(April 6, 2014 at 5:33 pm)Heywood Wrote:(April 6, 2014 at 10:37 am)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Minds aren't purely algorithmic as far as we can tell at this point (unless I'm really forgetting something; Rasetsu knows a lot more on te mind than I). Hence talk of minds "simulating" things is just nonsense. Minds may consider things, but actual simulation is different from merely considering them, as it lacks any real rigor or detail. I'm currently considering a situation in my mind with two people throwing a ball. But am I simulating that in my mind? No. I'm not mentally sertting up what the relevant forces being applied are, what the particle interactions are like, etc. This is no kind of simulation I'm aware of.
You consider the situation of two people throwing a ball and believe it is not a simulation because it lacks any real rigor or detail but you fail to consider that the reason it lacks and rigor or detail is because your brain is incapable of providing it. If a more capable brain provided all those things you claim are lacking, wouldn't it then meet your definition of a simulation?
(April 6, 2014 at 10:45 am)Chas Wrote: Models are not discovered, they are created. They don't exist on some Platonic plane awaiting human apprehension.
A model comes about by applying mathematics to facts and evidence.
So, until we have evidence of that "intellect that thinks the Universe into being", there will be no model.
I tend to think that the Mandelbrot set or the Fibonacci sequence existed prior Benoit Mandelbrot or Leonardo of Pisa. But the debate on whether math is invented or discovered is really just a distraction that takes us away from the real question.
Can, in principle, a mathematical model of a brain capable of simulating a universe such as ours be created?
I don't see why it can't.
You can make a lot of models of things which don't exist.
