Re: Is the Mandelbrot Set real?

Hara Ra (harara@shamanics.com)
Wed, 06 Aug 1997 22:28:38 -0700


John K Clark wrote:
> >PReal - Physically Real. Representable by a one to one mapping
> >onto the set of all physical particles in the Universe.

> I see, something is real if it's physical and it's physical if it's real.
> I have do have a question however, are the Peano Postulates physical
> particles and if not why not?
>
They are not physical particles. However, the strings which state the
Postulates are finite and representatable within the physical universe.
The longest Preal string has as many characters as there are particles
in the universe, approximately.

> >Mreal - Representable by a functioning brain.
>
> Is Mreal a subset of PReal or is the functioning of the brain not physically
> real?

Mreal is a subset of Preal. A rather small subset - I suspect the
information capacity of a human brain is about 10^20 bits, and a 1.5 Kg
brain contains about 10^30 particles.

> >I think the notion of "Real" is a dead end, with no real
> >consequences.

> I think the notion of "Klognee" is a dead end, with no klognee consequences.
>
Stating that the Mandelbrot Set is Real doesn't tell me very much, so it
has few consequences.

> In another post you said:
>
> >If one adheres to the notion that a wave function is strictly a
> >means of calculating probabilities of events, this confusion
> >vanishes.
>
> If so and it's meaningless to ask what slit the electron went through, and it
> all just comes down to what I can calculate, then what does that say about
> the idea that there are things in the world independent of me, and what does
> that say about your 3 different types of "reality"?

What I can actually calculate is very much the crux of the matter. I am
limited to what I can do with Preal particles, and my thinking is
limited to what can be expressed within the Mreal. It is the mystics who
are totally immured of the inner infinite Reality, I am looking at what
can be expressed physically as a profound limit to what we can express.
Of course the use of abstraction is very useful here, for example the
word 'googol' describes a Real number but not a Preal one. However the
string 'googol' provides a tag for defining a specific Real number - but
the vast, vast majority of numbers of similar magnitude will never be
discussed or explored - it's not possible to do so.

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| Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> |
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