Demosthenes

is this what you were explaining about your philosophy of zero?

zero ontology

thinker

Yes, this is one of the basic ideas. IN this case it is a very general oveview of the 'information space' for finding the answer.

This is a much more detailed look at a very similar idea :
http://www.everythingforever.com/

I should also say that it I came to the same conclusions very much on my own, based upon my views about mathematics and physics, especially the implications of MWI and the use of the anthropic principle to o explain why the laws of physics look rigged. I was not aware of either of these sites, or that this was a recognised ontology/philosophy. My own personal conclusions just happen to fit in with the picture presented by these two sites. The central idea is a very simple one, that Zero is not really a number, and certainly not 'nothing'. There seems to be much confusion historically as to what Zero is and what infinity is. Understanding that Zero is a perfect infinity, representing everything (including the Universe), and that the other infinities are merely symettrical components of this perfect infinity, would appear to provide a very promising opportunity to resolve these problems, as well as providing an explanation as to why something exists rather than nothing.

What do you think of it?

[ July 20, 2001: Message edited by: thinker ]

telemachus

Ask a gambler if randomness creates, increases or reduces chance, and they'll tell you that the answer is reduces. (If they've learnt anything from their habit, at least.) Who cares?

Well, if they're right then randomness tends towards order, and so that'd be where we're headed. If i understand thinker's link correctly, the only reason this hasn't been understood is that we've been considering a different kind of order, not symmetrical order.

Infinite order, or Zero - right?

thinker

I don't understand. Please elaborate. I have trouble defining 'randomness'

I agree that the importance of symmetry has been overlooked by western philosophy, apart from that I am still not quite following you.

I suppose so. I consider 'order' to be something which turns up only in special cases. Normal mathematical structures do not have the beauty we associate with a mandelbrot set. There is something about a mandelbrot set (and chaos mathematics) which is more specifically ordered than most things.

How does the Zero ontology correspond to what you believed before you heard about it?

telemachus

Sorry, thinker. I wrote that post in too much of a hurry.

I was thinking of the analogy of a chess board that was given in the link you offered me. The combinatorial analysis i discussed elsewhere appears to show that randomness reduces chance, and hence supposedly random processes tend toward order in the longest run. I have always been unable to reconcile this result with the second law of thermodynamics; however, the analogy has helped me.

Let's suppose we are at the positive end of the infinite universe that is tending toward Zero, according to the theory. We have a stack of white squares all piled up neatly. From our perspective it seems that everything is ordered, and that after the big bang as the squares get further and further apart, increasingly less ordered. From the other end it would seem the same for the black squares.

Externally, though, if we were able to step outside the universe, we would see that the board is forming as we approach Zero, and that thus a different type of order is coming about. Symmetrical order.

I'm suggesting that it depends on how you view the universe as to whether or not you can see where it is going.

I'm sorry that this isn't more clearly explained. I'm still learning and getting used to these new ideas.

The comments on gambling were meant as a remark on the fact that gamblers, if they are successful, are supposed to be able to reach the intuition for themselves that randomness (e.g. shuffling) reduces chance. That is why casinos have to alter the odds, or else they'd make a loss.

I think i would define randomness as a shuffling of factors, achieved mindlessly. You are welcome to offer a better description.

telemachus

thinker:

I've been reading through many of your past posts in other threads and thinking about your comments and the information in the various links you have provided. My head is literally buzzing at the moment, but i am certain that i now understand your theory. It's going to take me some time before i can explain myself well enough to prove this, but it "fits" with so many other ideas i have studied and picked-up over time.

I would say it's a more precise way of explaining what i perhaps could only get across with alot of hand-waving and vague references to books i've read, theories i've heard and intuitions i've had.

I've studied daoism (or taoism) in great depth and i think that this system, as it was in the past before it became corrupted, comes closest to your Zero Ontology. I also discovered that there is a mathematical basis to daoism that is generally overlooked and provides more of a confirmation of this. Unfortunately most of the work on daoism i have seen tends to concentrate on the mystical aspects, ignoring the possibility that they may have been trying to model the universe.

I have also studied a great many subjects that perhaps other members would consider nonsense, such as the works of the old alchemists. I am no less convinced that they too were trying to explain concepts which were beyond their power to describe, not just seeking their fortunes.

I have found much along the lines of your thinking in the work of the Egyptologist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, and his doctrine of "Anthropocosmos". This is a very difficult idea to explain but it is essentially similar to Daoism, yet avoiding the path of expressing the concept negatively, or in terms of what it is not. I am still learning here as he was something of a polymath and an understanding of a bewildering array of ideas is necessary. There is much support for the possibility of an informational basis of the universe in his work. I think that the work in combinatorics i wrote of elsewhere has something considerable to say regarding your ideas, and that it is my poor explanation of it all that has led you to conclude otherwise.

My training in mathematics has left me with an appreciation of its beauty and perhaps a bias toward the Pythagorean dictum that all is number. I have tried to school myself in practical subjects but it seems that i keep coming back to the a priori.

The big gap in my learning is that i have come late to the theories of physics that you all discuss here as if they were conversations about the weather. I'm doing all i can to catch up. However, i'm only a youngster so i have the time!

I would be very interested to learn more about how you came independently to the Zero Ontology, and your ideas in general. I would also be happy to discuss any of the references i have made above and their relevance to our search.

thinker

I'll reply to your posts a little later when I have had a chance to think about them.

If you aren't familiar with MWI then you'll find this FAQ interesting :
http://www.hedweb.com/everett/

The real point of this post is to resummarize the basic idea, since I just decided to do the same thing in the philosophy of mathematics thread :

-------------------------

Mathematics has made two failed attempts to find a secure base and now seems to have proved that there isn't a secure base. In addition to this there is no real understanding of we should consider infinity to be. Most people don't even attempt to think of what infinity actually is. They consider it at untouchable, indefinable, unimaginable thing created by mathematicians but not understood by them. Worse still - some bright spark decided to add one to infinity and opened an endless can of worms that leads to all sorts of weird and wonderful and often paradoxical mathematical objects.

Conclusion : maths is just a language, it has no foundation and we don't even know if our version is correct.

Science on the other hand has been reaping the riches from mathematics for 2000 years. It seems that mathematics is an inexplicably good tool for modeling the behaviour of the Universe. It never lets us down once we know what it does. And what has it told us?

At a micro level :

I know you are agnostic regarding MWI, but you must at least grant that there is a case for saying that physics, as it stands, is telling us that we inhabit a multiverse consisting of all possible configurations of our Universe.

At a macro level :

We have an excellent model of the cosmos, but are left with two perplexing mysteries. Why do the physical constants looked engineered, and why does anything exist at all? In an attempt to explain this we have no choice but to invoke the anthropic principle and in doing so we imply that all mathematically possible multiverses exist, and that some of them support life, and we are in one that does. Indeed many physicists have stated, in one form or another, that it is probable that all mathematically viable Universes actually exist just as physically as ours does.

Conclusion : At both macro and micro level we see evidence that what we percieve to be the Universe is embedded in a sea of all potential possibilities. This is not mystical fantasy. This is a valid description of the best answers physics (and the anthropic principle) can provide us with.

Suggestion : We appear to have a meaningful concept of infinity in front of us. Instead of just being an incomprehensible idea which screws up the very mathematics that produced it it is in fact something far simpler. It is everything which can exist. Not a number. Not a creation at the end of the positive integers. It is the very same thing that we were led to by MWI and the anthropic principle. It is not a disembodied idea that you cannot imagine existing. You are looking at a tiny part of it right now. Your experience of reading this post is part of it. It is real. IT EXISTS.

How can we represent this mathematically?

Well it has to be represented by infinity, but when we say infinity we usually mean +infinity. The only way this can work mathematically is to define Zero as infinity and define +infinity + -infinity = infinity(0).

And Hey Presto! The whole sorry mess suddenly comes into focus. Mathematics has found a secure base for itself. It has not had one since the fall of Euclidean geometry, then the basis of maths. Now it has a secure base. Not only that but it is a secure base that we can actually relate to. Suddenly the arguments about whether numbers can exist is resolved. If infinity exists (as physics is suggesting), and if it can only be described mathematically by assigning it to Zero, then the integers most surely do exist also, and they are just as important as the Greeks dreamed they were.

It makes perfect sense and fits together beautifully (literally - see thread on beauty and symmetry).

We have a workable, tangible definition of infinity, and we know it actually exists.
We have provided a solid foundation for mathematics.
We have eliminated infinity+1 and all that logically follows it.
We have also eliminated paradoxes. Patricidal time-travellers and paradoxical infinite sets cannot exist, and so by this scheme do not exist by definition.
We have explained the currently contraversial conclusions of quantum physics.
We have provided the missing context for the anthropic principle, and explained the 'engineered' physical constants.
We have almost answered the question of why there is something instead of nothing. We have reduced it to : All that exists is one perfect infinity, of which we are all a part.

And almost nobody believes me.

thinker

Yin and Yang is simpler.

I understand what you are saying now and yes, it is another expression of the same pattern.

This is also how I ended up believing what I do. It was a grand coming-together of different ideas from different places. Theories of existence cannot be excluive. They have to encompass everything.

I have spent the last year studying the same things. Previously to that they lay in an area labelled "irrelevant". The Alchemists were not trying to find a chemical elixir to life. That was just a metaphor. We recieve this knowledge in the context of a Christian culture. Even the atheists are led astray by their repulsion to theism. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

All is number.

You may have even more time than you think you do. How old are you? I am 32.

I come from a scientific background. I studied 3 science A-levels and have read New Scientist since I was at school. For a job I work on the artificial intelligence side of military simulation systems.

The other passion of my life is music, and writing songs.

I eventually came to the conclusion that 0 = 1 + -1 was a pattern that appeared all over the place, especially when searching for truth. It appears all over the roots of science, it appears all over art, it appears in our lives. Maths can also be said to start from this equation.

I also concluded that the material world was really just 'information' and that the two biggest miracles - DNA and consciousness - also were fundamentally information-based. Thus I concluded there was no God apart from mathematics. I came to similar conclusions about music. I am still in a band and songwriting is an essential part of what I am. Music is hugely important to me.

I ended up here looking for material to de-brainwash a Christian, but became absorbed in the historical library here (check it out). I eventually started making posts about my ideas, got attacked by atheists skeptics, and much to my surprise I was backed up strongly by Buddhists. At the same time I was explaining my maths theory to someone and he pointed out the similarity to Yin and Yang. I have been here ever since, trying to convince people. It has proved surprisingly persuasive to wavering Christians, has been met with enthusiam by adgerents to Eastern philosophy, and has severely pissed off both the hard-line Christians and the atheist skeptics.

I think I should move this thread to Non-Abrahamic philosophy since you seem to be headed that way.....

Demosthenes

Sorry, I took a while to respond, I've been away lately.

Let me undertand where you're coming from. In your perspective, the universe is comprised purely of information organized in structures of ever increasing complexity. My thinking run along similiar lines, you seem to be saying that information can be thought of as negative and/or positive. So it all cancels to precisely zero, it reminds me of the notion of free lunch and creating a whole universe out of essentially zero energy on our part, since gravity and energy cancels each other out.

I'm just having a feel of what your basic ideas are. What of spacetime? Any true quantum gravity theory must be background free, meaning that the notion of spacetime as a static arena where the events playout must be thrown out of the windows. The only thing that matters is the relationships. In Loop quantum gravity, spactime is replaced by discrete combinatorical elements such as the spin networks which reconstructs the geometry of spacetime out of spins. I could go on and on...

thinker

Of course it does. That is because it was this realisation, straight from physics, that sent me down this path in the first place. That was one of my stepping stones. It's crucial.

Space and time are modes of human perception. Your descriptions of quantum gravitational theory etc... also fit in well the the general position. It is indeed only the relationships between the components which I am interested in. I don't believe 'matter' is material at all. I am confident that whatever conclusions physics comes to now, based upon its currens state its final state will approximately fit the picture I am painting. I don't see how there is any other way it could go.