Not Impossible!: How Our Universe May Exist Inside of a Computer - Softcover

Hanson, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595313329 ISBN 13: 9780595313327

Publisher: iUniverse, 2004

Synopsis

Does our universe exist inside of a computer? Have the strange phenomena of quantum physics finally been explained? Not IMPOSSIBLE! demonstrates that the surprising answer may be "Yes!" "But the material world is real" we insist, knocking on wood. How can this all be just information inside of a computer? Surely that's impossible!Climb aboard as computer science and AI researcher, G. Wells Hanson, takes us on the seemingly impossible journey from our universe, into the depths of a computerized universe. As you ride, your fingers are pried loose from your current ideas of reality. Watch as your material world slowly begins to fade. You will travel through the machinery of the worlds of human thinking, quantum reality, the brain, and the mind. Finally, you enter a universe programmed within a computer, where the strange phenomena that appear there provides an explanation for the mysterious quantum physics that has puzzled humankind for a century. Shaun Holmes, MA, and high school math teacher, describes the book as " an intellectual thrill-ride that takes us from our everyday world, to a place where I question my very existence and there's no going back! I think it really has the potential to stir the pot."

About this title

About the Author

With a concentration in physics and mathematics, G. Wells Hanson earned his computer science degree from SUNY, Stony Brook, where he participated in constructing the D0 (dee zero) drift chamber that was destined to reveal the existence of the top quark at Fermilab s two trillion eV proton-antiproton collider in 1994. A software engineer living in Arizona, Hanson researches Artificial Intelligence and the thinking brain.

From the Inside Flap

In this seminal work, Artificial Intelligence researcher, G. Wells Hanson, takes us from the world we call real, into the depths of a universe within a computer, as he demonstrates to us that our universe may itself be computerized. To achieve this, he produces fascinating and convincing new evidence that our material world, including our very bodies, are figments of our imagination. Relying on his experience in the physics research community, Hanson takes us on an intellectual journey, traveled for the sake of discovery itself. Along the way, he offers original answers to perplexing mysteries, including a model for human and machine understanding, a model of how the brain represents information and thinks with neurons, and explores several possible mechanisms of mind. His provocative conclusion demonstrates almost two-dozen of the mysterious and unexplained phenomena of quantum physics appearing spontaneously, resulting simply from programming a brain-like universe into a PC.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595313329
• ISBN 13: 9780595313327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 362