X-Message-Number: 14865 Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 20:37:59 -0800 From: Lee Corbin <> Subject: Why Running is Important to a Process Robert Ettinger writes in #14842 > #14842: Adiklis, uploading again [Ettinger] >Let me repeat my Turing Tome counterexample, in part, >with a slightly different emphasis. Imagine a huge book, >containing code for a person and his lifetime (or a large >segment of it, including his environment). Is the book >alive? Does it have feelings? Is anything happening? You already know that many, many of us say No. >It must be alive and feeling, if you believe that isomorphism >is everything. "Alive" and "feeling" are processes, and hence involve *time*, again, as you know. But I will concede that isomorphism isn't everything, unless it includes a strong linkage between states, and time is the only way that I know to provide it. But more below, >And you can't escape by saying the program must be running >in an active computer. If isomorphism is good enough for >space and for matter, why isn't it good enough for time? Many have asked this question, some in very dramatic form (e.g., Greg Egan in Permutation City). It is a very good question. I would say that an active ongoing calculation makes manifest (i.e. plain) information that is otherwise deeply hidden. A running calculation appears, in this way, to provide new information. But your question is really deeper than that, and I have written elsewhere at length on "The Problem of the Succession of Frozen States". To summarize, a single frozen state is much less than an ongoing process, which is a linear collection of many states. I think that the answer to your question may ultimately be: the linkage between a succession of frozen states is not strong enough to make them manifest in our universe, but a causally connected set of states linked through time is. Lee Corbin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14865