Comments on: Controlling Chaotic Systems

By: Big Elk

Big Elk — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:13:44 +0000

There’s no way for you to ever know for sure and that is centrally important to “it”

By: Julia

Julia — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:01:20 +0000

Invasion of the Blogger Snatchers.

By: alistair

alistair — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:56:46 +0000

could be…..me too.

at least i think so sometimes.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:50:19 +0000

So, my bet is that Tim followed his own advice a long time ago and left his computer in charge of his web site and we’ve been talking to a Timulation ever since.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/12/09/erasing-personal-history/

By: alistair

alistair — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:13:02 +0000

math is another map of reality. solving all reality problems is what the promise of quantum computing is about…..that and um, controlling it.

any emulation large enough and fast enough is percieved as real.

the child`s trick of drawing images on the corners of pages of books and then flipping them fast enough gives the impression of movement.

so, if you have a big enough sample of tim and a fast enough processor and a fast enough delivery medium…..

and who`s to say that this hasn`t all happened before?

By: speedbird

speedbird — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:25:02 +0000

Nice, thanks for that. Very interesting.

What I’ve understood previosuly is that, say you can predict the weather for one day, you need a certain amount of information. For each extra day, you need to double the amount of information so it quickly gets out of hand.

So now we’re talking about the information rate required to control a system - fair enough. Assuming we’re not part of the system, presumably.

What’s more interesting is how the undercurrent of philosophy shouts from the page ‘If you can predict something, that’s the same as control!’.

And also the more subtle thing about entropy: if you can measure a random sequence, it’s not entropic? Hmm… that’s strong determinism by another name. ‘We /can/ know the state of the Universe well enough to predict its future’. But then quantum computing scares me at the best of times, with its promise of solving /all/ mathematical problems.