From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 10:11:55 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
>
> There are an infinite amount of CAs and similar systems that can
> simulate fluid dynamics. Which of them are correct descriptions of
> the world? The issue become very relevant when building a boat,
> and the only solution Wolfram seems to give is to make a lot of
> measurements and then remove the rules that won't fit - but you
> still have an infinite amount of rules. Then you will likely use
> Occham's razor/algorithmic complexity and try to find the simplest
> remaining rule - but this is also enormously expensive. The other
> approach, assume a basic physics of particles and construct a
> description of fluid dynamics from their interactions seems to
> require far less computation. Neither will reach Absolute
> Certainty, but the goal is after all to get physics that we can
> use when building boats or refridgerators.
As I recall from the review, Wolfram says there are something like 36
rules total among all CA, that anything else is simply a variation of
one of these rules. If so, then while you could have infinite variation,
you won't have infinite combination, thus the universe is computable and
able to be defined as a particular CA.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:51 MST