On Mar 9, 3:06 pm, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>wrote: > > > > > On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: > > >> What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. > >> Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the > >> present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was > >> probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries > >> out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the > >> state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the > >> next moment? > > >> Andrew > > > I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the > > states of "the thinker" and his relation to the world are "computed" in a > > timeless way. The impression of time for "the thinker" is recovered by > > putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their > > content. > > > Brent > > Bruno and others, > > Do you think that computations performed by a computer or brain within a > block universe contribute to the computational histories of a person? I can > see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between > the frames. However, in a universe ruled by equations, it seems to me that > a computer in a universe is leveraging relations in math to perform > computations, albeit less directly than a platonic Turing machine running a > program.
It seems to me that a physical computer is leveraging causality, which is describable by some maths. Nothing happens "because" of maths, since maths can also describe the acausal, the uncomputable etc > To me it is like running a simulation of a brain on a virtual > machine on physical hardware. The VM provides a level of abstraction, but > ultimately its computations are still computations. In the same way a > mathematical universe is a level of abstraction yet could still provide a > platform for genuine computation (not descriptions of computation) to be > performed. What do you think? > > Jason -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
