On 03 May 2010, at 01:20, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/2/2010 3:33 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 02 May 2010, at 20:30, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/2/2010 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 May 2010, at 22:02, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com
> wrote:
This argument is not
definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of
consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for
consciousness it seems pretty good.
Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of
consciousness, then
there's no problem! That is pretty good.
So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have
timeless thoughts?
DM (digital mechanism, comp ...) entails somehow that all thought
are timeless;
That's one of the assumptions of DM, that thoughts are states.
But that seems doubtful to me. At the "substitution level" there
are states, but those are too finely divided to correspond to
thoughts.
Thought are not state. Thought correspond to infinities of
sequences of states: at least one for any universal machine, given
that the UD run all UDs executed by all universal machines. This
makes a lot of number relations involved in the epistemological
existence of (conscious, first person) thought. The thought are
really in the abstract structures realized by those infinities of
sequences of states. Now, all this is defined already in Platonia
and is timeless. Time belongs to the thought, it is part of the
qualia.
Ok. So sequence is part of thought, and I suppose that supplies the
direction of time we experience with the thought. So while the
thought, as described in Platonia, is timeless it's experienced as
timed because of the sequential structure.
OK. And the finite sequences are determined by the usual relations
provable in (Robinson) arithmetic: 0 < 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < ...
But thoughts related to universal machines which makes them felt
as being embedded in time-structure.
Amazingly enough some plants can make you live timeless
consciousness (google on salvia divinorum reports). Despite DM, I
thought such experience was not "memorizable", but apparently
they are.
Are these timeless thoughts expressible in sentences? or are they
like images?
I have to say that is unlike anything you can conceive, even after
"living that". It looks more like a new qualia, where reason suggests
that no qualia can be there, except perhaps in the form of a (sudden)
remembering of a "true" (eternal/invariant/unmovable) identity which
has just nothing to do with time, space, images, sound, even numbers.
Ineffable is the usual rendering.
Let me try an image of some predecessor altered conscious state: It
may be described as seing your "body-and-soul" as a window on reality,
and you cease to identify yourself with that body-and-soul, but you
identify "yourself" to the one who look through the windows, and
actually "your current window", which appears as contingent. This is
made possible by amnesy and/or dissociation from your memory/memories.
Let me make some comments related to other posts:
About TS (technological singularity): I have a theory according
to which this happens each time an universal entity generates an
universal entity. In that sense the following are probable
examples of TS:
- the big bang (in the theories where that exists)
- the origin of life
- the origin of brain
- the origin of thought
- the origin of languages
- the origin of computers/universal machine
- the origin of programming languages
etc.
All those TS, and infinitely many others, exist out of time and
space in any unravelling of arithmetical truth.
The Löbian machine is the most intelligent entities that can
exist, but "programming it" make it a slave, and its "soul falls".
What some people call TS is not when machine will be as clever as
us, but as stupid as us, probably. Stupidity develops when we
confuse competence and intelligence. Intelligence is needed to
develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on
intelligence.
About BB (Boltzmann brains):
BB provide a physicalist rendering of the (mathematical) UD
paradox. The UD, and thus elementary arithmetic, generates all
BB's states, in infinitely many histories. You can extract the
measure on them by the use of the logic of arithmetical self-
reference,
What measure is that?
The one which extends the 'measure one' given by S4grz1, or/and
Z1*, or/and X1*.That is, the material hypostases. The measure
exists if the arithmetical quantum logic, (with quantization of p
defined by BDp, with B and D the box and diamond of S4grz1 or/and
Z1* or/and X1*) fulfills von Neumann criterion for being the
"right' quantum logic: it defines the orthostructure on which a
"theorem of Gleason" makes it possible to extend the measure 1-
calculus into the full calculus (measure in [0 1]).
Doesn't that require a continuous probability operator? How is that
consistent with the digital nature of comp?
It is a consequence of the first person indeterminacy. The UD
multiplies all computations, belonging to the domain of indeterminacy,
by 2^aleph_0. It is a point I have discussed a long time ago with
Schmidhuber on this list.
The UD dovetails on all finite pieces of computations using the real
number as oracle. Although the set of real numbers is not enumerable,
the UD can dovetail on *all* real numbers, that is it can generate all
real numbers, or all infinite binary sequences:
The idea is to see a finite initial sequence as a name for all
sequences having the same beginning.
0 (here I have succeed in generating the first digit of all
sequences beginning by 0 (a non enumerable set!))
1 (and here another infinity!)
00 (and here another one)
01 (and here another one)
10 (and here another one)
11 (and here another one)
000
001
010
011
100
101
110
111
etc.
Even algorithmically incompressible sequences are eventually
generated, bit by bit. There is no contradiction, because a sequence
is said non compressible if the shorter program generating it, *and
only it* is about the same size of the sequence. Here, the trick is
that we generate all sequences, finite pieces by finite pieces.
From a third person point of view, this is equivalent with the
generation of all finite binary sequence, but ...
... your first person indeterminacy is invariant for the delay of the
UD generating all those piece of computations. So we have to take them
all, and the measure will be defined on all computations going through
your states, including those dovetailing on the reals. Applying the
rule Y = II, that is looking in the consciousness-differentiation
'picture' instead of the "bifurcating realities", you see that the
first person (plural) indeterminacy is defined a priori on a non
enumerable structure.
It is different but comparable to Skolem paradox, where an enumerable
model of ZF exists. From inside that model, many non enumerable set
exists, and the model (universe) itself is non enumerable. But it may
be said to be an illusion from inside. We, outside the model we see
bijection between the "non enumerable set" of the model, and N. But we
can see that those bijection does not belong to the model. They go out
and in the model, so that the creature in the model cannot see them,
and are correct when proving those set to be non enumerable.
But here, with the UD, it is different. The non enumerability comes
from the limiting use of the first person non awareness of any UD time
steps, and the fact that the UD and UDs dovetails on the reals (and
the octonions, etc.).
That's the UDA-type of explanation. Now, there is a more formal reason
reason: why would the model of the material 'hypostases", that is the
(non Kripke) semantics of the X1*, or Z1* be digital instead of
continuous? There is no reason. The fact that we loose the
necessitation rules favor more topological semantical structures.
Dont hesitate to ask any further questions.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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