. But I've yet to see anything convincing.
More comments:
On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 02:33 PM, Wei Dai wrote:
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 08:54:38PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
But in this, the only universe I will ever, ever have contact with, I
optimize as best I can. And I assume all the myriad mes
On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 02:40 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
Tim May wrote:
On your point about many pasts are fundamentally caused by quantum
uncertainty in memory devices, I strongly disagree. There is only
one past for one present, whether RAMs dropped bits in recording them
On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 11:43 AM, Tim May wrote:
Rereading my paragraphs, maybe they are unclear. It takes entire
chapters of books (I like David Albert's book, or Smolin's Life of
the Cosmos (from whence the cat and dog example was taken), Bub,
Hughes, and Barrett) to talk about
On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 12:35 PM, Hal Finney wrote:
Tim May writes:
This arises with quantum measurements of course. Once a measurement is
made--path of a photon, for example--all honest observers will report
exactly the same thing. There simply is no basis for disputing the
past
of my own focus on the
branch *I* am in.
--Tim May
Trek movie, the one where a cult of Multiversians is
setting off special weapons to destroy universes which fail to be
perfect in various ways.
I'll miss some tidbits of math I discussed with some of you, but I
won't miss the rest.
Until we meet in another reality,
--Tim May
. By
reducing their measure through QS and the likes, advanced aliens just
evolve out of existence in our world!
You ought to read Finity, by John Barnes. He explores a very similar
idea.
--Tim May
They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night,
and it was a very complicated
On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 12:38 PM, George Levy wrote:
Tim May wrote
If you mean that many presents have many pasts, yes. But the
current present only has a limited number of pasts, possibly just one.
(The origin of this asymmetry in the lattice of events is related to
our being
...they simply prodded me to set
down some of the many ideas percolating in my head. This may make me
seem like a conservative here, but it's my nature to analyze and
critique, to compare and contrast.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
--Tim May
time travel nor MWI travel/communication is possible.
--Tim May
of them to have done so. Since
the implications of building such portals are, I think, enormous, I
would expect a civilization which has built such things to have
expanded even more rapidly through their part of the universe than
without such things.
--Tim May
t;)
>From Hal's reference to Mike Price's document (which I read several years ago, so I'd forgotten or had not read his bit about MWI and Fermi), it looks like Price reached the same conclusion.
--Tim May
on this.
--Tim May
into the conventionalities.
Talk to Wei Dai. I write what I think is true and important.
--Tim May
, the quantum possible worlds are identical to the
possible worlds of Aristotle, Leibniz, Borges, C.I. Lewis, David Lewis,
Stalnaker, Kripke, and others.)
--Tim May
How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things
have been like if every security operative, when he went out
On Friday, January 10, 2003, at 12:34 PM, George Levy wrote:
This is a reply to Eric Hawthorne and Tim May.
(Tim comment: the quoted text below is partly a mix of my comments and
partly George's.)
Lastly, like most many worlds views, the same calculations apply
whether one thinks
of the multiverse,
the sheaf of universes in which Tim May or Hal Finney even exist is of
measure approaching zero.
Meanwhile, I'm _here_.
--Tim May
Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David
Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
On Friday, January 10, 2003, at 08:54 PM, Tim May wrote:
Wei suggested that in the context of a many-worlds universe (not just
the quantum MWI but even for a broader set of possibilities), you
might
not make this same decision. You know that when the coin flips, the
universe is going
From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Jan 9, 2003 1:22:32 PM US/Pacific
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Quantum suicide without suicide
On Thursday, January 9, 2003, at 12:32 PM, George Levy wrote:
As you can see, suicide is not necessary. One could be on death row -
in other words
in the SATs will score around 550-600 combined, but that a
random guesser in a non-multiple-choice QM exam will flunk with
ovewhelming likelihood.)
What should one do? What did all of you actually do? What did Moravec
do, what did I do, what did Tegmark do?
--Tim May
here perhaps already know, Halmos
was Von Neumann's assistant, writing up his lectures, when he wrote his
book.)
Provided the complex space is normed, and is complete, which all
finite-dimensional vector spaces are, the math works. No infinities are
needed, which is good.
--Tim May
, of course.)
--Tim May
On Monday, December 30, 2002, at 11:57 AM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
As I understood it, the basic idea here was to use the fact that
history must work out consistently to get a machine that could solve
problems much faster than a Turing machine. For example, for any
problem that requires
, that other worlds have
more than linguistic existence.)
--Tim May
.)
--Tim May
, by John
Barnes. A New Zealand astronomer/mathematician with some interesting
ideas about abductive reasoning finds himself slipping between
different realities.
--Tim May
for biological systems is on the order of what Max Tegmark and
others have estimated for decoherence.)
In other words, no quantum clones doesn't mean no for all intents and
purposes clones.
--Tim May
biases (if we only know geometry, we see things
geometrically, and so on).
One of the reasons I like studying math is to expand my conceptual
toolbox, to increase the number of conceptual basis vectors I can use
to build models with.
--Tim May
for moon shots to fund what
they think is needed...))
The AGI may come from the distant great-great grandchild of
financial AI systems.
--Tim May
Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David
Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
On Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 11:42 PM, Eric Hawthorne wrote:
I'm in the camp that thinks that emergent systems are real phenomena,
and
that eventually, objective criteria would be able to be established
that would
allow us to say definitively whether an emerged system existed in some
with instantons,
where perhaps wormholes are opening and closing, where perhaps
Kalabi-Yau topological structures are vibrating or whatever it is they
do.
Fascinating stuff, to be sure.
--Tim May
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long
either for his
career or for getting any kind of progress or confirmation (!).)
My belief is that basic mathematics is much more important than
computer use, in terms of understanding the cosmos and the nature of
reality.
--Tim May
.).
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum
reality, cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
continues to be in topos theory, modal logic, and quantum logic.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum
reality, cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto
On Friday, October 4, 2002, at 09:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
At 9:36 -0700 1/10/2002, Tim May wrote:
MWI looks, then, like just another variant of modal realism. To
wit, there IS a universe in which unicorns exist, and another in
which Germany won the Second World War
On Tuesday, October 1, 2002, at 06:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
At 12:26 -0700 30/09/2002, Tim May wrote:
If the alternate universes implied by the mainstream MWI (as opposed
to variants like consistent histories) are actual in some sense,
with even the slightest chance of communication
even crude estimates
difficult and probably worthless.)
Hmmm
--Tim May Prime, resident of Earth Prime
in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum
reality, cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
--Tim May
Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David
Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
and branes, spin foams, twistors, etc.), is to unify
these two fundamentally different outlooks. As of now, this hasn't
happened.
* Personally, I think there is much of interest in the discrete at
Planck scales relational approach.
--Tim May
. But this
reasoning is speculative and needs a lot more thought...maybe. Someone
could probably write a nice Baxterian story with this theme.)
--Tim May, Occupied America
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin
I took a quick look at a newstand copy of American Scientist, the
current issue. A good article on variations in the cosmic background
and how this might be able to give some indications about very early
forks taken in the evolution of the universe we are in.
In other news, am reading Graham
Zeilinger papers on
delayed-choice and double-slit experiments, but haven't had a chance to
read them except by skimming.)
--Tim May
along to a
fairly predictable conclusion.)
I hope this explains why I don't look to Egan's fictional character for
actual theories, just stimulation.
--Tim May
, etc. are perhaps defined by 40-digit or even 200-digit
numbers, the Laplacian dream of a suffiicently powerful mind being able
to know the future is dashed.
Unpredictability, or randomness, arises even in a fully classical real
world.
--Tim May
As my father told me long ago, the objective
On Wednesday, September 4, 2002, at 02:44 PM, Hal Finney wrote:
Tim May wrote:
In weaker forms of the MWI, where it's the early state of the Big Bang
(for example) which are splitting off into N universes, De Witt and
others have speculated (as early as around 1970) that we may
for dealing with quantum cosmology,
it is also the right logic for dealing with a huge number of other
things.
--Tim May
On Tuesday, September 3, 2002, at 02:21 PM, scerir wrote:
Tim May:
I don't have a comprehensive theory of time,
but I am very fond of causal time.
Sometimes we read papers saying there is now
experimental evidence that quantum phenomena
are a-causal or non
.
--Tim May
, are the points of intersection
between logic and geometry.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum
reality, cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
. And motivated me to finish reading Huw
Price's book.
This is the real blessing of mailing lists like this one! I may now be
motivated to understand the kinds of logic you discuss if only to try to
refute you! (no offense intended)
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA
the visible Universe.
--Tim May (who also thinks the difficulty of time-reversing things like
ripples in a pond, radiation in general, and all sorts of other things
makes the Poincare recurrence a useful topological dynamics idea, but
one of utterly no cosmological significance)
Hal has brought up Huw Price's book, Time's Arrow and Arhimedes'
Point, and especially the thermodynamic/entropy arguments related to
recurrence a la Poincare, Boltzmann, and others.
A point Price makes several times is th
..though it needs to be borne in mind that not everyone had a clear
(A minor typo is corrected)
On Sunday, August 18, 2002, at 01:00 PM, Tim May wrote:
In Sequence One, the two urns are filled with stones of mixed color at
the start of the film. As the main transfers stones, the number of
black and white stones in each of the urns fluctuates
).
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality,
cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
by such
a recurrence.)
Nietzsche had similar ideas of the eternal recurrence, circa 1870.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality,
cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel
reason about the entire Universe or Multiverse unless we
can reason about very simple sub-parts of it.
In any case, it's my particular interest at this time.
I hope this helps clarify things a bit.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel
On Tuesday, August 13, 2002, at 10:08 AM, Tim May wrote:
This graph, this set of vertices and edges, is a per-ordered set.
More than just a set, any category with the property that between any
two objects p and q there is AT MOST one arrow p -- q is said to
be pre-ordered.
I meant
On Monday, August 12, 2002, at 11:18 PM, Wei Dai wrote:
Tim, I'm afraid I still don't understand you.
On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 06:00:26PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
It is possible that WWIII will happen before the end of this year. In
one possible world, A, many things are one way...burned
as the math of nonstandard logic goes, I think the most
interesting application within our lifetimes will come with AI.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality
On Tuesday, August 13, 2002, at 06:16 PM, Wei Dai wrote:
On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 10:08:50AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
* Because toposes are essentially mathematical universes in which
various bits and pieces of mathematics can be assumed. A topos in which
Euclid's Fifth Postulate is true
to believe.
--Tim May
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize
Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of
conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are
peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. --Samuel Adams
this relates to cosmology.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality,
cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
at David Lewis's work. It's a bit off the
beaten track for most MWI thinkers, but it clearly deals with the same
general ideas. And it offers new language and new tools.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest
to think about and respond to tonight.)
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality,
cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
organs are part of
the package.
But I have no particular philosophical or cognitive special competence
in this area, so I won't participate in the debate. Maybe later I will
turn my attention to it.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel
the topology and
geometry of life space: we know something about what nearness means,
through single-point mutations and their effects of organism viability,
and we are learning what rearrangements and insertions of string
sequences may mean.)
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA
different, perhaps.
--Tim May
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum
reality, cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
categorial. Functors are
the morphisms between categories. The first chapter of Yetter's book
is an intro to category theory, the second one, on Knot theory, ...
Exciting stuff.
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main
is that it simply defines omniscience as being
enough to have complete knowledge. There is no evidence that such
omniscience is possible, not even with all the computer power in the
universe.)
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current
.)
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality,
cosmology.
Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
areas.
I'll keep you all posted!
--Tim May
on some computer. I have a
hard time conceiving of how so much interesting mathematics would exist
with simple local CA rules. But I could be wrong. :-) )
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list background)
Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986.
Current main interest: category
that I speak about Goldblatt, because of Tim May who dares
to refer to algebra, category and topos! I want mention that Goldblatt
did wrote an excellent introduction to Toposes: Topoi. (One of the big
problem in topos theory is which plural chose for the word topos.
There
are two schools: topoi
turned out to be
favorable to life.
85
It was the old anthropic principle, the fudge which had saved a thousand
cosmologies. And I had no real argument with it even if all the other
universes were destined to be forever hypothetical.
--end excerpt--
--Tim May
(.sig for Everything list
is a professional
physicist, and has done much good work on conventional cosmology, so I'm
not dissing him. More on this later.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors
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