[[Part deux]]
To Forrest et alia:
I live in a world of philosphy more different than you can imagine, where I belong to the C++ Stroustrup school and the Java-heads belong to the Java/Sun school, both of Object-Oriented design philosphy.
Unlike any other philosophy, Computer Science and its attendant Computer Engineering are the only schools of science that are wholly synthetic. That is, they are pure human invention. The Science is what we say it is and although there are competing and incompatible schools of thought, none can be proven to be wrong because it is ALL artiface! We humans built this thing, it is completely an invention and I am one of the artisans. Nature has no parallel to Computer Science and we did not discover it. Rather, we invented it. It is a human tool. Arguably, Computer Science is neither a Science nor is it Natural. Although, biology may soon enter this heady realm, once they can create a wholly synthetic organic molecule and build it into a wholly synthetic organism (they're working on a synthetic microbe).
With that in mind, physics may provide the bricks and mortar (electronics)but the concepts provide the structure. My arguments earlier applied to
digital computers, a construct that has serious limits built into its fundimental base. One of those limits is the inability to provide true randomness. This alone argues for its inherently deterministic nature. One cannot construc t a
f(x)=y where
f(x)= rand(x) because
rand(x) is only an approximation of a truely random function, rather it is a complex but predictable series.
This is where many naive attempts at encryption fail. Although, in my field, it is argued that even in an analog medium, true randomness is difficult, or even impossible, to implement. The guys working on
Quantum Computers are, of course, arguing the complete opposite.
Remember what I said about Computer Science being wholly an artifact and see this for what it is, a bunch of artists using the new medium (Quantum Mechanics) to develop a new school of artiface, called Quantum Computing. The difference would be like working in Opaque Grays vs. Modern Tempras. Frankly, I'm not even sure how we could figure out a way to program this beast, but we will, eventually. This might indeed become the medium that would finally allow us to build a true neural net and pave the way towards true Artificial Intelligence. But to hear some philosophers, it might even be the first real intelligence since, humans aren't, arguably, intelligent.
Following historical precedent, it will take over a century to fully develop this technology such that we can make good use of it.