[jerf]

The Universe May Do As It Damned Well Pleases.

Maybe it is "made of fields", maybe it isn't, but "I think that's nonsense", which is just a gussied up way of saying "my intuition rejects that", is not a valid judgment method. The universe does not check with our intuition before doing what it Damned Well Pleases.

[lottin]

So you think the universe might be made of, say, subordinate clauses?

[jerf]

Whether or is or it isn't, it does it without consulting you or me or our intuitions.

I assume you meant that as an obvious absurdity, but if you were going for that you probably should have avoided the concept of "language", which can be Turing Complete. Still, the main point is, whatever it is, it is, and it isn't asking us for permission to be what it is.

[lottin]

My point is that physical reality cannot be made of something that doesn't exist physically, such as mathematical objects, abstract concepts or more generally ideas of any kind. Do you not agree that this must be true?

[jerf]

You lack the capability to judge what those things are, not because of some personal deficiency but because humans lack the ability at this level. If you dug in far enough you'd find your definition of what an abstract concept is circular anyhow, from the looks of it.

Proving the universe isn't made out of "mathematical objects" in particular is equivalent to the difficulty of proving it's not a "simulation". This is one of the red lines that tells you you've gone too far; you can't prove that. You can't even non-circularly define such a thing in this context anyhow, let alone prove anything.

[Koshkin]

It is true, but also kind of trivial. More subtly, one can say that we tend to call what is real using the same words that we use for mathematical objects that model them.

[lottin]

I don't know that we do that. For instance, physicists are able to describe motion in physical terms and don't insist that it literally is a vector. It only happens with quantum fields.

[hazbot]

Is there some experiment you can do that shows some 'physical realityness' that the mathematical object can't describe?

If not, then whose to say whether the mathematical object is 'real' or just a perfect description? Is the difference meaningful?

[lottin]

Yes, the difference is absolutely critical. Being unable to differentiate imaginary from real is a serious mental disorder.