Re: Tegmark is too physics-centric
Hi Russell, Let me try to be a little more specific. You say in your Occam paper at http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/occam/node4.html The first assumption to be made is that observers will find themselves embedded in a temporal dimension. A Turing machine requires time to separate the sequence of states it occupies as it performs a computation. Universal Turing machines are models of how humans compute things, so it is possible that all conscious observers are capable of universal computation. Yet for our present purposes, it is not necessary to assume observers are capable of universal computation, merely that observers are embedded in time. Are you meaning physical time, psychological time, or just a (linear) order? I am just trying to have a better understanding. Bruno At 18:00 23/02/04 +1100, Russell Standish wrote: Comments interspersed. On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 07:15:45AM -0500, Kory Heath wrote: I understand this perspective, but for what it's worth, I'm profoundly out of sympathy with it. In my view, computation universality is the real key - life and consciousness are going to pop up in any universe that's computation universal, as long as the universe is big enough and/or it lasts long enough. (And there's always enough time and space in the Mathiverse!) Computational universality is not sufficient for open-ended evolution of life. In fact we don't what is sufficient, as evidenced by it being an open problem (see Bedau et al., Artificial Life 6, 363.) I also suspect that it is not necessary for the evolution of SASes, but this is obvious a debatable point.
Re: Tegmark is too physics-centric
I think that psychological time fits the bill. The observer needs a a temporal dimension in which to appreciate differences between states. Physical time presupposes a physics, which I haven't done in Occam. It is obviously a little more structured than an ordering. A space dimension is insufficient for an observer to appreciate differences, isn't it? Cheers On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 02:11:07PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Russell, Let me try to be a little more specific. You say in your Occam paper at http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/occam/node4.html The first assumption to be made is that observers will find themselves embedded in a temporal dimension. A Turing machine requires time to separate the sequence of states it occupies as it performs a computation. Universal Turing machines are models of how humans compute things, so it is possible that all conscious observers are capable of universal computation. Yet for our present purposes, it is not necessary to assume observers are capable of universal computation, merely that observers are embedded in time. Are you meaning physical time, psychological time, or just a (linear) order? I am just trying to have a better understanding. Bruno At 18:00 23/02/04 +1100, Russell Standish wrote: Comments interspersed. On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 07:15:45AM -0500, Kory Heath wrote: I understand this perspective, but for what it's worth, I'm profoundly out of sympathy with it. In my view, computation universality is the real key - life and consciousness are going to pop up in any universe that's computation universal, as long as the universe is big enough and/or it lasts long enough. (And there's always enough time and space in the Mathiverse!) Computational universality is not sufficient for open-ended evolution of life. In fact we don't what is sufficient, as evidenced by it being an open problem (see Bedau et al., Artificial Life 6, 363.) I also suspect that it is not necessary for the evolution of SASes, but this is obvious a debatable point. -- A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Tegmark is too physics-centric
Dear Russel, Could we associate this psychological time with the orderings that obtain when considering successive measurements of various measurements of non-commutative canonically conjugate (QM) states? Also, re your Occam's razor paper, have you considered the necessity of a principle that applies between observers, more than that involved with the Anthropic principle? Something along the lines of: the allowable communications between observers is restrained to only those that are mutually consistent. We see hints of this in EPR situations. ;-) Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 5:19 PM Subject: Re: Tegmark is too physics-centric I think that psychological time fits the bill. The observer needs a a temporal dimension in which to appreciate differences between states. Physical time presupposes a physics, which I haven't done in Occam. It is obviously a little more structured than an ordering. A space dimension is insufficient for an observer to appreciate differences, isn't it? Cheers snip
