Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
Initial
Input
Interactive
Input
High-
Level Rule
Medium-
Level Rule
Low-Level
Rule
Lowest-
Level Rule
Helper
Rules
Underlying
disciplines
Human
Reckoner
Numbers, words and
symbols on paper.
Turing Machine
Personal
Computer
The Web
Symbols on the tape. Files. Names of networked
machines.
Extra problems. None. Keyboard and mouse. Requests to read and
write data.
A tax form or chain
of math problems.
May be read in.
Person’s learned
reckoning behavior.
Algorithm for
addition.
Memorized plus and
times tables.
Ability to read and
write.
Psychology,
biology, physics,
logic.
A rule coded up as
symbols on tape, can be
read by a universal Turing
machine.
A lookup table matching
stimulus pairs to response
triples.
Standard run cycle: read,
look-up response, write
and move.
Devices for reading,
writing, and moving the
head.
How to read and writing
symbols
Physics, logic.
Application software
such as a word or
image processor. May
be read in.
Operating system such
as Windows or Linux
Microcode on the chip.
The system clock
Chip architecture such
as logic gates and
adders.
The BIOS code for
reading and writing
files.
Electrical engineering,
physics, logic.
Browsers, email, Web
crawlers.
Applets, interactive Web
pages, online data bases.
Communications
software to send and
receive data.
The software on the
networked machines.
Read and write methods.
Communication theory,
computer technology.
Cellular
Automaton
Pattern of marked
cells.
Reaching in to change
some cell values
while the computation
runs.
The rule used by the
individual cell
processors.
The run cycle which
updates all the cells in
synch.
If implemented on a
PC, the machine code
that emulates the CA.
If implemented on a
PC, microcode and
chip architecture.
Graphics to display
the CA.
Depends on the
implementation.
Table 1.3: PCs, reckoners, Turing machines, and the Web. Finally, to summarize this
chapter, here’s some of the key points I made.
• A computation usually has multiple levels of rules, not all of them explicit.
• It’s possible for two distinct computational processes to have equivalent behavior, but
it may be that one is faster than another.
• Although a computation may be theoretically possible to carry out, it can be
practically unfeasible to do so.
• The flow of many computations is in some sense unpredictable.
• A legitimate computation may run endlessly without having to reach a conclusion.
Joke about Von Karman Vortex Street
As a sometime fiction writer, I like to think of Von Karman Vortex Street as a place,
possibly located somewhere near Miles Davis’s Green Dolphin Street and the Firesign
Theater’s Non-Euclid Avenue.
p. 57