Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 10:49:56 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 16 February 2014 01:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, the copy of the experience has no belief or experience at all. The reflection of the fire doesn't burn anything. Are you saying that the copy will be dead? I'm saying that the copy was never alive to begin with. A pathologist would examine it and declare that it cannot possibly be dead, everything is normal. It not only looks like Craig, it also has skin, bones, internal organs, blood, the histological structure of the organs is all normal, biochemical analysis is normal, everything is normal. You are assuming that is possible, but it isn't. All you can do is clone me, which is no better than a twin brother as far as being a copy. No other kind of reproduction will work, any more than a flame could be made out of pixels. If it's all normal by every objective test but it is dead, that would be a miracle. It won't be normal by every objective test. You keep thinking of a zombie, but I am talking about a doll. There are no zombies, just as there is no way to turn lead into gold by a chemical transformation. I'm proposing that all the atoms will be in place, put there by a futuristic version of a 3D printer. Any analysis will then show that this is a normal human with healthy organs. A pathologist doing an autopsy of a cadaver finds at least some evidence of tissue damage consistent with death even if the cause of death is undetermined, but in this case he will find nothing wrong. Are you claiming that, nonenetheless, the 3D printed copy will be as lifeless as a cadaver? Given that a person with a delusion by definition lacks insight into the fact that he is deluded, how do you know that you are not a copy? You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. A doll as in dead, or some other kind of doll? A doll as in never alive - as in a sculpture, an artifice, a facade... Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com'); . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list@googlegroups.com'); . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cool Cuttlefish footage
On 15 Feb 2014, at 23:17, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:08:07AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Feb 2014, at 20:47, meekerdb wrote: On 2/14/2014 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: I find cuttlefish fascinating. They are social, relatively intelligent, can communicate, able to grasp and manipulate things. It seems like they were all set to become the dominant large life form (instead of humans). A mystery: they don't live a long time. Usually intelligence go with a rather long life, but cuttlefishes live one or two years. Yes - I find that surprising also. Hard for them to dominate, also, as they have few protections, no shelter, and are edible for many predators, including humans. One could say the same about early home 2 millions years ago. The invention of the throwable spear changed all that. Yes. They survive by hiding and fooling. They can hunt with hypnosis (as you can see in the video). I feel privileged that these wonderful animals (giant cuttlefish) can be found less than 200 metres from my house. I have often observed them when snorkling or scuba diving. You are privileged indeed. I had to laugh at the Texan prof's comment that they are as least as smart as fish. That is weird indeed. fish are not known to be particularly clever. I do have a habit of underestimating fish intelligence, Me too ... but IMHO their intelligence equals that of some mammals or birds, and clearly outclasses fish. I agree. I think I mentioned the anecdote which convinced me they exhibit a second order theory of the mind, which may well be sufficient for consciousness. Which I call self-consciousness, and I think this is already Löbianitty. I do think that all animals have the first order consciousness, they can feel pain, and find it unpleasant, but can't reflect on it, nor assess I feel pain. they still can react appropriately. I m not sure, but it fits better with the whole picture. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On 15 Feb 2014, at 18:48, meekerdb wrote: On 2/15/2014 5:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind. I have another theory of intelligence, which is that kids are intelligent (= can change their mind and learn), and adults are stupid (= can no more change their minds). The best defense against becoming stuck with a wrong opinion is don't make up your mind in the first place. Unfortunately, this might depend on your early education. We are culturally and biological programmed to look (at least) self- confident, and that leads sometimes to fake certainty, and some people are so gifted that they can foll themselves ... However, this means accepting the burden of acting under uncertainty. Which is necessary if you search truth, and might be a burden, when you have to take actual quick decision, like in real life. In real life, we don't really need certainty, but only some high plausibility degree. I think. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 15 Feb 2014, at 18:20, meekerdb wrote: On 2/15/2014 1:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: You might keep in mind that astonishing truth (deducible from Matiyasevitch): - The polynomial on the reals are not Turing universal (you cannot simulate an exponential with such polynomials) - the polynomial on the integers are Turing universal, you can simulate exponential, and indeed all Turing machine with them. You can simulate the function sending the integers x on x^(x^(x^(x^...))) x times with a integers polynomial of dgree four!, but you cannot with any polynomials on the reals. That is astonishing. Where can I read a proof (without having to learn too much background)? I would recommend the book by Matiyasevich(*). It is very good. You don't need a background (except 17 is prime, of course). But you will need to do some work, of course. It took 70 years to Davis, Putnam, Robinson and Matiyasevich to prove this. The so called DPRM theorem. Many logicians thought they would not succeed. Bruno (*) You will find many accounts when googling on matiyasevich hilbert's tenth problem. + amazon.com for the references. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 15 Feb 2014, at 19:30, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The 3-1 view is the 3p view on the 1p views, note the plural, after the duplication. That is far more convoluted than it need to be, it's really not all that complicated. After the duplication both the Washington Man and the Moscow Man agree that they were both the Helsinki Man at one time. OK. A third party observer would also agree with this. After the duplication both the Washington Man and the Moscow Man agree that they are no longer each other. A third party observer would agree with this too. So unlike Einstein's thought experiments in this one everybody involved is in agreement about everything that happened, which is why we can learn nothing from it. Not at all. The 3P definition of 3p and 1p allows to agree on some 3p accounts of the whole derivation, that is why we can do science here. it is the same in Einstein relativity. the 1p discourse have to be eliminated from the scientific account, except as data, or subject matter. In our case, indeed everybody agrees on the FPI (except you, for still quite unclear reason). A typical observation will be the diary of the guy in W assess that he is in W, and (perhaps) that he could not have predicted that, That is incorrect, the Helsinki Man could have successfully predicted that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington. That is correct, but is not answering the question, which is asked to the H man, at a moment he has not yet been copy. At that moment, predicting that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington is tautological, and half of a 3-1 description, but the question is about the unique 1-1 = 1-description(s). You make your 3-move again. In Helsinki you know that P(my experience will be the experience of seeing a unique city) = 1. But if you choose in advance one city, that choice will be refuted by the doppelganger. and that the diary of the guy in M assess that he is in M and (perhaps) that he could not have predicted that. And the Helsinki Man could have successfully predicted that the Moscow diary will be written by the guy in Moscow. Which is the other half of the 3-1 description. But that was not asked to the H-man. the question asked was about his first person experience, and as just said above, by comp, it can only been unique. But of course if you're trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity none of this matters, it doesn't matter if the predictions were correct or not. We are not trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity at all. I can be amnesic on who I am for example. the question is about the expectation of some unique 1p experience I will live soon. By comp I know that it must be W, or M, but not both, nor none. So the prediction you have often made, and never clearly retracted, that you will find yourself in W and M, is a correct prediction for the 3-1 view, Yes, after it was all over and the smoke had cleared away a third party observer will say that John Clark is in Moscow and John Clark is in Washington. Correct. That's the 3-1 view. but that is not what is asked in Helsinki, which concerns the 1- views, or as I said the 1-1-views (the 1-view on the 1-view). If that is the question then the only answer the Helsinki Man can give is my first person view is of Helsinki. No. that's the correct answer to what do you feel right now, but the question is what could you feel after pressing the button. As you know that by comp you don't die, and as you know that P(I will see only one city) is 1, you know with certainty that you, in your future 1-view sense, will see W, or M, and not both, and that you cannot predict which one, without being refuted by the doppelganger, so you can only say W or M, with a non constructive or. That's the FPI. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 Feb 2014, at 05:08, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 10:40:17 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 16 February 2014 01:41, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: To extend your metaphor, in my view, since the characters in a drama can build an LCD screen as part of the show, but an LCD screen can't build a show as part of its function, it makes more sense that the drama is fundamental and that from an absolute perspective, it is the pixels which are the epiphenomenal show. The reason why it is reversed for us locally is that our show is nested several times within other shows which are both larger and smaller in scope and slower and faster in frequency. The most 'other' of these shows is the one which appears most mechanical, as it includes the fastest, slowest, largest, and smallest experiences relative to our own - the polar opposite of our own native scope, which is by definition middle-range from our perspective. As per my answer to David, the movie has meaning only to a conscious entity. If a computer is a conscious entity it will create meaning for itself, as humans do. You don't think a computer could do this but that's just prejudice. It's not prejudice, it's clarity. It would be clear if you say what is missing in the comp, which makes her into a doll. But it is here that you need to invoke something which is neither Turing emulable, nor FPI-recoverable. It's not that I think that a computer could not create meaning, it's that I understand why computation is meaningless by definition. No more meaningless than a cell triggering another cell chemically or electrically, a priori. Or, again, you put in the cells something non Turing emulable, but then why not do that for the silicon devices? It is prejudice, unless you make clear what is not Turing emulable or FPI recoverable in the brain, and why that will be absent in the silicon. Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On 16 Feb 2014, at 06:35, Kim Jones wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 2:06 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 14, 2014 10:23:35 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 1:09 pm, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/14/2014 4:24 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 14 Feb 2014, at 3:42 pm, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: What about the CMBR? When it was created there were (presumably) no observers in existence in the universe. Are you saying it wouldn't exist if we hadn't evolved to detect it (e.g. if humans hadn't evolved, or if we had never invented radio telescopes) ? Yes - exactly. A direct consequence of The Reversal. First comes Mind. Physics and matter and the 3D holographic farmyard are a long way down the road. I hope no one is assuming that it requires something as weird as a human to implement consciousness. Something as basic as a Boltzmann brain would be in principle, instantly possible in any universe, surely. Of course Boltzmann brains are notoriously transient, so we're to think of the universe (or at least pieces of past light cones) blinking in and out of existence. Or does that take a Boltzmann brain plus optic nerves and eyes and a Boltzmann telescope? Brent A mind without a hosting apparatus is the entity I am struggling to describe. I have no trouble with the notion that consciousness can simply exist with no extra qualifiers whatsoever. We are talking about that which simply exists - when it exists, where it exists, its characteristics etc. are another story. I don't know whether such questions are even relevant. Kim Existence, when, where, and characteristics would all be conditions within the primordial capacity for experience. Craig OK - so Hameroff and Penrose's conjecture that consciousness was a property of the primordial universe has legs then? These two are physicalists though; if I read Russell correctly he is saying this. Penrose if consistent with comp (even if it is for wrong reason (misuse of Gödel 1931)). Comp implies not-physicalism or not-computationalism, and Penrose opts for physicalism, and abandon computationalism. (Not Hameroff: he still believes in comp, as he is OK with brain is a (quantum) computer). Bruno Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 15 Feb 2014, at 18:34, Richard Ruquist wrote: Isn't quantum mechanics based on the reals? Yes. Like classical physics. And like, most plausibly the comp- physics, by the dovetailing on the reals inputs, which might play a role in the measure stabilization problem. But this has to be extracted from the semantics of the comp propositional physics (the two, or three, material hypostases). Bruno On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 12:20 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/15/2014 1:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: You might keep in mind that astonishing truth (deducible from Matiyasevitch): - The polynomial on the reals are not Turing universal (you cannot simulate an exponential with such polynomials) - the polynomial on the integers are Turing universal, you can simulate exponential, and indeed all Turing machine with them. You can simulate the function sending the integers x on x^(x^(x^(x^...))) x times with a integers polynomial of dgree four!, but you cannot with any polynomials on the reals. That is astonishing. Where can I read a proof (without having to learn too much background)? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 15 Feb 2014, at 14:14, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 02:45, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If that is so (and I agree that it is, since I am not a physical eliminativist) it is still consistent with the physical processes still being *sufficient* to produce consciousness. It would only not be sufficient if some further ingredient were necessary beyond the matter in the right configuration. I've been reflecting on our exchange on the subject of reference. The assumption that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of physics would entail, I suppose, that we shouldn't think of physics itself as referring to anything at all. The idea is that we can always give a fully sufficient and closed account of any sequence of events in fully-reduced physical-causal terms. It might be slightly out-of-topic, but I would distinguish the statement consciousness is an epiphenomenon on physics, and consciousness + physics is an epiphenomenon of arithmetic. Only the last case can lake sense to me. I might be able to give some sense to epiphenomena (I am not sure), but if consciousness is an epiphenomena, eventually the physical reality has to be also an epiphenomenon. One could make an analogy, for example, with watching a movie on an LCD screen, in terms of which the dramatic events must always be fully reducible to some sequence of illumination of the screen pixels (so that the drama is an epiphenomenon of the pixel-physics). For this analogy to be transferable to the mind body problem, we must further assume that the dramatic interpretation which, in the case of the the movie must be provided externally, is somehow internal to the epiphenomenal causal logic and the physics on which it supervenes. If this is granted, the epiphenomenal dramatis personae then have access to a logic of reference that somehow travels on the underlying ontology, but is ineffective in it. As in the movie analogy, there is a dramatic logic that supervenes on the physical level, but is no more effective in physical terms than we would expect the characters in a movie to be in changing the underlying pixel-physics. Yes, in that view, consciousness has no responsibilities, and the person is eliminated. But then with comp, I don't see why matter, not just primitive matter, must be eliminated too. If the foregoing is to make any sense, we are forced to the view that all references to such dramatis personae are, in the end, merely a manner of speaking, and that consequently *all* such gross or macroscopic references are, strictly speaking, epistemological (i.e. they are all internal references to epiphenomena of some fully- reduced physical ontology). You might be on the track of some contradiction here. It looks like all references becomes meaningless, including the reference on the physics on which consciousness would be an epiphenomenon on. Funnily enough, I recently heard Jaron Lanier expressing just such a view (at least as a possibility). Do you agree that your views imply that reality is in some sense like this? I am curious also. Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 11 Feb 2014, at 2:15 pm, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: The point is that if we take the assumptions of comp, then quantum duplication, hypothetical matter transmitter duplication, and living from day to day ALL involve the same amount of (or lack of) continuity. Yes. The way I now understand it, with Comp, sleeping in your bed at night is Death Lite. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:35:59 AM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 2:06 pm, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Friday, February 14, 2014 10:23:35 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 1:09 pm, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/14/2014 4:24 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 14 Feb 2014, at 3:42 pm, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: What about the CMBR? When it was created there were (presumably) no observers in existence in the universe. Are you saying it wouldn't exist if we hadn't evolved to detect it (e.g. if humans hadn't evolved, or if we had never invented radio telescopes) ? Yes - exactly. A direct consequence of The Reversal. First comes Mind. Physics and matter and the 3D holographic farmyard are a long way down the road. I hope no one is assuming that it requires something as weird as a “human” to implement consciousness. Something as basic as a Boltzmann brain would be in principle, instantly possible in any universe, surely. Of course Boltzmann brains are notoriously transient, so we're to think of the universe (or at least pieces of past light cones) blinking in and out of existence. Or does that take a Boltzmann brain plus optic nerves and eyes and a Boltzmann telescope? Brent A mind without a hosting apparatus is the entity I am struggling to describe. I have no trouble with the notion that consciousness can simply exist with no extra qualifiers whatsoever. We are talking about that which simply exists - when it exists, where it exists, its characteristics etc. are another story. I don't know whether such questions are even relevant. Kim Existence, when, where, and characteristics would all be conditions within the primordial capacity for experience. Craig OK - so Hameroff and Penrose's conjecture that consciousness was a property of the primordial universe has legs then? These two are physicalists though; if I read Russell correctly he is saying this. I would go further and say that the possibility of the primordial universe, as well as the possibility of properties is part of primordial sense. Craig Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:29:09 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). That makes sense to me because the amoeba's body will look like a copy to our body's senses. A 3p view of 3p is truncated and filled in generically. The 1p amoeba is the localized subset of the entire history of amoeba-like experience, not just the isolated maintainer of the 3p amoeba body. When we look for 3p evidence, we will not necessarily see 1p authenticity as certain evidence. The authenticity has to be felt through the feeling as semi-describable aesthetic qualities...which is where we get a lot of unscientific sounding terms like life force, kundalini, prana, xi, etc. These kind of numinous qualities apply not just to living beings, but to works of art, sacred places, etc, if you are subjectively receptive to their authenticity. They do not give us infallible proof of originality, but they are reminders that there is an important difference between 'something' and *the real thing*. Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. The reproduction of the amoeba's body is an approximate copy from our 3p perspective, but the Xp copier itself cannot be copied. It is not only unique, but it is uniqueness itself - meta-unique if you like. The Xp copier is consciousness, who provides both the meaning and the method of copying. All arithmetic truth relates only to the 3p view of Xp copying language. Craig Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, No, the proper understanding is that gravitation and curved space are EQUIVALENT. Both are produced by the presence of mass-energy (and stress). I would say that gravity and curved space are metaphorical rather than literal. The literal phenomenon is that the inertial frame of sensible external relations is what is being curved. It is literally the experience of stress - of seriousness and realism which is seen from the outside as exaggerated irreversibility and inevitability. Mass-energy is the public token which represents sensory-motive. Space/density is the dual of mass, time/duration is the dual of energy. Mass-energy doesn't produce anything except externalized reflections of phenomenal experiences. Gravitation and curved space describe the back end of the sensory-motor (not motive because its externalized) relations which are interphenomenal, automatic, and unattended on all frames but the primordial one. Craig You say Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. Are you saying then that acceleration from a rising elevator is motion through curved space? That was my original question but I don't know what your answer is from your post.. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:41:09 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:22:18AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, By the Principle of Equivalence acceleration is equivalent to gravitation. Gravitation curves space. No - curved space generates the phenomena of gravitation. It is sometimes said that matter curves space. So doesn't this mean acceleration should also curve space? If not, why not? Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. If not, doesn't that violate the Equivalence Principle? No. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 12:45, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. The reproduction of the amoeba's body is an approximate copy from our 3p perspective, but the Xp copier itself cannot be copied. It is not only unique, but it is uniqueness itself - meta-unique if you like. The Xp copier is consciousness, who provides both the meaning and the method of copying. All arithmetic truth relates only to the 3p view of Xp copying language. OK, so if I understand you, there is an Xp copying process (i.e. one that incorporates both meaning and method) that results in there being two amoebae where previously there was one. You also seem to be saying that in principle no 3p copying process can reproduce what the Xp process achieves and as a consequence any products of a merely 3p process must be dolls, or lacking in meaning / consciousness. In terms of my LCD screen analogy, the drama itself could manifest its own LCD screen, but any character that appeared on that second-order screen would be a mere unconscious puppet with respect to the authentic characters of the main drama. For that analogy to hold, it would imply that real meaning would inhere only in the first-order machinations (if that's the appropriate word) of an Xp reality, but not in any secondary recursions. If so, you appear to be saying that any attempt on our part to 3p-copy a conscious entity would be more or less analogous to the characters in a movie trying to breed new characters by generating them on their own LCD screen rather than by engaging in the customary biological manoeuvres (which in the analogy are a first-order manifestation of the underlying Xp process instantiated by the pixel-physics). Is that more or less it? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 03:36, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: The difference between the movie and the conscious entity is that the movie has meaning to an external observer, while the conscious entity creates its own observer and hence its own meaning. Yes, that's what I said. OK, I think I've got the idea now. Now I'll have to give some thought to Bruno's suspicion that there may be some contradiction inherent in this position. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:45:13 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 10:49:56 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 16 February 2014 01:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, the copy of the experience has no belief or experience at all. The reflection of the fire doesn't burn anything. Are you saying that the copy will be dead? I'm saying that the copy was never alive to begin with. A pathologist would examine it and declare that it cannot possibly be dead, everything is normal. It not only looks like Craig, it also has skin, bones, internal organs, blood, the histological structure of the organs is all normal, biochemical analysis is normal, everything is normal. You are assuming that is possible, but it isn't. All you can do is clone me, which is no better than a twin brother as far as being a copy. No other kind of reproduction will work, any more than a flame could be made out of pixels. If it's all normal by every objective test but it is dead, that would be a miracle. It won't be normal by every objective test. You keep thinking of a zombie, but I am talking about a doll. There are no zombies, just as there is no way to turn lead into gold by a chemical transformation. I'm proposing that all the atoms will be in place, put there by a futuristic version of a 3D printer. I understand, but I am saying that is not possible. Atoms do not literally occupy 'places', it is only impressions of atoms which appear to occupy relative places within a sense modality. If you try to copy a living cell, you won't get an exact copy, you'll just get another living cell (if you're lucky). Any analysis will then show that this is a normal human with healthy organs. It would, in a universe where it was possible to literally copy physical presence, but it is not possible in this universe. Copying is a concept that relies on our failure to detect differences from our perceptual vantage point. There are no actual copies of physical events, and a human lifetime is a single, irreducible physical event (within its own frame of reference). A pathologist doing an autopsy of a cadaver finds at least some evidence of tissue damage consistent with death even if the cause of death is undetermined, but in this case he will find nothing wrong. Are you claiming that, nonenetheless, the 3D printed copy will be as lifeless as a cadaver? I doubt that a 3D printed copy of a fully developed body will ever live. A 3D clone of DNA grown in vitro will live, but it will of course have a separate life and be a separate person, just as all identical twins, even brain-conjoined identical twins are separate people. If there were some way to copy a fully developed body so that it lived, it would still not be a copy of the original, but just a new original that reminds us of the copy from the outside perspective. Craig Given that a person with a delusion by definition lacks insight into the fact that he is deluded, how do you know that you are not a copy? You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. A doll as in dead, or some other kind of doll? A doll as in never alive - as in a sculpture, an artifice, a facade... Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 14:06, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If there were some way to copy a fully developed body so that it lived, it would still not be a copy of the original, but just a new original that reminds us of the copy from the outside perspective. Ah, but then you would be faced with the questions posed by the UDA/MWI arguments, because there would then be two conscious originals who claimed equal possession of the same history to that point. That is all you need for the duplication arguments to go through. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 09:39, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: If the foregoing is to make any sense, we are forced to the view that all references to such dramatis personae are, in the end, merely a manner of speaking, and that consequently *all* such gross or macroscopic references are, strictly speaking, epistemological (i.e. they are all internal references to epiphenomena of some fully-reduced physical ontology). You might be on the track of some contradiction here. It looks like all references becomes meaningless, including the reference on the physics on which consciousness would be an epiphenomenon on. Well, I guess one would have to say that all references (including references to internal representations of physics) are only *internally* meaningful. The whole schema - physics included - would then have to be considered an epiphenomenon of some inaccessible ur-physics. I'm not sure that it's exactly a contradiction just because of that, though, as in practice any putative ontological base - numbers included - must be inaccessible in this sense, except to theory. However, one distinction between arithmetic / computation as an ontology, and some kind of putative ur-physics, is that it is more difficult to discern any principled motivation whatsoever to derive reference in a primitive physics. A typical response to this reference problem is to justify CTM by smuggling an ad hoc notion of computation into physics. It is ad hoc in the sense that physical computation is still no more than primitive physics, so now computation itself becomes an epiphenomenon of physics and consciousness therefore an epiphenomenon of an epiphenomenon. If not a blatant contradiction, this strikes me as quite close to a reductio. Computation (as emulated in arithmetic) on the other hand offers, at least, a principled system of internally-recursive self-reference that could motivate the layers of connectivity between the ontological base and the level of indexical physical reality. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Block Universes
Jesse, OK, I'm back... Let me back up a minute and ask you a couple of general questions with respect to establishing which past clock times of different observers were simultaneous in p-time The only clocks in this example are the real actual ages of two twins 1. Do you agree that each twin always has a real actual age defined as how old he actually is (to himself)? Yes or no? 2. Do you agree that this real actual age corresponds by definition to the moment of his actually being alive, to his actual current point in time? (As a block universe believer you can just take this as perception or perspective rather than actuality if you wish - it won't affect the discussion). Yes or no? Now assume a relativistic trip that separates the twins 3. Do you agree that IF, for every point of the trip, we can always determine what ACTUAL age of one twin corresponds to the ACTUAL age of the other twin, and always in a way that both twins AGREE upon (that is frame independent), that those 1:1 correspondences in actual ages, whatever they are, must occur at the same actual times? That this would give us a method to determine what (possibly different) actual ages occur at the same actual p-time moment in which the twins are actually alive with those (possibly different) actual ages? Yes or no? Edgar On Friday, February 14, 2014 3:05:13 PM UTC-5, jessem wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 9:37 PM, Jesse Mazer laser...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Do t and t' refer to proper times for A and B (defined only along each one's worldline), or coordinate times in the rest frame of A and B (coordinate times have a well-defined value for arbitrary events, and will agree with the proper time for the observer that's at rest in whichever coordinate system we're talking about)? If proper time, I don't know what you mean by relationship between those variables, unless you're just talking about what pairs of readings are simultaneous in each frame. If coordinate time, then my answer is yes--the relationship between the coordinate time of an event in one system and the coordinate time of the same event in another system is just given by the Lorentz transformation equations for time: t' = gamma*(t - (vx/c^2)) t = gamma*(t' + (vx/c^2)) where gamma = 1/sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2), and v is the velocity of B's frame as measured in A's frame (with the assumption that we set up our coordinate axes so that B is moving along A's x-axis). Small correction, the unprimed x in the second equations was meant to be an x', i.e. the position coordinate of the event in the B's frame: t = gamma*(t' + (vx'/c^2)) And here's the corresponding Lorentz equations relating the position coordinate assigned to a single event by the each of the two frames: x' = gamma*(x - vt) x = gamma*(x' + vt') Incidentally, I'm going to be away this weekend but if you have time to continue the discussion in the next couple days by responding to the post I quoted above (and also to the post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/xtjSyxxi4awJif possible, especially my questions at the end of that post about the meaning of same point in spacetime), I can get back to you by early next week. Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 Feb 2014, at 13:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:29:09 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). That makes sense to me because the amoeba's body will look like a copy to our body's senses. A 3p view of 3p is truncated and filled in generically. The 1p amoeba is the localized subset of the entire history of amoeba-like experience, not just the isolated maintainer of the 3p amoeba body. When we look for 3p evidence, we will not necessarily see 1p authenticity as certain evidence. The authenticity has to be felt through the feeling as semi-describable aesthetic qualities...which is where we get a lot of unscientific sounding terms like life force, kundalini, prana, xi, etc. These kind of numinous qualities apply not just to living beings, but to works of art, sacred places, etc, if you are subjectively receptive to their authenticity. They do not give us infallible proof of originality, but they are reminders that there is an important difference between 'something' and *the real thing*. You are just saying that you are not subjectively receptive to the machines 1p. Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. The reproduction of the amoeba's body is an approximate copy from our 3p perspective, but the Xp copier itself cannot be copied. It is not only unique, but it is uniqueness itself - meta-unique if you like. The Xp copier is consciousness, who provides both the meaning and the method of copying. I can understand that consciousness is a selector, but it makes no sense for me to say it is the copier. All arithmetic truth relates only to the 3p view of Xp copying language. Why? I illustrate that this is not the case, already with the most known definition of knowledge. Bruno Craig Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 3:17 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Einstein couldn't be classed as witless He claimed atoms were the littlelest When they did a bit of splittin' em It scared everybody shitless. A Quantum Mechanic's vacation Left his colleagues in dire consternation Though tests had shown His speed was well known His position was pure speculation There ain't half been some clever bastards Probably got help from their mum There ain't half been some clever bastards Now that we've had some Let's hope that there's lots more to come. There was a young lady named Bright Who traveled much faster than light She left one day In a relative way And returned the previous night John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 Feb 2014, at 15:32, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 09:39, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: If the foregoing is to make any sense, we are forced to the view that all references to such dramatis personae are, in the end, merely a manner of speaking, and that consequently *all* such gross or macroscopic references are, strictly speaking, epistemological (i.e. they are all internal references to epiphenomena of some fully-reduced physical ontology). You might be on the track of some contradiction here. It looks like all references becomes meaningless, including the reference on the physics on which consciousness would be an epiphenomenon on. Well, I guess one would have to say that all references (including references to internal representations of physics) are only *internally* meaningful. Yes. Like with comp's reversal consequence. (Through the conversation with Quentin, I think I will have to explain better a part of step seven, which might add light, or perhaps obscurity, on this thread). This is a problematical for someone believing both that there is a moon, and that it makes sense to refer to it, for example by pointing a finger to the moon. From thought cannot act on matter we arrive at thought cannot refer to matter, and well, this is almost the consequence of step 8, as it says that the notion of matter has nothing to do with a material reality. Then we can still refer to the moon, but we know it is a sort of collective lawful hallucination, or more exactly a mean on a set of 3p well defined computation. The whole schema - physics included - would then have to be considered an epiphenomenon of some inaccessible ur-physics. Exactly. I'm not sure that it's exactly a contradiction just because of that, though, as in practice any putative ontological base - numbers included - must be inaccessible in this sense, except to theory. It illustrates, perhaps better than step 8, the difficulty of wanting a primitive matter having a primitive ontological reality capable of singularizing a conscious person capable to refer to it. I have to think more about this. However, one distinction between arithmetic / computation as an ontology, and some kind of putative ur-physics, is that it is more difficult to discern any principled motivation whatsoever to derive reference in a primitive physics. A typical response to this reference problem is to justify CTM by smuggling an ad hoc notion of computation into physics. Yes. That is why at first sight I took the discovery of the quantum universal machine as a blow for comp. I thought that the quantum formalism provided a notion of physical computability, but it brought only a notion of physical computation, which is not excluded with computationalism (it is a sort of direct exploitation of the statistical nature of the computations below our substitution level). It is ad hoc in the sense that physical computation is still no more than primitive physics, so now computation itself becomes an epiphenomenon of physics and consciousness therefore an epiphenomenon of an epiphenomenon. If not a blatant contradiction, this strikes me as quite close to a reductio. It makes arithmetic an epiphenomenon of physics, and it makes physics an epiphenomenon of physics. Computation (as emulated in arithmetic) on the other hand offers, at least, a principled system of internally-recursive self-reference that could motivate the layers of connectivity between the ontological base and the level of indexical physical reality. With a big price of reducing physics to a unique calculus of self- reference on the consistent, and/or true, or both extensions. This makes sense only if the arithmetical or quasi-arithmetical []p p, []p t, (and []p p t) obeys knowledge and probability logic respectively, and that is the case when p is restricted on sigma_1 sentences (which emulates UD*). Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cool Cuttlefish footage
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 23:17, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:08:07AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Feb 2014, at 20:47, meekerdb wrote: On 2/14/2014 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: I find cuttlefish fascinating. They are social, relatively intelligent, can communicate, able to grasp and manipulate things. It seems like they were all set to become the dominant large life form (instead of humans). A mystery: they don't live a long time. Usually intelligence go with a rather long life, but cuttlefishes live one or two years. Yes - I find that surprising also. Hard for them to dominate, also, as they have few protections, no shelter, and are edible for many predators, including humans. One could say the same about early home 2 millions years ago. The invention of the throwable spear changed all that. Yes. They survive by hiding and fooling. They can hunt with hypnosis (as you can see in the video). I feel privileged that these wonderful animals (giant cuttlefish) can be found less than 200 metres from my house. I have often observed them when snorkling or scuba diving. I'm just jealous, really. I've seen them alone, confirming the solitary status but also in groups, and have wondered whether there is some group cooperation thing happening outside of mating, as they seemed often to be moving in one direction, which could be of course just getting away from huge yours truly. You are privileged indeed. I had to laugh at the Texan prof's comment that they are as least as smart as fish. That is weird indeed. fish are not known to be particularly clever. What's funny is that he seemed scared of peer consensus, maybe from the rival funding dolphin learning research camp or something, to finally aim quite low, leaving everything else to what we still have to learn. But they have nothing to hide in this regard: they live two years, go through that one mating cycle in which the males are capable of cross dressing to fool the huge machos, and the females acknowledge this through some control over sperm selection. Some humans of both genders do not display that level of intelligence, lol! I do have a habit of underestimating fish intelligence, Me too ... ... and overestimating the human one ;-) but IMHO their intelligence equals that of some mammals or birds, and clearly outclasses fish. I agree. I think I mentioned the anecdote which convinced me they exhibit a second order theory of the mind, which may well be sufficient for consciousness. Which I call self-consciousness, and I think this is already Löbianitty. I do think that all animals have the first order consciousness, they can feel pain, and find it unpleasant, but can't reflect on it, nor assess I feel pain. they still can react appropriately. I m not sure, but it fits better with the whole picture. Also the survival of the little flamboyant one, that just gave up on swimming, mostly marching the sea floor, totally exposed to all predators, not bluffing poison because it actually is poisonous; when the rest of its kind is a delicacy for anything larger. Strange that the predators believe the display of colors; OK, we believe you little guy without having gone to the lab... and that this one survived, not by speed, or camouflage but by disco sign that reads: remember, I'm not fooling around, these colors are for real. I really am not like the rest of my kind, you like to eat. We get that, and we have an update. That's why I'm not swimming away. Simple really: you eat me, you're in trouble or you die. You better swim on and let me do my things here, k? Good. PGC Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 , Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: A typical observation will be the diary of the guy in W assess that he is in W, and (perhaps) that he could not have predicted that, That is incorrect, the Helsinki Man could have successfully predicted that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington. That is correct, but is not answering the question, Then what exactly is the question? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. predicting that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington is tautological, Exactly. Precisely. And thus we can conclude that the thought experiment is worthless. In Helsinki you know that P(my experience will be the experience of seeing a unique city) = 1. Who is Mr. my? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. the question asked was about his first person experience, Who is Mr. his, and who exactly is the person having this first person experience? Be specific, give names, and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. By comp I know that it must be W, or M, but not both, nor none. Well good for comp. the only answer the Helsinki Man can give is my first person view is of Helsinki. No. that's the correct answer to what do you feel right now, but the question is what could you feel after pressing the button. Who is Mr. you? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. As you know that by comp you don't die Well good for comp. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cool Cuttlefish footage
On 16 Feb 2014, at 17:41, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 23:17, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:08:07AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Feb 2014, at 20:47, meekerdb wrote: On 2/14/2014 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: I find cuttlefish fascinating. They are social, relatively intelligent, can communicate, able to grasp and manipulate things. It seems like they were all set to become the dominant large life form (instead of humans). A mystery: they don't live a long time. Usually intelligence go with a rather long life, but cuttlefishes live one or two years. Yes - I find that surprising also. Hard for them to dominate, also, as they have few protections, no shelter, and are edible for many predators, including humans. One could say the same about early home 2 millions years ago. The invention of the throwable spear changed all that. Yes. They survive by hiding and fooling. They can hunt with hypnosis (as you can see in the video). I feel privileged that these wonderful animals (giant cuttlefish) can be found less than 200 metres from my house. I have often observed them when snorkling or scuba diving. I'm just jealous, really. I've seen them alone, confirming the solitary status but also in groups, and have wondered whether there is some group cooperation thing happening outside of mating, as they seemed often to be moving in one direction, which could be of course just getting away from huge yours truly. You are privileged indeed. I had to laugh at the Texan prof's comment that they are as least as smart as fish. That is weird indeed. fish are not known to be particularly clever. What's funny is that he seemed scared of peer consensus, maybe from the rival funding dolphin learning research camp or something, to finally aim quite low, leaving everything else to what we still have to learn. But they have nothing to hide in this regard: they live two years, go through that one mating cycle in which the males are capable of cross dressing to fool the huge machos, and the females acknowledge this through some control over sperm selection. Some humans of both genders do not display that level of intelligence, lol! I do have a habit of underestimating fish intelligence, Me too ... ... and overestimating the human one ;-) but IMHO their intelligence equals that of some mammals or birds, and clearly outclasses fish. I agree. I think I mentioned the anecdote which convinced me they exhibit a second order theory of the mind, which may well be sufficient for consciousness. Which I call self-consciousness, and I think this is already Löbianitty. I do think that all animals have the first order consciousness, they can feel pain, and find it unpleasant, but can't reflect on it, nor assess I feel pain. they still can react appropriately. I m not sure, but it fits better with the whole picture. Also the survival of the little flamboyant one, that just gave up on swimming, mostly marching the sea floor, totally exposed to all predators, not bluffing poison because it actually is poisonous; when the rest of its kind is a delicacy for anything larger. Strange that the predators believe the display of colors; OK, we believe you little guy without having gone to the lab... and that this one survived, not by speed, or camouflage but by disco sign that reads: remember, I'm not fooling around, these colors are for real. I really am not like the rest of my kind, you like to eat. We get that, and we have an update. That's why I'm not swimming away. Simple really: you eat me, you're in trouble or you die. You better swim on and let me do my things here, k? Good. PGC The champion of faking is no more faking anymore, LOL. Well, if all apparent food was edible, faking would no more made sense. May be there has been a competition among species of cuttlefishes the one being really not edible, and the other developing tools to look like them. Of course cuttlefishes fakes also rock, or the predators itself. Cuttlefish can imitate in a second, what some jumping spider took I don't know how many millions of year to do, like imitating perfectly a non edible ant. Note how it uses her front legs to imitate ant's antenna! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pgs_-Lckno Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
Craig, I agree with your idea in one sense, that actually space and clock time are just computational relationships between events, specifically the dimensional aspects of those events, rather than the actual physical background to events that is usually assumed. In my book on Reality, I point out the reasons why it's more reasonable to assume that spaceclocktime is something that arises out of elemental computational events in discrete fragments, rather than existing as a fixed, pre-existing background to events. The advantage of this approach is that it enables a conceptual unification of quantum theory and GR; immediately resolves all quantum paradoxes (which are paradoxical only with respect to the fixed, pre-existing background space mistakenly assumed); and provides a clear explanation of the source and necessity of quantum randomness. Strangely no one here seems interested in how this happens, even to criticize it! Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 8:35:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, No, the proper understanding is that gravitation and curved space are EQUIVALENT. Both are produced by the presence of mass-energy (and stress). I would say that gravity and curved space are metaphorical rather than literal. The literal phenomenon is that the inertial frame of sensible external relations is what is being curved. It is literally the experience of stress - of seriousness and realism which is seen from the outside as exaggerated irreversibility and inevitability. Mass-energy is the public token which represents sensory-motive. Space/density is the dual of mass, time/duration is the dual of energy. Mass-energy doesn't produce anything except externalized reflections of phenomenal experiences. Gravitation and curved space describe the back end of the sensory-motor (not motive because its externalized) relations which are interphenomenal, automatic, and unattended on all frames but the primordial one. Craig You say Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. Are you saying then that acceleration from a rising elevator is motion through curved space? That was my original question but I don't know what your answer is from your post.. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:41:09 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:22:18AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, By the Principle of Equivalence acceleration is equivalent to gravitation. Gravitation curves space. No - curved space generates the phenomena of gravitation. It is sometimes said that matter curves space. So doesn't this mean acceleration should also curve space? If not, why not? Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. If not, doesn't that violate the Equivalence Principle? No. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 2/15/2014 7:40 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 February 2014 01:41, Craig Weinbergwhatsons...@gmail.com wrote: To extend your metaphor, in my view, since the characters in a drama can build an LCD screen as part of the show, but an LCD screen can't build a show as part of its function, it makes more sense that the drama is fundamental and that from an absolute perspective, it is the pixels which are the epiphenomenal show. The reason why it is reversed for us locally is that our show is nested several times within other shows which are both larger and smaller in scope and slower and faster in frequency. The most 'other' of these shows is the one which appears most mechanical, as it includes the fastest, slowest, largest, and smallest experiences relative to our own - the polar opposite of our own native scope, which is by definition middle-range from our perspective. As per my answer to David, the movie has meaning only to a conscious entity. If a computer is a conscious entity it will create meaning for itself, as humans do. You don't think a computer could do this but that's just prejudice. I don't disagree, but I think this formulation leaves meaning as mysterious and one may ask why consciousness creates meaning. I think meaning comes from being able to act in the world to realize values. And it doesn't require consciousness, at least not human like consciousness. The Mars Rover acts to fulfill a mission plan and so rocks and hills have meaning for it. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
How Wolves Change Rivers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q A quick video that can shed some light on the inadequacy of bottom-up models. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:12:03 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 14:06, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: If there were some way to copy a fully developed body so that it lived, it would still not be a copy of the original, but just a new original that reminds us of the copy from the outside perspective. Ah, but then you would be faced with the questions posed by the UDA/MWI arguments, because there would then be two conscious originals who claimed equal possession of the same history to that point. That is all you need for the duplication arguments to go through. They would each be their own originals, not the same original. In identical twin is as identical as identical can be. Craig David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
John, You say that You can tell if spacetime is curved or not by observing if light moves in a straight line or not. and then you say that light does NOT travel in a straight line in the accelerating elevator example you give. So, by your terminology, does that mean that the acceleration of the elevator IS curving space or not? It seems like you might be saying that the acceleration does curve space but only in its own frame. Would that be an accurate way to state your understanding? And if that is true can we then say that the curvature of space is not absolute and the same for all observers, but is frame dependent, at least in the case of acceleration curving space? And can we say this is a basic difference between the curvature of space by gravitation and by acceleration, that the curvature of space by gravitation is absolute in this sense, but the curvature of space by acceleration is relative in the sense it is true only for the accelerating frame? Edgar On Friday, February 14, 2014 3:44:47 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:39 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: The accelerating elevator is in deep space. There are no tidal forces. You can tell if spacetime is curved or not by observing if light moves in a straight line or not. If you were in deep space and the elevator was accelerating at 1g due to a attached rocket and you turned on a laser pointer that was aimed parallel to the floor you would notice that the light would not hit the spot directly across because by the time it took the light beam to cross the elevator the elevator would be moving faster upward than when the light beam started it's journey due to the acceleration. Thus you would observe the light beam hit a spot slightly below where it would have hit if the light moved in a straight line, so you would conclude that spacetime inside the elevator was curved. If the elevator was not in deep space but was just sitting on the surface of the Earth you would make the exact same observation and make the same conclusion about the curvature of spacetime. So you'd know spacetime was curved but unless the elevator had a window you wouldn't know if it was because it was in deep space being accelerated by a rocket at 1g or because it was sitting still on the surface of the Earth in the planet's 1g gravity field. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:58:24 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 13:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:29:09 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). That makes sense to me because the amoeba's body will look like a copy to our body's senses. A 3p view of 3p is truncated and filled in generically. The 1p amoeba is the localized subset of the entire history of amoeba-like experience, not just the isolated maintainer of the 3p amoeba body. When we look for 3p evidence, we will not necessarily see 1p authenticity as certain evidence. The authenticity has to be felt through the feeling as semi-describable aesthetic qualities...which is where we get a lot of unscientific sounding terms like life force, kundalini, prana, xi, etc. These kind of numinous qualities apply not just to living beings, but to works of art, sacred places, etc, if you are subjectively receptive to their authenticity. They do not give us infallible proof of originality, but they are reminders that there is an important difference between 'something' and *the real thing*. You are just saying that you are not subjectively receptive to the machines 1p. No, I'm saying that I am receptive to the absence of machine 1p (and I'm not by any means alone in that sensitivity). The uncanny valley is not merely the failure to detect the presence of subjectivity it is the positive detection of the failed attempt of an object disguised as a subject. Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. The reproduction of the amoeba's body is an approximate copy from our 3p perspective, but the Xp copier itself cannot be copied. It is not only unique, but it is uniqueness itself - meta-unique if you like. The Xp copier is consciousness, who provides both the meaning and the method of copying. I can understand that consciousness is a selector, but it makes no sense for me to say it is the copier. Why? The phenomenon of perceptual fill-in is a pretty vivid example of how copying is part of how consciousness produces representation. All arithmetic truth relates only to the 3p view of Xp copying language. Why? I illustrate that this is not the case, already with the most known definition of knowledge. Knowledge and definition are both 3p expectations also. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. span class=Apple-style-span style=border-collapse ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:32:35 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I agree with your idea in one sense, that actually space and clock time are just computational relationships between events, specifically the dimensional aspects of those events, rather than the actual physical background to events that is usually assumed. In my book on Reality, I point out the reasons why it's more reasonable to assume that spaceclocktime is something that arises out of elemental computational events in discrete fragments, rather than existing as a fixed, pre-existing background to events. I agree, except that I see elemental computation also as something that arises out of even more primitive sensory-motive qualities disentangling into localized fugues which precede even qualities of discreteness or linear sequence. The advantage of this approach is that it enables a conceptual unification of quantum theory and GR; immediately resolves all quantum paradoxes (which are paradoxical only with respect to the fixed, pre-existing background space mistakenly assumed); and provides a clear explanation of the source and necessity of quantum randomness. Strangely no one here seems interested in how this happens, even to criticize it! Yes, I am very familiar with the feeling ;) I have only a superficial understanding of QT and GR, so I wouldn't be the one to criticize technically. My objection is only that whatever primordial form or function can be conceived of as absolute must supervene on an even more primordial possibility of aesthetic appreciation and intentional participation. Craig Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 8:35:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, No, the proper understanding is that gravitation and curved space are EQUIVALENT. Both are produced by the presence of mass-energy (and stress). I would say that gravity and curved space are metaphorical rather than literal. The literal phenomenon is that the inertial frame of sensible external relations is what is being curved. It is literally the experience of stress - of seriousness and realism which is seen from the outside as exaggerated irreversibility and inevitability. Mass-energy is the public token which represents sensory-motive. Space/density is the dual of mass, time/duration is the dual of energy. Mass-energy doesn't produce anything except externalized reflections of phenomenal experiences. Gravitation and curved space describe the back end of the sensory-motor (not motive because its externalized) relations which are interphenomenal, automatic, and unattended on all frames but the primordial one. Craig You say Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. Are you saying then that acceleration from a rising elevator is motion through curved space? That was my original question but I don't know what your answer is from your post.. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:41:09 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:22:18AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, By the Principle of Equivalence acceleration is equivalent to gravitation. Gravitation curves space. No - curved space generates the phenomena of gravitation. It is sometimes said that matter curves space. So doesn't this mean acceleration should also curve space? If not, why not? Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. If not, doesn't that violate the Equivalence Principle? No. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 2/16/2014 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But of course if you're trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity none of this matters, it doesn't matter if the predictions were correct or not. We are not trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity at all. I can be amnesic on who I am for example. the question is about the expectation of some unique 1p experience I will live soon. By comp I know that it must be W, or M, but not both, nor none. But that's the ambiguity I see. When you ask the H-man, Where do you think you will be? he has to provide some interpretation to the word you. My immediate, intuitive thought was, I expect to be in both places. Which depends on what is meant by I. If I is just conscious experience then there are two Is and neither is the H-man because they're not experiencing Helsinki. So I must be experiences and memory. Then the M-man and the W-man are both I the H-man, in which case the H-man should answer Both. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 16 Feb 2014, at 17:46, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 , Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: A typical observation will be the diary of the guy in W assess that he is in W, and (perhaps) that he could not have predicted that, That is incorrect, the Helsinki Man could have successfully predicted that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington. That is correct, but is not answering the question, Then what exactly is the question? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. The question is what do you expect to live when pushing on the button. You = the unique 1p owner of your personal memory in Helsinki (brain, diary, mobile, whatever you keep with you when going in the duplication box). predicting that the Washington diary will be written by the guy in Washington is tautological, Exactly. Precisely. And thus we can conclude that the thought experiment is worthless. We can only conclude that your rephrasing of it was worthless. In Helsinki you know that P(my experience will be the experience of seeing a unique city) = 1. Who is Mr. my? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. The unique 1p owner of your personal memory in Helsinki. (H, say) And the question bears on the future unique 1p owner of a consistent extension of that 1p owner memory. By comp we know that after duplication, there will be two such extension, and we know that both 1p knower remains unique from their 1p points of view, in each consistent extension (HW, HM). the question asked was about his first person experience, Who is Mr. his, and who exactly is the person having this first person experience? Be specific, give names, and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. The question is asked to John-Clark with diary H, before the pushing on the button. The confirmation or invalidation is made after the pushing, by interviewing all copies, the John-Clark with diaries HM, and HW respectively. It is an exercise in elementary propositional logic that if John-Clark- H cautiously writes in his H diary I predict 'W v M' will be true, then both JC-HM and JC-HW will confirm the prediction. W v M is a certain event. You can test easily the other predictions. By comp I know that it must be W, or M, but not both, nor none. Well good for comp. Er ... that is the FPI. the only answer the Helsinki Man can give is my first person view is of Helsinki. No. that's the correct answer to what do you feel right now, but the question is what could you feel after pressing the button. Who is Mr. you? Be specific and DON'T HIDE BEHIND PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT. The owner of the H diary, before he pushes on the button and differentiate into the one with the HM diary and the one with the HW diary. In that protocol, there are no others. OK? As you know that by comp you don't die Well good for comp. Well comp implies you don't die in that duplication, and that you (the guy in Helsinki) will survive in both city. It predicts also with probability 1 that you (the H-guy) will feel to be in only one city. Do the simple math, with the precision made above, but it is rather obvious that in H, you can't predict your specific next future 1p experience. W M is false in the two consistent extensions W is false in one of them M is false in one of them W v M is true in all of them Likewise, in the iterated self-duplication, with some high frequency, if the initial H guys predicts, in his H diary, white noise, then the very vast majority of results of the copies will confirm the predictions. If the H-guy is asked about the number of W experiences to be expected, in such systematic iterated self-duplication, the best he (the H-guy) can do, if only to maximize the confirmation of his descendants, is to use Newton Binomial, or Pascal triangle. I don't think there is anything controversial here. Please go to step 4. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
Craig, Well first I'm not so optimistic as you that some here don't harbor some pretty ridiculous ideas including that there was no reality before humans. Second, there is a view I present in my book that resolves both perspectives. If we hold the view that everything is just computationally interacting information at the fundamental level, then it is reasonable to define any change in that information as a generic type of experience I call Xperience. In this model then, everything that happens is an Xperience, and every information form can be considered a generic observer, whose computational change amounts to an observation. So in this sense we get observers from the very beginning and don't have to wait for human observers to appear. I don't see how this wouldn't be consistent with the Block and Bruno universes 1p views of observable reality though I have no desire to explore that avenue Note that this model is also consistent with the transition from the old erroneous view that human observation 'caused' wavefunction 'collapse' to the modern view of decoherence, in which we can say that it is the interactions of two particles themselves which supply the generic 'observation' of each other to produce some exact dimensional 'measurement' in each other's frames. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:04:24 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:51:18 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p perspectives of conscious human observers. To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. And it implies there was no reality before humans. I don't think anyone here (or anyone that I have ever spoken with, really) thinks that there was no reality before humans. Idealism, or the kind of Pansensitivity that I suggest need not have anything to do with human beings at all. The issue is whether anything can simply 'exist' independently of all possibility of experience. I think that if that were possible, then any form of perception or experience would be redundant and implausible. More importantly though, in what way would a phenomenon which has no possibility of detection be different than nothingness? We can create experiences that remind us of matter and energy just by imagining them, and we can derive some pleasure and meaning from that independently of any functional consideration, but what reason would the laws of physics or arithmetic have to accidentally make sensation and participation? I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human independent reality. Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality for human independent reality itself. That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of reality... Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:05:34 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:23:14AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I also suspect Bruno's math skills are superior to mine, but his understanding of the place of math in reality seems pretty deficient, or perhaps just rigid. As I've pointed out his 8 steps may well be mathematically consistent but that doesn't mean they have anything to do with the fundamental structure of reality at all. To meaningfully apply a purely mathematical or logical proof to reality, one must establish an actual correspondence of the variables in the proof to actual variables of reality. I don't see Bruno doing that at all. The strength of Bruno's approach is that that is implicit in the assumption of COMP. Once you assume that one's consciousness can be implemented by a computation, then necessarily ontological reality (whatever that is) can also be implemented by a computation. This is a simple consequence of the Church thesis. There is no way that anything happens in his static Platonia. And there is no method of selecting the structure of our actual universe from what is apparently his all possible universes. He told us his theory doesn't predict the fine tuning, as this type of theory must, because the fine tuning is not important in hi view. It is not important for the UDA. But it is, nevertheless, not inconsistent with the Anthropic Principle either. Bruno would say it is necessary for the manifestation of other conciousnesses to us. I reserve my judgement on this... -- Prof
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
Craig, But how can elemental computation arise out of even more primitive sensory-motive qualities and supervene on an even more primordial possibility of aesthetic appreciation and intentional participation since those seem to be human dependent attributes? Aren't you confusing human mental MODELS of reality (to which your comments might apply) with the actual human independent reality which human minds make their internal models of? That seems like a much more reasonable view of reality... Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:05:15 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:32:35 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I agree with your idea in one sense, that actually space and clock time are just computational relationships between events, specifically the dimensional aspects of those events, rather than the actual physical background to events that is usually assumed. In my book on Reality, I point out the reasons why it's more reasonable to assume that spaceclocktime is something that arises out of elemental computational events in discrete fragments, rather than existing as a fixed, pre-existing background to events. I agree, except that I see elemental computation also as something that arises out of even more primitive sensory-motive qualities disentangling into localized fugues which precede even qualities of discreteness or linear sequence. The advantage of this approach is that it enables a conceptual unification of quantum theory and GR; immediately resolves all quantum paradoxes (which are paradoxical only with respect to the fixed, pre-existing background space mistakenly assumed); and provides a clear explanation of the source and necessity of quantum randomness. Strangely no one here seems interested in how this happens, even to criticize it! Yes, I am very familiar with the feeling ;) I have only a superficial understanding of QT and GR, so I wouldn't be the one to criticize technically. My objection is only that whatever primordial form or function can be conceived of as absolute must supervene on an even more primordial possibility of aesthetic appreciation and intentional participation. Craig Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 8:35:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, No, the proper understanding is that gravitation and curved space are EQUIVALENT. Both are produced by the presence of mass-energy (and stress). I would say that gravity and curved space are metaphorical rather than literal. The literal phenomenon is that the inertial frame of sensible external relations is what is being curved. It is literally the experience of stress - of seriousness and realism which is seen from the outside as exaggerated irreversibility and inevitability. Mass-energy is the public token which represents sensory-motive. Space/density is the dual of mass, time/duration is the dual of energy. Mass-energy doesn't produce anything except externalized reflections of phenomenal experiences. Gravitation and curved space describe the back end of the sensory-motor (not motive because its externalized) relations which are interphenomenal, automatic, and unattended on all frames but the primordial one. Craig You say Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. Are you saying then that acceleration from a rising elevator is motion through curved space? That was my original question but I don't know what your answer is from your post.. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:41:09 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:22:18AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, By the Principle of Equivalence acceleration is equivalent to gravitation. Gravitation curves space. No - curved space generates the phenomena of gravitation. It is sometimes said that matter curves space. So doesn't this mean acceleration should also curve space? If not, why not? Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. If not, doesn't that violate the Equivalence Principle? No. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
Russell, Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with Cognitive science (and AI as well), is just as important as physical science for understanding reality, because it enables us to understand the many ways our views of reality do not correspond to the actual reality which they model. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:40:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 05:51:18PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p perspectives of conscious human observers. That is most certainly not the case with COMP, which posits an ontological reality that is computationally universal (in which case it may as well be Peano arithmetic). It might be levelled at my world view, described in Thoery of Nothingm although to be fair, I do not make any sort of ontological commitment, but just argue that ontological reality doesn't really have any empirical meaning. To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. No - because in both COMP, and in my theory of nothing, the presence of other observers is a predicted consequence. Hardly solipsism. Perhaps you mean something else - idealism perhaps? And it implies there was no reality before humans. If by human you mean observers in general, then yes - it does imply that. There is no reality without observers. I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human independent reality. What evidence do you offer for this assumption? Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality for human independent reality itself. It is intersubjective reality. But strictly speaking, not independent. That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of reality... Actually, it has rather a lot of advantages for understanding as compared with the alternatives. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 16 Feb 2014, at 19:10, meekerdb wrote: On 2/16/2014 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But of course if you're trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity none of this matters, it doesn't matter if the predictions were correct or not. We are not trying to ascertain the nature of personal identity at all. I can be amnesic on who I am for example. the question is about the expectation of some unique 1p experience I will live soon. By comp I know that it must be W, or M, but not both, nor none. But that's the ambiguity I see. When you ask the H-man, Where do you think you will be? The H-man has a diary. He must predict what will happen from his first person experience, when he pushes on the button, and then open a door. He must write the result, which can only be W, or M, but not both, in his diary, and compare that result with the prediction. See my last reply to John Clark. There is no ambiguity, you need only distinguish carefully the 3p description, from the 1p experiences. he has to provide some interpretation to the word you. My immediate, intuitive thought was, I expect to be in both places. That is the 3-1 view. You go out of your body, and you look at you reconstituted in both place. That is the correct 3-1 view indeed. yet, to answer the question asked, you need to reintegrate the body, and as it has been duplicated, you need to dovetail a little bit on the two 1-views itself. And in this case, both can see that both city was wrong, as both can see they are in only one city. Which depends on what is meant by I. You might reread the thread, or just the paper. The 1-I, or 1-view, or 1p view, is the content of the personal diary taken by the experiencer, and the 3-view are view by outsider, which means here that they are not entering in the duplication boxes. If I is just conscious experience then there are two Is and neither is the H-man because they're not experiencing Helsinki. So I must be experiences and memory. For UDA, even just the memory is enough, and the honesty in the confirmation and refutation game, also. Then the M-man and the W-man are both I the H-man, in which case the H-man should answer Both. Again, that is the correct 3-1 view. But the question is asked on the 1-1 views, which are the 1-views. The reason why I insist in that 1p/3p distinction is to avoid any ambiguity. In the 3p you are all of them, in the 1-p you remain always only one of them. (them = the relative copies). Again see my last post to John Clark. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
Liz, Thanks for your interest in my balls Liz! :-) Edgar On Saturday, February 15, 2014 12:14:49 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 15 February 2014 10:07, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net javascript:wrote: Liz, If Liz had actually been following my and Jesse's lengthly discussion she would know her comment below isn't true. But of course truth isn't one of Liz's strong points, it generally comes in second to spite You spend all your time being rude and unpleasant to all and sundry, yet as soon as someone say something that slightly bruises your poor little ego, you start whingeing. In other words you like to dish it out, but you can't take it. For god's sake grow up, or at least grow some balls. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On 16 Feb 2014, at 18:47, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q A quick video that can shed some light on the inadequacy of bottom- up models. Nice video, Craig. But don't make it into an opportunist argument against comp, as comp explains why 3p bottom-up models miss the real thing in arithmetic too. The machine can already explains this. There is an arithmetical reason why the arithmetical relations challenge the arithmetical reasons. You invent unexplainable gods (like your sense) to decrete that some 3p being cannot support consciousness, just due to their digital skin. Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 16 February 2014 18:10, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: But that's the ambiguity I see. When you ask the H-man, Where do you think you will be? he has to provide some interpretation to the word you. My immediate, intuitive thought was, I expect to be in both places. Which depends on what is meant by I. If I is just conscious experience then there are two Is and neither is the H-man because they're not experiencing Helsinki. So I must be experiences and memory. Then the M-man and the W-man are both I the H-man, in which case the H-man should answer Both. Sure, but in taking this view, which is legitimate in its own terms, you're in danger of turning step 3 into gibberish just to make a point. But the point you make here is precisely not the point of step 3. That point is that *anyone whomsoever*, when considering his or her own future, will reasonably expect to experience it as a single-valued outcome. Therefore, faced with precisely such circumstances as the duplication thought experiment (or MWI), whether the H man plumps for either W or M as that single-valued outcome, one of his successors is bound to discover that he picked wrongly. That said, one may well take the view that normal expectations of this sort are derived from a misunderstanding of the true state of affairs. Interestingly, one of the advantages of thinking about the situation in terms of Hoyle's analogy is that it can then make intuitive sense for the H man to predict with certainty that he *will* discover himself to have become both the W man and the M man, but never simultaneously. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On 16 February 2014 19:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? Because he understands that comp cannot possibly be true. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 17:48, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Ah, but then you would be faced with the questions posed by the UDA/MWI arguments, because there would then be two conscious originals who claimed equal possession of the same history to that point. That is all you need for the duplication arguments to go through. They would each be their own originals, not the same original. In identical twin is as identical as identical can be. You are blatantly ignoring the challenge this presents to your contention that a conscious person cannot be duplicated in principle, by quibbling over the meaning of copy and original. If Craig were the person duplicated (whilst asleep, say) and there were then two originals (A and B) each of whom laid claim to being Craig with the same history, how would you know whether you were A or B? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 Feb 2014, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:58:24 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 13:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:29:09 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). That makes sense to me because the amoeba's body will look like a copy to our body's senses. A 3p view of 3p is truncated and filled in generically. The 1p amoeba is the localized subset of the entire history of amoeba-like experience, not just the isolated maintainer of the 3p amoeba body. When we look for 3p evidence, we will not necessarily see 1p authenticity as certain evidence. The authenticity has to be felt through the feeling as semi-describable aesthetic qualities...which is where we get a lot of unscientific sounding terms like life force, kundalini, prana, xi, etc. These kind of numinous qualities apply not just to living beings, but to works of art, sacred places, etc, if you are subjectively receptive to their authenticity. They do not give us infallible proof of originality, but they are reminders that there is an important difference between 'something' and *the real thing*. You are just saying that you are not subjectively receptive to the machines 1p. No, I'm saying that I am receptive to the absence of machine 1p (and I'm not by any means alone in that sensitivity). A nonsense, followed by an authoritative argument. The uncanny valley is not merely the failure to detect the presence of subjectivity it is the positive detection of the failed attempt of an object disguised as a subject. What you say is that you, and some others, have a magical talent, capable of detecting absence of consciousness. Do you think that the humans having not that talents are also deprived of subjectivity, or are they just stupid, or what? Your theory is the refrain we are superior. Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right, it means that the copy doll will be a zombie. The reproduction of the amoeba's body is an approximate copy from our 3p perspective, but the Xp copier itself cannot be copied. It is not only unique, but it is uniqueness itself - meta-unique if you like. The Xp copier is consciousness, who provides both the meaning and the method of copying. I can understand that consciousness is a selector, but it makes no sense for me to say it is the copier. Why? The phenomenon of perceptual fill-in is a pretty vivid example of how copying is part of how consciousness produces representation. ? All arithmetic truth relates only to the 3p view of Xp copying language. Why? I illustrate that this is not the case, already with the most known definition of knowledge. Knowledge and definition are both 3p expectations also. You are not arguing. Bruno Craig Bruno Craig Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. span class=Apple-style-span style=border-collapse ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 17:42, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't disagree, but I think this formulation leaves meaning as mysterious and one may ask why consciousness creates meaning. I think meaning comes from being able to act in the world to realize values. And it doesn't require consciousness, at least not human like consciousness. The Mars Rover acts to fulfill a mission plan and so rocks and hills have meaning for it. Unfortunately this seems to me to beg the questions it seeks to answer. The Mars Rover certainly acts in a manner consistent with rocks and hills having meaning for it (based on our empathic identification with its situation) but its behaviour can equally be attributed to physics alone (as indeed can ours, under the same physicalist assumptions). But I agree that meaning is related to value and hence cries out for an explanation of value that resists elimination by reduction to an account in purely physical terms. This requirement probably implies some necessary relation between meaning and consciousness, or at least self-reference. It may be that the ramifications of computational reference may ultimately lead to such an explanation, but that is beyond my competence to assess. Right now I don't have any other suggestions. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY? Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au kmjco...@icloud.com Mobile: 0450 963 719 Phone: 02 93894239 Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Kim, I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health problems. For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and healthy aspects of life! Best, Edgar On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at least. Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the Physical). And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!). David In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY? Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au kmjco...@icloud.com Mobile: 0450 963 719 Phone: 02 93894239 Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Kim, I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health problems. For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and healthy aspects of life! Best, Edgar On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at least. Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the Physical). And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!). David In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY? Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au kmjco...@icloud.com Mobile: 0450 963 719 Phone: 02 93894239 Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Kim, I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health problems. For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and healthy aspects of life! Best, Edgar On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote: On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at least. Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the Physical). And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!). David In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 16 February 2014 16:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 15:32, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 09:39, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: snip From thought cannot act on matter we arrive at thought cannot refer to matter, and well, this is almost the consequence of step 8, as it says that the notion of matter has nothing to do with a material reality. Then we can still refer to the moon, but we know it is a sort of collective lawful hallucination, or more exactly a mean on a set of 3p well defined computation. Yes, at least it seems that thought cannot refer to the sort of matter of which it would be an epiphenomenon! snip It illustrates, perhaps better than step 8, the difficulty of wanting a primitive matter having a primitive ontological reality capable of singularizing a conscious person capable to refer to it. I have to think more about this. In effect, might step 8 be regarded as a reductio of the premise that the laws of matter to which we can refer and those of any putative ur-matter can be in any way coterminous? Under CTM, it is consistent to suppose that the observable laws of matter must derive from some principled notion of computation. At the outset we grant the assumption that such a notion of computation must ultimately be grounded in primitive physical activity. Accordingly, we propose a system of such physical activity that is initially acceptable as grounding some set of computational relations corresponding to a conscious subject and hence to the physical laws observable by such a subject. Then we show that we can systematically change the physical contingencies such that every last vestige of these relations is evacuated even while all relevant physical events continue to go through. This in effect provides a reductio of the original premise, under CTM: That the observable physical laws can be supposed to derive directly from a more primitive physical activity and simultaneously from any principled notion of computation consistently extractable from such activity. Since both cannot be the case, we must opt for one or the other. However, one distinction between arithmetic / computation as an ontology, and some kind of putative ur-physics, is that it is more difficult to discern any principled motivation whatsoever to derive reference in a primitive physics. A typical response to this reference problem is to justify CTM by smuggling an ad hoc notion of computation into physics. Yes. That is why at first sight I took the discovery of the quantum universal machine as a blow for comp. I thought that the quantum formalism provided a notion of physical computability, but it brought only a notion of physical computation, which is not excluded with computationalism (it is a sort of direct exploitation of the statistical nature of the computations below our substitution level). Could you elaborate a little on the distinction you see between physical computability and physical computation? It is ad hoc in the sense that physical computation is still no more than primitive physics, so now computation itself becomes an epiphenomenon of physics and consciousness therefore an epiphenomenon of an epiphenomenon. If not a blatant contradiction, this strikes me as quite close to a reductio. It makes arithmetic an epiphenomenon of physics, and it makes physics an epiphenomenon of physics. Computation (as emulated in arithmetic) on the other hand offers, at least, a principled system of internally-recursive self-reference that could motivate the layers of connectivity between the ontological base and the level of indexical physical reality. With a big price of reducing physics to a unique calculus of self-reference on the consistent, and/or true, or both extensions. This makes sense only if the arithmetical or quasi-arithmetical []p p, []p t, (and []p p t) obeys knowledge and probability logic respectively, and that is the case when p is restricted on sigma_1 sentences (which emulates UD*). Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:31:21AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with You have misread my question. I asked what evidence was there for an external reality independent of humans, that you so confidently asserted, rather than an intersubjective reality. Edgar Owen wrote: I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human independent reality. Russell STandish asked: What evidence do you offer for this assumption? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:18:54 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 17:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Ah, but then you would be faced with the questions posed by the UDA/MWI arguments, because there would then be two conscious originals who claimed equal possession of the same history to that point. That is all you need for the duplication arguments to go through. They would each be their own originals, not the same original. In identical twin is as identical as identical can be. You are blatantly ignoring the challenge this presents to your contention that a conscious person cannot be duplicated in principle, by quibbling over the meaning of copy and original. If Craig were the person duplicated (whilst asleep, say) and there were then two originals (A and B) each of whom laid claim to being Craig with the same history, how would you know whether you were A or B? A single cell can be divided into many, but full grown organism can't be cut down the middle longitudinally and grow into two separate bodies. Even as a single cell, mitosis can't be induced by slicing a zygote in half - the motive for reproduction has to come from the inside out. I don't think it will ever be possible to duplicate an organism without growing it from scratch. A cloned brain would have to grow in a vat and would come out as a new born unique individual (who would have comparable similarity to their clone parent as an identical twin separated at birth does). The problem is the assumption that duplication is a possibility in the first place, and that the barrier to duplication depends on complexity alone. What I'm saying is that consciousness is an event, not a structure. You cannot duplicate an event because it is connected to all other events. Craig David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:09:13 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 19:05, Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be javascript:wrote: Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? Because he understands that comp cannot possibly be true. Just as you understand that I cannot possibly understand comp. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
Russell, Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that you and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you think I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine before I ever met you The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of reality that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he lives in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their own way. Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:17:21 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:31:21AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with You have misread my question. I asked what evidence was there for an external reality independent of humans, that you so confidently asserted, rather than an intersubjective reality. Edgar Owen wrote: I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human independent reality. Russell STandish asked: What evidence do you offer for this assumption? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:05:09 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 18:47, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q A quick video that can shed some light on the inadequacy of bottom-up models. Nice video, Craig. But don't make it into an opportunist argument against comp, as comp explains why 3p bottom-up models miss the real thing in arithmetic too. The machine can already explains this. There is an arithmetical reason why the arithmetical relations challenge the arithmetical reasons. You invent unexplainable gods (like your sense) to decrete that some 3p being cannot support consciousness, just due to their digital skin. Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? If explanation supervenes on a god, then that god is by definition unexplainable. God supervenes on sense, as do explanation, truth, and arithmetic. I don't ignore computation at all, I show how we can see beyond it and through it to a more genuine, integrated understanding. Craig Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
When have I ever suggested that? I don't suppose any such thing. I would however say that you have so far been impervious to reasoned argument with respect to comp, on the sole apparent premise that your prior understanding suffices to trump reason itself. David On 16 Feb 2014 21:38, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:09:13 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 19:05, Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? Because he understands that comp cannot possibly be true. Just as you understand that I cannot possibly understand comp. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How does acceleration curve space? Can anyone provide an answer?
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:23:32 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, But how can elemental computation arise out of even more primitive sensory-motive qualities and supervene on an even more primordial possibility of aesthetic appreciation and intentional participation since those seem to be human dependent attributes? They only seem to be human dependent attributes because we are human. If the cells and molecules our bodies are made of had no sensory capabilities, certainly there would be no reason to develop any such capabilities. What our immune system or digestive system does is far more important and complex than what humans primitively do in their environment. Aren't you confusing human mental MODELS of reality (to which your comments might apply) with the actual human independent reality which human minds make their internal models of? That seems like a much more reasonable view of reality... While human experience does model non-human experiences, I do not think that it makes sense to say that it is, itself a model of anything. There are experiences which are independent of human experience, but there are not necessarily any phenomena which are independent of all experience. As far as I can tell, there is no meaningful difference between a phenomenon which can never be detected or inferred in any way and nothingness or non-existence. If we are talking about local views of reality only, then sure, the experiences which our body tells us are other bodies or objects are indeed so alien to our own perception, on such wildly different scales, that figuratively we could consider our experience a model of the phenomenon, but literally there is no model, only a presentation of the relation of our own experience to others. Craig Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:05:15 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:32:35 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I agree with your idea in one sense, that actually space and clock time are just computational relationships between events, specifically the dimensional aspects of those events, rather than the actual physical background to events that is usually assumed. In my book on Reality, I point out the reasons why it's more reasonable to assume that spaceclocktime is something that arises out of elemental computational events in discrete fragments, rather than existing as a fixed, pre-existing background to events. I agree, except that I see elemental computation also as something that arises out of even more primitive sensory-motive qualities disentangling into localized fugues which precede even qualities of discreteness or linear sequence. The advantage of this approach is that it enables a conceptual unification of quantum theory and GR; immediately resolves all quantum paradoxes (which are paradoxical only with respect to the fixed, pre-existing background space mistakenly assumed); and provides a clear explanation of the source and necessity of quantum randomness. Strangely no one here seems interested in how this happens, even to criticize it! Yes, I am very familiar with the feeling ;) I have only a superficial understanding of QT and GR, so I wouldn't be the one to criticize technically. My objection is only that whatever primordial form or function can be conceived of as absolute must supervene on an even more primordial possibility of aesthetic appreciation and intentional participation. Craig Edgar On Sunday, February 16, 2014 8:35:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, No, the proper understanding is that gravitation and curved space are EQUIVALENT. Both are produced by the presence of mass-energy (and stress). I would say that gravity and curved space are metaphorical rather than literal. The literal phenomenon is that the inertial frame of sensible external relations is what is being curved. It is literally the experience of stress - of seriousness and realism which is seen from the outside as exaggerated irreversibility and inevitability. Mass-energy is the public token which represents sensory-motive. Space/density is the dual of mass, time/duration is the dual of energy. Mass-energy doesn't produce anything except externalized reflections of phenomenal experiences. Gravitation and curved space describe the back end of the sensory-motor (not motive because its externalized) relations which are interphenomenal, automatic, and unattended on all frames but the primordial one. Craig You say Motion through curved space appears as acceleration in a flat tangent space. Are you saying then that acceleration from a rising elevator is motion through curved space? That was my original question but I don't know what your answer is from your post.. Edgar On Thursday,
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
Have you forgotten now that I was responding to your own contention in response to Stathis that if a living person could be duplicated both of the resulting persons would be original? Perhaps you would care to respond to my comment with respect to what might be inferred from this contention of yours rather than yet again straying from the subject. David On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:18:54 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 17:48, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Ah, but then you would be faced with the questions posed by the UDA/MWI arguments, because there would then be two conscious originals who claimed equal possession of the same history to that point. That is all you need for the duplication arguments to go through. They would each be their own originals, not the same original. In identical twin is as identical as identical can be. You are blatantly ignoring the challenge this presents to your contention that a conscious person cannot be duplicated in principle, by quibbling over the meaning of copy and original. If Craig were the person duplicated (whilst asleep, say) and there were then two originals (A and B) each of whom laid claim to being Craig with the same history, how would you know whether you were A or B? A single cell can be divided into many, but full grown organism can't be cut down the middle longitudinally and grow into two separate bodies. Even as a single cell, mitosis can't be induced by slicing a zygote in half - the motive for reproduction has to come from the inside out. I don't think it will ever be possible to duplicate an organism without growing it from scratch. A cloned brain would have to grow in a vat and would come out as a new born unique individual (who would have comparable similarity to their clone parent as an identical twin separated at birth does). The problem is the assumption that duplication is a possibility in the first place, and that the barrier to duplication depends on complexity alone. What I'm saying is that consciousness is an event, not a structure. You cannot duplicate an event because it is connected to all other events. Craig David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:23:11 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:58:24 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 13:45, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:29:09 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Feb 2014, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 3:43:29 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 15 February 2014 18:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: You can't copy awareness. Awareness is what is uncopyable, not just because awareness is special, but because it is ontologically perpendicular to the possibility of simulation. All attempts to copy awareness result in a doll. Does that then entail that if a conscious amoeba were to fission, the resulting two amoebae would be unconscious? Or only one of them? That's not a copy of an amoeba, reproducing its body is part of what an amoeba does. But the evidences we have is that amoeba use the Dx = xx method for the self-copy (indeed I discovered it by looking at amoeba and reading book on molecular biology, before finding the logicians got it). That makes sense to me because the amoeba's body will look like a copy to our body's senses. A 3p view of 3p is truncated and filled in generically. The 1p amoeba is the localized subset of the entire history of amoeba-like experience, not just the isolated maintainer of the 3p amoeba body. When we look for 3p evidence, we will not necessarily see 1p authenticity as certain evidence. The authenticity has to be felt through the feeling as semi-describable aesthetic qualities...which is where we get a lot of unscientific sounding terms like life force, kundalini, prana, xi, etc. These kind of numinous qualities apply not just to living beings, but to works of art, sacred places, etc, if you are subjectively receptive to their authenticity. They do not give us infallible proof of originality, but they are reminders that there is an important difference between 'something' and *the real thing*. You are just saying that you are not subjectively receptive to the machines 1p. No, I'm saying that I am receptive to the absence of machine 1p (and I'm not by any means alone in that sensitivity). A nonsense, followed by an authoritative argument. The idea that is is nonsense or an authoritative argument is itself an authoritative argument. I'm reporting on what I consider to be a common sense, apprehension which could likely be classified as a human universal. Even a monkey prefers a wire mother which is soft to one which is only wire. The idea that somehow the difference between machines and conscious people is simply a matter of degree of complexity is, believe it or not, a hypothesis which is supported only by certain interpretations of mathematics, not an uncontested truth. My argument is that these interpretations are actually an inversion of Godel's understanding, and falsely attribute tangible aesthetic qualities where none are specified. It's not enough to say that comp cannot be proved wrong, it is my understanding that our progress as a species depends on our realization that the fact that comp cannot be proved wrong is actually proof that it is wrong. I expect that to sound like nonsense, but it is all consistent with the nature of proof being subordinate to more primitive layers of sense from which the expectation of proof or falsification, logic or illogic arise. The uncanny valley is not merely the failure to detect the presence of subjectivity it is the positive detection of the failed attempt of an object disguised as a subject. What you say is that you, and some others, have a magical talent, capable of detecting absence of consciousness. No, I am saying that everyone has this ordinary sense, but a few people deny it. Do you think that the humans having not that talents are also deprived of subjectivity, or are they just stupid, or what? Not at all, those who deny that sensitivity or who have developed their other talents to the point that they lose touch with it are just more specialized. There could be some people who can't tell the difference between a living thing and a machine because they are stupid, or young children, but mostly I think that they are very smart people, just too logical to have an unbiased view of consciousness itself. Your theory is the refrain we are superior. It has nothing to do with superiority. Your refrain is 'you are elitist', but you are the one projecting a value judgment of consciousness = good, unconsciousness = bad. I say only that there is an important difference and that difference is unrelated to arithmetic or computation. Copy and self-copy are different, for machines too, but in the case under study, this does not entail any observable difference, and if you are right,
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that you and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you think I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an intersubjective reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all observers. And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine before I ever met you The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic Principle does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a reverse syllogism fallacy. So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of reality that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he lives in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their own way. Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed, not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What are numbers? What is math?
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:13:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, Well first I'm not so optimistic as you that some here don't harbor some pretty ridiculous ideas including that there was no reality before humans. Second, there is a view I present in my book that resolves both perspectives. If we hold the view that everything is just computationally interacting information at the fundamental level, then it is reasonable to define any change in that information as a generic type of experience I call Xperience. In this model then, everything that happens is an Xperience, and every information form can be considered a generic observer, whose computational change amounts to an observation. Except that information does not seem to be an observer. Signs don't read. Rules don't play games. Languages don't speak. I think it makes more sense the other way around. Forms and information must first be experiences. The idea of things 'happening' of 'change' requires an a priori expectation of linear time, of memory, persistence, comparison, etc...all kinds of sensible conditions which must underpin the possibility of any information at all. Craig So in this sense we get observers from the very beginning and don't have to wait for human observers to appear. I don't see how this wouldn't be consistent with the Block and Bruno universes 1p views of observable reality though I have no desire to explore that avenue Note that this model is also consistent with the transition from the old erroneous view that human observation 'caused' wavefunction 'collapse' to the modern view of decoherence, in which we can say that it is the interactions of two particles themselves which supply the generic 'observation' of each other to produce some exact dimensional 'measurement' in each other's frames. Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:04:24 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:51:18 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Russell, But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p perspectives of conscious human observers. To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. And it implies there was no reality before humans. I don't think anyone here (or anyone that I have ever spoken with, really) thinks that there was no reality before humans. Idealism, or the kind of Pansensitivity that I suggest need not have anything to do with human beings at all. The issue is whether anything can simply 'exist' independently of all possibility of experience. I think that if that were possible, then any form of perception or experience would be redundant and implausible. More importantly though, in what way would a phenomenon which has no possibility of detection be different than nothingness? We can create experiences that remind us of matter and energy just by imagining them, and we can derive some pleasure and meaning from that independently of any functional consideration, but what reason would the laws of physics or arithmetic have to accidentally make sensation and participation? I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human independent reality. Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality for human independent reality itself. That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of reality... Edgar On Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:05:34 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:23:14AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I also suspect Bruno's math skills are superior to mine, but his understanding of the place of math in reality seems pretty deficient, or perhaps just rigid. As I've pointed out his 8 steps may well be mathematically consistent but that doesn't mean they have anything to do with the fundamental structure of reality at all. To meaningfully apply a purely mathematical or logical proof to reality, one must establish an actual correspondence of the variables in the proof to actual variables of reality. I don't see Bruno doing that at all. The strength of Bruno's approach is that that is implicit in the assumption of COMP. Once you assume that one's consciousness can be implemented by a computation, then necessarily ontological reality (whatever that is) can also be implemented by a computation. This is a simple consequence of the Church thesis. There is no way that anything happens in his static Platonia. And there is no method of selecting the structure
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 7:12:33 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/16/2014 11:34 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 17:42, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net javascript:wrote: I don't disagree, but I think this formulation leaves meaning as mysterious and one may ask why consciousness creates meaning. I think meaning comes from being able to act in the world to realize values. And it doesn't require consciousness, at least not human like consciousness. The Mars Rover acts to fulfill a mission plan and so rocks and hills have meaning for it. Unfortunately this seems to me to beg the questions it seeks to answer. The Mars Rover certainly acts in a manner consistent with rocks and hills having meaning for it (based on our empathic identification with its situation) but its behaviour can equally be attributed to physics alone (as indeed can ours, under the same physicalist assumptions). But I agree that meaning is related to value and hence cries out for an explanation of value that resists elimination by reduction to an account in purely physical terms. I don't think so. We know where the values of the Mars Rover are encoded and how they affect its behavior and we know how we could change them. That's about as good as reductionism gets. This requirement probably implies some necessary relation between meaning and consciousness, or at least self-reference. There's a relation. The Mars rover must know where it is and its internal status (the first level of consciousness) in order to pursue its values. If it can form second order, instrumental values in arbitrarily deep hierarchies then I would say it has reflexive consciousness, i.e. it's self-aware. I don't think it needs to know where it is at all. No more than the beads of an abacus know where they are, or a net knows how big the fish are. As long as the designers of the Rover can relate the data from the rover to real places, it is hard for them to remember that this relation is their own rather than the Rover's. Craig Brent It may be that the ramifications of computational reference may ultimately lead to such an explanation, but that is beyond my competence to assess. Right now I don't have any other suggestions. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:47:46 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: When have I ever suggested that? I don't suppose any such thing. I would however say that you have so far been impervious to reasoned argument with respect to comp, on the sole apparent premise that your prior understanding suffices to trump reason itself. You don't suggest that I can't understand comp, but you suggest that I am impervious to reasoned argument about it...why would that be the case if I understood comp as you seem to think it deserves to be understood? David On 16 Feb 2014 21:38, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:09:13 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 16 February 2014 19:05, Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why not being agnostic, especially that you have admitted not having studied computer science. Why being negative on something that you ignore? Because he understands that comp cannot possibly be true. Just as you understand that I cannot possibly understand comp. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 17 February 2014 00:07, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Sure, but in taking this view, which is legitimate in its own terms, you're in danger of turning step 3 into gibberish just to make a point. But the point you make here is precisely not the point of step 3. That point is that *anyone whomsoever*, when considering his or her own future, will reasonably expect to experience it as a single-valued outcome. But only insofar as he reasonably expects himself not to be duplicated. Well then, facing duplication, would your expectation change to that of personally experiencing a simultaneous two-valued outcome? And if the answer is yes, does that imply that you would reject MWI as a possibility because (I presume) you have never in fact experienced such an outcome? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 17 February 2014 00:12, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't think so. We know where the values of the Mars Rover are encoded and how they affect its behavior and we know how we could change them. That's about as good as reductionism gets. But now aren't you just substituting value as an epiphenomenon of physics in place of consciousness? Stathis could just as easily say that this was merely a manner of speaking and whatever occurs is simply a consequence of physical causation. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 2/16/2014 5:03 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 17 February 2014 00:07, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Sure, but in taking this view, which is legitimate in its own terms, you're in danger of turning step 3 into gibberish just to make a point. But the point you make here is precisely not the point of step 3. That point is that *anyone whomsoever*, when considering his or her own future, will reasonably expect to experience it as a single-valued outcome. But only insofar as he reasonably expects himself not to be duplicated. Well then, facing duplication, would your expectation change to that of personally experiencing a simultaneous two-valued outcome? And if the answer is yes, does that imply that you would reject MWI as a possibility because (I presume) you have never in fact experienced such an outcome? I wouldn't say reject since it is possible, but MWI is very different it is just projection onto different orthogonal subspaces of the Hilbert space. Bruno's teleportation is necessarily classical and it depends on consciousness being *classically* duplicated. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 2/16/2014 5:14 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 17 February 2014 00:12, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't think so. We know where the values of the Mars Rover are encoded and how they affect its behavior and we know how we could change them. That's about as good as reductionism gets. But now aren't you just substituting value as an epiphenomenon of physics in place of consciousness? Stathis could just as easily say that this was merely a manner of speaking and whatever occurs is simply a consequence of physical causation. I and I would agree with Stathis - except for the merely. I think Bruno was right when he observed that epi doesn't mean anything in this context. Stathis doesn't think that consciousness is separable from the physics; it's just talking about the same thing at a different level. We don't call life an epiphenomena of biochemistry. And I regard meaning in the same way, or as Dennett calls it the intentional stance. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On 17 February 2014 00:29, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You don't suggest that I can't understand comp, but you suggest that I am impervious to reasoned argument about it...why would that be the case if I understood comp as you seem to think it deserves to be understood? You said that I understood that you could not possibly understand comp. I have never said that nor do I believe it. I do however expect that you will persist in attacking a parody of comp of your own devising as long as you fail to engage with the genuine argument in its own terms and this is not necessarily so easy. But not only is genuine understanding not equivalent to acceptance, it is the only generally accepted route to refuting any argument on reasonable grounds. When I previously suggested this, you deflected my proposal with some slightly disturbing remarks about seduction and Kool-Aid (which I presume to be some delightful US beverage unfortunately unavailable in my neighbourhood). Oh, and some tendentious psycho-babble about too-clever people losing touch with common sense, as I recall. I don't know whether you regard me as a die-hard defender of comp, but I certainly don't see myself in that light. My own original predilections tended towards sensory-motive ideas and the so-called computational theory of mind seemed to me to be obviously wrong-headed, based on arguments not dissimilar to Searles' classic Chinese Room. The idea of the reversal of comp-physics simply hadn't occurred to me before I encountered Bruno's theory and I have spent the last six or seven years, off and on, trying to follow the ramifications of his argument, which goes well beyond the mind-body problem in isolation. In fact, the comp-physics reversal places observation at the axis of the world-problem as a whole, something that is now curiously reflected in recent developments in cosmological theory. But, like any theory, it is permanently open to refutation. I suspect that much of your own opposition to comp (or what you imagine it entails) is, in effect, political and indeed you yourself have sometimes suggested as much. This prior commitment is reflected in your manner of deflecting arguments and questions somewhat in the manner of a lawyer defending his brief, even when they concern the details of your own theory. But frankly, I still don't understand why you wouldn't risk a sip of the Kool-Aid just out of native curiosity. What have you to lose? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 17 February 2014 01:39, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I and I would agree with Stathis - except for the merely. I think Bruno was right when he observed that epi doesn't mean anything in this context. Stathis doesn't think that consciousness is separable from the physics; it's just talking about the same thing at a different level. We don't call life an epiphenomena of biochemistry. And I regard meaning in the same way, or as Dennett calls it the intentional stance. Well I guess that's all fine and dandy as long as we're not too particular about analysing out some precise ontological or epistemological status for each level of description. Maybe you feel that any such attempt is premature, or not even possible. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 17 February 2014 01:35, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Well then, facing duplication, would your expectation change to that of personally experiencing a simultaneous two-valued outcome? And if the answer is yes, does that imply that you would reject MWI as a possibility because (I presume) you have never in fact experienced such an outcome? I wouldn't say reject since it is possible, but MWI is very different it is just projection onto different orthogonal subspaces of the Hilbert space. Bruno's teleportation is necessarily classical and it depends on consciousness being *classically* duplicated. So what about the first part of the question? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views
On 2/16/2014 6:17 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 17 February 2014 01:35, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Well then, facing duplication, would your expectation change to that of personally experiencing a simultaneous two-valued outcome? And if the answer is yes, does that imply that you would reject MWI as a possibility because (I presume) you have never in fact experienced such an outcome? I wouldn't say reject since it is possible, but MWI is very different it is just projection onto different orthogonal subspaces of the Hilbert space. Bruno's teleportation is necessarily classical and it depends on consciousness being *classically* duplicated. So what about the first part of the question? I don't know what I would personally experience because I is ambiguous after duplication. That's where I think John Clark has a point about pronouns. Of course Bruno objects that this expectation question is about 1-p experience. But it is asked of H-man, to whom the M-man and the W-man are like third persons. Perhaps it is enough for Bruno's point that the question has no definite answer - I think he's just trying to motivate indeterminancy. Brent David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: How Wolves Change Rivers
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:07:06 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 17 February 2014 00:29, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You don't suggest that I can't understand comp, but you suggest that I am impervious to reasoned argument about it...why would that be the case if I understood comp as you seem to think it deserves to be understood? You said that I understood that you could not possibly understand comp. I have never said that nor do I believe it. I do however expect that you will persist in attacking a parody of comp of your own devising as long as you fail to engage with the genuine argument in its own terms and this is not necessarily so easy. Then that means you are accusing me of understanding comp but pretending not to so that I can attack a straw man. If you are convinced of that there's nothing that I can say, but from my perspective, if you think that I'm attacking a straw man, all that you have to do is explain the difference between what I am attacking and the full strength position of comp. I do use examples which are hyperbole to make my point obvious, but that doesn't mean my points are invalid just because the context becomes more sophisticated. The problem with the disconnection of mathematics from either consciousness (if we use a physical primitive) or physics (if we use a phenomenal primitive) remains no matter what. If computation can create consciousness, then consciousness has to be superfluous to consciousness, and if computation can create superfluous phenomena which are not computational then there is no basis to consider computation any different than any other brute-emergence religious faith. But not only is genuine understanding not equivalent to acceptance, it is the only generally accepted route to refuting any argument on reasonable grounds. When I previously suggested this, you deflected my proposal with some slightly disturbing remarks about seduction and Kool-Aid (which I presume to be some delightful US beverage unfortunately unavailable in my neighbourhood). Oh, and some tendentious psycho-babble about too-clever people losing touch with common sense, as I recall. References to Kool-Aid generally have to do with its availability in Guyana, rather than the US. I'm not sure what it is that you think I don't understand. I get accused of not understanding something very important about comp, but when pressed for more details, all that I have ever gotten is that it can only be understood by studying the very principles which I am saying supervene on more primitive sense for their very existence. I don't know whether you regard me as a die-hard defender of comp, but I certainly don't see myself in that light. My own original predilections tended towards sensory-motive ideas and the so-called computational theory of mind seemed to me to be obviously wrong-headed, based on arguments not dissimilar to Searles' classic Chinese Room. The idea of the reversal of comp-physics simply hadn't occurred to me before I encountered Bruno's theory and I have spent the last six or seven years, off and on, trying to follow the ramifications of his argument, which goes well beyond the mind-body problem in isolation. In fact, the comp-physics reversal places observation at the axis of the world-problem as a whole, something that is now curiously reflected in recent developments in cosmological theory. But, like any theory, it is permanently open to refutation. I don't understand what is special about the comp-physics reversal. It seems like old news to me. I have no problem with physics falling out of computation, but sensory experience doesn't fall out of either one - not unless you smuggle the possibility of it in before the fact. With the sense primitive, physics and comp reflect each other and overlap each other, and the overlap can be inverted to triangulate sense. Physics gives form, comp gives function, but you need something else to allow forms to be appreciated and functions to be participated in. If forms and functions could exist without that, they certainly would, and the possibility awareness developing would not arise under any plausible circumstance. Turn it around, and the primitive sensory-motive interactions could easily be presented qualitatively as forms and functions. There's no need to complicate it, it is a matter of comparing the most basic possibilities and seeing which one makes the most sense. I suspect that much of your own opposition to comp (or what you imagine it entails) is, in effect, political and indeed you yourself have sometimes suggested as much. Not at all. Like you, I was not always a supporter of the position that I have now. For most of my life I had reasoned that of course our phenomenal experience was merely the computational product of a brain, and I looked forward to a future in which people will be uploaded,
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On Sunday, February 16, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:45:13 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Sunday, February 16, 2014, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, February 15, 2014 10:49:56 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 16 February 2014 01:32, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: No, the copy of the experience has no belief or experience at all. The reflection of the fire doesn't burn anything. Are you saying that the copy will be dead? I'm saying that the copy was never alive to begin with. A pathologist would examine it and declare that it cannot possibly be dead, everything is normal. It not only looks like Craig, it also has skin, bones, internal organs, blood, the histological structure of the organs is all normal, biochemical analysis is normal, everything is normal. You are assuming that is possible, but it isn't. All you can do is clone me, which is no better than a twin brother as far as being a copy. No other kind of reproduction will work, any more than a flame could be made out of pixels. If it's all normal by every objective test but it is dead, that would be a miracle. It won't be normal by every objective test. You keep thinking of a zombie, but I am talking about a doll. There are no zombies, just as there is no way to turn lead into gold by a chemical transformation. I'm proposing that all the atoms will be in place, put there by a futuristic version of a 3D printer. I understand, but I am saying that is not possible. Atoms do not literally occupy 'places', it is only impressions of atoms which appear to occupy relative places within a sense modality. If you try to copy a living cell, you won't get an exact copy, you'll just get another living cell (if you're lucky). Any analysis will then show that this is a normal human with healthy organs. It would, in a universe where it was possible to literally copy physical presence, but it is not possible in this universe. Copying is a concept that relies on our failure to detect differences from our perceptual vantage point. There are no actual copies of physical events, and a human lifetime is a single, irreducible physical event (within its own frame of reference). I'm not sure what you think I mean by copy but what I actually mean is that it is physically similar to the original, in the same way that a new black 32GB Google Nexus 5 phone is physically similar to every other such phone. They are not literally the same phone as they are physically distinct, and if you did very precise measurements you would find that they differ in multiple small ways, but if they came out of the factory within engineering tolerance they are close enough to be shipped to customers as black 32GB Google Nexus 5. A pathologist doing an autopsy of a cadaver finds at least some evidence of tissue damage consistent with death even if the cause of death is undetermined, but in this case he will find nothing wrong. Are you claiming that, nonenetheless, the 3D printed copy will be as lifeless as a cadaver? I doubt that a 3D printed copy of a fully developed body will ever live. A 3D clone of DNA grown in vitro will live, but it will of course have a separate life and be a separate person, just as all identical twins, even brain-conjoined identical twins are separate people. If there were some way to copy a fully developed body so that it lived, it would still not be a copy of the original, but just a new original that reminds us of the copy from the outside perspective. Craig If the copy were not alive then as I said a pathologist would find some deficit in it, which would indicate a technical problem with the copying process. For example, it may be that its heart does not beat because, on close analysis, there is a structural problem with the myosin in the cardiac cells. To fix this would require an adjustment to the 3D printer. I'm spelling this out but usually in philosophical discussions it's assumed mere technical issues are solved. Or do you think there is some other ingredient that arbitrarily precise molecular assembly can never capture? If so, how would you explain the mystery of a body with apparently perfectly healthy tissues that is dead? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 17 February 2014 02:34, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 16 February 2014 17:42, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't disagree, but I think this formulation leaves meaning as mysterious and one may ask why consciousness creates meaning. I think meaning comes from being able to act in the world to realize values. And it doesn't require consciousness, at least not human like consciousness. The Mars Rover acts to fulfill a mission plan and so rocks and hills have meaning for it. Unfortunately this seems to me to beg the questions it seeks to answer. The Mars Rover certainly acts in a manner consistent with rocks and hills having meaning for it (based on our empathic identification with its situation) but its behaviour can equally be attributed to physics alone (as indeed can ours, under the same physicalist assumptions). But I agree that meaning is related to value and hence cries out for an explanation of value that resists elimination by reduction to an account in purely physical terms. This requirement probably implies some necessary relation between meaning and consciousness, or at least self-reference. It may be that the ramifications of computational reference may ultimately lead to such an explanation, but that is beyond my competence to assess. Right now I don't have any other suggestions. David I think Brent feels he has the answer to the question of what is needed to give rise to meaning/feeling/consciousness etc. His position is quite attractive and consistent, but I am not sure how to convince myself that it is true. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Better Than the Chinese Room
On 17 February 2014 08:39, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/16/2014 5:14 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 17 February 2014 00:12, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't think so. We know where the values of the Mars Rover are encoded and how they affect its behavior and we know how we could change them. That's about as good as reductionism gets. But now aren't you just substituting value as an epiphenomenon of physics in place of consciousness? Stathis could just as easily say that this was merely a manner of speaking and whatever occurs is simply a consequence of physical causation. I and I would agree with Stathis - except for the merely. I think Bruno was right when he observed that epi doesn't mean anything in this context. Stathis doesn't think that consciousness is separable from the physics; it's just talking about the same thing at a different level. We don't call life an epiphenomena of biochemistry. And I regard meaning in the same way, or as Dennett calls it the intentional stance. I think if I say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of biochemistry I should also say that life is. We don't say that, because while life is mysterious, it is not quite as mysterious as consciousness, and it seems to me that much of the philosophical discussion about consciousness occurs mainly because it seems mysterious. As a person somewhat familiar with biology I can see how life emerges from biochemistry, but I can't see how consciousness does in quite the same way. To put it differently, I can't imagine all the biochemistry being there but life absent, but I can imagine all the biochemistry being there but consciousness absent (though further reasoning may show that that to be impossible). But maybe that is just a failure of imagination. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
