Let me explain what I mean by the intelligence or predictive power of the universe. I mean that the universe computes everything in it, the position of every atom over time. If I knew that, I could tell you everything that will ever happen, like tomorrow's winning lottery numbers or the exact time of death of every person who has ever lived or ever will. I could tell you if there was life on other planets, and if so, what it looks like and where to find it.
Of course that is impossible by Wolpert's theorem. The universe can't know everything about itself and neither can anything in it. We don't know the program that computes the universe because it would require the entire computing power of the universe to test the program by running it, about 10^120 or 2^400 steps. But we do have two useful approximations. If we set the gravitational constant G = 0, then we have quantum mechanics, a complex differential wave equation whose solution is observers that see particles. Or if we set Planck's constant h = 0, then we have general relativity, a tensor field equation whose solution is observers that see space and time. Wolfram and Yudkowsky both estimate this unknown program is only a few hundred bits long, and I agree. It is roughly the complexity of quantum mechanics and relativity taken together, and roughly the minimum size by Occam's Razor of a multiverse where the n'th universe is run for n steps until we observe one that necessarily contains intelligent life. -- -- Matt Mahoney, mattmahone...@gmail.com ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Teaac2c1a9c4f4ce3-M8bedda3b66ddcfb10805ff85 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
