“So you make continuous simulations of systems using digital computers running on top of a continuous substrate that’s ultimately made of discrete particles which are really just continuous fluctuations in a quantized field?” “Yup.” ”That’s disgusting!” “That’s hurtful. And aren’t you guys running digital machines made out of continuous parts, which are really just discrete at the bottom?” ”It’s not the same! This is a beautiful instance of the divine principle ‘as above, so below’. (Which I’m amazed your lot recognized.) Entirely unlike your ramshackle tower of leaking abstractions.” “You know, if it makes you feel any better, some of us speculate that spacetime is actually discretized.” ”I’m going to barf.” “How do you even do that anyway? I was reading a novel the other day, and it said—” ”Don’t believe everything you hear in books. Besides, I read that thing. That world was continuous at the bottom, with one layer of discrete objects on top. Respectable enough, though I don’t see how that stuff can think.” “You’re really prejudiced, you know that?” ”Sod off. At least I know what I believe. Meanwhile, you can’t stop flip-flopping between the nature of your metaphysics.”
“So you make continuous simulations of systems using digital computers running on top of a continuous substrate that’s ultimately made of discrete particles which are really just continuous fluctuations in a quantized field?”
“Yup.”
”That’s disgusting!”
“That’s hurtful. And aren’t you guys running digital machines made out of continuous parts, which are really just discrete at the bottom?”
”It’s not the same! This is a beautiful instance of the divine principle ‘as above, so below’. (Which I’m amazed your lot recognized.) Entirely unlike your ramshackle tower of leaking abstractions.”
“You know, if it makes you feel any better, some of us speculate that spacetime is actually discretized.”
”I’m going to barf.”
“How do you even do that anyway? I was reading a novel the other day, and it said—”
”Don’t believe everything you hear in books. Besides, I read that thing. That world was continuous at the bottom, with one layer of discrete objects on top. Respectable enough, though I don’t see how that stuff can think.”
“You’re really prejudiced, you know that?”
”Sod off. At least I know what I believe. Meanwhile, you can’t stop flip-flopping between the nature of your metaphysics.”