>>17
In practice I want to predict cellular automata without having to actually run the simulation, or just find a way of accelerating them infinitely.
Partially answered in
>>18. Since CAs can be Turing-equivalent, you run into the problem of computational irreductibility - you can't predict them without running them. It is of course a possibility of slowing yourself down (as a SIM, not a plain human) so that they run faster.
This is not to say that some programs, especially those designed by engineers to be predictable - can be predicted.
As a side-note, I've once heard of "free will" described in the sense of being unable to predict what you would do before doing it - computationally irreductible algorithms and (some) physical systems do fit this requirement.
In the book "A new kind of science", Wolfram talks about "computational irreducibility", i.e. that there might in fact be no way to predict the behavior of these automata without running them. Is he right, or just a defeatist?
Oh, I should have read this before responding. He's mostly right, but not completelely. It is possible to find models which better and better predict something. Sort of in the same way that you can solve the halting problem for specific cases
if you can make certain assumptions and those assumptions are correct. This is not that different from inventing a set theory or higher transfinite forms of math where you assume infinite processes will behave some specific way. The problem with that is that you risk being wrong the more assumptions you make about the behavior of the infinite.
As math itself is inexhaustible (by Godel and all), it will almost always be possible to find a shortcut, but never generally. This is to say that science will never end, not even if the world is just math or computation!
Because simulations are insanely slow. I don't want to wait 100 years just to get a result. That's why I asked about the prediction thing.
Either you can make a better model or you can slow yourself down (only available to SIMs or AGIs). I don't see any other way out of this.