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I'm sorry but WTF. Maybe I have my computer science theory all wrong but I distinctly remember this statement: the universe is Turing complete. That means tha
by confluence 14y ago
I'm sorry but WTF.
Maybe I have my computer science theory all wrong but I distinctly remember this statement: the universe is Turing complete.
That means that it is at least a computer - it may be something more - but it must be at the very least a computer.
Secondly WTF is with non-computable arguments. Given arbitrary memory and ability to do computation - anything can be computed.
Thirdly what's this mapping crap - the universe's probabilistic state does not need to be mapped - it's just information moving around.
The Lagrangian method he uses can be computed. Looks just like an expensive optimisation problem.
- stungeye 14y agoI'm not sure that "the universe as Turing machine" is anything more than a theory. The universe can contain Turing machines -- we're both using one right now -- but I don't think we can say for certain that the universe is one. Also, not everything is computable. Alan Turing proved this in his paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." The Halting Problem is a related example of the limits of computation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
- confluence 14y agoComputers are an existence proof - the universe is indeed at least a Turing machine. The halting problem can be effectively solved for deterministic finite machines - it would just take a long time time.