1) encode your form in bits -- it doesn't matter what encoding you use. Say the number of bits you need is N.
2) Try all the Turing machines that can be expressed in less than N bits. 3) If one of them produces your sequence, there is a hidden order to it, that can be expressed as that Turing machine. If not, your form is disordered. Josh On Thursday 07 June 2007 01:41:14 pm Mike Tintner wrote: > Eric B asked me for a test to prove "free thinking" - & I'm getting to it - > but I realised it raised a much deeper philosophical & presumably > mathematical issue which some of you guys, especially the > supermathematicians, may have well have given thought to, and I certainly > haven't. > > The issue is this: how can you prove a given form - whether a physical form > or form of behaviour - is disordered? How can you prove that it cannot be > considered as having been programmed, and there is no underlying formula for > it? (And another way of saying "disordered" is "free" as in free-form - and > NOT free-willed). > > How can you show that a free verse form really is free and does not conform > to some underlying pattern? Or that a Jackson Pollock abstract action > painting is not the result of a complex formula or program? > > Or that a given series of numbers 3..1,017..19.. 4..1,000,039..etc is not > produced by any formula? > > Or that a given stream of association of words (in which some do appear to > connect to each other, and others don't) really is disordered? How, to take > an application of that, could you show that a schizophrenic's stream of > speech really is mentally disordered? > > Or that a ramshackle dwelling really has been chaotically cobbled together? > > Will the proponent of order, so to speak, always be able to claim that no > matter how disordered a given form may appear, (and no matter how most > people may agree that it is disordered), there is always an underlying order > waiting to be revealed? > > P.S. None of this actually relates to answering Eric's request. But I > realised it did raise an important issue. > > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; > > ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=e9e40a7e
