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why would complex interactions not emerge from a computer simulation One answer is "They will, and surprisingly quickly. But they will be a completely differen

why would complex interactions not emerge from a computer simulation One answer is "They will, and surprisingly quickly. But they will be a completely different set of complex interactions than are observed in the real world, because of some roundoff error in the binary representation of the Nth digit of some apparently unimportant constant. Unfortunately, because the system is complex, you'll probably spend the rest of your career trying to track down that error, and fail." Another answer is: They would, if the simulation was comprehensive enough. Unfortunately, phase space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Seriously: Your mind reels when confronted with the number of different molecular interactions going on inside the "simplest" single-celled prokaryote, so you abstract it away, almost as a reflex, to stop yourself from going mad. Then you abstract away the first-order abstraction. Then you keep going. Soon you begin to imagine that you can model an entire collection of a trillion organisms, just as a naive programmer imagines that they can rewrite Windows in three days if only they use a powerful enough language. It's a mere matter of programming!

eru 16y ago
If you wanted an exact simulation, the n-th digit is important. But if you just want some system where some other (possibly intelligent) behaviour emerges, the n-th digit is not important.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Well, it would by all means be awesome if we could build an intelligent system that didn't match the one we already have. And we even have an existence proof that such a thing is possible, given enough design time. Unfortunately, the existence proof says nothing about the odds of doing so very quickly -- in less than, say, a million years, which is very quick by historical standards.
yungchin 16y ago
As for the first answer: we all have to learn to deal with roundoff error. That's not by principle an obstacle. The other answer contains an implicit assumption that's not obviously correct: you suggest that complexity only arises when you enumerate every possible dimension of phase space. But physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules, without taking into account every particle's state vector. Finally, did you really try to equate my statement to the statement that Windows could be written in three days? ...
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  No, I'm poking fun at Kurzweil's 2020 deadline, not at you. You appear to have been wise enough not to specify a deadline... As for this statement: physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules Absolutely, but it doesn't follow that every complex behavior can be reproduced from simple rules. To overgeneralize from success in one field is the occupational illness of futurists. It's certainly a key problem for Singularitarians, who tend to get so enthusiastic about Moore's Law that they forget that most of the world has nothing to do with microelectronics.
  - yungchin 16y ago
    Haha, well I guess the fact that for a moment I felt that was condescending mostly says a lot about me ;)
- pjscott 16y ago
  Biological systems are approximate. I would assume that they can deal with a little rounding error.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    At the lowest level biology is physics. And physical systems are not approximate, they are exactly what they are, and a small round-off error can give a huge difference in the specific outcome, even if on a macroscopic level that outcome might be indistinguishable from the 'real' outcome. So the real question then becomes does biology tolerate working on an approximation of the underlying physics and does that simulated biology still have the ability to exhibit intelligence. I think the first is a maybe, the second a yes but I couldn't give you any reasons why other than that it might be that our biology needs 'its' physics to operate and that probably anything Turing complete has the potential to exhibit intelligence, regardless of whether or not we find a way to achieve that.

eru 16y ago

If you wanted an exact simulation, the n-th digit is important. But if you just want some system where some other (possibly intelligent) behaviour emerges, the n-th digit is not important.

mechanical_fish 16y ago
Well, it would by all means be awesome if we could build an intelligent system that didn't match the one we already have. And we even have an existence proof that such a thing is possible, given enough design time. Unfortunately, the existence proof says nothing about the odds of doing so very quickly -- in less than, say, a million years, which is very quick by historical standards.

yungchin 16y ago

As for the first answer: we all have to learn to deal with roundoff error. That's not by principle an obstacle. The other answer contains an implicit assumption that's not obviously correct: you suggest that complexity only arises when you enumerate every possible dimension of phase space. But physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules, without taking into account every particle's state vector. Finally, did you really try to equate my statement to the statement that Windows could be written in three days? ...

mechanical_fish 16y ago
No, I'm poking fun at Kurzweil's 2020 deadline, not at you. You appear to have been wise enough not to specify a deadline... As for this statement: physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules Absolutely, but it doesn't follow that every complex behavior can be reproduced from simple rules. To overgeneralize from success in one field is the occupational illness of futurists. It's certainly a key problem for Singularitarians, who tend to get so enthusiastic about Moore's Law that they forget that most of the world has nothing to do with microelectronics.
- yungchin 16y ago
  Haha, well I guess the fact that for a moment I felt that was condescending mostly says a lot about me ;)
pjscott 16y ago
Biological systems are approximate. I would assume that they can deal with a little rounding error.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  At the lowest level biology is physics. And physical systems are not approximate, they are exactly what they are, and a small round-off error can give a huge difference in the specific outcome, even if on a macroscopic level that outcome might be indistinguishable from the 'real' outcome. So the real question then becomes does biology tolerate working on an approximation of the underlying physics and does that simulated biology still have the ability to exhibit intelligence. I think the first is a maybe, the second a yes but I couldn't give you any reasons why other than that it might be that our biology needs 'its' physics to operate and that probably anything Turing complete has the potential to exhibit intelligence, regardless of whether or not we find a way to achieve that.