From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Fri Sep 21 2001 - 14:06:29 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Damien, have you ever heard the saying, "If you torture the data enough,
> it will confess?" This looks to me remarkably like the analysis of
> allegedly significant events in the so-called "Bible Code".
Perhaps part of this is due to their interpretation involving a 'global
consciousness'. I haven't looked at their data enough to even begin to
form any coherent ideas, but I found it interesting that the subsequent
'period of silence' seemed to decrease the randomness of the EGG data
(if I am interpreting that correctly).
One alternative to the 'global consciousness' idea might be that we are
living in a computer simulation, or maybe cellular automaton, and more
so, a hash CA in which lookup tables are used to skip intermediate steps
between slices of 'reality' (or whatever). The 911 events stirred up the
pot so to speak, reducing the efficiency of the lookups and requiring
more generation by generation computing, while the 'period of silence'
enabled more efficiency in the lookups since a significant number of
people weren't doing anything. I realize this is not how CA's work and I
am totally lacking in the math skills to either explain what I mean or
interpret the data. Nonetheless even this sketchy hand-waving
incorporates the 'period of silence' EGG effects better than their
global consciousness theory.
Perhaps we could test this theory by placing large nuclear bombs
throughout the world and set them to be set off on some random trigger.
They would need to be in cities where they would be 'noticed' by
sentient beings. We might also use such opportunities to have teams of
observers stand by who would be instructed to *not* be distracted by the
subsequent tragic events, instead they would concentrate on other areas
of reality and see if any anomalies occur as computational resources are
diverted to simulate the multitude of disruptions when one of these
bombs go off. Sounds a bit drastic though.
This might also explain the Fermi paradox: if we are not alone in this
universe I might expect to see similar EGG activity from time to time as
world-changing events take place on other planets. Then again I haven't
yet looked at their location-by-location results.
-Mike
-- ====================================================================== Michael Wiik Principal Messagenet Communications Research Washington DC Area Internet and WWW Consultants http://messagenet.com mwiik@messagenet.com ======================================================================
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