From: Byrne Hobart (sometimesfunnyalwaysright@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 22 2007 - 15:46:01 MDT
>Maths can describe
>anything, even things which have no existence in the universe, so I'd
expect
>mathematics to be bigger than the universe in terms of complexity.
Kolmogorov might dispute that: if you can simplify the universe by
describing it with models, and those models can also describe things that
don't exist in this universe, you haven't added any complexity to the
models.
Describing the sequence 2, 4, 6, 8, by noting that the number in
position nis equal to 2
n is an abstraction -- noting that 2*10=20 doesn't mean that your
abstraction is more complex than the original statement.
On 6/22/07, David Picón Álvarez <eleuteri@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> > FWIW, it's recently been shown that to explain the universe of
> > mathematics one needs not only a large number of axioms, but an infinite
> > number of axioms. (I forget just which order of infinity this is, but
> > it's larger than C.) And math is an attempt at a simplified abstraction
> > of the universe.
>
> I wouldn't call maths an abstraction of the universe. Maths can describe
> anything, even things which have no existence in the universe, so I'd
> expect
> mathematics to be bigger than the universe in terms of complexity.
>
> --David.
>
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