# What is the anchor of Reality? Why is All irreversible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 23, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093 "2004-08-23T15:04:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/21 "2004-08-24T04:29:01Z")
> [@WoodCM](#): > > You are right (I think) in thinking things are from the bottom up. For example, the thing we call our ‘consciousness’, most people regard as the thing that controls everything else. The opposite is true! Our awake minds are the result of everything else - from the unaware-part of our minds, from the rest of our highly complex body (a guarguantan drugs-machine etc), from the rest of life and everything else! I’m not so sure. Water itself is this incredibly complex combination of electrons and protons/neutrons made of quarks, and so on, but it is quite a stable, confident little molecule, isn’t it? I think our minds are similar. Complexity of a magnitude that we can barely comprehend, yet with solid and predictable powers and tendencies. I think the pattern is indeed built by the processes you state, yet can sustain itself without them (i.e., the Afterlife). > [@](#): > > Free will a total myth, though please don’t think I am socialist, for they are the greatest denyers of truth of all. Well, here’s the rub, I think: we can choose what to do, but not what we choose to think and feel. Not immediately. A thought can come into the mind to change how we think, but we cannot choose to think that primary-mover thought. Or can we? I’m still not sure. Of course, we are little beings, who hardly know anything, but your post is brave and true, and I salute you. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/22 "2004-08-24T04:47:09Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Yes, but I don’t think it’s necessary to step outside the universe to understand its _properties._ again, it may not be necessary to step outside the universe to understand its local properties, but it is necessary to step outside to be sure (in a logical sense) that those properties are _universal_ and not just local. > [@](#): > > Understanding laws is important. My real question is what anchors those laws. Noting that there is an arrow of time doesn’t tell us WHY there is an arrow of time. In some ways, the arrow of time is counter-intuitive. We design our own systems that we create (one simple example being a resettable video game) to be reversible. you won’t hear it from me that the universe was _designed_. i think **SentientMeat** gave some great links for understanding the basis of the anthropic principle and fine-tuning, and i refer you to those. > [@](#): > > Can’t buy that, as it’s a contradiction. We would have to understand it in order to know it’s beyond our understanding. I have little doubt that many things _are_ beyond our understanding, but we are unable to specify beforehand what they would be. that’s not true at all. we would have to understand something about our _understanding_ to know that something is beyond it. if there’s something i’m missing, please elaborate, because i still don’t see what’s contradictory. > [@](#): > > I’ve debated this point heavily before. Any argument that pattern and number are mere human constructs and not the Truth is a blatant self-contradiction, inasmuch as modus ponens/tollens or some kind of logical/mathematical principle must needs be invoked in order to make the argument in the first place. again, i think you make a mistake here by attributing properties to the wrong “objects”. we can say nothing about a non-logical world, and it has nothing to do with the properties of that world. what is involved, as **Lib** mentioned, is our language: it is a limitation of our language and our understanding of the world that prohibits such discussion, not anything specific about such a world as we might wish to discuss. logic can be used to say plenty about logic. that all those propositions are tautological does not make them any less true. ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/23 "2004-08-24T04:53:44Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Well, here’s the rub, I think: we can choose what to do, but not what we choose to think and feel. Not immediately. A thought can come into the mind to change how we think, but we cannot choose to think that primary-mover thought. Or can we? I’m still not sure. on free will: of course we cannot be the primary movers. to what exactly would we attribute this will which we would call free? in the end, it can be but random chance if it is truly “free” and i think few would appreciate that interpretation. my basic view is that for every decision we make, we have a choice. after that choice is made, the option we chose is the only option we _could_ have chosen, barring fluctuations from random chance. ---
**Author:** ![WoodCM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7bcc69/32.png) [@WoodCM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WoodCM)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/24 "2004-08-24T05:08:19Z")
[QUOTE=Aeschines] I’m not so sure. Water itself is this incredibly complex combination of electrons and protons/neutrons made of quarks, and so on, but it is quite a stable, confident little molecule, isn’t it? I think our minds are similar. Complexity of a magnitude that we can barely comprehend, yet with solid and predictable powers and tendencies. I think the pattern is indeed built by the processes you state, yet can sustain itself without them (i.e., the Afterlife). Well, here’s the rub, I think: we can choose what to do, but not what we choose to think and feel. Not immediately. A thought can come into the mind to change how we think, but we cannot choose to think that primary-mover thought. Or can we? I’m still not sure. Exactly. What I feel about the above depends on the mood I am in, which I cannot control. If I am feeling particurlarly optimistic, then I think ‘perhaps there is more to it’, and I am not so sure about us being trapped in a world of utter meaningless and nothingness. When not so happy, I feel utter despair and hoplessness. I truly hope that the former is true, but just like you, I don’t know. Still, the greatest comfort to me is that we are truly ignorant, and even if the former is true - think this - all the evil in the world is also meaningless! ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/25 "2004-08-24T09:57:36Z")
> [@](#): > > **Lib** : “No statement with a truth value can even be made about the singularity” “It is a singularity” (In any case, since I believe that statements supervene on the physical, I’m not too concerned with so-called “metaphysical” consequences.) > [@](#): > > **Aeschines** : why is the universe you describe above the way it is? What causes the rules? The way I described it, the universe is effectively _any_ “way it is” _somewhere_. “Rules” are merely the way offal-based consciousness encodes “how it is”. > [@](#): > > It’s not as though there are signs posted, “Do Not Disintegrate.” [They do](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission) under certain conditions. In this region of the universe, most of them simply have an [enormous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay) half-life. > [@](#): > > Any argument that pattern and number are mere human constructs and not the Truth is a blatant self-contradiction Truth is _itself_ a human construct, its physical nature being “an offal-based memory/proposition which encodes the universe the way it _is_ rather than the way it _isn’t_.” I have never understood your contention that _objects_ can be physical but their _arrangement in spacetime_, for some reason, **cannot** be. Both objects _and_ their spatial-temporal arrangement surely [supervene on the physical](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=233397)? As for “free will”, I generally [deny](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=233397) this as being simply an offal-based “calculation”. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/26 "2004-08-24T15:58:41Z")
> [@Sentient](#): > > “It is a singularity” Meaning that it is some undefined entity about which you are making no assertion with any truth value. If I label X/0 as “undefined term”, I am saying nothing about “X/0” (since there is nothing to say), but about undefined terms. In other words, your statement is amphibolous because it is a truncation of “The _equation_ is a singularity”. The point remains that you do not know whether the singularity is timeless or not. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/27 "2004-08-24T16:08:11Z")
Not that black holes are _necessarily_ singularities, but can statements having truth values be made about black holes? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/28 "2004-08-24T17:00:13Z")
Truth is disquotational because truth is expressed by language; therefore, for obvious reasons there are severe epistemological problems with making statements about undefined things. That’s why you can make a statement about a singularity’s equation, but not about what the equation represents. That’s also why people argue endlessly about things like “God” — so often, they never pause to define what they’re talking about. So, if you can define a black hole, then you can make a statement about it that is either true or false. But if you make a statement about say, obix, how can I or anyone challenge you? ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/29 "2004-08-24T17:09:20Z")
Wouldn’t you say that subsequent statements relate only to the accepted definition of the black hole, and not really to the black hole in and of itself? It’s Epistemology 101, but somehow it seems to be often forgotten around here. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/30 "2004-08-24T17:27:36Z")
That’s a bit Nietzschean, but yes, ultimately, you’re correct. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/31 "2004-08-24T18:11:42Z")
Very well, how about the truth value of this statement?: _Within the event horizon of a black hole, a singularity is the only possible future._ ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/32 "2004-08-24T19:13:09Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > My wife was cooking in my mom’s kitchen, knocked something over or did somthing, and in a flash a small ceramic ladle holder was destroyed. This bothered her quite a bit, even the object was of no great monetary value. > > She can be quite insightful at times. She said, “That thing getting broken was just like a person dying.” The irreversibility of it. > > But the Universe provides counterexamples. We arrange the chairs in the room and put them back. There you are wrong. We no more put the chairs back then gluing the ladle holder together restores it. We may be able to get it close to being the same, close enough for us, but it never is the same. Perhaps one day, in a John Varley world, we will be able to save our memories and restore them, and thus defeat death. Will we be the same? It depends on whether you are satisfied with close enough, like the chairs, or not, like the ladle holder. But it would never be truly the same. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/33 "2004-08-24T19:36:04Z")
'R’eality is an unreachable concept. Explanation of R can be subjected to infinite regress, leading nowhere. But the fundamental constraint is that we live entirely as perceptions i.e. seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, even (the awareness) of being. Reality would presumably involve the essence of perception. This, fundamentally, can never be “known” since ‘knowing’ is also a state of perception. Imagine a robot trying to disassemble itself. At best, it can only dissemble till the remaining intact machinery is functioning. There comes a point when the sole remaining part can disassemble itself because **it is** the part it is trying to disassemble. We are restricted to Perception and all our efforts are limited to that domain. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/34 "2004-08-24T19:38:08Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > There comes a point when the sole remaining part **can** disassemble itself because **it is** the part it is trying to disassemble. Correct to **can’t**. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/35 "2004-08-25T02:45:32Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > The way I described it, the universe is effectively _any_ “way it is” _somewhere_. I agree in part. Anything consistent with the laws of pattern and number must come into being, but the rub is that a contradiction cannot come into being. And here, I think, is an interesting argument (my own, heh): Suppose somewhere there is a partition of Reality (or the Universe) that is defined as completely uninflenced by and unknown to any other. Well and good, but somewhere else there is a partition that is defined as influencing and knowing all others. How is this contradiction resolved? I don’t know. But this thought experiment leads me to believe that, while partitions are possible, everything in Reality is still connected. That is, there is only one Universe, though different worlds can be layered one on another (the Afterlife is said to be a world separated not from our own by space, but by vibration). Undoubtedly such reasoning offends your reductionist-materialist sensibilities, but the point still has pertinence. If the Universe is “every which way” somewhere, then in some brane or other location there ought to be a black hole or other feature capable of destroying everything in every other partition. If you counter-argue that there are branes or partitions that are completely separate from, and unknowable to, our own, then I would argue further that such a place is, logically speaking, equivalent to something that does not exist at all. > [@](#): > > “Rules” are merely the way offal-based consciousness encodes “how it is”. I find the term “offal-based consciousness” quite negative and gross. Why do you insist on such a negative phrase? At any rate, I think the word “merely” in your point is dangerous. How do you explain the incredible congruence between our “mere” encoding and Nature, which has given us such power over it? If we then agree that our rules do give us power and seek to explain just how they do so, we are certainly not lead to the conclusion that chance alone is the cause. If chance is not the cause, then what is? I am not the only person to argue that the congruence of our understanding of pattern and number to the physical world implies that the latter is also, at bottom, pattern and number. > [@](#): > > [They do](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission) under certain conditions. In this region of the universe, most of them simply have an [enormous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay) half-life. Point taken, the neutron itself is an unstable particle outside the nucleus. But the larger point is that even such a breakdown itself follows rules. Why so? My conclusion, although not particularly profound, is that the pattern of our physical universe is intelligently (thought NOT consciously, as by God) determined. Determined in condradistinction to other partitions, though not entirely separated from them. > [@](#): > > Truth is _itself_ a human construct, its physical nature being “an offal-based memory/proposition which encodes the universe the way it _is_ rather than the way it _isn’t_.” A self-contradicting set of propositions. Unless of course you don’t intend to convince anyone, which goal would require the concept of “Truth,” which, according to concept itself, is not “mere truth.” > [@](#): > > I have never understood your contention that _objects_ can be physical but their _arrangement in spacetime_, for some reason, **cannot** be. Both objects _and_ their spatial-temporal arrangement surely [supervene on the physical](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=233397)? I would say that the concept of “physical” isn’t really all that profound to begin with. It comes from, I think, our homo sapiens experience of bumping into big, clunky things while noticing that we also have things like songs, and consciousness, and recipes: things that are important to us but which we don’t bump into. Ultimately, I think, it’s pattern all the way up and all the way down. > [@](#): > > As for “free will”, I generally [deny](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=233397) this as being simply an offal-based “calculation”. I agree that “free will” is a concept without a foundation, since we can’t really point to a function of “will” in the mind. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/36 "2004-08-25T03:00:39Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There you are wrong. We no more put the chairs back then gluing the ladle holder together restores it. We may be able to get it close to being the same, close enough for us, but it never is the same. I agree that, technically, it is not the same. But for human consciousness it is often equivalent to the same. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/37 "2004-08-25T04:46:22Z")
> [@](#): > > What causes Reality, once it has taken a new path, to stay on it? nothing, because it doesn’t. There is no path. There is just whatever is happening now. It will lead to something, but what that is is not ordained. It’s just that something is going to happen. If we rewound the clock to any arbitrary point in the past something else might happen. Read Stephen Gould’s _Wonderful Life_ for a better explanation of this. > [@](#): > > What causes Reality to continue in being at all? A simpleminded answer to a difficult question: It just does. Seriously though, the fundamental components of matter and energy–quarks, electrons, photons, etc.-- have a certain amount of staying power. They’re just not going to blink out of existence. Since they’re here, and they interact in such a complex manner that allows stuff like life and self-awareness to develop, reality is self-supporting. What these things “really” are, and how they came to be in the first place is a question no one can answer. Not now at least, and probably never. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/38 "2004-08-25T05:44:33Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > nothing, because it doesn’t. There is no path. There is just whatever is happening now. It will lead to something, but what that is is not ordained. It’s just that something is going to happen. If we rewound the clock to any arbitrary point in the past something else might happen. Read Stephen Gould’s _Wonderful Life_ for a better explanation of this. I’m not sure that standard science agrees. No part of space-time exists any more than any other. The present seems to be the present to us only because of the relationship of our mind/brain to it. 2004 has no more existence to it than 1995 or 2020. > [@](#): > > A simpleminded answer to a difficult question: It just does. Seriously though, the fundamental components of matter and energy–quarks, electrons, photons, etc.-- have a certain amount of staying power. They’re just not going to blink out of existence. Since they’re here, and they interact in such a complex manner that allows stuff like life and self-awareness to develop, reality is self-supporting. What these things “really” are, and how they came to be in the first place is a question no one can answer. Not now at least, and probably never. Yes, they have staying power. My question, though, isn’t just why they don’t just disappear; that’s just the most drastic example. The broader question is why the properties of anything are what they are and why they don’t change. And one of those weird (to me) properties is that they _do_ stay the same and allow for Reality to take one path instead of another. Just an hour or two ago I was watching my wife walk across the room, and struck me as weird that she was there, now here, yet the consciousness of the whole “event” is so fluid, just marching right along with time itself. Reality is baffling, surely even to the gods! ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/39 "2004-08-25T05:50:21Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Truth is disquotational because truth is expressed by language; therefore, for obvious reasons there are severe epistemological problems with making statements about undefined things. Dear friend, I think you might be on the wrong track. Point, line, and plane are the undefined terms of classical geometry, but we can certainly say many things about them. Moreover, we can communicate much of them by demonstration. We can **get** things about them. As for the singularity, well, I think that’s a can of worms. It’s a theoretical construct, thought up to tell a story and make sense of how things are in the Universe at present. And the story, as it goes, makes a lot of statements about it. It was not in time and space, time and space came from it. Etc. etc. I think it is a mistake to think of the singularity as a “real object.” It is an element of a story. That’s not to say that the things we say about it aren’t “true,” but the things we say about it have the same somewhat satisfying truth value as a statement like, “The man was taller than average and I’m sure his name didn’t begin with an M or S.” ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093/40 "2004-08-25T09:53:48Z")
**Aeschines:** > [@](#): > > Anything consistent with the laws of pattern and number must come into being Again, you use this phrase ‘come into being’. Can these regions not exist _over all time_, such that there was _never_ such a transition? > [@](#): > > That is, there is only one Universe, though different worlds can be layered one on another (the Afterlife is said to be a world separated not from our own by space, but by vibration). Are you channelling [Everret and DeWitt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation) here, or **lekatt**? > [@](#): > > Undoubtedly such reasoning offends your reductionist-materialist sensibilities _Offended_? Not at all. Believe what you like, and let us explore the consequences of our respective beliefs. > [@](#): > > If the Universe is “every which way” somewhere, then in some brane or other location there ought to be a black hole or other feature capable of destroying everything in every other partition. No, by “every which way” I alluded to a continuum of those _parameters_, not that ‘somewhere’ there was, say, a universe of centaurs playing Jenga with prosthetic limbs. > [@](#): > > If you counter-argue that there are branes or partitions that are completely separate from, and unknowable to, our own, then I would argue further that such a place is, logically speaking, equivalent to something that does not exist at all. Agreed, these branes might be _unobservable_ and _unfalsifiable_ and thus _unscientific_. All we would be left with is their logical and mathematical consistency and that they might be predicted by a theory which has _other_ consequences which _are_ observable: this is perhaps marginally more convincing than mere “faith and maths alone”. > [@](#): > > I find the term “offal-based consciousness” quite negative and gross. Why do you insist on such a negative phrase? I find the term succinct and accurate. I will eschew it if you wish, but unless you eat brains then I’d suggest _you_ could accurately describe them as “offal” also. > [@](#): > > If we then agree that our rules do give us power and seek to explain just how they do so, we are certainly not lead to the conclusion that chance alone is the cause. If chance is not the cause, then what is? Encoding the universe how it _is_ rather than how it _isn’t_ allows useful and ‘powerful’ _prediction_ and _manipulation_. This is not “chance” any more than a computer calculation is “chance”. What is the _cause_ of a computer’s ‘power’? > [@](#): > > But the larger point is that even such a breakdown itself follows rules. Why so? My proposal was that those parameters are different “elsewhere”, such that the breakdown _does_ follow different rules “elsewhere” and atoms are not so permanent (or do not even form from cooling plasma in the first place). > [@](#): > > A self-contradicting set of propositions. How so? > [@](#): > > Ultimately, I think, it’s pattern all the way up and all the way down. And why can pattern not supervene on the _physical_? You are perfectly welcome to _deny_ the physical if you wish, but I would appreciate your explanation of why I _cannot_ deny the _non_-physical. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-anchor-of-reality-why-is-all-irreversible/261093.md?page=3)