Programming the Universe (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, January 08, 2010, 03:23 (5435 days ago) @ xeno6696

Monkeys and Typewriters.-According to Seth Lloyd, this argument from Boltzmann showed that it is statistically improbable for a monkey to type out Shakespeare completely at random. (He also points to an ongoing computational project that has successfully found the first 24 letters to Hamlet--completely at random.) -http://everything2.com/title/Monkey+Shakespeare+Simulator (defunct site, you'll have to use the wayback machine to find the original.) -What this principle underlies is a different statistical perspective than we're used to. When I first came to the forum, I challenged that the proper view of probability wasn't in operation on dhw's treatise. Here's why.-Quantum particles act as random programmers in the universe. Physical laws act as modifiers to these mini programs; the programs that produce garbage output are recycled into the quantity known as entropy. Laws of physics preserve information; information is infectious in physical systems; it transfers itself to all particles in the system. I know from computer science, it is possible to design a program that randomly generates other programs that do produce meaningful output; most of them are garbage, but you do get useful ones. Lloyd's point is that random quantum fluctuations act as programmers themselves; this is due to the fact that quantum particles are the only things in the universe with the power to *create* information. -As for the physical laws themselves, they are relationships between physical quantities; while David would argue that these are all fine-tuned, mathematically the only thing that changes among the different possibilities are the numbers--the underlying structures themselves are all identical. What generates the numbers are our quantum programmers and it is they who "decide" via the simple perturbations of 1, 0, and 0+1 what the final output will be. -A deeper question for you is "If the universe is complex, doesn't it have to be complex in order to generate it?"-If it is anything that I hope I can impart, it's this: Isn't the machine you're typing on incredibly complex? Isn't the screen you're viewing also complex? When my kids play a computer game, aren't the physics complex?-I'm going to answer, "No." Everything that you view is the result of 1's and 0's. The obvious answer here is that humans programmed the machine; this is true. But for something like the universe, there is no setup required for the physical laws--they simply exist. -In our universe, chance is a tautology, and the underlying physical laws are axioms; self-evident truths that *must* be true for our universe to be the way it is.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"