(urth) The significance of Apu Punchau

[David Stockhoff]

Sure, the but the issue is not running Briah, as is clearly in some sense the case. The issue is controlling each iteration to be nearly identical to, and presumably always slightly better than, the "last." Sorry, no.

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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:06:45 -0500
From: "Gwern Branwen" <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) The significance of Apu Punchau
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
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On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 9:45 AM, David Stockhoff  wrote:

> > Jeff Obviously, this is not a matter that can be truly resolved. You're
> > right that the destiny-control machinery must be used for something, and we
> > are told in general terms what that is. But again I'd have to assert that,
> > if common-sense analysis means anything here, one archipelago per galaxy is
> > simply not enough computing power, however you measure it, to micromanage
> > each world in a galaxy---but also that it would surely require such energy
> > to run (and there has to be implementation as well) that it would take an
> > entire universe to feed it.
>   

This would be incorrect; you drastically underestimate the limits of
computing. An area the size of a laptop could simulate entire worlds
many many times over.

Good reading in this are includes Seth Lloyd's paper "Ultimate
physical limits to computation". See
http://www.ar-tiste.com/qcomp_onion/jan2002/UltimateLaptop.htm and
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043

The limits are intimidatingly vast, and certainly many times (if not
orders) greater than what they need to run Briah.

- --
gwern



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