A random collection of questions about info-cosmology

From: Eric Hawthorne <egh.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 09:59:10 -0800

Some of these questions may be profound, and some silly. (In fact, they
may be sorted in order of profound to silly.) My education is spotty
in these areas. I'm most interested in specific references that help
answer (or destroy)
these questions.

1. What test could determine if a computational hypothesis holds?

2. Is it enough that a theory be elegant and explain all the known
physics observations,
or does the test of the theory also have to rule out all competing
theories, or at least force
all known competing theories to add ugly complex terms to themselves to
continue to work?

3. Is it not true that the kind of computation that computes the
universe or multiverse
must be an energy-free computation, because energy itself is INSIDE the
computed
universe, and it would be paradoxical if it also had to be OUTSIDE.

4. What range of energy regimes and physical laws are required to
produce spontaneous
order where the order retains the dynamism required for life. (e.g. as
opposed to producing
one big, boring crystal.)

5. Do these "special" energy regimes and physical law sets NECESSARILY
produce
spontaneous order with the required dynamism?

6. Why does spontaneous order emerge in these energy/law regimes?

7. If we were in a "possible world" where thermodynamics ran backwards
(entropy decreased),
would the time-perception of observers within that world also run
backwards? Would these
backwards worlds (as far as classical physical observations go, anyway)
thus be equivalent
to and theoretically equatable with the corresponding possible world
which was the same except
that thermodynamics runs forwards as we are used to?

8. What is the significance of the fact that observers like ourselves
(possibly with some notion of
free will) are separated in space and can only communicate / cooperate
with each other at the
speed of light. They cannot interfere with some decisions that the other
makes, because the other
has already made the decision before a lightspeed communication can tell
them or force them
to stop. Imagine Jane on Venus and Joe on Mars getting into an argument.
Immediately after
receiving Joe's last communication (which he sent an hour ago), Jane
decides to detonate her
solar-system bomb in frustration and spite. Nothing Joe can say or do
can stop her, because
it will take two hours for him to know she's about to push the button,
and communicate his
desperate and well-crafted plea for forgiveness. The idea of
FUNDAMENTALLY independent
decision makers "co-existing" seems interesting. Open ended question.
It's just as if Joe and
Jane lived at different times. (And yet they CAN communicate with each
other, just slowly. Hmmm)
Received on Sun Nov 02 2003 - 14:44:25 PST