Registered: Sep 2007
Re: Universal as a minimum not as a universal
Originally posted by Tony Smith
History is as overcrowded with theoreticians insisting on answers that are just too simple to work as it is with those trying vainly to return humanity to the centre of affairs. Real history is overflowing with unanticipatable synergies. [/B]
Great point, Tony. Stephen Wolfram gave a talk at MIT last evening, and one of the things he said was, "If the Universe is reducible to a simple rule, like one which would generate a cellular automata, it would be ridiculous not to *try* to search for it."
Science is currently saturated with the idea that the FT is *so* complex in form we've got to use complex structures in mathematics, understood well by perhaps a couple handfuls of people in the world, to deal with it (see current trends in Algebraic Geometry and Quantum Mechanics; also String Theory, though I personally know less on that front). And perhaps the computation for something as complex as the universe is itself, complex. But perhaps it isn't.
At bottom, it would be silly not to exhaust all simple searches before embarking upon complex searches, especially since complex searching involve tools in mathematics that can take a significant portion of one's life to conquer.
With respect to "Why does universality matter.." again, forgive my naivete, but I think universality simply implies one *can* search. Searching for a program to do what you want it to do is certainly less efficient, when you want to do something comparatively simple, than building the program. However, when you have something reasonably complex, traditional methods (building complexity from simple, atomic expressions) can become as complex as the model itself. Therefore, it might make more sense to search through the space of possible computations (as long as you know what you're looking for, of course).
I'm new to NKS, so if someone can explain it better than I can (or correct me, if I'm wrong), please do.
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