Either name is fine (since it is hardly a secret who I am here).
Yes, I see the problem, but this was very much in my mind when I wrote all this. I could have hardly missed the issue. I would have to accept it or deny it, and in fact I considered it a great deal. It is the first thing you would need to consider. I still maintain that there is nothing special about this algorithm length. I actually think your practical example of buying the computer, if anything counts against it. Suppose you sold me a computer and it “allegedly” ran a program 10^21 bits long, but I had to use another computer running a program that was (10^21)+1 bits long to analyze what it was doing and get any useful output. Would I want my money back? Of course I would. However, I would also want my money back if I needed a (10^21)-1 bit program to analyze the computer – and so would you. As a consumer, the thing would be practically useless anyway. In one case I am having to do all the computers job, and a tiny bit more, just to get any output. In the other case I am having to do a tiny bit less than the computer’s job to get any output: it would hardly make a practical difference. There is no sudden point at which I would want my money back: I would want it back long before we got near 10^21 bits. Can you show that 10^21 bits is special? I would say that to have it as special you pretty much have to postulate it and I want to work with a minimum of postulates: it is my whole approach, though it causes some conclusions I hardly find comfortable.
You have mentioned Occam’s razor, but we may disagree on how it should be applied. What Occam originally said was probably too vague to help much in these matters, so we should go with what seems a reasonable “modernization” of Occam’s razor. I do not think Occam’s razor tells us to reduce the amount of stuff we accept. Rather, I think it tells us to reduce the amount of stuff we accept as intrinsically existing. I would not, for example, regarding Occam’s razor as arguing against the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as many people would. I would say that Occam’s razor would argue against having some arbitrary wavefunction collapse mechanism if we need not assume one.
I would also say, as well, that this does not resolve the issue of combining computers and probability that I raised in the first article. My intention was to put a number of such issues together and show that we needing to do the sort of thing I said to get round difficult issues.
Either name is fine (since it is hardly a secret who I am here).
Yes, I see the problem, but this was very much in my mind when I wrote all this. I could have hardly missed the issue. I would have to accept it or deny it, and in fact I considered it a great deal. It is the first thing you would need to consider. I still maintain that there is nothing special about this algorithm length. I actually think your practical example of buying the computer, if anything counts against it. Suppose you sold me a computer and it “allegedly” ran a program 10^21 bits long, but I had to use another computer running a program that was (10^21)+1 bits long to analyze what it was doing and get any useful output. Would I want my money back? Of course I would. However, I would also want my money back if I needed a (10^21)-1 bit program to analyze the computer – and so would you. As a consumer, the thing would be practically useless anyway. In one case I am having to do all the computers job, and a tiny bit more, just to get any output. In the other case I am having to do a tiny bit less than the computer’s job to get any output: it would hardly make a practical difference. There is no sudden point at which I would want my money back: I would want it back long before we got near 10^21 bits. Can you show that 10^21 bits is special? I would say that to have it as special you pretty much have to postulate it and I want to work with a minimum of postulates: it is my whole approach, though it causes some conclusions I hardly find comfortable.
You have mentioned Occam’s razor, but we may disagree on how it should be applied. What Occam originally said was probably too vague to help much in these matters, so we should go with what seems a reasonable “modernization” of Occam’s razor. I do not think Occam’s razor tells us to reduce the amount of stuff we accept. Rather, I think it tells us to reduce the amount of stuff we accept as intrinsically existing. I would not, for example, regarding Occam’s razor as arguing against the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as many people would. I would say that Occam’s razor would argue against having some arbitrary wavefunction collapse mechanism if we need not assume one.
I would also say, as well, that this does not resolve the issue of combining computers and probability that I raised in the first article. My intention was to put a number of such issues together and show that we needing to do the sort of thing I said to get round difficult issues.