Le 08-août-06, à 08:58, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
>> >> Not at all. I mean it in the operational physical sense. Like >> observing >> your hand with a microscope, or looking closely to the "path" of an >> electron. > > Could you say more about this? If you examine an object more and more > closely you see more and more detail, and I understand that you have > other > arguments suggesting that this is all due to the ensemble of > computations > underpinning the physical reality, but are you suggesting that the > fact that > you can observe these levels is *by itself* evidence for these levels > and > sublevels of computation? Comp predicts that if you look closely enough you will see reality blurring. The evidence from empirical science (quantum physics) is that indeed reality blurs, but of course "informal comp" does not give the details of the blurring process. (That is why I get technical at some point). When we look at an electron in some well defined state of energy around the nucleus, we "see" literally a map of accessible worlds. The electron behaves as if it blurs around the nucleus, and what chemists call an orbital is really a map of where you can find the position of the electron would you decide to measure it. The microscope image is somehow misleading, because both with comp and already with the quantum, the many histories can manifest themselves through *isolation* only, like the Schroedinger cat in its box. Practically a hot macroscopic box does interact too heavily with the environment so that we cannot really isolate it, so we cannot make our comp history completely independent of what happen in the box, and thats why confirmation or refutation of comp or of the quantum needs the microscopic world. But macro-effects are not excluded and are arguably already present for the quantum (superfluid, superconductivity, violation of Bell's inequality on large distance, etc.) Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---