[Fis] "express matter and energy in terms of information"

Tue Feb 27 06:18:40 CET 2024

That‘s it what is all this about!
Very nicely said in a nutshell, Lou!
Thank you! And Karl too, for his Q&A/S outline. 

This latest exchange is worth to be published as a letter to the editors of Nature. 

Formal systems and theories like set theory or Milner‘s Pi calculus taken alone for themselves, are of course limited in their capability to describe and explain the real world, but their number, being human creations is unlimited, since these systems and theories are living too, i.e. emerging and developing to make new bridges between islands of knowledge and represent new solutions, and thus, while being just tools like Stu‘s favorite screwdriver, they have also unlimited number of uses, that only we can limit when answering a specific question. 

All the best,

Plamen

> On Feb 27, 2024, at 4:15 AM, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Excellent Karl.
> Thank you.
> 
> The point about good theorems about limitations is that they show us exactly what produces the limitations. 
> Thus if you insist on using one formal system and it is consistent and can do arithmetic, then it is definitely incomplete.
> We can actually see how this happens. But that does not mean that we are limited. We are limited if we insist on one system.
> We are not limited in the Goedelian way if we are evolving new systems over time. That is in fact what mathematics does.
> No one has proved that there are utterly unsolvable problems, just that if you insist on living in a box then you will not be able to see what is outside 
> the box. And remarkably, we find very challenging problems that push us to find out how we are boxed and push us to get out of that box.
> The problems come both from within mathematics (like Riemann Hypothesis or Collatz problem) and from outside mathematics (like the problem of understanding biology, or the problem of unifying gravity and quantum theory). Mathematics is not based on formal systems. Mathematics is based on unsolved problems.
> Science is not based on formal procedures. Science is based on our questions about the world.
> Best,
> Lou
> 
>> On Feb 26, 2024, at 4:01 AM, Karl Javorszky <karl.javorszky at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Assisted Self-Exploration         
>> 
>> 2024 02 26
>> 
>>  
>> Dear Carlos,
>> 
>>  
>> Thank you for pointing out Alex’s remark, who said:
>> 
>> P.S. Since the world, particularly that of living forms, is 
>> extensively populated by critical points / instabilities,
>> the time evolution of the world cannot be fully described
>> by digital information.
>>  
>> The situation in which someone is frustrated because of an inability to solve a task is not that unusual. One of the established tools to assist the client in this crisis is to encourage them to investigate their inability and check whether there are ways with either improving on abilities or lowering of expectations. Let me give a short and simple demonstration.
>> 
>>  
>> State: So you can’t describe and explain clearly some processes of Nature by using your traditional language.
>> 
>> Question: Do you think that what you cannot describe is
>> 
>> a.       The work of trolls, elves, divine will, Kismet and like
>> b.      Basically, comprehensible in a rational fashion
>> 
>> State: So, you are sure you can describe the thing if you have the dexterity, because the thing, in itself, as such, is not indescribable. The only thing is to learn, how.
>> 
>> Question: Do you think the problem lies
>> 
>> a.       In your brain, you not being talented enough
>> b.      In the tools you use, these not being suited to do the task with
>> 
>> State: It is the tools that are a problem. One is habituated to the tools one has learnt.
>> 
>> Question: Would you be available for a clandestine revolutionary conspiracy that would overthrow the ruling system, if by such acts you could gain the ability to describe that what you presently cannot describe?
>> 
>> a.       No, I am a faithful follower of the Sumerians and their descendants, their prophet Wittgenstein and his apostle Shannon. The world is made up of units that are uniform. The units fit seamlessly. One state of the world can be described by one logical sentence. You cannot fight city hall, much less Academia.
>> b.      Yes, I believe that each one has the right to use their own head. All established knowledge turns out in historical perspective to be a man-made, socially influenced construct, with its structural problems. I join the anti-Sumerian coalition by saying that biology needs a better explanatory language than that developed by the Sumerians.
>> 
>> State: So, you can distinguish different properties of different units and you are willing to talk about system of concepts, which deviates to the ruling mantra, because it has different units, not uniform units like the Sumerians.
>> 
>> Question: Have you been interested in rankings, social prominence, privileges, class structures, social hierarchies and the like?
>> 
>> a.       No, sorting things was never my hobby. I avoid the subject of sorting, because when I assign a rank to a thing, then this is a private, subjective act. I have learnt that correct, objective, factual are such things that I as a person have no dealings with. Sorting being a procedure with many possible rules and many possible results, it is too much subjective for me, and I shall never in my life sort and resort 12 books on my table, because I hear in my head people saying. “Why do you put it there? Could you not have taken a different place?!” in a sentence melody which I have no wish to hear again.
>> b.      I thought you would never ask. This is a cathartic moment for me. There is so much emotional ballast with my experiences of being sorted, ranked, chosen, rejected, belonging to these but not to those which, etc. etc. Besides, is a concept of continual reorderings not similar to a Greek concept of competing deities, to Marx’s class struggle and the ideas of a well-ordered collection and the ideal society?
>> 
>> State: You are ready to learn something new. The algorithms that describe the functioning of a closed collection of individual units have not been evolved by the Sumerians, because the poor devils had no computers. Now we have computers and time and interest, so inevitably something non-Sumerian had to come up eventually, with the flexibility to describe what happens in biology, which is – somewhat simplified – a closed collection of individual units.
>> 
>> Question: The proceedings within a habitat of simple logical units direct your attention to recurrent patterns. One can only observe such, if one breaks with 3 Sumerian traditions: 1. Finite collection (we use 136 units), 2. Units are individuals (we use pairs of a,b), 3. The individual units have relations among each other (we read out numbers from a table).
>> 
>> a.       Such self-made artistry is not my métier. For me, science is that what is published in respectable magazines and endorsed by influential persons of authority.
>> b.      I was always good at accounting, sudokus, the magic cube and such. Give me a riddle based on a+b=c for the first 16 a,b, and I will sort it out. If we dig up some archaic logical interconnectors, there is business in this project.
>> 
>>  
>> Along such lines would an assisted self-exploration go.
>> 
>>  
>> Karl
>> 
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