Using Object Oriented Programming to revolutionize physics?

[Daniel Pitts]

My thesis isn't "use OOP to do simulations."

I'm suggesting a simulation that contains an internal observer.

That's never been done before.

Are you sure? My programs often observe themselves using the Observer
pattern. Maybe you should be more expressive about your meanings.

 

[Daniel Pitts]

What I find revolutionary is the use of one set of information in a
physical resource to organize into a virtual resource for a new second
set of information of a different kind.

Physicists have been simulating stuff for years, but only with the one
set of data.

The second set is innovative.

Sorry, what? They incorporate an external source of information?
Brilliant, I'm sure that is a brand new idea, except for digital cameras
and scanners, microphones, sensors... Get my drift?

Try to be specific with your ideas, vagaries will not suffice.

 

[Owen Jacobson]

My thesis isn't "use OOP to do simulations."

I'm suggesting a simulation that contains an internal observer.

That's never been done before.

Hold up a second. If we take, say, Java in the abstract, it's a
Turing-complete language[0]. That is, two interesting properties
hold:

1. Any computable process can be computed using the rules of the Java
language.

2. Any Java program can be reduced to a single natural number.

Are you seriously trying to convince me that there exist some numbers
which contain, when converted into Java (or some other Turing
language, or expressed as instructions for a UTM), is somehow self-
aware? That there exists *an integer* capable of computing things
that, as far as I can tell from reading between the lines of your
incredibly vague posts, that represents some physics breakthrough?

I'm really, *really* not sold.

-o

[0] Barring limitations like finite heaps, which are actually required
by the java language. I know. Bear with me.

 

[Michael Helland]

Some how I thought you would go there. Just because one person was
rejected but was revolutionary doesn't mean anything about the current
argument. It *could* be that you're ideas are revolutionary, but until
you flesh them out a bit more, it'd be hard for me to judge.

The current argument is that I should implement it.

You could be right.

We can make that the end of the argument if that's what you want.

Or we could explore the possibility of pursuing a collaborative
effort.

Copernicus, you are not.


So far you haven't described anything, only vague ideas and an assertion
that no one has done it yet.

Fair enough.

Did you read the entire first post? How about the webpage I linked to?

Are you positive? What makes you think those three areas of research are
mutually exclusive?

I've talked to some researchers, like John Smythies, who is a
neuroscientist and also trained in general relativity, I believe.

But really, all three of these fields require 15 years of study and
experience to claim expertise in just one of them.

What level of expertise? Do you really need one person who has
experience in all three, or three people who each have experience in one?

I need the help of a highly skilled neurobiologist and a quantum
physicist.

If you can expand your ideas a little bit, perhaps into a form that is
somewhat more concrete, then you might have something that interests me.

Fair enough.

Have you read this?

http://www.cloudmusiccompany.com/paper.htm

 

[John W. Kennedy]

Are you seriously trying to convince me that there exist some numbers
which contain, when converted into Java (or some other Turing
language, or expressed as instructions for a UTM), is somehow self-
aware? That there exists *an integer* capable of computing things
that, as far as I can tell from reading between the lines of your
incredibly vague posts, that represents some physics breakthrough?

A deterministic universe would appear to require either that, or else
the proposition that self-awareness is an illusion. Of course, that
latter would be completely inconsistent with what he is attempting to
do, viz., to reinflate the long-burst "life force" pseudo-religion.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"

 

[Michael Helland]

My thesis isn't "use OOP to do simulations."

I'm suggesting a simulation that contains an internal observer.

That's never been done before.

Hold up a second. If we take, say, Java in the abstract, it's a
Turing-complete language[0]. That is, two interesting properties
hold:

1. Any computable process can be computed using the rules of the Java
language.

2. Any Java program can be reduced to a single natural number.

Ok.

Can a single natural number be expanded to a Java program with no
further information?

Are you seriously trying to convince me that there exist some numbers
which contain, when converted into Java (or some other Turing
language, or expressed as instructions for a UTM), is somehow self-
aware?

I guess that depends on the answer to my question above.

But the basic idea is to use the java program to create some virtual
substance in a computer program, and use it to build a second virtual
computer.

The second virtual computer should be gathering data about it's
environment, sort of like a human being does.


That has never been done, but it when it is done, we have two sets of
data, and a new, unique question to ask in the philosophy science:

We use hypotheses to predict the results of an experiment. What if the
computer program, with its two sets of data, is a hypothesis and what
if we ignore the first set of information, the data of the computer
program, and instead make our predictions based on the second set of
information, the data in the virtual computer?

In other words, the model predicts the results of an experiment
through an internal artificial intelligence.

What will we find?

What if we used that fundamental substance to recreate the double-slit
experiment with an observer present?

How would the first set and the second set of information differ?

 

[Michael Helland]

A deterministic universe would appear to require either that, or else
the proposition that self-awareness is an illusion.

Of course, that
latter would be completely inconsistent with what he is attempting to
do, viz., to reinflate the long-burst "life force" pseudo-religion.

I don't think that's very accurate.

Take a closer look:

http://www.cloudmusiccompany.com/paper.htm

 

[Lew]

The second virtual computer should be gathering data about it's
environment,

"its"

 

[Owen Jacobson]

Hold up a second.  If we take, say, Java in the abstract, it's a
Turing-complete language[0].  That is, two interesting properties
hold:

1.  Any computable process can be computed using the rules of the Java
language.

2.  Any Java program can be reduced to a single natural number.

Ok.

Can a single natural number be expanded to a Java program with no
further information?

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoedelNumber.html>

Which actually describes how Gödel numbers apply to Turing-computable
functions, but since all "real" computer languages are capable of some
strict subset of Turing-comptable functions that's not all that much
of a limitation.

To save you some effort:

"Then there exist algorithmic procedures that sequentially list all
consistent sets of Turing machine rules. ... Any such procedure gives
both an algorithm for going from any integer to its corresponding
Turing machine and an algorithm for getting the index of any
consistent set of Turing machine rules."

That is, for any particular mapping between computable processes and
numbers there will exist a computable mapping in either direction.

I guess that depends on the answer to my question above.

But the basic idea is to use the java program to create some virtual
substance in a computer program, and use it to build a second virtual
computer.

The second virtual computer should be gathering data about it's
environment, sort of like a human being does.

That has never been done

This has been done before: have a look at breve.

<http://www.spiderland.org/>

The field in general is called "alife" or "artificial life" and
revolves entirely around programmable entities operating within a
simulated environment.

It cannot possibly be any more powerful than the computer it's running
on. If you simulate anything within a JVM, the entire universe of the
simulation will be constrained by the capabilities of the JVM - that
is, to computable functions. Likewise with an x86 chip directly, or a
massively-parallel supercomputer[0].

We use hypotheses to predict the results of an experiment. What if the
computer program, with its two sets of data, is a hypothesis

A computer program is not a hypothesis. A formal statement of
expected results and reasons is a hypothesis.

and what
if we ignore the first set of information, the data of the computer
program, and instead make our predictions based on the second set of
information, the data in the virtual computer?

In other words, the model predicts the results of an experiment
through an internal artificial intelligence.

What will we find?

What if we used that fundamental substance to recreate the double-slit
experiment with an observer present?

How would the first set and the second set of information differ?

However the programmer intended them to differ. I can write a program
that simulates interferometry in a few different ways and play with
the fundamental constants involved -- change 'c', change the
interference function, whatever. The results will either be
consistent with the underlying mathematical and physical theories
behind interferometry, or they won't be.

But if they're not, it's probably because the code has a bug, not
because I've discovered that the math is wrong.

-o

PS. this is drifting rapidly off-topic for cljp. Would someone
suggest a more suitable venue? comp.programming springs to mind.

[0] <http://www.andrewboucher.com/papers/parallel.htm> -- parallel
operation does not increase the computational power of a Turing-
equivalent process.

 

[Michael Helland]

This has been done before: have a look at breve.

<http://www.spiderland.org/>

Thanks for the reference. I've been scrounging around and I've got
more research to do.

But so far I still think, like in Java, breve is capable of making my
idea a reality, but so far only is still only a possibility.

The field in general is called "alife" or "artificial life" and
revolves entirely around programmable entities operating within a
simulated environment.

It cannot possibly be any more powerful than the computer it's running
on. If you simulate anything within a JVM, the entire universe of the
simulation will be constrained by the capabilities of the JVM - that
is, to computable functions. Likewise with an x86 chip directly, or a
massively-parallel supercomputer[0].

We use hypotheses to predict the results of an experiment. What if the
computer program, with its two sets of data, is a hypothesis

A computer program is not a hypothesis. A formal statement of
expected results and reasons is a hypothesis.

That's a prediction, but we can call it a hypothesis.

If you take that hypothesis and generalize it for as many different
results, you have a really handy hypothesis in the form of an
equation.

The equation, something like F=ma, is the hypothesis.

Just as the equation *is* the hypothesis in traditional physics, the
computer program *is* the hypothesis in the type of physics I'm
suggesting.


Except the data in the memory of the computer doesn't make the
prediction, the information in the second set, the hypothesis'
measurement of itself.

However the programmer intended them to differ.

Nope. The programmer can't really "intend" the second set to do
anything.

It exists as a natural result of the complexity of the first set.

Once the information has become self-aware, in other words once there
is an artificial life inside that makes first hand observations of
life inside the information, a new second set in a new virtual
resource appears.

The difference is:

set 1: is how the programmer intended the virtual world
set 2: is how the virtual world looks to someone inside it

If you get that, and you'd be among the first, then you should
understand why I think that's the key to a new class of hypotheses
(computer programs) better suited for quantum mechanics.

 

[Wildemar Wildenburger]

That is good news!

What I am suggesting is not standard at all.

To some people, it's just plain bizarre and incomprehensible, though I
think its self-evident and fairly self-explanatory.

Which of those describes your feelings on it?

Troll-Alert.

/W