Hi Fred:
> I have not corresponded with the distribution in quite a while. Your
posting
> below seems to have caused some furor.
That's good, right?!
> I tend to feel that the position that our universe is a digital
> cellular automaton is vulnerable, mainly because it implies that we
> can create universes containing self-aware structures (SAS's) that
> our much simpler than the one we inhabit, by using some
> multi-dimensional analogue to Rule-30 below.
I don't see why our being able to create life within cellular automata makes
the view that we too live in a cellular automaton weak or vulnerable. There
is no reason why a self-aware entity within cellular automaton wouldn't be
interested in cellular automata too.
Within the Universe that generates all things... All things will happen.
> A resolution to the White Rabbits problem accepted by most on the
> distribution requires us to insist that we live in the simplest
> possible universe containing SAS's. So it would be impossible or
> highly improbable that we can create universes with SAS's (e.g., by
> constructing cellular automata).
I just don't understand the White Rabbit problem. Again, in a Universe
where Everything happens, some worlds are going to have white rabbits, and
others blue, and others flying, and others hopping.
Probability has nothing to do with it. (And is meaningless, in my opinion,
when it comes to infinite collections of things.)
We happen to find ourselves in a world where most rabbits stay on the
ground. But to conclude that it has always been so, or that it will always
remain so, or that it is somehow "more likely than the alternatives" is just
plain silly. No justification is needed for what we see.
As I suggested in my other post, "leaping Leporidae", each of us has little
idea what 'really' happened before we were born... or what will happen when
we die.
Are you absolutely sure the world is what you think it is?
See 'The Matrix', or 'The Thirteenth Floor', or 'eXistenZ', or 'The Truman
Show', or better yet: all of them. Now stir gently.
> If you could, and you could prove that you have created a universe
> inhabited by SAS's, that would indeed be some achievement, and it
> would force a change of thinking in many.
That's what I'm here for - to change the thinking of many!
Anyway, I don't have a mathematical proof yet, but I do have some nice,
ultra-high-resolution photographs of these SAS's:
http://cvm.msu.edu/~dobrzele/ideas/dp/leo/2dRule30.htm
And some exquisitely animated 3D models that are so lifelike, you cannot
tell that they aren't real:
http://digitalphysics.org/Automata/Triangle/
> Whether our universe is digital or continuous is harder to decide.
> Even with a set of quantized universes, we could have a continuum of
> 'different sized' quanta building blocks, though it may not affect
> the physics for each of the universes.
That's a great way of putting it! Different sized quanta.
--
Philosophically speaking, challenging the idea of white rabbits...
What if our current world was deliberately made "ordinary" and "regular" so
that we can get our bearings among all the multitudes of crazy realities out
there? A kind of VR training ground for digital spirits that had grown
tired of VR heaven and purposely instantiated themselves into corporeal (but
still digital) bodies in order to fully experience the pleasures of freedom
outside? Outside of gravity and bills and carpel tunnel syndrome.
What if our world is just a puzzle we've constructed for ourselves to keep
us busy for a few decades? And when we solve it, and learn the truth that
all is virtual, we'll be set free to create new worlds of our own design and
safely explore the fantastic worlds of others?
Just wondering...
Joel
Received on Wed Jun 20 2001 - 12:09:13 PDT