42 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

Here is another article that needs to be addressed from an Informational Science perspective and could be straight out of De Chardin or Tippler. It overlaps very nicely with what was presented by John Smart at the TransVision Conference with regard to Universal Complexity and thus belongs here for review. (you may want to look at the original article as I am having trouble getting exponents to copy into this text format)

LL/kxs

http://www.nature.co.../020527-16.html
Universe is a computer
A physicist has worked out how many calculations have happened since the Big Bang.
3 June 2002
PHILIP BALL

We are all living inside a gigantic computer. No, not The Matrix: the Universe.

Seth Lloyd, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, has estimated how much information the Universe can contain, and how many calculations it has performed since the Big Bang1.

Lloyd views every process, every change that takes place in the Universe, as a kind of computation. One way of looking at the exercise is to imagine setting up a simulation of the Universe, particle for particle, on a hypothetical super-duper computer.

To simulate the Universe in every detail since time began, the computer would have to have 1090 bits - binary digits, or devices capable of storing a 1 or a 0 - and it would have to perform 10120 manipulations of those bits. Unfortunately there are probably only around 1080 elementary particles in the Universe.

Computer science

Just as clocks were the favourite analogy for complex systems during the age of Newton, now scientists like to compare everything to computers. DNA is sometimes described as digital, and the human brain, consciousness and life itself are discussed as though they all involve computation. So is Lloyd taking it all too far, depicting the Universe as a computer?

Perhaps; but Lloyd has a reputation as a challenging lateral thinker, especially in information theory. Two years ago he calculated the physical limits to computation: the constraints that physical laws place on the power of, say, a laptop-sized computer2. Now he's just doing the same for a Universe-sized computer.

The concept of physics as a computational process was articulated by the US physicist John Archibald Wheeler in the phrase "It from Bit". And complexity guru Stephen Wolfram suggests in his recent book A New Kind of Science3 that all of reality might result from a kind of algorithm, like a computer program, being enacted again and again on the underlying building blocks of space and matter.

We tend to associate computation with problem-solving, whereas it isn't clear that there is any 'problem' for the Universe to solve. But the connection between information science and physical processes appears once we think about events on the quantum scale.

Quantum switch

Every fundamental particle has a discrete number of different quantum states available to it. If a particle moves from one quantum state to another, this is rather like switching a bit in a computer from one state (say, 1) to another (say, 0).

"If one regards the Universe as performing a computation", says Lloyd, "most of the elementary operations in that computation consist of protons, neutrons, electrons and photons moving from place to place and interacting with each other according to the basic laws of physics."

What, then, is the Universe computing? "Its own dynamical evolution", says Lloyd. As the computation proceeds, reality unfolds.

He estimated the maximum number of logical operations the Universe has performed by calculating its total energy with Einstein's E = mc2. The energy of any physical system determines how fast it can switch from one quantum state to another - how fast it can compute.


References
Lloyd, S.Computational capacity of the Universe. Physical Review Letters, 88, 237901, (2002).
Lloyd, S.Ultimate physical limits to computation. Nature, 406, 1047 - 1054, (200o).
Wolfram, S. A New Kind of Science. (Wolfram Media, (2002).

[DJS]

But back to the "hard wiring"  you are looking at something very different than I am, you are looking at "specific beliefs" while  I am trying to analyze "why believe" at all.  What is the qualitative function of belief that makes it distinct from knowledge?

This is no idle question and we have touched upon it in other discussions, I am returning to it here because I think it is germane to the issue of Naturalistic Spirituality & Increasing Complexity.  Why would a randomized process of Natural Selection create a behavioral advantage for any organism to have a (possibly) biologically based "faith function"?

Forgive me if my answers sometimes seem amateurish. Sometimes I find myself having to reread your posts to graps their significance. I had never heard of the terms "meme" or "evolutionary psychology" until I came to this site a few months ago. I feel like I am trying to learn a new language. A question I would have is, isn't this all belief? How can you prove evolutionary psychology? I mean, you can make logical conclusions that seem reasonable, but how do you prove something of this nature? Am I missing something here?

Ok, let me try to have a go at "why believe". Maybe, in more primative times, a human that believed in himself, or his tribe, or his favor with a higher power possessed more confidence. Belief gives the believer a hell of a lot of confidence. This confidence could translate to aggressiveness (willing to take chances) which could correlate to an increased chance of survival and reproducing.

Belief = Confidence Is this part of your point?

Meanwhile, on the other side the nonbeliever, the "thinker", would be less willing to commit to action. This would effect their rate of survival/prcreation. Afterall, isn't passivity the equivalent of suicide inside of nature? (oops, I am once again basing my argument on belief [:o] , how do I avoid this?

Edited by Kissinger, 15 July 2003 - 12:59 AM.

[Discarnate]

First off -you're right, it *IS* a new language you're learning. The 'fun' part is that it's not yet solidified - it's changing as we use it. Sometimes, parts change on a daily basis!

Go read up on evolutionary psych. They have some interesting 'proofs' for it. A simple way to think of it, like most psych models, is to see if it's an useful modelling tool for people. IE - is it something which helps explain why people do what they do?

IMO, the answer to EvPsych and that question is 'yes'. Your milage may vary.

Memes, however, are a wonderful concept, and another IMO useful tool to predict behavior of those crazy humans. Ever read the Selfish Gene by Dawkins? Highly recommended if you haven't.

And how to avoid belief - perhaps by attaching numbers. Figure things out. Math is one tool to do this, some forms of philosophy as well, and the granddaddy of 'em all is logic, as badly abused as that can be.

-Discarnate

[Lazarus Long]

There is absolutely nothing wrong about learning new languages. Be proud of yourself for recognizing the need and accomplishing the expansion of your own horizons. IMHO that is the true definition of being Transhuman.

[kevin]

I found an interesting paper called

The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: a New Kind of Reality Theory or CTMU for short.

It was written by an individual with an interesting story; from his website MegaFoundation.org

Christopher Michael Langan was born in San Francisco, California, but spent most of his childhood and young adulthood in Montana and other points west. Although identified as “gifted” while still a young child, Christopher Michael was challenged with inadequate schooling, extreme poverty, severe abuse, and the responsibility of caring for his younger siblings. Raised to value brawn over brain, Christopher Michael worked as a cowboy, lifeguard, firefighter, and construction worker.

For the past 20 years, Christopher has worked as a bouncer in nightclubs on the East End of Long Island.  Without the benefit of a “higher education”, Chris has engaged in research into the areas of mathematics, physics, and the cognitive sciences for over 25 years. His masterwork, a treatise combining science and philosophy to offer a cohesive explanation of reality, is nearing completion. 

Although upon reading the abstract, I realized I was a bit out of my depth and almost called it quits,

Abstract: Inasmuch as science is observational or perceptual in nature, the goal of providing a scientific
model and mechanism for the evolution of complex systems ultimately requires a supporting theory of reality
of which perception itself is the model (or theory-to-universe mapping). Where information is the abstract
currency of perception, such a theory must incorporate the theory of information while extending the
information concept to incorporate reflexive self-processing in order to achieve an intrinsic (self-contained)
description of reality. This extension is associated with a limiting formulation of model theory identifying
mental and physical reality, resulting in a reflexively self-generating, self-modeling theory of reality identical
to its universe on the syntactic level. By the nature of its derivation, this theory, the Cognitive Theoretic
Model of the Universe or CTMU, can be regarded as a supertautological reality-theoretic extension of logic.
Uniting the theory of reality with an advanced form of computational language theory, the CTMU describes
reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language
characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and selfexecution
(reflexive read-write functionality). SCSPL reality embodies a dual-aspect monism consisting of
infocognition, self-transducing information residing in self-recognizing SCSPL elements called syntactic
operators. The CTMU identifies itself with the structure of these operators and thus with the distributive
syntax of its self-modeling SCSPL universe, including the reflexive grammar by which the universe refines
itself from unbound telesis or UBT, a primordial realm of infocognitive potential free of informational
constraint. Under the guidance of a limiting (intrinsic) form of anthropic principle called the Telic Principle,
SCSPL evolves by telic recursion, jointly configuring syntax and state while maximizing a generalized selfselection
parameter and adjusting on the fly to freely-changing internal conditions. SCSPL relates space,
time and object by means of conspansive duality and conspansion, an SCSPL-grammatical process
featuring an alternation between dual phases of existence associated with design and actualization and
related to the familiar wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics. By distributing the design phase of
reality over the actualization phase, conspansive spacetime also provides a distributed mechanism for
Intelligent Design, adjoining to the restrictive principle of natural selection a basic means of generating
information and complexity. Addressing physical evolution on not only the biological but cosmic level, the
CTMU addresses the most evident deficiencies and paradoxes associated with conventional discrete and
continuum models of reality, including temporal directionality and accelerating cosmic expansion, while
preserving virtually all of the major benefits of current scientific and mathematical paradigms.

HUH?

I soldiered on further and found that there was much accessible material in the remainder of the 56 page document of which I have only skimmed a bit. Still, it seems relevant to the topic of this thread although those of you involved in this discussion have probably already have encountered his thoughts.

Here's the Intro..

Introduction
Among the most exciting recent developments in science are Complexity Theory, the theory of
self-organizing systems, and the modern incarnation of Intelligent Design Theory, which
investigates the deep relationship between self-organization and evolutionary biology in a
scientific context not preemptively closed to teleological causation. Bucking the traditional
physical reductionism of the hard sciences, complexity theory has given rise to a new trend,
informational reductionism, which holds that the basis of reality is not matter and energy, but
information. Unfortunately, this new form of reductionism is as problematic as the old one. As
mathematician David Berlinski writes regarding the material and informational aspects of DNA:
“We quite know what DNA is: it is a macromolecule and so a material object. We quite know
what it achieves: apparently everything. Are the two sides of this equation in balance?” More
generally, Berlinski observes that since the information embodied in a string of DNA or protein
cannot affect the material dynamic of reality without being read by a material transducer,
information is meaningless without matter.1
The relationship between physical and informational reductionism is a telling one, for it directly
mirrors Cartesian mind-matter dualism, the source of several centuries of philosophical and
scientific controversy regarding the nature of deep reality.2 As long as matter and information
remain separate, with specialists treating one as primary while tacitly relegating the other to
secondary status, dualism remains in effect. To this extent, history is merely repeating itself;
where mind and matter once vied with each other for primary status, concrete matter now vies
with abstract information abstractly representing matter and its extended relationships. But while
the formal abstractness and concrete descriptiveness of information seem to make it a worthy
compromise between mind and matter, Berlinski’s comment demonstrates its inadequacy as a
conceptual substitute. What is now required is thus what has been required all along: a
conceptual framework in which the relationship between mind and matter, cognition and
information, is made explicit. This framework must not only permit the completion of the gradual
ongoing dissolution of the Cartesian mind-matter divider, but the construction of a footworthy
logical bridge across the resulting explanatory gap.

and a link to the paper for those who wish to read further Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe

[ocsrazor]

Hi Kevin,

There is a ton of redundancy and unnecessary jargon in that abstract, but I generally agree with what the author is saying. The quick and dirty is that he is suggesting that the old information theory (which is really Shannon/Weaver/Wiener communications theory) needs to be updated into a true theory of information and cognition, and that the difference between these two is that information in cognitive systems like us forms these loops which act back on themselves to become even more complex. He is also making the observation that all complex physical systems do the same sorts of recursive looping and make themselves increasingly complex.


Great find, I will add this paper to my reading stack. I'm sure there are probably some good nuggets in there.

Best,
Peter

[kevin]

Thanks for the clarification Peter, I have had precious little exposure to the language and mechanics used in explaining the theory so it made it all the more difficult to understand. As I read through the paper, the abstract becomes more accessible..

I've always felt that the universe, as a whole in and of itself, is fundamentally evolving, bootstrapping itself into higher levels of organization and that through our own evolution we play a part in contributing to the larger pattern. It is quite exciting to me that 'information' and communication play such a central recursive role and that there is some actual 'jargon' to describe such a concept in a more concrete sense than just a 'feeling'. The question remains for me however, Where does the 'need' to propagate information arise? Are time/space and matter/energy merely mechanisms to get the job done? My intuition tells me that underlying our 'universe' lies a very simple imperative to evolve... it's quite beautiful and fitting to me that realizing that everything we perceive to be real is just a vehicle for that imperative to move from A to B to C to... who knows where..

I'm not sure if you managed to check out this website...

http://home.hetnet.n...ckel/index.html

which is a site of a student of philosophy who uses the concept of a 'dyanmical law' which governs the form of the pattern of a 'uniform being'. He uses crystals as examples of 'uniform beings' and their growth based on their atomic structure as an example...

I've only just scratched the enormous amount of writing this guy has on the site but I've found some of it useful for framing my intuition with actual language.

Edited by kperrott, 22 July 2003 - 05:56 AM.

[Gewis]

An interesting listen, but so interesting and complex it's nearly impossible to pay attention to and work at the same time, can be found here. It's Stephen Wolfram discussing how nearly all the complex phenomena in the universe can be predicted and governed by a few simple rules of cellular automata, probably about 50 minutes long. It's also all covered in A New Kind Of Science. I haven't picked it up yet, but it should be a good checkout.

[lordprovost]

I've always liked the idea of the 'Seraphim' put forward in Aldous Huxleys Heaven and Hell.They're a rehash of Jungs Archetypes of the unconscious mind and could go a long way towards explaining such phenomena as visions of the virgin mary etc.
In Brazil where old african Gods have been merged with Catholic saints in religions like candomble umbanda and macumba we can see how these cerebral deities have been with us down through the ages.
Which bodes the question whether an AI could be programmed to mimic the complexities of the unconscious [?] For me though I don't believe in God, unless the lifeforce of the universe could be given that name [!]

[Omnido]

Interesingly enough, I have developed a total lack of fear regarding death.
For me, it is more of a hatred for the involuntary termination of my cellular cohesive structure, against the collective will of the many billions of neurons and pathways in my brain. I do not want to die...yet, unless there is no other logical or rational choice than to do so.
Natural decay is the ravage of Entropy, not the decree of nature. Nature must follow entropic law, Until it develops through understanding itself, a means and method for halting or reversing entropic decree.
Nature's decree is to merely survive and procreate. Evolution has yielded us the tools to improve upon ourselves (natures improvement upon itself) to the point of cancelling the effects of bio-chemcial entropy.
However, I have no fear of it. I do not fear death, I merely ask why it must exist, just as I ask why I exist.
For me, without purpose, there is no justifiable reason to exist. I say purpose, what I really mean is "Human Meaningful Purpose" which in all its subjectivity, could be almost anything.

[bacopa]

Kevin that's alot how I've been thinking recently that emotion is a necassary thing for us to be the amazing beings that we are. I would imagine life without emotion being quite futile as people would not have empathy in order to relate to one another and be the complex and adaptable beings that we are now.

[bacopa]

So Omnido do you believe that there is a purpose to life? and furthermore your acceptance of death is this because of a lack of a purpose? what about the discussions previously regarding conciousness, belief, objectivity, subjectivity etc. surely these are defined purposes if not that than what is it that we're "doing" here? these are some questions that you may want to think about...I struggle too with the idea of "a higher purpose" or authority but I think there is purpose in everything that we do.

[Omnido]

The purpose that I refer to dfowler is a purpose that defines an epic nature and fate. I have no such epic purpose, unless one is to dip into the realm of the butterfly theory, in which my very typing on my keyboard causes some drastic effect in the forseeable future or the immediate present.
While I can see how such events can occur, I cannot trace them to myself with any degree of importance, and thus they have no definable meaning to me.

"What are we doing here?" We're discussing.
Thats about it.
Discussing, conversating, sharing ideas.
Thats all.
I have been with this Institute since before it was ever an institute, and I have seen little that has been discussed ever put into action. All that I have seen is the collective typed works and references from the various members across the globe, especially those from the Directors, and from Bruce himself.
I dont see a laboratory for ImmInst.
I dont see a world leader or council advisor to the rest of the united nations whom speaks for ImmInst and receives any kind of recognition.
I dont see any multi-millionare devoting any of their funds to this institution.
I dont see any progress beyond a collective of shared information.

What is it I am waiting to see?
Planned, defined, and enacted propositions for realization of immortality.

When you ask me what we are all doing here and what other higher purpose could exist, I tend to think in monumental terms.
Yes, I am pushy when it comes to getting things done.
Yes, I have little patience for the "normal speed" of developing trends.
Yes, I expect 200% from people, because it is what I would give into such an ideal.

For now, there is nothing epic in this, nothing developing, nothing happening.
All I read is speculation and conjecture, theory and opinion, fact and fiction.
I am one for Applied sciences as well, not just theoretical.
The theories have long since been established.
Im waiting for the application.

Edited by Omnido, 04 April 2004 - 11:53 PM.