Conversations:
OK, here's one I had on plastic with Marduk-kur. I'll post it in reverse order so it makes sense to read. Wait, what I just wrote is going to be at the bottom. Oh well.
Travis:
Hey, I'm back. Eating dinner and so on.
I'm really happy you're intrigued by the theory. I've talked to a good number of people now, and so far no one has come up a obvious fatal flaw in the logic — which means it actually has a non-zero chance of being correct, which is astounding. We'll see what the transhumanists have to say in Toronto (which I plan on blogging at my site) — I bet Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg will have some interesting comments. And after I polish the paper a good bit more, I'm planning on sending it to Woodin and Chaitin and Tegmark and Hofstadter and so on, and let them take a crack at it. If it still stands up, then we'll have to see if that good old exponential technological and scientific growth keeps up, and if Statistical Metaphysics really is correct then we are all in for a HELL of a ride... We'll see.
Hmmm, I'm a bit burned out from too much coffee, so I'll keep this shortish... But yeah, in my more traditional research I work on colliding black holes, which is almost as nonlinear a system as you can get — just working with a model of a nonlinear scalar system brings out all sorts of interesting behavior — I almost feel like a biologist at times grappling with the myriad little interacting phenomenon that pop up. In fact, stepping back, that's almost a definition for nonlinear systems — the elements interact with eachother. Hmmm, I'm probably overgeneralizing there, but with a linear wave equation, you can have two different waves that run into eachother, will pass right through eachother, and separate and go on their ways, their shapes unchanged by the encounter. The same doesn't hold for a nonlinear system! Hmmm, so OK, the subunits (waves, atoms, cellular automata cells...) interact — in what ways? What's the effective rule set? And then I bet simple combinatorics of the rules kicks in, and from the huge number of different scenarios thus made possible some will be 'interesting' (maybe set up a reproducing system?) and higher level heuristic rules can then emerge and so on... I should really think a lot more about this. In fact, yeah, you're right, it segways very smoothly into stat meta! I'll reference you if I work it in somehow. What are you're thoughts?
Travis:
Hey, I'm back. Eating dinner and so on.
I'm really happy you're intrigued by the theory. I've talked to a good number of people now, and so far no one has come up a obvious fatal flaw in the logic — which means it actually has a non-zero chance of being correct, which is astounding. We'll see what the transhumanists have to say in Toronto (which I plan on blogging at my site) — I bet Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg will have some interesting comments. And after I polish the paper a good bit more, I'm planning on sending it to Woodin and Chaitin and Tegmark and Hofstadter and so on, and let them take a crack at it. If it still stands up, then we'll have to see if that good old exponential technological and scientific growth keeps up, and if Statistical Metaphysics really is correct then we are all in for a HELL of a ride... We'll see.
Hmmm, I'm a bit burned out from too much coffee, so I'll keep this shortish... But yeah, in my more traditional research I work on colliding black holes, which is almost as nonlinear a system as you can get — just working with a model of a nonlinear scalar system brings out all sorts of interesting behavior — I almost feel like a biologist at times grappling with the myriad little interacting phenomenon that pop up. In fact, stepping back, that's almost a definition for nonlinear systems — the elements interact with eachother. Hmmm, I'm probably overgeneralizing there, but with a linear wave equation, you can have two different waves that run into eachother, will pass right through eachother, and separate and go on their ways, their shapes unchanged by the encounter. The same doesn't hold for a nonlinear system! Hmmm, so OK, the subunits (waves, atoms, cellular automata cells...) interact — in what ways? What's the effective rule set? And then I bet simple combinatorics of the rules kicks in, and from the huge number of different scenarios thus made possible some will be 'interesting' (maybe set up a reproducing system?) and higher level heuristic rules can then emerge and so on... I should really think a lot more about this. In fact, yeah, you're right, it segways very smoothly into stat meta! I'll reference you if I work it in somehow. What are you're thoughts?
posted by Travis Garrett at 10:38 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home