On 6/27/2015 9:20 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 spudboy100 via Everything List <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> But surely phenomena in quantum physics and Conways Life are random, but computable?
Conway's Life is computable but not predictable,
That raises a question as to what "predictable" means. In what sense is the evolution of
Schrodinger's equation predictable? Except for very simple boundary conditions or
constraints you can only predict it's evolution by numerical simulation. So why it it
thought of as more predictable than the GoL? Because Schrodinger's equation has a few
constants of the motion: total momentum, energy, angular momentum?
there is no shortcut so the only way to know what it will do is watch the program run
and see; however Conway's Life is not random either.
Life is computable because there is always something (the previous generational life
pattern) that if inputted into a computer running the Life program will cause the
computer to output the next generation Life pattern. But a event is random if and only
if it is a event without a cause, so if something is computable it can not be random.
There is no law of logic that demands every event must have a cause and in the 20th
century some events in physics were discovered that had no cause, in other words were
random.
John K Clark
Since the GoL is not reversible (no conserved "energy"), if you watched a GoL running
backwards it would include randomness.
Brent
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