On 16 Sep 2011, at 21:15, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 9/15/2011 9:46 PM Bruno Marchal said the following:
On 15 Sep 2011, at 21:01, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 9/15/2011 7:34 PM Bruno Marchal said the following:
Hi Evgenii,
On 13 Sep 2011, at 21:45, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
...
At present, I am just trying to figure out our beliefs that
make the simulation hypothesis possible.
But this is really astonishing, and in quasi-contradiction which
what you say above. We just don't know any phenomena which are
not Turing emulable. As a theorician, but only as a theorician, I
can show the theoretical existence of non simulable phenomena,
but that really exists only in theory, or in mathematics. Worst,
most non simulable phenomena will be non distinguishable from
randomness, and if we are machine, we will never been able to
recognize a non Turing emulable phenomenon as such. It seems that
the question is more like "how can we believe something non
Turing emulable could exist in Nature".
Let me repeat your statement: "We just don't know any phenomena
which are not Turing emulable." I am not sure that it is so
evident.
Ah? You have a counter-exemple?
As I have written, the simulation hypothesis just does not work in
practice.
I don't understand what that means.
It means that what you can simulate in practice is actually pretty
limited. So when you speak about a counter-example, I do not
understand you. Just try to employ simulation in practice and you
will immediately see my point.
It is easy to say that everything in Nature is Turing computable.
Yet, it is hard to use this statement in practice. Exactly here I
see a discrepancy.
Well, after all my example is here
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/09/simulation-hypothesis-and-simulation-technology.html
OK. Note that the mechanist hypothesis entails the falsity of the
simulation hypothesis. If I am a machine, then the physical universe,
actually any physical (and epistemological) things, CANNOT be Turing
emulable. Mechanism entails the falsity of the digital physics
assumption, and it is an open problem if it does not also entail also
the falsity of Deustch Thesis (The thesis that physical things are
emulable in polynomial time by a quantum computer). With mechanism we
can only hope that the white rabbits are relatively rare, not that
they are inexistent.
So I tend to agree with you. As far as I think that mechanism is
plausible, I think that we cannot simulate most natural phenomenon. In
particular we cannot simulate a brain, seen as a physical object, and
that is why we have to choose a level of substitution, and hope our
"computations" does not rely on a lower level. Mechanism is just the
belief that there is such a truncation level, like we have good
evidences that it exists for all organs of the body. There are many
strong evidence that indeed biology, by its fuzzy redundancy, does
exploit a lot the mechanist truncation of information.
I insist on this: mechanism is the less reductionist hypothesis ever
proposed in the human and exact sciences, and it makes almost
everything concrete non Turing emulable, except oneself. So, despite
many confusions on this, mechanism is almost the opposite of the
simulation hypothesis. When you will study the UD theorem, you should
understand this by yourself.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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