[extropy-chat] Fragmentation of computations

[Russell Wallace]

On 3/27/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do you say this because they are quantum fluctuations, or because of the
> extreme improbability that Swamp Man will emerge? There is a problem if you
> say quantum effects are non-causal because everything is ultimately a
> quantum event, which has a classical approximation at large scales. There is
> a problem if you say extremely improbable things that happen are non-causal
> because improbable things can happen and, given long enough, will happen.
> Boltzmann thought the whole universe was a kind of Swamp Man, a random low
> entropy variation.
>

In that context I was focusing on the difference between theories about
Hash-Life Man which are falsifiable at least in principle, and theories
about Swamp Man which are not. I don't personally think it matters as far as
consciousness is concerned - we could imagine that our universe is a kind of
Swamp Man (with the interesting corrolary from the reversibility of physical
law that time was almost certainly running backwards until just now), though
Boltzmann's view falls over once we consider that it would have been much
cheaper to generate, say, just our solar system that way rather than the
whole universe.
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