Re: Turing machine cosmology

From: Damien R. Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 22 2002 - 17:08:05 MST


On Fri, Feb 22, 2002 at 12:07:41PM -0800, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> Quality unknown.
>
> http://www.arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0202314

Now that I've read it, I think it's pretty neat. At the very least the
writing doesn't really trigger the crackpot detectors, despite a few
alarms. ("Printer's ink"? And it could use a bit of proofreading.)
Basically he's hypothesizing that the universe is a UTM, and thinking
about what that would mean, and coming to interesting conclusions about
the necessity for symmetry breaking, random parameters in the Standard
Model (a Theory Of Everything would lead to an inconsistent UTM, he
says) and endless although logarithmically distributed new laws of
physics (new constants of physics, new bits of Chaitin's Omega.) Plus a
calculation apparently convergent with cold dark matter estimates.

Doesn't make concrete predictions to falsify, and while I get Godel,
Chaitin's Omega is still black magic to me, so a paper which treats it
as primitive has a high 'eep!' factor for me. But it was pretty
interesting. In that "I may have just read a seminal paper" way.

-xx- Damien X-)



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