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Yanniru, Further On The Above

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Posted by Alan on May 12, 2002 00:49:36 UTC

Further on the above:

Dr. Dick wrote:

"..................... then you should also be capable of seeing scientific progress as the phenomena of shifting assignments of meaning applied to the total information available to a thinking mind (the entity in which "thought happens"). If, in fact, learning is indeed little more than the consequence of accumulated shifts in the assignment of meaning of what we know (that underlying undefined information) then it becomes quite reasonable to consider the issue of what constraints those assignments must obey in order to provide an acceptable assignment of meaning. That is the central issue of my work."

And Paul agreed that I had described exactly what Dr. Dick had done with my: "So I ask: did he not then show the tautological structural framework of communicable (linkable) digital explanation (linking, networking) itself?"

And Dr. Dick has written:
"Let us suppose for the sake of argument that some ancient Egyptian just happened to comprehend the true nature of reality. That he has the correct answer to every question which can be asked on any subject. Knowing everything, he also knows how to avoid death and, for the last 6 thousand years, he has been composing a document which contains a complete description of his knowledge and understanding (in hieroglyphs of course). However, in order to protect his knowledge from those who know hieroglyphs, he has done it all in a secrete code.

50 years ago, with the advent of computers, he translated his writings into computer graphics and recorded them on to a wire (I presume you have heard of a wire recorder - they preceded tape recorders). However, he used an operating system of his own design to convert the original scrolls to pictures. And he has shuffled the wires so that no one except he will know the correct order. The wires have fallen into your possession. Your problem is to uncover exactly what he was saying!

First, I hold that the problem is exactly analogous to the problem the universe has presented living entities.

Second, I hold that the information I have available to work with (magnetic spots on a wire) can be translated into a set of numbers.

Finally, the original premise, that he had discovered the true nature of reality, says that, if I am able to recover the information on the wire, I will understand his concept of reality and be able to answer any question about reality which is conceivable. So, what can I say about the possible patterns I may find on those wires (note, this is before I look). That is the subject of my presentation in "The Foundations of Physical Reality".

Since I can make up an analogous story to translate any concept of reality (and likewise all the conclusions that concept might entail) into a set of numbers, why not just define reality to be a set of numbers? The idea encompasses any possible representation so it becomes a universal representation of the fundamental problem. The nice thing is that the problem is now very well defined as opposed to the common presentation of the problem which is, for practical analysis, only vaguely defined."
(last quote from Counterbalance).

One might ask if the laws of physics are the laws of the virtual explanation projected from the interaction of two other explanations (so the laws of doing physics, the laws of "common ground" between at least two scientists trying to understand/ communicate their explanations to each other).

-dolphin



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