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To: tortoise

p.s.: Please tell me why I am wrong to suspect that, in saying you believe the Universe is reducible to an algorithm, you are implying that the Universe is "designed." And then please tell me: How can an algorithmically-based Universe be a random process? Or is the algorithm itself a pure accident? In which case, it would seem to me you'd have a devil of a time trying to "reverse-engineer" it.


725 posted on 02/18/2005 12:45:30 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Please tell me why I am wrong to suspect that, in saying you believe the Universe is reducible to an algorithm, you are implying that the Universe is "designed."

This will not be constructive unless you stop using a rather pedestrian and ambiguous definition of "algorithm". I'm using it in a very strict sense. Let me say it again:

Everything that exists is algorithmic information. A rock, a tree, a cloud of hydrogen atoms floating in interstellar space, space itself. If algorithmic information implies "design", then your definition of "design" is meaningless since everything that exists in all possible spaces is "designed" by definition. We do not need a new word for "exists" in mathematics.

The more basic problem is that "design" is another one of those ambiguous and fuzzily defined "I know it when I see it" terms, like "alive". Until you come up with a strict and unamibiguous definition of "design", it cannot be used as a term in any kind of rigorous theoretical construct.

(The even uglier problem is that the pseudo-mathematical term "design" as it is being used her runs afoul of the Invariance Theorem, which makes it discardable ipso facto.)

731 posted on 02/18/2005 1:08:33 PM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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