On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 08:40:40AM -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > All the anthropic reasoning stuff is bunk in my opinion. It's based on > the faulty idea that one can reason about consciousness by equating > observer moments with parts of the block universe. But as I suggest > above, you can't do this. >
I'm not entirely sure what to make of what you say here, except that it seems to be a criticism of the ASSA (that each observer moment is selected independently of any other from an absolute measure distribution). > > Bostrom's writings appear to grant validity to anthropic reasoning > (which I think is bunk) and also appear to identify consciousness > (sentient observer-moments) with pre-existing computations in the > block-universe. As I suggested above, consciousness is not reducible > to physical processes and this is what invalidates anthropic reasoning. Not all anthropic reasoning maps consciousness to specific physical processes... > > um.... now why does your sig say 'professor Russell Standish', > Mathematics with a academic address given? ;) > Its an adjunct position, which mainly means they don't pay me anything, or give me an office. The main advantages for me are access to a uni library (and more importantly the electronic journal subscriptions), and access to supercomputers for running simulations (I still have to apply, but it doesn't cost me anything). The main advantage to the school is some credit for my publications (which is worth real money)! Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
