Charles Goodwin wrote:
>> From: Marchal
>
>> Some time ago Charles Goodwin wrote:
>>
>> >(However I *still* don't understand why the laws of physics
>> operate inside a
>> >universe which is only a collection of disconnected
>> instants. Can anyone
>> >help?)
>>
>>
>> See http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/ (imo)
>
>
>Unfortunately I don't have time to browse through another list! Is there any
>particular discussion / part of it that you'd like to point me to? Or can you
>give a condensed version of the argument?
It would be a pleasure to give you a condensed version, and perhaps I will
do it once I have more time. It certainly bears on some FOR chapters, in
particular, and TOEs in general.
In one post, on this list, Juergen Schmidhuber proposes, as a TOE,
the collection of all running programs. David Deutsch answered that such
a TOE explains too much and should be trivial.
I have published (in the eighties) a similar proposal, not really as a
TOE,
but as a way to formulate the mind body problem in the computationalist
frame (i.e. with the hypothesis that we are machines or comp).
(See my 1988, 1991 paper).
So I both agree and disagree with Deutsch. As a TOE the running of the
universal program is trivial, but as a formulation of the mind body
problem it is highly non trivial.
In my (PhD) thesis I do precisely two things:
1) A "philosophical" yet rigorous argument showing the necessity that comp
entails a reversal "matter/mind" (or physics/"machine's psychology")
2) A translation in pure arithmetic of that argument (under the form
of an "interview" of an arbitrary sound universal machine. This leads
to purely arithmetical interpretations of quantum-like logics (showing
in particular some relationship between qualia and quanta).
That (technical) part + a recent paper by Rawling and Selesnick in the
Journal of ACM 2000 even gives me a way to describe quantum circuit in
the ... "mind border of the universal machine".
Thanks to the infinite patience of some everything-list correspondents
I have been able to give electronical explanation on both 1 and 2 in
english on the net.
Perhaps the simplest way for the "1)" is my recent discussion with Joel
Dobrzelewski, where UDA = Universal Dovetailer Argument. The universal
dovetailer (UD) is the program generating and running all program.
To begin with, a gentle explanation in english of my UD has been given
by Hal Finney:
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3041.html
Then, a step by step (Socratic) presentation of the "philosophical" yet
rigorous UDA argument is given in the following discussion with Joel
Dobrzelewski (+ a precision asked by George Levy):
UDA step 1
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2971.html
UDA step 2-6
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2978.html
UDA step 7 8
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2992.html
UDA step 9 10
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2998.html
UDA last question
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3005.html
Joel 1-2-3
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3013.html
Re: UDA...
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3019.html
George'sigh
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3026.html
Re:UDA...
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3035.html
Joel's nagging question
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3038.html
Re:UDA...
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3042.html
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal
Received on Tue Jul 10 2001 - 06:35:26 PDT