Awesome, thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I’d love to sit down and talk with you more on this because it’s always an interesting conversation. (Check your e-mail.)
So I mostly agree with what you are saying and I think that perhaps that is a failure of clarity on my part since I was writing fast and it was late. And I didn’t attempt to edit or fully research. Hence my declaration of weird, late night thoughts.
The intent of what I wrote was not to argue for or against whether we are in a computational universe of some type. I stipulated that at the beginning because it was a necessary prerequisite of some of the ideas I was thinking about. The debate about whether this is true or not goes far beyond a late night medium post.
Going back to quantum mechanics, it’s not the act of observing that affects the system, it’s anything that could in principle allow someone to observe.
This speaks to what I was attempting to elucidate around the idea of internal representation. Moving from a purely mathematically reality to one in which there is a need to construct an internal representation has many potential consequences. I agree that the observation is not the actual issue, it is the need to create an internal representation that arises from the potential for observation.
So when we say “the universe doesn’t let us know dx and dp with greater accuracy than dx*dp=h,” what we’re really doing is anthropomorphizing the mathematical fact that dx and dp are related in the above manner, and thus it’s a consequence of the experimental fact that particles are wave-packets, i.e. they are wave-like but also localized as a particle as we just built up in our example.
I think this gets to the crux of what I was trying to say and failed to fully deliver on. Our reality is by definition somewhat anthropomorphic because it is all passing through a human filter. While math or physics may be “pure” they still rely on the observational tools that are delivered via the biological systems in our bodies and the mental models that enable consciousness in our brains.
But the real point was that a mathematical concept, say sin(x), is a construct. It can be computed given data (x) or the intersection with something (FP) with different results. It can represent a small part of a much more complex system. If the universe is computational and there is a program or algorithm that governs it from instantiation onward that is a mathematical construct that given data (probably the preceding state) would allow for the flawless projection of the next state.
How do things change when an observational requirement is added to the algorithm / mathematical construct? If the observational requirement is completely external than it is possible that is has no effect on the system. If it is internal than it will certainly have an effect.
These are the questions that I was exploring: does adding the ability to “observe” from inside the system, the internal representation requirement, change things? How? Perhaps with no need for internal representation the universe is all waves (the algorithm) and particles (the rendered output) arise only because of the need for internal representation?
Thanks again for reading and the thoughtful response!
