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• brucecohenpdx commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  Tegmark says in that arxiv paper: I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Godel's sense) structures exist Which is what I was trying to imply when I quoted Kronecker upthread. If there is a single Platonic Realm, then ISTM that it must have some basic postulates, and that it can't contain structures that are mutually inconsistent or are undecidable from the postulates. Conversely, if there are inconsistent structures in mathematics, I think that means either that there must be multiple Platonic Realms, or none. As an apostate Platonist of many years standing, I vote for none....
• brucecohenpdx commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  I have trouble understanding how a Platonic Realm could embrace contradiction. Does that mean there have to be multiple Platonic Ideals for the contradictory concepts and for all Ideals in the chain of proof from the postulates to them? After populating a contradictory Realm, how does Platonism offer any explanatory power or simplification? And if it doesn't, why believe in it?...
• brucecohenpdx commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  Prime numbers, like any other positive integers, exist by nature of the fact that it's possible to count things, and the integers represent the equivalence sets of the counts. I'll grant that a lot of the structure of the universe is determined by number theory, but that doesn't mean there has to be a abstract realm to hold the numbers. It could be all in our heads. But in what way does a complex number exist? As for Euclid's 5th postulate, it's true for some geometries and false for others. How can it be an ideal if it's only conditionally...
• Rudy Rucker commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  C, that's a wonderful, memorable line: "And here I was thinking mainly of the time Pythagoras killed three guys in a bar fight with a hypotenuse."...
• Rudy Rucker commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  Robert Sneddon, I worked on four projects at Autodesk. CA Lab (later called Cellab), James Gleick's CHAOS software, Autodesk Cyberspace, and Artificial Life Lab. Autodesk Cyberspace was to be an API for writing VR programs, and it pretty much bombed in the marketplace, although we did make some nice demos. Due to stock drop, Autodesk laid me off before we shipped Aritificial Life Lab, but I finished it and had it published by the Waite Group Press. All of these progams are available for free download on my websit, see rudyrucker.com/software. Rather recently I finally figured out how to get...