Vaniver comments on For FAI: Is "Molecular Nanotechnology" putting our best foot forward? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: leplen 22 June 2013 04:44AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 23 June 2013 08:41:21PM 2 points [-]

It didn't help, in my particular case, that one of my first interactions on LW was in fact with someone who appears to have their own view about a continuous version of quantum mechanics.

Continuous in the sense of, like, continuous energy levels? Because if so, wow.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 25 June 2013 04:19:19PM 0 points [-]

Here's my guess:

  • "Continuous" is a reference to the wave function as described by current laws of physics.
  • Eliezer is "infinite set atheist", which among other things rule out the possibility of an actually continuous fabric of the universe.
Comment author: Baughn 28 June 2013 05:02:12PM 2 points [-]

As I've already pointed out to another infinite set atheist, you could get the appearance of a continuous wavefunction without actually requiring infinite computing power to simulate it. All you need to do is make the simulation lazy - add more trailing digits in a just-in-time fashion.

Whether or not that counts as complicating the rules for the purpose of solomonoff induction is.. hard to say.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 28 June 2013 06:00:39PM 0 points [-]

Furthermore, a "continuous" function could very well contain a finite amount of information, provided it's frequency range is limited. But then, it wouldn't be "actually" continuous.

I just didn't want to complicate things by mentioning Shannon.

Comment author: Vaniver 25 June 2013 05:33:48PM 0 points [-]

That would be reasonable, but it's not clear to me what "their own view" about that would look like. My impression is that most physicists see the universe as (at least functionally) continuous, with a few people working on determining upper bounds for how small the discrete spatial elements of the universe could be, and getting results like "well, any cells would be as much smaller than our scale as our scale is from the total size of the observable universe."

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