Modified Wigner's friend experiments with photons appear to falsify the idea that wave function collapse can be instantaneous for all observers anyhow.

But that also has nothing to do with information theory. QIT covers quantum systems fine and doesn't require any me collapse hypothesis.

You keep saying these things prove IT is somehow falsified, but seem unable to explain how.