Ben,
Thanks for reply. I'm a bit lost though. How does this formula take into
account the different pixel configurations of different objects? (I would have
thought we can forget about the time of display and just concentrate on the
configurations of points/colours, but no doubt I may be wrong).
Roughly how large a figure do you come up with, BTW?
I guess a related question is the old one - given a keyboard of letters, what
are the total number of works possible with say 500,000 key presses, and how
many 500,000-press attempts will it (or could it) take the proverbial monkey to
type out, say, a 50,000 word play called Hamlet?
In either case, I would imagine, the numbers involved are too large to be
practically manageable in, say, this universe, (which seems to be a common
yardstick). Comments? The maths here does seem important, because it seems to
me to be the maths of creativity - and creative possibilities - in a given
medium. A somewhat formalised maths, since creators usually find ways to
transcend and change their medium - but useful nevertheless. Is such a maths
being pursued?
On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:37 PM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly
filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual
system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that
this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable?
If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try
all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same.
Matt,
Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A
computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the
total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how
long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them?
(It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there
is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a
page). Are you saying that there aren't? -
There is a finite number of possible screen-images, at least from the point
of view of the process sending digital signals to the screen.
If the monitor refreshes each pixel N times per second, then over an interval
of T seconds, if each pixel can show C colors, then there are
C^(N*T*800*600)
possible different scenes showable on the screen during that time period....
A big number but finite!
Drawing on a page is a different story, as it gets into physics questions,
but it seems rather likely there is a finite number of pictures on the page
that are distinguishable by a human eye.
So, whether or not an infinite number of objects exist in the universe, only
a finite number of distinctions can be drawn on a monitor (for certain), or by
an eye (almost surely)
ben g
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