Post by @yoginho@spore.social

2023-09-14 06:06 UTC

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Did you know that this argument only came up with Deutsch and Lloyd in the 1980/90s? Before that, nobody (including Church & Turing) ever thought that it would be reasonable to apply the term "computation" to physics. So, no: it's you, not me who's misreading Turing. Effective computation means literally "something a human being can do by rote" (i.e. calculating, scheduling, optimizing). In Church & Turing's 30s papers, a computer is a (usually underpaid, female) human.

Replies (2)

@yoginho@spore.social 2023-09-14 06:08

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Church & Turing, as long as they lived, were fiercely opposed to applying the theory of computation to the brain or physics. Computation is a tiny fraction of what our human brain does, and is not at all what the brain evolved for. Is physics computation? No! You fail to see the difference between simulating a mechanism (a model of the world) and the claim that the world *is* a computer. The latter implies that physical mechanisms have symbolic content, which is absurd.

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@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org 2023-09-14 14:08

@yoginho@spore.social I don't really want to engage in an extended debate here, but I will just note this: Turing and others very much so connected humans being able to do some calculation by rote to the ability to create a mechanical device to do that function. So, there was always a direct connection to physics/mechanics, because the implication was always that if an effective method existed, then a physical/mechanical system could in principle implement the function for us.

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