This probably gets us into Penrose's Emperor's New Mind territory which
seems to have had mixed reviews...
Of course there are many more non-computable problems than computable ones,
so I would just assume that there must be aspects of culture that 'do not
compute'. Maybe this is too loose an argument though -- it's certainly not
a proof!
No comments on my misgivings about memes? Anybody have an opinion on
that? Or does anyone know of a literature discussing memes?
David
At 09:27 PM 4/1/2003 +0100, Alan Penn wrote:
>This brings a question to mind: are there any qualitative properties of
>systems that are provably _not_ representable in terms of bits?
>
>The theory of computation says that anything computable can be computed
>using a finite state machine (if I understand it right) so I suppose such
>properties - if they exist - must not be computable. If so what are they,
>and are they socially interesting?
>
>Alan
>
> >
> > Hi SIMSOC,
> >
> > Jorge, I'd love to underline what you've written.
> > Let me add just one more perspective:
> >
> > On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Jorge Sima~o wrote:
> >
> > > Clearly, only for a very simple real world phenomena can the bit
> > > flipping be considered an appropriate model, in the sense of
> > > producing at least some qualitative similarities with the real
> > > phenomena.
> >
> > True. Moreover, in theory, every computer model is in fact only bit-
> > flipping. No matter how big your numbers are they are represented by
> > bits. Any increase or decrease is a bit-flipping, and can be broken
> > down to single-bit-flipping like in a sugarscape world.
> >
> > So, if you look at it the other way 'round: If you do not feel
> > comfortable with values represented by single bits just make your
> > sugarscape bigger and look at it from a macroscopic point of view
> > where you can not distinguish single bits. Or, if you like it
> > more sophisticated: Find an interpretation that translates a certain
> > number of bits to whatever quality you like.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > --
> > -- Andreas
> >
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