Re: computationalism as a form of magic
On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: I see computationalism as a form of magic. The only difference is that one works and the other doesn't. Extispicy (using animal entrails to predict the future) makes use of magic and it doesn't work at all; Newton used computation to predict the future position of planets and it worked beautifully, and that gives us some reason to believe that computation may be a better tool in figuring out how the world works than magic, although I did think Harry Potter was fun. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: computationalism as a form of magic
On 09 Jul 2013, at 00:44, Jason Resch wrote: From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz Computation[edit] Leibniz may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist.[65] Early in life, he documented the binary numeral system (base 2), then revisited that system throughout his career.[66] He anticipated Lagrangian interpolation and algorithmic information theory. His calculus ratiocinator anticipated aspects of the universal Turing machine. In 1934, Norbert Wienerclaimed to have found in Leibniz's writings a mention of the concept of feedback, central to Wiener's later cybernetic theory. In 1671, Leibniz began to invent a machine that could execute all four arithmetical operations, gradually improving it over a number of years. This Stepped Reckoner attracted fair attention and was the basis of his election to the Royal Society in 1673. A number of such machines were made during his years in Hanover, by a craftsman working under Leibniz's supervision. It was not an unambiguous success because it did not fully mechanize the operation of carrying. Couturat reported finding an unpublished note by Leibniz, dated 1674, describing a machine capable of performing some algebraic operations.[67] Leibniz also devised a (now reproduced) cipher machine, recovered by Nicholas Rescher in 2010.[68] Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. In 1679, while mulling over his binary arithmetic, Leibniz imagined a machine in which binary numbers were represented by marbles, governed by a rudimentary sort of punched cards.[69] Modern electronic digital computers replace Leibniz's marbles moving by gravity with shift registers, voltage gradients, and pulses of electrons, but otherwise they run roughly as Leibniz envisioned in 1679. Leibniz seems to have been very close indeed. Thanks to a work by Jacques Lafitte(*), I tend to consider that Babbage made the full discovery of the universal computer. Full means that he discovered Church thesis. He discovered it when realizing that the functional language that he invented to just describe his machine was as much conceptually powerful than his machine. To understand/discover Church thesis you have to discover two (rather different) universal machines :) Bruno (*) Lafitte, J. Réflexion sur la science des machines, Vrin, 1931. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Re: computationalism as a form of magic
Hi Jason Resch Leibniz also wrote a book on jurisprudence and was a mining engineer. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: Everything List Time: 2013-07-08, 18:44:36 Subject: Re: computationalism as a form of magic From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz Computation[edit ] Leibniz may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist. [65] Early in life, he documented the binary numeral system (base 2), then revisited that system throughout his career.[66] He anticipated Lagrangian interpolation and algorithmic information theory. His calculus ratiocinator anticipated aspects of the universal Turing machine. In 1934, Norbert Wiener claimed to have found in Leibniz's writings a mention of the concept of feedback, central to Wiener's later cybernetic theory. In 1671, Leibniz began to invent a machine that could execute all four arithmetical operations, gradually improving it over a number of years. This Stepped Reckoner attracted fair attention and was the basis of his election to the Royal Society in 1673. A number of such machines were made during his years in Hanover, by a craftsman working under Leibniz's supervision. It was not an unambiguous success because it did not fully mechanize the operation of carrying. Couturat reported finding an unpublished note by Leibniz, dated 1674, describing a machine capable of performing some algebraic operations. [67] Leibniz also devised a (now reproduced) cipher machine, recovered by Nicholas Rescher in 2010.[68] Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace . In 1679, while mulling over his binary arithmetic, Leibniz imagined a machine in which binary numbers were represented by marbles, governed by a rudimentary sort of punched cards.[69] Modern electronic digital computers replace Leibniz's marbles moving by gravity with shift registers, voltage gradients, and pulses of electrons, but otherwise they run roughly as Leibniz envisioned in 1679. On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Dear Prof. Tegmark, I have been trying to think of a way to make computationalism work but I can see no force that numbers might have on the physical world that might empower them. Instead I see computationalism as a form of magic. Serious magic if you will, but still magic, magic in the sense that saying the proper magic words or drawing certain figures or performing certain incantations or rituals will cause things to happen, presumably in imitation of those forms. But even though it is a form of magic, it may be that the numbers can be causal in some paranormal sense, if you can accept Leibniz's view that ideas seek perfection and physical realization is the highest perfection. If you can accept that, you might give some acceptance to the idea, and that actions can be preformed by intentions. Best, Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: computationalism as a form of magic
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz Computation[edithttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibnizaction=editsection=22 ] Leibniz may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist. [65] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#cite_note-65 Early in life, he documented the binary numeral systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system (base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix 2), then revisited that system throughout his career.[66]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#cite_note-66 He anticipated Lagrangian interpolationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_polynomial and algorithmic information theoryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory. His calculus ratiocinatorhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_ratiocinator anticipated aspects of the universal Turing machinehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine. In 1934, Norbert Wiener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wienerclaimed to have found in Leibniz's writings a mention of the concept of feedbackhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback, central to Wiener's later cybernetichttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics theory. In 1671, Leibniz began to invent a machine that could execute all four arithmetical operations, gradually improving it over a number of years. This Stepped Reckoner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_Reckoner attracted fair attention and was the basis of his election to the Royal Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society in 1673. A number of such machines were made during his years in Hanoverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanover, by a craftsman working under Leibniz's supervision. It was not an unambiguous success because it did not fully mechanize the operation of carrying. Couturat reported finding an unpublished note by Leibniz, dated 1674, describing a machine capable of performing some algebraic operations. [67] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#cite_note-67 Leibniz also devised a (now reproduced) cipher machine, recovered by Nicholas Rescher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Rescher in 2010.[68]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#cite_note-68 Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage and Ada Lovelace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace. In 1679, while mulling over his binary arithmetic, Leibniz imagined a machine in which binary numbers were represented by marbles, governed by a rudimentary sort of punched cards.[69]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#cite_note-69 Modern electronic digital computers replace Leibniz's marbles moving by gravity with shift registers, voltage gradients, and pulses of electrons, but otherwise they run roughly as Leibniz envisioned in 1679. On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Dear Prof. Tegmark, I have been trying to think of a way to make computationalism work but I can see no force that numbers might have on the physical world that might empower them. Instead I see computationalism as a form of magic. Serious magic if you will, but still magic, magic in the sense that saying the proper magic words or drawing certain figures or performing certain incantations or rituals will cause things to happen, presumably in imitation of those forms. But even though it is a form of magic, it may be that the numbers can be causal in some paranormal sense, if you can accept Leibniz's view that ideas seek perfection and physical realization is the highest perfection. If you can accept that, you might give some acceptance to the idea, and that actions can be preformed by intentions. Best, Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
computationalism as a form of magic
Dear Prof. Tegmark, I have been trying to think of a way to make computationalism work but I can see no force that numbers might have on the physical world that might empower them. Instead I see computationalism as a form of magic. Serious magic if you will, but still magic, magic in the sense that saying the proper magic words or drawing certain figures or performing certain incantations or rituals will cause things to happen, presumably in imitation of those forms. But even though it is a form of magic, it may be that the numbers can be causal in some paranormal sense, if you can accept Leibniz's view that ideas seek perfection and physical realization is the highest perfection. If you can accept that, you might give some acceptance to the idea, and that actions can be preformed by intentions. Best, Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
