From extropians-request@extropy.org Thu Oct 28 15:58:43 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA26436; Thu, 28 Oct 93 15:58:38 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA03082; Thu, 28 Oct 93 15:58:24 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by news.panix.com id AA11414 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Thu, 28 Oct 1993 18:48:12 -0400 Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 18:48:12 -0400 Message-Id: <199310282248.AA11414@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: October 28, 373 P.N.O. [22:47:58 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 28 Oct 93 Volume 93 : Issue 300 Today's Topics: AIT book ref, the overkill edition [1 msgs] Bet 5000 [1 msgs] Bits and Bytes Online v1 #13 [1 msgs] Extropy #3 [4 msgs] Genetic Programming and stocks: the "data" [1 msgs] Latest Bits and Bytes from Jay Machado... [1 msgs] META/TECH: List distribution... [1 msgs] New AIT book? [2 msgs] New Cryonics Organization [1 msgs] Nightly Market Report [1 msgs] Universal Realization [1 msgs] _Visible Light_ excerpt: pretty good... [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 53598 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 22:23:41 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: New AIT book? Could someone send me the reference for that new algorithmic information theory book? -thanks -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. -- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1993 22:06:35 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Latest Bits and Bytes from Jay Machado... Hey, dude! Cheer up! Chill out! Technology isn't that bad! Get an amiga! Hanno Protagonist ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1993 22:13:48 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Bits and Bytes Online v1 #13 On the serious side, this is the first B&B since I started reading them that I'm sending to the big bit bucket in the sky, at Cygnus X-1. }iWell, it was fun for a while... Phil ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1993 20:49:06 -0800 (PDT) From: Sameer Subject: Extropy #3 > > >"Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish." -- Cat, ordering dinner > > That's not quite how it worked: > > "Fish!" > "The fish of the day is Trout a la Creme." > "Fish!" > "The fish of the day is Trout a la Creme." > Fish!" > > Actually, though, what is the deep, dark, sinister secret behind > Extropy # 3? Can I see what's going on if I post my public key and > someone can send me something encrypted? > > PHil > I too am very curious, and will be greatly appreciative of anyone who in some way imparts to me the information about this issue. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 00:02:37 EDT From: pmetzger@lehman.com (Perry E. Metzger) Subject: New Cryonics Organization FYI, I've forwarded this posting from CryoNet. [Incidently, this new organization follows the decentralized cryonics model that I've been advoocating for some time. I am extremely happy to see that cryonics might now be treated as a business rather than as a charity -- this would likely improve service.] Message: #2444 - New Cryonics Organization Message-Subject: CRYONICS New Cryonics Organization From: charles@mindvox.phantom.com (Charles Platt) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 00:39:55 EDT On Saturday, October 23rd, a meeting was held in Chicago to announce tentative plans for establishing CryoCare, a new cryonics organization. Hosting the meeting were Saul Kent, Brenda Peters, and Courtney Smith. A similar meeting was held in New York City on Sunday, October 24th, co-hosted by the same people with the addition of Charles Platt. Thirty-six people attended the New York meeting. (I don't have figures for the meeting in Chicago.) CryoCare will contract with other newly formed, independent organizations for the three major functions of cryonics: standby/stabilization/suspension, long-term patient storage, and investment of patient funds. Clients of CryoCare will be free to select the service providers of their choice, where a choice exists now or in the future. Competition will provide a motivating force among service providers, and CryoCare will withdraw its endorsement from service providers that do not meet minimum standards. This "separation of powers" provides greater security and a stronger incentive for maintaining quality than has ever existed in cryonics. In addition, the use of a separate, bona-fide trust to invest patient funds will provide insurance against the misuse of those funds at any time in the future. Reaction at the New York meeting was very positive. People at the meeting seemed uniformly eager to look ahead and avoid any further "gripe sessions" about current cryonics providers. Issues relating to Alcor, for instance, were barely mentioned. Some people made suggestions which will be incorporated into the final organization plan. The plan is still tentative at this stage, but Mike Darwin's company, BioPreservation, which is CryoCare's choice as a provider of suspension services, already has almost all the necessary equipment to conduct suspensions. Much of this equipment is more sophisticated and more modern than can be found in any other cryonics organization. A detailed progress report describing the proposed details of CryoCare was handed out at the meetings. A dozen copies of this progress report are still available, including color photographs of BioPreservation's operating room, its building, and one of its two ambulances. Anyone who wants a copy of the progress report can obtain it by sending email to charles@phantom.com, while supplies last. Sign-up paperwork for CryoCare is not yet ready, but should be available well before the end of the year. Several people have called asking whether to make (or renew) suspensions elsewhere, or wait for CryoCare. Our advice is that if you want immediate coverage, by all means make (or continue) arrangements with the cryonics organization of your choice; but if you are interested in the CryoCare plan, try to keep your future options open. CryoCare has already been endorsed, supported, and partially funded by more than thirty cryonics activists, many of them with exceptional professional skills. BioPreservation, directed by Mike Darwin and Steve Harris, MD, has unmatched technical capability, professional medical personnel, and facilities. This, we think, is the rational future of cryonics. If you would like to receive future updates regarding CryoCare, please send email to charles@phantom.com, and your name will be added to a temporary mail list for this purpose only. --Charles Platt ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 00:10:02 EDT From: The Hawthorne Exchange Subject: Nightly Market Report The Hawthorne Exchange - HEx Nightly Market Report For more information on HEx, send email to HEx@sea.east.sun.com with the Subject info. News Summary as of: Thu Oct 28 00:10:02 EDT 1993 Newly Registered Reputations: (None) New Share Issues: (None) Share Splits: (None) Market Summary as of: Thu Oct 28 00:00:03 EDT 1993 Reputations of members of the Extropians mailing list: [ Note: Contact hex-request to have a reputation placed on this list. ] Total Shares Symbol Bid Ask Last Issued Outstanding AMARA .10 .50 .50 10000 1000 ANTON .61 .63 .63 10000 1943 ARKU .18 .31 .30 10000 5301 BLAIR .01 1.20 .01 10000 26 BROOX .01 1.00 - 10000 - DEREK .06 .19 .19 100000 18430 DROSE - .15 .10 10000 3000 DRS - .15 .15 10000 2600 DVDT .75 1.75 1.70 10000 10000 E .80 1.00 .90 10000 8011 ESR - - - - - FCP .06 1.30 1.50 80000 15345 GHG .02 .30 .20 10000 8180 GODII .01 1.00 - 10000 - GOEBEL .01 .25 1.00 10000 767 H .40 .76 .76 30000 10290 HAM .60 .90 .90 20000 15918 HANNO .15 .24 - 10000 500 HFINN 1.50 6.00 .01 10000 1005 IMMFR .25 .70 .80 10000 1838 JFREE .02 .50 .50 10000 3200 JOHN .30 .40 .35 10000 600 JPP .26 .29 .26 10000 3500 KARL 1.00 1.50 2.00 10000 1000 KLAUS - .45 .45 100000 36004 KNNTA .12 .19 .26 100000 10100 LEFTY .31 .40 .40 10000 4751 MARCR - - - - - MEEKS - - - - - MLINK - .01 .01 1000000 102602 MWM - 1.50 .01 10000 1260 N 5.00 9.00 9.00 10000 4750 P 22.50 25.00 1.50 1000000 94 PETER - .01 1.00 10000000 600 PRICE - .01 .01 10000000 1410 R .40 .80 .70 10000 6100 RJC .65 2.00 1.00 10000 5200 ROMA - - - - - RWHIT - - - - - SAMEER .30 .75 .61 10000 9810 SHAWN .55 .55 .01 10000 25 SWANK - 1.00 - 10000 - TIM .10 .60 .50 10000 2104 WILKEN 1.00 10.00 1.00 10000 102 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other reputations: Total Shares Symbol Bid Ask Last Issued Outstanding 1000 .05 .40 .20 10000 5000 110 .01 .10 .10 10000 1750 150 .01 .10 .10 10000 1750 1E6 .20 - .20 10000 8825 1E9 .01 .09 .20 10000 7000 200 .02 .20 .10 10000 5075 80 .01 - - 10000 - 90 .01 - .10 10000 2000 ACS .10 .15 .12 10000 3223 AI .01 .09 .10 10000 2400 ALCOR .25 .85 .60 10000 3675.00 ALTINST - .25 .05 10000 4000 ANARCHY .20 .90 1.00 10000 1100 BIOPR .01 .09 .05 10000 3000 BITD .01 1.00 - 10000 - BLACK - .10 .10 100000 6000 CHUCK - - - - - CYPHP .20 .40 .30 10000 10000 D&M - - - 10000 - DC1000 - .10 - 10000 - DC200 - .15 .10 10000 1500 DC7000 - .10 - 10000 - DCFLOP .15 - .15 10000 6000 DRXLR .75 .90 .80 10000 4545 EXI .10 .25 1.54 10000 3025 FAB - - - - - GOD - .10 .10 10000 3000 GUNS - .90 1.00 10000 3900 HART - 1.99 2.00 10000 9000 HEINLN .28 .30 .30 10000 6600 HEX 100.00 101.00 100.00 10000 4088 KPJ - - - - - LEARY .01 .50 .20 10000 1000 LEF .10 .35 .10 10000 5214 LIST .40 10.00 .75 10000 5000 LP .25 .30 .50 10000 5625 LSOFT .50 1.00 .50 10000 9550 LURKR - .01 - 100000 - MED21 .01 .30 .30 10000 5399 MMORE - 1.25 .10 10000 3000 MNSKY - 1.80 - 10000 - MORE .38 1.25 .75 10000 2660 NEWTON - .50 .20 10000 1000 NLAW - .50 - 10000 - NNLAW - .50 - 10000 - NSS .02 .03 .01 10000 25 OCEAN .15 .18 .20 10000 6600 OOMPH - 15.53 22.00 20000 - PENNY - .08 1.50 10000 2500 PGP - 1.00 1.00 100000 2100 PLANET .01 .02 .02 10000 4000 PPL .30 .45 .30 10000 4600 RAND .18 .20 .20 10000 3900 RAW - .05 - 10000 - SHECKY - - - - - SSI .15 .20 .20 10000 5200 TCMAY .38 .40 .38 10000 6200 TRANS .01 .90 .60 10000 3211 VINGE .01 1.00 .75 10000 3449 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1993 23:32:25 -0500 From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: _Visible Light_ excerpt: pretty good... We sit together, speaking under the canned music. Art made into white noise, to divide us table from table in the dining hall. "Awful stuff, that music," I saw. Then I have another thought: "On the other hand--" "There were four?" "No. The music. The Greeks painted vases." "What have Greek urns got to do with canned music?" "Art. Do you know--" I hold up a spoon. "This is art." "Come on. They stamp them out by the thousands." "But an artist designed this. Its balance, its shape. An artist drew it and sculpted it, and another sort made the die. Then a workman ran it and collected his wage. Which he used to buy a tape. Do you know, we work most of our lives to afford two things: leisure and art." "Even mass-produced art?" "The Greeks mass-produced clay lamps. Now we call them antiquities. And we set them on little pedestals in museums. They painted their pots and their lamps. Rich Greeks had musicians at their banquets. Nowadays the poorest man can have a fine metal spoon and have music to listen to with his dinner. That's magical." "Well, now the rest of us have got to put up with damned little die-stamped spoons." "How many of us would have _owned_ a spoon in those good old days?" "Who needed them? Fingers worked." "So did typhoid." "What has typhoid to do with spoons?" "Sanitation. Cities and civilizations _died_ for want of spoons. And good drainage. It's all art. I've walked the streets of dead cities. It's an eerie thing, to read the graves and the ages. Very many children. Very many. And so many cities which just--died. Not in violence. Just of needs we take for granted. I tell you we are all kings and magicians. Our touch on a machine brings light, sound, musicians appear in thin air, pictures leap from world to world. Each of us singly wields the power output of a Mesopotamian empire-- without ever thinking about it. We can _afford_ it." "We waste it." I lift my hand toward the unseen stars. "Does the sun? I suppose that it does. But we gather what it throws away. And the universe doesn't lose it, except to entropy." "A world has only so much." "A solar system has too much ever to bring home. Look at the asteroids, the moons, the sun-- No, the irresponsible thing is _not_ to wield that power. To sit in a closed world and do nothing. To refuse to mass-produce. To deny some fellow his bit of art bought with his own labor. It's not economical to paint a pot. Or to make a vase for flowers. Or to grow flowers instead of cabbages." "Cabbages," you recall, "have their importance in the cosmic system." "Don't flowers? And isn't it better that a man has music with his dinner and a pot with a design on it?" "You don't like the ancient world?" "Let me tell you, _most_ of us didn't live well. _Most_ of us didn't make it past childhood. And not just villages vanished in some bitter winter. Whole towns did. Whole nations. There were no good old days." "History again." "That's why we make fantasies. Because it was too bad to remember." "Cynic." "I do write fantasies. Sometimes." "And they're true?" "True as those poor dead kids in Ephesus." "Where's that?" "See?" I sigh, thining of dead stones and a child's game, etched forever in a dead street, near a conqueror's arch. "Let me tell you a story...." >From _Visible Light_ by C.J. Cherryh. I thought it would be welcome after B&B... Phil, signing off for now... +-----------------------+Here, all too soon the day! |"Standard Disclaymore" |Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow. |pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu |I should know, heaven has her way; +-----------------------+Each one given memories to own. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 23:13:39 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: New AIT book? > > Could someone send me the reference for that new algorithmic information > theory book? > > -thanks > > -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- Funny you should ask! My copy just arrived today--and it looks fantastic. Nick Szabo is visting my house today, and is sitting here flipping though some of my books even as I type (Cover's "Information Theory," Zurek's "Complexity," and Hal Varian's "Economic and Financial Modelling with Mathematatica," etc.). The book you asked about is "An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity Theory and Its Applications," by Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi, Springer-Verlag, 550 pages, $59 (plus tax and shipping). ISBN #0-387-94053-7. Call 1-800-SPRINGE. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 09:40:19 GMT From: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk Subject: Extropy #3 You write: >You and anyone else in the UK who wishes to see a copy of #3 can >do so this Sunday by attending the UK Cryptoprivacy Meeting in >London. I have a copy, see. :-) I was considering going, but I'll be in Cambridge on Friday and London on Saturday, and a third journey in as many days is more than I feel like doing. Oh well. -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 10:19:05 GMT From: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) Subject: Extropy #3 Sorry, that last message of mine wasn't intended for the list. -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Oct 93 22:24:00 -0400 From: USR1593A@cbos.uc.edu Subject: Universal Realization John K Clark (johnkc@well.sf.ca.us) writes: >Hans Moravec calls these ideas "Universal Realization" and is >currently writing a book about it. His main points: >1) Anything can simulate anything. >2) A simulated object is a real object in it's own world. >3) Nothing means anything without an interpretation. >4) A thing can have more than one interpretation. >5) A mind is the one thing that has it's own self consistent >interpretation inherent within it; in fact that is the >definition of a mind (although you would still need an >interpretation to make contact with it). >Concerning #5, to communicate with another person the >interpretation is straightforward, if the person smiles he is >happy, if they make sounds with their mouth we find meaning in >them from the rules of grammar, but Moravec goes as far as to >say that a interpretation must exist that can find a mind even >in a rock. The reason we can't detect them is that were too >stupid. The interpretation is so hideously complex that as a >practical matter their workings are indistinguishable from >random thermal vibrations. Concerning 2), this may be too generous. It may imply that everything possible exists. If by "world", Moravec implies that we be realists toward the existence of possible worlds, then I think we would have to wonder about the relevance of the grouping "world" with respect to the concept of possibility. A much more reasonable way to think about possibility is to consider it much like a software version control system. In such a system, only the deltas are stored, which are the differences between the divisions. If we do have manifold branching possibilities that exist, I would imagine that only the deltas exist, not a whole "universe slice" at each branch. I think the best views on 3), 4), and 5) can be found in Quine's two books: Ontological Relativity Pursuit of Truth As far as finding minds in rocks, that is like finding a finished statue in an uncut chunk of marble. On the subject of minds existing as pure math, he stated in MIND CHILDREN (p. 178): "I do not see how to draw any meaningful conclusions from it, since it seems to imply that everything possible exists." He goes on to mention that we may be simulated persons in the mind of a super-intelligent being. This position is quite old, held by the Bishop Berkeley. He walks into all of this in defense of pattern-identity required for transmigration. But, as Parfit showed in REASONS AND PERSONS Part III c. 1986, one does not have to be a non-Reductionist to hold that what is important in survival does survive transmigration. Parfit claims that Personal Identity does not transfer, but that personal identity is not what is important in survival. Nagel in The View From NoWhere takes the view that Personal Identity is what matters in survival of transmigration. I lean toward Nagel's view in the case of non-destructive scan copy, but am not convinced by Parfit's dismantling of the kind of in-place replacement seen in cases like Moravec's brain surgery, MIND CHILDREN (p.109-110). Parfit considers two scenarios, 1) replace the brain pieces one at a time, and 2) remove all the brain pieces and then put in all the replacements. Parfit makes three important observations on these two scenarios: REASONS AND PERSONS p.475 1) "in both cases, this person's brain will be composed of the very same new components" 2) "Can my fate depend on this difference in the ordering of removals and insertions?" 3) "Can it be so important, for my survival, whether the new parts are, for a time, joined to the old parts?" I'm still analyzing questions 2) and 3), it is very similar to Hobbes ship of Theseus according to Hirsch. The classic analogy is the watch which is taken completely apart and the old parts discarded, and then reconstructed from new parts. In this case, it appears to be a different watch, but in the case of replacing components one by one with the new parts it doesn't! Replacing the battery for your watch just re-energizes it, like food. Bruce Zimov usr1593a@cbos.uc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 12:54:27 +0000 (GMT) From: Charlie Stross Subject: META/TECH: List distribution... Tim Freeman writes: >>Also: Can WWW work over a UUCP connection? >I have seen a pointer go by to a www-to-mail gateway. Using this >would let you read www documents with a UUCP connection, but it >wouldn't let you use www readers to read them and follow links; the >only option would be reading the messages with your mailer, and >following a link would be as slow as sending and receiving a mail >message. >If this is what you're looking for, drop me a note and I'll dig up and >post the pointer. >Tim {been off the list for three days due to flu} You could, of course, create your own HTTP server on the local host, and write shell scripts to invoke the www-to-mail gateway to retrieve requested documents, and to add them to the local hierarchy. Then you could run Mosaic locally and although it would be slow it would automatically cache anything you were interested in. Or you could look out for any of the web knowbots that people keep testing out on the WWW. -- Charlie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Stross is charless@scol.sco.com, charlie@antipope.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 13:00:29 +0000 (GMT) From: Charlie Stross Subject: Genetic Programming and stocks: the "data" "Phil G. Fraering" writes: >I'd like to raise a couple points about doing market analysis >of any kind and the "data" question that Derek Zahn and Tim >May were just talking about. >Simply put, a lot of the bets and analyses that are being discussed >here seem to be immune to any sort of algorithmic system applied >to any sort of large commercial data dump. Or so it seems to me. Bingo. The stock market is an example of a non-monotonic situation, because information introduced into it cannot be extrapolated from prior probabilities. Bayesian analysis is not reliable. There is, AFAIK, no formal theory of reasoning in non-monotonic situations. Dempster-Shafer theory tries to model it using two different confidence dimensions; fuzzy logic comes close but has no formally proven basis. My brother-in-law did a PhD in this area and is of the opinion that it's going to be about as easy to come up with such a theory as it is to prove that P == NP in algorithmics. -- Charlie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Stross is charless@scol.sco.com, charlie@antipope.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 07:51:29 -0700 (PDT) From: more@chaph.usc.edu (Max More) Subject: Extropy #3 Phil (and probably others) are curious about the "banned" EXTROPY #3. I want both to explain #3's general unavailability and also to ask those who have copies to *not* make copies for anyone who asks. If you really want a copy of #3, talk to me. Though officially out of print, it can be made available to people I know well enough. So why *is* it out of print? Two reasons: (1) In my opinion, it's a poor issue -- most of the articles are not terribly well thought through, and most are not obviously of great relevance to Extropianism. Several articles deal with views of love and sex, this being a subject with which we were personally grappling with at the time. These topics *could* be written in such a way as to be highly relevant to EXTROPY's concerns, but I don't think those articles met the standard. So, reason #1 is lack of relevance and undeveloped writing. Combined, these could give an undesired impression to new readers, especially those who hadn't read a good sample of the issues. (2) Having observed some nasty things done to people in the War On (people who use) Drugs, I have become a little more cautious since writing "Psychedelics and Mind Expansion" for EXTROPY #3. While I don't regret having written it, if I were to write it now I would avoid the first-person, in-your-face style. I realize that EXTROPY completists find it irritating that there's a missing issue in their collection. I may consider bringing it back into print (after consulting with co-editor of the time, Tom Morrow), since there are now more issues, so #3 will be less likely to give a poor impression overall (in fact it will help to show how far EXTROPY has evolved). Again, if you really want a copy of #3, contact me. Please do not ask others to breach copyright. Max More more@usc.edu Editor EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 28 October 1993 06:33:58 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Bet 5000 In <9310270501.AA27824@jobe.shell.portal.com>, hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal Finney) wrote: > The little bit of understanding I have of James' program > does make me somewhat skeptical that it will work. The > impression I have is that he starts his system off in a > superposition of all possible bit patterns. Then as time > goes forward he increases the energy in those patterns with > small deviations from the constraints while decreasing > those with large numbers of deviations. In the end, only > the solution with no deviations is left. Wrong way around. In the process that I describe the initial state, and the desired final state, are both ground states of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. The system remains at all times in the ground state of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian is initially such that its ground state is the state where all possibilities have equal probability and phase. Each bit is in the plus 1 state of it's negation operator. It would be possible to work the system in the way you describe, but that is a whole new ball of wax involving short unstable closed cycles in a chaotic attractor. That is considerably harder to comprehend than the example I finally proposed, though it might well be vastly easier to build. It is certainly vastly harder to analyze numerically. > As I said, my understanding is pretty shaky, but if this > is what is happening I'd be concerned by the large number > of states. With 80 bits we'd have 2^80 states, and the > amount of energy in any one state is so tiny that I would > think that noise would be an overwhelming problem. This > is just an intuition, though, and I will be very interested > to see how it all comes out. You are speaking as if, when a state has probability 2(-80) the associated energy levels are correspondingly low. This is not case. The energy difference is as large as it is for a real state. A state with probability 2^(-80) gets bounced around no more and no less than a state with probability 2^(-1) Noise is a problem of order N, not a problem of order 2^N. You still require the same amount of noise energy to bounce the state from one eigenstate to the other. The noise energy required to prevent the system from functioning is proportional to the difference between energy eigenvalues, not the probabilities of states. This is not really an algorithm, this process has no classical equivalent) Let us call it a process, though it is non procedural. The reason this process will work is that the energy gap between the ground state and the first excited state, for the class of problems that I specified, declines roughly as 1 / [N lg(N)] where N is the number of bits, at the point where the two components of the Hamiltonian are roughly comparable in magnitude. Thus because the Hamiltonian is slowly changing, slow compared to the energy difference between the ground state and the first excited state, the system remains in the ground state of the instantaneous Hamiltonian at all times. Another way of looking at this is to say that the system feels out all possible states, which a quantum system can do, and a classical system cannot do. Unlike the class of problems considered by Deutsch, this does not directly test the Everett hypothesis, because the computer is not carrying out separate evaluations in separate universes. In Deutsch's class of problems, the evaluation is done separately in each universe, in a fashion equivalent to the classical manner, and then the results are mingled. For the process that I propose the mingling occurs continuously, and the processing has no classical equivalent at any point, hence classical intuition is bound to mislead you. > Hal Finney > hfinney@shell.portal.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 11:50:17 EDT From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) Subject: AIT book ref, the overkill edition ------BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE------ The following announcement is forwarded from the Alife list (more info about the Alife list at the very bottom). -fnerd - --------------- BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE --------------------------- From: Paul.Vitanyi@cwi.nl Subject: Comprehensive Kolmogorov Complexity/Randomness/Algorithmic Information (Text)Book: Appeared September 93. Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi, AN INTRODUCTION TO KOLMOGOROV COMPLEXITY AND ITS APPLICATIONS, Springer Verlag, August 1993, xx+546 pp, 38 illus. Hardcover $59.00/ISBN 0-387-94053-7/ISBN 3-540-94053-7. (Texts and Monographs in Computer Science Series) BLURB: Written by two experts in the field, this is the first unified treatment of the central ideas and their applications of Kolmogorov complexity---the theory dealing with the quantity of information in individual objects. The book presents a thorough, comprehensive treatment of the subject with a wide range of illustrative applications. Such applications include topics in general induction, machine learning, statistical inference, theory of computation, formal language theory, combinatorics, average case analysis of algorithms like HEAPSORT, lower bound proof techniques, the incompressiblity method, probability theory, randomness of individual objects or sequences, structural complexity theory, logical depth, physics and computation, information distance, and Boltzmann entropy. The book is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers in computer science, mathematics, cognitive sciences, philosophy, electrical engineering, statistics and physics. The text is comprehensive enough to provide enough material for a two semester course and flexible enough for a one semester course. Although it discusses the mathematical theories of Kolmogorov complexity and randomness tests in detail, it does not presuppose a background in heavy mathematics. The book is self contained in the sense that it contains the basic requirements of computability theory, probability theory, information theory, and coding. Included are numerous problem sets, comments, source references and hints to solutions of problems, as well as extensive course outlines for classroom use. CONTENTS: Preface v How to Use This Book viii Acknowledgements x Outlines of One-Semester Courses xii List of Figures xix 1 Preliminaries 1 1.1 A Brief Introduction 1 1.2 Mathematical Preliminaries 6 1.2.1 Prerequisites and Notation 6 1.2.2 Numbers and Combinatorics 7 1.2.3 Binary Strings 11 1.2.4 Asymptotics Notation 14 1.3 Basics of Probability Theory 16 1.3.1 Kolmogorov Axioms 17 1.3.2 Conditional Probability 18 1.3.3 Continuous Sample Spaces 19 1.4 Basics of Computability Theory 22 1.4.1 Effective Enumerations and Universal Machines 26 1.4.2 Undecidability of the Halting Problem 32 1.4.3 Enumerable Functions 34 1.4.4 Feasible Computations 35 1.5 The Roots of Kolmogorov Complexity 45 1.5.1 Randomness 46 1.5.2 Prediction and Probability 55 1.5.3 Information Theory and Coding 61 1.5.4 State Symbol Complexity 79 1.6 History and References 80 2 Algorithmic Complexity 87 2.1 The Invariance Theorem 90 2.2 Incompressibility 95 2.3 Complexity C(x) as an Integer Function 101 2.4 Random Finite Sequences 105 2.5 *Random Infinite Sequences 112 2.6 Statistical Properties of Finite Sequences 126 2.6.1 Statistics of 0's and 1's 127 2.6.2 Statistics of Blocks 130 2.6.3 Length of Runs 132 2.7 Algorithmic Properties of 134 2.8 Algorithmic Information Theory 140 2.9 History and References 165 3 Algorithmic Prefix Complexity 169 3.1 The Invariance Theorem 171 3.2 Incompressibility 175 3.3 Prefx Complexity K(x) as an Integer Function 177 3.4 Random Finite Sequences 177 3.5 *Random Infinite Sequences 180 3.6 Algorithmic Properties of K(x) 188 3.7 *The Complexity of the Complexity Function 190 3.8 *Symmetry of Algorithmic Information 194 3.9 History and References 209 4 Algorithmic Probability 211 4.1 Enumerable Functions Revisited 212 4.2 A Nonclassical Approach to Measures 214 4.3 Discrete Sample Space 216 4.3.1 Universal Enumerable Semimeasure 217 4.3.2 A Priori Probability 221 4.3.3 Algorithmic Probability 223 4.3.4 The Coding Theorem 223 4.3.5 Randomness by Sum Tests 228 4.3.6 Randomness by Payoff Functions 232 4.4 Continuous Sample Space 234 4.4.1 Universal Enumerable Semimeasure 234 4.4.2 A Priori Probability 238 4.4.3 *Solomonoff Normalization 242 4.4.4 *Monotone Complexity and a Coding Theorem 243 4.4.5 *Relation Between Complexities 246 4.4.6 *Randomness by Integral Tests 247 4.4.7 *Randomness by Martingale Tests 254 4.4.8 *Randomness by Martingales 256 4.4.9 *Relations Between Tests 258 4.5 History and References 268 5 Inductive Reasoning 275 5.1 Introduction 275 5.2 Bayesian Reasoning 279 5.3 Solomonoff's Induction Theory 282 5.3.1 Formal Analysis 284 5.3.2 Application to Induction 290 5.4 Recursion Theory Induction 291 5.4.1 Inference of Hypotheses 291 5.4.2 Prediction 292 5.4.3 Mistake Bounds 293 5.4.4 Certification 294 5.5 Pac-Learning 295 5.5.1 Definitions 296 5.5.2 Occam's Razor Formalized 296 5.6 Simple Pac-Learning 300 5.6.1 Discrete Sample Space 301 5.6.2 Continuous Sample Space 305 5.7 Minimum Description Length 308 5.8 History and References 318 6 The Incompressibility Method 323 6.1 Two Examples 324 6.2 Combinatorics 328 6.3 Average Case Complexity of Algorithms 334 6.3.1 Heapsort 334 6.3.2 Longest Common Subsequence 338 6.3.3 m -Average Case Complexity 340 6.4 Languages 344 6.4.1 Formal Language Theory 344 6.4.2 On-Line CFL Recognition 349 6.4.3 Multihead Automata 351 6.5 Machines 356 6.5.1 *Turing Machine Time Complexity 356 6.5.2 Parallel Computation 362 6.6 History and References 370 7 Resource-Bounded Complexity 377 7.1 Mathematical Theory 378 7.1.1 Computable Majorants 381 7.1.2 Resource-Bounded Hierarchies 386 7.2 Language Compression 392 7.2.1 With an Oracle 393 7.2.2 Without an Oracle 396 7.2.3 Ranking 399 7.3 Computational Complexity 401 7.3.1 Constructing Oracles 402 7.3.2 P-Printability 405 7.3.3 Instance Complexity 406 7.4 Kt Complexity 410 7.4.1 Universal Optimal Search 411 7.4.2 Potential 413 7.5 Logical Depth 421 7.6 History and References 428 8 Physics and Computation 433 8.1 Reversible Computation 434 8.1.1 Energy Dissipation 434 8.1.2 Reversible Logic Circuits 435 8.1.3 A Ballistic Computer 436 8.1.4 Reversible Turing Machines 439 8.2 Information Distance 441 8.2.1 Max Distance 442 8.2.2 Picture Distance 446 8.2.3 Reversible Distance 448 8.2.4 Sum Distance 450 8.2.5 Metrics Relations and Dimensional Properties 452 8.2.6 Thermodynamics of Computing 455 8.3 Thermodynamics 458 8.3.1 Classical Entropy 458 8.3.2 Statistical Mechanics and Boltzmann Entropy 461 8.3.3 Gibbs Entropy 467 8.4 Entropy Revisited 468 8.4.1 Algorithmic Entropy 469 8.4.2 Algorithmic Entropy and Randomness Tests 473 8.4.3 Entropy Stability and Nondecrease 478 8.5 Chaos, Biology, and All That 486 8.6 History and References 490 Bibliography 493 Index 527 - 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