juergen.domain.name.hidden wrote:
>
> > I have sympathy for one point of Juergen's though - in the space of
> > descriptions (which we should agree by extension of logical positivism
> > is all that can be discussed), computable descriptions must have
> > higher measure than noncomputable ones. However, it seems to me that a
> > random oracle is an essential component of consciousness and free will
> > - why this is so I can only guess - and so the anthropic principle
> > constrains the interesting universe to having these. It could be that
> > this random oracle is simply a consequence of 1st person indeterminism
> > that arises through the duplicability assumption, as Bruno points out,
> > but then why should duplicability be necessary?
>
> There is no evidence whatsoever that we need a random oracle.
>
I have posted a number of times on this subject, and from experience,
I doubt I could convince you, even with a large reply. However, I
consider both the phenomna of "free will", and quantum mechanics to be
evidence of a random oracle at play. Note - I use the word _evidence_
advisedly - its not proof. It is possible to explain away these
phenomena by more straightforward mechanistic means, however, all
these explanations I've seen to date have been thin and unconvincing.
Incidently, whether UD* (output of the UD) is countable or uncountable
is irrelevant for whether observers see random values in their
histories or not, since at any point in time, their histories are
finite. However, the measure issue is important, as computable
histories have higher measure than ones that are only partially
computable. Therefore, if there are random oracles in nature, there
must be a good anthropic reason why they're there.
Cheers
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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Fri Feb 09 2001 - 20:48:48 PST