Editing Openai/69627843-9c08-8013-83cb-fe3ebf14df3d (section)

=== Assistant: I get what you’re pushing for: you want the clean, balls-out claim that the “constructor gap” forces a constructor, ful… ===
I get what you’re pushing for: you want the clean, balls-out claim that the “constructor gap” forces a constructor, full stop.

The issue isn’t courage. It’s whether the inference is actually valid as stated.

===== Not strictly, no — unless you add one extra premise. =====

Right now your inference is:
# There is a universal update rule (ToE / fundamental dynamics).
# Constructor Theory: reliable transformations require constructors.
# Therefore, the universal update rule requires a constructor (a “feme”).

The weak link is (2) → (3), because constructor theory’s “constructor” is defined inside a substrate whose laws are already given. It’s about tasks within a dynamical system, not necessarily about “what makes the dynamical system run at all.”

So without an extra premise, a physicist can say:
* “The update rule is not a task enacted by a constructor; it’s the primitive dynamical law.”
* “Constructor theory doesn’t demand a constructor for the law itself.”

That’s not a nitpick — it’s exactly where critics will go.

==== Add this explicitly: ====

: 

If you assert P3, then yes — your conclusion follows:
* If rules must be instantiated,
* and instantiation requires a persisting information structure,
* then the ToE must have a carrier,
* and if you push the analogy, that carrier is a constructor, and if it can vary/propagate, a replicator.

That’s the actual courageous move: claiming P3 is true of physics, not just of computers.

Right now your talk kind of smuggles P3 in via the Game of Life + memory analogy, but it’s not labeled as a premise, so critics can call it a category error.

==== It’s not cowardly; it’s conservative ontology. It says: ====
* You probably don’t need a new kind of thing,
* you need a new kind of stability mechanism.

But if your thesis is explicitly: “there is a thing,” then yeah, my line is a retreat from that.

However: you can keep the strong claim without retreating by sharpening what you mean by “object.”

==== : ====

That is a clean, brave statement. And it makes the hidden premise explicit.

==== That’s where you want to spend your argumentative ammo. ====

Arguments for P3 (your side):
* “Rules” that do work in known systems always correspond to physical carriers (memory, constraints, boundary conditions, fields, action principles encoded in state, etc.).
* If you take computational physics seriously, a rule is an algorithm; algorithms require a physical implementation.

Arguments against P3 (their side):
* Fundamental law is not “implemented”; it is primitive (no carrier needed).
* “Instantiation” is a category imported from computation.

So the debate becomes crisp and real, instead of muddy.

==== - Your conclusion doesn’t strictly follow from “constructor theory” alone. ====
* It does follow if you add the explicit “Instantiation Principle.”
* If you want the brave version, don’t soften the claim — tighten the premises.

If you want, I can rewrite your talk’s “logical inference” slide as a 4-line formal argument (axioms + the missing premise) so it’s bulletproof and you stop getting hit with “category error / regress.”