On Thursday, August 27, 2015, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > > > -------- 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 > <stath...@gmail.com> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','stath...@gmail.com');> > Reply-To: > everything-list@googlegroups.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list@googlegroups.com');> To: > everything-list@googlegroups.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list@googlegroups.com');> > <everything-list@googlegroups.com> > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list@googlegroups.com');> > > > > On 26 August 2015 at 17:21, Peter Sas <peterjacco...@gmail.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','peterjacco...@gmail.com');>> 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". >
Yes; I meant that it's no more or less a problem if there is no physical computer. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
