[lit-ideas] Re: The World Simulated
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 01:22:32 +0100 (BST)
Comments below.
--- John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Robert Paul wrote:
>
> > A similar embarrassment turns up in Lewis Carroll's 'Sylvie and
> > Bruno,' where a map with a scale of one mile to one mile is discarded
> > as too cumbersome. 'A character notes some practical difficulties with
> > this
> > map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I
> > assure you it does nearly as well".'
> >
> > Perhaps those behind the world simulation project have overcome this
> > difficulty.
>
> Ah, yes, There is indeed a problem of making a map with a scale of 1:1.
There is no particular problem at all: take a piece of white paper that is
1cm2: another piece of white paper of the same size may be regarded as a 1:1
'map' of it (we can colour the paper if we want).
Indeed if our 'map' is of something sufficiently tiny we may want the 'map'
to be bigger than the scale of the thing it maps. (Think of the model or
'map' of the double-helix)
Carroll's (was he a bit Irish?) "we now use the country itself, as its own
map, and I assure you it does nearly as well" is a nice piece of logical
absurdity. In fact, it is more absurd than, as Witter's thought (afair), 'a
thing is identical with itself' is absurd:- pace _this_ Witters, a thing *is*
identical with itself - not that this tells us much - 'x=x' is true, not
nonsense. But x, or a thing, is not a 'map' of itself - at least not usually:
this is because it cannot be regarded as a representation of itself, rather
it is itself. (I am not a 'map' of myself: I am not a description of myself;
I am myself - for better or worse).
> But if we make a map with a scale of 1:2, or any other scale other than
> 1:1,
> we run into another unsolvable problem: How do we show the map of the map?
Is this "unsolvable" problem really so serious or important?
This 'How do we show the map of the map?' question, I suggest, really raises
a point about the essential incompleteness of 'maps', or more generally of
description of any sort; instead of maps we might imagine a person tasked to
draw everything in a room. If the drawing is itself considered part of the
room then it is clear they cannot complete the task: for every stroke made in
the drawing will give rise to the need to make another stroke in a
drawing-within-the-drawing, and so on.
As is said this gives rise to
>an infinite
> regress.
[Btw, I might agree that also
> We're into "Magic Slate"
> territory;
except I don't know what it means: the magic slate sounds like something
hippies hoovered their drugs off.]
But the question is whether this 'essential incompleteness' really impacts on
accuracy?
Clearly this incompleteness means no map, or description, or theory, can be
accurate of 'everything', because then it would have to include itself in
what it represents, describes or explains: but is this really a problem? For
no sensible map, description or theory seeks to be accurate of 'everything',
and thus have to account for itself as part of itself. So while I might agree
with the following, provided we understand "an accurate simulation of the
whole world" to mean a _complete_ simulation of the world,
>The same thing has to happen with the computer simulation: The
> simulation is not
> an accurate simulation of the whole world unless it includes the
> simulation as a part of that
> world, so the simulation has to include the simulation, and so on, and
> so on, and so on.
I am unsure there is any serious problem here:- clearly there is a sense in
which a model of the globe may be regarded as an "accurate simulation of the
whole world" (or accurate enough, as far as it goes)as long as we give up any
absurd assumption that it is _complete_ a simulation (in which case the
infinite regress would arise).
The essential incompleteness of all knowledge is a central theme in Popper's
theory of knowledge (it is a Kantian theme): but this incompleteness does not
preclude any notion of accuracy, merely any idea of complete accuracy - where
the completeness especially means a complete theory of 'everything' and thus
of the theory itself.
As to maps, Popper has written [parenthetically in Schilpp, p.61]:- "the
familiar analogy between maps and scientific theories [is] a particularly
unfortunate one. Theories are essentially argumentative systems of
statements: their main point is that they explain deductively. Maps are
nonargumentative. Of course every theory is also descriptive, like a map -
just as it is, like all descriptive language, communicative, since it may
make people act; and also expressive, since it is a symptom of the "state" of
the communicator - which may happen to be a computer."
(In this Popper is defending, among other things, the idea there is a
hierarchy of language-functions with the higher presupposing the presence of
the lower but where the lower can exist without the higher: so argument is
higher than description, which is higher than the communicative or signalling
function, which is higher than the expressive function.)
That a simulation cannot simulate itself, or a map cannot map itself, does
not impact on the growth of scientific knowledge - it is simply part of the
fact that all human knowledge is imcomplete, including scientific knowledge.
Donal
Still trying unsuccessfully to raise induction again sometime without in the
meantime losing the will to live.
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