RE: "Time" and my proposed model

From: Hal Ruhl <hjr.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 21:21:31 -0800

Dear Bruno:

Thank you for your comments they are helpful as always.
I took a quick look at your universal dovetailer post and then went back to
look at Tegmark's paper etc.

Rather than continue to struggle to describe my model mathematically, I
describe it below mechanically in terms of a sort of Turing machine - sort of.

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My Superverse is like a seething collection of a countably infinite variety
of the following machine each variety of which has countably infinite copies.

The machine has a printer that prints a single bit on a piece of paper and
drops it into the input slot. It reads the input and decides what bit to
print. Isolated machines print random bits.

Individual machines of the same variety can link up side by side when they
encounter each other and coordinate print decisions and cycles with up to X
neighbors on each side. These 2X + 1 machines form a region. The length
of print cycles is random but all linked machines print simultaneously.

Regions can link together upon chance encounters to form units of 2M + 1
regions in which M regions to either side provide input to the central region.

X and M are functions of the machine variety.

When units link up regions still take input only from M regions on either
side.

When N units link up the string made by reading the simultaneously printed
bits of the entire line of machines left to right or right to left - N
[2M(2X + 1) + 1] bits long - is isomorphic to a configuration of a new
universe [or two].

Each print cycle produces a new configuration of that universe.

N can randomly increase by adding random increments at random print cycles.

When N gets to a countable infinity the process stops and the total
structure breaks up into its individual machines and disperses into the
Superverse to start all over again.

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That seems to be all that is necessary mechanically to have one of these
universes look like ours and run a countably infinite number of universes
simultaneously.

For ours X would be something like 10 to the power + 35, M seems to be 6
and a region represents the portion of my discrete space grid to which an
isolated space point is confined. The X bits encode the location of the
point within its region.

It took maybe 20 lines of text. That is not much information. But what
kind of information is it? The only thing I can see is the relative
information of the difference between machines which is all possible
differences which is no information at all.

I do not see objective time in there either.

The entire line of machines is a finite, consistent FAS.

Each universe is discontinuously computational.

Increments in N correspond to the addition of decidables to the FAS.

Hal
Received on Wed Nov 15 2000 - 18:44:04 PST