Comment by mr_toad
1 day ago
> what if everything from mind, physics, value, selfhood, is simply a recursive pattern
Most matter in the universe is various forms of plasma that have no pattern. You generally find patterns in condensed matter.
And yes patterns, including life, repeat themselves. That’s just a tautology.
> Most matter in the universe is various forms of plasma that have no pattern. You generally find patterns in condensed matter.
I don't know anything about plasma or science, so do take this as an accusation, but does science have a way to identify something of having no pattern vs having no pattern found?
The mathematical concept is symmetry (which differs a bit from the layman’s definition).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_(physics)
Much of the universe, and the laws of physics are symmetrical. But condensed matter exhibits forms of asymmetry, and emergent behaviour. Organisation reduces the possible microstates of a system, and thus breaks symmetry.
Off the top of my head: Kolmogorov complexity, Shannon entropy? I suppose also it depends on how faithfully or to what granularity one has extracted information from a natural phenomena