[H]

Thanks - will give it a read, just been a bit busy!

Not a problem.  Been a bit swamped here too, but trying to wade through.  I found two other papers by him too, but not sure if I can refind those links.  I'll do what I can though.

[sciborg2]

Thanks - will give it a read, just been a bit busy!

Not a problem.  Been a bit swamped here too, but trying to wade through.  I found two other papers by him too, but not sure if I can refind those links.  I'll do what I can though.

Loved the paper - Meillassoux really gets to the heart of the problem. Randomness as Hyper Chaos is not some mish-mash of pre-Creation chaos with all substance being indeterminate. That suggests a Probablity Law that impinges on stability.

Since Hyper Chaos doesn't adhere even to Probability Laws, Everything can arise in seeming Orderly fashion and continue to work that way for trillions of years...or even Forever...

Also, found this interesting link about how Randomness Saves Relativity:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/08/11/how-quantum-randomness-saves-relativity/#26478bdd6f92

[H]

Loved the paper - Meillassoux really gets to the heart of the problem. Randomness as Hyper Chaos is not some mish-mash of pre-Creation chaos with all substance being indeterminate. That suggests a Probablity Law that impinges on stability.

Since Hyper Chaos doesn't adhere even to Probability Laws, Everything can arise in seeming Orderly fashion and continue to work that way for trillions of years...or even Forever...

Right, his point, seemed to me, to be that we have no real way of knowing if Laws will stand in the next moment only because they happened to have stood in the previous one.

Here are two more links:
http://www.uhimik.ru/download/31550.pdf
(The site is in Russian, but if you complete the captcha and hit the button, it will download.)

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Potentiality-and-Virtuality-Quentin-Meillasoux.pdf

[sciborg2]

Loved the paper - Meillassoux really gets to the heart of the problem. Randomness as Hyper Chaos is not some mish-mash of pre-Creation chaos with all substance being indeterminate. That suggests a Probablity Law that impinges on stability.

Since Hyper Chaos doesn't adhere even to Probability Laws, Everything can arise in seeming Orderly fashion and continue to work that way for trillions of years...or even Forever...

Right, his point, seemed to me, to be that we have no real way of knowing if Laws will stand in the next moment only because they happened to have stood in the previous one.

Here are two more links:
http://www.uhimik.ru/download/31550.pdf
(The site is in Russian, but if you complete the captcha and hit the button, it will download.)

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Potentiality-and-Virtuality-Quentin-Meillasoux.pdf

Meillasoux really digs into the heart of the problem, that the True Materialism would have to become rational by the extinguishing of Natural Laws.

I need to dig deeper into these links (can't get the Russian site to work for me) but I am still unsure about where he positions the Logical Universals necessary for the rational in this. Of course any reductionist account has to find a way to square this problem of how to account for the authority of logic, probably why I'm more on the Platonist's side here...

[H]

Loved the paper - Meillassoux really gets to the heart of the problem. Randomness as Hyper Chaos is not some mish-mash of pre-Creation chaos with all substance being indeterminate. That suggests a Probablity Law that impinges on stability.

Since Hyper Chaos doesn't adhere even to Probability Laws, Everything can arise in seeming Orderly fashion and continue to work that way for trillions of years...or even Forever...

Right, his point, seemed to me, to be that we have no real way of knowing if Laws will stand in the next moment only because they happened to have stood in the previous one.

Here are two more links:
http://www.uhimik.ru/download/31550.pdf
(The site is in Russian, but if you complete the captcha and hit the button, it will download.)

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Potentiality-and-Virtuality-Quentin-Meillasoux.pdf

Meillasoux really digs into the heart of the problem, that the True Materialism would have to become rational by the extinguishing of Natural Laws.

I need to dig deeper into these links (can't get the Russian site to work for me) but I am still unsure about where he positions the Logical Universals necessary for the rational in this. Of course any reductionist account has to find a way to square this problem of how to account for the authority of logic, probably why I'm more on the Platonist's side here...

Does this link work for you?

I actually haven't been able to get time to really dig in to any of them.  I guess I superficially understood his point as being that there was no real way we could know why laws are laws, or that we can't know, for certain, that laws will continue to be laws?

[sciborg2]

Loved the paper - Meillassoux really gets to the heart of the problem. Randomness as Hyper Chaos is not some mish-mash of pre-Creation chaos with all substance being indeterminate. That suggests a Probablity Law that impinges on stability.

Since Hyper Chaos doesn't adhere even to Probability Laws, Everything can arise in seeming Orderly fashion and continue to work that way for trillions of years...or even Forever...

Right, his point, seemed to me, to be that we have no real way of knowing if Laws will stand in the next moment only because they happened to have stood in the previous one.

Here are two more links:
http://www.uhimik.ru/download/31550.pdf
(The site is in Russian, but if you complete the captcha and hit the button, it will download.)

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Potentiality-and-Virtuality-Quentin-Meillasoux.pdf

Meillasoux really digs into the heart of the problem, that the True Materialism would have to become rational by the extinguishing of Natural Laws.

I need to dig deeper into these links (can't get the Russian site to work for me) but I am still unsure about where he positions the Logical Universals necessary for the rational in this. Of course any reductionist account has to find a way to square this problem of how to account for the authority of logic, probably why I'm more on the Platonist's side here...

Does this link work for you?

I actually haven't been able to get time to really dig in to any of them.  I guess I superficially understood his point as being that there was no real way we could know why laws are laws, or that we can't know, for certain, that laws will continue to be laws?

Works - thanks!

Yeah I think the jist of the idea is the Laws could stop working at any time. I actually heard this in a talk on scientific wonder from a physics professor whose name I can't recall...the talk was on Scientific Wonder and the professor was at Stanford at the time (2013-ish)...

[sciborg2]

It's late and I have been drinking so forgive me if we talked about this but regarding Mathematics as the foundation stone of Order wanted to post the famous (i think?) essay by Wigner:

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

THERE IS A story about two friends...One of them became a statistician and was working on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate...

..."And what is this symbol here?"

"Oh," said the statistician, "this is pi."

"What is that?"

"The ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter."

"Well, now you are pushing your joke too far," said the classmate, "surely the population has nothing to do with the circumference of the circle."

 Naturally, we are inclined to smile about the simplicity of the classmate's approach. Nevertheless, when I heard this story, I had to admit to an eerie feeling because, surely, the reaction of the classmate betrayed only plain common sense...
 -- Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

[TaoHorror]

It's late and I have been drinking so forgive me if we talked about this but regarding Mathematics as the foundation stone of Order wanted to post the famous (i think?) essay by Wigner:

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

THERE IS A story about two friends...One of them became a statistician and was working on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate...

..."And what is this symbol here?"

"Oh," said the statistician, "this is pi."

"What is that?"

"The ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter."

"Well, now you are pushing your joke too far," said the classmate, "surely the population has nothing to do with the circumference of the circle."

 Naturally, we are inclined to smile about the simplicity of the classmate's approach. Nevertheless, when I heard this story, I had to admit to an eerie feeling because, surely, the reaction of the classmate betrayed only plain common sense...
 -- Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Is Wigner agreeing Pi has nothing to do with population analysis/trends? Because to me it does ... his "eerie" feeling is what's throwing me, I'm not sure what he's concluding about the story. Is he concerned/wondering how much science we rely on was not developed with "common sense" and is more faulty than we may realize or is he saying "common sense" is a concerning chasm between scientists and the rest of us, psychological phenomenon over simple ignorance. At risk of completely missing his point, I say there's a difference between admitting ignorance ( "I don't know" ) and empowering ignorance ( "That doesn't make sense, so it's not true", "That makes sense, so it's true" ).

[TLEILAXU]

My eyes hurt too much to read the whole thing, but from that quote what I interpret is that normies are stupid and that 'common sense' is some arbitrary bullshit 

[sciborg2]

It's late and I have been drinking so forgive me if we talked about this but regarding Mathematics as the foundation stone of Order wanted to post the famous (i think?) essay by Wigner:

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

THERE IS A story about two friends...One of them became a statistician and was working on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate...

..."And what is this symbol here?"

"Oh," said the statistician, "this is pi."

"What is that?"

"The ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter."

"Well, now you are pushing your joke too far," said the classmate, "surely the population has nothing to do with the circumference of the circle."

 Naturally, we are inclined to smile about the simplicity of the classmate's approach. Nevertheless, when I heard this story, I had to admit to an eerie feeling because, surely, the reaction of the classmate betrayed only plain common sense...
 -- Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Is Wigner agreeing Pi has nothing to do with population analysis/trends? Because to me it does ... his "eerie" feeling is what's throwing me, I'm not sure what he's concluding about the story. Is he concerned/wondering how much science we rely on was not developed with "common sense" and is more faulty than we may realize or is he saying "common sense" is a concerning chasm between scientists and the rest of us, psychological phenomenon over simple ignorance. At risk of completely missing his point, I say there's a difference between admitting ignorance ( "I don't know" ) and empowering ignorance ( "That doesn't make sense, so it's not true", "That makes sense, so it's true" ).

Ah no Pi does figure into calculation of certain probability equations, and Wigner is pointing out how odd that is when one thinks about it.

The essay then goes on to discuss a great deal of how mathematics finds use in science, to an arguably uncanny level. Why would reality be such that a variety of mathematical structures could be so useful in predictive strength for physical phenomenon?

Thus, for me, while it does seem correct that "Laws of Nature" have no power and are merely a symbol of regularities I also think it can't just be "Hyper Chaos" - mathematics suggests there is some deeper Order at work...

[sciborg2]

My eyes hurt too much to read the whole thing, but from that quote what I interpret is that normies are stupid and that 'common sense' is some arbitrary bullshit 

I don't know, if you told me before I took a class on statistics that Pi would figure into the Normal Distribution I'd feel a bit of wonder...OTOH when I was presented with this fact it didn't strike me in any way. Circles -> Curves -> Normal Probability Distribution Curve all seem to follow without any scent of the transcendental...

I have in the past wondered if Wigner is overstating the incredible-ness of the math-science relation, but in the face of Meillassoux's Hyper Chaos it does [seem] rather amazing that not only do we have a stable reality but this reality is intelligible to [largely hairless] monkeys who, as Chomsky put it, evolved to survive a particular ecological niche not solve mysteries of the universe.

Wigner gets into this a bit in the essay itself, noting 'it is not at all natural that "laws of nature" exist, much less that man is able to discover them'.

[TLEILAXU]

My eyes hurt too much to read the whole thing, but from that quote what I interpret is that normies are stupid and that 'common sense' is some arbitrary bullshit 

I don't know, if you told me before I took a class on statistics that Pi would figure into the Normal Distribution I'd feel a bit of wonder...OTOH when I was presented with this fact it didn't strike me in any way. Circles -> Curves -> Normal Probability Distribution Curve all seem to follow without any scent of the transcendental...

I have in the past wondered if Wigner is overstating the incredible-ness of the math-science relation, but in the face of Meillassoux's Hyper Chaos it does [seem] rather amazing that not only do we have a stable reality but this reality is intelligible to [largely hairless] monkeys who, as Chomsky put it, evolved to survive a particular ecological niche not solve mysteries of the universe.

Wigner gets into this a bit in the essay itself, noting 'it is not at all natural that "laws of nature" exist, much less that man is able to discover them'.

I mean, I get what you mean, but on the other hand, what happens... happens. That particular niche selected for systems capable of complex computations, so here we are, doing complex computations.

[sciborg2]

My eyes hurt too much to read the whole thing, but from that quote what I interpret is that normies are stupid and that 'common sense' is some arbitrary bullshit 

I don't know, if you told me before I took a class on statistics that Pi would figure into the Normal Distribution I'd feel a bit of wonder...OTOH when I was presented with this fact it didn't strike me in any way. Circles -> Curves -> Normal Probability Distribution Curve all seem to follow without any scent of the transcendental...

I have in the past wondered if Wigner is overstating the incredible-ness of the math-science relation, but in the face of Meillassoux's Hyper Chaos it does [seem] rather amazing that not only do we have a stable reality but this reality is intelligible to [largely hairless] monkeys who, as Chomsky put it, evolved to survive a particular ecological niche not solve mysteries of the universe.

Wigner gets into this a bit in the essay itself, noting 'it is not at all natural that "laws of nature" exist, much less that man is able to discover them'.

I mean, I get what you mean, but on the other hand, what happens... happens. That particular niche selected for systems capable of complex computations, so here we are, doing complex computations.

I agree...sometimes.

It is simultaneously banal and wondrous. Heh.

[sciborg2]

Springer publication released a book called Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection between Physics and Mathematics. At a glance it runs the opinions on this question, from it being entirely mundane to arguments for Platonic-Order/Hyper-Chaos like I mentioned earlier in the thread.

I believe all the essays are available here, but the above were selected by some group or other:

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31424

[sciborg2]

Looks like the physicist Aleksandar Mikovic beat me to the idea of Platonic Math providing some ordering of the Hyper Xaos:

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems and Platonic Metaphysics

A law of Nature can be easilly understood within a platonic metaphysics. It is a postulate in a mathematical theory we use to describe the Nature. On the other hand, explaining the laws of Nature within a materialistic metaphysics, is more complicated. If one accepts that the natural laws are different entities from space, time and matter, and are irreducible, then for a materialist it does not seem to be a problem to add a finite set of such objects to his ontology. In this case the natural laws are the postulates of a finite TOE. However, any TOE has to include the aritmethics, so that Goedel's theorems imply that there can not be a finite number of laws which completely explain the universe and one must introduce an infinite number of natural laws. This means that in addition to space, time and matter, one has to introduce an infinite number of other entities, which are not reducible to space, time and matter, and hence one is back at platonism.

In order to avoid introducing an infinite number of non-material entities in a materialistic metaphysics, one then has to give up the idea of a natural law as a mathematical concept (i.e. a postulate in a mathematical theory). Then the only explanation for a natural law in a materialistic metaphysics is that a natural law represents a regular pattern which appears in the fundamentaly chaotic motion of matter. This regularity appears at random and lasts for a very long time. In this case one accepts the view that at the fundamental level there is no order and the particle trajectories and field configurations are completely arbitrary. This doctrine is a logical possibility, but it is highly implausible. The standard example for this type of implausibility is to find a string of letters in a random sequence of letters which corresponds to a well-known novel; or to construct a functioning airplane by using a tornado passing through a junk yard. Also, if the natural laws are finite-duration random regularities, then the Earth can stop orbiting the Sun tomorrow, which means that our reality can disintegrate at any time in the future.

Another problem in a materialistic metaphysics is how an observer will recognize a natural law given that the ideas of order do not exist. This is also a problem in a platonic metaphysics, see [6], but it is a less severe problem, because the basic elements from which one can construct a solution already exist, see [2] for a possible solution.