SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide

2010-07-16 Thread Lennart Nilsson
Now, Mark Buda is either sarcastic or mad. I think he is pulling your leg
here Bruno.

-Ursprungligt meddelande-
Från: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] För Bruno Marchal
Skickat: den 16 juli 2010 16:06
Till: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide


On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote:

 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.

This is on the fringe of authoritative argument.



 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.


 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.


 But you can't get the
 laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers.

On the contrary: you can. Everyone can. You cannot besure because you  
cannot know that you are correct, so the usual doubt of the cartesian  
scientist remains. Computationalism explains in detail why any form of  
certainty, when made public, is a symptom of non correctness.


 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,

I don't see any sense here.


 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.

2012 is the year of the election in France. The Maya consider their  
own prediction as a prediction that some reasonable man will arrive.  
They never talk of apocalypse. 2012 is like prohibition: making  
money by selling fears.



 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.


 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.

Why do you want to convince Richard Dawkins? You give him credit.  
Actually you do his very own error, because when Dawkins try to  
convince the Christians that they are wrong on God, he gives them  
credit on their notion of God. No one care about fairy tales, once we  
tackle the fundamental question with the scientific (= modest,  
hypotheses-based) approach.



 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.

Restrain yourself to communicate what is communicable. And just hope  
that the people will figure out by themselves what is not communicable  
yet true (like consciousness to take the simplest candidate).



 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.

I don't believe in coincidence. Or better I believe coincidences are  
just that: coincidences. The brain has an habit to over-interpret  
coincidences, and if you search them, you will find more and more, and  
you will take the risk of believing anything, that is to become  
inconsistent. The prohibition of drugs is based on similar form of  
unsound reasoning.



 And I can explain how that
 works.

 Bruno, when you read this, you are literally 

Re: SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide

2010-07-16 Thread Mark Buda
 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.