Re: A nerw idea to play with

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue Aug 31 11:31:55 1999

Gilles Henri wrote:

>I REFUSED to see this movie! (ok, I may be wrong, but let say I refuse to
>pay to see this movie, I will wait until it comes on TV)

I like very much your sense of humour, Gilles.

>Again all this stuff relies on what I called comp2, ie the hypothesis that
>a digital simulation can be at some level completely equivalent to an
>analogic physical system.
 
Being digitalisable ourself (with comp) we don't
need to be emulated at *any* analogical level (if that exist at all).
Comp = there is a level where we are psychologicaly equivalent, no more.

> To speak like Jacques, I think that's the worst
>crackpot idea that emerged from computer science!

Do you really think that someone believe a digital machine can emulate
in extenso (completely) an analogical machine (if that exist) ?
I don't believe that such an idea ever emerged from computer science.
If that idea is what you mean by comp2, I think that this
crackpot idea emerges in your own mind.

To be sure, there are sense in which digital system can emulate
continuous
one, and may be there are sense in which comp2 could be interesting after
all, but I have not the time to deal with constructive
mathematics now, alas :-(.


>The flaw is that even if it were the case, the required information is so
>huge that it could not be physically realized by any system in our
>Universe. You must invoke a super Universe where the amount of available
>information would by far exceed that in our own universe. So it won't take
>a million years to do it. It will never be done...

False. By "if it were the case" I guess you mean there is a level where
we are digitalisable. In that case, in some definite sense, 'it' *has*
been
done, in the atemporal and immaterial realm of the relations between
numbers.

Now, even about the question "will we build real simulacron in some
futur?", I am no more so sure it is impossible.
There was a time I was "sure" it was impossible. But reflexion on the
possibly practical existence of quantum
computing (i.e. the ability to compute 'Fourier transform' on arbitrarily
large
set of outputs of some programs) makes me *less sure* about that.

Especially because we don't need to emulate any environment at all
(still less universes) only
counterfactually related correlations between observers (classical UTM).

So I begin to think that it is not entirely inconcevable that simulacron
may indeed be build, for exemple by those among us who believe their
brains are hot (classical) machines. (It is comp with high level of
subst.)

But even today children begins to share complex virtual environment,
through the net, and we can see the birth of truly virtual kind
of cities ...

and you know what happened when amoebas invented the phones, (the brain)
so I think it is hard to imagine what the net will gives ...
... in the long run.

Don't look at the movie Gilles, read the book :-)

Bruno
Received on Tue Aug 31 1999 - 11:31:55 PDT