On 30 Sep 2014, at 19:32, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 1:04 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> Computationalism is the theory that the human brain is a
computer, a type information processing machine, and it postulates
that thinking is a form of computing. But you can't have a brain or
a computer or a machine of any sort without matter.
> Computer have been discovered in arithmetic. Gödel was close in
his 1931 paper, but missed it, but then it is clear in Post, Church,
Turing paper. Turing made his machine looking more "physical" but it
is still a purely mathematical objects, and computations are too.
So over the last few decades was it a big waste of time and money to
spend trillions of dollars and millions of man-hours to make
computers out of matter?
This does not follow from what I said. To use a computer in our
physical reality, we need to implement it in that physical reality.
but to get the result that the physical reality emerges from
computations, you need to invoke the immaterial computations which
exist in arithmetic.
I don't think so. Maybe computers really do exist in some sort of
ethereal Platonic abstract plane, maybe they're real but apparently
they're not quite real enough to get the job done here on planet
Earth.
Correct.
> You don't need the notion of matter in computer science, unless
you are interested in the implementation of computer in some
physical reality. Then you need some physics to define what this
means. But this does not mean that physics is primary.
As I've said no natural phenomenon has ever been found where nature
must solve a NP-hard problem
To solve it exactly? Perhaps, we can't be sure. But swarm of ants
solves efficaciously NP complete problem, like the traveling salesman
problem. I think some soap film solves some NP problem too, but I have
no reference at hands. But I am sure of the relevance of your remark
in our topic.
Bruno
to figure out what to do next, if the so called real numbers are
really real I find it difficult to understand why that is the case.
John K Clark
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