Franko's "Universe as a Computer Program" Debunked

[Franko]

Joshua,

Listen, I believe everyone is responsible for their own actions. That's WHY I don't believe the universe is absolutely deterministic.

That is a contradiction. If you are responsible for what happens to you, then that is determinism – positive and negative reinforcement.

Of course since you have a kindergarteners understanding of Determinism I don’t expect any of this to make much sense to you.

If the universe is deterministic, as you contend, and if I am just a program doing what I was programmed to do, as you contend, then am I responsible for what the Programmer designed me to do?

What “programmer” are you referring to?

I’ve told you many times that I do not believe that the LG created you. She may have modified your algorithm (greatly improved it), but She didn’t write it. She didn’t create YOU.

If, indeed, the universe is deterministic, and I'm just doing what I'm programmed to do, and can't change or do anything else (because I have no will), then why doesn't the Goddess simply delete me right away, instead of running me?

Because She didn’t create you, and She needs some time to make an assessment of you. She is trying to determine if you are an ultimately beneficial meme, or an ultimately harmful one.

Is she hoping that I will "magically" IGNORE my program and become a paragon of virtue?

She is hoping that your program is NOT fatally flawed – Yes. She is even trying to correct any error She’s perceives, but some Gravitons are beyond all hope.

If the universe is "deterministic", why can't she just look at my code and say "oh, Joshua was programmed to not believe in me, he is a bad program" and send me to the Cosmic Abyssal Recycling Bin immediately?

This universe isn’t a True universe. That is why you are only here for an instant (although it may not seem that way to you). Imagine an electron orbiting the nucleus of an Atom. The electron orbits in a shell, and it can change from one shell to the next. The electron orbits in the shell, but when it changes shells (changes states) it seems to jump (teleport) from one shell directly to the other.

In reality the electron is NOT teleporting to the new shell magically. In reality it is moving there in a fairly “normal” manner, except this happens so quickly relative to our sense of time that it appears to happen instantaneously.

The same thing is happening with You here. This Universe is not a True eternity. It is simply a transition zone between two shells (real universes).

See, let's say I'm just an algorithm, a peer-to-peer transfer protocol that some programmer designed so that people can share files over the internet - like WinMX or Kazaa. My job is simply that - to transer files. That's it - I have no control over what those files are, I just transfer them.

Now, suppose the Programmer who wrote and installed me uses me to transfer Bad Things - like terrorist bomb plans, for example, or child pornography. Maybe being able to get such things is why he programmed me all along. It doesn't matter. I have no choice over what files I transfer - I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. I couldn't even "want" to stop it, because I have no will.

That’s True, but how is this any different then the terrorist example I used previously? If you are conditioned for evil, then you are evil.

What you are saying is that when my "cycle" is up, then the Goddess will look at me and say, "during your existence, you were used to transfer terrorist bomb plans and child pornography - therefore, you are a bad program and you will be deleted from the hard drive of the universe."

She won’t actually delete you, She’ll just “copy” you to a place where you can no longer cause any harm to anyone but yourself. Eventually you will be the one who deletes your own program.

There are problems with your version of the universe. The first problem is that the judgement ultimately doesn't matter to me …

If you are saying that your Fate doesn’t really concern you, then I don’t know what you expect me to tell you?

… I'm a few lines of code and that's it.

You are what you are and that’s it.

When I'm "exited" and "uninstalled", nothing can possibly matter to me any longer, because I am no longer running. So the purpose of "judgement" in your universe is an unnecessary (and therefore illogical) extravagance.

No, you are somewhat autonomous. The moment you ceased sensing (perceiving) Time you would cease to exist, the LG has been helping you to improve your perception of Time, but even before Her modifications to your algorithm you still experienced Time. In fact, if you were cut loose immediately (and not sent to a cell) then you would fall back to the Abyss and experience Time far better then you ever did in the past. You don’t even need the universe (classroom) around you any more.

But the second, and most obvious, problem is that your universe blames the tool used to commit the crime rather than the evil Programmer who actually committed it.

That’s not True.

I was only following orders works sometimes, but for the most part you should have known better. Rest assured when anyone uses this defense at their judgment day they are always asked Who’s orders were you following? and that guy gets it 10x as bad.

Why doesn't the Goddess ever get pissed at the "Progenitor/Initial/Lead/Solipsist/Programmer" for writing such effed-up program/gravitons?

Because without Him, none of us would exist.

Imagine what it would be like if the FBI, when it finds a child pornographer, puts the file-transer program on trial and sentences it to be "deleted" instead of arresting the criminal himself. That's the universe you present, Franko.

Are you saying that if we could eliminate only the technology necessary for child pornography (but nothing else) we shouldn’t do it?

What purpose do Nuclear weapons serve Josh? Should every family have a Nuclear weapon in their basement – “just in case”?

Now, before you have a seizure, you need to remember that the purpose of this thread isn't to prove whether "God" exists or doesn't. It isn't to "prove" whether the universe is deterministic or purely random, allowing for free will. The universe may very well be deterministic, Franko.

You sound like a Skeptic there Josh …

The sole purpose of this thread is to prove that a universe can be predetermined, or can be personal-responsibility based, but can't be both at the same time.

Says who?

You need to familiarize yourself with the concept of Determinism. What you are saying above is the equivalent to 2 + 2 = 3.

The two types of universes are mutually exclusive.

Yeah, I realize that your “heavenly crystal spheres” are incompatible with my whacky “Round-Earth” model of the solar system.

And yes, God (or Goddess) can exist in either one. It seems to me that you think your explanation of the universe is the only one in which God can exist, therefore to disprove your explanation is to disprove the existence of God. It's not true - I've done nothing to disprove the existence of God.

If I have evidence for God, and you do not, and you are reflexively attempting to disprove My evidence for god, then that doesn’t make you look like a Deist – it makes you look like any other A-Theist on this forum.

You say you don't believe that the two are mutually exclusive - but those two programs I wrote at the very beginning of the thread prove that they are mutually exclusive.

If you wrote them and You are God, then perhaps what you say is correct?

But I have never claimed that the LG wrote your program, and I have stated that She didn’t more times then I can count. I don’t think you really care though because I happen to believe you are simply an A-Theist who took a thrashing from me, and then created a sock-puppet (Joshua Korosi) who pretends to be a “Deist” while he goes out of his way to dogmatically assert the sacred beliefs of the Cult of Pessimism (A-Theism).

Of course, you admittedly started saying that I was wrong immediately without even reading the programs! Who is the one who already had his mind made up?

Considering the title of this thread, I figured I’d play by your rules.

You don’t understand squat about Logical Deism, yet (according to you) you have already determined that it is FALSE.

You sound just like any other A-Theist who believes that NO EVIDENCE means FALSE just because he wants it to. (unless it’s no evidence for “free will” in which case NO EVIDENCE means TRUE just because he wants it too).

No matter how much you say I'm wrong, the programs are there for all to see, and they won't go away.

Your programs prove nothing. And they certainly aren’t any evidence for “free will”. They certainly aren’t evidence that GOD does not exist.

Don’t you remember?

TLOP (GOD) makes/controls YOU makes/controls CAR

 

[evildave]

Well of COURSE it's not a computer program!

It's a VCR tape.

After carefully hand crafting and animating every atom in the universe like a stop-action cartoon for nearly an eternity, god(dess) just sits there like an autistic toddler watching it over and over.

 

[Franko]

evildave:
It's a VCR tape.

After carefully hand crafting and animating every atom in the universe like a stop-action cartoon for nearly an eternity, god(dess) just sits there like an autistic toddler watching it over and over.

Apparently you have confused me with the UndercoverElephant. That is his version of how it all works.

 

[evildave]

Demonstrate why having infinite (perfect and immutable) read only memory that's accessed in a predetermined manner would produce different results from the predictable universe you describe.

(And of course "god"(dess) can have infinite read only memory. It's got lots of other impossible baggage. Just throw the infinite bank of ROM into a box and pop it into the cosmic VCR.)

 

[Franko]

evildave,

Demonstrate why having infinite (perfect and immutable) read only memory that's accessed in a predetermined manner would produce different results from the predictable universe you describe.

Read only memory? Where did you come up with that notion?

Do you know anything today that you didn’t know yesterday? Do you know anything today that you didn’t know ten years ago?

If you answered YES, then I’d say there is empirical evidence you (and the universe) are more than ROM.

(And of course "god"(dess) can have infinite read only memory. It's got lots of other impossible baggage. Just throw the infinite bank of ROM into a box and pop it into the cosmic VCR.)

You’ve been misinformed. Logical Deists don’t believe in the notion of “Infinity”. Infinity (as it is typically defined) is an incoherent concept. It is NOT logical.

 

[evildave]

The ROM only maintained the *illusion* of additional experience beteen the image of the universe of a day ago, and the image of the universe today.

 

[Franko]

The ROM only maintained the *illusion* of additional experience between the image of the universe of a day ago, and the image of the universe today.

If Solipsism were True you’d have it exactly right.

Atheist = A-Theist = A Theist = One Theist (God)

 

[evildave]

If it's all immutably pre-determined, then it can be represented as one big read-only image.

Solipsism only claims that it's all in some big psycho's head. It does not necessarily make claims of determinism, one way or another. Though I suspeve a solipsistic universe run by a psycho-'goddess' to train gravitons would be far from deterministic.

The following code sample illustrates how (if the tables represented all values representable in the universe), the reults of all operations could be a table lookup.

This over-simplifies a bit. But the idea is that whatever you plug in for these predictable outcomes, the output is the predicted outcome.

The state of the entire universe, including all of your current notions for this picosecond is at address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000

The state of the entire universe, including all of your current notions for the next picosecond is at address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000001

A counter is simply being strobed to make it all work. Or the ROM is not built for random access (which saves a lot of logic on any masking), but for only sequential access (like a tape). The result of each strobe is dumped on the cosmic address bus to light (or not light) subatomic-size elements.

To make this perfectly clear (at least to everyone besides Franko) It's not my belief, it's my model of why the 'totally deterministic' universe notion is dumb, and essentially makes the claim that the universe is a tape in a VCR.

I would suspect that anyone who did know a little about how computers actually work would understand this allusion to illusion.

#include < stdio.h >
#include < stdlib.h >

void help(void)
{
	printf( "MathDemo number operator number\nDemonstrates simplistic table-driven math\n" );
	printf( "\t Supports numbers between 0 and 3\n\tOperators: +, -, *, /\n" );
	exit(1);
}

int main( int argc, const char** argv )
{
	int first, second, result;
	char op;
	if( argc != 4 )
		help();
	first = atoi(argv[1]);
	op = *argv[2];
	second = atoi(argv[3]);
	if( first < 0 || first > 3 || second < 0 || second > 3 )
		help();
	switch( op )
	{
	case '+':
		{
			static const int tab[4][4] = 
			{
				{ 0, 1, 2, 3 },
				{ 1, 2, 3, 4 },
				{ 2, 3, 4, 5 },
				{ 3, 4, 5, 6 },
			};
			result = tab[first][second];
		}
		break;
	case '-':
		{
			static const int tab[4][4] = 
			{
				{ 0, -1, -2, -3 },
				{ 1,  0, -1, -2 },
				{ 2,  1,  0, -1 },
				{ 3,  2,  1,  0 },
			};
			result = tab[first][second];
		}
		break;
	case '*':
		{
			static const int tab[4][4] = 
			{
				{ 0, 0, 0, 0 },
				{ 0, 1, 2, 3 },
				{ 0, 2, 4, 6 },
				{ 0, 3, 6, 9 },
			};
			result = tab[first][second];
		}
		break;
	case '/':
		{
                        // Division rounds to int, but you could make these tables 'float', and the outcomes would work 
			static const int tab[4][4] = 
			{
				{ 0, 0, 0, 0 },
				{ 0, 1, 0, 0 },
				{ 0, 2, 1, 0 },
				{ 0, 3, 1, 1 },
			};
			result = tab[first][second];
		}
		break;
	default:
		help();
	}
	printf( "%d %c %d = %d\n", first, op, second, result );
	return 0;
}

 

[Franko]

Evildave:

If it's all immutably pre-determined, then it can be represented as one big read-only image.

If you think I am going to trasp through your little A-Theists diversions into “look mommy – I writz a comp-utard poogran!” Then you really didn’t learn anything in A-Theist indoctrination camp.

… and you call yourself a Poogranner!

 

[Kilted_Canuck]

Frankie, Frankie, Frankie,

why do you always have to go around saying that we have no free will BUT we have to suffer the consequences. Maybe you should plan out what you believe and what you will preach for others, so that you don't contradict yourself as often.

P.S. Your not convincing anyone here because we are skeptics, not because we are all Athiests.

 

[Franko]

Da’Fool-Lite:

why do you always have to go around saying that we have no free will BUT we have to suffer the consequences. Maybe you should plan out what you believe and what you will preach for others, so that you don't contradict yourself as often.

How is that a contradiction moron? Do you know Anything about Determinism you clueless twit?? … Anything at all?!?

Pleeease! …

Why don’t you hop back to Infidels.org, or at least dash back over to the Banter section, and leave the grown-ups to have their “grown-up talk”.

That’s it … run along little girl …

 

[evildave]

If you think I am going to trasp through your little A-Theists diversions into “look mommy – I writz a comp-utard poogran!” Then you really didn’t learn anything in A-Theist indoctrination camp.

… and you call yourself a Poogranner!

Actually you call yourself a "programmer". Of course, you couldn't write a line of code nor comprehend even a trivial example meant to illustrate a point, weak little pretender boy.

 

[evildave]

If you had a point to make you would have just made it.

But you don't have a point to make evildave. The only point you are making is My point.

And My point is that YOU are nothing more than an A-Theist Troll, who is deeply devoted to his religious dogma, but doesn't really have anything to say about it, no points to make, no evidence to support it ...

But you are going to holler and whine like a religious fanatic that it is the "one true faith" regardless of these facts.

Ha! I love it when you get all petulant!

 

[Franko]

evilnitwit:

a trivial example meant to illustrate a point

If you had a point to make you would have just made it.

But you don't have a point to make evildave. The only point you are making is My point.

And My point is that YOU are nothing more than an A-Theist Troll, who is deeply devoted to his religious dogma, but doesn't really have anything to say about it, no points to make, no evidence to support it ...

But you are going to holler and whine like a religious fanatic that it is the "one true faith" regardless of these facts.

[evildave -- desperate fanatic mode/on]

 

[evildave]

Cool, I'm watching 'Back to the Future', and my quote of your post preceeds Franko's post.

 

[Megalodon]

Cool, I'm watching 'Back to the Future', and my quote of your post preceeds Franko's post.

Im converted, Ed is not Supreme... EvilDave is...

Unless.... EvilDave is the Messias!!! Look, EvilDave.

Praise the Lord

 

[evildave]

And of course we have further evidence conveniently dropped in our laps relevent to poking little holes in Franko's assertion that "computers are absolutely deterministic".

Real time inputs, bugs, glitches.

Somebody will have fun trying to reproduce this one.

So, was it "predetermined" that the software would hiccup just for me? My, don't I feel privileged.

 

[Earthborn]

I think there is some confusement here that 'predetermined' somehow means the same as 'preprogrammed'. This is not true. It is possible to make a computer program that does things that are not programmed into it but that are still the inevitable result of it running.

Imagine a very simple universe: a huge plain that contains of nothing but red and white tiles. The only things 'living' there are robotic ants that deterministically follow a very simple program:

IF I'm on a RED TILE
TURN 90 degrees LEFT
WALK FORWARD to next tile

IF I'm on a WHITE TILE
TURN 90 degrees RIGHT
WALK FORWARD to next tile

The ants have no free will, they cannot decide to do it any other way. They blindy follow their TLOP.

There is another rule in this universe:
IF an ant stood on a RED TILE
it will TURN WHITE

IF an ant stood on a WHITE TILE
it will TURN RED

This means that the actions of the ants have an influence on their surrounding! Even though the things that will happen as a result of this deterministic universe are not preprogrammed, they are still inevitable since there is no room for chance in the TLOP in this universe. It is even impossible to predict exactly what will happen, without running the program of this universe: the only way to predict what will happen is tracing step by step every step of the ants, basically running the program in your head.
Everything is predetermined (impossible to happen any other way) but not preprogrammed (planned out by the programmer).

Some of you probably already know that I'm talking about the world famous Langton Ants. You can experiment with them with several JAVA programs you can find on the web, or you can just use my program. Not in fancy-schmancy C, but just in down to earth QBasic: you can find it on your Windows CD or in %windir%\COMMAND directory. Just copy the program below and paste it in Notepad. Save it as LANGTON.TXT, then rename it to LANGTON.BAS (QBasic is a DOS program so pasting the program directly into it is a bit difficult.) Start QBasic and use the OPEN menu to OPEN the LANGTON.BAS program and press F5 to start.

DECLARE SUB Checker ()
DECLARE SUB Polka ()
DECLARE SUB TwinDot ()
DECLARE SUB Spot ()

SCREEN 12
CONST MaxX = 639: CONST MaxY = 479
INPUT "Number of 'Ants':", a
PRINT " 1 - Red"
PRINT " 2 - White"
PRINT " 3 - Checker"
PRINT " 4 - Polka Dot"
PRINT " 5 - TwinDot"
PRINT " 6 - Spot"
INPUT "Choose background:", b

DIM x(a): DIM y(a): DIM d(a)
FOR n = 1 TO UBOUND(x)
x(n) = INT(RND * (MaxX + 1)): y(n) = INT(RND * (MaxY + 1)): d(n) = INT(RND * 4) + 1
NEXT

SELECT CASE b
CASE 1: LINE (0, 0)-(MaxX, MaxY), 4, BF
CASE 2: LINE (0, 0)-(MaxX, MaxY), 15, BF
CASE 3: Checker
CASE 4: Polka
CASE 5: TwinDot
CASE 6: Spot
END SELECT

DO
 
    FOR n = 1 TO UBOUND(x)
        SELECT CASE POINT(x(n), y(n))
        CASE 15: PSET (x(n), y(n)), 4
        d(n) = d(n) + 1: IF d(n) > 4 THEN d(n) = 1
        CASE 4: PSET (x(n), y(n)), 15
        d(n) = d(n) - 1: IF d(n) < 1 THEN d(n) = 4
        END SELECT
       
        x(n) = x(n) - (d(n) = 2) + (d(n) = 4): y(n) = y(n) - (d(n) = 3) + (d(n) = 1)
      
        IF x(n) > MaxX THEN x(n) = 0
        IF x(n) < 0 THEN x(n) = MaxX
        IF y(n) > MaxY THEN y(n) = 0
        IF y(n) < 0 THEN y(n) = MaxY
    NEXT

LOOP UNTIL INKEY$ = CHR$(27)
SCREEN 0: WIDTH 80,25

SUB Checker

FOR n = 0 TO MaxY STEP 2
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 2: PSET (m, n), 15: PSET (m + 1, n), 4: NEXT
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 2: PSET (m, n + 1), 4: PSET (m + 1, n + 1), 15: NEXT
NEXT

END SUB

SUB Polka

LINE (0, 0)-(MaxX, MaxY), 15, BF

FOR n = 0 TO MaxY STEP 4
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 4: PSET (m, n), 15: PSET (m + 2, n), 4: NEXT
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 4: PSET (m, n + 2), 4: PSET (m + 2, n + 2), 15: NEXT
NEXT



END SUB

SUB Spot

LINE (0, 0)-(MaxX, MaxY), 15, BF

FOR n = 0 TO MaxY STEP 4
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 4: PSET (m, n), 15: PSET (m + 1, n), 4: NEXT
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 4: PSET (m, n + 1), 4: PSET (m + 1, n + 1), 15: NEXT
NEXT


END SUB

SUB TwinDot
LINE (0, 0)-(MaxX, MaxY), 15, BF

FOR n = 0 TO MaxY STEP 3
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 3: PSET (m, n), 15: PSET (m + 1, n), 4: NEXT
FOR m = 0 TO MaxX STEP 3: PSET (m, n + 1), 4: PSET (m + 1, n + 1), 15: NEXT
NEXT

END SUB

When you start the program you can enter how many 'ants' it will use. Choose 2 for the first time you run the program. And choose a RED or WHITE background for them to run around on.

You will see that the ants appear to randomly run around at first. (Okay, you don't see the ants, only the tiles they change in colour) But they are not! Only their starting coordinates are 'randomly' chosen. Everthing else is just their rigid programs unfolding.
But suddenly out of the blue it appears as if they invented something new! They begin making large tube structures that can reach to the ends of the screen and beyond. They are only stopped when they encounter the works of the other ant which makes them turn back and destroy what they just made until they end up with what they had when their universe first began: the start of the program). But they don't stop there: they simply appear to go back to a past before that and start making other structures until they hit eachother works again and go in reverse once more. This universe with these two ants seems to have no time: everything happens once in one direction, once in the other and then back again. Even the starting point has no special meaning: it is just one state in an endless string of different states.

If you want to see a demonstration of the complexity these ants can create, choose one of the dotted backgrounds with two ants. They will create complex patterns that keep changing for minutes (depending on your computer of course), then they start cleaning everything up, make something new and clean that up to start all over again. Remember: the patterns are not designed in advance and the ants have no memory of them.

If you choose 1 ant in the beginning it will behave a bit differently: it too can create complex patterns, however it will not clean it up. The pattern keeps changing forever eventually creating a mess that looks quite random. Although all the different patterns could theoretically be recorded in a 'videotape' fashion (saving the screen everytime the ant makes a move), this would require an infinitely long tape.

If the universe is like this, having totally rigid 'natural laws' that cannot be deviated from than this is a good analogy, and it is deterministic: it cannot evolve in any other way. It does not mean that one thing cannot be the result of what went on previously, in fact everything IS deterministically the result of what went on previously. The end result will be the same everytime the universe restarts the same way, hence it is predetermined. Since it is not specifically programmed to produce a specific outcome, it is not pre-programmed. Something that is pre-programmed is pre-determined, but something pre-determined is not necessarily pre-programmed.

However: if there is only the slightest bit of randomness introduced into such a universe, ours or the ants', the end result will not always be exactly the same everytime it is run, therefore it is not predetermined. No one can be sure today that there is nothing in the universe that is or isn't entirely deterministic. It is a philosophical question that cannot be answered.

 

[evildave]

Well, if you want the same demonstration, but easier to find and more largely studied, there's always "life", and the same sorts of web searches that turn up ants will turn that up. "Life" can be randomly seeded, and it will generally turn out stable colonies after a little while.

As a closed system, your results are generally guaranteed, but neither simulation is purely deterministic if you add or ramove a single cell (or ant, or block) at a randomly chosen time and a randomly chosen location while the simulation is running. Often it will have little or no effect. Sometimes it will hugely change the outcome. You have to run that sim a LOT of times to catch the differences.

And "outcome" is subjective. What is the "outcome"? When the colony reaches apparent stability? The state the colony is in after 100 cycles? 1000 simulation cycles? 10000 cycles? A week of cycles?

The Earth its self is not a closed system, nor is any subset of population on this Earth. If we had provable determinism in the real world, the same joker would win the lottery every week. But since we can't even simulate the state 40 plastic balls will have after they get blown around by some air, what makes you think you can determine the state of the whole universe a billion years from now?

And what of applicability of this computational predictability to the real world? We can demonstrate the fallibility of this assertion with every release of a software product that has to go out to real people in the real world with millions of computers, some of which are broken in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways, all under the influence of real-time inputs and contending with other applications for resources.

The Greeks thought they could derive all knowledge from math and philosophy alone, and they were wrong. You have to have those little "reality checks" that scientific method allows. Math always "works", but it doesn't always match what you find in reality. Actually, it seldom does. Your measurements are buggered, your assumptions are imprecise, and elements you never considered intervene.

 

[Kilted_Canuck]

Franko, I didn't know you had it in you! You discovered the Theory of Everything and didn't tell us. So, how is the Quantum World related to the Macroscopic World, in what you call TLOP? These worlds are not connected in the least sense, but you seem to be able to connect them and claim that we are all insane for not seeing it. The laws of physics are not all connected, as Relativity, Newtonian physics, and Quantum physics will show you.

Give us some hard evidence, and we might believe you. (No, that voice inside your head does not count)