Re: :Weird mysterious ineffable stuff
Blue Sound (liveevil@020.co.uk)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 18:40:46 0100
> But what exotic non-quantal stuff do you think the consciousness-mediating
> `machine' is made out of? What on earth makes you think its phase space is
> `rigid' (assuming that assertion makes any sense)?
The Turing machine is made out of normal stuff, it's the computer sitting in
front of you. Its the interaction of the machine with the environment that
affects the time line. The quantas making up the fabric of the universe are
computing under constraints. There are overarching constraints existing before
the big bang, the constraints added moments after, and there are recent,
temporary, highly localized constraints such as the restriction of gun threads
on this mailing list. The quanta compute many potentials, but to keep dogs from
turning into cats and cups from unsmashing certain constraints interact with
quanta to maintain the reality we know.
A Turing machine has a rigid phase space because it has a finite internal state
space and a finite input space. This doesn't change unless some one rewires the
machine. Anyways, you guys have worn me out so I've changed the color of my
sound and won't be able to respond for a while.