Hal Ruhl wrote:
> I see nothing in the rest of your post that makes my believe there is
> a difference of kind between rocks and humans.
I believe it is a mistake to concentrate only on the reductionist theory
of the "very small", and to assume that there
is nothing else interesting about systems that are larger. Theories of
spacetime and matter's "unit" composition
are not the be all and end all. To explain emergent system behaviour,
you have to have a theory whose language
is a vocabulary of various kinds of complex properties. This is because
emergent systems, as one of their
interesting properties, do not depend on all of the properties of their
substrate. They only depend on those properties
of the substrate which are essential to the interaction constraints that
determine the macro behaviour of the system.
Thus, in theory, you can change the system's substrate and still have
the same complex system, at its relevant
level of description.
However, that being said, I think, Hal, that we're on a similar
wavelength re. "fundamental" "info" physics.
Ref. my previous everything-list posts on the subject:
Riffing on Wolfram
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4123.html
Re: The universe consists of patterns of arrangement of 0's and 1's?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4174.html
Re: The universe consists of patterns of arrangement of 0's and 1's?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4183.html
Constraints on "everything existing"
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4412.html
Re: Constraints on "everything existing"
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4414.html
Re: Constraints on "everything existing"
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4427.html
Re: Running all the programs
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4525.html
Re: 2C Mary - How minds perceive things and "not things"
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4534.html
Re: are we in a simulation?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4566.html
Re: Fw: Something for Platonists
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4594.html
Re: Why is there something instead of nothing?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4896.html
Re: Why is there something instead of nothing?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4900.html
Re: Is the universe computable?
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4950.html
Warning, my vocab in these posts is a little informal.Go for the
fundemental concepts if you can get them out of the writing.
Cheers, Eric
Received on Sat Apr 17 2004 - 21:27:36 PDT