4 ms·
Here’s something I don’t get about Wolfram and insisting on a computation-like underbelly of the universe. Computation is built on the idea of Turing machine.
by meroes 5y ago
Here’s something I don’t get about Wolfram and insisting on a computation-like underbelly of the universe.
Computation is built on the idea of Turing machine. But what is reading the tape in Turing’s analogy? A human! The tape and Turing machine are designed so that every human agrees upon its formal validity.
It’s not a statement about mental states or computation based “reality”. More than all of those and first, it is a about how society can use social rule-following and basic step-by-step processes (using language) to create formal systems.
A human reading the tape or even a human with pencil and paper. That is the main analogy.
So why do so many like Wolfram think computation is reality? It seems from the get go he is headed down the wrong track.
You and I are computers and computers can think according to Turing. But TM’s came about to develop formal systems.
To me Wolfram and the Churchlands seem to have completely unjustified claims.
- zmgsabst 5y agoThere are other formalisms, which better fit Wolfram’s claims — eg, lambda calculus or automata. A model of state transfers on encoded operators actually isn’t very far from “physics just happens to particles”.
- meroes 5y agoOkay but no formalism (formal system) should take up the purpose of metaphysical or physical ontology. That is a very clearly a mistake.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- VirusNewbie 5y agoI think you missed the forest for the trees. It may help to familiarize yourself with turing completeness and what wolfram calls computational equivalence.
- meroes 5y agoNot the angle I’m going down. I’m purely talking about don’t confuse how to engineer a formal system with ontology. That is the hype about formal systems. They are formal, they do not model the world!
- uoaei 5y agoWe could be a little more permissive here about what constitutes a "model". Models are not systems. <=> Maps are not territories. Formal systems are models. They model the world. Depending on which formal system you use, one may model the world better than another. There is no "perfect" there is only "comprehensible", "insightful", and, when predicting the future, "accurate". All of these are measured in degrees, not kinds. Models are not related to systems a priori. You are permitted to apply any model to any system. Whether the application is useful is only posterior to this first step.
- meroes 5y agoTo me this a problematic viewpoint. All these formalisms are not meant to be models of the world. I’d even argue for anything to be accepted as a formal system it must be far removed from taking stances on reality.
- uoaei 5y agoNot all formalisms are models of the world. Not all models are formalisms. But all formalisms are models.
- uoaei 5y agoComputation is not built on the idea of the Turing machine... That is a very, very strong claim that I assume you did not mean to imbue with such heft. The Turing machine, rather, is a Platonic ideal -- a model -- of a computing machine which is transparent to humans performing analysis on it. There are other models, and there are other means of computation.