Is the Universe Made of Math?

Re:Is the Universe Made of Math? by sgt101 on Saturday July 01, 2017 @05:32PM (#14679148)

This is a matter of belief then? Interestingly the philosophy of preferring simplicity came from the need to characterize the holy trinity ! As a small thing that lives on a small planet that orbits a small star in no particular place at no particular time what imagination makes you think that things won't be hidden from you?

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Re:Is the Universe Made of Math? by kazinator on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:50AM (#14682718)

I, ahem, believe so because:

- If you have no access to other universes, how can you design an experiment which positively confirms their existence?

- The situation without hidden variables is indistinguishable experimentally with a situation that does have hidden variables.

The latter is precisely why we can make a virtual machine which makes the kernel believe that it's running in a PC chassis with an Intel EEPro 100 ethernet card.

In fact, based on Tegmark's hypothesis, I have to suspect that even the universe I'm apparently in doesn't just exist stand-alone; it's also embedded/contained an infinite number of times in more complex universes (which virtualize so perfectly, that there is no way to tell). One of those universes is the simplest one, not embedded in anything; for all intents and purposes, we can proceed as if we are in that one.

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