Re: Let There Be Something

From: George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:17:36 -0800

I conjecture that if one can design physical laws for a universe capable
of 1) supporting the NAND function 2) storing (locally) 1 bit, 3)
transmitting 1 bit from one point to another point, then one could also
generate a Turing machine in this universe which would then be capable
of supporting machine duplication (life) and AI (consciousness.) The
basic physical laws (TOE) in such a universe would be very simple. One
would need 1) a logical law: NAND; 2) a state law to allow the existence
of "states"; and a concept of extension or space such that different
states can exist at different locations and be transmitted from one
location to another location.

A related question is what is the smallest number of dimension for such
a universe, that can support life and consciousness.

George



Russell Standish wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:18:01AM +0100, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>
>>Hi Russel,
>>
>>Le Jeudi 03 Novembre 2005 22:11, Russell Standish a ??crit??:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Even then, there is still a loophole. I suspect that 3D environment
>>>are far more likely to evolve the complex structures needed for
>>>consciousness, so that conscious GoL observers are indeed a rare
>>>thing. I don't know if this is the case or not, but if true it would
>>>make a GoL example irrelevant. More interesting is to look at some 3D
>>>CA rules that appear to support universal computation - Andy Wuensche
>>>had a paper on this in last year's ALife in Boston. No arXiv ref I'm
>>>afraid, but you could perhaps email him for an eprint...
>>>
>>>Cheers
>>>
>>>
>>But 3D, 2D CA is of no relevance... the way we see the computation through the
>>gol as nothing in common with how hypothetical living being inside the gol
>>would perceive their environment.
>>
>>Quentin
>>
>>
>
>True, but I suspect it does have impact on the likelihood of conscious
>observers arising in such a system. In a plenitude of CAs of different
>rules and dimensionality, initialised at random, I suspect that 3D or
>higher CAs will dominate the measure of those CAs that generate the
>complex data structures needed for conscious observers. Perhaps 3D is
>even favoured. This is, of course, a hunch to be proven or disproven
>by some future mathematical genius.
>
>Cheers
>
>
>
Received on Fri Nov 04 2005 - 18:20:18 PST