Hi Stephen, Finally some time to get back to this interesting discussion. Sorry for the delay...
No, I don't understand your argument that we can only use the notion of a single computational space if we wish to consider a "timeless" version of Computation?" That simply doesn't follow. As long as we simply assume there is a notion of "becoming" (your term which I can accept though I call it happening) IN the computational space we don't have that problem at all. Didn't we just agree to a notion of becoming at the fundamental level? Second, in my view the computational space is fundamental. Things like Hilbert space are one of the many computational RESULTS of the fundamental computations. It's more analogous to myriads of running software programs interacting with each other as necessary than Hilbert space and certainly not the usual physical dimensional space. All these emerge OUT OF the computational level. Third, I never claimed there is any actual PHYSICAL action at all. In my view everything is actually just the computational evolution of the information underlying the universe at the most fundamental level. As I've repeatedly stated in my view a physical, material, dimensional world is an INTERPRETATION of the computational world in the internal mental model (simulation) of some observer. I spend the entire Part IV of my book explaining in great detail why this is correct. So I don't think your criticism addressing this applies. I agree with everything in your next paragraph in quotes below: I thought that was understood. It's not an "accident or illusion", it's an interpretation or model that makes reality easier to compute by biological minds as you suggest. " The fact is that we do perceive a physical world and ourselves as "in it". To regard this as some "accident" or "illusion" is to throw away the very thing that is necessary to communicate between minds (that are defined computationally). Physical actions act as a means to partition up universal computations into separable entities and allows for the existence of local computations that are not universal that can perform tasks that would otherwise require too many resources to implement." Finally I agree there is NOT just a single computation going on. I just agreed with that in my previous response. I suggested there are myriads of computations going on in a single computational reality. One of course needs a single computational reality for all the computational results to manifest in the same universe. So what can we agree to out of this part of the discussion? Can we agree 1. There is a single fundamental computational reality which includes myriads of individual computations? 2. This fundamental computational reality includes the attribute of becoming? 3. The current state of the universe is the current result of all these computations? 4. The 'physical world' in which we experience our existence is an internal mental interpretation (representation or simulation whichever term you prefer) of an observer's interaction with the fundamental computational reality? Remember even QM agrees there is no physical world in the sense of the classical world of our mental model but actually consists only of colorless interacting wavefunctions, that in essence it's just active mathematical processes... So we should be able to agree the classical material physical dimensional world exists in our minds rather than 'out there' in the universe.... Edgar On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:09:03 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: > > Dear Edgar, > > Cool! We are making progress in understanding each other. :-) Let me get > into some details, where the devil is! > > > On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Edgar L. Owen <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > Stephen, > > Yes, I understand not necessarily moving in space but just moving in the > sense of being actively computed. That's what I am talking about. Thought > that was understood... > > And I do NOT take perception as passive. It's an ACTIVE computation, a > computational interaction with the program of an organism with that of > sensory information input from the external world's computations. I thought > that was understood also.. > > And there is no SEPARATE computational space (that needs to be proposed). > There is ONLY computational space. All actual reality is the current > computational results of that computational space. There is no actual > classical physical world. The notion of a physical material world is an > INTERPRETATION of the information results of the computational space in the > mind of some observer. It's the way the information is modeled or simulated > by a mind. > > > Did you understand my argument that we can only use the notion of a > single computational space if we wish to consider a "timeless" version of > Computation? My argument follows the way that the Wheeler-Dewitt > equation<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation>shows > that if we consider the Universe in terms of a single QM system, its > wavefunction will be "stationary". (Julian Barbour argues this well in > his book <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Time_(book)>.) > From there we notice that this wave function "lives" in a Hilbert space > that has infinitely many degrees of freedo > ... -- 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.
