How today's computers can indeed allow us to visually time travel.

reply to post by staple


Well as I have said many times there is no random number in this program… so, no. This is a sequential change not random generation. Not formula driven in any way, well other than X+1=y.

reply to post by byeluvolk


Have you written it?

reply to post by Threadfall


Yes I have mentioned this many times, but I guess it gets over looked in the rest of the talk. The program is not that big, and fairly simple. It is just a series of nested loops and counters used to keep track of the (X,Y) coordinate and the color to display

reply to post by byeluvolk

The calculation isn't hard, displaying it in a user-friendly format is. Lets say we have a 1024x768 resolution with a bit depth of 16 bit. The number of images displayed is 786,432 to the power of 65,565 That's considerable more than the number of atoms in the known universe.

Originally posted by shimmeringsilver73

A computer can be programmed to look for certain algorithms or signatures that would signify that an image has developed that may be of worth. This can cut down the human time involved considerably.

It wouldn't. How would a computer be able to decide whether an image is noteworthy? Even if it could with absolutely no false positives or negatives, there would still be more images than anyone could ever possibly view.

reply to post by john_bmth


I have never claimed the math was complicated, far from it if you read the thread. And actually you have it backwards. It is Color^(resX x resY) as I have pointed out many times.



****EDIT

Think of it like this; with a 3 digit number you have 3 "pixels" or a screen that is 1x3,and 10 colors. Thus you have 1000 possible numbers to display or 10^3.

reply to post by john_bmth


The algorithm to determine if a picture is noteworthy is easy, it is also already written and in use in many places. It is based on the number of contiguous pixels that are within a certain color range. Basically this says that if there are a bunch of pixels all clumped together that are close the same shade of blue for example, it may be interesting to look at. This test is usually done for more than one clump per picture as well. Not perfect by any means but it will weed out most of the trash.

The drawback is still that even with the best algorithm, as you say there is still far too many to ever look at. People do not grasp the size of this number. It is so much bigger than anything a mere human brain can comprehend that the mind just refuses to accept the size. Until you truly understand what it means to show every possible picture, this is just some abstract number. You have to really delve into the problem, and imagine the endless possible pictures, before you really begin to comprehend just how big this number is. Only then do you realize how futile it is to try and speed the process up in any way.

reply to post by byeluvolk


Even with the best algorithm theoretically possible, there would be more images than combined human lifespans to view. And that's with a purely theoretical algorithm. More to the point, what would be the practical benefit? This though experiment is as old as computer displays, it's an interesting notion but ultimately meaningless.

reply to post by byeluvolk

Yes, my mistake, thanks for pointing it out. In either c_javascript:icon('')ase, the number is so large as to fry any mind

reply to post by john_bmth




The point was that a very simple computer program contains all the knowledge of the universe, as well as every alternate universe you can imagine. These simple few lines of code will show the history of each and every second of every possible universe from every possible view angle. This is limited only by the physical characteristics of the display in use. And therefore as we get better displays you get more detail, at the expense of an even longer time line to show them all.

The point being that the code for such is very simple, yet in reality the pictures are generated slower than they are “happening” in reality. Therefore no matter how long you live it is physically impossible to view them. So while all this knowledge is theoretically at your fingertips. You are still better off to “experience” the future than try to “see” it. And you are better off reading about the past. Better off viewing paintings of alien worlds than to try and visit them.

You have come to half the conclusion, the fact that it is impossible to see anything of value. But you missed the point that the program that contains all this knowledge is a VERY simple program to write. Call it “A Computer’s View of God”, “The Digitization of the Universe”, or any other catchy name, but it all boils down to the fact that this is a very small and simple computer program, and it contains “everything”, and “Nothing.” While the program itself has no mystical, theological, or philosophical components in its making, the study of this program and what it means becomes these things very quickly. This is nothing more than a philosophical study in the way that a computer can and will reveal everything, while at the same time it reveals nothing, as you will never get to see what it reveals in your life time. You will never see what it has to reveal in the lifetime of the universe for that matter, even if you lived that long.

I think people are looking at this like it was a serious attempt to see the future, or the past. They are not realizing it was more of a technological look at philosophy. It is a game to get a person thinking about the possibilities, not a plan to really try and see the future. As I stated to one post above; the ideal way to see the future with this program is to start it running with the “perfect” fuzzy logic in place to pick out only real images somehow. Then you build a time machine and travel to the future and look at the image this program has shown you. At this time you will indeed be able to see the future with this program. People keep trying to say it will not work for one reason or another, and fail to realize that it does indeed work perfectly. They are missing the point entirely. It can’t be debunked as an impossible program. The code is tried and proven. They are just having a hard time wrapping their mind around the possibilities, and the futility of the thing.

reply to post by byeluvolk


But the problem is it's like me saying that I have every truth in the universe, but for every truth I have a hundred trillion lies. You're free to have a look but you have no way of discerning the truth from the lies.

reply to post by john_bmth


And now you start to see the point I was trying to make. Even with access to just the “truth” you would never get to see anything of value. Now mix in all the alternate truth and the images that are pure static trash and you begin to get a grasp on how big this number is. This is why I say it contains everything and nothing. While it will indeed show you everything eventually, assuming you could live long enough to see it. You then have no way of knowing what was real and what was some alternate reality, other than that which you experienced for yourself. So once again we are back to the fact that it was better to just live out your life and experience the future as it unfolds than to try and see it beforehand.

This program touches on so many religious and philosophical points as you dig into it. It brings questions to the nature of reality, the nature of infinity etc. The more you think about it, the deeper you get drawn in. Eventually something will click into place and it will point you down a new path of contemplation as it brings another area of possibility into focus.

reply to post by byeluvolk


I am guessing that each image drawn is completed first. Then it looks for a pattern that says if it is a useful image instead of a random, pixel soup. Why not let it examine/calculate a random section of the image. (I know you have no random in the image creation) and see if it is indeed a pixel soup or possible the mona lisa? Run the image generator at the same time as the image recognizer. Why waste CPU cycles generating random images if you have a formula to see that it is random?

I applaud thinkers like you. I once wrote a fractal generating program in basic. It was 15 lines of code at most.

If you limit yourself to a B&W image (not greyscale) you'd get a reasonable dither. Also if you limit yourself to just 10*10 pixels. And if you generated a billion images per second...

It would only take 40,000,000,000,000 years to complete.

Almost doable!

(PS - I do understand where you're coming from!)

Finally.

lighttrap.codeplex.com...

original inspiration: code.msdn.microsoft.com/lighttrap

Obviously this information is not disseminated within the community well enough to ensure understanding, perhaps now is the time.

reply to post by usernamehere


Hmm, I have not visited this thread for a while, but yes that video you posted does a good job of showing this idea in action. Just scale up thier demo to a full screen, and full color output, and you will have the result I have talked about here. I actually just came back to this thread today as I was talking about this concept with a coworker and as we talked over the course of a few hours and he began to realize the extent, and ramifications of this very simple program. I saw him change his entire outlook from one of "what ever" to "Holy computers Batman!"

Think about the odds of ANY recognizable image being displayed, yet alone something that can be discerned as relevant while viewed out-of-context.

Amazing thinking OP.

With a large enough quantum computer all possibilities could be processed simultaneously and with good enough 'requirements' input, such as a root visual, we should easily be able to extract images of any point in space / time. Then using a human selected output as the next root visual, we should be able to extract a stream of images like a video!

My brain is struggling to comprehend the implications of this.

That is the usual flow when I bring this up to people. Fist, they do not understand what I mean. Second, they finally grasp what this program is doing. Third, they look to see how simple of a program it is. And finally, they start to think of the possibilities and what it all means. And then some slip into dementia as thier brain melts.

EDIT Sorry wrong thread.