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Author-god

Seed-Wad

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I'm not sure whether this should be in philosophy or Faith&Spirituality, but as it is more an entertaining of an idea than actual faith in it, I guess it belongs here.

The following is an explanation of what I think god would be like if one were to exist, based on everything I know of the world, and of my life.

Author-god
Universe-object.
Let's look at a 2-D universe, starting with a big-bang like our universe is supposed to have started,
uo1.png

fig. 1
and let's suppose it will one day collapse like some think will happen to ours as well,
uo2.png

fig. 2
then, if we take time to be just another spacial dimension, we obtain the following object:

uo3.png

fig. 3

This object is timeless. Like a videotape or a book, it will just sit there in its parent universe and be static.

Enter the God concept.
Like we can write computer programs, or algorithms, so a God would have been able to set our universal constants and starting conditions before setting the computation in motion that would compile the universe-object.

rule30_500_L.gif

Fig. 4. Rule 30 by Stephen Wolfram is an algorithm (cellular automatum) that calculates row (i) from row (i-1) using a certain rule based on whether the preceding cell was black, and how many of its neighbors were black, and then choosing whether to color the new cell in row (i) black or to leave it blank. In this human made 'universe', the rows can be seen as the time dimension, the columns as the single spacial dimension, and rule 30 as the totality of physics. The first cell is made black before the program is run. Rule 30 is such that it impossible for humans to predict what patterns will form in the right half of the figure without actually running the rule using the same initial condition.
Source: http://www.meditopia.org/chap5.htm

It is important to note here that once the initial conditions are set, the universe-object will be formed without godly intervention, in so that t=1 will lead to t=2 purely through a logical computation. Yet, it should remain possible for god to have certain handlebars through which to interject its influence on pivotal moments, should wish be so.

The butterfly effect.
The smallest influence can drastically alter the eventual outcome of history. An imperceptible change of force in the atmosphere might change the weather a few weeks later from heavy rain to sunny weather, a second of delay might make you miss a bus, putting you in a different situation you otherwise would have been in, exposing you to different stimuli, which may germinate into different thoughts years later, different actions - every influence is connected to every other within the network within reach. Our lives evolve in the way they do because of countless coincidences.

Precognition.
In Patrick Rothfuss' book The Wise Man's Fear, a cthaeh is a malicious creature that knows every possible future, and thus knows exactly what words to say to you to make the worst possible future reality.
When we think of a god, we imagine such a god to have knowledge akin to the cthaeh. Whether this knowledge is indeed perfect remains to be questioned but at least any knowledge of the intricate results of minor changes will far exceed that of any mortal being.

It also fits a god to have a much broader scope of interest, to be able to simultaneously enjoy the epic fate of clashing galaxies as well as the delicacy of a mere human (or animal, or even vegetative) sensation, a split second of realization or recognition.

Author-god.
As said above, a god is not entirely free to influence the proceedings of time, as the computations follow unalterable rules and this will spawn a host unavoidable consequences to interjected events, of which some might not entirely agree with God's intentions.

Thus the task of an author-god, who has the goal to make an interesting universe-object (perhaps to be read again, to share with other gods like writers share their books?) is to find the best compromise between values and to chose on of the infinite number of possible futures.
How elegant would it be to tip the flow of events in your favor by the slightest influence! Indeed, an author-god that fits my imagination of greatness would try to interfere as little as possible, with as subtle means as possible - of course the interest lies in how things develop on their own, not to constantly let your influence be felt (for such purposes I'm sure there are other tools available to a god).

It is easy to think of a God as perfect, but that is also a philosophically challenging enterprise, never mind quite uninteresting ultimately... If we think of author-god to be merely a creature in a higher dimensional universe with a super-mortal intelligence, then we preserve the great probability that our author-god is indeed not perfect. Thus, even if author-god has an intellect of unimaginable greatness, having to choose from an infinite amount of futures to find the best mix of incomparable values must be a very taxing task, even for it.

What interests an author-god? Is it a just creature, with the best intentions? Or perhaps cruel and sadistic instead? I like to believe the author-god has a profound understanding of poetry and drama: comedies and tragedies sometimes too absurd, sometimes too subtle, for us to understand or appreciate. No one can guess at the motives of author-god, but it is clear that whatever its motives are, such will be the essence of life: a cruel author will aim to create a cruel life, and so it will be. Is life cruel? Some might say that, I have believed that for quite some time, but now life merely seems absurd and filled with poetic and dramatic extremities. Perhaps there are multiple author-gods, working in collaboration; perhaps now there has come a new author-god to take interest in my condition, making me see its work so that I may appreciate the absurd things it has in store for me.

It is clear that the investigation of life will give a big insight into the intentions of the author-god, but it should be noted that there is not such a thing as a scientific examination of life. Such activities will always be philosophical in nature, and thus the two will be able to influence each other: the idea of a cruel life will inspire a cruel god; the idea of a poetic god will inspire a poetic outlook on life.

Afterword.
This is entirely a work of conjecture, and many things supposed or questioned here we will never know a definite truth to. Many of those things might also be (upon further inspection) (self-)contradictory. The entire idea may be totally unbelievable in itself. But it is an interesting idea nonetheless, and when pondered and entertained it might make life a little brighter where it otherwise seemed gloomy and boring.

So I like to ask you, what kind of author-god do you envision? Which conclusions would you draw from an idea like this?
The most beautiful thing I could think of was that every moment is eternal, it leaves a trace in time leading back all the way to the beginnings of time, and any moment may become present again for countless times, whenever god's consciousness passes over it to read the story that is our universe.
 

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This belongs rather in spirituality.

I will try to answer.

There is no god that measures to our standards of desire or intervention. Thats what a human would do given almighty status.

God is every possible state of every possible piece of space-matter that will always exist.
This god will always exist because it is matter, it is time and every change.
It will even exist in nothingness as after the word nothing is spoken there cannot be true void for a record of nothingness to be comprehensible.

Indeed god would be a record of itself and of its eventual nothingness.
 

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Hello Seed-Wad. I'm familiar with Wolfram's Rule 30. From a few simple rules a complex world design is generated. There is something magical about this. It occurs this way and no other way can be generated from that start. It's magic and we can wonder what allows this to happen. We could argue only a "god" can permit this ... or think of it that way.
 

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Hi Blarraun, that is an interesting notion of God, and one that I share. I agree with you that this notion of God does not agree with the idea I tried to explain here, and that whenever we ascribe human reasoning (like motivation) to a creature of higher intelligence we are just lacking in imagination.

Hi BigApplePi. I think the chaos revealed by rule 30 is merely the result of nonlinearity in which the interaction of all actors help to give the final result. It is our minds (which use nonlinearity a lot, funny enough) that cannot fully comprehend nonlinear mechanisms and thus are limited only to linear processes to understand the world around them.
 

BigApplePi

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Hi BigApplePi. I think the chaos revealed by rule 30 is merely the result of nonlinearity in which the interaction of all actors help to give the final result.
Last time I thought about that I observed two things going on. One was the rules for Rule 30, and two the physical layout of those squares. One has nothing to do with the other in a sense I'm not ready to describe. It's like a clash of zebras and tomatoes. They are not related. When you put these two things together you get an unpredictable reaction. Another thing to say is there is no chaos. It's predetermined. The chaos is not real. It's in our own minds. The construction hits us in the face as unpredicted when it's not. That's the way we react to God. We don't understand and can't understand God but God is nevertheless acting.

I can simplify this puzzle if you are interested ... just to see if it works.
 

Seed-Wad

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It's chaos because there's no order to it, it may be predictable (but only through the original function) and it may be deterministic and even simple, but if you cannot discover patterns in it, it is chaos pure and true.

Could be that there are patterns in it, that we just can't see, but according to powerful statistics tests, it is indeed chaotic.

Yet, what is the order of chaos? The following springs to mind:

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern
 

BigApplePi

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It's chaos because there's no order to it, it may be predictable (but only through the original function) and it may be deterministic and even simple, but if you cannot discover patterns in it, it is chaos pure and true.
I've forgotten the definition of chaos. Is it "random"? See my signature line. The decimal expansion of pi appears to be random numbers. Would you call them "chaotic"? What about the first digit: 3? Is that chaotic or reasonable?
 

Seed-Wad

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Good one, took me a long time to think before I could answer, and still, I have no good answer, but:

Like with rule 30, the numbers are generated by a known algorithm. So their origin is orderly, but in relation to each other there are no patterns to be found, there is no order. The 3 is defined by the algorithm, it is 3 because 1+1=2 and a circle is defined how a circle is defined, the same counts for the rest of the numbers. Like your signature says, it is our number system that creates an endless string of digits, it is not necessarily dependent on the properties of the circle itself.

Pi is, like to every man who ponders it, a riddle to me. The closest I come to understanding it is by seeing it as some kind of fractal dimension. But well, that only raises more questions while not totally answering the first one.

I remember some mathematician saying that the absence of order was more interesting than the presence of order. Perhaps we should just put our minds to rest with the idea that some processes just don't produce elements with internal order. A lot do, some don't.

Still it seems magical to me that numbers should just roll out, seemingly coming out of nowhere, but perhaps that's just the brains obsession with patterns. :confused:
 

BigApplePi

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Good one, took me a long time to think before I could answer, and still, I have no good answer, but:

Like with rule 30, the numbers are generated by a known algorithm. So their origin is orderly, but in relation to each other there are no patterns to be found, there is no order. The 3 is defined by the algorithm, it is 3 because 1+1=2 and a circle is defined how a circle is defined, the same counts for the rest of the numbers. Like your signature says, it is our number system that creates an endless string of digits, it is not necessarily dependent on the properties of the circle itself.

Pi is, like to every man who ponders it, a riddle to me. The closest I come to understanding it is by seeing it as some kind of fractal dimension. But well, that only raises more questions while not totally answering the first one.

I remember some mathematician saying that the absence of order was more interesting than the presence of order. Perhaps we should just put our minds to rest with the idea that some processes just don't produce elements with internal order. A lot do, some don't.

Still it seems magical to me that numbers should just roll out, seemingly coming out of nowhere, but perhaps that's just the brains obsession with patterns. :confused:
You are a compatriot in this. We are looking at this, but see the same mystery. I thought about this some time ago but never posted it. It's a proposed "solution" to the mystery that at least intuitively solves the problem. I'd be interested in what you think. If I have it right, it will absolutely blow your mind.

I will try to write it out tomorrow (won't take long) but am watching a movie right now and then bed. See ya.
 

Seed-Wad

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Cool, can't wait to see what you come up with :cat:
 

BigApplePi

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Three's a Crowd

Cool, can't wait to see what you come up with :cat:
Originally Posted by Seed-Wad
Good one, took me a long time to think before I could answer, and still, I have no good answer, but:

Like with rule 30, the numbers are generated by a known algorithm. So their origin is orderly, but in relation to each other there are no patterns to be found, there is no order. The 3 is defined by the algorithm, it is 3 because 1+1=2 and a circle is defined how a circle is defined, the same counts for the rest of the numbers. Like your signature says, it is our number system that creates an endless string of digits, it is not necessarily dependent on the properties of the circle itself.

Pi is, like to every man who ponders it, a riddle to me. The closest I come to understanding it is by seeing it as some kind of fractal dimension. But well, that only raises more questions while not totally answering the first one.

I remember some mathematician saying that the absence of order was more interesting than the presence of order. Perhaps we should just put our minds to rest with the idea that some processes just don't produce elements with internal order. A lot do, some don't.

Still it seems magical to me that numbers should just roll out, seemingly coming out of nowhere, but perhaps that's just the brains obsession with patterns. :confused:
I'm just going to write this out without serious editing and even accuracy because spontaneity is easier. What we are looking for is a "simple" intuitive explanation as to what is going on. Do you think what is below has merit?

You may have heard of the three-body problem. That is the problem of trying to get a formula for how three celestial bodies might move in space. We will assume all three bodies are close enough in mass so two don't overwhelm a small one. Newton gave a law for two bodies: One goes around the other. But three eluded astronomers and mathematicians. Finally someone came up with some sort of solution: The three bodies move chaotically except in unlikely special cases. Another way of saying this is you start with two bodies, throwing in a third results in random behavior. The intuition comes in when you imagine throwing in the third body. It doesn't know how to behave because it relates somehow to both of the others at the same time. Then one of the original bodes encounters not one but two and it itself changes. Results are unpredictable.

There is something about this three entity condition that applies generally. Suppose you encounter a couple arguing. Suppose you want to give advice and be helpful. You are no heavyweight professional. As soon as you try advice, the results are unpredictable. One may say you favor them and that is unfair. The other can get upset at you. Both can turn on you or they may listen politely. It's unpredictable.

I propose the same thing happens with the two themes we've looked at.

The circle is a circle formed by points equidistant from a center. Looking at a ratio like pi is like an independent body. A human being trying to see patterns is also independent. One could say intuition says the first digit of the ratio must be three, but what about the second? The ability of the human mind to discern patterns is like an independent third body. There could be a pattern there, but maybe not. Going one step further the very definition of "pattern" is at stake. Could it be there is no such thing as a "pattern" but in the finite* human mind?

Same with Rule 30. Those eight starting rules (body one) conceptually are independent of the resulting geometric layout (body 2) when expanded. The human observer looking for a pattern (body 3) is independent. There could be a pattern as with other rules, but that is unpredictable ahead of actually trying the rules out.

So far I haven't encountered anyone who recognizes this theory. I've just posted it and no one knows what to make of it. I suppose I should write up a generality.
________________

*Human being: there is no pattern there I can determine.
God: I looked at that decimal expansion. There certainly is a pattern there or ah ain't God. Just take it to infinity (which only I can do) and it's exactly pi!
 

nebnobla

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The human being created civilization not because of willingness but of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government; You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands. The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgement and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms. The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by Death. The human organism always worships. First, it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgement of others), next it will be self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment. The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.
 

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It's no mystery folks, correct me if I got something wrong , It's a world of Pseudorandomness
Pi is not yet proven to be random or pseudorandom so we could assume it behaves randomly.

You may have heard of the three-body problem. That is the problem of trying to get a formula for how three celestial bodies might move in space. We will assume all three bodies are close enough in mass so two don't overwhelm a small one. Newton gave a law for two bodies: One goes around the other. But three eluded astronomers and mathematicians. Finally someone came up with some sort of solution: The three bodies move chaotically except in unlikely special cases. Another way of saying this is you start with two bodies, throwing in a third results in random behavior. The intuition comes in when you imagine throwing in the third body. It doesn't know how to behave because it relates somehow to both of the others at the same time. Then one of the original bodes encounters not one but two and it itself changes. Results are unpredictable.
With all respect, this is not confirmed, It could be not random, this is chaos theory and deterministic chaos. This is an increase in complexity due to multi factor interactions. What we are discussing here is astrophysics and mechanics of movement of celestial bodies. I will just find my trusty book about this.

Three bodies problem
is very interesting indeed, this applies to many connected 3 point systems such as double pendulum.

When you have to consider many factors that currently elude your scope, you tend to think of a system as behaving randomly. There are so many of them and they are so inaccurately measured that even the margin of error when ignored or included produces totally different behaviours. This problem is mostly due to the errors in observations and to the ultra-dynamic nature of change.

We could say that it is for us, practically random, but we know how this is just not quite the same.
 

BigApplePi

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It's no mystery folks, correct me if I got something wrong , It's a world of Pseudorandomness
Pi is not yet proven to be random or pseudorandom so we could assume it behaves randomly.


With all respect, this is not confirmed, It could be not random, this is chaos theory and deterministic chaos. This is an increase in complexity due to multi factor interactions. What we are discussing here is astrophysics and mechanics of movement of celestial bodies. I will just find my trusty book about this.

Three bodies problem
is very interesting indeed, this applies to many connected 3 point systems such as double pendulum.

When you have to consider many factors that currently elude your scope, you tend to think of a system as behaving randomly. There are so many of them and they are so inaccurately measured that even the margin of error when ignored or included produces totally different behaviours. This problem is mostly due to the errors in observations and to the ultra-dynamic nature of change.

We could say that it is for us, practically random, but we know how this is just not quite the same.
If I have you right you are saying absolute randomness is not the same as pseudo-randomness. The latter appears random to us but on closer examination is non-random. How would we define the former? How about behavior which is uncaused? That is, if it were caused we would now have in our grasp the effect as determined meaning cause dependent and therefore non-random. The three-body problem illustrates chaos theory (it's been years since I looked at that so correct me). Chaos theory is about falling off a cliff: One has regular predictable behavior and then something at one point causes a discontinuity making different behavior. To determine or predict that difference one must get hold of a point. That's the problem. A point is "infinitesimal" and very hard to get hold of. That's what happens when you have three bodies. If you can't get hold of a point or figure when and where it occurs you can't have a handle on a cause. That makes the situation very close to behavior which is uncaused.

Those links you gave ... I'm not sure they offer solutions for special cases or ALL cases? Here is a visual. There are others:

 

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Just before we begin I will give some links, I hope I won't get spam blocked again.-I was, good! :cool:
Important information before understanding random / seemingly random dichtomy.
Information Entropy
Lecture thanks to MIT

Planck time
Determinism, I dont link because I assume its well known

Randomness in case of information entropy
Random Variables

In my post I am going to assume Planck constants gravitational constants and speed of light as elements providing us with Planck lenght and time that will be here assumed as smallest imaginable size and timescales.

Random or Pseudo-random:

If I have you right you are saying absolute randomness is not the same as pseudo-randomness. The latter appears random to us but on closer examination is non-random. How would we define the former?

Absolutely random process is that for which information entropy is maximal for the number of possible outcomes. This means that you cannot predict the next state of this process. You would have an actual 0% chance of choosing the right answer. Ideal way to visualise this is to predict that the next number will be the one you predicted, number that is randomly selected from infinity.

Main extension:

How about behavior which is uncaused? That is, if it were caused we would now have in our grasp the effect as determined meaning cause dependent and therefore non-random. The three-body problem illustrates chaos theory (it's been years since I looked at that so correct me). Chaos theory is about falling off a cliff: One has regular predictable behavior and then something at one point causes a discontinuity making different behavior. To determine or predict that difference one must get hold of a point. That's the problem. A point is "infinitesimal" and very hard to get hold of. That's what happens when you have three bodies. If you can't get hold of a point or figure when and where it occurs you can't have a handle on a cause. That makes the situation very close to behavior which is uncaused.
What happens is that there is an infinitely small chance of you actually getting the right number. You could argue that your chance would be x/infinity, however when you calculate the limit of this function you can see how your result approaches 0 from both sides.[/quote]

This also shows hints of what I am going to present next. The process we were describing, i.e motion of 3 bodies is not random, it may be random to a certain degree but at any indefinitely small step (assuming planck time is a smallest possible timeframe for change to occur) we could predict the next step.

So with our current level of precise measurement and predictions we could calculate the information entropy for double pendulums, three celestial bodies etc.

We would initially have a very low information entropy, because it is initially quite simple to predict next steps (but we have already erred in our predictions a bit), as the system unfolds it appears more and more complex. However at any point in time we can attempt to calculate the limit of error and limit of outcome of such system, a margin where a pendulum will swing etc.

The set of possible outcomes is not infinite as is in the case of perfectly random source. We could say that there might be at least as many as 1.61619926 × 10^-35 times every planck lenght we err possible outcomes. As long as we know that we couldnt err by a margin less than a planck lenght, we also can calculate the possible margin of our error and also the information entropy of our system.

If we missed our measured setup by 1.61619926 × 10^-35 We could show how our guess/calculation is going to be x/1.61619926 × 10^-35 precise, this by no means is an infinite level of randomness, this still is a high level of information entropy and by every step we miss this margin of error increases multiplying itself and becomes so unbeliveably large that it is not discernable from an infinite pool of outcomes.

We could do the same thing for the purely random process, we could randomly select a 0 or 1 from a coin toss and always guess it will be 0. Initially we stand 50% chance of knwoing that it will be 0 so the information entropy is 0.5, after repeating the process our total chance of double 0 is 25% etc. This approaches 0 with every other step. So for us to guess an infinitely repeated perfectly random coin toss we would stand 0 chance.

I have shown how we stand much better chance of predicting a motion of pendulum and planets without the use of calculations, only by pure guess.

However pendulums and other 3 element systems are bound by the natural laws that are described by physics and mathematics (as incorrectly as we may) we still have better chance of calculating an outcome of a double pendulum swing or gravitational motion than we have by pure guess.

This shows how initially we might stand 100% chance of calculating a motion and as it unfolds and complicates we stand less and less chance of swings, that gives us the apparent feeling of random behaviour, which indeed is not random but chaotic.
We can increase our chance of predicting the outcome with every information we gather and evermore precise measurements we make of this system.

This shows how our measurements and calculations give rise to the chaos of options.

Below is a phase space of possible outcomes of a pendulum swing
[BIMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Double_pendulum_flips_graph.png[/BIMG]
We can see how there are areas for which there is 0% of occurence that we can already discard when calculating. This would be impossible for our random process which would take entire phase space with even probability of outcome.

I agree that we cannot prove that there are purely random processes, we can still find more and less random (but not surely pure random) processes in our universe.

We can show how fractals and pseudorandom algorithms of computers show much lower information entropy as we compare them to the atmospheric noises and other sources used for obtaining more random information.

Fractals too are seemingly random and yet show limits of occurence when calculated on a set. In fact every next step only shallows their set of outcomes and makes them less and less unpredictable, as the space of answers gets cut by another outcomes.

Extension to quote 3:

Those links you gave ... I'm not sure they offer solutions for special cases or ALL cases?
We may not know for a long time whether system we are in is fully deterministic or not. However we can determine many outcomes with our current knowledge and methods.

Final (not that final) thoughts:

What bothers me about determinism and lack of randomness is that the pattern will have to repeat at some moment. Repeating patterns are hell imo.

It is like in music. If you wanted to compose a music on a piano, you can select different notes different tempo different lenght of a piece and different expression.

What you will find is that there is an finite amount of pieces you can compose for 3 minutes and that there is an even smaller set of pieces that people will actually enjoy, music (connection of sounds, expression, speed) has a limit at which there cannot be any more combination produced that would be pleasing for an individual. That is one of post modernist ideas too.

This delves rather into philosophy/faith, but we could praise our forgetfulness here, If we were to remember every piece and pattern we might actually find that we enjoy music less and less as we listen to it. A terrible view of the world, I find limits to human cognition and existence quite salvatory by this notion.

Computers and any state based machines are deterministic. This means that outcomes rely on basic conditions that were set prior to calculation/execution.

You cannot achieve randomness on a deterministic computer, because you can predict every next step that this computer will take, it's information entropy is dashing close to 0.
 
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BigApplePi

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Blarraun. I have to display spoilers to reference for writing responses.
Important information before understanding random / seemingly random dichtomy.

Information Entropy
Lecture thanks to MIT
Only played to the first idea. Do I need to play more? I am a minimalist. If supplied more information than I need, I'll skip stuff and could end up skipping what is important. A "bit" has been defined.


Planck time
Determinism, I dont link because I assume its well knownRandomness in case of information entropy
Random Variables
No comment so far.


In my post I am going to assume Planck constants gravitational constants and speed of light as elements providing us with Planck lenght and time that will be here assumed as smallest imaginable size and timescales.
I am philosophically oriented rather than physics oriented. So I never understood or accepted Planck's constant. Could it be different in a different universe? Anyway Planck's constant is small but not zero. It is NOT infinitesimal. Does that not make the universe in which it lives, modular rather than continuous?


Random or Pseudo-random:
Absolutely random process is that for which information entropy is maximal for the number of possible outcomes. This means that you cannot predict the next state of this process. You would have an actual 0% chance of choosing the right answer. Ideal way to visualise this is to predict that the next number will be the one you predicted, number that is randomly selected from infinity.
Don't know if there is an example of this in the real world. That could be what we are talking about.


Main extension:
What happens is that there is an infinitely small chance of you actually getting the right number. You could argue that your chance would be x/infinity, however when you calculate the limit of this function you can see how your result approaches 0 from both sides.
Not sure what real example of x/infinity is. It may not be infinity but just a large number.


This also shows hints of what I am going to present next. The process we were describing, i.e motion of 3 bodies is not random, it may be random to a certain degree but at any indefinitely small step (assuming planck time is a smallest possible timeframe for change to occur) we could predict the next step.
Agree about the next step. The problem is over a large number of steps to locate the discontinuous step is difficult.


So with our current level of precise measurement and predictions we could calculate the information entropy for double pendulums, three celestial bodies etc.

We would initially have a very low information entropy, because it is initially quite simple to predict next steps (but we have already erred in our predictions a bit), as the system unfolds it appears more and more complex. However at any point in time we can attempt to calculate the limit of error and limit of outcome of such system, a margin where a pendulum will swing etc.
We can predict the next step at first yes. The trouble comes when we reach the point of discontinuity in our equations ... like falling off the cliff.


The set of possible outcomes is not infinite as is in the case of perfectly random source. We could say that there might be at least as many as 1.61619926 × 10^-35 times every planck lenght we err possible outcomes. As long as we know that we couldnt err by a margin less than a planck lenght, we also can calculate the possible margin of our error and also the information entropy of our system.

If we missed our measured setup by 1.61619926 × 10^-35 We could show how our guess/calculation is going to be x/1.61619926 × 10^-35 precise, this by no means is an infinite level of randomness, this still is a high level of information entropy and by every step we miss this margin of error increases multiplying itself and becomes so unbeliveably large that it is not discernable from an infinite pool of outcomes.
It would be large, very large, but not infinite.


We could do the same thing for the purely random process, we could randomly select a 0 or 1 from a coin toss and always guess it will be 0. Initially we stand 50% chance of knwoing that it will be 0 so the information entropy is 0.5, after repeating the process our total chance of double 0 is 25% etc. This approaches 0 with every other step. So for us to guess an infinitely repeated perfectly random coin toss we would stand 0 chance.
We can toss a coin a large number of times, but not infinite.


I have shown how we stand much better chance of predicting a motion of pendulum and planets without the use of calculations, only by pure guess.
I don't see what you have shown. Why?


However pendulums and other 3 element systems are bound by the natural laws that are described by physics and mathematics (as incorrectly as we may) we still have better chance of calculating an outcome of a double pendulum swing or gravitational motion than we have by pure guess.
Okay, but our guesswork will have slim results. Better than pure guess but approaches zero better because of the many steps. Think of trying to balance a stick or noodle on the tip of your finger.


This shows how initially we might stand 100% chance of calculating a motion and as it unfolds and complicates we stand less and less chance of swings, that gives us the apparent feeling of random behaviour, which indeed is not random but chaotic.
Yes not random but chaotic as you say. 100% of calculation as long as the universe is modular (discrete) as determined by Planck's constant. Not so if the universe is continuous and not Planck.

We can increase our chance of predicting the outcome with every information we gather and evermore precise measurements we make of this system.

This shows how our measurements and calculations give rise to the chaos of options.

Below is a phase space of possible outcomes of a pendulum swing
[BIMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Double_pendulum_flips_graph.png[/BIMG]
Nice picture of pendulum swings.


We can see how there are areas for which there is 0% of occurence that we can already discard when calculating. This would be impossible for our random process which would take entire phase space with even probability of outcome.

I agree that we cannot prove that there are purely random processes, we can still find more and less random (but not surely pure random) processes in our universe.
Agreed. Pseudo random as long as the universe is discrete.

We can show how fractals and pseudorandom algorithms of computers show much lower information entropy as we compare them to the atmospheric noises and other sources used for obtaining more random information.

Fractals too are seemingly random and yet show limits of occurence when calculated on a set. In fact every next step only shallows their set of outcomes and makes them less and less unpredictable, as the space of answers gets cut by another outcomes.
Could we say in general each next step has low information entropy but after compounding all the steps we approach 100% entropy but never get there?

Extension to quote 3:
We may not know for a long time whether system we are in is fully deterministic or not. However we can determine many outcomes with our current knowledge and methods.
We can be selective in determining outcomes but the whole system is too complex to be determined in practice. That means we as humans will see randomness even though determined in theory, that is in the theoretical limit.


Final (not that final) thoughts:
What bothers me about determinism and lack of randomness is that the pattern will have to repeat at some moment. Repeating patterns are hell imo.

It is like in music. If you wanted to compose a music on a piano, you can select different notes different tempo different lenght of a piece and different expression.

What you will find is that there is an finite amount of pieces you can compose for 3 minutes and that there is an even smaller set of pieces that people will actually enjoy, music (connection of sounds, expression, speed) has a limit at which there cannot be any more combination produced that would be pleasing for an individual. That is one of post modernist ideas too.

This delves rather into philosophy/faith, but we could praise our forgetfulness here, If we were to remember every piece and pattern we might actually find that we enjoy music less and less as we listen to it. A terrible view of the world, I find limits to human cognition and existence quite salvatory by this notion.

Computers and any state based machines are deterministic. This means that outcomes rely on basic conditions that were set prior to calculation/execution.

You cannot achieve randomness on a deterministic computer, because you can predict every next step that this computer will take, it's information entropy is dashing close to 0.
Some good examples here: music, computers, etc. But forget about repetition. The system is too large to encounter running through all the combinations before repetition sets in except in special cases and special subsets of the whole.
 

RobdoR

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If I may interject,

It seems like we are getting into the free will vs predestination debate here (which I'm all for).

I tend to lean toward predestination because it is very difficult for my to imagine a causeless action. "God doesn't play dice". But that would mean true randomness doesn't exist. Yet, quantum mechanics kind of shoots that down. So we are left with a paradox. And that's where things really get interesting.

Our eyes see two different conflicting images, but we see better for it. Light is a wave and a particle. The cat is alive and dead. These very real paradoxes at make me feel a little better when I try to tackle questions like the nature of God. It turns out there is a scientific basis for the idea that God is beyond description. Or at least it's possible for God to be described in two conflicting yet correct ways.

As far as God being an author. I don't even think he needs to "interfere" at all. He did that when he wrote the story. But that brings up another question. Do we mere mortals exist as words on a page, or do we exist as thoughts in a mind? A book doesn't come alive until it is read. The characters don't live until they live in the mind of the reader. Maybe our lives are the fleeting synaptic connections of some powerful being reading a bit of comedy before bed.

Maybe the same story has been read before. Would that mean that we existed before? Or are we just an instance of a greater character archetype?

And how are the characters of a book supposed to understand the book they are in? The Never Ending Story comes to mind, as does a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager. If we could understand the story maybe we would cease to be ourselves.
 

Ex-User (9086)

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I am philosophically oriented rather than physics oriented. So I never understood or accepted Planck's constant. Could it be different in a different universe? Anyway Planck's constant is small but not zero. It is NOT infinitesimal. Does that not make the universe in which it lives, modular rather than continuous?

High physics is so much beyond perceivable that it is approaching philosophy from the left side and reality from the right.
I decided to use physics and constants, quite unintentionally, frankly I was fully certain that my views would agree with physics and they did. Using physics to show a more scientific corellation. I feel that in many examples where I only use philosophy to present something I am quickly disregarded and placed in a box where people think I describe my projections to them.

I do not discard the idea of multiverse, multi-constant universes. I just focus on the version we seem to inhabit.

I agree that when we use constants we divide the continuity and analyze a sequence rather than a function. Planck constant is rather specific in a sense that there seem to be no particles that could dislocate by a distance smaller than this constant.
I don't see what you have shown. Why?

I think I have later proven this, but not at the point you raised this question :). you also seem to agree with me later on. So this is a bad placement of a truth/false statement there. If your curiosity or questioning is unsatisfied as to why that is I will try again.
Could we say in general each next step has low information entropy but after compounding all the steps we approach 100% entropy but never get there?

That's what relative chaos is about

We can be selective in determining outcomes but the whole system is too complex to be determined in practice. That means we as humans will see randomness even though determined in theory, that is in the theoretical limit.

Some good examples here: music, computers, etc. But forget about repetition. The system is too large to encounter running through all the combinations before repetition sets in except in special cases and special subsets of the whole.
My thoughts on our exchange so far:

If universe is continuous, there are infinitely small elements, smaller that planck constant etc. Random behaviours exist as it will never be possible to measure an infinitesimally small variables/values. This means that determinism is just a systemic abstract approach at limiting a range of possibilities to patterns that reappear with most certainty.

This means that in our lives, given a fixed amount of time, we actually have a limited, but still infinite set of possible outcomes to any measurement. Whether is it our place in the timespace or our decision on something, it was selected from the immeasurably large pool of states of information

If universe is modular, sequential. We are deterministic on a cut off time period sequence of our lives. We have an unbeliveably large domain of possible states, however given precise measurements and calculations it all could be defined and predicted. Level of complication and chaos is enough high that our lives are practically random, being pseudorandom in a strict sense.
This also means that random in sequential universe would be a function of time. As you mentioned, finite number of coin tosses is not random, however with time our universe produces an infinite amount of tosses and everything with time appears more and more random.
 
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Ex-User (9086)

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Maybe the same story has been read before. Would that mean that we existed before? Or are we just an instance of a greater character archetype?

This is a speculation, this type of questioning usually leads to no significant answers and answers might never be found.

We could exist before, we could be anything you abstract as long as it fits in.
And how are the characters of a book supposed to understand the book they are in?

This is a much more interesting question, in fact I love this question. If a book is well written, a typical character will never feel out of place. He/she won't question gods and rules of a setting and will perform its role with certainty and in harmony.

Understanding of the book comes from the fact that you don't really exist. You exist as a composite of everything else. You are the book, looking from your perspective, the universe appears to expand from you, when you change perspective a central point of universe also shifts.

You are the book and everything as much as everything and the book holds to you.
The Never Ending Story comes to mind, as does a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager. If we could understand the story maybe we would cease to be ourselves.
Imagine being in a sandbox or at sea with loads of sand. If you understand the story you see all this unordered sand with very high entropy. You use your hands and build yourself a sand castle, that is you. This sandcastle has higher order than its enviroment and as time will eventually lead to destruction of this castle, from waves, winds, other time functions.

Some tend to lock themselves in a castle and see everything through a window of a guard tower.
Some tend to see many castles and choose to live in the most appealing.
 

Cognisant

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It is important to note here that once the initial conditions are set, the universe-object will be formed without godly intervention, in so that t=1 will lead to t=2 purely through a logical computation. Yet, it should remain possible for god to have certain handlebars through which to interject its influence on pivotal moments, should wish be so.
Why?

Why not just run the simulation and observe, maybe it's just my personal bias but why go to the trouble of making something potentially autonomous and not letting it have autonomy? I mean if you can run simulations over and over why would you care if things didn't work out exactly as you intended them to, indeed wouldn't that be more exciting?

I think the best universes would be when something really weird happens, when the story twists in an unexpected direction, like in the trenches of WWI when allied and axis troops called ceasefire without permission from their superiors and spent Xmas singing, sharing food/drink and playing games before returning to their trenches to kill each other the next day.

If I was a god I'd be thinking: WTF is going on!?!

And I'd be loving every bizzare second of it :D
 

BigApplePi

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Why not just run the simulation and observe, maybe it's just my personal bias but why go to the trouble of making something potentially autonomous and not letting it have autonomy? I mean if you can run simulations over and over why would you care if things didn't work out exactly as you intended them to, indeed wouldn't that be more exciting?
Well yes. You run those simulations and complain about the ones that don't work out.

I think the best universes would be when something really weird happens, when the story twists in an unexpected direction, like in the trenches of WWI when allied and axis troops called ceasefire without permission from their superiors and spent Xmas singing, sharing food/drink and playing games before returning to their trenches to kill each other the next day.
That's sounds like a good example of an unexpected discontinuity: develop that chaos theory!

If I was a god I'd be thinking: WTF is going on!?!

And I'd be loving every bizzare second of it :D
Yeah. Let Cognisant run the simulations.
 

Ex-User (9086)

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Yes, let's not distract ourselves with thought. Let's just "be" and have fun.
Have I described an INTP go for model?
 

Seed-Wad

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Why?

Why not just run the simulation and observe, maybe it's just my personal bias but why go to the trouble of making something potentially autonomous and not letting it have autonomy? I mean if you can run simulations over and over why would you care if things didn't work out exactly as you intended them to, indeed wouldn't that be more exciting?

I think the best universes would be when something really weird happens, when the story twists in an unexpected direction, like in the trenches of WWI when allied and axis troops called ceasefire without permission from their superiors and spent Xmas singing, sharing food/drink and playing games before returning to their trenches to kill each other the next day.

If I was a god I'd be thinking: WTF is going on!?!

And I'd be loving every bizzare second of it :D

To continue my rampant speculation about unknowable nonsense, here's why:

As a God, you can take in the smallest of details of the world you are watching and from that you can already know, in an instant, how it will play out until the end of time. You don't need to let the record play on, so to say. But as said, once the object has been rendered, it cannot be changed anymore. So when a god makes the object and shares it with other gods, the readers cannot change the object they are reading.

Now, as a reader you never know where the author will make changes, as this information is not available to you until you've actually read the part in which it happens. What you then get is interesting plot twists. The reader will try to deduce the author's intention through the little changes it has already perceived to try to predict the next changes and thus the plot twists before they are read, but the author's mind is as strong or stronger than the reader's, giving an interesting interaction between the reader and the author via the object.

A game of minds for godly creatures with nothing better to do.

:kodama1:
 
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