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Bruno Marchal  
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 More options Sep 17 2011, 10:56 am
From: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:56:17 +0200
Local: Sat, Sep 17 2011 10:56 am
Subject: Re: bruno list
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On 16 Sep 2011, at 21:15, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 9/15/2011 9:46 PM Bruno Marchal said the following:

>> On 15 Sep 2011, at 21:01, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

>>> On 9/15/2011 7:34 PM Bruno Marchal said the following:
>>>> Hi Evgenii,

>>>> On 13 Sep 2011, at 21:45, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

>>> ...

>>>>> At present, I am just trying to figure out our beliefs that
>>>>> make the simulation hypothesis possible.

>>>> But this is really astonishing, and in quasi-contradiction which
>>>> what you say above. We just don't know any phenomena which are
>>>> not Turing emulable. As a theorician, but only as a theorician, I
>>>> can show the theoretical existence of non simulable phenomena,
>>>> but that really exists only in theory, or in mathematics. Worst,
>>>> most non simulable phenomena will be non distinguishable from
>>>> randomness, and if we are machine, we will never been able to
>>>> recognize a non Turing emulable phenomenon as such. It seems that
>>>> the question is more like "how can we believe something non
>>>> Turing emulable could exist in Nature".

>>> Let me repeat your statement: "We just don't know any phenomena
>>> which are not Turing emulable." I am not sure that it is so
>>> evident.

>> Ah? You have a counter-exemple?

>>> As I have written, the simulation hypothesis just does not work in
>>> practice.

>> I don't understand what that means.

> It means that what you can simulate in practice is actually pretty  
> limited. So when you speak about a counter-example, I do not  
> understand you. Just try to employ simulation in practice and you  
> will immediately see my point.

> It is easy to say that everything in Nature is Turing computable.  
> Yet, it is hard to use this statement in practice. Exactly here I  
> see a discrepancy.

> Well, after all my example is here

> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/09/simulation-hypothesis-and-simulation-te...

OK. Note that the mechanist hypothesis entails the falsity of the  
simulation hypothesis. If I am a machine, then the physical universe,  
actually any physical (and epistemological) things, CANNOT be Turing  
emulable. Mechanism entails the falsity of the digital physics  
assumption, and it is an open problem if it does not also entail also  
the falsity of Deustch Thesis (The thesis that physical things are  
emulable in polynomial time by a quantum computer). With mechanism we  
can only hope that the white rabbits are relatively rare, not that  
they are inexistent.

So I tend to agree with you. As far as I think that mechanism is  
plausible, I think that we cannot simulate most natural phenomenon. In  
particular we cannot simulate a brain, seen as a physical object, and  
that is why we have to choose a level of substitution, and hope our  
"computations" does not rely on a lower level. Mechanism is just the  
belief that there is such a truncation level, like we have good  
evidences that it exists for all organs of the body. There are many  
strong evidence that indeed biology, by its fuzzy redundancy, does  
exploit a lot the mechanist truncation of information.

I insist on this: mechanism is the less reductionist hypothesis ever  
proposed in the human and exact sciences, and it makes almost  
everything concrete non Turing emulable, except oneself. So, despite  
many confusions on this, mechanism is almost the opposite of the  
simulation hypothesis. When you will study the UD theorem, you should  
understand this by yourself.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


 
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