On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:25 PM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> "physical" is anything that is NOT nothing. >> >> And "nothing" is anything that is >> infinite >> , >> unbounded >> , and >> homogeneous >> >> in both space and time. >> >> > > > a Game of Life computation qualifies as a physical universe, > Yes, provided that the game is played on a physical computer or a physical checkerboard or on anything else that is not nothing. > > When we envision (imagine) a GoL emulation, we interpret it as a grid of > cells You talk about "cells" in the plural, so there is more than one, so they must be both *bounded* and *finite*, so they are not nothing, so they are physical. > > with changing states So the cells are *not homogeneous* in the time dimension, so that is yet another reason they are not nothing. Not nothing aka physical. > an equally consistent view would be to imagine the grid as a binary number, whose bits flip from one step to another according to finite rules. Finite stuff flipping around and changing = physical. > > > can anyone truly differentiate a "physically existing GoL universe" from a > "platonically existing recursive computation" > ? > > Yes. I can. John K Clark -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
