Re: George Kampis

[John M <***>]

Tim,
I had some personal communication with George in the 90s, (after I read his
book )- in Hungarian. He is himself. Many of his ideas are matching RR's and
he points that out, but he has his own ideas.
Lately I got the infofrom him that his interest led him into other domains
so I should not expect a new book on this topic (as I asked for).
He is OK. (Those Hungarians!)

John M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: George Kampis


> > Judith
> > PS: Tim; how would you say George's work/conclusions differ from my
> > father's?
>
> I hope I don't mangle this too badly. Roughly and very briefly, for Kampis
> the argument is as follows. Systems can be thought of as being comprised
of
> "components". Components are not "things" per se - context (their role in
a
> system and how they arose) can play a role. Reductionism might be thought
of
> as the program of finding what are the basic fixed context-free components
> which together are presumed to comprise some sort of "universal library".
A
> "component system's" behavior results from the particular components which
> constitute that system. The dynamics of the system, then, can be mapped to
> some algorithm. But this holds true only if the components in the
component
> system remain fixed and constant. If they change, then the dynamics change
> and an entirely different algorithm will generally be required. Now that
> system is modeled by two (or more) different algorithms, neither one of
> which entails the other logically nor can the algorithms necessarily
become
> combined into one large algorithm; hence, that system is computable
locally
> and temporarily, but overall as a system is noncomputable..
>
> The stipulation that "what is a system" is restricted to be those systems
> which are computable mandates that the components of the system must
remain
> fixed and constant. This amounts to an arbitrary a priori restriction on
> system identity and on physical reality itself. Self-modifying systems are
> ones for which the system itself can alter its own components and thereby
> alter the nature and behavior of the system. Self-modifying computer
> programs are really only systems which are restricted to some
recombination
> of some universal set of components - a computer can only have a finite
> instruction set and has limited inferential entailments. These
restrictions
> are by design and entirely artefactual: we have to specifically and
> carefully design a computer so that it will in fact work this way and only
> this way. By contrast, there are no such artefactual restrictions on the
> physical world and the systems therein. Such systems can therefore
> potentially self-modify in ways that outstrip our algorithmic notions of
> entailment, and therefore such systems clearly can fall into the category
of
> being noncomputable. We can build computers and toasters and so on as
> physical systems, by imposing appropriately designed constraints, but that
> does not in any way imply that physical systems are therefore generically
so
> restricted in their flexibility.
>
> This gives the main theme in very broad strokes and it may come across as
> overly simplistic. Kampis addresses alot of subtle and interesting points
as
> he goes along. Clearly there's alot of kinship with the ideas in Rosennean
> complexity, although it is framed and argued in very different terms.
Kampis
> goes into much more detail, and the discussion of "The Main Theorem"
occurs
> only after 200+ pages of preparatory discussion of the Newtonian paradigm,
> the notion of state, dynamics, and so on. Alot of similarity to the
> preparatory discussion in "Life Itself". Then follows another 200+ pages,
> including discussion of Church-Turing, information, syntactics/semantics,
> etc. I always found it interesting that both books were both published in
> 1991, although I consider this to be purely coincidence.
>
> Regards,
> Tim
>