Re: Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed May 03 2000 - 11:40:19 MDT


On Wed, 3 May 2000, John Clark wrote:

> I found an interesting quotation from a new book on quantum computers called
> "Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse" By Julian Brown, if comes from a chapter
> on the work of Ed Fredkin, one of the leaders of the "physics is computation"
> school:

Fredkin is one of the sharpest people around in terms of understanding
the nature of the "physics of computation".

> [snip quote]
> So what explanation does he have for the missing workload?
> "Either something else is going on in the universe that we don't know
> about" he says, "or God was incompetent on a scale that boggles the mind"."
>

I'll vote for the "we don't know about it" camp. Its too easy to
modify your clock rate and tailor the energy consumption rate to
fit the rate at which interesting information becomes available.
Given that the universe will be a far more complex and interesting place
in the future, I'd argue that the SIs are waiting for the renaisance era.

Robert



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