Re: The Game of Life

From: Jerry Clark <Jerry.Clark.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 16:23:00 +0000

Christopher Maloney wrote:

> Jerry Clark wrote:
> >
> > Such 'Life' evolution raises an interesting question: These SAS's would ...
> > Sooner or later a physicists would hear about
> > this new development and the realisation would be made that their universe
> > *is* a Life simulation.
>
> Would it? This is a questions I've thought about some. Would the
> fundamental mechanism of the life simulation be deducible by these
> SAS's? Perhaps the only things that would be "knowable" by these
> SAS's would be higher level structures, which they might interpret
> as, for example, eleven dimensional quantum mechanical strings, or
> something.

I didn't say that the fundamental life simulation would be deducible by these
Life SAS's, just that they would begin to play around with the 'Life' game and
then notice a correspondence between some of the structures they were
discovering in their Life simulations and some of the structures their
particle physicists were discovering. Once such a coincidence had been
noticed they'd be able to develop testable hypotheses that would go to
show that their universe was a Life world, and then they'd be left with
trying to calculate the boundary conditions (probably impossible in their
case).

>
>
> But, assuming that the lowest level structure of their world is
> discernable, I would expect there to be a significant difference
> between the measure of those creatures and the measure of other
> creatures - us perhaps.
>

I don't know on what grounds you make that assumption but I'll go
along with it. I'm definitely not assuming that our universe is a
game of Life.


>
> So if we further assume that our universe is *not* a game of life,
> and if the AUH is true, then by the SSA I would conclude that the
> probability of any SAS finding itself to be in a game of life is
> probably zero. That is, the set of SAS's inside a game of life is
> of measure zero relative to the set of SAS's inside universes like
> ours.

Can you please define SSA for me...


>
> In the bizarre nature of infinite sets, not all SAS's are in
> universes like ours, but in fact the probability of being in a
> universe like ours is 100%.
>

I don't believe in infinite sets. But I'd accept a rephrasing along the
lines of "the probability of being in a universe like ours is very close
to 100%". Still like to see the reasoning though. (Or perhaps a reference).


>
> >
> > More interestingly still: when are *we* going to discover some
> > CA or similar which
> > turns out to be *our* universe? In my lifetime I hope.
>
> CA?
>
> --
> Chris Maloney
> http://www.chrismaloney.com
>
> "Donuts are so sweet and tasty."
> -- Homer Simpson
Received on Mon Dec 06 1999 - 07:21:13 PST

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