From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 09:18:57 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
If Platonic reality were enough, then it would completely
wipe out all our reasons for doing anything. As Greg Egan
hinted at in his absurd Theory of Dust (in Permutation
City), your life will continue (has continued--is continuing)
in timeless platonic space regardless of what happens in
the actual execution. So why save a little girl from Nazis?
Why strive to build a friendly AI? Whether you fail or
succeed, and it's all happening in platonic space anyway
then who gives a shit?
### I think we can have our mathematical cake and eat it too, if we conceive
of some of the Platonic entities as incomplete - e.g. since certain sets can
be defined (or define themselves, or exist) only in relation to other,
simpler sets, we could imagine that there is an "edge" to mathematics - the
sets which use all simpler sets (those are frozen, timeless, like the set of
all integers from 1 to 100) in their definition. One of the edge sets could
be the set of all numbers fully describing the current state of the
multiverse. The set of numbers describing fully the state of the multiverse
tomorrow is not a part of mathematics, it doesn't mathematically exist yet
(unless we live in a simulation within a meta-multiverse which already went
through the stage containing ourselves eons ago). I imagine that this
process of derivation at the edge of mathematics can give rise to our
experience. The arrow of time runs from the simple sets, to infinities of
unimaginable ordinality, and they do get bigger with every tick of the
clock. Even the integer fully encoding Lee's mind is not finished - every
time you ask it something, it adds more digits (according to rules inherent
in itself and other numbers), and therefore it's conscious.
Rafal
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