On 3/4/2019 3:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 3 Mar 2019, at 20:43, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 3/3/2019 4:52 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Here's an example David Wallace presents (as an "outlandish"
possibility): Suppose in *pi *(which is computable, so has a
/program/ (a spigot one, in fact) that produces its digits. Suppose
somewhere in that stream of digits is the Standard Model Equation
(say written in LaTeX/Math but rendered here)
https://www.sciencealert.com/images/Screen_Shot_2016-08-03_at_3.20.12_pm.png
So what could this mean? (He sort of leaves it hanging.)
Nothing. Given a suitable mapping the SM Lagrangian can be found in
any sequence of symbols. It's just a special case of the rock that
computes everything.
Even if rock would exist in some primitive sense, which I doubt, they
do not compute anything, except in a trivial sense the quantum state
of the rock. A rock is not even a definable digital object.
It's an ostensively definable object...which is much better.
If someone want to convince me that a rock can compute everything, I
will ask them to write a complier of the combinators, say, in the
rock. I will ask an algorithm generating the phi_i associated to the rock.
There is no particular phi_i associated to the rock. That's the point.
The rock goes thru various states so there exists a mapping from that
sequence of states to any computation with a similar number of states.
Of course one may object that the actual computation is in the
mapping...but that's because of our prejudice for increasing entropy.
Brent
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