Re: Juergen's paper

From: H J Ruhl <HalRuhl.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 23:28:22 -0800

Dear Russell:

snip

> >
> > I do not see that at all. Why does it need a history? All it needs is
> the
> > capability of finding a next state.
>
>It doesn't need the capacity to find the next state. If it has that
>capacity, then the history is computable.

I said "capability of finding a next state". I did not indicate how it
found such a next state. It could for example do so at random.

>It is a poor assumption to
>assume that the universe is deterministic (history computable from
>initial state).

That is part of what I am trying to say. How can one definitely associate
a particular history [parsed particular string] with a particular universe
unless one can make such a deterministic computation of the successive
segments from their individual prior segment?


>Histories are any description unfolding with time, whatever that
>happens to be. Time appears to be necessary for consiousness.

Why must there be an unfolding. A universe can be just a sequence of
completely random states.

I see universes as a sequence of states where each transition is partially
determined randomly. How much random content effects the properties of a
universe. But there is no unique identifiable history for such a
universe. Each of its states can be considered to be an initial state.


> >
> > That was not my point. The initial state of a universe is not
> computable -
> > it just was. The point is the method of association of any history with a
> > particular universe.
> >
>
>My point is that any history just is. However, those that are
>computable from a simple initial state are dense in a large subset of
>such histories (subset proportional to 2^{-C}, where C is the
>complexity of the initial state), so we should expect a random sample
>to select a history that is approximately a computable outcome from a
>simple initial state.

I see the degree of random content in the finding of the next state as
having a uniform distribution and any degree of random content can belong
to an infinite number of different universes.

> > As to your example how would you parse it into segments each describing a
> > state of the universe? The universe may be doing so and thus computing
> > Omega and not know it. This as I understand it is possible for non
> halting
> > computers since no selection to compute Omega was made.
>
>Good point - perhaps Omega is a bad example. It is possible that an
>algorithm exists for computing the binary expansion of Omega, its just
>that you can never prove that it does. However, there are uncountably
>infinite number of binary strings for which no algorithm
>exists. Choose any one of these.

I do not see that the absence of an algorithm for computing the complete
string is relevant to the mechanism of computing a segment from the prior
segment.

Yours

Hal
Received on Tue Jan 22 2002 - 20:31:05 PST