RE: Nothing (was: RE: Changing One's Mind)

From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 11:00:17 MDT


Eugen Leitl [mailto:eugen@leitl.org] wrote:

Really, this is pure mysticism. If there's no observer and no universe to
encode your information there is no mathematics. "1+1=2" is as meaningless
and as equally probable as 1+1=4893479327582347528345234hahahahahahahaha.

### If you use Shor's algorithm to factorize a number using a quantum
computer, there is no observer (or else your superposition would collapse
prematurely), and most of the calculation is not done on material elements
of our universe. Yet, the resulting factors are provably correct, which
means that there *is* mathematics outside of our universe, and, by
extension, the "outside" of our universe is mathematical. No mysticism here,
number 15 was already factorized by this method, proving the principle.

Rafal



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