Wow, so now I'm wondering how we determine the cellular automata code for invisible dimensions!  Can invisible dimensions impact visible cellular automata ?  Perhaps visible, humanly tangible systems aren't closed and other forces are acting on them?  Check it out at New Scientist. 

Will Wolfram call invisible and unforeseeable effects "computational irreducibility"?

I hope I don't dream about this stuff tonite!

8:34:53 PM    comment []

Okay, I admit it, I've been in a state of denial.  There were no blueberries to be had (how berry sad).  Patch number 1 was too sodden for picking; Patch number 2 sold the last of their crop just minutes before I arrived.  Dang it all.  I’ve no choice now but to give up the ghost of Summer and move on.  Autumn is definitely here.  Time to think about apples and pumpkins and raking leaves.

Has anyone else noticed the Christmas trinket displays worming their way into the stores?  That’s not helping my disposition; I feel compelled to rebel, clinging to the end of Summer even more tightly.  Do retailers think we’ll slip and forget, spending Christmas dollars early?  Not before the first fiery leaves have fallen, not before the skin has been split on the annual sacrificial pumpkin-cum-jack o’ lantern.  Hell, no.  And just where do they think they’ll display the Halloween costumes and candy, the Thanksgiving turkey and fixings?  It’s just so tragic, this Christmas-in-July-on-life-support.  A holiday getting by, sickly confident on Prozac, stretched a little tightly with Botox.  Tres pathetique, n’est ce pas?

My disposition is further taxed by my current reading selection, A New Kind of Science.  Granted, author Stephen Wolfram is a friggin’ genius.  But a RATIONAL genius with a good editor wouldn’t waste this much paper to make his case.  Omigod, there’s a REAM of unnecessary paper here. 

I’m probably oversimplifying this by saying Wolfram’s premise is that the entire universe is comprised of or can be described by simple programs (cellular automata).  To put it another way, everything is memes – repeatable agents.  Everything you touch, everything you do, everything around, about you, just programs.  

Our ancient ancestors first explained the universe in very simple two-dimensional terms, little more than pictograms.  Hundreds of years ago, humans began to explain the universe through linear equations, moving our understanding to a more fully fleshed-out 3D Newtonian worldview.  Wolfram’s premise suggests that science move from 3D to 4D, like the shift from Newtonian to quantum physics, breaking everything down from cellular level to the quark – everything can be attributed to a pattern, a program, a script.  He removes intelligence from much of the complexity we see around us, attributing it to the computational irreducibility of certain programs.  Through the concept of computational equivalence, Wolfram encourages us to see that we and the universe are equally complex, equally computationally irreducible.  (For this reason we perceive intelligence where there may not be any, just a really complex program.)

Why would I read this? you might ask.  Because I wanted to know whether we can compute the end of science.  Is it possible that everything can be computed, is there an end in site?  Wolfram says sure, but computing it would take as long as waiting to find out how it all turns out.  Guess that means we work on all the computationally reducible stuff in the meantime, like genetics and quantum physics, global warming, peace in the Middle East, and why the butter side always lands down when you drop your toast. 

What’s my frustration with this tome (which I’m sure you’re sensing)?  Because Wolfram tells us what (in a stupefying 847 pages and an additional 348 pages of notes), but there are no real or readily apparent answers to who, how, why.  I’m thinking: If everything in the universe can be attributed to programs, who the hell is writing the code?  And more importantly, why?

(Those of you with a spiritual or religious bent will no doubt have a personal answer, but personally I’d like to see the coder’s signature on the work.  You know, write once, use twice, give credit where due on use.  To who am I giving credit?)

Off to the apple orchard, to see what apples are programmed for this year’s crop.  I’ll thank the Heavenly Code Geek when I find my favorites, Cortlands and Jonathans.  But I suspect the Big Scripter in the Sky already knows my feelings about this, and has already programmed my reaction to availability and my response.

11:34:35 AM    comment []