From: Peter de Blanc (peter.deblanc@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 09:10:11 MDT
On Wed, 2005-07-20 at 08:48 -0500, Chris Capel wrote:
> Size, in thise case, presumably being the complexity of the
> computations done by the machine, not the size of the data that it
> works on. It would only model the physical laws that govern the
> universe, and start with some set of data describing the conditions at
> the big bang that we don't count against its size. Otherwise, the
> simplest machine would be one which randomly comes up with new things
> to introduce to the Cartesian Theater of our subjectivity that happen
> to rationally agree with everything the individual person knows at the
> time. In other words, life is just a dream. Because then the machine
> doesn't have to bother modeling the rest of the universe (which we
> assume a machine modeling objective reality would do) which would
> probably vastly simplify the size of the machine.
Your total body of sensory data is a string, S. Find the smallest java
program, which, without any external input, will print the string S. The
program may print other stuff after printing S, but it may not print
anything before S.
A program which simply generates every possible string will fail,
because it also has to locate S within that vast mess, and specifying
the location of S will take approximately as many bits as S itself
contains.
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