I think, Hal, you still used your "human" (anthropocentric) imagination when you wanted to show a 'free' thinking: cince they were missing from your 'eliminated' concepts: do you take space and time for granted in the 'universes' of different (physical?) principles? How about 'our' logic? causality (without time)? "WHEN" does such a universe exist (in our terms)? We have a hint to such "impossibilities": I call it 'idation', pure thought (since we have nothing to assign instead). We muster thought beyond the restrictions of space and time, dreams etc. surpass our physical system. Such ideas are not esoteric just unusual, especially in our physical natural science - brainwashed brains.
When I speculated how to arrive at a Big Bang from a "plenitude" that has no info for us - including 'everything' (knowable and not), in some perfect invariant symmetry of an overall exchange, I found that the symmetry-brake may be a motor. Not spatial, not timely, the "total" infinite symmetry of the unlimited change, of unlimited identities which break just by the unlimitedness: it must lead to asymmetical elements as well in its infinity. So there we were at Big Bangs in unlimited qualities. One of them is ours, where an INSIDE 'system' of space-time evolved in causality and which, from the inside. played off the evolutional process of complexities, all the way to the final dissipation - back into the plenitude's infinite invariant symmetry. Other "universes" (I did not find a better word) may be completely different, based on the participant elements constituting the occurring fulgurations of occurring asymmetrical knots . In the timeless system all occur and dissipate (immediately? it has no sense) and may or may not have any impact on each other. I was careful NOT to imply on other such occurrences 'our' inside data about our system which we don't even know well ourselves. I don't believe we may have the imagination to dream up different ones. All (sci-fi, white rabbit, comp, etc.) are variations upon our universe. I try to be consequent in my "scientific agnosticism". Just FYI, I do not request acceptance. My 'narrative'. John Mikes ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hal Finney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 1:39 PM Subject: Re: Is the universe computable > At 13:19 19/01/04 -0500, Stephen Paul King wrote: > > >Where and when is the consideration of the "physical resources" required > >for the computation going to obtain? Is my question equivalent to the old > >"first cause" question? > > Anything "physical" is by definition within a universe (by my definition, > anyway!). What are the physical properties of a system in our universe? > Mass, size, energy, electrical charge, partical composition, etc. If we > at least hypothetically allow for the existence of other universes, > wouldn't you agree that they might have completely different physical > properties? That they might not have mass, or charge, or size; or that > these properties would vary in some bizarre way much different from how > stable they are in our universe. > > Consider Conway's 2-dimensional Cellular Automota universe called Life. > Take a look at http://rendell.server.org.uk/gol/tm.htm, an amazing > implementation of a computer, a Turing Machine, in this universe. > I spent a couple of hours yesterday looking at this thing, seeing how > the parts work. He did an incredible job in putting all the details > together to make this contraption work. > > So we can have computers in the Life universe. Now consider this: what > is the mass of this computer? There is no such thing as mass in Life. > There are cells, so you could count the number of "on" cells in the system > (although that varies quite a bit as it runs). There is a universal > clock, so you could count the time it takes to run. Some of our familiar > properties exist, and others are absent. > > So in general, I don't think it makes sense to assume literally that > computers require physical resources. Considered as an abstraction, > computation is no more physical than is mathematics or logic. A theorem > doesn't weigh anything, and neither does a computation. > > Hal Finney
