From: Kirk Steele (ksteele42@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 12:26:59 MDT
http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=31&action=display&threadid=11535&start=0Æ
Ok, right, let's get to it then shall we?
First off:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF072-4891-1F0A-97AE80A84189EEDF&catID=2
EVERBODY go read the article.
Done? Good.
First paragraph: "Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely to be told "matter and energy." (Bekenstein, J.)
Parse that. "Physical world" "made of" "'matter and energy'"
These three clauses of the predicate statement are carried through the article as if they were a given.
Fallacy: Begging the question
PROVE IT. Then assert it. If this is not done then any subsequent syllogism formulated from this predicate are fallacious
Then "information" is thrown in the stew to make the argument all better.
It is a good read: entropy, Boltzman/Shannon ratio (old thought that one), 10^23/10^10 for current silicon chips, degrees of freedom leading to dimensions in the known universe, thought experiment of the thought of most dense objects in the universe as comparison models for explanation - Black Holes, event horizon area being correspondent to the entropy of the black hole, transcendence of the 2nd law into the GSL, Hawking radiation compensation for entropy disparity, universal entropy bound of limit of information carrying capacity of a bounded physical system, holographic model, black hole entropy less than one quarter of the surface area of the equivalent spherical mass pre black hole collapse, 10^66 bits of information per cubic centimeter as limit for information storage, information limit dependant upon surface are of system not mass, (he forgets to mention Lorentz contraction......hm....)extensibility of the hologram as model to "physical universe," 5D anti-De Sitter universe,
superstring........
Hasn't anyone every read Flat Land?
This is an OLD argument. Posed MANY years ago, even by me as a very sophomoric freshman in high school.
The apparent limits of our system are bounded by our ability to describe our system until such time as these limits merge. When the information density approaches physical density.... ergo Boltzman/Shannon ratio......bbbys
Ok, now, what is Bekenstein giving us as a take home message that we didn't already know?
The basic argument hasn't changed for a century or so, just that the data is becoming more refined, the refinement of the syllogisms is becoming more precise, the information density is becoming more dense, approaching entropy.
Recursive.
Parsimony is a guideline, as offered by bircoleur. Stipulated.
Induction is a guideline, as offered by many before bricoleur. Stipulated.
Isomorphism. Stop.
This is where the train wrecks.
Isomorphism implies degrees of freedom in the system used to describe. Differing degrees of freedom implies different states of the information describing something. Different states of information describing something implies different somethings being described, or differing states of the same something under description.
Only when there is a universally stipulated set of descriptors, a convergent set of "degrees of freedom" being used to describe things does the assertion of Isomorphism hold true. It does not.
This is where bricoleur missed his own great opportunity to truly expand the sum total of the gr8 argument.
Isomorphism is not possible until the degrees of descriptive freedom are stipulated. Until such time things "seeming" to be "observationally indistinguishable" must be stipulated as being disparate, by definition of being described differently.
[bricoleur]When you say, "faith, belief, trust and related concepts have no place in good science" I happen to agree 100%, but I think such a formulation misses some interesting epistemological issues. Whole books can be written (and have been), but as an example, I'll mention just three such issues.
[kirk]I think such a formulation was an inchoate segue, almost a non sequitor. When you say "parsimony, induction, and isomorphism" are asserted to offset the balance of our human biases when we exert our need to "rush in to fill that abhorrent vacuum," I think such a formulation misses a major morphological and recursive point. You are commiting the act of isomorphically describing a thing which has already been stipulated.
Occam applies.
kirk
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