Could you completely predict every detail about the future of the entire universe, ie all human actions, cellestial events, everything? I've always pondered this. I suppose once you figured out a way to make the actual computer, then yes, you could.

No.

Would it require more than 4 GB of RAM?

Would my Apple II work?
Worse comes to worst, you could always hook up two atari st's and you'd be good to go.

if i made it it would only be able to predict when i want a sammich

which is now

Yes.

Or maybe not.

I guess it could if nobody looked at the predictions.

Predicting the behavior of atoms wouldn't work. Atoms are too big.

I guess the only way to predict the future is to know everything by being everywhere. Therefore you'd have to be a form of intelligent energy that can communicate with all forms of energy, thus knowing all. Complicated.

It'd make a cool game though

Oh yeah, that brings up something interesting: Even if you could build/design such a computer, how would it get data about every atom in the universe?

Expansion packs?

Jumping from atom to atom? I have no idea, good question. I think the answer is not in a computer.

Currently computer based predictions work as is:

We know what certain conditions can cause, and therefore observe them, and the program will tell us, according to our knowledge, the probabilities of events with the present conditions.

The margin of error is big, as we don't know everything about these events, such as weather. Our knowledge grows, yes but we still have much to learn. We also can make mistakes in our observations.

EDIT:

We probably don't need to observe EVERY atom in the Universe to simulate it. We just need to know the parameters and conditions that define its behavior.

OBSERVATION!

God.

End of story.

The universe already is such a computer; it's continuously computing its next state.

It's like a huge Finite State Machine

F.S.M.

holy crap

Theres no way to predict every human action.
I suppose if you believe in fate, and that the universe has a pre-ordained destiny, then yes, the computer might be able to do so, but I still doubt it could.

Religious war starting in 3...2...

Cause and effect, however humanity has the strange attribute of being able to cause a lot more things than other creatures.

We are bound to a set of rules, so infinite our understanding can only see parts of it a time. We are predictable.

Even a psychopath is predictable, if you understand his thinking, and what parameters can cause what reactions.

Except, we currently cannot comprehend all the parameters that cause our actions, therefore, we have an illusion that everything is unpredictable.

Nothing is unpredictable, its just too complicated.

However there is ONE thing that might shoot down this theory:

CHOICE.

How does a human being make choices? Sometimes we make choices out of emotions, knowledge or wisdom. And sometimes we ignore these entirely. It may seem random, but I don't think its anymore random than a random seeded number.

A human can suddenly get a surge of emotion or a memory of something long ago and act upon them.
Like, the other day I suddenly remembered as a child I was fond of a particular ice-cream flavour, one that I hadn't had in years, so I decided to go out and buy some.
How would anything predict that?

A certain parameter or function that is not evident to our superficial observation of the observed events caused this reaction. Whether it be how your body operates with memories by sequentially allowing such events to occur or it is a stimulated occurrence.

I suppose it is remotely minutely possible, but yeah... I don't think so =p

Well, I have noticed that sometimes my mind will see something, for instance a color, and will return the name of the color, and or something related to that color, which can cause a memory of an emotion or something related.

Like for instance, you see a chocolate colored object, that in this case reminds you of the closed chocolate memory of some sort. How the brain returns the closest memory available baffles me, if it even does it, this would suggest that memory is stored in banks and a search function in our brain will find the closest bank related to chocolate.

This memory will then be loaded into our conscious and perhaps create a desire to consume this product, or perhaps to remember to avoid it if we disliked it.

This is a VERY OVER SIMPLIFIED example. The human brain is billions of times more complex than this, but I needed to post a simple and easy to follow example.

Yeah I can understand that, and memories/thoughts are often triggered by certain things.
But to predict that someone is going to walk down the street, glance at a blade of grass with a beetle on it and have a specific memory triggered, rather then say, him looking in a slightly different direction and having some other thought triggered or none at all.... just seems extremely unlikely to me, even with a theoretically ultimate super computer thingie

monte carlo

If free will is an illusion (and it could be), then yes. Otherwise, no.

You are just mentioning a chain of events which are composed of more chains of events, which when we get down to the gut level of these, and work ourselves upwards from there, they are, predictable.

No, I'm mentioning events that are random and unpredictable, I don't believe for a second that everything that the person in my scenario is garunteed to look at that blade of grass

You're all fools.

Assuming you could build such a computer (It would need to many times larger than the universe) and you could get data on every particle (You can't, hesienberg uncertainty principle) and simulate it perfectly (Maybe. Those quantum things that appear random now could be following a set of rules we just haven't discovered yet) then the question is much simpler : Do we have Free Will or not?

And the answer is also simple : If there is no 'higher power', if there is nothing beyond this physical world, then, no. You do not. All of your actions are determined either by the state of the universe at the big bang, or by the random outcome of quantum events. But the illusion of free will is plenty, really, it doesn't actually matter if we have it, as long as we THINK we have it.

If there is something else, if there is some component to us that exists outside space and time, then you can still, truly, have free will.

It'd work fine as long as the ants co-operate.

Also, Deadman doesn't seem to understand what's going on. At all. We're not simulating people.

Actually, yeah I admit I forgot about the whole "manipulating every atom thing" which means you could theoretically predict what people think/do. I concede point.


And JM... you missed my point AND my mistake completely.

uhh, wouldnt said computer need to simulate itself,and simulate itself simulateing itself (and so on to infinity)?

>.> <.<

Alpha1, assuming it existed inside our universe, yes.

EUREKA

The Universe isn't a finite state machine, it's non-deterministic.

Einstein specifically disliked quantum mechanics for the reason that this sort of computation is impossible.

So?

That doesn't make sense. In order to do that you would have to store information about every atom in the universe. Even if you could get storage dentistry down to one bit per atom, you would always need more atoms than are in the universe to represent and process the ones that already are.

And if you could somehow just that hurdle, I think the quantum nature of atoms would end up screwing you up anyway.



What happens, happens weather it's predictable or not. The future can't be changed any more than the past, it's just that we have no way of determining it from our perspective.

Don't speak such dirty words...

(sorry after working with monte carlo simulations for over 2 years with the hope of getting real data...then the LHC going bang...I'm sick of them)

hhhmm, back on topic...F.S.M.

A few years ago I heard that some scientists discovered a hormone that is responsible for making us feel Nini ist süß.

Sorry for that last bit, my gf told me to write it.

They discovered a hormone that makes us feel as if the choice we just made was really ours.

Mr. Heisenburg says no.