Thursday, May 3, 2007

Principle of Computational Equivalence: Take Two

The Principle of Computational Equivalence is unnecessarily weak. Wolfram stated it thus:
Almost all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication.
To begin with, "Almost all" doesn't mean anything. Nor does "obviously simple." Here is an alternative conjecture with the meaningless modifiers removed:
All processes can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication.
Tell me what's wrong with that.

Everything in the universe (including, and perhaps especially, the universe itself) can be viewed as a computation. All processes in the universe- even those that are "obviously simple" are, or at least can be viewed as, irreducible computations.

The mathematical idealizations that approximate these processes are exactly that: idealizations and approximations.





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