X-Message-Number: 8196 Subject: infinite amounts of computation Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 11:33:58 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <> > From: Ken Stone <> > > Could one of the defenders of the notion that it is somehow > possible to create an infinite cascade of simulations please > let me know where I can go find an affordable infinite-MB > SIMM to run one on? No one has made the claim that you can do an infinite amount of computation. The universe itself is finite. The fact that a simulation cannot conduct infinite amounts of computation thus does not mean that it is somehow "less capable" than the universe itself. Ettinger repeatedly claims that simulations must be able to conduct infinite amounts of computation to be like the real universe, which of course is silly since as I've said three times in this message, the universe itself cannot conduct infinite amounts of computation and is not itself infinite. Ettinger also keeps claiming that a machine containing simulations which contain simulations will somehow magically "slow down" or "grind to a halt" -- as I have pointed out, not only isn't this true in theory, but the experiment of actually running nested copies of PSIM on a NetBSD 1.2D machine (sitting in front of me) shows that no matter how many copies are nested, the outer machine does not increase in load. This is, of course, to be expected, since the simulator it is running will take the same amount of CPU time to run regardless of what software it runs. Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8196