Excellent post, John. If I understood correctly, the general idea here is that capturing initial conditions accurately is hard, and any minuscule error in the initial conditions can become amplified in the future of this system. However, the laws of physics govern all physical systems, and they assert that certain states are impossible regardless of initial conditions.
The assertions made by the laws of physics make it relatively easy to predict specific properties about the system’s future irrespective of initial conditions (i.e. initial conditions are being abstracted away). For example, the laws of physics asset that perpetual motion machines can never work so we can confidently rule them out without needing to understand their implementation details.
The idea of expressing physics in terms of counterfactuals rather than initial conditions plus the laws of motion has been explored by David Deutsch. He calls it Constructor Theory. I don’t think Constructor Theory has been well-received by the physics community, but it is interesting.
Excellent post, John. If I understood correctly, the general idea here is that capturing initial conditions accurately is hard, and any minuscule error in the initial conditions can become amplified in the future of this system. However, the laws of physics govern all physical systems, and they assert that certain states are impossible regardless of initial conditions.
The assertions made by the laws of physics make it relatively easy to predict specific properties about the system’s future irrespective of initial conditions (i.e. initial conditions are being abstracted away). For example, the laws of physics asset that perpetual motion machines can never work so we can confidently rule them out without needing to understand their implementation details.
The idea of expressing physics in terms of counterfactuals rather than initial conditions plus the laws of motion has been explored by David Deutsch. He calls it Constructor Theory. I don’t think Constructor Theory has been well-received by the physics community, but it is interesting.