On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 05:08:42AM -0400, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:14 AM Russell Standish <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must > exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that > something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to > do this. Bruno Marchal claims the opposite - that arithmetic, or in > fact any abstract system capable of universal computation, is > sufficient for the job. To be quite frank, I'm a fence sitter in this > debate, as I've yet to see any physically realisable experiment that > can settle the matter. > > > I have. Add 2 +2 on your computer. Observe the output. Hit your computer as > hard as you can with the hammer. Add 2 +2 on your computer again. Observe if > the output has changed. Note that a hammer can change physical things but > can't > change arithmetic.
You could be observing a simulation of a hammer breaking a simulated computer, which if faithful, should prevent the computation from taking place. It does not demonstrate ontological existence of the computer. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20190826000419.GJ2402%40zen.
