In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts about the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, oh great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language! Without you, how can one not fall into despair at the sight of everything that is happening at home? But one cannot believe that such a language was not given to a great people!
I.S. Turgenev
Today I decided to open a new section on my blog:
Alpha-code
Working with behavior and reaction programs: detecting and correcting errors, changing execution priorities.
The title of the section may be misleading at first: after all, most readers of my blog know me primarily as a developer of computer programs, a popularizer of the My Visual Database development environment. But I propose to look at the problems of programming more broadly, observing global systems, exploring the most advanced tool for programming the surrounding space – Man.
But before we talk about what alpha code is, let’s fantasize about a popular topic today: is our universe a computer simulation? First, let’s clarify the terminology.
Computers and programs
A computer is a system that processes information using a program.
A program is information that determines how data (information) is processed by a computer.
Computers can be of different types: physical, chemical, biological and even virtual. The latter are a special program. It turns out that everything depends on understanding what information is.
Information
Information is not matter or energy, information is information.
Norbert Wiener
As we enter the slippery slope of philosophy, let us hold with one hand to structuring as a universal method of searching for truth.
Information (from Latin informātiō) is data, regardless of the form of its presentation.
Data is a representation of information in a formalized form that can be interpreted multiple times.
How can one not recall the adventures of Ijon Tichy and his attempts to unravel the mystery of Sepulkaria. However, the difference between information and data becomes clear: it takes a person to get information from data. Or, as it is now fashionable to say among physicists, an observer.
And let me disagree with dear Wiener: any information that is available to us in this world needs a carrier: material or energy. In my opinion, the opposite statement is also true: any matter or energy is information. And as noted above, this is quite enough to assert that the material (or energy, which, according to the latest information, is the same thing) world can be a computer executing a certain program. Moreover, the difference between data and program is a convention.
Self-modifying code
Although Von Neumann architecture allows the execution of code that can modify itself, modern programming paradigms limit the development of this direction to entertainment with the Turing Machine or sophisticated ways of protecting software from prying eyes and equally sophisticated ways of infecting programs with computer viruses. But nature has gone further: using complex biochemical processes, organisms can adapt to environmental changes, changing their behavior, eating habits, and even their appearance. And produce offspring with modified programs. But this is more related to metaprogramming.
Metaprogramming
Metaprogramming is a type of programming associated with the creation of programs that generate other programs as a result of their work. Examples of metaprogramming include the development of various compilers and translators. A fun but challenging activity. However, at the everyday level, everyone can do this: once you create a habit, you generate stable behavioral programs that you will carry out in the future without much effort. Which once again confirms the theory that the world is a computer program.
The most controversial point in this concept is freedom of choice: is a person’s adoption of this or that decision an expression of his will or a consequence of his fulfillment of a certain behavioral program laid down in him in childhood or even before his birth? Finding out this is very problematic, so most people prefer to use another mechanism for stabilizing their sensory perception in the mode of lack of reliable data – faith.
Optimization
Faith is a method of approximating knowledge that does not require any initial data obtained through experiment or even observation. And what’s interesting is that in different spheres of human life these data are called differently: dogmas, axioms, transcendental knowledge or even theories. In programming terms, faith is like storing a table of logarithm values instead of an algorithm for calculating it. The advantage is incredible performance, the disadvantage is incorrect decisions if errors have crept into the table as a result of a hardware failure or sabotage. In other words, it is an optimization that provides a tactical advantage in decision making, but may fail in the long run.
However, it is with faith that such an important concept as the soul is most often associated – an immortal immaterial entity, a source of energy for the body, a connecting thread with the Creator, the source code of the Human program or Alpha code.
Stranstvo*
* In English it is something between wander and wonder.
There are three manifestations of God on earth: nature, love and a sense of humor. Nature helps you live, love helps you survive, and a sense of humor helps you experience.
Mikhail Zadornov
To take our minds off serious thoughts, let’s play a little with words. What associations do you have with the word “stranstvo,” which is not yet in the official Russian language?
- Part, a certain element of space, side, direction, surface of an object.
- The process of moving in space, wandering, travel, movement.
- Some incomprehensible property or quality, strangeness, peculiarity.
So, the story about the alpha code is a stranstvo that shows one of the sides of our existence from an unusual side and is the beginning of the most interesting events on the path to finding answers to the most important and complex questions of our lives.