| HN Mirror

Thanks for all that you are doing with the donations. It really shows great integrity which is in rare supply these days.

I know it's a long shot and some people are gonna rag on me-- but I want to ask, are you/the fund, at all interested in experimental digital physics? I've had this project on the backburner for a while, have been reading textbooks on automata, partial differential equations, and particle physics to get to a place where I can better engineer model universes.

The gist of the project in a few words, is to create a simple 2d universe with enough information dynamics to allow for universal computation and most importantly, evolution. Conway's "Game of Life" is turing complete, aka universal, as are many automata and digital simulations. However, these models were not designed with evolution in mind..nor simple principles like the duality between mass and energy-- or analogously in a simple digital realm, storage and movement.

This universe that we reside in might be complex and hardly simulatable in all its glory with our current computational powers. However, if we strip out EM, the weak force, the strong force, maybe even gravity..go down to 2 spatial dimensions, we still might be able to produce a universe in which computers form, and evolution takes hold to produce intelligent forms. Now, I am not asserting that intelligence of our caliber will form or if it is even probable. But I think this endeavor is worth some salt.

I've written a blog post[1] more about the proposal but it mostly reiterates what I mentioned here. There is also the movie which is amateur but still informative and entertaining.[2]

My email is in my profile in case you are at all interested in pursuing the proposal.

Cheers.

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[1] https://scrollto.com/life-a-universe-simulation/

[2] http://amzn.to/2qWUFQC