Donate it to the library or a local food bank. Simple community building.

Several years ago I was taking economic classes at my local university out of interest and to be more informed about intentions in our geopolitical world.

A few years after those classes I ran as a candidate for city council in my local municipal elections on a platform based on sound economic policy. I did not get elected, not even close, as I was running opposite an incumbent.

A few years after that I saw this man at a coffee shop that I knew I recognized from somewhere, but had no chance of remembering him on my own. He came up to me and prompted me, and I then realized that he was one of my economic profs, retired now, from when I was taking courses all those years ago.

After brief pleasantries he said: "I recognized your name in the last election. I wanted to say that I voted for you."

Quite surprised, I managed to respond with a sincere smile on my face: "coming from an economist, that really means a lot to me, thank you".

That does help. Thanks.

I really hope that the people of Thunder Bay recognize how fortunate they are that they have such a dedicated group of local journalists actively engaged in battling decades of systemic racism, backed by an independent journalism institution actually committed to strengthening democracy.

That sort of thing seems like it is a little less common in our western world these days. What is it that they keep saying, democracy dies in darkness?

I think it is great that you have committed so much effort to learning about how our world works and I would encourage you to continue to pursue your interests in cosmology.

However, the peer-review process in science is an important thing, and the simple fact that you have been struggling to get people to engage with your thesis for the past 6 months is the peer-review process at work, though not necessarily in a formal, academic setting.

For real, this paper you've written is science fiction. I truly believe that society needs to go beyond the limitations of science itself, into a process of Post-Normal Science, but Post-Normal Science is a very different thing than science fiction. Post-Normal Science is still subject to peer-review such that the assertions and assumptions are still logically consistent with our empirical reality. As an example of the distinction, though there are a lot of different elements out there in our universe, we have to make materials using the properties that those elements have available to us, we can't make up the properties that we want the material to have first then try and force the elements to do precisely what we want them to.

Please accept with humility, this paper isn't going to win a Nobel prize. However, don't let that reality stop you from looking for answers to the questions you clearly are so passionate about. KEEP GOING!

To try and be a little more supportive I would encourage you to learn more about thermodynamics. Here is a question that has fascinated some of the most brilliant scientists in history that we still have no formalized answer to:

If the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy is always tending to a maximum, and that increasing disorder defines the arrow of time, how is it possible that life even exists? Humans are insanely complex, and exist by taking simple atoms and molecules and combining them in an intricate ordered structure. The different layers of external and internal complex structure is incalculable; we are extremely highly ordered in a universe forcing disorder.

As an example I'll point out Schrödinger's 1944 book called "What is Life" where he suggested the concept of 'negentropy' as a potential answer to this question. This question is relevant to your thesis, as realistically it is useful energy (or a Demon, I suppose) that is needed to do the work in ordering, that is, working against the 2nd law, and you're thesis is trying to find a truly renewable (i.e. infinite) energy source in the universe with which to achieve the Demon's task.

Since it is clear that you have a solid foundational background in physics, I would recommend reading Isabelle Stenger's work on thermodynamics and dissipative structures. Very specifically, try chapter 10 of her book "Power and Invention: Situating Science".

One prevailing argument here is that dissipated energy (i.e. heat) can never be converted into useful work (a different interpretation of the 2nd law). Some even argue that the expansion of the universe (the gradient that your web is attempting to extract useful energy from) is caused by the constant increase in dissipated energy that the 2nd law forces on our universe. Now this is only one interpretation of the existing thermodynamic framework in our scientific community, but this view is explicitly saying that useful work can never be extracted from the expansion of the universe, unfortunately contradicting your main thesis.

Thank you very much for your hard work and contributions to society here in bringing these ideas forward in this space to inspire public discourse and debate.

I have questions about the macroeconomic implications of AI replacing jobs. Does this mean that those workers will shift to other non-AI jobs? Or does this mean that unemployment goes up and there just aren't any jobs for people any more?

The way I am thinking about this, if corporations are able to hoard more wealth and increase profits substantially by getting rid of the need to pay people, how does the economy function if the money that would be paid to those workers is no longer circulating back into the economy?

If people then will get money from a UBI instead of labor income, who pays the government taxes? Corporations? Consumption taxes on people?

If corporations manage to get labor costs to near zero, profits go to near infinity, which is the goal of profit maximizers. But then there is no money in the hands of individuals to be able to pay to consume the goods or services these corporations provide? Is this desire to replace human labor with AI not just a living example of the myth of Icarus?

Any economists out there interested in breaking these issues down into more of a layman language for me? Thanks!

Change the goal. The French economist Thomas Piketty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty) has demonstrated, using 250 years of historical data, that the wealth gap increases as long as the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate. Every institution in the western world (including governments who are trying to maximize tax income) are trying to maximize return on capital. Growth is good if it is in the public interest. If we only want growth because it increases our returns on capital, inequality is the result.

Good unpopular opinion!

The goal of capitalism is maximizing capital. What happens in society then is that human well-being comes second after capital maximizing. Yes, it is uncontested that capitalism has improved global human well-being. GDP growth is very obviously correlated with increase in human well-being. But correlation does not imply causation. If the goal were to maximize human well-being first and have capital come second, the outcomes would be different.

One criticism of capitalism that is ignored is that it was the 19th-20th century discovery of super-low entropy energy sources that were incorporated into production that has lead to such rapid growth in technological advances and efficiency. Within neoclassical economic models oil is considered a substitute for capital (which is infinite), not as a limited natural resource that provides energy that allows production to take place.

And so, as capitalism chugs on and on in society, burning more and more oil will continue to generate more and more capital, growth will go up and up and finally after all of that human well-being will go up and up. There is no endgame there, what happens when oil runs out? Or when there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere for human well-being to be sustained on earth?

If the goal changes from capital maximizing to human well-being maximizing then there is an endgame, to ensure sure that human well-being (infinite?) is always sustained on earth. Increasing capital can come after that instead.

This is the third time I have seen this story come up from three different science journalism websites recently.

Here is the actual published proof.

It seems a lot of commenters on these threads have a lot of skepticism about the authors claims, as we should with such a bold claim. Are there any mathematicians or logicians here that can actually unpack the proof with scrutiny and explain it to me in lay terms?

I didn't mean to belittle anyone.

I was simply trying to suggest some interesting further reading on the topic you are studying and engaged with. This is an area of interest of mine as well.

How this can be achieved is the question

Just fucking vote. Engage in all local, state, and federal elections. Be invested in the results. Everyone, all the time, vote on everything. Believe in democracy.

That is just how rotating things work. This is why vehicles need a differential, so that when you turn a corner the inside wheel can rotate at a different speed as the outside wheel.

Your worth is defined by how much you give away, not how much you accumulate. Stark contrast to our Western societies.

Yes, I do genuinely agree with you that, especially in the context of this post, most nice gestures like this aren't flirtatious at all. I'm simply trying to point out that there are people who work front line jobs and who have bad days that aren't perfectly attuned to social cues and gestures out in public and interpret social situations in diverse ways.

I just think that the risk of coming off as insincere if you say something nice is way lower than the risk of coming off as a creep and making someones bad day feel worse.

Thank you for this. My recent hyper fixation has lead me down the rabbit hole of non-algorithmic theories of consciousness with a specific focus on the theory mentioned in this proof. Would I be interpreting this proof correctly in asserting that if consciousness is non-algorithmic, this proof means AGI is impossible?

I am from Thunder Bay and have lived here my whole life. These are not new stories, and the highest 10 year average in Canada in this case is not a surprise. TBay is a bottleneck between eastern and western Canada. It is a hub for dozens of Northern Ontario remote First Nations communities. In all of the small communities outside of TBay, there are billboards on the highway that are directed specifically at reminding people that "Human Trafficking is a Crime". I don't intend to be directly confrontational, but the comment:

maybe there should be some awareness campaign and/or educational programs to get the public more knowledgeable and work to recognize and report these instances or avoid them.

is incredibly ignorant. Located on the north shore of Lake Superior, TBay is visited by dozens of Great Lake and International cargo ships daily during the shipping season; it isn't an issue of the public not recognizing that trafficking is taking place, it is a crime of opportunity. TBay is also regularly considered to be the 'murder capital of Canada'. We have some of the highest drug overdose rates in the country as well. Some people might be oppositional to my point of view here, but the problem is systemic racism.

The only access to most of the remote First Nations in Northwestern Ontario is through TBay. Drug trafficking as well as human trafficking up North can only happen through the city. A lot of these remote communities are also struggling with increasing populations and limited access to resources. Several of these communities are under boil water advisories due to lack of resources and infrastructure, some of which have been so for over 15 years. This issue is incredibly complex, but realistically it comes down to the fact that anti-Indigenous racism is rampant and very well off still within our country, despite Harper's apology and all of the 'Truth and Reconciliation' that has been happening lately.

Some media resources, in case anyone is interested in looking further into the issue: Brief Podcast series on the topic Award winning narrative outlining the overt racism in TBay

We don't understand gravity to the point where we have a consistent algorithmic explanation for it. As suggested, there are competing theories, all of which are algorithmically based. The holy grail of modern physics is to find the algorithm that explains gravity as that is the last missing piece to finalize the theory of everything.

The results of this research are implying that it is not possible to prove, algorithmically, that gravity is quantum but rather that quantum gravity as the foundation of the universe is non-algorithmic and therefore non-computational. And so a theory of everything is impossible, implying that the universe cannot be simulated by computing the theory of everything.

This research builds on a lot of the work that Roger Penrose did in the 90s in exploring the potential non-algorithmic nature of consciousness (https://en.wikipedia.org/...). If you read his book "Shadows of the Mind" published in 1993 you will find a prediction of future computational abilities that is a shockingly accurate description of AI deep fakes and the AI slop we see today with LLMs.

The no-simulated universe idea is one interesting conclusion of this research, but in my opinion, a more interesting conclusion of this research is that if you believe Penrose's argument for consciousness being non-algorithmic, than this research is implying that AGI is also impossible.

Alfred North Whitehead - Process & Reality (1929)

The most difficult read of my life, but it changes worldviews.

I genuinely appreciate your concern. I'm really glad that you are here in Canada, as open minded people make our world a better place.

Engaging with racism is always helpful, in any context. Here in TBay there used to be a city committee directly committed to addressing racism in the city. They had a campaign headlined: "If you witness racism, say something", with a link to report observations. The headline was on billboards, city buses and everything around the city.

I suppose enough local tax payers complained about inefficient use of tax dollars and that committee has since been retired. But the international headlines about TBay continue.

Disproving the 'matrix theory' is just the catchy headline to garner clicks. The results of the research are beyond just the matrix. For example, this proof means that non-algorithmic determinism isn't something that represents a lack of deeper theoretical understanding. There are theories that consciousness is non-algorithmic. In that case, this proof means that AGI is also impossible.