I wonder who supplied the great programmer with the Turing machine in the first place. What separates Turing machines from mincing machines in that context? And an important premise is an implied equivalence of an infinite sequence of states with infinite states. "Before" the world creation there is not "time" per se. So how is the Turing machine, where sequence plays a pivotal role, supposed to work in that exo-time context?
A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#52Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#53"Several of the Great Programmer’s universes will feature another Great Programmer who programs another Big Computer to run all possible universes. Obviously, there are infinite chains of Great Programmers. If our own universe allowed for enough storage, enough time, and fault-free computing, then you could be one of them."
Loved that line.
I do not understand this main point of the article. Perhaps someone can explain?
"On the other hand, computing just one particular universe’s evolution (with, say, one particular instance of noise), without computing the others, tends to be very expensive, because almost all individual universes are incompressible, as has been shown above. More is less!"
It seems the point is that the program to compute all universes is short, while the program to compute one particular universe is long. But surely runtime is greater in the former?
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#54Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#55In this vein, I strongly recommend Scott Aaronson's Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Profound and inspiring!
Thanks for your input.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#57"Several of the Great Programmer’s universes will feature another Great Programmer who programs another Big Computer to run all possible universes. Obviously, there are infinite chains of Great Programmers. If our own universe allowed for enough storage, enough time, and fault-free computing, then you could be one of them." Loved that line. I do not understand this main point of the article. Perhaps someone can expla…
At the beginning:
> Time. The Great Programmer does not worry about computation time. Nobody presses Him.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#58Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#59"Several of the Great Programmer’s universes will feature another Great Programmer who programs another Big Computer to run all possible universes. Obviously, there are infinite chains of Great Programmers. If our own universe allowed for enough storage, enough time, and fault-free computing, then you could be one of them." Loved that line. I do not understand this main point of the article. Perhaps someone can expla…
At the beginning: > Time. The Great Programmer does not worry about computation time. Nobody presses Him.
Ok, thought it might refer to that. So "expensive" is the length of the program and nothing else.
Re: A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything (1999)
#60Schmidhuber has forgotten to cite Leibniz. The results in this document are nothing more than a trivial corollary of the principle of metaphysical efficiency, not to mention pre-established harmony, which Leibniz has discovered the most general forms of in 1710, which encompasses not only the construction of the physical universe, but also morality. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/ .
I always felt the philosophy of Spinoza and Leibniz would be the best candidates for the foundation of a philosophy of computer science.
Leibniz did invent binary arithmetic didn't he? And if I'm not mistaken his inspiration for it came from the I Ching, which was one of the original founding documents of ancient Chinese philosophy (i.e. yin and yang => 0 and 1).