Re: The Rapidly-Accelerating Computer

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 11:35:48 -0700

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 09:36:53AM -0700, hal.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> Doesn't this assume that objective time is discrete? With continuous
> objective time there is no objective fact of the matter about whether a
> given interval is finite or infinite. There are algebraic transformations
> like t' = 1/t which turn finite times into infinite, and vice versa.
>
> In the example above with the RAC, you have a time t measured by an
> ordinary observer and a time t' measured by the RAC. Then in the CSO
> case you have the time t measured by the CSO and time t' measured by an
> ordinary computer. The relationship between t and t' seems to be the
> same in each case. The only difference is in terms of "objective time",
> but it's not clear that is uniquely defined (or even meaningful at all).

Ok, forget about the notion of objective time then, and just think about
whether the universe contains an observer moment when the oberver
perceives that the computer has gone through an infinite number of
cycles. The answer is no in the CSO case since at any given moment in the
universe an ordinary computer would have gone through only a finite
number of cycles.
Received on Fri Oct 13 2000 - 11:37:47 PDT