X-Message-Number: 18605
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 10:43:00 -0700
Subject: Fredkin's Digital Philosophy (was Re: Uploading: dt & time shuffles)
References:  <>
From:  (Tim Freeman)

Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 22:21:34 +1100
>You might care to examine Ed Fredkin's continuing work (some of it very
>recent) on digitizing all of physics:
>
>http://digitalphilosophy.org/

Very interesting stuff.  Thanks for the pointer.

The thing I don't get is that according to Feynman's "QED" book,
Quantum Electro Dynamics gives answers correct to ten decimal places
for some measurable nontrivial properties of electrons.  It would seem
odd that physics that is really based on cellular automata would give
results that happened to work out exactly the same as QED, which
doesn't resemble cellular automata at all.

On the other hand, Feynman makes a good case at the end of that book
that QED is rotten at the core and can't possibly be the whole story,
even if all you are dealing with is electrons and photons.  Weird.

Fundamentally, all of this fundamental theoretical physics has no
bearing on chemistry.  I am a chemical being and humanity doesn't have
the nanotech problem solved yet, so chemistry determines my well-being
in the short term.  I therefore really should try to ignore all
theoretical physics.

-- 
Tim Freeman       
; formerly 

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