Talk:Mathematical universe hypothesis

Theory?

While I find Tegmark's proposals intriguing, I dispute calling this one a "theory". It's more of a provacative proposal that future theories adopt a particular and controversial featureCH (talk) 21:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this just one of those ideas that occurs to pretty much everyone independently at some time or another? At least to philosophy students or distracted physics undergrads.

I'm not sure what "feature" you are referring to. Tegmark's "everything" or UE is frequently discussed as a potential TOE (for example in "New Scientist" magazine http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe_frames.html or... http://scienceweek.com/2003/sc031031-1.htm). It appears to be a theory rather than a tautology (which it is sometimes derided as). Please elaborate on what you mean by "feature" and why it should not be referred to as a TOE. In the meantime I'm going to remove the "feature of" insertion.Joncolvin 07:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Being non-falsifiable, this proposal would not even qualify as science, let alone as a theory of everything. It is perhaps a "theory of everything" in a philosophical sense, but not in a scientific sense. Intriguing and attractive as it is, there is no way that experiment could possibly shed any light on the matter and therefore it lies outside the realms of science. Robin S 01:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

An extremely positivist viewpoint, Robin. This theory does in fact make predictions: one such prediction is that physics will become more "mathematical" as it progresses deeper towards the ultimate TOE. To date this prediction has been successful. Tegmark does not pretend that his theory is science; it is metaphysics, but metaphysics of a predictive nature. It bridges science and philosophy in a similar manner to the anthropic principle. Joncolvin 05:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The last point of criticism "is self-contradictory because one cannot subsume all possible (partly contradictory) mathematical structures into one structure" is the result of a misunderstanding and has no bearing. The Ultimate Ensemble is not "one structure" ... the parts have absolutely no relation to each other. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.179.98.125 (talk) 03:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a wikipedia article, not a research paper. It correctly reports what criticisms other physicists have made---there is even a citation showing you where this criticism was made. Just as a matter of interest, however, if the different parts have absolutely no relation to each other, and we are "in" one part, then presumably you agree with the criticism that the proposal is unverifiable, since we could never find any empirical evidence of the existence of the other, absolutely unrelated, parts. Dark Formal (talk) 05:24, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a "theory" in the philosophical sense: a reasoning mindset. Philosophical theories are not provable in the scientific sense, they work, or they don't. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 21:13, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It is much more than just a philosophical theory. I argue it is a scientific theory. If you study the articles written on the topic by M.T., you'll see that there is math that goes with it, and some ways are suggested to test aspects of the theory. --IO Device (talk) 23:43, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Relation to Schmidhuber's ultimate ensemble

Apparently both Max Tegmark's ensemble and Jürgen Schmidhuber's ensemble of all computable universes were published in 1997. Their relation should probably be clarified. Discrepancy (talk) 20:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Inadequate "Responses" section

The Criticisms section has three subsections. The first two are criticisms and the third is entitled "Responses". It's good to have a "Responses" subsection, but it needs to summarise Tegmark's answers to the two attacks. It's unsatisfactory just to point the reader to Tegmark's book as if the article was a teaser campaign. I suggest that somebody who has read the book gives a short precis here of the relevant arguments. Tommy Herbert (talk) 22:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The theory is well defined if you write it this way

The "Criticisms" section says: "Some argue that the "set of all mathematical structures" is not well-defined."

The Kolmogorov_complexity of the universe is 0, but the Kolmogorov_complexity of any part of the universe is more than 0. This means that if the universe was able to be converted to a form the computer would take as input, and if zip files were better optimized, then the universe would compress to a 0 byte zip file. This does not mean it could be represented as 0s and 1s or as a file at all. It means there is no total information because it all balances to 0. Many things decrease Kolmogorov_complexity as they get bigger. For example, "all integers" has more integers than "all integers except 107 and 30", but the Kolmogorov_complexity of "all integers except 107 and 30" is bigger. Similarly, if the universe includes all math structures, then that is very simple to describe: The Kolmogorov_complexity of the universe is 0. Also, the Kolmogorov_complexity of nonexistance is 0, which means if Max Tegmark's theory is true, then the universe does not exist. Its simple. BenRayfield (talk) 19:19, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Mathematical structures in the level-4 multiverse exist relative to other mathematical structures. What you're saying is that the KC of both existence and nonexistence is 0, and from that you're implying that existence==nonexistence, from which you imply nonexistence (this is a contradiction). I don't see the logic in your implications. --IO Device (talk) 03:19, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

The KC of nonexistence is 0? Nonexistence isn't a thing, so how can it have a KC?Joncolvin (talk) 02:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Joke?

Tegmark is known to produce elaborate intellectual jokes one time in ten or so. Funny enough, a few of them gain some considerable serious interest despite being jokes. Is this one of them? Just consider the sound of "MUH" and possibly also "TOE"... Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 21:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you kidding? You're practically defaming the man. MUH ain't a joke. Just consider the number of articles by him on the topic. --IO Device (talk) 23:41, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps more of a Shaggy dog story than a joke. And who cares how many articles X writes about X's idea? What counts is how many articles other experts (not popular media like New Scientist) write about X's idea. 84.177.47.244 (talk) 19:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Improving "Criticisms" Section

The paragraph summarizing the three-way debate (Hut-Alford-Tegmark [1]) is correct. It simply states the criticism made in section VI.A of that paper, in the paragraph beginning "Finally, the Fundamentalist describes himself as...". One way to improve this section of the WP article would be to also include summaries of the other criticisms made in that paper. And also criticisms from other papers. Dark Formal (talk) 22:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)