On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 2:20 PM Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
>>without the laws of physics a Turing machine can't exist, > > > *> The laws of physics are a human construct.* > No. Humans are a law of physics construct. > * > Mathematically different sets of laws can fit the same experimental > results and produce the same results.* > Yes. And that's because mathematics is a language, and you can say the exact same thing in many different ways. > *> I guess what you actually mean is: "without physics a Turing machine > can't exist".* > Yes. *> If you mean a physical instance of the machine, then you are trivially > correct. * > I mean you need physics to *DO *anything, and a Turing Machine needs to *DO* things. A description of a Turing machine in a book, no matter how detailed, cannot make a single calculation or do anything else either; and a description of a cow in a book can not produce milk no matter how many organic chemical formulas are included in the book. > *> Of course, Turing's point was not to provide instructions on how to > construct a very inefficient computational device. His point was to > formalize the very idea of computation.* > Touring wasn't suggesting that a practical way to make a computer was with a long string of tape with nothing but ones and zeros on it, but he wanted to make a hypothetical computer as simple as possible to get at the bare essentials, and he found that to get down to the core understanding of computation you've got to talk about something physical; that is to say he had to talk about getting things done and the only way things can get done is by making use of the laws of physics. And so Turing came up with something that we now call a Turing Machine. *> So, if your claim is actually "without physics computation cannot > exist", then you are just betting on one brute fact to build reality upon > instead of another. Maybe you are correct,* > I'd say my odds of being correct are pretty damn good considering the fact that nobody is ever observed a computation being made without making use of the laws of physics, and nobody has ever even proposed a theory about a computation could be made without making use of the laws of physics. > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> -- > 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/CAJPayv0Qcuj2Bzk1GpCbsSg6u_xQfRmH6CjjW6VRt8kt7Opwiw%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0Qcuj2Bzk1GpCbsSg6u_xQfRmH6CjjW6VRt8kt7Opwiw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > > -- 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/CAJPayv2BZQ-YDNtmQu0zPZUoxeQ2Bwxi1npRBoJk3rKauGRrww%40mail.gmail.com.
