On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 02:28:27PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> of brain and the like. I of course respect completely that opinion; but I
> point on the fact
> that once you make the computationnalist hypothesis then it is the reverse
> which becomes
> true: even if locally pi is a production of the human brain, globally the
> laws of physics logically
> develop on the set of all possible beliefs of all possible universal and
> immaterial (mathematical)
> machines embedded in all possible computations (computationnal histories).
I respect that opinion, I'm just interested in theories which are
instrumental in solving this universe's problems. You know, trivial stuff:
wars, famines and death. A TOE which says: universe is information, every
possible pattern exists, observers which can observe themselves will, is a
bit sterile in that respect.
There's a little problem with some practical relevance I don't have an
answer, though, which I'd like to have your opinion on.
We have a finite system, iteratively evolving along a trajectory in state space.
We have observers within that system, subjectively experiencing a flow of
time.
I have trouble alternating between the internal and the external observer
view. So we have a machine crunching bits, sequentially falling from state to
state. This spans a continous trajectory. We can make a full record of that
trajectory, eliminating a time axis. When does the subjective observation of
existence assemble into place? The first time the computation was made?
I have trouble seeing my subjective observer experience as a sequence of
frames, already computed. Is the first run magical, and the static record
dead meat? I'm confused.
Let's bring a little dust into the run. Let's say we use a HashLife approach,
which assembles the flow from lightcone hashes. Does this screw up the
subjective experience? If yes, how?
What about computing a record of all possible trajectories? Is enumerating
all possible states sufficient to create an observer experience?
I haven't spent much time on this, so maybe you can bring some light into the
matter.
> That's all my thesis
> is about. I don't pretend it is obvious, for sure.
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="
http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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Received on Fri Jan 16 2004 - 11:38:14 PST