Re: “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?”

[Bruce Kellett]

On 22/06/2017 7:22 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Jun 2017, at 01:31, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 22/06/2017 1:44 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 21 Jun 2017, at 08:21, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 21/06/2017 4:03 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:15:31PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 19/06/2017 10:23 am, Russell Standish wrote:
I know Scott wouldn't go as far as me. For me, all such 
irreversible

processes are related to conscious entities in some way. Whilst
agreeing that Geiger counters are unlikely to be conscious, I would
say that the output of Geiger counter is not actually discrete 
until

observed by a conscious experimenter.

That sounds remarkably like the "many minds" interpretation of
quantum mechanics. This is disfavoured by most scientists because it
leaves the physics of the billions of years before the emergence of
the first "conscious" creature unresolved -- the first consciousness
would cause an almighty collapse on the many minds reading.


Each consciousness causes "an almighty collapse" in er own mind
independently of any other. It's a pure 1p phenomena.


It is actually a 3p phenomenon because there is inter-subjective 
agreement about the fact that measurements give definite results.


Inter-subjectivity does not imply 3p, as it can be "only" 1p plural. 
Let me illustrate this with a variant of the WM duplication.


Imagine that Bruce and John are undergoing the WM-duplication 
*together*.


By this I mean they both enter the scanning-annihilating box, and 
are both reconstituted in Washington and in Moscow.


And let us assume they do it repetitively, which means they come 
back to Helsinki, and do it again together.


Obviously, the line-life past that each copies describes in its 
personal diaries grows like H followed by a sequence of W and M. The 
number of copies grows exponentially (2^n). After ten iterations, we 
have 2^10 = 1024 individuals, who share an indeterminate 
experiences. With minor exceptions, they all agree that the 
experience has always given each times a precise outcome, always 
belonging to {W, M}. Importantly  the duplicated couples agreed 
(which was the Washington or Moscow outcome) in all duplication. 
They mostly all agreed they did not found any obvious algorithm to 
predict the sequence (the exception might concerned the guys in 
nameable stories, like:


WW

MM

Or the development of some remarkable real number in binary, like 
the binary expansion of PI, sqrt(2), sqr(n), etc. In this case, the 
computable is made rare (and more and more negligible when n grows, 
those histories are "white rabbits histories").


That is what I mean by first person plural. It concerns population 
of machine sharing self-multiplication. it is interesting to compare 
the quantum linear self-superposition with the purely arithmetical one.


Sure, that would seem to be reasonably described as 1p-plural. except 
that there is no need to have two people enter the duplicating machine


? Then it is just 1p singular. We need two (or more) people entering 
the duplication device so that we get the intersubjective agreement.

and undergo different teleportations afterwards.


? They undergo the same teleportations. They are both reconstituted in 
the two different locations, and, obviously (we assume Digital 
Mechanism) they agree that the outcome is well determined from their 
common first person view, and that this the 1p plural.


Surely it is sufficient to consider one person doing a series of 
polarization measurements on a sequence of photons from an 
unpolarized source.


You need two persons. With one person, you can't distinguish 1p from 
1pp (1p plural).


I think I understand it now. The problems, I think, have arisen because 
you are using the same terminology for both the classical duplication of 
persons and the quantum branching of worlds. I think that conflating 
these two situations is a mistake because they are intrinsically 
different. In classical person duplication, there is no entanglement. 
Even if you duplicate two or more persons simultaneously, and subject 
them to the same teleportations, there is no real entanglement, just a 
simulation that mimics some features of entanglement. The lesson of Bell 
is that classical simulations of entanglement can never reproduce the 
quantum results.


In classical person duplication, it is only the person that is 
duplicated, not the whole world, so the 1p experience becomes central. 
Because the world is not duplicated, you can have an external observer 
who can see both ends of the duplication -- the 3p view. However, in the 
quantum case, a quantum event, when magnified to macro significance by 
decoherence, results in a branching of the whole world into disjoint 
copies. The role of the observer is diminished here, to the extent that 
an observer is not even required: if it is a quantum measurement, the 
experimenter is entangled with the result simply as part of the wider 

​Cosmological Natural Selection

[John Clark]

I've just read Lee Smolin's book
​ ​
"Time Reborn"
​ ​
and it reminded m
​e​
of his previous book
​ ​
"The Life Of The Cosmos"
​ ​
that was about
​ ​
Cosmological Natural Selection. Smolin's idea is that when a star collapses
into a Black Hole a Singularity does not form in it's center, instead
everything bounces back before infinite density is reached. You would not
see this from the outside of the Black Hole but from the inside such a
thing would look like a big bang, and a new universe would be formed.
​ ​
In that new universe the constants of physics, the 20 or so number
​s​
 that can't be derived and must be put in by hand by physicists to make
there theories conform with observation, are similar to their parent
universe but not identical, there would be some
​small ​
random variation.
​​
Universes that have laws encouraging the formation of black holes will
​thus ​
have more descendants than those that don't
​.​

​And
 all this sounds very much like Darwin's idea written on a cosmic scale
​ ​
because it has the 2 things that are needed, natural selection and
inheritance (although some have questioned the inheritance part wondering
if information can really cross the event horizon, even mutated
information).

Smolin
​ ​
does not
​ ​
predict
​ ​
that
​ ​
as a result of this Evolution
​ ​
the physical
​ ​
constants
​ ​
in our universe
​ ​
are
​ ​
perfect for the formation of Black Holes,
​ ​
but he does predict no small change
​ ​
in them
​ ​
will make more Black Holes.  And Black Holes need stars that go supernova,
and
​ ​
hose stars
​ ​
produce carbon and oxygen that also causes dust clouds to cool more and
collapse into
​ ​yet
more
​ ​
large stars that go supernova
​ ​
and form more Black Holes
​.​
Those heavy elements also cause life to form but as far as
​ ​
Cosmological Natural Selection
​ ​
is concerned that's just a unimportant byproduct.

But what about Primordial Black Holes, you don't need stars to make them.
According to inflation theory expansion of
​our​
 universe started slow but then in just
​ ​
10^-36 seconds space expanded by a factor of 10^78, during that time the
universe grew by a larger personage than it has form then to now
​ ​
13.8 billion years
​ ​
later. There is a number called the Size Density Constant, if it were much
larger all the matter in the universe would form Black Holes almost
immediately, but it turn out then the universe would inflate for even less
than 10^-36 seconds so there would be much less matter in it, so although
all its matter would be in the form on Black Holes it would have fewer
Black Holes than out universe does.

Smolin makes another prediction this one is about Neutron Stars.
Cosmological Natural Selection
​ ​
predicts that the maximum mass a Neutron Star can be is lower than
previously thought and thus more Black Holes can be produced due to a
particle called the Kaon. The conventional idea is that in a Neutron Star
the pressure is so high electrons are forced into protons forming neutrons
and that's the end of the story, and if that's true then the maximum mass
of a Neutron star is
​ ​
somewhere between
​ ​
2.5
​ ​
and
​ ​
2.9 solar masses
​.​
But that's without considering Kaons, Smolin found that theory says some
interesting things happens to them when the pressure gets very high.

Normally Kaons are much more massive than electrons and thus unstable, but
under ultra high pressure suddenly the individual wave function of the
particles will merge, much like what happens to electrons in
superconductors, and their effective mass should be reduced
​ ​
by
​ ​
a lot, perhaps even to less than that of a electron.  If that actually
happens then things would be reversed and electrons would become unstable
and decay into Kaons (and Neutrinos  which fly out of the star and play no
further part in the story). In this scenario the upper mass limit for a
neutron star is
​ ​
between
​ ​
1.6
​ ​
and
​ ​
2 solar masses. More than that and a Black Hole forms because the
Kaon-Proton-Neutron soup at the center would be even more dense than
degenerate neutron matter
​,​
 so the Neutron Star would be smaller
​ and​
 its surface gravity greater, and thus a Black Hole can be formed with less
mass.

​But would the effective mass of the Kaon really ​become less than that of
the electron? Nobody knows for sure but we do know that the mass of the
Kaon depends on the mass of the Strange Quark, and the Strange Quark has
little involvement with everyday matter in our everyday world, so in a
universe that had a Strange Quark with a mass very different from our own
things would be pretty much the same as they are here except the maximum
size of a Neutron Star and thus the minimum size of a Black Hole would be
different.

​
The two most massive neutron stars
​where the​
​
 mass
​ ​
ha
​s​
​ ​
been
​ ​
been accurately measured
​are​
​ ​
PSR J0348+0432
​ ​
with
​ ​
2.01±0.04 solar masses
​ ​
and
​ ​
PSR J1614–2230
​ ​
with
​ ​
1.97 ± 0.04
​ ​
solar masses. So far the Kaon idea 

Re: “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?”

[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 Jun 2017, at 03:46, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 22/06/2017 10:32 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Jun 2017 00:31, "Bruce Kellett"   
wrote:

On 22/06/2017 1:44 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 21 Jun 2017, at 08:21, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 21/06/2017 4:03 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:15:31PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 19/06/2017 10:23 am, Russell Standish wrote:
I know Scott wouldn't go as far as me. For me, all such irreversible
processes are related to conscious entities in some way. Whilst
agreeing that Geiger counters are unlikely to be conscious, I would
say that the output of Geiger counter is not actually discrete until
observed by a conscious experimenter.
That sounds remarkably like the "many minds" interpretation of
quantum mechanics. This is disfavoured by most scientists because it
leaves the physics of the billions of years before the emergence of
the first "conscious" creature unresolved -- the first consciousness
would cause an almighty collapse on the many minds reading.

Each consciousness causes "an almighty collapse" in er own mind
independently of any other. It's a pure 1p phenomena.

It is actually a 3p phenomenon because there is inter-subjective  
agreement about the fact that measurements give definite results.


Inter-subjectivity does not imply 3p, as it can be "only" 1p  
plural. Let me illustrate this with a variant of the WM duplication.


Imagine that Bruce and John are undergoing the WM-duplication  
*together*.


By this I mean they both enter the scanning-annihilating box, and  
are both reconstituted in Washington and in Moscow.


And let us assume they do it repetitively, which means they come  
back to Helsinki, and do it again together.


Obviously, the line-life past that each copies describes in its  
personal diaries grows like H followed by a sequence of W and M.  
The number of copies grows exponentially (2^n). After ten  
iterations, we have 2^10 = 1024 individuals, who share an  
indeterminate experiences. With minor exceptions, they all agree  
that the experience has always given each times a precise outcome,  
always belonging to {W, M}. Importantly  the duplicated couples  
agreed (which was the Washington or Moscow outcome) in all  
duplication. They mostly all agreed they did not found any obvious  
algorithm to predict the sequence (the exception might concerned  
the guys in nameable stories, like:


WW

MM

Or the development of some remarkable real number in binary, like  
the binary expansion of PI, sqrt(2), sqr(n), etc. In this case, the  
computable is maderare (and more and more  
negligible when n grows, those histories are "white rabbits  
histories").


That is what I mean by first person plural. It concerns population  
of machine sharing self-multiplication. it is interesting to  
compare the quantum linear self-superposition with the purely  
arithmetical one.


Sure, that would seem to be reasonably described as 1p-plural.  
except that there is no need to have two people enter the  
duplicating machine and undergo different teleportations  
afterwards. Surely it is sufficient to consider one person doing a  
series of polarization measurements on a sequence of photons from  
an unpolarized source. That person will record some sequence of '+'  
and '-' results. If the experiment is repeated N times, there will  
be 2^N sequences, one in each of the generated worlds.


But that has nothing to do with inter-subjective agreement between  
different observers. To see that, consider just one polarization  
measurement: In order for it to be said that the measurement gave a  
result, there has to be decoherence and the formation of  
irreversible records. I think it is Zurek who talks about multiple  
copies of the result entangled with the environment. So many  
different individuals can observe the result of this single  
experiment, and they will all agree that the result was what the  
experimenter wrote in her lab book. That is inter-subjective  
agreement. It clearly has nothing to do with 1p, or 1p-plural  
pictures.


I think there may be a terminological confusion here. IIUC, 1p- 
plural denotes, amongst other things, just such inter-subjective  
agreement between mutually entangled observers.


That seems a remarkably confusing terminology. The example Bruno  
gave to illustrate 1p-plural was not an example of inter-subjective  
agreement -- there were just repeated measurements by the one person.


?

By TWO persons. You do miss the point, it seems.

Bruno



If you conflate 1p-plural with inter-subjective, what on earth is  
3p? The notation suggested to me 'third person', or the view of an  
outsider watching the experiment. This outsider certainly gets  
entangled with the experimenter and his result, but the many copies  
give rise to the inter-subjective agreement about what that result  
was. Bruno has certainly used 3p in this way many times 

Re: “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?”

[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 Jun 2017, at 01:31, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 22/06/2017 1:44 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 21 Jun 2017, at 08:21, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 21/06/2017 4:03 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:15:31PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 19/06/2017 10:23 am, Russell Standish wrote:
I know Scott wouldn't go as far as me. For me, all such  
irreversible

processes are related to conscious entities in some way. Whilst
agreeing that Geiger counters are unlikely to be conscious, I  
would
say that the output of Geiger counter is not actually discrete  
until

observed by a conscious experimenter.

That sounds remarkably like the "many minds" interpretation of
quantum mechanics. This is disfavoured by most scientists  
because it
leaves the physics of the billions of years before the emergence  
of
the first "conscious" creature unresolved -- the first  
consciousness

would cause an almighty collapse on the many minds reading.


Each consciousness causes "an almighty collapse" in er own mind
independently of any other. It's a pure 1p phenomena.


It is actually a 3p phenomenon because there is inter-subjective  
agreement about the fact that measurements give definite results.


Inter-subjectivity does not imply 3p, as it can be "only" 1p  
plural. Let me illustrate this with a variant of the WM duplication.


Imagine that Bruce and John are undergoing the WM-duplication  
*together*.


By this I mean they both enter the scanning-annihilating box, and  
are both reconstituted in Washington and in Moscow.


And let us assume they do it repetitively, which means they come  
back to Helsinki, and do it again together.


Obviously, the line-life past that each copies describes in its  
personal diaries grows like H followed by a sequence of W and M.  
The number of copies grows exponentially (2^n). After ten  
iterations, we have 2^10 = 1024 individuals, who share an  
indeterminate experiences. With minor exceptions, they all agree  
that the experience has always given each times a precise outcome,  
always belonging to {W, M}. Importantly  the duplicated couples  
agreed (which was the Washington or Moscow outcome) in all  
duplication. They mostly all agreed they did not found any obvious  
algorithm to predict the sequence (the exception might concerned  
the guys in nameable stories, like:


WW

MM

Or the development of some remarkable real number in binary, like  
the binary expansion of PI, sqrt(2), sqr(n), etc. In this case, the  
computable is made rare (and more and more negligible when n grows,  
those histories are "white rabbits histories").


That is what I mean by first person plural. It concerns population  
of machine sharing self-multiplication. it is interesting to  
compare the quantum linear self-superposition with the purely  
arithmetical one.


Sure, that would seem to be reasonably described as 1p-plural.  
except that there is no need to have two people enter the  
duplicating machine


? Then it is just 1p singular. We need two (or more) people entering  
the duplication device so that we get the intersubjective agreement.







and undergo different teleportations afterwards.


? They undergo the same teleportations. They are both reconstituted in  
the two different locations, and, obviously (we assume Digital  
Mechanism) they agree that the outcome is well determined from their  
common first person view, and that this the 1p plural.




Surely it is sufficient to consider one person doing a series of  
polarization measurements on a sequence of photons from an  
unpolarized source.


You need two persons. With one person, you can't distinguish 1p from  
1pp (1p plural).




That person will record some sequence of '+' and '-' results. If the  
experiment is repeated N times, there will be 2^N sequences, one in  
each of the generated worlds.


Glad to hear that. You might try to explain this to John. But you need  
two person doing the experiment, or discussing it at least, in which  
case the secondf person will entangle with the first, already  
entangled with the observed particle (say).


O2 O1 (up + down) ==>O2 (O1 up + O1 down) ==> O2 O1 up + O2 O1 down =>  
O2 O1[up] up + O2 O1[down] down => etc. There is subjective agreement  
between O1 and O2, because the superposition and measurement (in the  
same base, here) propogate from O1 to O2.








But that has nothing to do with inter-subjective agreement between  
different observers.


? Because you withdrew the second person. I think me or you miss  
something.





To see that, consider just one polarization measurement: In order  
for it to be said that the measurement gave a result, there has to  
be decoherence and the formation of irreversible records. I think it  
is Zurek who talks about multiple copies of the result entangled  
with the environment. So many different individuals can observe the  
result of this single experiment, and they will all agree that the  
result was 

Re: “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?”

[David Nyman]

On 22 Jun 2017 2:46 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 22/06/2017 10:32 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 22 Jun 2017 00:31, "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

On 22/06/2017 1:44 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 21 Jun 2017, at 08:21, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>> On 21/06/2017 4:03 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:15:31PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>>
 On 19/06/2017 10:23 am, Russell Standish wrote:

> I know Scott wouldn't go as far as me. For me, all such irreversible
> processes are related to conscious entities in some way. Whilst
> agreeing that Geiger counters are unlikely to be conscious, I would
> say that the output of Geiger counter is not actually discrete until
> observed by a conscious experimenter.
>
 That sounds remarkably like the "many minds" interpretation of
 quantum mechanics. This is disfavoured by most scientists because it
 leaves the physics of the billions of years before the emergence of
 the first "conscious" creature unresolved -- the first consciousness
 would cause an almighty collapse on the many minds reading.

 Each consciousness causes "an almighty collapse" in er own mind
>>> independently of any other. It's a pure 1p phenomena.
>>>
>>
>> It is actually a 3p phenomenon because there is inter-subjective
>> agreement about the fact that measurements give definite results.
>>
>
> Inter-subjectivity does not imply 3p, as it can be "only" 1p plural. Let
> me illustrate this with a variant of the WM duplication.
>
> Imagine that Bruce and John are undergoing the WM-duplication *together*.
>
> By this I mean they both enter the scanning-annihilating box, and are both
> reconstituted in Washington and in Moscow.
>
> And let us assume they do it repetitively, which means they come back to
> Helsinki, and do it again together.
>
> Obviously, the line-life past that each copies describes in its personal
> diaries grows like H followed by a sequence of W and M. The number of
> copies grows exponentially (2^n). After ten iterations, we have 2^10 = 1024
> individuals, who share an indeterminate experiences. With minor exceptions,
> they all agree that the experience has always given each times a precise
> outcome, always belonging to {W, M}. Importantly  the duplicated couples
> agreed (which was the Washington or Moscow outcome) in all duplication.
> They mostly all agreed they did not found any obvious algorithm to predict
> the sequence (the exception might concerned the guys in nameable stories,
> like:
>
> WW
>
> MM
>
> Or the development of some remarkable real number in binary, like the
> binary expansion of PI, sqrt(2), sqr(n), etc. In this case, the computable
> is made rare (and more and more negligible when n grows, those histories
> are "white rabbits histories").
>
> That is what I mean by first person plural. It concerns population of
> machine sharing self-multiplication. it is interesting to compare the
> quantum linear self-superposition with the purely arithmetical one.
>

Sure, that would seem to be reasonably described as 1p-plural. except that
there is no need to have two people enter the duplicating machine and
undergo different teleportations afterwards. Surely it is sufficient to
consider one person doing a series of polarization measurements on a
sequence of photons from an unpolarized source. That person will record
some sequence of '+' and '-' results. If the experiment is repeated N
times, there will be 2^N sequences, one in each of the generated worlds.

But that has nothing to do with inter-subjective agreement between
different observers. To see that, consider just one polarization
measurement: In order for it to be said that the measurement gave a result,
there has to be decoherence and the formation of irreversible records. I
think it is Zurek who talks about multiple copies of the result entangled
with the environment. So many different individuals can observe the result
of this single experiment, and they will all agree that the result was what
the experimenter wrote in her lab book. That is inter-subjective agreement.
It clearly has nothing to do with 1p, or 1p-plural pictures.


I think there may be a terminological confusion here. IIUC, 1p-plural
denotes, amongst other things, just such inter-subjective agreement between
mutually entangled observers.


That seems a remarkably confusing terminology. The example Bruno gave to
illustrate 1p-plural was not an example of inter-subjective agreement --
there were just repeated measurements by the one person.


That's why I said "amongst other things".

If you conflate 1p-plural with inter-subjective, what on earth is 3p?


3p is a (sometimes imaginary) perspective on some state of affairs at one
remove from the 1p views of any of the supposed participants of interest.


The notation suggested to me 'third person', or the view of an outsider