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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)

#71

Post by goldenkey »

ozy wrote: post #67
goldenkey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversion between states means nothing if the states can multiply endlessly. There needs to be conservation to prevent "something for nothing."

There is quite some room between that and strict conservation of "energy".

Energy is an abstraction dealing with information states. So one has to first define what is the instigator of state change..and what its state is. The whole thing is a self referential nightmare if you don't conserve. Any kind of constant bias will take hold if vast compute cycles pass. But I dont necessarily disagree with psuedo randomness like hidden cyclic variables and other types of statistic macroscopi conservation without strict micro conservation.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

jatsign wrote: post #59
jrimbault wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

RobertoG wrote: post #25
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.

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

adjkant wrote: post #13
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

cgio wrote: post #51

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…

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by vecter »

Ono-Sendai wrote: post #39
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…

the general problem is uncomputable. but for some specific data outputs we may be able to find the shortest program.

Woops, that's what I meant to write.

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

#77

Post by goatlover »

chriswarbo wrote: post #50
goatlover wrote: post #26

Earlier 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…

Or our brain is a telegraph, the world wide web, an orchestra, a theater, a tv, millions of mindless bots, etc.

We use metaphors to help understand things we lack a literal explanation for, or the full explanation is complex and ongoing (neuroscience, biology, chemistry).

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

#78

Post by ozy »

goldenkey wrote: post #71
ozy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is quite some room between that and strict conservation of "energy".

Energy is an abstraction dealing with information states. So one has to first define what is the instigator of state change..and what its state is. The whole thing is a self referential nightmare if you don't conserve. Any kind of constant bias will take hold if vast compute cycles pass. But I dont necessarily disagree with psuedo randomness like hidden cyclic variables and other types of statistic macroscopi conserv…

"whole thing is a self referential nightmare if you don't conserve"

Indeed and that is probably best to focus on. Conservation, should serve that goal first. And I think you will see that as you implement things you can let go of strict versions.

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