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divorced

John wrote:divorced

Sorry to hear

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Not sure where to begin this one so here goes....

I think the best explanation to tie a lot of this together is explained in the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... KK_kzrJPS8

When I first heard it I thought it was just Elon being Elon but it is starting to look like that is the best explanation for reality. His concluding point was the most important "Either we will create simulations indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist". Taken from GD and some of the things that have been roughly approximated in this thread this could very well be the implication. In fact if you look at it if we are just a simulation it most certainly appears we could be at the conclusion of the simulation. This crisis war seems uniquely shaped such that an AI is created, one side wins, and their new found powerful computers would eventually be used for simulations indistinguishable from reality. That isn't to say AI takes over so much as any winning side that has IT after its crisis war will use it to create simulations to the greatest possible resolution as a tactic when it comes time to fight the next crisis war. Everyone will do this because much like thinking is cheaper than "trying it and figuring it out" so are simulations and thats why they are made extensive use of in the military (from what I hear).

On less solid ground it does make sense from a personal perspective for me. For one the concept of the spiritual has permeated every society that has existed. Many of the most nebulous concepts of God that hold true across civilizations can in some sense be applied to some base creator. I have also wondered that if God were to exist why would you ever need to create our universe if you are "all powerful and all knowing". If you are all knowing you would know the result of your creation before you created it. However, if you are relatively speaking "all knowing" (for us ants) but still are constrained to a non-deterministic universe you would still have a reason to create our universe (a simulation). From the bible of being "made in his image" this would make sense because you would want the simulation to resemble your own likeness and reality to provide more information. It is also more so funny to note that Yahweh is/was in the time of polytheistic times the "war god". This is the God that between Jews Christians and Muslims the majority of the world worships. In this sense islam does look like it will be the larger more pressing problem as china while large and powerful is a single entity that will probably fall (not easily) like Japan. islam on the other hand is an ideology that is based off the same God and much similar concepts and is more widely dispersed throughout the world. It is hard to say how much control over this there is but obviously it would make more sense to go after the more tangible easily defined enemy of china then focus on the amorphous enemy that resides within (at this point).

I'm thinking of submitting this to my historical fiction class. let me know what you think.

John wrote:divorced

So the latter "non-troglodyte", then. As expected.

..and no need to give out any "personal" info, John-O. Though, I have given you folks my "mistress who is the sea" (who will probably kill me) info,.. but to be fair and divulge more personal info,.. I'm really quite short.

..except for "there", of course.


Aloha nui nā hoaloha! <shaka!>

uncertainty wrote: When I first heard it I thought it was just Elon being Elon but it is starting to look like that is the best explanation for reality. His concluding point was the most important "Either we will create simulations indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist". Taken from GD and some of the things that have been roughly approximated in this thread this could very well be the implication. In fact if you look at it if we are just a simulation it most certainly appears we could be at the conclusion of the simulation. This crisis war seems uniquely shaped such that an AI is created, one side wins, and their new found powerful computers would eventually be used for simulations indistinguishable from reality. That isn't to say AI takes over so much as any winning side that has IT after its crisis war will use it to create simulations to the greatest possible resolution as a tactic when it comes time to fight the next crisis war. Everyone will do this because much like thinking is cheaper than "trying it and figuring it out" so are simulations and thats why they are made extensive use of in the military (from what I hear).

Here is another question that is related to this line of reasoning (or fiction of you prefer): Why is our physical existence limited to three dimensions? We know that there is at least 4 dimensions but some speculate even more. If we assume no "creator" then this question probably can't even be meaningfully discussed. However, if we take the perspective of our reality being a "simulation" or "computation" then this question can hold merit. This is because if our reality is a simulation it seems it would necessarily imply the entity that started said simulation is in a higher dimension. To illustrate this point, if you wanted to simulate our universe the only way you could completely do so is by creating our universe over again. You could obviously never fully simulate the whole of your reality from within it. What I would speculate though is with powerful enough computers you could simulate a multitude of lower dimensionality worlds. You could also perform limited simulations of the same dimensionality you inhibit should you choose.

If there is a creator it would by definition have to be a higher dimensionality "being". I think "the infinite" is a good descriptor because infinity is such a poorly defined concept. It's very existence and usage points to the inherent limitation of us as humans. Its just short hand for "really fucking big and beyond what we can even comprehend meaningfully". The fact that there are different sizes of infinity likely means there is so much that will forever be beyond our understanding that we can only understand that it is out there. From this perspective it can make sense to say the creator has lived "forever" or for an infinite period of time because the creator lives in a higher dimension in which we can't ever grasp what it means for things to begin..... As I'm thinking about this since time is one of the dimensions of our physical universe it wouldn't even make sense to talk about time and the creator in the same sentence. The creator would exist above such notions.

Ran in to some more information in the neighborhood of these wacky ideas from "Programming the Universe" by Seth Lloyd.

Thus, at bottom, the universe can be thought of as performing a quantum computation. Likewise, because the behavior of elementary particles can be mapped directly onto the behavior of qubits interacting via logical operations, a simulation of the universe on a quantum computer is indistinguishable form the universe itself.

the computational capacity of any physical system can be calculated as a function of the amount of energy available to the system, together with the system's size.

- thought of this in terms of a civilization as a physical system on this note...

the maximum rate at which a physical system (an electron, for example) can move from one state to another is proportional to the system's energy; the more energy available, the smaller the amount of time required for the electron to go from here to there.

In the computational-universe paradigm, the concepts of space and time, together with their interaction with matter, are to be derived from an underlying quantum computation. That is, each quantum computation corresponds to a possible spacetime--or more precisely, a quantum superposition of spacetimes--- whose features are derived from the features of the computation. ... Imagine the quantum computation as embedded in space and time. Each logic gate now sits at a point in space and time, and the wires represent physical paths along which quantum bits flow from one point to another. The first feature to note is that there are many ways to embed the quantum computation in space and time. ... Once the causal structure of the quantum computation has been specified, the only features of spacetime that remain to be fixed are local length scales, and these are to be fixed in terms of the wavelike properties of the local quantum-mechanical matter. The "matter" in the computational universe arises out of the quantum logic gates.

The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life.

If the universe is indeed a quantum computer, this presents an immediate explanation of the complexity we see around us.

Effective complexity is a simple and elegant measure of complexity. Every physical system has associated with it a quantity of information -- the amount required to describe the physical state of the system to the accuracy allowed by quantum mechanics. The basic way to measure somethings effective complexity is to divide that amount into two parts: information that describes the regular aspects of the thing and information that describes its random aspects. The amount of information required to describe a system's regularities is its effective complexity.
In an engineered system, such as an airplane, the effective complexity is essentially equal to the length of the system's blueprint: it is the amount of information required to put the system together.

the effective complexity of any system that exhibits purposeful behavior can be similarly measured. Any bit that affects the ability of the system to attain its purpose contributes to the system's effective complexity.
Of course, the definition of purposeful behavior is to some degree subjective. But suppose we focus on behavior that allows a system to (a) get energy and (b) use that energy to construct copies of itself. Living systems devote most of their time and effort to eating and reproducing. However one defines life, any system that can accomplish those two actions has gone a long way on the road to being alive. Once we identify as purposeful those behaviors that enhance the system's ability to get energy and use it to reproduce, then we can measure the effective complexity of all living systems and all systems that may someday be alive. As we'll see, effectively complex systems that get energy and reproduce arise naturally out of the underlying computational process of the universe

This initial revolution in information processing was followed by a sequence of further revolutions: life, sexual reproduction, brains, language, numbers, writing, printing, computing, and whatever comes next. Each successive information-processing revolution arises from the computational machinery of the previous revolution. In terms of complexity, each successive revolution inherits virtually all of the logical and thermodynamic depth of the previous revolution. For example, since sexual reproduction is based on life, it is at least as deep as life. Depth accumulates.

We have defined purposeful behavior as that which allows systems to (a) get energy and (b) reproduce. The effective complexity of a living system can be defined as the number of bit of information that affect the system's ability to consume energy and reproduce. If we add to these two behaviors a third, to reproduce with variation, then we can look at the way in which effective complexity changes over time.
Any system, such as sexual reproduction, that consumes energy and reproduces with variation can both generate additional effective complexity and lose existing effective complexity. Of the varying copies constructed during reproduction, some will be better at consuming and reproducing than others, and those variants will come to dominate the population. Some variants will have greater effective complexity than the original system and some will have less. To the extent that greater effective complexity enhances the ability to reproduce, effective complexity will tend to grow; by contrast, if some variant can reproduce better with less effective complexity, then effective complexity can also decrease. In a diverse environment with many reproducing variants, we expect effective complexity to grow in some populations and decrease in others.

Wanted to get this off my mind that occurred to me today and then move on to other things:

A computation can be seen as a purely physical phenomenon occurring inside a closed physical system called a computer. Examples of such physical systems include digital computers, mechanical computers, quantum computers, DNA computers, molecular computers, microfluidics-based computers, analog computers or wetware computers. This point of view is the one adopted by the branch of theoretical physics called the physics of computation as well as the field of natural computing.

An even more radical point of view is the postulate of digital physics that the evolution of the universe itself is a computation - pancomputationalism.

Computation - Wikipedia

I haven't been able to find a precise definition on computation but I was able to find this. The problem is even this definition is way too limited and wouldn't incorporate the "pancomputationalism" I had been toying with above. A similar definition I would put forward is something along the lines of "the transformation of state in a closed physical system toward some specific end". Identity groups can be thought of as a computational process just like the universe or an individual human. They are constantly using energy to process information and progress through different states even though we don't currently know what that end is. I have indirectly made this implication in the past without realizing it. This is the first time the concept occurred to me explicitly. The important thing being that it ties together concepts in this thread and in my "Economic centralization" thread.

Heisenberg wrote:...
A similar definition I would put forward is something along the lines of "the transformation of state in a closed physical system toward some specific end".

Since "the universe", per se, is the only REAL singular "thing", only "the universe" has an actual "specific end (condition/goal)".

All other "things" have sub-goals, subservient to the only real goal (that of "the universe").

Identity groups can be thought of as a computational process just like the universe or an individual human. They are constantly using energy to process information and progress through different states even though we don't currently know what that end is. I have indirectly made this implication in the past without realizing it. This is the first time the concept occurred to me explicitly. The important thing being that it ties together concepts in this thread and in my "Economic centralization" thread.

"Computation" is simply: Things coming together to "putate", or "impute", or "have meaning assigned to the new thing" that they "mysteriously" create via their "coming together".

In other words: 1+1=2, which simply assigns new meaning to the "new thing" created by the "coming together" of the two "1's" which doesn't actually change the 1's at all.

In other words, again, it's creation ex nihilo.

..but to what end?

The only end possible! The only non-sub-goal that exists. The meaning/goal of the universe.

..but what about all those actual sub-goals?

They come and go (karma chameleon like) as needed, but always in service to the only non-sub-goal.

My contention is that a major sub-goal, on the stellar-system level, is the creation of a bio-informational "apex lifeform" whose goal is (will be) to evolve beyond the seeming necessity of the Generational Genocidal Cycle.

That "thing's" goal will then change/evolve into preserving "locale specific ecological beauty" while simultaneously exporting the methods to accomplish that task as far and as quickly as possible.

..but then what?

Beats me. But I'm quite sure I'm several, if not thousands, of "levels" below the ultimate "universal goal".


Aloha a me mahalo! <shaka nui!>

Don't forget to take into account multiple parallel universes.

Like a multiprocessor computer.

https://www.space.com/32728-parallel-universes.html

John wrote:Don't forget to take into account multiple parallel universes.

Like a multiprocessor computer.

https://www.space.com/32728-parallel-universes.html

Much like the word "singular", the word "universe" implies "only one of them" (although considerably more vehemently).

There are no "multiple universes", by definition. It there SEEM to be more than one, then you simply redefine the "new things" as parts of the (by definition) UNI-verse, and the faeries and unicorns of the "now biggerer universe" can sleep without worry once again..!

Now, if there SEEM to be an infinite number of them (or of anything for that matter) then you've done something wrong, and failed to notice something really quite important, though probably very very subtle.

The asymptote is God's way of saying, "WRONG buckeroo! I'm the only one on THAT intersection! Try again..."


Aloha nui! <shaka!>