-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: If the universe is computational, what is the computing platform? What are
the options?
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 17:32:37 +1000
From: Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
On 26 August 2015 at 17:21, Peter Sas <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi guys and girls,
I'm sure this question has already come up many times before, but it's an
important
one, so I guess it can't do any harm to go over it again.
If the universe is thoroughly computational, what are the computations
'running' on?
What I especially like to know is what options are discussed in digital
physics. So
far I have encountered only the following possibilities:
(1) Mathematical platonism: all natural numbers, and all mappings between
them (i.e.
all algorithms), simply exist in 'Plato's heaven', including those
algorithms that
compute our universe. The simple non-spatiotemporal existence of those
algorithms is
enough to 'instantiate' a spatiotemporal world. This type of solution can be
found in
Tipler, Tegmark and our own Bruno Marchal.
I thought Tipler's theory is that there will be an actual physical computer that will be
able to do all possible computations as the Universe collapses - although since he came up
with the idea it has been shown that the Universe won't collapse in the required way.
Major problem: the hard problem of consciousness.
Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness a problem in the computerless
computation scenario?
Because then it's not clear why there should be the connection between brains and
consciousness. If they are both just computations, why do they have this tight causal
relation. Why can't the consciousness be computed independently. If it can't, if it
depends on the brain being also computer - then you're back to the "hard problem".
Brent
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