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From: omni@topazio.dcc.ufmg.br (Lucio de Souza Coelho)
Subject: Re: GREAT Pynchon AI.Life Quote!
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References: <3emljr$6ts@crl.crl.com> <D27J7C.26w@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> <3evkij$2p3@crl5.crl.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 10:34:23 GMT
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In article <3evkij$2p3@crl5.crl.com>, arthurc@crl.com (Arthur Chandler) writes:
|> : 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


I think living things ARE just patterns of ones and zeros. For me, whole Cosmos
is information, and bits are the basis of information.

Otherwise, talking about Laplace... He believed that past and future states of
the Universe could be calculated from present since a sufficiently precise measu-
rement of present state was obtained. But Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,
discovered after Laplace's time, proof that arbitrarialy precise measurements
are impossible (and so arbitrarialy precise predictions).

