The 'great programmer' could have the intelligence and consciousness of an
amoeba. And why bother talking about him if he's not needed - Ockam would
not approve.
The great program (Juergen, please correct me) looks something like LET
A=A+1 GOTO START. Any ideas on how a program runs when you don't have a
flow of time, but a static block universe?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug [SMTP:Douglas_Jones.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: 26 February 1999 14:32
> To: Higgo James
> Cc: Everything-List
> Subject: RE: delayed reply
>
> While it's true that you don't NEED infinite chains of Great Programmers,
> they happen anyway. Since all possible worlds exist, then all possible
> programmers exist, and all possible (finite) programs will eventually be
> written by them given sufficient time.
>
> And they don't necessarily have to be great programmers. Obviously, the
> vast majority of the infinite collection of programs that are written
> within
> these infinite worlds will be buggy, ill-behaved, or even ill advised,
> resulting in many worlds containing no self-aware-substructures at all, or
> perhaps even lawyers and politicians. But an infinite number of them will
> give rise to things like chocolate and love, and even more programmers
> capable of great programs. (Actually, I just thought of a Great Program,
> but alas the margins of this message are too small to contain it.)
>
> Of course, even the greatest of these great programs may not be fully
> appreciated by their authors, who generally only have time to observe a
> very
> small portion of their output bitstrings. How many times throughout the
> multiverse has a careless slip of the hand sent a blast of particularly
> strong caffeinated beverage (or a particularly hot cup of tea) cascading
> into the mechanism, prematurely terminating one of the greatest of all
> Great
> Programs?
>
> Fortunately for us, there are lots of worlds where the program doesn't get
> aborted. For any given Great Program, there ought to be a very large
> number
> of worlds wherein that particular program is written, and in some of them
> that program may have the opportunity to run long enough to give rise to
> beautifully complex worlds, which give rise to even more programmers
> writing
> more programs that define even more worlds, and on and on, until someone
> writes that original program again. And of course it doesn't stop there
> (and it definitely doesn't start there either).
>
> So for any given world, there are a large number of programmers in a large
> collection of worlds who can justifiably take credit for writing it, and
> also no credit at all, since there is also a large collection of worlds
> containing mindless automatons busily enumerating all possible programs.
>
> Seems to me there may be somewhere in all this a proof of the existence or
> non-existence of God, depending on which God Model one subscribes to (if
> any). Perhaps a proof of the existence of the immortal soul can be
> glimpsed. Of course, all this is impossible. But then, I long ago
> reconciled myself to the notion of living in a world of measure zero.
>
> Gotta go, the water is boiling and my teacup awaits.
>
>
> Doug
> http://www.station1.net/douglasjones/many.htm
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Higgo James [mailto:james.higgo.domain.name.hidden]
> > Sent: Friday, February 26, 1999 3:02 AM
> > To: 'juergen.domain.name.hidden'
> > Cc: 'everything-list.domain.name.hidden'; 'avoid-l.domain.name.hidden.edu'
> > Subject: RE: delayed reply
> >
> >
> > Great post from Juergen Schmidhuber. A superb explanation, from an
> > unexpected source (computer science), of the subjective nature of
> > everything. Lots of people - like me until recently - talk about
> > subjectivity and fail to see the enormity of the idea. I have ccd this
> to
> > Vic Stenger, who I have failed to move even slightly towards this view,
> > which he regards as bordering on solipsism (Hi, Vic, hope Japan
> > doesn't sink
> > into the sea as our economic data indicate).
> >
> > One point of disagreement with Juergen: you don't need infinite
> > strings of
> > great programmers. There need be no great programmer, just the
> > program. And
> > since there's no programmer to make it complicated, the program
> > is as simple
> > as it can be.
> >
> > James
> >
>
Received on Fri Feb 26 1999 - 06:56:27 PST