Freedomain Radio

In an interview for Discover Magazine, cosmologist and mathematician Max Tegmark blows your mind.

So the mathematical structure that is the theory of relativity has a piece that explicitly describes time or, better yet, is time. But the integers don’t have anything similar.
Yes, and the important thing to remember is that Einstein’s theory taken as a whole represents the bird’s perspective. In relativity all of time already exists. All events, including your entire life, already exist as the mathematical structure called space-time. In space-time, nothing happens or changes because it contains all time at once. From the frog’s perspective it appears that time is flowing, but that is just an illusion. The frog looks out and sees the moon in space, orbiting around Earth. But from the bird’s perspective, the moon’s orbit is a static spiral in space-time.

I have a small little tid bit that maybe you've heard before. If you take the function x^n, that is x raised to the n power, where n is the number of particles, you can some interesting results.

x^1, 1 particle, this function describes a straight line, so in the absence of other particles, this particle moves in the nature of a straight line.

x^2, 2 particles, this function describes a parabola, so with two particles the predicted motion is a parabola. Hence when you throw a rock the rock moves in the path of a parabola in relation to the earth.

But the bottom line is I think you can get some insight into things with just mathematics.

 Your migrane is just a really difficult math problem. All you need is a math tutor, not a tylenol.

Haha. It's always fun to watch mathematician with delusions of grandeur. Math is fine to describe the universe and such, but it does not necessarily mean that the math is objectively real.
The universe can invalidate math, math can't invalidate the universe. The universe is real. Math is a useful concept. I can't imagine it any other way, so I have a hard time taking a scientist seriously when he say that math can make something real.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm still waiting for someone to prove that time really exist and isn't just another word for change (like movement of particles). This is why I reject spacetime as a valid concept and the reason why I can still believe in free will.

PS: timetravel is impossible

If the universe did exist in that manner, and everything that has happened is already bound up in the structure of the universe, then free will would not exist since events would be completely predictable on some level.  Since free will does exist, you've got a piece of evidence that doesn't fit into the mathematical model and, I would say, directly contradicts it.  Hence, barring the definitive proof of universal determinism, the model is false.

Logic fan:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm still waiting for someone to prove that time really exist and isn't just another word for change (like movement of particles). This is why I reject spacetime as a valid concept and the reason why I can still believe in free will.

But isn't the concept of space-time pretty important to the theory of relativity? I mean, if it were just change, then one would think relativity wouldn't really work out, but relativity does work out, and in fact we need it to keep commercial GPS satellites from conveying inaccurate information to people on earth.

<!-- @page { size: 21.59cm 27.94cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> 

Nasikabatrachus:

But isn't the concept of space-time pretty important to the theory of relativity? I mean, if it were just change, then one would think relativity wouldn't really work out, but relativity does work out, and in fact we need it to keep commercial GPS satellites from conveying inaccurate information to people on earth.

I don't know if space-time is necessary to the theory of relativity. I kind of figured that they could put an extra variable in the equations (without using the concept of space-time to justify it) and the math would be the same. I know the math works so fare as we know, but the interpretation of the math could be wrong without the math being wrong. So, it's a valid model that we can use for all kinds of stuff. But I don't think space-time is real, like say a chair. You can compare the concept of a chair with a real chair and they will match. But you can't compare the concept of time with real time, because that doesn't exist. Change do exist, but there doesn't exist like a “universal standard change” that you can compare all other changes to.

On of the things thats I find interesting about relativity is that it kind of support that universal standard time (or universal standard change) is wrong. Or at least I think it does. In relativity they use the concept of reference frames a lot. So instead of using universal standard time, they compare things to a local time reference (or a local standard change). My guess it that that's why relativity is so successful, but I'm no expert.

No, but the Universe is explicable in math (or possible to model in math) because discrete entitities with specific properties to exist.  The Universe is not made of math, the universe is made of the Universe which has attributes which can be reduced to math.  But it is clearly meaningless to say that the Universe 'is' math, since that is not at all what we experience.  Mathematics is a component of a thing deprived of the most important part, material substance.

neutrinoide, thanks... that was the most awesome thing I've ever seen.

Neutrinoide

That was a very interesting talk. Thank you very much for linking to it.

It's not math. It's made of cellular automatons.

Yeah that was really incredible.  Thanks.

What an unholy mess...

Math is a formal system of symbolic strings and non-contradictory rules on how to derive valid strings (theoremes) from the initial arbitrary (but consistent) set of strings (axioms). No more no less.

Math exists in human minds, not in objective reality. There is no math in the universe. Math in no way relates to the physical universe. Being a-priori system, math cannot be confirmed nor disproved by anything in universe. Math is developed through deductive logic, objective reality is discovered.

Math cannot explain anything about universe, being totally unrelated to it. Universe is a system that has causal and temporal relationships - while math has only functional relationships.

What math does with regard to universe is it allows us to model certain aspects of it in order to achieve some quantitative results.

A model is a system in which relationships are isomorphic (have correspondence) to substantial relationships of another system. In order to construct a model of a system, one must already posess understanding of the relationships of the modelled system. Or guess them.

Why math is suitable for modeling the objective reality is a mystery that is irrelevant to our understanding of the world or our development of math.

It looks like Universe is logical. We do not know why, but if it weren't we would not be having those discussions. The only way how math could have affected the arragement of universe is if universe was an artificial creation by some powerful mind - like a computer simulation or an antfarm - according to some specific math system (there might be many) they cared to implement. Which would still live the question why math works in their (meta)universe.

Brush up on your epistemology, people. :)