What is Digg?114 Comments
- synaesthesia, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21Wrong, the universe is really an intense and immensely complex hallucination experienced by a 17 year old Belgian kid on a potent mix of Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms and LSD. Upon coming down from this trip (while simultaneously nullifying all of existence), this kid will mark the end of our universe with the words "Dude, that was ***** trippy", then raid his mom's fridge for the last bag of Doritos.
Of course, you can't prove or disprove my belief and i'm no more qualified than the rest of you to speculate on it, but the fact that I suggest such a thing is surely newsworthy and worth a digg....or is it? - justinvt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16The more people who know about Claude Shannon and information theory the better. I think it's silly that we need to have arguments about whether or not evolution is real on Digg, and then we have articles like this become popular as well. The universe can be beautiful and complicated without us having to impose our theistic allegories on top of it. Like a dog chewing on it's own leg, believing it to be a bone, we are the universe attempting to understand itself. Why is that too boring? Why am I contemptible for not believing in the god that created the world in a week, when eveything else the universe tells us is so nuanced and subtle?
- markit, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21interesting views
... and the answer is 42 bty - r3becca, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Is it just me or is this concept obscenely obvious?
Back in the heyday of Newtonian physics the universe was perceived to being akin to a gigantic clockwork machine.
Today, computers are the modern equivalent to the technical marvel that was the mechanical clock but the concept is the same.
This dupe is centuries old ;) - humpingmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Doritos in the fridge?
- Bitruder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10So... don't complain.
- veloscaper, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11If the universe is a computer can someone hit reset, I think we could all use a fresh boot.
- Nameless1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8So, then are black holes like buffer overflows? (too mutch stuff in a small and undefined space)?
- newevilmind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6if the universe really was a computer we'd know because all we would hear about all day is how people are trying to convince it to use Ubuntu.
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Scientists love to say that the universe is whatever is the state-of-the-art machine of their time..once the universe was a perfect clock (Newton), then a great thermic machine (Carnot), then a great computer, now a great quantum computer..if you ask me, the universe is a great PS3 :P
- ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Uh oh, someone figured it out. Time for the anomaly to visit the Source, methinks, and reset this mess.
- organic, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16_what is 42?_
The answer to life, the universe and everything. - dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5So the universe uses PVS (Potentially Visible Set)? I knew it!
- CosmicJustice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's a self referential system. The description of the universe is encoded into the universe. Imagine a computer program which is composed completely of it's own description. Now imagine that that program is also a virtual machine capable of running itself.
- dlogic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think the prof is missing a point...or may be he dosent in his book.
I read this somewhere i dont remember...where....
The universe exists at a point and all computation happens there....that makes it a quantum computer.
Its like the Half Life I play......the scene out of my view point dosnt exist but when i turn (ie change my view point) that part is created i front of me from the Mem and by the CPU. - DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Wow this is the worst interview I've ever saw, there's nothing of value to take from this and it's just a shameless plug for his book anyway. Lame.
- simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Lol, right. A computer MEANS man-made. New one to me.
- kindrobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Doritos in the fridge?"
Hey, it's a strange universe. - Izzie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5correction mice built nothing they paid for it to be built.
- nabs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There was an interesting podcast from Science Friday talking about this very subject. Worth a listen.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5330709 - cal0001, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3a computer dose not meen 'man-made', 'artificial intelligence. ' The turm computer was first used to describe the people working for mathematicians they were calde computers because they computed the equations.
- thespanielator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4His argument is a very nice parallel to Cosmos by carl sagan
- brhad56, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE" -God's final message to his creation
- tachyon2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As nabs was saying as I was typing:
If you listen to the NPR Science Friday podcast, they did an interview with an MIT professor in the department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering about this very topic. It was simplified, yet detailed enough, to get a basic understanding of the concept of quantum computing.
http://www.sciencefriday.com - tont0r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5This interview had the feeling that a 20 year old emo journalism major conducting everything.
- ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Interesting idea :D We probably know more about the existence of the universe than we do about the PS3, too! :D
- Sithlrd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8The ultimate question is "What is 6 x 9", of course.
Sci fi newbs. LOL - Fenster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have been watching the re-run/re-make of that series of TV shows on the Science Channel (Discovery Science maybe?). I am about 3-4 episodes into it, dated, but good stuff.
- Reddog_x2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4So, the universe exists mostly to download porn?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It's not the universe... just Earth. Jeez! Get it right!
- DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I think it's Wired that makes him come off as a crackpot. They're just "LOL QUANTUM STUFF"/new age ***** for the entire interview.
- harr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"and the ultimate question would be ?????"
Mutually exclusive to the answer. Knowledge of one precludes knowledge of the other. I can't remember the exact quote, but I do know it mentions it in the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_Tertiary_to_Quintessential_Phases
The are differences in the storyline between different versions (old radio series, new radio series, books, etc.), so there may be other ideas (such as "what do you get if you multiply six by nine" (primary phase, fit the sixth), and Marvin thought he could read it from Arthur Dent's brainwave pattern in the primary phase fit the fifth-ish) and as Deep Thought said that the Earth could work out the question you would have thought it would be possible. - simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Can someone tie this to black holes?
- Tomos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2> It's a self referential system. The description of the universe is encoded into the universe. Imagine a computer program which is composed completely of it's own description. Now imagine that that program is also a virtual machine capable of running itself.
Sounds like the human body and DNA. There is a tenuous fractal link here too. - john570, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Billions and Billions....... God I love that show. Too bad he is gone.
- boycy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Brilliant article - very interesting.
It's irritating how people seem not to grasp the fact that the computer is only a metaphor and that it's not a computer being controlled by someone to compute a specific thing.
BTW computer doesn't mean man-made or AI, computer means something which computes. Duh. - simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The limits of mathematics are an illusion brought on by limits of actual reality. If they existed otherwise, then the math would show it as well. Considering that it's believed the laws of "physics" break down within a black hole, or may be entirely different in other areas of the universe, then our math will describe those events and break down along with as we study and alter to describe those things accurately. Math is not a mold which makes shapes, it's an eye, an eye we develop, and we use to see through to understand patterns and methods reality uses to calculate. Laws of physics are not limiting, like i said, it only seems that way because we are limited by the true deeper rules of reality. NOT the math. We just see it through the math. So don't bother arguing with math, or logic, too abstract.
I get what you're saying, the idea, I just really dissagree with your way of percieving... or communicating it. It's just not solid, it's missleading.
Not to mention, what does "understand" mean? If you think we can't know the math which produced everything we can observe, I disagree. Quantum computing is on the edge of proving you wrong, in fact, are you implying that this entire Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing is ultimately not going to work as predicted? Even though it alread IS on a small scale?
Seth Lloyd could be lieing, but I highly doubt it, and on the radio recording I listened to he stated that Quantum Computers are already being observed to see information being altered. Information on how qbits flip, and information is moved, in reality. So you are obviously wrong. Unless, as I said, it's true that you're wrong as I can't interpret all your relative and missconceptualized ideas. I'll be glad to continue this if you e-mail me, I don't want to keep checking these comments. - justinvt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Did you read the link I posted? We have mathmatically shown that boolean logic is flawed - a consciousness isn't a consciousness unless it is somehow a compressed echo of the external universe. It is this algorithmic compression that makes "understanding" possible, but because it is compressed the understanding will ALWAYS be partial. There is an age old problem, that deals with what is knowable, and what knowledge is. If you aren't willing to confront the reality that math and logic are TOOLS and not universal invariables then you will be deluding yourself, and how can you get anything done like that? Read the link I posted- it's very interesting!
- justinvt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The truth is that the processes which underlie our consciousness are computational by nature, so information/computation is the only true way that we can "understand" reality. It doesn't provide any metaphysical explanation for why we exist, but we wouldn't really be capable of understanding such an explanation, so what's the point? Almost by definition it is correct to compare the universe to a giant quantum computer. To compare it to a carnot engine, or whatever else, is just another way of algorithmically compressing reality so that our consciousness may interface with it. It is still the same thing --- Superimposing a statistical framework ("expectations") on top of an enormous probabilistic soup. With the tools currently available to us that is the limit of our understanding.
Did anyone read the article in March's (?) Scientific American about Chaitin's Halting Probability (Omega) and how it places a limit on how accurately a computational system can be described? http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/ecap.html - simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Mathematics and any abstract system of laws are here to -describe- the world around us. We then use our knowledge of those laws to aid us in developing mechanical devices, and to further understand other things. It's not a tool as in a hammer and a chisel.
Yes I read the link. Yes it was interesting. But I'm not convinced that a flaw in -our- understanding of logic is enough evidence to prove conciousness can't be a product of quantum computation. I'll stay on the fence, but you're still assuming regardless.
and that just makes you highly self-dilluted in missconceptions. There's no way in hell you can be certain in anything unless you are so undeniably. So just get back on the fence and don't form biased opinions. - Headphoner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Two things:
1) If that's his view, he should have said Computers are like the universe (not the other way around).
2) Organisms have functions; what's the function of the universe? - dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6"There is no god."
"Gods' gonna get you for that"
Nah. I know how he dies - jumjum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think of the universe as a map for a PC game (such as a .bsp map for Quake). If you type 'noclip' in the console then go into the sky far enough and look down, you'll see that the entire map is just a box, surrounded by empty grey "canvas". Equating this idea to the universe, what is beyond its box, or even the program, or even the computer? I think this is an unimportant question given where humanity is at in this point in time (and may be eternally unimportant), but I would comfortably bet that there is a "box", and we're in it, see below.
Where the prof goes wrong is that he theorizes that the universe makes decisions based on mood, producing humans and offspring, which is not the case. There's no evidence of even lifeforms evolving, much less the cosmos. When you look at a Pentium 4 laptop you don't say, "It evolved from an IBM PS/2 14 billion years ago", you say, "It had a designer." Anything that carries information does. Be it a DNA strand that carries so much information that even one of Yoshi Deherrera's computers can't contain all the data, or someone writing "Johnny loves Becky" in sand on a beach; -all- information must be penned. - wonko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2for those of you making the H2G2 jokes... he actually does mention 42 in his book. i picked it up a week ago or so. Its not the easiest read in the world but its not horribly difficult, this coming from a guy who has yet to take a REAL physics class. Oh i took physics in HS but it turned out it was "dumb people's" physics.I was SO bored in that class, slacked off and ended up with a B. I do plan to correct that now that I'm in college. In short...
Go pickup his book "Programming the Universe" if quantum computers and/or quantum physics interests you. - tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This isn't news. His book Programming the Universe has been out for a while now. It's a really good book though and I highly recommend it...
- DocDEB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Man I just hope The Universe doesn't see us as a virus and run its AV program.
- Izzie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2there's no point in being fast if you're not accurate.
actually the question is "what do you get when you multiply six by nine"
do you want to know more ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything - CatfishJones, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4'The ultimate question is "What is 6 x 9", of course.
Sci fi newbs. LOL'
Math newb. - Erixxxxx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Well, science is utterly incoherent when put under the microscope of any religon, not just the collection of secular religous beliefs known as philosophy. But then since niether organized nor secular religons use microscopes (which implies empirical verfication), its a rather inaccurate anology you came up with there, albeit a telling one.
- why27, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Actually the correct answer was really ______27_______ if you noticed, they said they wouldn't tell you everything without something else?
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