Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: mcohen@charming.nrtc.northrop.com (Martin Cohen)
Subject: Re: GREAT Pynchon AI.Life Quote!
Message-ID: <D2KEAy.443@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com>
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Organization: Northrop Grumman Automation Sciences Laboratory, Pico Rivera, CA
References: <3emljr$6ts@crl.crl.com> <D27J7C.26w@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> <3evkij$2p3@crl5.crl.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 19:32:56 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <3evkij$2p3@crl5.crl.com> arthurc@crl.com (Arthur Chandler) writes:
>Mark W. Tilden (mwtilden@math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>: In article <3emljr$6ts@crl.crl.com>, Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com> wrote:
>: >  "If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of human lives and 
>: >death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a 
>: >computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what 
>: >kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?"
>: >   - Thomas Pynchon (*Vineland*, pp. 90-91)
>
>: Nice idea, but an inexact premise I think.  Saying that a life could be
>: represented by ones and zeros is like converting all the information
>: about a life to a single number, then marking that number on a bar with
>: a notch.  Superficially accurate but lacking the necessary detail.
>
>: Living things, not just humans, are a bit more complex than that.
>
>: Is all.
>
>  Maybe -- but here's Laplace with a contrary view --
>
>  "Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the
>forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the
>bodies that compose it  an intelligence sufficiently vast enough to
>submit this data to analysis  this mind could embrace in one formula the
>movements of the greatest galaxies and the tiniest atoms in the universe.
>For this intellect, nothing would be uncertain.  The future and the past
>would all be present to its understanding." 
>
> Laplace, Philosophical Essay on Probability

Unfortunately for Laplace, modern chaos theory shows that
the future is not predictable.






-- 
Marty Cohen (mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com) - Not the guy in Philly
  This is my opinion and is probably not Northrop Grumman's!
          Use this material of your own free will
