On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:00 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote: >> How can any of those questions be approached by conscious entities in >> a deterministic computational framework? >> >> Everything you’ll ever learn, every mistake you’ll ever make, every >> belief you’ll ever have is already locked in. > > This is fatalism. By AR+Comp you will experience all possible experiences, > perhaps an infinite number of times (recurring endlessly?). But this does > not mean we are powerless to affect the measure of those experiences. A > simple example: Some think that QM implies that in half the universes they > put on the seatbelt and in half the others they don't. This is not true, if > the person is conscientious enough they probably put on the seat belt in >>99% of the universes. That depends entirely on them. A > less safety-concerned individual may have the opposite probabilities.
If the evolution of the universal wavefunction is deterministic, then it doesn't depend entirely on them...it depends entirely on the universal wavefunction. How could it depend entirely on them - using "depend" and "them" in the usual senses of the words? You're not surreptitiousness using "non-standard" definitions of words without making that explicit, are you? Once the initial state of the wavefunction are fixed and the rules that determine its evolution are fixed - then everything else, including seatbelt usage, is also fixed. If anything depends on anything, *everything* depends on the initial state and the rules that "govern" (describe?) how the state changes. In your example, they don't put on their seatbelt 99% of the time *because* they are conscientious - rather, they are labeled "conscientious" because they put on their seatbelt 99% of the time. See how the arrow is reversed there? >> Your life is “on rails”. Maybe your final destination is good, maybe >> it’s bad - but both the destination and the path to it are static and >> fixed in Platonia. >> >> Further, nothing about computationalism promises truth or anything >> else desirable...or even makes them likely. >> >> In fact, surely lies are far more common than truths in Platonia. >> There are few ways to be right, but an infinite number of ways to be >> wrong. If you think you exist in Platonia, then surely you also have >> to conclude that nearly everything else you believe is a lie. > > > What is true in this universe may be false or meaningless in most of the > universes, but there might be some things which are true in every universe > (such as 2+2 = 4). It seems conceivable to me that you might have trouble convincing the inhabitants of every (or even most) universes of that, even by appeal to experience. Just set up the initial conditions correctly, and the state changes correctly, and viola! A whole universe of people who have funky beliefs that are reinforced by experience at every check. Or are contradicted, but the contradictions as misinterpreted as confirmations. Maybe that's us... Maybe my imagination is more vivid, or my checks on it less stringent. Have you tried imagining such a thing? Living in such a universe? As a spur to imagination: Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? The role of madness? The gentleman with thistle-down hair? > (I can easily prove to you at least one thing must be > self-existent for there to be anything at all) Conscious experience. >> >> Can I change it? No. > > Then why bother to get food when you are hungry? It's entailed by the brute computational structure of Platonia, I assume. >> Why 9/11, Auschwitz, AIDS, famine, bigotry, hate, suffering? They are >> computationally entailed. > > This is just reductionism taken beyond the level where it should be taken. > You might as well answer: It is physically entailed, chemically entailed, > biologically entailed, etc. I don't see the point of the argument. Hmmmm...I don't see how you could miss the point of the argument...? See above on seat-belts. >> Platonia actually sounds like more hell than heaven. > > You base that on the small part of Platonia you have seen in your decades as > a human on this remote planet floating through an infinitesimal part of the > universe. Perhaps life in other alien civilizations is comparatively a > heaven. Actually I would tend to think that the number of hedonists and masochists in Platonia would balance each other. For every entity that loves pleasure, there's another who loves pain. Just flip a few bits, and there you have it - heaven transformed into hell, or vice versa. >> Oh wait...maybe I can’t invent such a book, because I’m not a very >> good writer, and people don’t find the structure of my fantasies >> compelling or believable or interesting or useful. Rats. > > My point was that mathematics has its own rules, it is not something where > anyone can add their own arbitrary axioms as they see fit. I would tend that good fiction also has its own rules. At least fiction that would be considered "good" by some particular audience. >> Well, according to you I shouldn’t feel bad. My failure was entailed >> by the computational structure of Platonia. My efforts to achieve >> success were...futile. >> > > Who determines what song you choose to listen to on the radio (or music > player), you or the atoms bouncing around in your brain? Neither. I'd say it's purely contingent. Not determined by anything. > As thinking beings > we have a will which we can exercise. Don't let deterministic or > non-deterministic theories of the universe tell you otherwise. Ya, I don't see how that could be. >> BUT...it’s just a story. There’s no absolute against which to judge >> these stories, and so there can be no matters of fact except relative >> to the stories. > > So ultimately, where do these stories come from? Nowhere. They're purely contingent. Without any reason or explanation whatsoever. >> No. Information is something that observers have. Observers are not >> something that information has. > > I agree. Observers are aware of information, and that makes them conscious. > You say observers interpret information. Well explain what you > mean precisely by interpret. I take interpret to mean "experience as meaningful". Which doesn't mean that it *is* meaningful...just that it's experienced that way. I could go a little further and add "experienced as meaningful in a way that connects to other beliefs." Though I'm not sure that's necessary. > I define interpretation as a system which may enter one of multiple states > based on that information (information processing). This is different from > information travelling through some pipe. The atomic elements of > computation compare and contrast information through logical operations AND, > OR, NOT, etc. > There is only so much that can be done with information. Whatever your > interpreter does with it, can be replicated by an appropriately programmed > Turing machine. An appropriately programmed Turing machine can experience information as meaningful? It could possibly interpreted as doing this...but given that there's not much to a Turing machine, I'd have my doubts as to whether this was actually the case. So, I take experience as fundamental, and work my way out from there. I'm not starting with an abstract concept like computation and trying to work my way *back*. Computation is just a way of looking at things, a way of thinking about things. It's not a thing in itself. >> Our positions are mirror images. >> >> Reverse the arrow of explanation, and you’ve got it! This still seems to be the case to me. >> But this doesn’t make much sense to me. There’s nothing in my >> conception of particles or configurations or sequences that would have >> led me to predict that combined they would give rise to something like >> my conscious experience. > > Lightly press on the back of your hand with your finger and spend a few > minutes concentrating on the qualia of that experience. What more can you > describe it as beyond the awareness of information? Consciousness experience is fundamental. Fundamental concepts can’t be described in terms of anything else..they’re fundamental. This is why you can’t explain “red” to a blind person. It’s a fundamental concept. If you don’t have it, it can’t be transmitted to you or explained to you, because it can’t be “built up” from more basic concepts. What do we mean by “communicating information”? When we use a word, it just picks out an idea or a thought that exists in your mind. For instance, out of all of the concepts that humans are capable of thinking, the word “Red” picks out one of them. But nothing of the experience of redness that is conveyed by the word “Red”. Just like there is nothing of the idea of two-ness conveyed by the word “two”. You already have to know about “two” to correctly interpret the word. No fundamental concepts are ever communicated via words. Let’s say I tell you, “I have a red cube that is 2 inches on a side.” To understand that message, you must already have the fundamental concepts of redness and of spatial distance and dimension and be able to map the words I’m using to those concepts. Note however, that the concept of a “cube” is obviously not fundamental…but fully grasping its meaning requires possession of the fundamental concepts of spatial distance and dimension. So, I can communicate the meaning of “cube” to you because it isn’t a fundamental concept…it’s defined in terms of spatial dimensions. However, I cannot communicate the meaning of “space” or “color” or “emotion” to someone who has no subjective experience of those concepts, because they are fundamental. *That* is why qualia are ineffable. Ya? >> I say the opposite. Representation is something you do, which is so >> natural to you and so useful to you that you’ve mistaken it as the >> explanation for everything. > > > You should read > this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind) > Functionalism is the idea that it is what the parts do, not what they are > that is important in a mind. > Computatalism is a more specific form of functionalism (it assumes the > functions are Turing emulable) I've read that article before. I used to be a computationalist. BUT, like Hilary Putnam, I moved on. > What is your background? Perhaps knowing that we could communicate more > clearly or choose better examples. I am a computer programmer, with > interests in cryptography which involves some number theory. I'm a computer programmer also. Have been for about 18 years now. Bachelor's degree in computer systems engineering. Two years of graduate school...nothing to show for it...blah. So, again, you don't have to work too hard to explain the basics of computationalism to me, I had a layover there for several years. Which doesn't mean I know everything about it, but I know something. A key part of my move away from it was realizing that it didn't close the Chalmersian explanatory gap. And also, this thought: "Hey, if computations can exist platonically and cause conscious experience...why can't conscious experience just exist platonically itself, without the need for any underlying causal structure???" Beyond platonic logical structures, why not other platonic abstractions...why not purely contingent structures? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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