[extropy-chat] Role of Observer is not Relevant

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 03:09:45PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> >
> > Did the number 0x0bd11a0bb188f291956549705169a996110841d4 exist?
> 
> ### Yes! Always and forever, timeless, just as any element of the
> platonic plenum.

Well, I'm not religious. Because it's a large cryptohash of 
an entropy pool that number didn't exist anywhere in the universe
before I made it. Now that number exists in many copies, in many
people's mailboxes on nonvolatile storage, and it will take a while
before it's gone again -- when each and every copy of it has been
erased. It may well be that that number then won't appear again,
until the universe dies of old age -- I'm too lazy to make a guesstimate
what GLYrs of computronium working for GYrs can come up with.
 
> > > How come numbers "exist" in silicon, or gray matter but not in the
> > > number of chickens?
> >
> > Chickens can count a bit, actually.
> 
> ### This is not what I meant. A clutch of chickens always consists of

I know. I was referring to the fact that chickens can be their only
observers, making a measurement upon a particular physical assembly: 
a flock.

> a certain number of chickens. A certain number of gates in an
> integrated circuit may be in states that express a number. Why do you

Yeah, I already said that some human-derived (which are causally
entangled to the long evolutionary optimization process -- which
neither plasma nor interstellar organic-coated ice grains have 
participated in yet.

> say that a number doesn't exist when it is a property of a clutch of
> chickens but does exist when it is a property of a piece of silicon?

Not all circuits can count, it take special ones. 

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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