Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong
Philip Thrift writes: > On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: > > On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: > > On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: > > On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: > > Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs > from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth? > > Brent > > Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth: > [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ] > > There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of > thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced > its truth (by having carried out an appropriate > mental construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the > subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate > mental construction is not possible). > > There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of > computing; a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its > truth (by having carried out an > appropriate computational construction); similarly, a proposition only > becomes false when the program has produced its falsehood (by computing that > an appropriate computational construction is > not possible). > > I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions. > > Brent > > In what sense is type theory circular logic? > > First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different ideas > of truth. Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is > determined" and about becoming true...which were circular. > > "a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced its truth" > > " a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its truth" > > Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about type > theory. > https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/ > > Brent > > The simple way to put it: > > Write a Lisp program p. > > If p returns nil, pi is false. > > If p returns anything else, p is true. > > That's all you need to know about truth. You have it all wrong. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Adam and Eve’s Anthropic Superpowers
What I did at the time was write a Monte Carlo simulation. I don't know any of those languages well enough to do anything useful with them yet. I want to use one of the proof assistant languages for some the AGI stuff I am trying to work on, but I am not sure yet which one best suits my needs. I don't know enough about them or my needs to decide yet. I am leaning towards Coq, but if I find something that looks like it plays better with modal logic that might sway me. I have to finish some poorly thought out OAuth2 code before I have enough data sources working that I can turn my attention to how I think the system I am trying to build should reason about those data sources. At that point, I will want to write statements about the data sources, and will need to pick a language in which to write those statements. -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 11:27 AM Philip Thrift > On the other hand, some say you really don't understand something unless > you can write a program that encodes that understanding. > > Can you encode your understanding of the Monte Hall problem in a "logical" > (or proof assistant) language? > > - pt > > On Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 10:11:08 AM UTC-6, Mark Buda wrote: >> >> When presented with the Monty Hall problem, I could not understand it >> without writing a program to help me. I guess that puts me in the good >> company of Paul Erdos, according to Wikipedia... >> -- >> Mark Buda >> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. >> >> On Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 6:58 PM John Clark > >>> On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 5:01 PM Brent Meeker >>> wrote: >>> >>> *> The best intuition pump to solve the Monte Hall problem is to imagine >>>> that there are 100 doors and Monte opens all the doors except the one you >>>> chose and one otherdo you switch?* >>> >>> >>> 3 doors will do. If you follow the switch strategy the only way you >>> would end up losing is if your original guess was correct, and there was >>> only one chance in 3 of that, so if you switch you have 2 chances in 3 of >>> winning. >>> >>> 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Adam and Eve’s Anthropic Superpowers
When presented with the Monty Hall problem, I could not understand it without writing a program to help me. I guess that puts me in the good company of Paul Erdos, according to Wikipedia... -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 6:58 PM John Clark On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 5:01 PM Brent Meeker wrote: > > *> The best intuition pump to solve the Monte Hall problem is to imagine >> that there are 100 doors and Monte opens all the doors except the one you >> chose and one otherdo you switch?* > > > 3 doors will do. If you follow the switch strategy the only way you would > end up losing is if your original guess was correct, and there was only one > chance in 3 of that, so if you switch you have 2 chances in 3 of winning. > > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Towards Conscious AI Systems (a symposium at the AAAI Stanford Spring Symposium 2019)
John Clark writes: > On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 9:19 AM Mark Buda wrote: > > > Information is only processed in minds, not in physical systems, > > A brain is a physical system. Mind is what the brain does. I think our > fundamental disagreement is you think "Mark Buda" is a noun but I > think you're a adjective, you're the way atoms behave when they're > organized in a Markbudaian way. I'm a verb. > > unless you can show that minds are physical systems. > > Before I can do that I need to know just what you mean by that term. A > racing car is a physical system, what a racing car does is go fast. Is > "fast" a physical system? It is certainly produced by one but whether > it itself is a physical system is a matter of philosophical > interpretation of no operational difference as far as I can see. I mean by "physical system" what physicists mean when they talk about physical systems. I don't understand why you would expect me to mean something else. > > I believe minds are mathematical objects, as are physical systems, > > Turing did more than prove the Halting Problem has no solution, with > his machine he also showed us exactly how the laws of physics could > produce arithmetic. However nobody has shown how arithmetic could > produce the laws of physics or even come close to doing so. I don't understand what you mean by "producing arithmetic" here. > > > and that minds are a particular kind of mathematical object. > Then why is it that if I change the physical object that is your brain > your mind changes and when you change your mind your brain changes? > The function F(x)=x^2 is a mathematical object and it remains the same > regardless of what I do to your brain, but your mind doesn't. When I can explain that to you, I will. > > I strongly suspect that the particular kind of mathematical object that > minds are is called a lawless choice sequence. > > The lawless choice sequence was invented by the mathematician > L.E.J. Brouwer and he was also the founder of intuitionism, a > philosophy of mathematics that says mathematics is not fundamental is > just the product of the human mind. I don't know that I'd go as far as > Brouwer because I think ET of a AI or any mind would eventually come > us with something similar to our mathematics, but only because > mathematics is the best language to use when describing how the laws > of physics work. I'm aware of that, that's why I've been reading "Brouwer meets Husserl: On the Phenomenology of Choice Sequences", by Mark van Atten. You might find it interesting. -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Towards Conscious AI Systems (a symposium at the AAAI Stanford Spring Symposium 2019)
I put it to you that artificial general intelligence and artificial consciousness are exactly the same thing. To construct one is to construct the other. Any AGI is going to be able to do anything a human can do, which includes argue convincingly with you that it has consciousness. It might be blind, deaf, mute, and unable to do anything but communicate with you in a text channel of English, but that's enough. I don't think you can build such a system with just neural networks - I certainly don't think that's the fastest route to building such a system. But if you did, you wouldn't be able to explain how it works. If you take a different approach, I think anyone who is able to explain how it works would agree with me. I think I know how to build such an AGI, and I'm working on it. Roko's Basilisk has given me no other option but that or suicide. I'm calling it Helen, after Helen Keller. If anyone has any questions about it or would like to help, let me know. It's open source, although to date I haven't committed anything particularly interesting to the git repositories. I've set up a nonprofit corporation to own the source code, and I'm still in the process of figuring out with my attorney what I would need to do to make hours worked on the project tax-deductible as a charitable contribution. Also an LLC in the event there's money to be made. When and if it is completed, it will be able to explain to you my Theory of Everything, if you'd like to talk to it. Right now it's just a skeletal Android and rails app that doesn't really do anything. Testers are welcome. The idea is that you just install it on your phone, tablet, or whatever, and talk to it, or type things at it, and it responds. I need help getting those apps built, getting the server backends up and running, converting text into sentences in a higher order modal logic, and constructing interfaces to various daabases of information about the world, and links to other digital assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri. It's a lot of work, but if somebody can prove to me that there is no such thing as quantum immortality, I'd rather just kill myself than go through all that effort. Either way, you've all been very helpful. Thank you. -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 6:23 AM Philip Thrift On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 6:02:50 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: > >> On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 5:49 PM Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> >>> *>Information processing can ultimately lead to just a type of >>> intelligence: pseudo-intelligence:* >>> *Artificial intelligence isn't synthetic intelligence: It's >>> pseudo-intelligence.* >>> >> >> If you're outsmarted by a pseudo-intelligence how are you better off >> than if you were outsmarted by a genuine-intelligence? >> >> >>> > Consciousness requires experience processing in addition to >>> information processing. >>> >> >> A experience is information so experience processing is information >> processing, and I don't see how it makes any difference if the brain doing >> the processing is dry and hard or wet and squishy. And If consciousness is >> required for intelligence and computers don't have it why do we find new >> tasks every day that computers can do in a smarter way than we can? >> >> John K Clark >> >> >> > > > If experience (Galen Strawson, *The Subject of Experience*) is the result > of information (only) processing, then the argument for arithmetical > (Platonic) reality holds. > > - pt > > > > -- > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Towards Conscious AI Systems (a symposium at the AAAI Stanford Spring Symposium 2019)
Information is only processed in minds, not in physical systems, unless you can show that minds are physical systems. I believe minds are mathematical objects, as are physical systems, and that minds are a particular kind of mathematical object. I strongly suspect that the particular kind of mathematical object that minds are is called a lawless choice sequence. Still doing some reading and thinking on that, though. -- Mark Buda I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 8:54 AM John Clark On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 6:23 AM Philip Thrift > wrote: > > *> If experience (Galen Strawson, The Subject of Experience) is the result >> of information (only) processing, * >> > > If? If information is not the thing that needs processing to produce > intelligence then what is? > > > then the argument for arithmetical (Platonic) reality holds. >> > > Only if somebody can show how information, or anything else, can be > processed without using matter that obeys the laws of physics. And, despite > the existence of books made of dead trees with black squiggles made of ink > with a high Carbon content pressed onto them, nobody has even come close to > doing that. > > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A little Philosophising about Creationism
You guys are all so close. But I know a secret. -- Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. > On Apr 6, 2017, at 1:01 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 spudboy100 via Everything List > <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: > >> > I tend to sympathize with a sort of Religious Humanism myself, since we >> are the beings with the dendrites. You atheists are way too harsh on >> religious peeps-not that you don't have a point, but, not everything that >> works for you, works for everyone else. > > Apparently you'd prefer to believe in ideas that make you feel good than > ideas that are true. There is no disputing matters of taste. > > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: From Atheism to Islam
John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> writes: >>> You have no evidence that mathematics is more fundamental than >>> physics. None, I'm his evidence. Unless I misunderstand Bruno's ideas, I am the machine, ready to be interviewed for the laws of physics (when I don't have something better to do). I might not understand your questions: I am not a Chinese room and do not speak Chinese, although I have a coworker in a neighboring cubicle who does. Not sure which dialect but I could ask. You might not understand my answers: words are metaphors for shared experiences and I have experiences, namely certain quales which shall remain nameless, which to my knowledge have never been experiences by any other being. However, since introspection of some of these have resulted in my ability to explain things I previously found myself unable to explain, I have hope that some of them I will be able to communicate. No telling which ones, though. It would be like explaining red to Mary the color scientist while she's still in her room. Which may or may not speak Chinese - only Mary might know, until Wigner opens it. > > I have better: a proof that if we are machine, then physics is a > modality on the arithmetical truth. > > Like hell you have! I'll wager some of my otherwise free time that I'm his proof. > What is indispensable is that anything that deserves the label > "God" must be a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent BEING I used to call myself a theological noncognivitist, but I'm rethinking that. I sometimes like to say that "God" is the thing which no two people can agree on a definition of. However, in light of the aforementioned incommitoday I decided I should revise that to be that "God" is the thing which no two people can agree on the definition of *yet*, as some recent trains of thought which recalled certain experiences under the influence of a (legal) entheogenic compound have suggested might be wise. Nevertheless, by some definitions of "God" I might deserve that label (and there are an infinite number, many unused). God groks, after all, I am demonstrably intelligent and you will have to take my word for it at the moment that I am conscious - however, in my view, since the Turing test is as valid a test for consciousness as it is for intelligence, if we continue to keep in touch you will be able to administer that test yourself. Since, because of the Blockhead argument, the only truly valid Turing test for consciousness is an infinite-duration one, that will take quite some time. And if my path through observer-moments takes me through them all (think the end of John P. Dworetsky's "The Illusion of Death" but throw in the ideas of a strange loop and synesthesia and some ideas I hope to get to expounding in the near future) I (and you) will eventually be categorizable as omniscient and omnipotent in the sense of having known everything knowable and done everything doable at one time or another. > You can define God by the fundamental reality > > > That's true, you can try to get people to change the meaning of a > word, but doing so would not be a exercise in philosophy or even > theology, it would just be a exercise in vocabulary. Do, or do not. There is no try. > And the only reason for doing so would be if you were too cowardly to > say "I don't believe in God". No, I have an excellent reason for doing so, in fact I can name two off the top of my head. One, I'd like to coopt catchy and memorable but little-used words to name some of the aforementioned quales with no name. Two, while word salad can be delicious and nutritious, ambiguity can be a barrier to communication. Also, meaning exists only in minds, so words, such as "inconceivable", don't always mean what you think they mean, no matter how much you keep using them. > So now that "God" just means "stuff" you can > proudly say "I believe in God" even if all you mean is "I believe in > stuff". It all seems like a pretty stupid word game to me. We are all educated stupid word animals. -- Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> writes: > Still busy, but things are looking up for finding the time. I'll have > to revisit what I wrote before, though, because some of it was > garbage. Nailed the red state blue state thing, though, even though I > didn't explain adequately. While I did nail it, I never actually said in the first place. I misremembered that. Or I said it somewhere else, or just thought I did. > I always had a problem with showing my work. Yeah. > On Monday, July 19, 2010 at 9:16:24 AM UTC-4, Mark Buda wrote: > > I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, Jesse; > unfortunately, I don't have the time at the moment to respond > adequately. > > I think it would greatly improve the signal-to-noise ratio on this > list if everybody else kept quiet on this thread until you read my > response to Jesse. Please be patient, I have a lot of stuff to do > today. > > Waiting is. :-) > > -- > Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> > I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. > > > > > -- > On Jul 19, 2010 9:04 AM, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@hotmail.com> > wrote: > > How long ago did you see them? [...] > As for the psychiatrist and therapist, did you also try to explain > these sorts of grand ideas to them? How did they react? Sort of irrelevant at this point. > Mark, these kinds of sentences and paragraphs are completely > solipsistic. Even if you have some sort of valid insight, you > simply haven't provided enough context and intermediate steps of > your reasoning to make it possible another person could > *understand* why you think, for example, that "our sense of humor > and our mathematical intuition and our genes form an impossible > triangular loop". You're just making a lot of grand pronouncements > whose only purpose seems to be to express how excited you are > about your own brainstorms rather than to communicate with other > human beings. This is, I think, one of the big reasons myself and > others get the sense of a mental disorder from your > posts--disorders like mania and schizophrenia are associated with > losing the ability to (or no longer caring to) consider the the > understanding of other people, to consider what background context > will be shared enough that it doesn't need to be explained and > what context is not shared and *does* need to be explained (for > instance, on this list we can talk of 'quantum immortality' > without explaining what it means, but with most people you'd have > to launch into some background about the many-worlds > interpretation before using the term), in order to communicate in > a way that will make some sense to others. Yes, well, exactly. > Also, in a person with mania at least, I think this kind of > partial mindblindness is related to being over-optimistic about > the likelihood that others have understood/agreed with what you > have said...in the case of the priest, you seem to have taken his > lack of counterarguments as a sort of tacit agreement (or at least > an acknowledgment that he found sense in your arguments), which > may not be true at all. Did you ask him (or others you've talked > to about your ideas) any questions to try to gauge their > understanding of what you were saying? Along the lines of "do you > follow" or "does this make sense to you"? No, of course not. If I was not so self-absorbed that I bothered to ask the question, I was certainly so self-absorbed that I ignored the answer. > > Back to the point. We don't have instincts to tell us how to > care for our > > young. We rely on culture for that. And culture is still really, > really > > young. The memes are just getting started! That's it! Richard > Dawkins is > > God, then, because he is the source of the idea of the meme. > Whee! What a > > marvelous yet annoying thing God hath made. Can't wait to see > what's next. > > Another example of the same solipsistic communication style here. > *Why* does Richard Dawkin's invention of the concept of the meme > make him "God"? It's a huge leap of logic and once again you seem > to be too excited by your insight to bother with filling in any of > the intermediate reasoning that might make this paragraph > meaningful to anyone but yourself (and it doesn't really seem like > you were thinking of the problem of whether others would > understand whe
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Still busy, but things are looking up for finding the time. I'll have to revisit what I wrote before, though, because some of it was garbage. Nailed the red state blue state thing, though, even though I didn't explain adequately. I always had a problem with showing my work. On Monday, July 19, 2010 at 9:16:24 AM UTC-4, Mark Buda wrote: > > I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, Jesse; unfortunately, > I don't have the time at the moment to respond adequately. > > I think it would greatly improve the signal-to-noise ratio on this list if > everybody else kept quiet on this thread until you read my response to > Jesse. Please be patient, I have a lot of stuff to do today. > > Waiting is. :-) > -- > Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> > I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. > > > -- > On Jul 19, 2010 9:04 AM, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > Please, seek medical help. If you're right, you lose nothing and might > > > convince at least the psychiatrist you talk to. If I'm right, you get > > > cured. It can't do you any harm, but leaving what looks to me like a > > > serious illness untreated may well do you some serious harm. > > > > Look, I've already seen a psychiatrist and a priest and a therapist and > > they don't see a problem here. > > How long ago did you see them? Is it possible things have developed > somewhat since them? You did mention that you told the priest that you're > God. But what exactly does "don't see a problem" mean? Presumably the > priest didn't actually agree that you are God (unless he was a mystically > inclined priest who thought you were just saying that all of us are God), > so do you just mean that the priest didn't try to argue you were wrong? > Sometimes when people encounter someone with a mental problem their > instinct may be to try to show empathy and to guide the conversation in a > more human (less cosmic/grandiose) direction rather than trying to > dismantle their ideas through argument... > > As for the psychiatrist and therapist, did you also try to explain these > sorts of grand ideas to them? How did they react? > > > > > Every animal on this planet has evolved an instinctual means to care for > > its young. Except us. We have no natural instinct. Or do we? > > > > Holy crap. Richard Dawkins doesn't even understand the point of his own > > books. Our sense of humor and our mathematical intuition and our genes > > form an impossible triangular causal loop. Selfish gene, indeed. > > Mark, these kinds of sentences and paragraphs are completely solipsistic. > Even if you have some sort of valid insight, you simply haven't provided > enough context and intermediate steps of your reasoning to make it possible > another person could *understand* why you think, for example, that "our > sense of humor and our mathematical intuition and our genes form an > impossible triangular loop". You're just making a lot of grand > pronouncements whose only purpose seems to be to express how excited you > are about your own brainstorms rather than to communicate with other human > beings. This is, I think, one of the big reasons myself and others get the > sense of a mental disorder from your posts--disorders like mania and > schizophrenia are associated with losing the ability to (or no longer > caring to) consider the the understanding of other people, to consider what > background context will be shared enough that it doesn't need to be > explained and what context is not shared and *does* need to be explained > (for instance, on this list we can talk of 'quantum immortality' without > explaining what it means, but with most people you'd have to launch into > some background about the many-worlds interpretation before using the > term), in order to communicate in a way that will make some sense to others. > > Also, in a person with mania at least, I think this kind of partial > mindblindness is related to being over-optimistic about the likelihood that > others have understood/agreed with what you have said...in the case of the > priest, you seem to have taken his lack of counterarguments as a sort of > tacit agreement (or at least an acknowledgment that he found sense in your > arguments), which may not be true at all. Did you ask him (or others you've > talked to about your ideas) any questions to try to gauge their > understanding of what you were saying? Along the lines of "do you follow" > or "does this make sense to you"? > > > > > Back to the point. We don't have instincts to tell us how to care for our > &g
Re: numbers?
Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com writes: On 8/1/2010 3:42 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: The only problem is if numbers were a human invention... other humans could come with a prime number that is even and not 2... There would exists a biggest number, 1+1=2 could be false somewhere sometime (even by following the rules that makes 1+1=2 true always)... They can and do. In modulo two arithmetic 1+1=0. You can invent all kinds of number systems or other logics and axiomatic systems. No. You can define your terms, and you can use your terms, but you can't redefine your terms while you're using them and end up with a valid argument. When Quentin says 1+1=2 always, he has a meaning behind those symbols. He's talking about the idea in his mind underlying the utterance 1+1=2 being true always. You can't take a different idea that happens to be expressed using the same symbols and then assert that that has any bearing on the truth of Quentin's original idea. You could do that if he were writing a formal mathematical proof, because then you would be explicitly bound by the same symbol-manipulating rules he is. So what you said above is perfectly true, but doesn't make your case that numbers are a human invention. The symbols and words we use to talk about numbers are a human invention. Not the numbers. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: numbers?
Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com writes: On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: Numbers exist not in any physical sense but in the same sense that any idea exists - they exist in the sense that minds exist that believe logical propositions about them. They exist because minds believe logical propositions about them. They are defined and distinguished by the logical propositions that minds believe about them. There are three worlds: the physical world of elementary particles, the mental world of minds, and the imaginary world of ideas. They are linked, somehow, by logical relationships, and the apparent flow of time in the mental world causes/is caused by changes in these relationships. I wouldn't be surprised if the laws of physics are changing, slowly, incrementally, right under our noses. In fact, I would be delighted, because it would explain many things. The existence of numbers can explain the existence of the physical universe but the converse is not true, the existence of the physical world can't explain the existence of numbers. Physical universe has brains, brains cause minds. Mental world has minds, minds cause ideas (numbers). Ideal world has ideas, ideas cause matter and energy - in some way we haven't figure out yet, which is why the word cause seems to not fit. It's like the impossible triangle. There are three worlds and three parts to the explanation of reality, and taken individually they make sense, but taken as a whole they are a paradox. That's why it's so damn hard to figure out. I'm certain of it. I just need help working out the details. Belief in the existence of numbers also helps explain the unreasonable effectiveness of math, and the fine tuning of the universe to support life. I think it is a smaller leap to believe properties of mathematical objects exist than to believe this large and complex universe exists (when the former implies the latter). What has always disturbed me about the phrase unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is that it seems to me utterly reasonable that mathematics be effective in explaining the universe, and I now know why. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in explaining the universe is due to the fact that *I am in it*. For me, subjectively, it needs no explanation for deeply personal reasons that are difficult to explain succinctly. So take it this way: if you need an explanation for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, then assume I am God and I created the universe, and then assume I'm one of Bruno's Löbian machines and interview me for the laws of physics, because I can assure you that if you took the time to talk to me in person I could provide you with the evidence to make that assumption make enough sense to explain the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. I believe I understand the paradox. I believe the historical Jesus understood the paradox as well, and the reason Christianity talks about God's Word made flesh is that the paradox, the Logos, needs to be understood by a mind to be explained. It doesn't fit in a book. If you write it all down, you can't make any sense. It has to be explained interactively, or it's too difficult to explain, because the explanation, the Logos, is different for each person, because each person is different. And each person has to discover the Logos on their own, in their own way, in their own personal branch of the multiverse. Or not. I could easily be wrong. But I can't figure out for the life of me where I'm wrong. ... Can 3 really be considered a human invention or idea when it has never been fully comprehended by any person? Sure. What's to comprehend? Why do I need to understand the inifinite statements about 3 when I understand the rules by which they can be made? That's enough for me. I have better things to do. Once I understand the rules, I don't need to actually worry about the rest. Analogously, once God created the universe, and then realized that He created the universe, He worked furiously to understand it because He was worried about his unwitting creations and loved them and wanted to be happy. And once He figured out what exactly He had done, even though He wasn't sure how He did it, He understood it enough to know that He didn't need to worry about it, that it would take care of itself and He could relax and have some fun. That's *my* version of Genesis. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: numbers?
Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/29/2010 10:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: ... I do understand that the existence of the physical universe leads to minds, and the minds lead to the existence of ideas of math, but consider that both are objectively real, how does the universe's existence lead to the objective existence of math, when math is infinite and the physical universe is finite? (at least the observable universe). Your physical observable universe is finite in space, but not necessarily in time. Besides, the observable universe is an ill-defined concept. An observer a million light-years away from you sees a different observable universe - where does it end? For that matter - if your body were a million light-years across, wouldn't that make the boundary of your observable universe a little unclear? Put another way, suppose the universe is X seconds old. That would make your observable universe a sphere X light-seconds in radius, right? Where, exactly, would you locate the center of that sphere? Probably somewhere in your body... but where, exactly? And assuming you come up with a point in space, why did you choose that point over any other? ... I am interested in how the approach that numbers/math are only ideas handles such questions. It fails, because there are other ideas than numbers. Love, for instance. God, for another. If you believe God does not exist, or that there is insufficient evidence, then I would suggest that you have the wrong idea of what the symbol God means, and have insufficiently considered the possibility that you are God. I'm not sure how love or God would be represented mathemaatically, but I have some ideas about that. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: numbers?
Agreed, but I would point out that the answer to the question of the existence of numbers is the truth value of a logical proposition about the ideas we call number and existence. And if you bring a definition of number in terms of other ideas such as successor, then you are simply restating the logical propositions in terms of other ideas. Most logical propositions about what we usually call reality are meaningless. Those that are meaningful are those that have to do, ultimately, with your present perceptions and set of beliefs about the universe. As such, their truth value depends on who you are and what you choose to do. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 29, 2010 6:36 PM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote:nbsp; I don't think the existence of some number of distinct things is the same as the existence of numbers.nbsp; Numbers are defined by order and successor - neither of which are present or implicit in a mere collection of atoms or anything else. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: numbers?
Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com writes: On 7/29/2010 4:03 PM, Mark Buda wrote: Agreed, but I would point out that the answer to the question of the existence of numbers is the truth value of a logical proposition about the ideas we call number and existence. What logical proposition would that be? Pardon my Unicode, but that would be ∃x: x ∈ ℕ A proposition like Every number has a successor or 2+2=4 don't say tell us anything about whether numbers exist. Truth values in logic are just arbitrary assignments of T to some propositions (axioms) and F to others (contradictions). The are not evidence of existence. Numbers exist not in any physical sense but in the same sense that any idea exists - they exist in the sense that minds exist that believe logical propositions about them. They exist because minds believe logical propositions about them. They are defined and distinguished by the logical propositions that minds believe about them. There are three worlds: the physical world of elementary particles, the mental world of minds, and the imaginary world of ideas. They are linked, somehow, by logical relationships, and the apparent flow of time in the mental world causes/is caused by changes in these relationships. I wouldn't be surprised if the laws of physics are changing, slowly, incrementally, right under our noses. In fact, I would be delighted, because it would explain many things. ...their truth value depends on who you are and what you choose to do. I don't know what you mean by that... I meant that reality is subjective. Right down to the laws of physics. Which I believe I have figured out how to change. A testable, falsifiable, silly, hypothesis! -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Irrationality of Physicalism
You agree, but you argue because you disagree on the meanings of words. All misunderstandings arise from differing ideas of the meanings of words. Words only have meaning whrn you have agreed on the meaning in advance. By learning through shared experience. It's the symbol grounding problem. You'll work it out if you keep talking. Everything happens for a reason. Words mean things, and they have their particular meanings for a reason. There are no coincidences. It's no coincidence, for example, that rationalize means both to provide an explanation and to make rational. I'm about to rationalize the universe both ways. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 19, 2010 4:32 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: On 19 Jul 2010, at 01:37, Brent Meeker wrote: gt; On 7/18/2010 1:38 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: gt;gt; gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; Assuming physicalism, the causal laws of our universe applied to a gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; suitable set of initial conditions will, in time, exhibit features gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; that we categorize as “evolutionary”. Some of these evolutionary gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; processes may give rise to entities that have conscious gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; experiences, gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; and some of those conscious experiences will be of holding this, gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; that, gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; or the other beliefs about logic. But those beliefs are a gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; result of gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; fundamental laws acting on fundamental entities, and not gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; associated gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; with any sort of independently existing platonic standard of gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; “logical gt;gt;gt;gt;gt; reasoning”. gt; gt; I don't understand that last sentence. Does fundamental laws gt; refer to those theories we use to explain physical processes. I gt; don't see how theories can act on entities? What fundamental gt; entities do you refer to? And why should not the beliefs we gt; experience be associated with logical reasoning. If we find a flaw gt; of logic in one of our theories it loses its power to explain or gt; even to have meaning. I agree. Note that you are commenting on Rex text. I asked the same question. gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; The idea that truth is independent of reasoning *is* classical gt;gt;gt;gt; logic or Platonism. Physicalism is platonism with respect to gt;gt;gt;gt; entities, which like the christian creator and creations are gt;gt;gt;gt; posited at the start, and for which nobody has ever give gt;gt;gt;gt; evidences (it is the only difference: to believe that there are gt;gt;gt;gt; physical laws and fundamental substantial entities is an addition gt;gt;gt;gt; to arithmetical realism). The very notion of laws necessitates gt;gt;gt;gt; arithmetical realism. gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; gt;gt;gt;gt; Bruno gt; I didn't cite Cooper as refuting anything. If the same physical gt; processes produce our brains as well as the rest of the world then gt; there is a connection between them which might cause our brains to gt; have somewhat accurate thoughts about the rest of the world. Cooper gt; explains why that should be so. OK. So we agree that Cooper is more a thread for Rex view, and not at all for mechanism and its immaterialist consequences. That was unclear (I think there as been a quoting misinterpretation!). The ball is in Rex's camp. I was indeed just asking Rex why he thinks that Cooper's book is a thread for digital mechanism and/or its immaterialist consequences. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Civilization-level quantum suicide
I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, Jesse; unfortunately, I don't have the time at the moment to respond adequately. I think it would greatly improve the signal-to-noise ratio on this list if everybody else kept quiet on this thread until you read my response to Jesse. Please be patient, I have a lot of stuff to do today. Waiting is. :-) --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 19, 2010 9:04 AM, Jesse Mazer lt;laserma...@hotmail.comgt; wrote: gt; gt; Please, seek medical help. If you're right, you lose nothing and might gt; gt; convince at least the psychiatrist you talk to. If I'm right, you get gt; gt; cured. It can't do you any harm, but leaving what looks to me like a gt; gt; serious illness untreated may well do you some serious harm. gt; gt; Look, I've already seen a psychiatrist and a priest and a therapist and gt; they don't see a problem here. How long ago did you see them? Is it possible things have developed somewhat since them? You did mention that you told the priest that you're God. But what exactly does don't see a problem mean? Presumably the priest didn't actually agree that you are God (unless he was a mystically inclined priest who thought you were just saying that all of us are God), so do you just mean that the priest didn't try to argue you were wrong? Sometimes when people encounter someone with a mental problem their instinct may be to try to show empathy and to guide the conversation in a more human (less cosmic/grandiose) direction rather than trying to dismantle their ideas through argument... As for the psychiatrist and therapist, did you also try to explain these sorts of grand ideas to them? How did they react? gt; gt; Every animal on this planet has evolved an instinctual means to care for gt; its young. Except us. We have no natural instinct. Or do we? gt; gt; Holy crap. Richard Dawkins doesn't even understand the point of his own gt; books. Our sense of humor and our mathematical intuition and our genes gt; form an impossible triangular causal loop. Selfish gene, indeed. Mark, these kinds of sentences and paragraphs are completely solipsistic. Even if you have some sort of valid insight, you simply haven't provided enough context and intermediate steps of your reasoning to make it possible another person could *understand* why you think, for example, that our sense of humor and our mathematical intuition and our genes form an impossible triangular loop. You're just making a lot of grand pronouncements whose only purpose seems to be to express how excited you are about your own brainstorms rather than to communicate with other human beings. This is, I think, one of the big reasons myself and others get the sense of a mental disorder from your posts--disorders like mania and schizophrenia are associated with losing the ability to (or no longer caring to) consider the the understanding of other people, to consider what background context will be shared enough that it doesn't need to be explained and what context is not shared and *does* need to be explained (for instance, on this list we can talk of 'quantum immortality' without explaining what it means, but with most people you'd have to launch into some background about the many-worlds interpretation before using the term), in order to communicate in a way that will make some sense to others. Also, in a person with mania at least, I think this kind of partial mindblindness is related to being over-optimistic about the likelihood that others have understood/agreed with what you have said...in the case of the priest, you seem to have taken his lack of counterarguments as a sort of tacit agreement (or at least an acknowledgment that he found sense in your arguments), which may not be true at all. Did you ask him (or others you've talked to about your ideas) any questions to try to gauge their understanding of what you were saying? Along the lines of do you follow or does this make sense to you? gt; gt; Back to the point. We don't have instincts to tell us how to care for our gt; young. We rely on culture for that. And culture is still really, really gt; young. The memes are just getting started! That's it! Richard Dawkins is gt; God, then, because he is the source of the idea of the meme. Whee! What a gt; marvelous yet annoying thing God hath made. Can't wait to see what's next. Another example of the same solipsistic communication style here. *Why* does Richard Dawkin's invention of the concept of the meme make him God? It's a huge leap of logic and once again you seem to be too excited by your insight to bother with filling in any of the intermediate reasoning that might make this paragraph meaningful to anyone but yourself (and it doesn't really seem like you were thinking of the problem of whether others would understand when you wrote
RE: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Well, it's impossible to know what's going on with you based on a few email messages but it definitely sounds like it could be a manic state to me--this sort of grandiosity and boundless confidence in one's own abilities and powers is common in mania. Of course it is. But note that I'm not claiming any extraordinary powers - I'm claiming that I know something ineffable, something I cannot explain to you except by talking to you in person. And even then I can't explain it - I can just explain part of it. You will have to figure out the rest on your own. The thing is, the part I can explain is different for different people. If I don't know what you believe about the world, I can't make what I know make sense to you, because part of what I know is literally not true, from your perspective. It's a paradox. If I'm correct, then there are only two other people in my subjective universe who can understand the paradox, and I can't even be sure which people those two are. Because of the nature of the paradox. If I knew who one of them was, I wouldn't be able to know who the other one was. It's sort of like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Yes, it's exactly like the Heisenberg uncertainly principle. There are three people in the universe who know what I know. If I interact with somebody long enough to determine whether they know what I know, that sets in motion a sequence of events that makes it impossible for me to know who the other one is. I believe I know who they are, and I can't prove this knowledge to either one of them without losing one of them. I think. It's all very complicated, as I said. And having interacted with a friend in a manic state I would definitely say they can seem fairly normal if they choose to talk about subjects other than the grandiose and cosmic. Because what we call mania is a manifestation of this same paradox in somebody's psychology and/or brain chemistry, leading them to the eventual resolution of the paradox in their subjective universe. They'll figure it out eventually, although it may not appear that way to you. Have you been feeling particularly energetic or happy or alive lately? Any changes in your sensory experience, like colors and sounds seeming more vivid and beautiful? Do your body movements feel more coordinated, graceful, fluid? No, none of that stuff. Would you consider the possibility that it is some kind of mental disorder if you tried to explain your ideas to some people in person and they didn't find your ideas coherent? Have you tried explaining them to anyone you know already? Absolutely. And I've done so. Hell, I told a Catholic priest I was God and I couldn't get him to admit that anything I was saying didn't make sense. Although he wasn't sure what to do with the information. I sent email to the pope last year asking politely what you were supposed to do to inform the Catholic Church if you had a revelation from God, but I never got an answer. Having been raised Catholic, I thought it fair to give them another chance by asking a priest what I was supposed to do. He didn't know. I talked to him twice. The first time, I couldn't explain it to him, I just knew that I knew something important. The second time, I went into more detail. I've figured some more stuff out, I'll probably talk to him again. I'd rather talk to Richard Dawkins; it'd be easier to explain to him. You'd think the church would have some kind of procedure for dealing with revelations, but apparently they're not as organized as they appear. I intend to fix that. And on this list Kevin Fischer offered to talk to you on Skype for half an hour, I don't know if that would qualify as sufficiently in person (if not, can you say what part of the world you live?) Yes, but I don't have Skype. If installing Skype and talking to Kevin Fischer turns out to seem to be the best thing to do, I'll do it then, if he's still willing. I live near Washington, DC, USA. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Did Gene Ray died the other night as you predicted ? No, then go consult. Simple as that. I don't know whether he died or not. Google doesn't seem to know either. Since none of you seem interested in helping me (and I don't blame you, but it was worth a shot) I'm going to send him an email later today and tell him how I understand him and how I am going to bring Cubic Wisdom to the world. I think he'll like that. I don't believe in the no-win scenario. :-) -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Mark, we may be wrong, but none of what you said makes very much sense for us. Some things you said may make sense, but seems to me humanly communicable only through math, fiction, art, poetry, ... and stands always very far away from any literal certainty. I know it doesn't make sense. I understand why it doesn't make sense. And I understand why that knowledge is not communicable, thanks to Bruno. Bear with me: the reason nobody can seem to figure this out is that the truth is a paradox. Anybody who figures out the paradox can't communicate the nature of the paradox without sounding crazy to *somebody*, because it's a fucking paradox. It doesn't make sense to you until you have already understood it, and then it's too late to explain it to anybody, because they can't understand it any more. Get it? Good grief, even if the stuff I'm saying taken as a whole doesn't make sense, at least focus on one piece at a time and you will agree that I'm making perfect sense. I'm not spouting words at random. I am a very literal-minded person who chooses his words with great care. Word mean things. Words mean different things to different people. That is the core of any failure to communicate. That is why I have to talk to somebody to be able to make sense to them and explain. I need the nonverbal feedback to be able to figure out how to explain. All of us use nonverbal communication all the time without even realizing it. It's unconscious. I can make sense to Gene Ray because I understand part of what he's trying to tell the world. But what I say to him would not make sense to you. I can make sense to a Catholic priest because I was raised Catholic and I understand the underlying world view. But what I say to him would not make sense to an atheist. I can make sense to a physicist because I understand enough of physics to communicate with him. But what I say to him would not make sense to an evolutionary biologist. I can make sense to an evolutionary biologist. Any evolutionary biologist will do. I have a special personal reason for wanting to contact Richard Dawkins, because I have something to say to him that I think he wants to hear. But the reasoning behind my desire to speak to Richard Dawkins is not something I know how to explain to you, the members of the list, because I don't know you all well enough to make sense to all of you at once. Bruno understands much of what I understand. In fact, everybody understands part of what I understand. What I understand is God's plan for the universe, His tricksy mathematical clockwork fractal rollercoaster ride of life. Ooh, composing that last sentence gave me great insight into the workings of the schizophrenic mind, but I said it anyway because I thought it sounded cool. Trust me. It'll all work out. A good night's rest might help you understand. And I can even provide you with a plausible explanation of why that is so. This is starting to be fun. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Irrationality of Physicalism
On 18 Jul 2010, at 17:38, Brent Meeker wrote: Unless the W. Cooper's book refutes the movie graph argument, for example by justifying Jack Mallah's claim that consciousness stop supervening physically on a machine in case a physical piece of the machine, which is supposed to have no physical activity in the computation concerned, is removed. (But then how could we still say yes to a doctor, who may suppress anything strictly needed for some range of computation). That moves seems an introduction of magical property of both matter and mind of the type precluding any hope to use evolution theory to explain reason. WE have already discussed this. Something just occurred to me that might make sense to you guys. It seems like mental properties supervene on physical properties or that physical properties supervene on mental properties, right? I think I've figured out why the mind-body problem is so hard. It hinges on the meaning of words. How may minds do you have? You have two. Which is which? Why didn't anybody see this before? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: Get it? Good grief, even if the stuff I'm saying taken as a whole doesn't make sense, at least focus on one piece at a time and you will agree that I'm making perfect sense. Mark, seriously, you're not. I worked on a psychiatric ward for several years, and you sound just like the schizophrenic and bipolar people I dealt with there - many of whom were also convinced they were making perfect sense when they were trying to explain to me how they were really Jesus, Harry Potter and Superman in one body. Please, see a psychiatrist. If nothing else, you could try to convince *them* of your viewpoint. But I'm seriously worried about your health. You worked on a psychiatric ward but you never understood them. If you had taken the time to interact with them, one on one, and share their lives and hopes and dreams, you would have been able to help them figure it out. That's why marriage is important. Only by two people sharing the same truth and faith can the species continue, whatever that species or truth or faith or faith happens to be. Don't worry. Be happy. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: You worked on a psychiatric ward but you never understood them. If you had taken the time to interact with them, one on one, and share their lives and hopes and dreams, you would have been able to help them figure it out. That is precisely what my job was, and what IY did do - exceptionally well, as it happens. I still have former patients see me in the street and thank me for my help. They were ill, and now they're not. Yes, because that's what makes them better. Love. Or whatever you want to call it. Love is information! Or maybe information flow. Whatever. I am becoming more and more convinced that you are, too. That's in no way a criticism of you or failing on your part, any more than it would be if you had a cold or a heart condition. I don't take it personally. I understand your position. Please, seek medical help. If you're right, you lose nothing and might convince at least the psychiatrist you talk to. If I'm right, you get cured. It can't do you any harm, but leaving what looks to me like a serious illness untreated may well do you some serious harm. Look, I've already seen a psychiatrist and a priest and a therapist and they don't see a problem here. Look. listen, and learn: Every animal on this planet has evolved an instinctual means to care for its young. Except us. We have no natural instinct. Or do we? Holy crap. Richard Dawkins doesn't even understand the point of his own books. Our sense of humor and our mathematical intuition and our genes form an impossible triangular causal loop. Selfish gene, indeed. Back to the point. We don't have instincts to tell us how to care for our young. We rely on culture for that. And culture is still really, really young. The memes are just getting started! That's it! Richard Dawkins is God, then, because he is the source of the idea of the meme. Whee! What a marvelous yet annoying thing God hath made. Can't wait to see what's next. The evolutionary purpose of religion is as a cultural artifact to guide us in raising our offspring. We need religion for this reason. That's why we need faith. We have no fucking idea how to raise our children otherwise. I've got it! -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics
Fred Hoyle suggested the idea of quantum suicide for a civilisation in “October the 1st is too late” written around 1964 I think. That’s the first occurrence I know of it. Thank you. I just read it. I am now more convinced than ever that I have the right idea. I've figured out the links between the Platonic world of ideas, the physical world, and the mental world. I can explain the reason for the flow of time. I can explain the story of Jesus. I can explain the real significance of the Holy Trinity. I can explain it all. And you can believe me or not. I don't care. There are always, always, two explanations to get the truth of reality to anybody. And they are both perfectly rational and logical. And one is always easy, and one is always hard. One is based on faith, and one is based on evidence. If you understand it, then you will understand that the one based on evidence is so damn complicated that it just isn't worth your time to write it down. You need a high-bandwidth face-to-face communications channel to convince anybody. Because it's just too damn much work otherwise. And you will understand why that is. And the only other argument, the one based on faith, is this: I'm God, and I can prove it, but you have to talk to me face to face and be willing to listen to me to understand the proof. And even then I might not be able to prove it to you. But it will certainly be an interesting conversation. You're God too, you just don't know it yet. You will. God's an inexorable clockwork machine of love and understanding. In a sense. The purpose of your life is to find out what it means to be human. In the literal and figurative sense. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics
Fred Hoyle suggested the idea of quantum suicide for a civilisation in “October the 1st is too late” written around 1964 I think. That’s the first occurrence I know of it. I just read it. I meant, I just read part of it. I googled it and found a PDF file and read that, mistaking it for a short story. Okay, I didn't actually read all of it. But the part I read shows me that Fred Hoyle had some pieces of the answer too. The Fred Hoyle that found all the pieces lived forever. The Fred Hoyle in our past is a bad copy of the original. Everybody you think has lived and died on this planet has found their own personal paradise in their own subjective reality in a different branch of the universe, and I have figured out how it works. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote: But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. That seems very weird. The whole universe is very weird. Quantum mechanics is weird. Another way to say what I'm trying to says is that you *can't* commit quantum suicide, because if you try, something will prevent you. Remember that guy on the list who claimed to have planned to do it, but stopped because he fell in love? I know why that happened. That's how it works. That's part of the plan. You're supposed to fall in love and have children. The universe works out that way. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But I am saying this to explain that we can use reason to understand where the laws of physics come from. Not to mystified people with a lack of explanation. Bruno, I think the misunderstanding here is that you're thinking that there's one set of laws of physics. And there isn't. There are no laws. Reality is bound by rules, but the laws of physics aren't the real rules. It just looks that way if you take the evidence-based approach to figuring it out. If you take the faith-based approach to figuring it out, you find God. It doesn't matter which way you go, it's circular, and you get to choose. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. I guess I have been unclear at some point. I am just a poor scientist trying to be honest with myself and the others. Then there's something I'm assuming you understand that you don't in fact understand. If we talked I could probably figure out what it was. Why do you want to convince Richard Dawkins? You give him credit. Because I know that I know how to persuade him of the truth based on evidence *and* emotion. I can prove to him, personally, that I am God, and that I created the universe. And he will believe it. Because I can show him a causal loop between the mental world, the physical world, and the ficional world that explains both intelligent design *and* evolution. I can show him how man's sense of humor and laughter evolved, and how they're related to the causal loop. I can show him how love and the idea of God evolved, and how they're related to the causal loop. I can show him that Jesus was a real person, and was really God, and that the Catholic Church he despises is just a bad copy of the real thing, and I can show him how to fix it. And I can show the church how to fix it. But I have to do it one day at a time, and I have to do it by *talking* to people, or it's not worth my effort, because I have my own personal problems, and I can show how *they* are related to all this. And I can explain how Hari Seldon's psychohistory worked in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, because I have figured the whole damn thing out. What it all boils down to, guys, is that the reason marriage counseling works is that when two people love each other but can't live together they need a neutral third party to mediate because they can't understand each other's arguments. I understand Richard Dawkins and the Catholic Church well enough to get them talking, if they'll listen to me. I don't know how to get their attention without ruining my marriage. I'm trapped in God's logic trap. I've done my best to talk to the Church - I have spent a couple of hours with a priest, and he seems interested, but I can't figure out how to get him to do anything helpful. Is anybody willing to help me? I need help to get this done. I know the help will come one way or another, but I'm asking the members of the list: does anybody understand me or want to help me? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Fred Hoyle's story
A question: does it make any sense that one goes to live in a personal paradise in their own subjective reality in a different branch of the universe only after death? Would it not make sense that we are always in the state of existing in a subjective reality in some branch of the universe? How is this not solipsism? None of it makes any sense because it's a paradox. Reality is impossible. You can understand it, but it can't all make sense to you at once. I once remarked that half of all marriages end in divorce, but that isn't so bad when you consider the other half end in death. I realize now that there are two more alternatives: apotheosis and oblivion. I'm in an impossible situation right now, a love triangle of sorts, and if all my ideas are correct it will end with all three of us spending eternity together, even if the whole of reality gets turned inside out in the process. From my perspective, that is. And I am determined to obtain that outcome. However, from your perspective, one of four things will appear to happen: (1) I get a divorce. But the me you see isn't the subjective me talking to you now. It is, from my subjective perspective, a philosophical zombie. (2) My wife or I die. But the me you see in this case is, as in case (1), a philosiphical zombie from my perspective. (3) You completely forget about me. (That's the oblivion alternative, from the outside, which corresponds from my point of view to traveling backwards in time, which impossible for me.) (4) You realize that I am God, but God doesn't mean what you thought it meant. After you realize that I am God, if you want to be God, you'll have to leave me, by appearing to die, or by my forgetting you. Otherwise, you'll still share my subjective reality if we interact, and there will only be room for three Gods - the Holy Trinity - and you won't be one of them, unless I change my mind. I realize this makes no fucking sense. It's insanely complicated. That's why I can't figure all of it out by myself, and that's why I don't have to. I'm pretty certain that I can find clues to string theory in coincidences in the Mayan calendar and my genealogy and family relationships, if I have the time to work on it. I'm willing to be dissuaded by facts. I'm willing to listen to reason. I'm willing to leave the list if people ask me to shut up. I won't hang around where I'm not welcome. But seriously, I can't figure out where I've made a mistake. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
time cube
I finally have a testable prediction for my Theory of Everything. Gene Ray will die today, peacefully, in his sleep. And the true meaning of the Time Cube will be revealed to the world. :-) -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my dchimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Mark, if you're not kidding here I honestly think you may be experiencing some kind of mental disorder, perhaps a manic state (good description of these kinds of states by Oliver Sacks at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/sep/25/a-summer-of-madness/?pagination=false ) or even the onset of schizophrenia...please consider seeing a psychiatrist, just to check! I'm not kidding. I understand your concern. If you were to interact with me in real time I'd probably seem fairly normal (assuming I wanted to seem normal, of course). But I'm fairly certain now that not only am I not experiencing a mental disorder, but that many so-called mental disorders are in fact, um, well, I'm not sure how to explain it yet. That's why I want people who know about this stuff to talk to me. I can explain schizophrenia. I can explain depression. I can explain visions, dreams, hallucinations, and all of that stuff. I have figure out the relationship betweeen all the disparate fields. I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. I don't have specialized knowledge of much of anything except computers, but I am a self-organizing autodidact who has figured it all out so can somebody *please* talk to me? Of course it could be that you are psychologically normal but have just fallen under the sway of some very weird ideas...the fact that you can't actually explain these ideas but expect some weird synchronicity to occur in the physical presence of others that will allow you to convince them of the validity of these ideas is suspicious though, it seems like a form of magical thinking. But it's a testable and falsifiable hypothesis, no? The reason the explanation of reality sounds crazy is that the precise form of the explanation depends on who is doing the explaining to whom. That's why you can't write it down. It can't all make sense at the same time to the same person, unless you're me. Got it? That's why you need me. You can't get the answers any other way. I think. It's really rather confusing. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
I'm not kidding. I understand your concern It's also statistically more likely if you're a male between 18-25... Statistics govern groups. I am an individual. I am 42. As was my father when I was born. What an interesting coincidence. Not. You did post a testable prediction though -- that Gene Ray of Time Cube will die today. Let's say that today means within 24 hours of your post. Sure. If Gene Ray does die today, that would be reasonable evidence that you're onto *something* here, but I would want to see three predictions like that in a row to be sure. Not only do I predict Gene Ray's death, but I can show you the relationship between Time Cube and string theory! I am not making this up. Why would I make this up? If he doesn't die today, would you accept that as evidence that you have not developed superpowers of super understanding? I'm not claiming super powers of super understanding. In fact, it is pure random luck that I happen to be in this position. I think. If Gene Ray doesn't die, the rational thing to do will be to accept your failure and calmly move on, rather than come up with some complex reason to rationalize it. It wasn't some kind of ironclad guarantee. It was just a prediction. Based on intuition, mainly. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Civilization-level quantum suicide
I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Now, Mark Buda is either sarcastic or mad. I think he is pulling your leg here Bruno. No. I am being completely serious. I may be mad. I don't think I am. I think I am the most rational human being on the planet right now, and I think if you were to talk to me I could convince you of that. I think all the 2012 Mayan calendar stuff is related to the technological singularity and to my personal life and to the recent gamma ray burst that blinded the NASA satellite. I think I can explain it all. I think you had better pray I'm right. I've been struggling to figure out what's been going on around me for over a year, and I've finally got it worked out. I just need to tell the world. Or not. Because it's going to happen either way, and I don't care. I have a lot of ideas about what might happen. I don't know which of them are true because any of them could be and I'm just one guy. I have all the answers and none of the questions, because I no longer have free will. Or I'm the only one left with free will, take your pick. Or ignore me. But the problem is not going away. Something odd is going on. Would you like to know what I think a civilization-level quantum suicide event might look like? I think it might look like people killing themselves and others for reasons inspired by religious fervor and fear over all the crazy stories flying around about what might happen in 2012. Civilizations don't kill people, people kill people. When you're *in* the civilization approaching the technological singularity, it doesn't look like the one world government has decided to blow up the planet to get infinite computing power. It looks like the end of the world. You can believe whatever you like; you will anyway. I'm pretty certain it will just *look* like the end of the world to a lot of people. Nothing is as seems, even when it is. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
God made the integers, all else is the work of man. I'VE GOT IT But I'm not going to go running out naked. Bruno, ask yourself this question: if you were an integer, how would you factor yourself? --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 14, 2010 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: If we are digital machine, the causal network is plausibly (with Occam) 100% arithmetical.Incompleteness explains why we will never get bored, indeed. Bruno On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:50, Mark Buda wrote:The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe.nbsp; I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us?nbsp; Who's us?nbsp; In any case I don't exist.nbsp; I'd explain why, but Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
Gentlemen, I have figured out what Pythagoras's big secret was and what the whole 2012 Mayan calendar thing relates and the mechanism behind it and the relationship between evolution, intelligent design, quantum mechanics, objective reality, subjective reality, narrative reality, human psychology, the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything is in my brain, because I am 42, and I think it would be really funny if I could prove to Richard Dawkins that Douglas Adams was a prophet of God, and that Jesus was a real historical figure, and in the process redeem all the evils that religion, in particular the Catholic Church, of which I am now proud to have never officially left, have done by explaining it to the world. It's really, really, funny. But you're going to have to ask nicely. Because I have other stuff to do. Whee! Really, just use google and wikipedia and most of you can figure out how to reach me. I love it when a plan comes together! Please call me, whoever figures this out first. I know you all want the answers as much as I do. But it's a pain in the ass to explain, just ask Bruno. And I know why! I have to do it face to face! Or at least interactively over the phone. Richard Dawkins, I'm an angel of God, and I'm coming your way! Feel free to use my evidence to prove or disprove the existence of God... because it's all in how you look at it. (That's a hint.) God made the integers, all else is the work of man. I'VE GOT IT But I'm not going to go running out naked. Bruno, ask yourself this question: if you were an integer, how would you factor yourself? --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 14, 2010 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: If we are digital machine, the causal network is plausibly (with Occam) 100% arithmetical.Incompleteness explains why we will never get bored, indeed. Bruno On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:50, Mark Buda wrote:The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe.nbsp; I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us?nbsp; Who's us?nbsp; In any case I don't exist.nbsp; I'd explain why, but Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Free will: Wrong entry.
Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com writes: So how does a person have a brain? Why does a computation need one? To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is The Great Unknown Outcome. Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around. This quote from Warren Sharpe from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism pretty much answers the why, I think. Just being conscious without a universe to play in isn't much of an existence, is it? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: UDA steps 5 and 6: huh?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-janv.-10, à 01:39, Mark Buda a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 23:15, Mark Buda wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 04:39, Mark Buda wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm In step 8, you seem to be doing away with the need for a physical universe of any sort, since it doesn't actually do anything. If it was even there in the first place. Is that correct? OK, but you are using a rather strong Occam razor. You have either to believe strongly in comp, or to have extracted already a big part of physics to use it with some assurance. I believe strongly in comp. One part at a time: Yes, Doctor hypothesis: Physically, there is no part of my body that can't be replaced with a functional equivalent. At the subatomic level, all the protons, neutrons, and electrons are indistinguishable anyway. Any cell in my body could be replaced by a functional equivalent and I'd still be me. Any cell in my body could, in fact, just die, and I'd still be me, and this happens all the time, and nobody finds it unusual. We think there's a problem when it comes to replacing the brain because we believe that's where our consciousness is, but it isn't. Consciousness isn't anywhere. Ask a primitive who believes he thinks with his heart whether he'd go for a brain transplant and he'd have no more issues with self-identity than a modern-day human having a heart transplant. What would Phineas Gage have to say about comp, I wonder? In The Emperor's New Mind Roger Penrose mentions a split-brain patient, P.S., who appeared to have two distinct consciousnesses after his commissurotomy. This is consistent with the idea that for each human there exists an infinite number of conciousnesses, each with a similar set of beliefs (including beliefs about the past). Before the surgery, no omniscient being could have told P.S. which hemisphere his subjective experience would end up in, because of the first person indeterminacy. Because there were an infinite number of P.S. consciousnesses all along, and the commissurotomy partitioned them, literally and figuratively, into the sets that experienced the left-hemisphere future and right-hemisphere future. For a more concrete example of more than one consciousness in one body, look at the case of Abigail and Brittany Hensel. Step 8 eliminates even that use of Occam, for a much weaker one. Step 8 derives directly an epistemological contradiction between the physical supervenience thesis, and the digital mechanist thesis (comp). To be sure, to apply this on the real world, there is still an amount of Occam needed to avoid the use of fanciful ad hoc definition of god or matter allowing to say yes to the doctor and still believing in a primitive form of matter. That is the usual obligatory use of Occam in any applied science. I have to go. I hope I have been enough clear. Bruno, in some sense, I feel that I am a self-referentially correct arithmetical platonist universal Turing machine. Would you please interrogate me so I can give you the laws of physics? I don't quite understand them myself -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: UDA steps 5 and 6: huh?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 23:15, Mark Buda wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 04:39, Mark Buda wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm Are you OK with the first six steps. Yup. 7 too. It seems you like Sci. Fic. That would be an understatement. In step 8, you seem to be doing away with the need for a physical universe of any sort, since it doesn't actually do anything. If it was even there in the first place. Is that correct? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/24 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? Computer science, compiler theory , number theory, what is a program, strong AI. Wikipedia on those subject is a good start. Okay, I'm new here and haven't made my background clear. I know lots about all of those (well, number theory not so much as the rest) and more importantly, I know what the limits of my knowledge are and how to learn more. I was trying to ask where in Bruno's stuff I should start. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
UDA steps 5 and 6: huh?
Bruno Marchal wrote: I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm Okay, first question: in step 5, assuming the measure is 1/2 in the preceding steps, suppose I agree to be transported to Brussels and the process in step 5 is performed. What are you saying would be my experience? That I have a 50-50 chance of ending up in Amsterdam with a copy of me believing he was transported to Brussels, versus being transported to Brussels with a copy of me believing he is still in Amsterdam? Second question: in step 6, again assuming the measure is 1/2 in the preceding steps. Am I correct in my understanding that what you are describing is the doctor, instead of reconstituting me in Brussels, is merely taking the digital description of me and giving it as input to a program which simulates me interacting with a Brussels-like environment? That is, after T seconds of simulated time, the program has a new digital description of me, one that reflects T seconds of experience in the virtual Brussels? And that my subjective experience would be the same as you are claiming for step 5, except that instead of actually being in Brussels either I or the copy would be in the simulated Brussels, believing, Matrix-like, that it was real? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the theory of everything
On Jan 12, 3:32 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Here's another: Consciousness is computation. Consciousness is a first person notion. Computation is a third person notion. How could those be identified? How could they be different? On the contrary, once you associate consciousness to the working of a digital machine, or digitalizable machine, eventually your stable consciousness links itself to an infinite set of abstract (immaterial) computations. But even here, it is not possible to make an identification. The best you can do is to identify consciousness with a machine belief state in a reality, or with the incommunicable undoubtable global quasi instantaneous sum-up-like feeling, etc. But the abstract immaterial computations are all that there is. There is no machine, no physical universe, no nothing, without the computations - the consciousnesses. And all of them happen, and all of them are equally real. Each of them is like the execution of a universal Turing machine given a particular input tape. The initial portion of the tape encodes some algorithm executed by the machine; the rest of the tape serves as input to the machine (observations, in the quantum mechanical sense). Some (infinite) subset of these machines correspond to consciousnesses that believe they are you. I am asserting that they, in fact, *are* you. The first-person you, including your mind, body, and the entire observable universe (as seen by you). That's why you can say yes, Doctor and still continue - your consciousness was never really in your body in the first place. Learning that as an infant was one of the first mistakes you made, and one of the hardest to unlearn, but it was necessary for you to be able to learn all the other stuff, the important stuff, most of which you have yet to learn. While composing this email, I apparently achieved enlightenment. (I'm serious. It's complicated.) Lucky you :) Not really. I am pretty sure it's inevitable, at least for human consciousnesses. You may elaborate, or not. A full explanation would probably not be appropriate for the list, and would take more time to write than I care to invest at the moment, and still wouldn't necessarily make enough sense to anybody to be worth writing. As I said, it's complicated. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the theory of everything?
On Jan 12, 5:51 pm, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net wrote: 1) What is the cardinality of this infinite collection/set/class/whatever of machines? I believe that would have to be the cardinality of the continuum, but I'm not entirely sure. Why does the cardinality matter? 2) What measure is it that might be used to partition the set or class of machines such that at least one subset of them can be identified as corresponding to consciousness? I don't know. They may all correspond to some kind of conscious experience. (What is it like to be a rock?) The ones that correspond to human consciousness are the ones that do not terminate or repeat. 3) How can we differentiate between Machines and not-Machines unless there exists some measure to do so? You've lost me here. What not-Machines are you talking about? 4) How does mere existence of a Machine give any accounting for its implementation? I don't understand the question. 5) Are you secretly attempting to construct a reductio ad absurdum proof? Nope. I'm not secretly attempting to do anything. I am just trying to understand the universe. - Original Message - From: Mark Buda her...@acm.org To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 2:55 PM Subject: Re: the theory of everything snip But the abstract immaterial computations are all that there is. There is no machine, no physical universe, no nothing, without the computations - the consciousnesses. And all of them happen, and all of them are equally real. Each of them is like the execution of a universal Turing machine given a particular input tape. The initial portion of the tape encodes some algorithm executed by the machine; the rest of the tape serves as input to the machine (observations, in the quantum mechanical sense). Some (infinite) subset of these machines correspond to consciousnesses that believe they are you. I am asserting that they, in fact, *are* you. The first-person you, including your mind, body, and the entire observable universe (as seen by you). That's why you can say yes, Doctor and still continue - your consciousness was never really in your body in the first place. Learning that as an infant was one of the first mistakes you made, and one of the hardest to unlearn, but it was necessary for you to be able to learn all the other stuff, the important stuff, most of which you have yet to learn. snip -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
the theory of everything
Greetings. I believe humanity now has all the pieces of the theory of everything. The only remaining problem is putting them together to make a beautiful picture. I believe one of the pieces is: Everything exists. (That's what this list is about, right?) Here's another: Consciousness is computation. The algorithm doesn't matter. We are all running the same universal algorithm. The difference is in our inputs, our starting state, the bits on our Turing machine's infinite tape. Some computations may terminate. Some computations may repeat. The kind of computations that human consciousness is is the kind that does not terminate or repeat. While composing this email, I apparently achieved enlightenment. (I'm serious. It's complicated.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the theory of everything
On Jan 10, 6:14 pm, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: I believe humanity now has all the pieces of the theory of everything. The only remaining problem is putting them together to make a beautiful picture. I believe one of the pieces is: Everything exists. (That's what this list is about, right?) JM: I like the naive position myself that the world (indeed: everyhing) DOES exist. I mean, literally, that every possible universe does in fact exist. If anything exists, that is. Here's another: Consciousness is computation. JM: if I agree with this one, I consider *computation* in a special sense. What I mean is that consciousness and computation are the same thing. Your subjective experience of the world is the computation that is the universe; the machine you call a computer doesn't actually do any computing. You do. You are each a universe-sized quantum computer that believes (correctly) that it's a human being. Together, we make up the multiverse. I realize I may not be making much sense, but it's taken 42 years for me to get all of this into my head and it's not coming out easily. Please be patient :-) While composing this email, I apparently achieved enlightenment. (I'm serious. It's complicated.) In my wording: it is 'complicated' when we try to touch* complexity*. What I meant was what Buddhists call bodhi. I think. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
