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A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

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Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#21

Post by goldenkey »

ozy wrote: post #19
goldenkey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really cool. I see how you sort of built in decay through age. I think the golden information principles for emergent life are easier to find than biological ones, but of course the requirements of space, time, etc are much larger when ones' simulation is at a lower level of abstraction. It really is a question of level of emergent behavior versus level of base behavior. Even QM can be emergent from determinis…

I have tried a few approaches at not having the simulator provide the copying function. But so far no luck. Do you have any concrete ideas? I would suggest it needs to be a simulation in which self-organisation is possible. But also catalyzation and self-catalyzation (autocatalysis)[1]. From there it is a small step to self-copying and thus ... evolution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis

Reproduction for RNA/DNA and cells, and later multicellular life, is an emergent property of some heavy-handed universal laws.

I would suggest forgetting about reproduction and focusing on principles of information storage and movement. Computation is really the cornerstone of reproduction. In any large enough space that allows computation, computers will pop up that copy themselves. By chance. They will then dominate if their resource requirements allow them to. That's the ticket. Emergent reproduction.

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#22

Post by goldenkey »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #20
goldenkey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Turing completeness is necessary for intelligent life. The Church-Turing [1] thesis initially defined turing machines in terms of what a person could do with endless paper and pencils. Effectively, we are turing machines that consume energy in order to remain stable, compute, and reproduce. We of course, are possibly more than that -- but turing completeness is a base property that seems like it should be met. Wit…

1) But we don't have arbitrary amounts of paper or time. 2,3) Your structure is 2+1D, which is a kind of 3D. Comments about 3D objects were talking about spacetime regions, not space region. 2b) Do you want locality? I'm not convinced spatial locality is how our universe operates. Also, non-locality in Minecraft interacting with the update engine is what caused a lot of seemingly non-deterministic effects. I guess it…

We don't but neither do universal simulations. Maybe I should have said finite-state turing machines. With a vast enough universe, the finite # of states won't matter much when it comes to producing life. What fraction of the information in the universe are our bodies, or if you go down further to simpler smaller species, the fraction gets smaller. It's tiny.

2) Yes, basically a flat torus. Not the most beautiful topology.

3) Yes, I think locality is the right approach at least for starting out. This project is iterative so nothing is set in stone.

Thank you for the questions and comments. I guess I left quite a bit out. And right now, I'm in the middle of a lot of design decisions regarding fusion and decay. It's not easy to build a universe, even a simple one.

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#23

Post by ozy »

goldenkey wrote: post #12
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no particular order: Why Turing completeness? In particular, you're not going to be able to realize the execution of an arbitrary Turing machine, so why not restrict to a subset you can actually compute and do your modeling in that non-complete framework? I don't think you can complete the torus in x, y, t (as there's no way to close the time dimensionl, so why not use a structure that is dimensionally symmetric?…

1) Turing completeness is necessary for intelligent life. The Church-Turing [1] thesis initially defined turing machines in terms of what a person could do with endless paper and pencils. Effectively, we are turing machines that consume energy in order to remain stable, compute, and reproduce. We of course, are possibly more than that -- but turing completeness is a base property that seems like it should be met. Wit…

"Turing completeness is necessary for intelligent life." Sure, but it would be extremely difficult to write a simulator with "interesting feedback" that is not turing complete ...

"In our universe, the speed of light is the speed of causality" In your simulation the step function is causality. I would not be too concerned if the simulator was not strict in conservation. As a matter of fact, the interesting parts of our universe have the property that they are in the middle of an entropy flow.

Just some random advice, maybe you don't find it useful, but I would not focus too much on these things ...

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#24

Post by ozy »

goldenkey wrote: post #21
ozy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried a few approaches at not having the simulator provide the copying function. But so far no luck. Do you have any concrete ideas? I would suggest it needs to be a simulation in which self-organisation is possible. But also catalyzation and self-catalyzation (autocatalysis)[1]. From there it is a small step to self-copying and thus ... evolution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis

Reproduction for RNA/DNA and cells, and later multicellular life, is an emergent property of some heavy-handed universal laws. I would suggest forgetting about reproduction and focusing on principles of information storage and movement. Computation is really the cornerstone of reproduction. In any large enough space that allows computation, computers will pop up that copy themselves. By chance. They will then dominat…

"computers will pop up that copy themselves" That is interesting idea. But do they pop up because the simulator provides the compute? Or because the simulator allows for the construction of structures that can compute?

I don't think you mean the first, as that is not too interesting to your goal. The latter is unlikely. How many possible configurations are there, and how many of those can compute? Let alone compute + copy? The universe will end before a random such entity appears.

Gravity causes matter to self organise into globes with disks. Charged molecules + surface tension causes crystallisation. Organic molecules support self-catylization.

From such organising principles there is a change self-copying arises before the universe ends. Or your EC2 budget ;)

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#25

Post by RobertoG »

vecter wrote: post #10

> It can be shown that there is no algorithm that can generate the shortest program for computing arbitrary given data on a given computer [2, 9, 1]. In particular, our physicists cannot expect to find the most compact description of our universe. This seems wrong to me. There exists no general algorithm to find the shortest program to compute arbitrary data, but we can surely find specific shortest programs to compu…

"we can surely find specific shortest programs to compute arbitrary data."

That would be what the scientific method is about.

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#26

Post by goatlover »

tmsldd wrote: post #16
vecter wrote: post #10

> It can be shown that there is no algorithm that can generate the shortest program for computing arbitrary given data on a given computer [2, 9, 1]. In particular, our physicists cannot expect to find the most compact description of our universe. This seems wrong to me. There exists no general algorithm to find the shortest program to compute arbitrary data, but we can surely find specific shortest programs to compu…

If you consider that our brain is a computer, then your argument isn't valid.

Our brain isn't a computer. That's the most recent metaphor we've used to try and make sense of the three pound organ in our heads.

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#27

Post by goatlover »

adrianN wrote: post #15
adjkant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find all of this really hard to take seriously when we work on the assumption that the design of the universe could be understood by a human. Why would something so small relative to the whole assume that its thoughts were high enough to comprehend the entire universe? I love philosophy, but let's actually spend our time and energy asking questions that do have meaning, because any small meaning to us is more impor…

So far we're doing a decent job of understanding the design of the universe. Most things you interact with follow the rules we figured out so well that you'd be really hard pressed to find an experiment to find a difference between prediction and reality. That makes many people confident that we can figure out the missing pieces as well.

Such as experiments in economics and sociology?

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#28

Post by tempodox »

lend000 wrote: post #3

"More than 2000 years of European philosophy dealt with the distinction between body and soul. The Great Programmer does not care. ... From the view of the Great Programmer, though, such bitstring subpatterns may be entirely irrelevant. There is no need for Him to load them with “meaning”." Interesting points, especially to follow up the recent 'is matter conscious?' article on HN. Schmidhuber often seems to be more…

> it is unlikely that life on Earth (or perhaps in general) is relevant to It.

Agreed. However, should there be an afterlife, then it had better not be found lest it suffer my eternal wrath.

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#29

Post by goldenkey »

ozy wrote: post #24
goldenkey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproduction for RNA/DNA and cells, and later multicellular life, is an emergent property of some heavy-handed universal laws. I would suggest forgetting about reproduction and focusing on principles of information storage and movement. Computation is really the cornerstone of reproduction. In any large enough space that allows computation, computers will pop up that copy themselves. By chance. They will then dominat…

"computers will pop up that copy themselves" That is interesting idea. But do they pop up because the simulator provides the compute? Or because the simulator allows for the construction of structures that can compute? I don't think you mean the first, as that is not too interesting to your goal. The latter is unlikely. How many possible configurations are there, and how many of those can compute? Let alone compute +…

Yes both. The sim provides the dynamics that allow for computers to exist. At a basic level, even simple phenomena are computations. RNA polymerase performs a computation when it copies. And we can go really low level, pretty much everything is a computation - of course, not all computations are equivalently great for life.

You are assuming this universe ends. In a type of heat death or singularity (choose your poison.) Not if gravity isn't part of the dynamics. And even then, the universe could be a cyclic one. [1]

Most likely EC2 is not the right approach. I have worked with Cuda and OpenCL and buying a bunch of beefy Teslas or the new Titans would be more cost effective.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model

Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)

#30

Post by ThomPete »

goatlover wrote: post #26
tmsldd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider that our brain is a computer, then your argument isn't valid.

Our brain isn't a computer. That's the most recent metaphor we've used to try and make sense of the three pound organ in our heads.

We are pattern recognizing feedback loops with memory. How is that not like a computer?
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