thomblake comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: AspiringKnitter 05 April 2012 07:51:31PM 6 points [-]

Wow. That's really cool, thank you. Upvoted you, jeremysalwen and Nornagest. :)

Could you also explain why the HPMoR universe isn't Turing computable? The time-travel involved seems simple enough to me.

Comment author: thomblake 05 April 2012 08:57:48PM 7 points [-]

Not a complete answer, but here's commentary from a ffdn review of Chapter 14:

Kevin S. Van Horn
7/24/10 . chapter 14
Harry is jumping to conclusions when he tells McGonagall that the Time-Turner isn't even Turing computable. Time travel simulation is simply a matter of solving fixed-point equation f(x) = x. Here x is the information sent back in time, and f is a function that maps the information received from the future to the information that gets sent back in time. If a solution exists at all, you can find it to any desired degree of accuracy by simply enumerating all possible rational values of x until you find one that satisfies the equation. And if f is known to be both continuous and have a convex compact range, then the Brouwer fixed-point theorem guarantees that there will be a solution.

So the only way I can see that simulating the Time-Turner wouldn't be Turing computable would be if the physical laws of our universe give rise to fixed-point equations that have no solutions. But the existence of the Time-Turner then proves that the conditions leading to no solution can never arise.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 06 April 2012 02:04:48AM 7 points [-]

I got the impression that what "not Turing-computable" meant is that there's no way to only compute what 'actually happens'; you have to somehow iteratively solve the fixed-point equation, maybe necessarily generating experiences (waves hands confusedly) corresponding to the 'false' timelines.

Comment author: tgb 10 April 2012 11:29:12PM 2 points [-]

Sounds rather like our own universe, really.

Comment author: johnswentworth 09 April 2012 10:52:42PM 3 points [-]

There's also the problem of an infinite number of possible solutions.

Comment author: faul_sname 13 April 2012 05:49:00AM 0 points [-]

The number of solutions is finite but (very, very, mind-bogglingly) large.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 05 April 2012 11:14:25PM 2 points [-]

Ah. It's math.

:) Thanks.