On 08 Jul 2011, at 01:59, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 10:12:45PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
One that happens to be incompatible with
theory that our minds are computer programs.
Can you explain that? It seems to be Bruno's central claim, but so
far as I can see he only tries to prove that a physical reality is
otiose.
Brent
Here's my take on it. I guess you read the version I wrote 6 years ago
in ToN.
Once you allow the existence of a universal dovetailer, we are far
more likely to be running on the dovetailer (which is a simple
program) than on a much more complicated program (such as simulating
the universe as we currently see it).
I am in a good mood, so I will respect that. I don't want to go in the
"details". Let just mention that I am not sure the size of the UD code
matter so much. If we assume the *physical* existence of a forever
running UD, then what counts is the number of computational histories
going in my current state. That the UD itself wins might play a role.
But the way I isolate a computer science isolation of a formulation of
the mind-body, even what you say, if correct, has to be deduced from
the self-introspecting discourse of the machine.
Under COMP, the dovetailer is
capable of generating all possible experiences (which is why it is
universal). Therefore, everything we call physics (electrons, quarks,
electromagnetic fields, etc) is phenomena caused by the running of the
dovetailer.
That's correct. Yet, I guess many people will suppose that this comes
from the fact that the UD will emulate some physical phenomenon, like
the computation of the heisenberg gigantic matrix describing the
observable evolution of the entire Milky Way + Magellan and Co. Now,
despite the UD does that indeed (trivially), that computation itself
is only playing an infinitesimal part in *our* experience of the
galaxy. A priori we have to take into account *all* computations going
through our actual 3-version of our actual mind state. So the real
physics, the one with the "real" quanta and the qualia, results from
the statistical interference of a priori a vastly bigger set of
computations.
By Church-Turing thesis, the dovetailer could be running
on anything capable of supporting universal computation. To use
Kantian terminology, what the dovetailer runs on is the noumenon,
unknowable reality, which need have no connection which the phenomenon
we observe. In fact with the CT-thesis, we cannot even know which
noumenon we're running on, in the case there may be more than one. We
might just as well be running on some demigod's child's playstation,
as running on Platonic arithmetic. It is in principle unknowable, even
by any putative omniscient God - there is simply no matter of fact
there to know.
All UDs are equivalent, and physics, nor the whole theology, can't
depend of the initial choice.
We can take elementary arithmetic, the combinators, or any Turing
complete formalism.
So we can even take the (rational, not real) Newton laws (but that
would be confusing!), or a rational topological computer (but that
would be treachery with respect to the "correct" extraction of the
consciousness/matter coupling from the introspecting universal machine
discourse.
So ultimately, this is why Bruno eliminates the concrete dovetailer,
in the manner of Laplace eliminating God "Sire, je n'ai besoin de cet
hypothese".
No, it is much worst, it is more like "Sire, Your hypothesis
(primitive matter) can't be used, and might only prevents the finding
of the solution to the mind body problem.
Anyway, Bruno will no doubt correct any mistaken conceptions here :).
The impulse is stronger than me :)
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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