Thanks Christopher (01)
its great that you got the book, tell us more about what you learn
from it which may be relevant to this forum, when you have a moment (02)
the work, among others, seems to be pointing, again, to a grand theory
of everyone
:-) (03)
On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Christopher Spottiswoode
<cms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Paola, many many thanks for your pointer to that Wolfram lecture!
> His entire work teems with deep questions that are certainly
> relevant to ontology, and you were very right to draw our attention
> to that amazing performance.
>
> John, thanks too for the usual balance in your response. However,
> I'm not sure that on the face of it this is correct:
>
>> [...] he wasn't making the mistake of claiming that the real world
>> is as simple as a digital automaton.
>
> Whether or not that would be a mistake (which is a whole other
> question...), I think he does in fact claim that the real world has
> a certain underlying simplicity.
>
> He does indeed propose and investigate many kinds of digital
> automata that are far from the simple cellular automata we've all
> seen. But his work is about how apparently real-enough complexity
> can be produced by simple automata. And on NKS p469 he does say
> this:
>
> "But it does mean that if one once discovers a rule that reproduces
> sufficiently many features of the universe, then it becomes
> extremely likely that this rule is indeed the final and correct one
> for the whole universe."
>
> where the "it" clearly refers to a long line of reasoning to which
> he appears to subscribe. And while NKS does cover many other areas
> of application of his complexity-out-of-simplicity theme, and his
> "computational irreducibility" does have a great generality, his
> heart and mind do appear set on discovering that one rule!
>
> That is my impression, anyway, after having studied much of his NKS
> (as best I could...) and tried to follow his doings since. But I
> would be keen to learn of any counter-arguments.
>
> Christopher
>
>
>
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> (04)
--
Paola Di Maio,
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