Reminds me of this riff on Clarke's third law I read somewhere: "Sufficiently advanced syntax is indistinguishable from semantics".
Whether one agrees to it or not, it may serve to spark an interesting discussion in the right environment.
I hadn’t heard this before, but this is why mathematics works:
A sufficiently advanced symbolic manipulation (math) is “indistinguishable” from the semantics of some phenomenon — like gravitation.
Because the math on the page doesn't have the logical relationships with your environment that defines gravity, it will only have those logical relationships with other mathematical objects described in the same system on the page.
If you could project the mathematical structure from the page back into the environment, then the gravity would be felt. This is why simulated systems are those systems, but only within the simulated environment.
That would be magic. And it assumes reality is mathematical or logical as opposed to those being descriptive human languages. We also don't know everything about gravity or spacetime (particularly in black holes), so our math is incomplete.
Yes, which is why attempting to dismiss the notion that gravity is mathematical by stating that math on a page doesn't exert a force on you is not a valid argument.
> And it assumes reality is mathematical or logical as opposed to those being descriptive human languages
Let's run an experiment: propose a universe in which conjunction, disjunction, negation or implication are violated. Do the properties of such a universe have anything in common with our own? If our reality necessarily preserves these properties, how could you sensibly argue that reality is not logical?
The fact that mathematics is accurately replicating the semantics of gravitation is why we got to the moon — that model was projected back into reality as the rocket’s trajectory; via a computer directly mediating the translation of model into rocket parameters.
And it worked.
The rockets are the mechanism of projecting that mathematical model back into physical change: but where you end up depends on which model you’re projecting.
If you can express the semantics of a black hole on paper you don't feel the pull of that either.
like QR codes.. they're encrypted, but the secret key is widely available: it's the source code that decodes the graphic