[ExI] Which direction does the arrow of time point in Conway's Game of Life?

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Which direction does the arrow of time point in Conway's Game of Life?

 

>…You don't have to invoke Quantum Mechanics or Relativity to figure out there are some funny things about time. In our world we, perhaps naively, believe the past … To such a being the future would be certain and hold no mystery but the past could only be speculated about. To such a being would the arrow of time point in the opposite direction from the way we see it? I can't see why it wouldn't.  John K Clark

 

 

I think about the people living in Capernicus’ time, and Galileo’s experience.  They knew the equations indicated the sun was the center of the universe which doesn’t bother us at all now, even as we learn that the sun orbits the center of the galaxy and the universe has no center, etc.  Think about those who were being told that regardless of Galileo’s stupid equations, the earth is the center of the universe and disregard that heretical bastard, etc.  But they could work the equations, and those equations were telling them something that must have been very uncomfortable.

 

Now we have QM in its current form is telling us stuff we just can’t really get our heads around: we might all be simulations.  The equations vaguely suggest it somehow, ja?  We are told to shut up and calculate, which most of us do, but the same notion surely was told to the students in the long time agos: shut up and use these heretical Galilean equations to get the right answers but when you finish, confess, pray and give money to the church, while keeping in mind the earth is the center of everything.

 

I don’t want to accept that we are all just sims, self-aware avatars, but I can’t escape the feeling that QM kinda suggests it in a way. 

 

On the other hand… if I am a sim, I can be run over and over again, cool.

 

spike

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