Charles Goodwin wrote:
>> From: Marchal > >> Some time ago Charles Goodwin wrote: >> >> >(However I *still* don't understand why the laws of physics >> operate inside a >> >universe which is only a collection of disconnected >> instants. Can anyone >> >help?) >> >> >> See http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/ (imo) > > >Unfortunately I don't have time to browse through another list! Is there any >particular discussion / part of it that you'd like to point me to? Or can you >give a condensed version of the argument? It would be a pleasure to give you a condensed version, and perhaps I will do it once I have more time. It certainly bears on some FOR chapters, in particular, and TOEs in general. In one post, on this list, Juergen Schmidhuber proposes, as a TOE, the collection of all running programs. David Deutsch answered that such a TOE explains too much and should be trivial. I have published (in the eighties) a similar proposal, not really as a TOE, but as a way to formulate the mind body problem in the computationalist frame (i.e. with the hypothesis that we are machines or comp). (See my 1988, 1991 paper). So I both agree and disagree with Deutsch. As a TOE the running of the universal program is trivial, but as a formulation of the mind body problem it is highly non trivial. In my (PhD) thesis I do precisely two things: 1) A "philosophical" yet rigorous argument showing the necessity that comp entails a reversal "matter/mind" (or physics/"machine's psychology") 2) A translation in pure arithmetic of that argument (under the form of an "interview" of an arbitrary sound universal machine. This leads to purely arithmetical interpretations of quantum-like logics (showing in particular some relationship between qualia and quanta). That (technical) part + a recent paper by Rawling and Selesnick in the Journal of ACM 2000 even gives me a way to describe quantum circuit in the ... "mind border of the universal machine". Thanks to the infinite patience of some everything-list correspondents I have been able to give electronical explanation on both 1 and 2 in english on the net. Perhaps the simplest way for the "1)" is my recent discussion with Joel Dobrzelewski, where UDA = Universal Dovetailer Argument. The universal dovetailer (UD) is the program generating and running all program. To begin with, a gentle explanation in english of my UD has been given by Hal Finney: http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3041.html Then, a step by step (Socratic) presentation of the "philosophical" yet rigorous UDA argument is given in the following discussion with Joel Dobrzelewski (+ a precision asked by George Levy): UDA step 1 http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2971.html UDA step 2-6 http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2978.html UDA step 7 8 http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2992.html UDA step 9 10 http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2998.html UDA last question http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3005.html Joel 1-2-3 http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3013.html Re: UDA... http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3019.html George'sigh http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3026.html Re:UDA... http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3035.html Joel's nagging question http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3038.html Re:UDA... http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3042.html Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal