MichaelVassar comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong

215 Post author: PhilGoetz 19 September 2009 09:05PM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 26 December 2009 04:14:28PM 0 points [-]

I'd be very surprised if this Universe was super-Turing, but you think it's actually incoherent? I can definitely conceive of a hypercomputational cellular automata, what is it about the idea of our Universe being hypercomputational that seems incoherent to you?

Comment author: MichaelVassar 26 December 2009 07:36:49PM 2 points [-]

I think that it is very common for things that we casually think we can definitely conceive of to actually be incoherent. I also think that almost everyone else underestimates how common it is.

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 December 2009 10:21:07PM 1 point [-]

I think I'm correcting for that. Do you agree that the halting oracle function itself is well-defined? If so, what seems inconceivable about a cellular automaton whose rules depend on the output of that oracle? OK, you have to stretch the definition of a cellular automaton to allow it, perhaps by allowing cells to have unbounded state, but the result is a wholly defined and therefore surely in-principle-conceivable Universe which is super-Turing. No?