Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 2009/1/6 Abram Demski <abramdemski.domain.name.hidden>:
>> Thomas,
>>
>> If time is merely an additional space dimension, why do we experience
>> "moving" in it always and only in one direction? Why do we remember
>> the past and not the future? Could a being move in some spatial
>> dimension in the same way we move through time, and in doing so treat
>> time more like we treat space? Et cetera.
>
> You could model a block universe as a big stack of Life boards, where
> the time dimension is represented by the spatial displacement between
> the boards. There's no way the observers in such an arrangement can
> step out of one board onto another, backwards or out of sequence. Some
> would say that the stack of boards does not count as a computation,
> and others that even if it counts as a computation it doesn't count as
> a conscious computation; that to reach such states you need causality
> and for causality you need fundamentally real time, not block
> pseudo-time. I don't see any justification for such claims beyond a
> desire to preserve the magic in the world.
If you don't require causality or something else that provides a continuum
topology then the boards can be infinitesimally thin and without any intrinsic
order. That would mean that a single "board", by itself (a "state" in machine
terminology) would have to count as a computation. That's why Bruno insists on
a digital structure, but even in his model there is the UD running in the
background and providing an order.
Brent
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Received on Tue Jan 06 2009 - 14:18:12 PST