On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 10:23 PM Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Ha! "Layman's terms" you say ? > > Sorry to hear of another casualty of covid... and admittedly Conway was an > important thinker... but this rambling interview seems best described as > confused. Does it really serve to further his legacy? > > Randomness itself is an illusion in many ways - a semantic contrivance > used as a strawman, impossible to document as relevant on a large scale or > outside of narrow constraints - but for that imply determinism, then we > always seem to end up with the need for some kind of embedded memory or > lingering "information field"...with spiritual overtones which then create > another issue. > > This is the strange and ironic paradox for an atheist like Conway. The > "Game of Life" can in fact be used as the very basis of a kind of > science-based spirituality - for those so inclined. > > Everything that occurs on a large enough scale seems to possess a > lingering echo of the past - which even as minimal causality, will be > labeled as deism. And why not? > > He believes we live in a universe which affords us "free choice" or "free will" so for him the deterministic laws of classical mechanics must be incorrect since they don`t allow us to make choices which are not determined by the past. However, for a similar reason he also thinks quantum mechanics must be incorrect because he argues that randomness is also a type of determinism. As he points out random numbers which affect outcomes today could have been generated or "rolled" by God in the past or even outside of time. However, unless the current laws of physics are regarded as a reliable proof of God, I don`t think his intention in this exercise was to refute the the existence of God. The the link I provided below starts the video at the relevant part of the interview. His explanation lasts about 8 minutes. Harry > > H LV <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The mathematician John Conway died in April from complications due to > Covid-19. He was most well known for his Game of Life, however he felt his > best work was his discovery of surreal numbers which grew out his interest > in the game of Go. > > In this interview clip John Conway explains in layman's terms why the > opposite of deterministic is not random. He says that Einstein`s > famous remark that "God does not play dice with the universe" is irrelevant > because he shows how randomness is also a type of determinism. > > https://youtu.be/r1bDSlt1n9M?t=2294 > > Harry > > >
