[FRIAM] "I have no idea what's going on." -- Towelie

[Marcus Daniels]

Glen writes:

< To what extent is "energy" a reductive projection of what's actually (ontologically) extant?  >

In the case of the physics of a crystal or a restricted Boltzmann machine (a neural net), it could be a sufficient description...

< Given all that, and what you say ("... not the details of the configuration"), I have trouble getting lost in the difference between the reduction and the fully detailed *thing* that I'm predisposed to imagine is "really" out there ... the thing being reduced. >

..but if a spin approximates something more than a spin, then the reduction (interpreting energy) could be a lossy reduction.   The assumption here is that there is nothing `below' the spins of interest, all that matters is a spin as it is coupled to other spins, and the consequences of that is revealed by energy.

Marcus