Fred Chen wrote: >I appreciate how something like the Universal Dovetailer or equivalent >programs can generate an infinite set of programs that could include the one >that describes our universe (including our consciousness).
You are confusing Schmidhuber-like theories with me-like theories (if I can say). In Schmidhuber-like theories there are indeed a program which generates an infinite set of programs that could include the one that describes our universe (including our consciousness). I have explained in length why such approach fails to explain what is matter, what is consciousness, what is time, what is a universe. And also that such approach buries the mind body problem. What I just show is that if we are machines then the physical appearances *must* emerges from *all* computations *at once*, and that the physical discourses, both first person (including uncommunicable qualia) and third person (communicable quanta) must be defined with a sort of sum on all computations. >However, Godel's >theorem applied to this top-down approach would prevent us >from being able to recognize that program, or even knowing how >to recognize that program. You are right! That the first law of machine psychology. It is related to what I call Post-Benaceraff principle. See http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2487.html. It can be dangerous for Schmidhuber-like approach. It does not threat my "theorem" :-) Quite the contrary: Godel's theorem is generalised by the modal logic G and G*, which axiomatises completely propositional psychology machine, from which portion of physics can be derived. >The best we can do is continually narrow down the options, >from an infinite subset to a "smaller" infinite subset, as we >add more parameters for >description. No. Read carefully the recent UDA thread to understand. >To reconcile with anthropic fine-tuning without white rabbits, I had bought >into the postulate that we were in the simplest possible universe, in the >absence of knowing the exact criteria for developing self-aware >consciousness, but just assuming that some absolute criteria exist. But >this begs the questions, what are those criteria and why those criteria? >Without knowing these criteria, we cannot tell what is the simplest possible >universe containing consciousness. With comp we don't need such criteria. We sum on all program executions. It really looks like a generalisation of Feynman integral. In particular it should be an integral ... Bruno
