Re: on formally describable universes and measures

From: <juergen.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 10:52:43 +0100

From: George Levy, Wed, 3 Jan 2001 13:16:37

>Talking about optimizing the universal Turing machine is completely
>ridiculous and pointless. It could be blindingly fast or slow as
>molasses.

The point of optimizing it is precisely to build the theoretically
fastest computer C. The results in section 6 derive from the fact that
even on C some things are hard to compute.

>Since perceived time is relative to the observer it would not
>make a bit of difference.

It would, because certain observers and universes are much easier
to compute than others. According to section 6, this has immediate
consequences for the probability distribution on the possible futures,
given particular past observations. Futures that are hard to compute
are less likely.

>And BTW I do believe that engineering will
>drive philosophy by making quantum computers work.

Some might feel tempted to call this wishful thinking.

Juergen
Received on Mon Jan 08 2001 - 01:55:33 PST