On Nov 24, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: > Kory Heath wrote: >> On Nov 23, 2008, at 11:24 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: >>> Kory Heath wrote: >>>> Or maybe I'm still misdiagnosing the problem. Is anyone arguing >>>> that, >>>> when you play back the lookup table like a movie, this counts as >>>> performing all of the Conway's Life computations a second time? >>> Why shouldn't it? >> >> Please see my recent response to Bruno. If we perform a complex >> computation which results in placing the integer "5" into some memory >> variable, and then later we copy the contents of that memory variable >> to some other location in memory, in what sense are we re-performing >> the original complex computation? > > That's different since, ex hypothesi, the original calculation was > complex. So > we can say just putting the answer, 5, in a register is not > repeating the > calculation based on some complexity measure of the process.
But the Conway's Life calculations are "complex" in the sense that I meant the term. If we have a grid of cells filled with a pattern of bits, and we point at one particular cell and ask, "If we iterate the Conway's Life rule on this grid a trillion times, will this bit be on or off?", we have to perform a bunch of computations to answer the question. If we store the results of those computations, and then later someone points at that same cell and asks the same question, and I just look up the answer, I don't see how we can say that that act of looking up the answer counts as re-performing the original computation. Are you arguing that it does? -- Kory --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
