If you destroy every recording of Top Gun, it will cease to exist.
> The bit sequence doesn't stop existing just because we delete every manifestation
Yes it does.
And Top Gun didn't exist before 1986.
How? Get rid of the universe, and the concept of pi doesn't exist. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Circles didn't exist before the universe, thus no pi. There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi.
Circles (perfect ones) are impossible in our universe, too. Circles are abstractions. If we have successfully deduced a conclusion from a set of axioms, wouldn't that deduction hold true in all possible universes?
The mathematical realist position is that these abstract math objects exist independent of an observer.
Ditto with sqrt(2), you need to "sharpen" the triangle made from half an square forever in order to get all the decimals.
I've noticed people in this thread are getting actual, physical things confused with concepts and mental representations of things.
Confusing the map for the territory.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-mathematics/
> It's like saying unicorns exist. They're a shared fiction. (A highly useful fiction, to be sure)
I will mention that dogs are also a useful shared fiction. We assign the label dog to a perception of a configuration of atoms that we think satisfy the criteria for what a dog is. So I'd say that numbers are more like dogs than unicorns, in that they are an abstraction that is used by us in practice to map to perceptions of physical objects.
And memory is fallible. It changes over time. People will all remember the movie differently.
The memory of Top Gun != Top Gun.