Mark_Friedenbach comments on Timeless Causality - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 May 2008 06:45AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 15 October 2013 04:52:30PM *  2 points [-]

4 years too late but... this is missing the point of both Eliezer and IL. Eliezer/Barbour's timeless physics has no changing state over time, because there is no time. Both states exist in a timeless configuration space, and the causal connection between them is only inferred. IL is trying to illustrate this leads to some pretty rediculous conclusions - such as that all you have to do is write down the states on a piece of paper, and then viola - you have created conscious beings even though no computation is actually going on.

EDIT: For what it's worth I think the Barbour's physics is a mysterious answer that doesn't actually dissolve any of the questions it purports to solve..