Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God

Scientific American ^ | 1/7/02 | Michael Shermer

[Aurelius]

"So how come we first "invent" an area of mathematics and only subsequently "discover" that it describers Nature?"

Late one night a policeman spots a slightly tipsy man bent over under a street light, looking for something. The policeman says "Have you lost something, sir ?" The man says "Yes, I lost my keys." The policeman say "Are you sure you lost them here?" The man says, "No, I lost them over there, (pointing into the dark) but the light is here."

[TigersEye]

Can you imagine what the scientific community would do to surpress that, and the chaos when the info got out, the reaction of other religions etc.?

Especially if it turned out to be coconut tree worshipers in the South Pacific.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

As I said.

The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Hmmm. I take the point about Euclidean and Reimannian geometry. Calculus? I am not entirely sure why Leibniz invented/discovered/needed calculus, but Newton was certainly trying to describe physical phenomena. On the other hand, these are relatively basic mathematical constructs to begin with. I suspect that the area under, or the slope of, a curve is not exactly tensor calculus (which I guess Einstein had to learn before he could formalize general relativity, which is more your point than mine).

I'm not sure about any point with B-T. It was an example, (in your favor) of a well-established mathematical fact which you would never expect to describe a physical phenomenon, but, in fact may. And, yes, the sets involved are not Lebesgue-measureable, but if (and that's a big if), there is a physical process that is modeled this way, well that's pretty funky if you ask me...

[MUDDOG]

You can find stuff under the ODE existence/uniqueness theorem too.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I get it (I think)

[.30Carbine]

It's an area of study that deserves volumes of research. Much repeated testing and random manipulation of many variables.

Ohmy. This could take years. And lots of lab space, too.

Shall we apply for a grant?

We'll have to. I would like to devote all my waking hours to this project...
and all of my sleeping hours, now that I think about it.
It would be interesting to study the effects of your working hypothesis on a sleeping subject.
There couldn't be a better lab partner than you, Tiger.

[TigersEye]

Okey dokey. I suppose I should give you the benefit of the doubt and check out your link first...but it's begging to be said. Your byline appears to be masquerading as making sense. Which of course takes it beyond the parameters of a religious/scientific thread. I bet you could make instant friends with the drug-war-warriors on a legalize pot thread. They love a pithy repeatable phrase that can't be assaulted because it doesn't mean anything.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Now, I'm curious about the history of something like Maxwell's Equations vs Stokes' Theorem (or Green's Theorem, if that special case was discovered first)

[.30Carbine]

Especially if it turned out to be coconut tree worshipers in the South Pacific.

Well, if that were the case the scientists and liberal media would be all over it before you could make your last margarita!

[TigersEye]

And lots of lab space, too.

Speaking of labs....there are too many physicists and theologians here. Let's be respectful and move to the biology lab. Besides, someone might point out that I was ignoring something and you know what that does to my scientific rigor. ; )

[Ditto]

the point at which total computational power will rise to levels so far beyond anything that we can imagine that it will appear nearly infinite and thus be indistinguishable from omniscience--may be upon us as early as 2050.

So we'll be able to pick up a copy of God v2.1 at Curcuit City for 44.95 plus tax? Will God get viruses?

Hell. Total computational power rose beyond anything I can comprehend 20 years ago but I do not worship my PC. We don't need to 'comprehend it' to use it.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Now, I'm curious about the history of something like Maxwell's Equations vs Stokes' Theorem (or Green's Theorem, if that special case was discovered first)

Slick, do you have any insight (or reference literature) here?

[tq]So how come we first "invent" an area of mathematics and only subsequently "discover" that it describers Nature?

[mud]You are correct sir, e.g., tensor analysis for general relativity, and functional analysis for quantum mechanics.

If you go back through a few posts you'll see that TopQuark, in particular, would argue (i think) that most physical phenomena are explained in terms of existing mathematics. I naively suggested he might have it backwards, that usually the mathematics are constructed to explain the physical process, but I think he may have a point. The example of Newton and his version of calculus clouded my vision at first...

[TigersEye]

...before you could make your last margarita!

I think the real problem would be not enough coconuts for 6 billion people.

[RightWhale]

When I wasted 6 months of lunch hours diagramming the assertions in volume 1, I found that the chart could not lie flat on a sheet of paper without special crossing symbols like circuit diagrams. In this way it is like a diagram of semantic linkages. Semantic linkages might be a non-orientable manifold; I'm not done with that chart even though the power of computer flowcharting is a tremendous aid. If I ever finish we will see.

[MUDDOG]

Both Green's and Stokes' Theorem preceded Maxwell's field equations.

Green's Theorem is the simplest extension to more than one dimension of Newton's fundamental theorem of calculus, e.g., the value of an integral can be computed by calculating the antiderivative at the boundary. In Green's case, the value of a 2-dimensional integral in 2-space equals a certain line integral about the boundary.

The classical Stokes' Theorem equates a surface integral in 3-space to a line integral on the boundary.

These classical theorems have been generalized to a modern Stokes' theorem which equates n-dimensional integrals to (n-1)-dimensional integrals on the boundary.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Well, at first I thought it was a joke referring to another thread, now I admit that I have no idea, although it is the end of a long day of freeping, I mean, uh, generating UML for this project...

[Don Myers]

"Not God, but impressive enough to be a god to people significantly less advanced."

That would work. We have a few of those people around.

[Don Myers]

"I can imagine, since you seem to have failed to grasp the logic that proves that the statement..."

Someday, people will be able to distinguish between semantics and truth.