Perhaps this is a useful insight into where people may be going wrong. The “laws of physics” are computable – IOW it is true that humans can use computers to express and explore mathematically defined regularities of behaviour in matter.
But it doesn’t follow that matter itself is doing the computing, or that some deus ex machina behind the scenes is doing the computing. Just because planets follow regular, mathematically definable orbits, doesn’t mean that they are computing their orbits – or that there’s a mathematical God/divine principle who/which use mathematics to calculate and arrange their orbits. This looks like another example of the logicomathematician’s extreme solipsism – “if I’m doing it, everyone and everything must be doing it - the world is just an expression of my mind.” Er no it isn’t. From: Jim Bromer Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2012 9:13 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Fw: Pre-pub Offer: A Computable Universe On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Mike Archbold <[email protected]> wrote: > > > It seems like the goal posts keep getting moved around as far as what does > and doesn't constitute computing, now seemingly becoming so broad that just > about any interaction is "computing" complete with a $99 book on sale. It > looks interesting anyway... The (so called) laws of physics are based on computable functions. That is an old idea. So, the argument goes, perhaps all the laws of physics may be expressed using computable relations. Even non-mathematical relations might be expressed as a kind of logical relation and a logical relation may be expressed as a mathematical relation. The thing that makes this argument interesting is that the laws of physics have played such an important role in modern science. There is a difference between the concept of computation and an effect of a pysical reaction because a computation can be used to model a wider range of computational systems than some particular reaction. However, there is a chance that the computable laws of physics have acted as a powerhouse not because nature is just a system of computable effects but because the arithemtic of the modernn positional notation system has an effective power that is still a bit hazy. Indeed, you can even see that lack of clarity in this group. The modern numbering system represents an impressive method of "compression" where a value may be represented in a highly efficient manner. (Imagine if you had to use ten million sticks to represent 10,000,000. It is not as efficient as using ten -or eleven or eight- characters of the alphabet. Ten million things vs a selection of eight marks drawn from a selecton of twelve variations or characters. That alone is one of the most amazing things that human beings have ever accomplished. But another, even more unexpected feat has been accomplished using the modern numbering system. By using addition or multiplication we are able to "compress" the number of steps that we need to take to calculate a transformation of a method on two such numbers. We don't have to add ten million representations of 10,000,000 in order to calculate what 10,000,000 X 10,000,000 equals, instead we can do it in around 64 representation-steps. (I am not going to check that but it is in the ball park. Of course we don't have to do all of the steps for a multiplication where the two decimal numbers has long strings of zeros in them. I knew that.) Saying that the underlying reality is a computable universe is taking a major leap. Saying that the underlying reality of the major advances that have emanated out of physics and computer programming is the power to "compress" representations and "compress" transformations of such representations is not that much of a step. By expressing this I am starting to see that particular kinds of relationships might be expressed in order to compress certain kinds of transformations of representations of ideological objects. However, I don't see anything that would come anywhere near the compressed transformations of arithmetic. Party like it's 30 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform Jim Bromer AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
