Stephen P. King (stephenk1@home.com)
Sat, 09 Oct 1999 13:29:19 -0400
Dear Ben and Friends,
This is neat!
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
[HK]
> > In a few cases... I had been studying Feynman integral myself. It
> > is hard to say that it has been given a definition mathematically.
> >
[BG]
> In 2D it has been dealt with nicely using analytic continuation, but no one
> has made this work for real 4D space as far as I know
>
> Some people have dealt with the Feynman integral using some nice Hilbert
> space mathematics, but I forget the references
>
> My inclination is to discretize everything, and then everything becomes
> automatically definable, i.e. it becomes a finite sum over a large
> number of combinations rather than a divergent integral.
Could the dichotomy of discrete vs. continuous be a complementarity
like subjects and object? It appears to me, based on my studies that the
contents of observation are always discrete but the realm of
possibilities from which these observations are reified (or
"actualized") is continuous. It appears that the Universe is in-itself
continuous but any subsets of the whole is not...
> The measure underlying the Feynman integral is not clear. Here I would like
> to introduce a notion of subjective simplicity, whereby e.g. the weight
> of a path in the measure is the a priori simplicity of the path. As a first
> approximation algorithmic information could be used for a simplicity
> measure. But I have never pursued this idea
> mathematically, althought it makes sense to me intuitively.
What is the quintessential difference between information and matter?
Is there a way of quantifying this "simplicity" such that it is
"contextual" and not "a priori"? I think that the subjectivity of
observations (an measurements in particular) are constructions not a
priori, for the same reason that experiences are constructions not a
priori!
> Also, if you believe the "mind over matter" results from the Princeton labs,
> these could be explained by the mind altering
> the simplicity measure underlying the Feynman integrals governing particle
> motion. But this is raw speculation
> of course!!
Mind has the ability to alter probabilities if we believe the data from
http://www.psicounsel.com/pear01.html. This implies that causality is a
very subtle mechanism that we need to look at carefully! This is the
thinking that drives my enthusiasm for Pratt's work! ;^)
Kindest regards,
Stephen
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