Great topic Peter! I recently worked on a film called *Digital Physics* in which the protagonist, Khatchig, chases the answer to some of these questions and I've been trying to keep following these concepts ever since. I can't tell you exactly which one of your possibilities Khatchig supports in his quest to prove DP but it's exactly what you're talking about and I have a feeling the film touches on a number of them. Cellular Automaton, Simulations, Computers, Wolfram, Fredkin, Kolmogorov Complexity, Free Will, etc... it's all in there. Maybe you guys can make heads or tails of the science in the movie. I'm still trying to!
Agree or disagree with Khatchig's science, I thought this group would enjoy the story and the universe it explores so I've included the trailer below. You can also check out the film's website here <http://www.digitalphysicsmovie.com/>... there's a "Science Corner <http://www.digitalphysicsmovie.com/science-corner/>" page on the site has a collection of links and videos to some of the top contributors on the topic you might enjoy. And if you like what you see, you can scroll to the bottom of the website and sign up for the Mailing List. We've just been accepted to two film festivals in October and we'll be making the film available on VOD by the end of the year so it's a great time to start getting updates. Thanks for your interest and thanks for supporting Digital Physics! https://youtu.be/Q216LjDzeJw On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 10:01:27 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: > > > > On Thursday, August 27, 2015, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net <javascript:>> > 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> Reply-To: everything-list@googlegroups.com To: >> everything-list@googlegroups.com <everything-list@googlegroups.com> >> >> >> >> On 26 August 2015 at 17:21, Peter Sas <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.
