On 04 Feb 2011, at 20:34, Andrew Soltau wrote:
On 04/02/11 19:22, David Nyman wrote:
On 4 February 2011 18:44, Andrew
Soltau<[email protected]> wrote:
From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in
language
problems.
Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do
you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential
reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day
observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to
date.
Forgive me butting in, but occasionally I find it helps to reconsider
the problem using less technical language (since I'm not very
technical). I tend to think about this from a One-Many perspective.
Essentially, in talking about "consciousness" or observation, the
comp
assumption implies that our perspective is always from the "point of
view" of the One. The infinity of computation, in this analogy the
Many, is somehow "seen" from the point of view of the One. So then
the question is - how can any particular set of experiences emerge,
or
be filtered, from the totality of the Many, from such a perspective?
Simple ideas of "measure" may indeed seem to give the wrong answer,
very quickly. It seems that we have to think combinatorially, in
terms of higher orders of "filtration" - perhaps an infinity of them.
The "Goldilocks enigma" of cosmology may be suggestive here - the
20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite degree of
adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence, seems to imply a
pitiless winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential
realities with the observed characteristics can survive. Hence the
remainder subside into non-experiential oblivion.
I suppose that was as clear as mud. But it may give a flavour.
David
From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in
language
problems.
Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do
you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential
reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day
observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to
date.
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Thank you David, 'butting in' very welcome!
It seems quite inevitable that any ordinary concept of measure must
give the wrong answer. And it seems to me that since what is
proposed is at least radically counter-intuitive, it requires some
powerful rationale to support it. I am not clear what possible basis
is provided for this rationale.
Yes indeed, 'the 20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite
degree of adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence' does
indeed imply, surely to all of us, that there is 'a pitiless
winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential
realities with the observed characteristics can survive' but surely
this implies, or tends to imply, a physical basis, a relativistic
and quantum mechanical basis, to reality - it is the physical
parameters, and their place in physics, which provides this brutal
filtering. Or is there a point here with respect to computational
mind that I am missing?
If the primitively physical universe does the filtering, then it
cannot contain an omega point, given that it will reproduce, as you
said, a universal dovetailing, and so the indeterminacy on my
computational continuations will bear on that dovetailing, and again
physics has to be emerging on the arithmetical dovetailing. That's the
point seven. You did miss this in a previews post, and I hope you have
well understood this now (tell me please).
So, a primitively physical reality can do the 'brutal filtering' only
by being 'little'. But then you are facing the movie graph problem,
you will have to make consciousness dependent on the primitively
physical nature of the running machine and this means you can no more
say "yes" to the doctor for any *digital* substitution which conserves
the functionality of your brain: in other word comp is false. That's
the point 8. We cannot distinguish an arithmetical emulation from a
"real, or primitively physical" one. The arithmetical creatures are
not zombies.
So if comp is true, we are led to that "radically counter-intuitive
conclusion" that the laws of physics *have to* emerge from the laws of
computation, that is on addition and multiplication. We might believe
at this stage that we have just refuted comp, because we might think
that there will remain too much white rabbits.
But that's not true. The mechanist are lucky, because once you try to
get a theory of computational observers, the computer theoretic self-
reference constraints show that the different points of view definable
(or meta-definable for a simpler machine than oneself) leads to
counter-intuitive propositions too, which counterbalance the counter-
intuitive nature of reality of comp.
Provability (Bp), knowability (Bp & p) and observability (Bp & Dp),
and feelability (Bp & Dp & p) obeys radically different logics,
despite proving the same arithmetical propositions. Indeed the
computationalist logic of observation appears to be quantum-like, and
appears to reorganize the structure of the computations space into a a
totally non trivial 'physical' reality.
In passing we have already derived from comp that, whatever the
physical reality is, it has to be indeterminist (nature confirms), non
local as a whole (nature confirms), made, in appearance, of non
clonable pieces of reality (nature confirms), and obeying a quantum-
like logic with many-worlds semantics (nature arguably confirms). What
remains astonishing for the computationalist is the simplicity of the
hamiltonians, but this might be related with our depth (à-la Bennett).
Little programs, like the M set, seems to play a role at the start.
In passing we have also got a notion of Universal Turing Person,
already conscious, and we have come back to a view of reality closer
to the Platonists and the Pythagoreans than to the Aristotelian.
You have to understand that the universal dovetailing is extremely
redundant, and highly structured by the self-referential constraints
when seen from inside. Our state of mind are big numbers, resulting
from deep computations, probably linear and thus relatively multiplied
(by at least 2^aleph_0) so that a measure of probability or
credibility makes sense, after all. Comp is not yet refuted. Comp is
saved by Gödel's theorem and Everett quantum mechanics, up to now.
And it is possible (even probable) that some oracle are at play, so
that David's fine tuning argument could also play a role. The UD
dovetails on all (Turing) oracles, and some might take the shape of
irreducible non algorithmic constant. After all pure number theory has
also many fundamental real constant, and it would be astonishing that
they don't interfere with the physical.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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