On Mon, Aug 15, 2022 at 7:07 AM Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Well, I like Stephen Wolfram > > *> I like him too. Mathematica is a beautiful piece of software and I > bought his book "A New Kind of Science" when it came out, which is also > beautiful and inspiring.* > Me too, that book is on my bookshelf only about 10 feet away from me right now. *> We are physical beings existing within the laws of physics. It could be > that there is a larger computational reality, and that our universe and the > laws of physics are "local" to the "sector" of the computation that we > inhabit. We are experiencing this computational reality from the inside.* > Yes we could be part of a computer simulation, but the computer simulating us must be operating according to physical law, unless it is also a simulation. But unless it's turtles all the way down eventually you're going to hit the bedrock of physical reality. *> The tricky thing, that Jason expanded on better than me, is that the > outcomes of computations preexist,* > The trouble is if all correct computations exist in some sort of platonic heaven then all incorrect computations exist there too, you need physics to tell the difference. If you have 2 rocks and then find 3 more you can make a one to one correspondence between the rocks and the fingers of your hand, but if you have 2 rocks and only find 2 more you cannot. *> in the sense that the outcome will be the same independently of how, > when or where the computation is performed. We might need a physical > computer to find out that 12345 * 67890 = 838102050, but it was already and > it always has been and will be the case that 12345 * 67890 = 838102050 (by > definition of the natural numbers and multiplication).* > But you needed a physical computer or a physical brain to figure that out. If platonic heaven contains everything that is true it also contains everything that is false, and there are many more false things than true things (that's why science is so difficult) so platonic Heaven is a pretty uninteresting place because it is so dense with things that are untrue. Meaning needs contrast. Michelangelo's David was carved from a single huge block of marble that was a 100 million years old, but it would be silly to say David was 100 million years old and Michelangelo did nothing but unpack it from the marble that was not part of David. And to make a real calculation rather than a pretend toy one you have to differentiate the correct from the incorrect, you not only have to mention the correct answer you have to make it clear that all the other answers, and there are an infinite number of them, are wrong. And for that you need a physical machine. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> wpr > -- 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/CAJPayv16pTwqNRGuTFJ%2B12_QKFcKR__Yw-P9mDD0S4sAwMudNA%40mail.gmail.com.
