Next: Preliminaries In C. Freksa, ed., Foundations of Computer Science: Potential - Theory - Cognition Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 201-208, Springer, 1997. A Computer Scientist's View of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Download postscript or gzipped postscript or PDF. IDSIA, Lugano, Switzerland juergen@idsia.ch December 1996 Abstract: Is the universe computable? If so, it may be much cheaper in terms of information requirements to compute all computable universes instead of just ours. I apply basic concepts of Kolmogorov complexity theory to the set of possible universes, and chat about perceived and true randomness, life, generalization, and learning in a given universe. Post publication note: Konrad Zuse was the first who seriously suggested the universe is being computed on a grid of computers or cellular automaton (digital physics); compare similar ideas by Ed Fredkin. They did not talk about computing all computable universes though. This paper and related ones are being discussed on the "everything" mailing list (everything-list@eskimo.com) created by Wei Dai. Follow this link to the archive. | |
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