Born to Do Math 183 – Armatures All the Way Down
September 1, 2020
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, it was turtles, turtles, all the way down. This is the infinite turtles ‘problem.’
Rick Rosner: In IC, we postulate the universe is made of information, which means a hardware containing the universe. It is not part of the universe, but contains the universe. The information space, we do not see it as information, but as space, matter, and the laws of physics. For that information to be able to exist needs to be stored and kept track of, and manipulated in some other physical environment, which implies another universe, it is made of information, which implies another hardware universe out to infinity.
Infinities are to be avoided in doing physics. We live in a universe that doesn’t have any infinities. It has a limited amount of information. It has a limited, though huge, number of particles. It has a limited, though huge, amount of space. It has a limited, though huge, duration of time. The manifestations of quantum physics are generally manifestations of the less than infinitely perfect defining of matter in space, and space itself, so there’s only a finite amount of information in the universe. So, quantum mechanics is the physics of non-infinite information.
We’re postulating this infinite chain, stack, Russian nesting dolls, of containing universes. Another principles of IC is that existence is dependent on non-contradiction and self-consistency. Requiring an infinity of universes seems to imply circumstances, that seem impossible to the point of “How can that fucking be?”, basically. It seems suspiciously like something that should preclude existence because existence should not require an infinity of universes. I was thinking about our actual, physical environment, and the larger universe containing our more local environment.
Our environment is specific and concrete. It comes with self-consistent history, a non-contradictory history. The universe seems to have played out, at the very least, over many billions of years. The events on Earth have played out for a few billion years for any kind of life and then less time for complicated life, and then you get to human history. It all plays out without any serious complications. It seems like stuff developed through evolution and the laws of physics without crazy contradictory stuff like time travellers, dragons, or stuff popping into the world for no reason or does not comport with the rules of physics as we know them.
Then you compare the specific non-contradictoriness of our world with the potential problematically infinite set of universes. Each bigger than the one it contains outward to infinity. That seems non-demonstrably, non-concretely abstract. It seems abstract. If it is so abstract, and if we only know the universe that we are in, and if we can look across billions of lightyears, our knowledge of the universe drops off dramatically. We only know about our immediate universe. We are perfectly abstract in that external universe. All we know is that we’re postulating that it should exist. Things get more abstract as we get further down the line of container universes out to infinity.
I would postulate that you can’t have inconsistency that serves to make existence impossible in stuff that we can’t know anything about. The stuff that is wildly abstract. You need specifics. We can have a concrete universe that exists in a non-contradictory way, as far as we know the universe, and as far as get to know the container universe. We may develop physics and analytical techniques so powerful; that we learn things about the hardware universe if it turns out that we are contained in another universe.
Still, that’s another island of specific and non-contradictory stuff. As long as you can keep sticking fingers out of exploration and continue to run into non-contradiction, you might be okay. You keep the infinities at bay. It reminds me of the stuff of Godel and the incompleteness theorems. I think it’s been proven that multiplication is never going to steer you wrong. Two pairs of numbers that don’t have prime factors in common will never be able to be multiplied together to make the same product. 7 and 9, and 6 and 10, an never be multiplied together to get the same number.
There is probably some theorem that says, “Multiplication will work that way we always expect it to work without blowing up,” but the overall consistency of mathematics can be proven within mathematics. You may be able to prove some arguments for math. But even that will be hinky because you will not able to prove that type of metaphysics to math, there may some hidden bombs within math that, once discovered, will show math as inconsistent. However, we know math works because we have been using it for thousands of years.
Math gets used quintillions of times a day without a problem. For practical purposes, math is self-consistent enough to exist, at least as a system for analyzing the world. Even though, it may not be infinitely consistent. Similarly, the world exists with enough concreteness and self-consistency that it apparently can exist. Even though, there may be troubling implied infinities that threaten to blow it up. But in practical terms, it is consistent enough. The threats to its consistency, the dangerous infinities, are sufficiently isolated via abstraction and not impinging on our finite world that they may turn out to be problematic. Our existence proves they would not be problematic, at least not making it impossible for anything to exist.
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Authors[1]
American Television Writer
(Updated July 25, 2019)
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
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Rick Rosner 