From: hansen (hansen@best.com)
Date: Sun Aug 15 1999 - 17:06:09 MDT
> Read any good books lately?
The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes
David Deutsch
1997 Penguin books
It says on the cover: "A leading scientist interweaves evolution,
theoretical physics, and computer science to offer a new understanding
of reality." Most books published these days say that on the cover.
It delivers. One of the most extropian books in existence, it seems
to me.
some topics:
Limits of classical computation.
The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Time travel as shifting to a slightly alternate universe.
Quantum computation to get beyond the limits of classical
computation:
"To those who still cling to a single-universe world-view, I
issue this challenge: explain how Shor's Algorithm works. ....
When Shor's Algorithm has factorized a number, using 10^500 or
so times the computational resources that can be seen to be
present, where was the number factorized? There are only about
10^80 atoms in the entire visible universe, an utterly
miniscule number compared with 10^500. So if the visible
universe were the extent of physical reality, physical reality
would not even remotely contain the resources required to
factorize such a large number. ..." p 217
[ I note in passing that the aforementioned Shor just got
a MacArthur grant, mostly for coming up with Shor's Algorithm...]
This got me interested in quantum computation. There are numerous
websites on it; I just got this book, I don't know if it's great yet.:
Explorations in Quantum Computing
Colin P. Williams, Scott H. Clearwater
1998, Springer. with cdrom.
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