Re: Cold and Dark?

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
25 Oct 1999 18:59:51 +0200

hal@finney.org writes:

> Dan Fabulich, <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu>, writes:
> > Tipler's argument leads me to hold that unless we actually have infinite
> > computing power, life will not go on forever in any meaningful sense of
> > the word. Infinite time is not infinite life.
>
> Actually I am beginning to think that it is worse than this. We not only
> need infinite computing power, we may need infinite information, that is,
> we may require in effect an infinite amount of "noise".

Yes, this could be an issue. We might want infinite algorithmic complexity. But I wonder if not quantum noise might be powerful enough to create it.

Algoritmic complexity (the complexity of something is defined as the length of the shortest program + data that generates it) is one of the better complexity measures around, but it is not good enough. If I sit in a box and come up with a great fantasy world, has the information and complexity in the box not increased? I think AC fails here because it is a static measure, intended to denote the complexity from a "God's eye perspective". What we need is a measure that can denote the increase in meaningful information.

Hmm... time to go home. It seems my mind is getting very chaotic. Perhaps good for my algorithmic complexity.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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