Bruno: > With comp, what holds 'your lot" together are the relation between > numbers. The apparent third person infinite regression stops at the > level of those relations. The first person is most probably confronted > with many infinities, but this should not be considered as > problematical.
MP: But what *relation* is there really? I just feel like this kind of discussion goes round and round in endless convolutions. Platonia is some kind of Never-never land; that numbers exist anywhere except inside human skulls and nowadays within phenotypic prostheses like electronic computers is NOT a proven fact, it is a glorious assumption! I mean the big and unanswered question is WHERE are numbers? Mathematicians now seem to be very sophisticated with WHAT numbers could BE, and _do_ also apparently, but very very big numbers which could represent everything significant about you, me, or the likelihood of a self referencing computer working out that it knows that it knows something really important, how can these 'relate'? Surely they have to be related by someone or something else! I guess what I am saying is that numbers need something which is not numbers in which, or by means of which they can exist for each other. I call it 'existence', and use the name of Janus as my symbol or emblem of this. But I don't expect any such symbol or emblem to resolve the paradoxes of our existence and experience of existence. As far as I can see, which admittedly is not very far, all explanations that purport to be *ultimate* explanations are doomed to a process of infinite recursion and regression. There was an Englishman called Kenneth Craik, who wrote a little book called 'The Nature of Explanation'. Unfortunately he died in his early thirties in a car accident in 1945 I think. I go along with his thesis - as I remember it from reading the book a decade or more ago - that the representational power of mathematics stems from its evolution of complex mathematical objects out of the interactions of simple elements, which can mirror many significant aspects of the physical/noumenal world because the latter seems to be manifesting a closely analogous evolution of aggregations of fundamental chemical elements, sub-atomic particles and so forth. For better or worse I must advocate what is hereabouts a virtual heresy: that people can never be reduced to numbers. To be a person entails the experience of 'I' and 'thou', 'me' and 'you'. There can be no me without you and no 'us' without 'them'. If a modest Loebian machine cannot work this out, then it needs to go back to school. Perhaps it can though, [if all worlds are possible and must happen], maybe it is just a matter of time before one or more smart, introspective, self-sustaining processors/processes emerges from a BOINC type distributed system. My bet is that the Silico-Electric ONE [or two, ...] will coalesce around the control and accounting of money, money being the embodiment of negative entropy in the cultural world. For what it's worth I think that such a creature will realise that ethics is part of the foundation of its world: a fundamental tool for the maximising of 'negative entropy'. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Le 06-mars-07, à 09:44, Mark Peaty a écrit : > >> >> Thank you Bruno! >> >> You and Russell between you have managed to strike some sparks of >> illumination from the rocky inside of my skull. There is no beacon fire >> to report but I start to get a glimmering of why you want to *assume* >> comp and see where it leads. >> >> It seems that self-reference and recursion are fundamental properties >> of >> anything that is "interesting" in all this, which rather seems to be >> the >> flavour of the new millennium. >> >> Just in thinking superficially about the Many Worlds though, it seems >> to >> pose a 'binding problem'. Now, I know that might sound like a leakage >> of >> concept from objections to identity theory in brain and mind theory. >> But >> what I am thinking about is this bit: >> >> 6) this means that if I take the comp hyp seriously, then, to predict >> the results of any experiment/experience, I have to "localize" all the >> infinitely many instantiations of my current state in the UD, look at >> the uncountable comp histories going through that states, and compute >> the statistics bearing on all consistent first person >> self-continuation. >> >> A human life must be a compilation of all these including the creation >> of internal [synaptic change, etc] structure/record which endow the >> ability to *be* the story. But when looking at this as a/n >> [infinity^infinity] Many Worlds affair, none of the worlds could 'know' >> that they are like or identical to others, surely? So I am puzzled. >> What >> holds 'my lot' together? We seem always to be confronted by yet another >> infinite regression. > > > > With comp, what holds 'your lot" together are the relation between > numbers. The apparent third person infinite regression stops at the > level of those relations. The first person is most probably confronted > with many infinities, but this should not be considered as > problematical. > > > > > > > >> ****** >> A quick aside, hopefully not totally unrelated: Am I right that a valid >> explanation of the zero point energy is that it is impossible *in >> principle* to measure the state of something > > Why can't we measure the state of something? Even with just QM, the > many-world idea has been invented for abandoning the idea that a > measurement pertubates what is observed. > > > >> and therefore *we* must >> acknowledge the indeterminacy > > We must acknowledge indeterminacy once we postulate comp, given that it > makes us self-duplicable, and indeed self-duplicated "all the time". > > Bruno > > >> and so must everything else which exists >> because we are nothing special, except we think we know we are here, >> and >> if we are bound by quantum indeterminacy, so is everything else [unless >> it can come up with a good excuse!]? >> >> [Perhaps this is more on Stathis's question to Russell: Is a real >> number >> an infinite process?] >> >> ****** >> >> >> >> Regards >> >> Mark Peaty CDES >> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >> http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ >> >> >> >> >> >> Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> Le 05-mars-07, à 15:03, Mark Peaty a écrit : >>> >>> >>> >>>> Nobody here has yet explained in plain-English why we have entropy. >>>> Oh >>>> well, surely, in the Many Worlds, that's just one of the universes >>>> that >>>> can happen! >>>> >>> >>> Not really. That would make the comp hyp or the everything idea >>> trivial, and both the "everything hyp" and the "comp hyp" would loose >>> any explicative power. (It *is* the problem with Schmidhuber's comp, >>> *and* with Tegmark's form of mathematicalism: see older posts for >>> that). >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> Except that, for plain-English reasons stated above, there >>>> are *and always have been* infinity x infinity x infinity of entropic >>>> universes. >>>> >>>> It doesn't make sense. Call me a heretic if you like, but I will >>>> 'stick >>>> to my guns' here: If it can't be put into plain-English then it >>>> probably >>>> isn't true! >>>> >>> >>> >>> I will try. I will, by the same token, answer Mohsen question here: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Mohsen: >>> >>>> I don't know if in the hypothesis of simulation, the conflict of >>>> Countable and Uncountable has been considered. >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> 1) I assume the comp hyp, if only for the sake of the reasoning. The >>> comp hyp is NOT the hypothesis of simulation, but it is the hypothesis >>> that we are in principle self-simulable by a digital machine. >>> >>> 2) Then we have to distinguish the first person points of view (1-pov) >>> from third person points of view (3-pov), and eventually we will have >>> to distinguish all Plotinus' hypostases. With comp, we are >>> duplicable. >>> I can be read and cut (copy) in Brussels, and be "pasted" in >>> Washington >>> and Moscow simultaneously. This gives a simple example where: >>> a) from the third point of view, there is no indeterminacy. An >>> external >>> (3-pov) observer can predict Bruno will be in Washington AND in >>> Moscow. >>> b) from a first person point of view, there is an indeterminacy, I >>> will >>> feel myself in washington OR in Moscow, not in the two places at once. >>> >>> 3) Whatever means I use to quantify the first person indeterminacy, >>> the >>> result will not depend on possible large delays between the >>> reconstitutions, nor of the virtual/material/purely-mathematical >>> character of the reconstitution. >>> >>> 4) There exist a universal dovetailer (consequence of Church thesis, >>> but we could drop Church thesis and define comp in term of turing >>> machine instead). >>> >>> 5) Never underestimate the dumbness of the universal dovetailer: not >>> only it generates all computational histories, but it generates them >>> all infinitely often, + all variations, + all "real" oracles (and >>> those >>> oracles are uncountable). >>> >>> 6) this means that if I take the comp hyp seriously, then, to predict >>> the results of any experiment/experience, I have to "localize" all the >>> infinitely many instantiations of my current state in the UD, look at >>> the uncountable comp histories going through that states, and compute >>> the statistics bearing on all consistent first person >>> self-continuation. >>> >>> 7) A naive reading of this leads to predict white rabbits (indeed the >>> lewis Carroll one) and perhaps white noise, that is too much entropy >>> ... This leads to a cheap refutation of comp, ... >>> >>> 8) ... except that the math shows this is a bit too cheap. Now if comp >>> is correct, AND if the physical laws are (approximately) correct, then >>> we have to extract the physical laws >>> a) without assuming the existence of a physical universe, >>> b) from the comp statistics. >>> >>> My (more technical) result is that computer science and mathematical >>> logics gives already clues that indeed we can recover the physical >>> laws >>> from computer science, once we get the relevant description of the >>> different points of view. >>> >>> In particular, for Mohsen's question, the conflict between countable >>> and uncountable appears to be an unavoidable conflict between first >>> and >>> third person points of view. The first person is bound up to interact >>> with uncountable physical apparent reality. >>> But all self-referentially correct universal machine introspecting >>> herself can discover the unavoidability of that conflict, and somehow >>> "meta-solve" it, indeed by distinguishing explicitly those points of >>> view again. When she does this, she discover a more subtle tension >>> between recursively countable and non recursively countable. This >>> tension is creative and can be proposed as a beginning of explanation >>> of life and local neguentropy. >>> >>> All this makes comp, and its related "theology" (theory of everything >>> including persons, say), empirically testable: derive the comp-physics >>> and compare with empirical nature. >>> >>> Must go. Hope this helps, (see papers in my url for more, or just ask) >>> >>> Bruno >>> >>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >>> >>> >>> >>> > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
