On 06 Mar 2011, at 14:03, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 4, 6:29 pm, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 04 Mar 2011, at 15:13, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 4, 7:57 am, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 03 Mar 2011, at 18:39, 1Z wrote:
If you have a UDA inside a physical universe,
I guess you mean "a UD inside a physical universe".
UDA is for the UD-Argument. The Universal Dovetailer Argument.
there is real physics
(qua physicalevents)
outside it, and there is a real study of physics outside it as
well.
What goes on in a
virtualised environment is not real. You could feed virtualised
people
false information
about the past, but that would not be rewriting history (in the
sense
of changing the real
past) and it would have not mean that the virtualissed people had
some
valid kind of history qua study of the past) either, since it
would
not be based
on true facts.
That might be consistent in some theory.
ie the common-sense intutions most people have
We can use common-sense to find on what we agree, not for disagreing
about a conclusion of a reasoning.
"Everyone knows that" is not available as argument in science. Cf:
"Everyone knows that the sun moved around the earth".
But, again, this is about what words mean, and the ultimate
authority there is common usage. History is the study or real events.
That's what it means.
We can use common sense to decide on what we agree, not on what we
disagree.
But you elude the reasoning
and the questions.
Likewise, their "phsyics" would not really be phsyics
, because it would not be based on the only real phsyical reality,
the
one in which
the UDA is embedded.
Sorry but in this case, it would be based on the 'real physical
reality'.
It would not be based on empirical data about the real physical
reality. It would be based on it ontologically, but they would
be unawae of that
That's the point. How could you then be aware you are in the first
physical universe, and not in the virtual but still physical universe
without finding a flaw in UDA[1-6]?
That's *not* the point. If I am virtualised, my physics isn't
real physics either!
But then you have to say "no" to the doctor, because he does
virtualize you. Your point before was that I did assume platonism,
which I did not, now you talk like if the doctor cannot copy me, given
that he should use the real physics. Comp say only that the brain has
to be copied at the level which I am Turing computable.
The UD is physically running in that universe, and by the
first person indeterminacy, even if you do an experiment in the
physical universe, your first person experience remains
determined by
the physical computations made by the physical UD. So to connect
your
experience with the physical reality, that physical reality has
to be
retrievable from the mathematics of the UD (computer science/number
theory).
But there is no guarantee that a virtualised person would
have any epistemic connection to physical reality.
So you reject the step 6?
What do you say in step 6? That people
in virtual environments can reach out the
outside reality?
This I said in another post, if you can stay a unbounded time in the
virtual environment, but it is not part at all of step six. In step
six I say that if you are scanned and annihilated and reconstituted in
double exemplars in a virtual environment, then you have to use the
same uncertainty calculus, to quantify your indeterminacy, than the
way you would use in a duplication of you made in the "real"
environment. This comes from the fact that, for a short time, you
cannot "reach the outside reality". You cannot distinguish real from
virtual (even when physical in both case).
Some
of them might see a realistic simulation through coincidence,
but it is doubtful that coincidence can found knowledge.
There can no be coincidence, given that what will happen from the
first person view is a sum on an infinity of computation.
(A friend of mine has perhaps find, today!, a way to justify the role
of the complex numbers from just that).
If you don't even have a coincidental
resemblance to reality inside the simulation,
that just makes matters worse
That would just refute comp. And that's the point.
There is no particular reason to think that
phsyics (qua study) that is baeed
on false information counts as physics in the true sense of the
term.
You always manage to use the term "true". But we cannot use that
term
when doing science. We put our assumptions on the table, and we
reason
from there. You are wrongly "using" the term "truth", like pseudo-
religion wrongly use the term "God", like a sort of authoritative
thing.
The kind of truth in question here is stipulative definition. To
say that physics is the study of flowers or rocks is not to use
the true, correct, conventional meaning of "physics"
When working on the mind-body problem you cannot take anything
granted, neither on mind, nor on matter (and thus physics) without
taking the risk of begging the question.
When doing any kind of philosphy, you
cannot just change the meanings of words
to suit the argument
You seem to put "real" on physics. But if the point consists in
doubting this, we do have a need to redefine some terms, or you are
begging the question.
Anyway, I use physics in a sense accepted by most physicists: the
science of what is observable and predictive locally.
THat is not how most physicists use the word
It is the usual I get from physicists. How do you define "physics".
The study of reality?
If "physics" *means*
the study of what is ontologically fundamental, then what is going
on
in the UDA can
only be pseudo physics.
Then you have to say "no" to the doctor, because he will build a
pseudo brain.
I have to say no to *a* doctor who will not build a physical brain.
I can still say yes to a doctor who promises to reincarnate me
in silicon.
OK, but then the reversal occur in any universe running a UD made
with
silicon.
I don;t have to accept that there is reversed physics inside
a UD, because I don't have to accept that there is any physics there,
properly so called
Ho do you predict the behavior of the moon in a robust universe,
accepting the comp hyp?
I have no clue how you can avoid the UD work in that prediction.
The point is that once you have said "yes" to the
doctor, qua computatio, you can understand that your next most
probable first person state will be more related to the infinitely
many third person corresponding states run by the UD than by the
one
single out as being the "true universe", even if that concept makes
sense.
But I don't have to accept that physics becomes reversed. I can
take the view that there is no study of physics, properly
so called, in the UD.
?
Then there is no physics at all anywhere, or you have to find a flow
in UDA[1-6].
OK: THe flaw is that there is no material
UD,
OK. You got the step seven. That was the modest point I try to prove
to you. Comp + MAT makes the universe non-robust (that is the way to
avoid the reversal after step seven).
and there is no immaterial one either
because Platonism is false.
We are back to our older conversation :)
It is related to the step 8.
You know my answer to this. I don't need platonism, I need only that
you believe that for all arithmetical predicate P(x) (actually only
the sigma_1) and for any number n, we have that P(n) is true or that
P(n) is false. Actually we need this already in step seven, just to
define what is an Universal Dovetailer, and to explain why it needs to
dovetail.
On the other hand, if "phsyics" just means
"investigation of subjective phenomenology""
then the argument goes through -- but only because that particular
definition of physics is
doing the heavy lifting. It isn't difficult to prove that physics
isn't about objective reality if
you have started with the assumption that it *is* about
subjective
reality.
I do assume there is a physical reality. I would not talk on doctor
and digital brain if that was not the case.
Then your conclusion that there isn't physical reality is in
contradiction
?
I think you confuse the idea that physical reality exist (which I
accept, given that I try to explain it) with the idea that physical
reality is the fundamental ontological basic (primary reality)
reality.
That would confuse anybody. You are using "physics" to
mean "phenomenology"
Because I showed that if comp is true, then physics is a first person
plural construct. So, indeed, to solve the mind body problem we have
to justify a phenomenology of matter. But that's the result, not the
assumption.
All what I say is that comp makes physical reality necessarily
explainable by (infinities of) arithmetical relations. I have never
said that there isn't any physical reality. The step zero of UDA,
i.e.
the definition of comp, would already be total nonsense.
The only assumption is
that a digital brain, physical and constructed from piece of matter
in
my neighborhood, is able to sustain my consciousness together
with my
current correct relative computation. I would not say yes to the
doctor if this could change the frequence of observable, by me,
white
rabbits, for example.
This means that the UD, generates the right measure of computations
corresponding to my observations. Below my level of substitution,
it
generates all the possible continuation, and so that fuzziness
should
be observable, and should be the bottom level defining what I will
take at first sight to be primary matter. Comp reduces the physical
laws to a measure on provable (sigma_1) arithmetical propositions
weighted by the proofs/computation (the arithmetical UD).
I don't have to accept that what the acitvity performed
by scientists in the UD is actually physics. I think it is
phenomenology.
This is incoherent with steps [1-6]. Which one?
Where in steps 1-6 does it prove that physics really
means phenomenogy?
Nowhere. It is done in step seven, with the assumption that there is a
primary robust universe.
And without that assumption, in step 8.
If you still don't see this, ask for clarification of the sane04
paper(*), because it seems to me that the first seven steps are
rather
clear, there. You have mentioned the WR. I take from this that
you do
understand the six first steps, don't you? The seven step follows
mainly from the invariance of first person experience for change in
the delays of the (virtual) 'reconstitutions'.
The eighth step is really more conceptually subtle, and the clearer
presentation I have done until now is in this list in the "MGA"
thread
(the Movie Graph Argument). It shows that the "real concrete UD" is
not needed for the reversal to occur.
Also, each time you use the term truth and real, you have to recall
what is your assumption, and to relate your notion of truth to
it. No
one can be certain of the ultimate third person (public) truth.
I don't need ultimate truth, I just need words to mean what
they usually mean.
This is not available in science. In complex issues we have to be
flexible on the meaning of the words, and inflexible on the validity
of the reasoning.
WHat you are doing is philosophy, and in philosophy
you have to be extremely careful about the meanings of words
That is why we have to redefine all the terms we are using so that we
are not locked in vocabulary misunderstanding. I can agree with you on
this. About the label 'philosophy', it has already a different sense
in different universities in little country, so I will not dispute it.
If you agree that we can do philosophy with the scientific method---
where we are asked to NOT believe in any pseudo-religion (like there
is a physical primary universe). What I mean, is that in science, we
don't use the word "true", "real", ever, except by reference to
assumption on which we agree (for private reason or just for the sake
of analysing the validity of a derivation).
You talk often like if you knew that a primary physical universe
exist. But a scientist cannot be certain on that; certainly not when
the deepest problem ever (the mind-body problem) is not solved.
What I know, because you told us, is that you assume (well, that
was
probably not your wording) the existence of a physical universe,
being
primitively physical, and made of some primary stuff, which would
be
ontologically existing and not made of, or reducible to, simpler
entities.
What I try to explain, is that if you are using this primary matter
to
singularize and make existing consciousness, then the primary
matter
AND the mind associated with it have to be non Turing emulable.
Matter doesn't have to be non-turing emulable *maths*.
This comes at step 8. The reversal appears already in step 7 for
*robust* universe.
Mind can still be Turing emulable, since your conclusions can
resisted by rejecting Platonsim and keeping comp.
Show me where in the reasoning the term "Platonism" is used in your
sense.
It sometimes an implication of your "AR", although sometimes
it isn't. I do not follow your usage of AR because it is equivocal
Be specific.
I think you are confusing the "AR" in the assumption, and the
Platonism derived at the end of the reasoning. You did so in many of
your older mail, as I have explained already.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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