Common sense is a myth.

He is simply using “impossible” to mean “intractable”. There isn’t enough time in the universe given the state space… Could you get lucky in the search space and guess a solution? Of course you can… You are confusing Mathemarics with empiricism.

@@tgenov Hi Tgenov. I think the talk was full of sloppy thinking and poor use of mathematical thinking. I disagree with the state space ‘analysis’ suggested in the talk. And I think the conclusions about lack of ‘laws’ in biology are completely unjustified. Again, the talk was stimulating, largely because it was so incorrect. [Strangely, the 1st question asked was a kind of ‘rug pulling’ question, which was dealt with rather rhetorically by the speaker. Phooey.] Of course biology is sufficiently regular that some form of ‘laws’ probably exist. I’ll bet you can think of one yourself, Tgenov. Give it a serious try for 1 hour, and let me know what you come up with. Cheers.

I struggle with, “if you plugged all the particle information…you could predict…” True in principle but consider this assertion: there is no universe where such a computation could be conducted due to rounding errors and error propagation. While that assertion might evoke “irreducible complexity “ or some such thing… even “replaying” this universe wouldn’t do the trick! That is, Laplacian thinking (initial conditions etc) is incoherent: it merely assumes its apparent conclusions: it is nothing more than an unsupported and untenable assertion which has been largely accepted… largely because it’s a pretty notion and it fits with newtonian thinking but also with an infatuation with the invention (relatively recent!!) of the decimal place and with calculus… mathematics is a powerful and potentially very misleading hammer in our hands: the universe is not a nail! The “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics should be taken at face value: it is nothing more than the un-reasonable application of that hammer to a “nail” despite the non-nail-nature of our universe And if you disagree with that, consider how far our hammer is from complete: infinitely far!! So even if it is correct to expect math to be very suited to describing physical reality… consider how poorly it is likely to be recognized as “suitable” in its current form after a few decades/centuries when we have vastly expanded its reach. Either way, the Laplacian view is worthy of extreme skepticism . I dont perceive a clear picture painted by the presenter… but we need this kind of exploration to prepare us for some radically new - and more correct - thinking about our universe and ourselves. Accept the “laplace” view but be prepared to jettison it when this kind of exploration (eventually) reveals a new perspective.

Oh. Wait a sec. One more thought: The laplacian view that leads to laplacian determinism... it's the classic "extrapolation" error. We need to use math as a tool to understand our world, not as a straightjacket that restricts original thought that will lead to improved comprehension of physical phenomena. To that end, we should acknowledge the usefulness of a laplacian approach, but recognize it's limitations: we should expect that extrapolating a successful tool to include EVERYTHING is, to put it mildly, likely an overreach. :)

@@d_wigglesworth You basically just stated what you personally believe without evidence but with full force of arrogant certainty.

​@@HakuYuki001 Yes, I did. This is the "comment" section. So. No offence intended; on either side, I presume! :) I often write down thoughts just to "test them out". Having a unarticulated, and therefore indefinite, thought is one thing... articulating it into a definite form (such as in writing) is something else entirely. The former might be riddled with error or be perfectly correct in some sense... but until it's in black-and-white... difficult to tell ! So whenever you see comments from me -- and possibly from everybody else -- I think it is safe to assume that the comment is really just a "trial" articulation of what is currently in the commenter's head-space....and that after reflection upon its definitely- (though not necessarily "clearly-") articulated form, the commenter might have a complete change of heart/head. In my case, I have to thank you for bringing my comment to my attention by responding to it. I've re-read that comment, naturally, and the impression I have is "Good! I wouldn't change a thing!" :) (though this was not necessarily to be the case, I assure you ... I often change my mind as I'm not afraid to articulate my thoughts just to "test them out") Apologies for coming off "arrogant". I don't mean to tell others how to think but only to give others -- and myself! -- something to reflect upon in case it is interesting. I hope it was interesting to at least SOME people!. In light of your comment I will perhaps express myself less arrogantly in future. :) A sincere Thank-You for articulating your thoughts in a definite form so that I can consider them. Occch... I was about to hit "reply" on this "essay" :) when I re-read the comment from @thomasmurphy9429 ... and I see that it is not clear from my -- now, rather old -- comment that I had correctly understood its content. but I think my Self from a month ago was trying to support the original commenter. Wasn't I?? Maybe I was. But now I'm going to make a fresh comment on that in a separate thread. :) ... here goes..

Ignoring that your theory also isn't coherent... Fair enough that math is an incomplete model, or that there are physical limits to computation, but neither are relevant to the question here. Is the universe following logical rules that could theoretically be mapped out? And then of course you have to offer an alternative theory, however incomplete, that works better. I've never heard anyone articulate any alternative theory. It's easy to vaguely assert that other options could possibly exist, and that is technically true, but it's pretty useless to say. Might as well say God could have done it.

Hi Eric. Your assertion cannot be universally true, or it would be a ‘universal law’. Cheers.

​@@SystemsMedicinelol.. true

That's not what he said. He said that the time the universe would've employed to form a collection containing at least one copy of each molecule made of a chain of 1000 atoms would be greater than the current age of the universe. So the universe doesn't create _all_ complex things, but only a very sparse subset thereof. Therefore, given any specific complex thing, such as a heart, it is a nontrivial question to ask why that specific complex thing came to exist.

2 years later here I am discovering him. may the adjacent possible of our new cognitive niches expand to more cracks in the floor and more niches: )

Just found out about him yesterday. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of him before.

I guess I'll join the chorus, hahaha. I cannot believe I'm only just now discovering Stuart Kauffman. His most powerful book, imho, is A World Beyond Physics, and so I can offer the limp defense that it came out in 2019. That's not ancient but neither is it yesterday. I wish I had read it 5 years ago. [Sigh]

It’s actually “chnops” - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHON

Bob Laughlin this comment shows exceeding stupidity

Ah, seeing this the second time, I have a feeling it might have to do with Kantian whole's

@@drkwrl Plus the biosphere is a part of the universe, so if any part of the universe lacks a law entailing its becomin it stands to reason the becoming of the full becoming of the universe cannot be prestated by any laws.

:))

Bijou Smith I don't think he argues that reductionism is false. As in that any process is constrained by and is dependent on the lower level. However, necessary entailment of physical laws for higher states is false. Therefore employing reductionism to explain or predict higher level possibilities is untenable. That's my sense of his point.

Bijou Smith Ok, but he argues that the HOLE chain that "arrives" to produce a new function is acausal, so then physics cannot be used to explain the process, even there might be some causal explanation to local parts. I find the argument convincing.

He isn't trying to argue that a reduction to physics is "false", but that it's non-exhaustive as an explanatory method, since it can certainly describe all physical things once they're given, but it cannot discriminate between functional properties and ancillary properties accessory to an organ in a "kantian whole". Knowledge of what a heart does so as to pump blood and the indirect consequence of its jiggling the pericardial sac so it goes "lub dub" are on an equal footing as far as a physical description is concerned. But that's the whole problem -- the two processes are not equal, as one of them is essential for the organism while the other isn't. Physics cannot in principle explain why, within the given universe of atoms, molecules, etc., whose possible combinations outrun the combinations that are actual, just this set of biological circumstances came to exist and not any of those other possible physical arrangements. To do this, we need the notion of purposive functioning that purely physical (i.e., geometrico-mechanical) descriptions cannot discern. Physics is not false -- it's true as far as it goes, but is not adequate to explain biologically physical things on its own terms.

This is pretty much what I was yelling at my screen.

What didn't you agree with and why?