[OT] "Pre-announcement" of Python-based "computing appliance"project.

[Richard Hanson]

[Attributions fixed, slightly. Some kind of strange quantum
entanglement seems to be going on here, somehow... Strings... er...
threads broken and attributions teleporting... ;-) ]

Stephen Waterbury wrote:

> (sorry, this looked like too much fun ... :)

Me, too! ;-)

> > "Ville Vainio" <ville at spammers.com> wrote in message
> > 
> > > A thing like "probability" just can't exist in the ultimate Reality.

No comment. :-)

> [...] QM may be the ultimate framework
> for an observer/observable-based theory of physics, 

But, but... How can *QM* be the ultimate framework? -- it doesn't
include gravity (GR).

> and since
> the observer/observable paradigm is fundamental to science,

Are you sure about that? ;-)

> it might be "as good as it gets", in which case an "ultimate
> reality" that is meaningful in the context of the scientific
> method might well require probability.

Leaving aside the determinate-indeterminate question, a case could be
(iconoclastically) made that the observer-observable "paradigm" was
*excluded* not *included* by GR and QM. You might say that GR and QM
take the "observer" *out* of the picture. In GR you could say that the
observer is transformed away -- it's all relative, and all that.
Likewise, in QM it seems that a robot taking measurements is
sufficient to "collapse the wave function." Of course, you could also
argue that robots are people, too. ;-)

The current work by physicists in all this is to find a way to
*combine* both QM and GR into a unified theory which works at all
scales and matter-energy densities. 

And then, what's all this dark matter and dark energy stuff?... ;-)

To slightly paraphrase Richard Feynman, no one even understands
*quantum mechanics*. :-)

> Of course, if you want to transcend observer/observable, you
> have to go beyond science, and into the realm of "Cosmajoonity"
> (see Freeman Dyson's delightful book "Disturbing the Universe" :).

Ultimately, many things may not be knowable in principle. How can
"all" be knowable to humans who are part of the very "system" being
considered, i.e., the cosmos? :-)


all-in-fun'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

-- 
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