Re: Fwd: Implementation/Relativity

From: Hans Moravec <hpm.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 13:18:00 -0400

Russell Standish <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
[re: AIs in video games]
> But then you would just have another SAS embedded within our
> mathematical structure. We already have these, namely homo sapiens,
> such an entity is not too surprising. What I was asking was whether it
> was possible to embed a mathematical structure - eg Conway's Game of
> Life - that contained a SAS. It for from obvious that this is
> possible, and if it were, it would imply that we were not in a minimal
> information world.

The internal logic of a simulation has only coincidental relationship
to our physics. We find it embedded in our universe because that's
the only place we could see it. But somewhere out there in mathematics
land is a universe that consists of the interior of the simulation,
following its logic, embedded in nothing else.

Conway's Life can host Turing machines (Gosper and others invented the
logic gates and memory cells that make it possible, and constructed at
least portions of both TMs and self replicators). Any AI that can
be described algorithmically can exist in a Life array, so does.
Received on Fri Jul 30 1999 - 10:21:25 PDT