On Tue, Dec 29, 2037 at 12:52:36AM +0100, Marchal wrote: > I will try. Please tell me if I fail.
No, it's very helpful. I'll have more feedback after digesting the information and reading the books on metamathematics. A couple of suggestions in the meantime. In your future papers you may want to define some of the terms that you use. For example what you mean by "computationalism" seems to be a very specific kind of computationalism, as the term is commonly used. This page (http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/local/books/computers-and-thought/gloss/node1.html) defines computationalism only as: > The notion that the operation of the mind can be explained entirely in > terms of the formal, or functional, properties of a computational > system. You should also get a local colleague to review your papers before publishing them. The CC&Q paper on your site contains a number of spelling and grammatical errors. The reviewer can also help you by pointing out the areas that need clarification. > The best book is Boolos 1993 "The logic of provability" (ref in my > thesis, or look at "Boolos" in the archive). > A good intro is Boolos and Jeffrey. > A textbook is Smorynski "Self-reference and Modal logic". > A popular introduction is Smullyan's "Forever Undecided". What about _Introduction to Metamathematics_, by Stephen Cole Kleene. Is that any good? > 2) Church Thesis: Anything computable is Turing computable. I give > the conceptual reason for this at > http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3344.html You refence a "G*" in this post. What does that mean? May I suggest that you put a list of such terms and definitions on your web site for reference? You probably defined it in an earlier post, but again it's hard to read 500 posts. Perhaps you could also give a list of essential posts that explain your ideas as concisely and clearly as possible and the order that is best to read them in, and put that on your web site as well. > Also, when you say that QM should be the shortest algorithm, I am > afraid you share with Schmidhuber a proposition on the mind body > relationship which I show to be inconsistent with comp. You seem > to believe that the mind brain relation is one-one. No I don't believe that. What I meant was that QM plus a translation algorithm (into some abstract description of observer-moments) is the shortest algorithm. I think that multiple distinct brains can translate to the same abstract description. On the other hand, from a decision theory perspective, this question may be irrelevent or just a subjective value judgement. The reason I'm so interested in a decision theoretic approach is that it may help us figure out which are the essential questions, and which may just be empty philosophy. If the answer to a question is irrelevent to choosing actions, does the question mean anything? If the answer only affects the utility function, does that mean it has no objective answer and there is no point in arguing over it? P.S. Happy Thanksgiving everythingers. Right now I'm very thankful that I live in a world that affords me the opportunity to think and talk about these issues.