thank you for introducing the "uncomputabiliy" and "un-simultability" issues.
I think the simulation is a reduction of the phenomenon it want to represent or describe, otherwise it would be an exact copy, a replica, made in the same matter, substance.
We simulate, with some limited technological (human) instruments, what we can understand, imagine, infer or interprete of the phenomena we get in touch with with our senses (natural and expanded through devices and machines), creating models which are generally made of another matter (with the algorithms we can simulate the behavour of material things or physical phenomena).
Models are simulations. And as Arturo Rosenblueth (October 2, 1900 - September 20, 1970, a Mexican researcher, physician and physiologist, who is known as one of the pioneers of cybernetics) points out: "The best model of a cat is another cat..., especially the same cat." [This sentence was historically attributed to Norbert Wiener and sounds slightly different: "The best model of a cat is another cat or, better, the cat itself"]
So I think the question could be, as Roger points out, the following: "are there any phenomena which can't be reduced, that is which can't be simulated, modelized or represented?"
Cheers
Pier Luigi
Il giorno 22/gen/2011, alle ore 12.35, roger malina ha scritto:
> Pier Luigi , Jennifer and yasminers
>
> The Simulation II discussion so far has been quite centered on
> the issue that perception and experience involve the integration
> of senses
>
> i would like to put the topic of UNCOMPUTABLE back into this mix
> with this quote from Chaitin about "irreducibility'
>
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/ai.html
>
> There are two kinds of algorithmic irreducibility: time irreducibility
> as in Wolfram [1], and information irreducibility as in Chaitin [2,3]
> and Calude [4]. In the first case, a physical system for which there
> are no computational shortcuts, for which the quickest way to see what
> the system does is just to run it. In the second case, a string of
> bits for which there is no theory more compact than being given the
> string of bits directly as is. In other words, there is no program for
> calculating the string of bits that is substantially smaller than the
> string of bits itself.
>
> In other words there are some processes in the universe where there is no
> shorter description than the process itself= ie even theoretically the process
> is uncomputable ( tough luck for computer scientists)
>
> We need some cognitive scientists in this discussion, but i would think
> that 'subjective experience' is uncomputable ie you could never develop
> a computer simulation that correctly simulates the subjective experience
> of someone else.
>
> related to this is Varela's concept of "enaction"
>
> http://liris.cnrs.fr/enaction/index-en.html
>
> The term « enaction » was proposed by Francisco Varela in order to
> designate a new paradigm in cognitive science, based not on the
> metaphor of the computer as in classical cognitivism, but instead on
> the metaphor of living organisms.
>
> I would like to make the assertion that relying on digital simulations
> is creating
> a situation where we focus primarily on processes that are theoretically
> simulatable or computable=
> whereas there are many other processes that are just not
> simulatable and there is a danger that we are developing huge blind spots
> (similarly there are parts of the universe that are theoretically unobservable
> eg the interior of a black hole, or the universe further away than
> light could travel since the birth of the universe)
>
> the work of artists , with its emphasis on triggering subjective
> experience.and exploitation of phenomena that may be unsimulatable may
> open up interesting
> areas of research that computer scientists are not focused on
>
> are there any examples ?
>
> roger malina
--
Pier Luigi Capucci
e-mail: plc@noemalab.org
web: http://www.noemalab.org/plc/plc.html
skype: plcapucci
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