Determinism, Cause Effect, and the head-tailed cat

[Frankiel]

Re: Determinism, Cause Effect, and the head-tailed cat

A Computer Scientist's View of Life, the Universe, and Everything[/i] by Jürgen Schmidhuber":vqaez3uw]

All Universes are Cheaper Than Just One
In general, computing all evolutions of all universes is much cheaper in terms of information requirements than computing just one particular, arbitrarily chosen evolution. Why? Because the Great Programmer's algorithm that systematically enumerates and runs all universes (with all imaginable types of physical laws, wave functions, noise etc.) is very short (although it takes time). On the other hand, computing just one particular universe's evolution (with, say, one particular instance of noise), without computing the others, tends to be very expensive, because almost all individual universes are incompressible, as has been shown above. More is less!

ftp://ftp.idsia.ch/pub/juergen/everything.pdf

This is actually what got me here, only I did it sort of in reverse. Looking at emergence theory and seeing that simple rules can lead to complex interactions made me question the existence of free will. If simple algorithms can produce our incredibly complex universe, then my question was, "can this simple algorithm produce randomness?"

The way I see/saw it (hahaha actually, looking at it, a see-saw is an excellent metaphor for my feelings on this), if randomness could be produced, then we could have free will, the ability to make a choice that has nothing or little to do with a prioi circumstances. Granted that may be a jump with a logical hole (which, in the interest of better understanding the framework within which this argument is based, you should feel free to correct or inform me), but it seemed to make sense at the time.

As for not brooding on it too much...

Well, I wouldn't say I'm brooding too much - it's quite like solving a crossword or playing sudoku to me; I'm just expressing my wonder with the universe and its complexity, and, in my own way, paying homage to the nebulous nature of existence. :P

In the meantime, I'll work on sitting...

Sincerely,
One-Who-Sits-Least-Yet-Talks-Most :P

[Jundo]

Re: Determinism, Cause Effect, and the head-tailed cat

We're talking massive numbers and a very large amount of time. The unique event that created a planet in the particular place where life exists may be a once in a billion event - but even then, there are enough stars and planets that this would still leave us with six billion such planets (according to The God Delusion or The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins - I forget which it is as I read them in rapid succession).

Hey Chet,

WARNING: The following is not a discussion of a particularly "Buddhist" idea ... just a particular subject that I, Jundo, happen to also be interested in.

There may be countless life-friendly planets in this universe, and countless universes ... but, still, I am left to ask, selfishly, why the particular planet, the particular narrow circumstances that I (and same for you too) happened to need happened to work out so right to let me think it so. I mean, under our present way of looking at events, it was always possible that our planet would be here, having all conditions so generally hospitable to life, with all events "just right" to lead to our little births and little lives (even if lives not always exactly to our liking) ... but so much more seemingly probable that, at any single stage along the way, any one domino in the needed chain would have fallen in a different direction

And even if there were countless worlds in the cosmos, each a little different, such that a "Jundo" and a "Chet" had to be born somewhere, sometime eventually (maybe many times) ... that would, under our present image of who we personally are, not explain how this particular "Jundo" and "Chet" were so incredibly lucky to end up here, on this pretty good world that we need now.

Thus, I believe, our present view of causation and how these events play out is likely wrong ... the dice are loaded in some way, or we are not quite who and what we think we are. (Read book for possible explanations).

Buddhism has a couple of apt images. The Mahayana speaks of countless worlds, countless sentient beings.

But it also speaks of each of us having our own particular stream of causation.

It also speak of our self being not just this small little "self" we might call "Jundo" or "Chet".

It also offers this famous image ...

A Blind Turtle in Search of a Floating Wood

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha used the metaphor of a blind turtle in a vast ocean to explain how difficult it is to be reborn as a human being and at the same time to have the chance of hearing the Dharma.

Suppose there is a small piece of wood floating on a vast ocean. The wood has a small hole the size of which is just enough for the head of a turtle to pop into. There is a long-lived sea turtle in the ocean. Once every one hundred years, this turtle comes out from the bottom of the ocean and pops his head into the hole of the wood.

To be able to hear the Dharma is just as hard as for the blind turtle to encounter the small piece of wood on a vast ocean and let its head go through the hole in the wood piece.

As for the theory of design, there are enough whacked out cul-de-sacs in the designs of ourselves and other animals that no design is indicated. Many structures in the body would not have been built the way they were by any designer who had the full freedom to 'start back at the drawing board' - no, natural selection created new uses for old equipment - all of which had to work while in transition and more than likely had to work better than the original equipment. Which is also pretty amazing when you think about it!

Personally, I happen to believe that Darwin's vision of evolution and natural selection is correct. I also feel that it is not the complete story. Much as a movie which has recorded the process of wild natural selection, when replayed, would appear to the viewer as wild natural selection ... but yet be fully determined as a movie ... or the way in which a computer simulation of natural selection would be partly determined and limited in its outcome by the programming of the software ... natural selection may exist, yet not be the full story.

I do not say that the process is like that (a movie, programmed software) ... just that I do not think that science yet has the complete story. The dice, I believe, were loaded in some way, and our "ridiculously unlikely" birth was not a complete crap shoot.

Obviously, our world and the processes of nature are wild, organic, based on competition and many dice rolls ... yet they may also be weighted toward certain outcomes. Much as a garden is wild, ever changing, many "dead ends" and disasters, subject to any number of variables, a place of change and birth and death ... yet also weighted toward certain outcomes by an intervening gardener's hand (I'm not saying who or what that "gardener" is, by the way)

Gassho, Jundo