2,371 research outputs found
Is there a physically universal cellular automaton or Hamiltonian?
It is known that both quantum and classical cellular automata (CA) exist that
are computationally universal in the sense that they can simulate, after
appropriate initialization, any quantum or classical computation, respectively.
Here we introduce a different notion of universality: a CA is called physically
universal if every transformation on any finite region can be (approximately)
implemented by the autonomous time evolution of the system after the complement
of the region has been initialized in an appropriate way. We pose the question
of whether physically universal CAs exist. Such CAs would provide a model of
the world where the boundary between a physical system and its controller can
be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut for the quantum
measurement problem. We propose to study the thermodynamic cost of computation
and control within such a model because implementing a cyclic process on a
microsystem may require a non-cyclic process for its controller, whereas
implementing a cyclic process on system and controller may require the
implementation of a non-cyclic process on a "meta"-controller, and so on.
Physically universal CAs avoid this infinite hierarchy of controllers and the
cost of implementing cycles on a subsystem can be described by mixing
properties of the CA dynamics. We define a physical prior on the CA
configurations by applying the dynamics to an initial state where half of the
CA is in the maximum entropy state and half of it is in the all-zero state
(thus reflecting the fact that life requires non-equilibrium states like the
boundary between a hold and a cold reservoir). As opposed to Solomonoff's
prior, our prior does not only account for the Kolmogorov complexity but also
for the cost of isolating the system during the state preparation if the
preparation process is not robust.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur
Synthesising Graphical Theories
In recent years, diagrammatic languages have been shown to be a powerful and
expressive tool for reasoning about physical, logical, and semantic processes
represented as morphisms in a monoidal category. In particular, categorical
quantum mechanics, or "Quantum Picturalism", aims to turn concrete features of
quantum theory into abstract structural properties, expressed in the form of
diagrammatic identities. One way we search for these properties is to start
with a concrete model (e.g. a set of linear maps or finite relations) and start
composing generators into diagrams and looking for graphical identities.
Naively, we could automate this procedure by enumerating all diagrams up to a
given size and check for equalities, but this is intractable in practice
because it produces far too many equations. Luckily, many of these identities
are not primitive, but rather derivable from simpler ones. In 2010, Johansson,
Dixon, and Bundy developed a technique called conjecture synthesis for
automatically generating conjectured term equations to feed into an inductive
theorem prover. In this extended abstract, we adapt this technique to
diagrammatic theories, expressed as graph rewrite systems, and demonstrate its
application by synthesising a graphical theory for studying entangled quantum
states.Comment: 10 pages, 22 figures. Shortened and one theorem adde
Nature as a Network of Morphological Infocomputational Processes for Cognitive Agents
This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted
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