Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are pattern recognizing feedback loops with memory. How is that not like a computer?
Like is the operative word. Also: https://imgur.com/a/Bg9WH
We're special!
A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#42I'm actually working on a project that explores the concept of information storage / movement duality to create life. https://scrollto.com/life-a-universe-simulation/ Send an email to the address listed in my profile if you'd like to be a part of the project.
So you are going to try build the Autoverse in Permutation City? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
In some respects but consciousness is unknown with regard to it.
I am defining life as intelligent computing machines that remain stable through consumption of their environment. Whether or not the life created is conscious is a deep question.
Consciousness is a hard problem.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It depends on whether you think economics and sociology are fundamental to the physics of the universe or merely emergent phenomena. It's quite possible to understand all the fundamental rules of a system while having great difficulty working out all the consequences of those rules at a macroscopic level.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#44Earlier 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…
"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 o…
Conversion between states means nothing if the states can multiply endlessly. There needs to be conservation to prevent "something for nothing."
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#4542 comments right now. What a strange coincidence. Had to say it.
Here it is: http://imgur.com/a/wGdGz
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#4642 comments right now. What a strange coincidence. Had to say it. Here it is: http://imgur.com/a/wGdGz
Hardly a strange coincidence. How strange is it for posts to get at least 42 comments at some stage in their existence, and for this to be one of them?
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are pattern recognizing feedback loops with memory. How is that not like a computer?
Like is the operative word. Also: https://imgur.com/a/Bg9WH
Sure just as you are like me but different or i am like a monkey but different. We are all simulating a reality.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#48> 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…
For any given state of matter and energy, there is a maximal number of possible states. Then, for any given computer existing in our universe there is a finite amount of accessible states, given that the expansion of the universe creates a horizon beyond which creates a limit to the volume we can read back data from.
Couple this with the fact that you can not create an algorithm that can arbitrarily compress any given input string, and then for any given computer you can find input strings that requires more state to represent than said computer can contain. Even if you allow for output over time, for any given such computer you can find an input string that is sufficiently incompressible that finding the shortest possible representation requires more intermediate state than the computer can contain, and that can be true even if a sufficiently large computer will make it possible to find patterns that makes the data very compressible.
In fact, that is what the article is pointing out: The universe may be a lot more regular than it appears, but it is possible that we may never be able to determine what the patterns are because it may be impossible to hold or compute over enough state to be able to determine what the patterns are in a way that lets us identify the patterns.
It is also possible that it turns out to be possible to easily create such a minimal program, but the article also points out that the vast majority of possible universes are incompressible.
For us to be able to compute the most compact description of our universe we 1) need to be in a compressible universe (or the description will subsume the totality of the universe itself), 2) need to be in one where the shortest possible description can be computed with the intermediate states possible to contain within the observable universe.
As the article points out, without additional knowledge of what type of universe we are in, the odds are firmly against us in that respect.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#49Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#50Earlier 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.
Our brain is a computer. That fact may or may not offer useful insights on the properties of brains that we care about.
Likewise, our brains are engines, converting energy from one form to another, and hence governed by thermodynamics. Again, that fact may or may not be useful for investigating properties of the brain we care about.
Our brains are also matter, meat, networks, made of atoms, and squishy. These are all facts, they may or may not be useful.