Math, Mind, Matter

Really enjoyed this IAS sponsered arxiv paper/debate by three physicists (Piet Hut, Mark Alford & Max Tegmark). 
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0510/0510188v2.pdf

Its a discussion of Roger Penrose's circular triangle:
or "math arises from the mind, mind arises from matter, and matter can be explained in terms of math"

The three authors are divided up into three schools: Fundamentalist, Secular, and Mystic who present independant versions of their triangle then debate. 

An extended version of the fundamentalist's (Max Tegmark of MIT) thesis can be found here where he attempts to construct a 'radically platonist' notion of a multiverse built entirely on math and consisting only of universes which are godel complete and computable.  Not sure I agree
with it, but I found it an interesting construction
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0646v2.pdf

Personally I find the idea of a multiverse a little suspect to be honest.  Its not that its not a cool idea, or that its necessarily false.  The process that was used to arrive at my main hangup, its not that we have anything resembling physical evidence, instead its that certain theories in physics work smoothly with certain categories of multiverses (string theory, etc).   I'm of the opinion that applying occam's razor here necessitates that we must either a. eliminate all simpler possiblities or b. find some empirical clues of alternate universes before jumping off in that direction.

That said I do think there are very far reaching implications of Godels work as well as later work done in information theory on oracle's, computability, etc and it is nice to see some physicists acknowledging that.

Very interesting debate though, and I'd say fairly accessible outside the immediate domain.