Friday, March 23, 2007

Zen Monkey TV launched, interview Rudy Rucker

10 Zen Monkeys have officially launched their video podcast, appropriately labeled 10ZM.TV - go to that link right there for details, subscription links, and their first video: an interview with mathema-philo-writer-guy Rudy Rucker.

I feel guilty in that I've only read one of Rucker's early books, White Light, which is kind of Alice on acid, going into infinities and so forth. In the interview, Rucker talks briefly about the idea that rather than just what-we-call-computers being computational devices, many things in nature can also be seen as computational - deterministi systems that react to inputs, often "satisficing" rather than attaining "perfection".

I'm something of a determinist, so I like the idea. Everything happens for a reason, and all that. Of course, if nature wasn't a deterministic system, there'd be no basis for science or empirical study. Without some kind of stability - a certain level of consistency - things would by definition become unstable, and we wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be typing this.

Anyway, Rucker's great. Go watch him.

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