Re: are we in a simulation?

From: George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:58:24 -0700

Hi Stephen,



Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Dear Friends,
>
> Does computational complexity (such as NP-Completeness, etc.)
> and computational "power" requirements factor into the idea of
> simulated worlds?
>
>

It may. Also important is the issue that Tegmark raised in the
Scientific American article about the ordering of an infinite set. The
probability of the occurence of an element of any subset (say the even
numbers) can be altered depending on how the element of the set (say the
natural numbers) are ordered.

So if we assume that the multiworlds are an infinite set, to compute the
probability of any event we need to know how the multiwords are ordered.
I conjecture that the ordering should be anthropy related.

Let's consider a double slit diffraction experiment. The multiworlds are
ordered according to the output diffraction pattern. Since the phases
add up to produce this pattern, it seems that the process is linear,
(thus simplifying computation) so computational complexity and
computational power do seem to be of relevance.

George.
Received on Thu Jun 12 2003 - 22:59:39 PDT