Re: Why our universe is open.

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue Aug 22 07:40:22 2000

Saibal Mitra wrote

>An interesting question can now be asked: Does the prisoner only exist
>when the computer is simulating his universe, or does his universe exist
>independently of our universe and simulating his universe simply means
>that we can take look at his universe and even interact with him?

Indeed. Physicality is a first person concept. To instantiate a
computation relatively to another computation will entangle these
computations and make possible some ``dream sharing".
This is also why there is no need for an ultimate computer. Arithmetical
truth is enough. This removes infinite regress in the computationnalist
"everything hypothesis".
A nice fiction book on that thema is ``Permutation City" by Greg Egan.

Bruno
Received on Tue Aug 22 2000 - 07:40:22 PDT