From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Aug 14 2004 - 15:36:05 MDT
--- Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
wrote:
> The UTM theory is about the equivalence of
> computational devices.
> What is wrong in the above is taking the
> authority of Turing for your
> own notion of reality being entirely
> computational. Since, to the best
> of my knowledge, Turing never said such a
> thing, this is inappropriate
> and a rather imho a rather shabby argumentative
> ploy. It is worst
> than an argument from authority.
>
> - samantha
Turing didn't suggest it, and more recently,
Wolfram did not originate it, as this reviewer
notes:
"It was not Wolfram but Konrad Zuse who was
the first to suggest that the physical universe
is being computed on a discrete computer, such as
a deterministic cellular automaton (CA). His
first paper on this topic dates back to 1967:
Konrad Zuse, Rechnender Raum, Elektronische
Datenverarbeitung, vol. 8, pages 336-344, 1967.
PDF.
Note that this is the same Konrad Zuse who
built world's first working general purpose
computers 1935-1941.
Zuse's book on CA-based universes came out 2
years later: Rechnender Raum, Schriften zur
Datenverarbeitung, Band 1, Friedrich Vieweg &
Sohn, Braunschweig 1969.
English translation: Calculating Space, MIT
Technical Translation AZT-70-164-GEMIT, MIT
(Proj. MAC), Cambridge, Mass. 02139, Feb. 1970.
PDF."
URL for above:
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/wolfram.html
Tom Buckner
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