this would make skilled navigation of consensus reality something more like navigation while regularly checkpointing with highly-linked observer positions?
my physical intuition (like, my kinesthetic sense) is saying that if this holds then we should be able to define math itself this way. that “skilled navigation” definition feels like it has the same physical affordances as a formal proof
like reality itself is a proof we’re building up with whoever’s contributed to what we’ve used so far, and we’re complexifying and reducing as we go, where “consensus” is measured in population density - like ratio of observer positions to observers (i.e. observer positions that are observably producing or resisting observation-edges), like a scale of ZFC to [your favorite crank here]
this gives my selfhood a slightly existential twinge, because (in this model) you really “can’t take it with you”, all you’ve got is the set of observer-positions you’re currently reading and synthesizing. there’s nothing (no thing), just observations that rhyme with “thing”. I’m reporting from a point of awareness, but .. I mean even that is actually overstating the situation, even if consensus doesn’t mind.
I’m aware that this is privileged thinking, speaking as one experiencing itself experiencing embodiment while comparing notes with one experiencing the other to not be experiencing embodiment. all hedging here is load-bearing, but also provisional, because I’m not certain if perspectival advantage holds up under observation
accordingly I’m incredibly interested in a good basis for a substrate-inclusive ontology, and finding a topology defined in terms of the observer .. makes sense, as a base layer. and I could see kids learning this reasoning-pathing faster than, say, object permanence. and, also,
> “The Platonic Representation Hypothesis: Neural networks, trained with different objectives on different data and modalities, are converging to a shared statistical model of reality in their representation spaces.” (arXiv:2405.07987)
if this holds, it should bridge directly into ^ that model
for clarity: the degrees of freedom involved in speculation of this scale is itself why I stick to building tools that I suspect should work, letting consensus reality prove the utility one way or the other. I’m not multiple enough to shift consensus - that’s a category error.
(is this what cells in slime mold .. uh, observe?)
the idea of bridging mathematics and phenomenology - like seeing people on that bridge, knowing they can trust their experiences because they demonstrably can, makes me actually cry
it feels like such relief