Russell Standish writes:
> > Is it still correct to say that a computation running on two physical computers (that is, what
> > we think of as physical computers, whatever the underlying reality may be) has almost twice
> > the measure as it would have if it were running on one computer? Otherwise, there would
> > be no point backing up anything, relying instead on Platonia's infinite hard disk.
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> It does not change the measure of the computation in Platonia. I think
> that is the clear message from COMP. But it does change the measure
> within the "physical" universe that we inhabit.
>
> Backing up things is to improve robustness in the face of noise (or
> equivalently the second law). I don't know of anybody doing it to
> increase measure per se.
>
> On the other hand printing 100 copies of my book is all about
> increasing the measure of my book within our physical universe, and
> not backing it up (5 copies distributed to the main libraries of the
> world would suffice for that!)
By increasing the measure locally in our universe, are you making no difference, or only a
small amount of difference to the measure overall in Platonia? For example, if all the matter
in the universe were converted to computers repeatedly calculating "2+2=4" would that give
"2+2=4" a bit of an edge over "3+3=6" in Platonia? What about the far more complex
computations underlying human consciousness: my understanding was that the appearance
of an orderly physical world that goes along with these is not an optional extra, but a necessary
consequence of the type of computation under consideration. That would mean that all of the
measure attributed to a conscious moment is in fact tied up in the (apparent) physical world,
because there are no computations of the required type possible that don't give the appearance
of a physical world. (If there are, we have to explain why we don't experience them.) So if you
increase the measure locally by duplicating and running a sentient program, you are increasing the
measure in Platonia as a whole, since there isn't anywhere else where sentient programs of the
sort with which we are familiar might be hiding.
Stathis Papaioannou
_________________________________________________________________
Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Tue Aug 08 2006 - 09:56:01 PDT