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Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by jstanley on Monday April 10, 2023 @11:59PM (#35520642)
If you're happy for mathematical structures to be infinite, why can't our universe (including ourselves) just be one infinite mathematical structure?

Yes, it's very complex, but there's plenty of room in infinity.

It doesn't need to have a "real" physical instantiation anywhere. It's like the simulation hypothesis, except you don't need the simulation. We're just the inside of an infinite self-experiencing mathematical structure, with nothing on the outside.

Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by defrost on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @12:07AM (#35520696)
It's an assumption that someone is happy with mathematical structures being infinite.

There are mathematicians unhappy with the notion even while being well versed in the Cantor (and other) arguments.

You can wander down that rabbit hole via (say) [1] as a starting point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_...

Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by GoblinSlayer on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @04:45AM (#35522489)
Because universe is a physical structure, not mathematical, e.g. you can't define things into existence.
Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by jbotz on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @05:43AM (#35522823)
Is it? Says who? This is an untirely unfalsifiable assumption. I personally don't share it. "It from bit"[0], I say, mathematics is fundamental, physical reality is just our perception of the underlying math.

[0] Title of a paper by John Wheeler. Can't find it right now, but if you google "it from bit" you'll find a lot of commentary on it.

Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by GoblinSlayer on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @09:58AM (#35525232)
The concept of fundamentality doesn't exist in mathematics, and it's by design. What is fundamental, Tailor series or Fourier transform? Mathematics doesn't care, it simply has no such concept.
Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by GoblinSlayer on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:09PM (#35529852)
Found commentary on "it from bit". It looks like an attempt to resurrect antirealism (participatory universe). The reason why antirealism was buried is because there's too much realism in quantum physics, so it won't fly.
Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by jstanley on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @07:20AM (#35537885)
This is exactly the position I'm trying to argue against.

What does it mean for something to be a physical structure? That you perceive it to be physical? But aren't your perceptions part of the universe? So how would you know if it actually "exists" anywhere?

Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by GoblinSlayer on Friday April 14, 2023 @04:33AM (#35566990)
Physical structure works by its own rules, mathematical structures work by our rules. For example, in mathematics you can complete an infinite process, because there's no time in mathematics, it can just be assumed out of existence. It can't be done with physics, because physics isn't affected by our assumptions.
Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by jstanley on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @09:07AM (#35613475)
Time and physics are just things you experience. They're parts of the universe, they're within the universe. The mathematical universe itself can quite easily be infinite in both space and time, you just can't experience all of it.
Re:Nobel Prize winner: The universe keeps dying and being re... by CuriouslyC on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @10:16AM (#35525502)
Physical systems have finite information storage capacity. Our infinities are descriptions of recursive processes (either iteration or subdivision). The quantization we've observed in the universe is a strike against infinities of subdivision, and it's literally impossible to observe a macro-infinity, so from a scientific perspective physical infinity is unsupported and seems unlikely.

Space might appear "infinite" if you set up a word problem where you fire two photons off in opposite directions and track the distance between them over time, but without an observer the only place information exists is in those photons, and space is meaningless. Infinities of time are likewise artificial constructs of measurement, there is only the current moment.