Calm, Steve, calm. :-) Remember my comment the
other evening: It is the appropriate moment in
human thought to change the definitions of
'objective' and 'subjective'.
Implementation is the 'subjective'. Relationship
need not be. In fact, relationship is necessarily
-intangible-, but -is- the object of any search
for 'the objective'.
That 'relationship' is made explicit via implementation
does not detract from its purity of specification .. its
'objectivity'.
Nor is the objectivity of a 'relationship' diminished
by the fact that relationship can only be explore, examined,
or empirically specified, except via subjective 'instantiation'.
These simultaneous aspects of reality/being are superposed
with one another. Both present even as they are mutually
distinguishable.
This takes 'objectivity' to an independent level of
identification, beyond any potential for anomaly, for
variation; immune to perturbation and noise.
It finally allows us to consiliently accomodate
'subjective' truths with objective basese.
Objectivity is the intangible and uncorruptable
'relations', rules, and laws, of being and performance.
Subjectivity is all the necessary examples and instantiations
-by which- we can and do 'know' the 'relations', rules, and
laws, of being and performance.
Jamie Rose
MetaScience Academy. Japan.
Ceptual Institute. USA.
Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Hal,
A theorem doesn't weigh anything, and neither does a computation.
Nice try but that is a very smelly Red Herring. Even Conway's Life can
not exist, even in the abstract sense, without some association with the
possibility of being implemented and it is this Implementation that I am
asking about.
Let us consider Bruno's beloved Arithmetic Realism. Are we to believe
that Arithmetic can be considered to exist without, even tacitly, assuming
the possibility that numbers must be symbolic representable? If they can
be, I strongly argue that we have merely found a very clever definition for
the term meaninglessness.
I beg you to go directly to Turing's original paper discussing what has
become now know as a Turing Machine. You will find discussions of things
like tape and read/write head. Even if these, obviously physical,
entities are, as you say, by definition within a universe and that such
universes can be rigorously proven to be mathematical entities, this
only strengthens my case: An abstract entity must have a possibility of
being physically represented, even if in a Harry Potter Universe, to be a
meaningful entity. Otherwise what restrains us from endless Scholastic
polemics about how many Angels can dance on the head of a Pin and other
meaningless fantasies.
The fact that an Algorithm is independent of any particular
implementation is not reducible to the idea that Algorithms (or Numbers, or
White Rabbits, etc.) can exist without some REAL resources being used in
their implementation (and maybe some kind of thermodynamics).
BTW, have you read Julian Barbour's The End of Time? It is my opinion
that Julian's argument falls flat on its face because he is making the very
same mistake: Assuming that his best-matching scheme can exists without
addressing the obvious status that it is an NP-Complete problem of
uncountable infinite size. It is simply logically impossible to say that the
mere postulation of a Platonia allows for the a priori existence of the
solution to such a computationally intractable problem.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
- Original Message -
From: Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: Is the universe computable
At 13:19 19/01/04 -0500, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Where and when is the consideration of the physical resources required
for the computation going to obtain? Is my question equivalent to the old
first cause question?
Anything physical is by definition within a universe (by my definition,
anyway!). What are the physical properties of a system in our universe?
Mass, size, energy, electrical charge, partical composition, etc. If we
at least hypothetically allow for the existence of other universes,
wouldn't you agree that they might have completely different physical
properties? That they might not have mass, or charge, or size; or that
these properties would vary in some bizarre way much different from how
stable they are in our universe.
Consider Conway's 2-dimensional Cellular Automota universe called Life.
Take a look at http://rendell.server.org.uk/gol/tm.htm, an amazing
implementation of a computer, a Turing Machine, in this universe.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday looking at this thing, seeing how
the parts work. He did an incredible job in putting all the details
together to make this contraption work.
So we can have computers in the Life universe. Now consider this: what
is the mass of this computer?