Re: Guessing?

On Jul 13, 2:54 am, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:

> Various claims are sometimes made about possibilities
> in physics that might account for some special mechanism
> the brain has access to. Usually these are some kind
> of quantum effects. My understanding is that the idea
> that the brain takes advantage of quantum effects is
> not generally accepted, but even if it were true,
> that doesn't change the situation. Quantum effects
> are computable. Quantum computers cannot compute
> anything that regular computers can't. Even if some
> hitherto-undescribed quantum effect exists, it will be
> possible to build an abstraction for it. I would be
> astonished to find that our computational models
> aren't already up to the task, but even if they aren't,
> we can simply expand them.

We don’t have a TOE and we don’t know whether the universe is computable. Since noncomputable problems abound in mathematics I would avoid being too presumptuous.

QM+GR appear incompatible. On that basis Penrose conjectures that the universe may be uncomputable. This is a logical possibility. Received on Mon Jul 14 2008 - 04:28:45 CEST