A process which transforms information? Ultimately, digital computation comes down to the NAND operation, I'm told, which means it's a lot of "bit twiddling" which ultimately transforms one lots of bits into another. I guess versions with non-binary data (like DNA I assume?) can be reduced in principle to binary...
Not sure about the entropy definition. Since nothing reduces entropy globally, I assume you mean only locally... Or at the cosmic scale? The expansion of the universe supposedly reduces entropy, or makes more states available to matter at least (I think it increases the maximum available entropy, as per Beckenstein, rather than reducing it). Well, life does that, I guess, temporarily... On 21 January 2014 09:17, Alberto G. Corona <[email protected]> wrote: > Computation is understood as whatever made by a digital computer or > something that can be emulated (or aproximated) by a digital computer. > So everything is a computation. That is a useless definition. because > it embrace everything. > > Everything is legoland because everything can be emulated using lego > pieces? No, my dear legologist. > > What about this definition? Computation is whatever that reduces > entropy. In information terms, in the human context, computation is > whatever that reduces uncertainty producing useful information and > thus, in the environment of human society, a computer program is used > ultimately to get that information and reduce entropy, that is to > increase order in society, or at least for the human that uses it. > > A simulation is an special case of the latter. > > So there are things that are computations: what the living beings do > at the chemical, physiological or nervous levels (and rational, social > and technological level in case of humans) . But there are things that > are not computations: almost everything else. > > > -- > Alberto. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
