On 16 Sep 2011, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/16/2011 11:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 15 Sep 2011, at 22:22, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/15/2011 11:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 14 Sep 2011, at 07:27, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/13/2011 10:01 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sep 13, 9:38 pm, meekerdb<[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/13/2011 4:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
The rules are at bottom the laws of physics.
That doesn't mean anything. The laws of physics are the
rules. That's
why I say it's circular reasoning. I ask you what is a rule,
and you
say it's at the bottom of laws, but laws are just another
word for
rule. There is no bottom, because there's nothing there. It's
an
intellectual construct.
Of course it's an intellectual construct, but it has
predictive power.
I agree. Deferent and epicycle have predictive power too. It
doesn't
mean they can't be understood in a greater context with more
explanatory if not predictive power.
And that's what Bruno is trying to do - provide explanations in
terms of arithmetic; which he takes as basic. But explanation
is cheaper than prediction.
But comp predicts, given that it predicts the predictable
observable. To get more quantitative results asks for a lot of
work and time. But comp predicts all what is predictible, at
different levels or modalities, and it predict in principle much
more given that it gives a glimpse on the complexity of death and
all first person possible experiences. It shows also the abyssal
complexity of numbers' epistemologies, and it frees the universal
machine from all normative theories (the usual velleity of
"other" local universal machines).
It is not for practical quantitative prediction, at least not
before we get the physical laws from numbers' theology, but we
are interested in fundamental question, aren't we?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Of course I don't expect you to be able explain why there are
three generations of leptons or tell me what dark matter is. But
we need some definite predictions to test a theory. To just
'predict' linearity or complexity is not very impressive. Physics
is a very well developed field, so it's going to be hard to get
from arithmetic to a new result.
Hard? Without doubt. But it is necessary (that *is* the point). I
don't know what is dark matter, or if it exists. But I know that IF
I am a machine, then dark matter does not exist, nor any matter.
And I know that addition and multiplication decides all questions
on the *observation* on matter and dark matter in the long run.
Necessarily (that is what has been proved).
But theories of cogitation and consciousness are not well
developed; so it is there I would hope for some real predictions.
Here's some interesting observations from a friend. I wonder if
your ideas might explain them.
I insist that I have no ideas. I just show the consequences of
mechanism, which is assumed by almost everyone, with different
degrees of explicitness. Did the theory of evolution predict
anything?
It predicted a great deal. It predicted that Lord Kelvin was wrong
in his estimate of the age of the solar system (based on the
assumption that the Sun was powered by gravity), a prediction that
Darwin was not bold enough to publish. It could be said to have
predicted genetics. Darwin didn't know about genes, but his theory
required some such digital information transmission. It predicted
the unity of biochemistry on Earth.
You must look at the mechanist assumption in a similar way: it
shows that the laws of physics are not a given (like some people
believed for biology and species before Darwin), but that the laws
of physics emerge, in a precise way, from the way the universal
numbers relate to each other.
To ask for using mechanism to say something concrete about dark
matter, today, would be like asking if the theory of evolution can
explain the action of some plant in the brain, or the working of my
personal computer.
I'll just quickly caveat how far we can extend existing findings,
of which there are a few in the last 4-5 years (see: www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dsweb/pdfs/06_01_EFC_DLS_ERG_RAS.pdf
-- this was done in Dan Schacter's lab at Harvard; Schacter is a
renowned memory researcher; and www.jneurosci.org/content/27/45/12190.full.pdf
-- this was featured in Nature Reviews in 2007). In terms of
memory and confidence, or how memory changes, Elizabeth Phelps at
NYU has done some ground breaking work.
These findings focused on what is happening in the brain during an
explicit statement of confidence in one's answer about some or
other semantic statement. The caveat is I am not sure how far we
can extend this to issues or questions for which an answer is
unclear and unavailable, or very difficult to ascertain because
veracity may depend on some type of understanding of conceptual
material for which the respondent has limited knowledge. It is
one thing to have confidence that the solution to the integral of
cos x is sin x + C, but another to have confidence that there is a
god, or that capitalism will fail. It seems in the latter two
instances the reward system is more important in neural
processing. But in all cases we are looking at the confidence in
the belief that the memory being retrieved is accurate.
During feelings of confidence in which the respondent is correct
(high-confidence and correct), medial and lateral parietal regions
are active indicating a role for these areas in post-retrieval
memory monitoring, but, note that limbic regions are also active
for confidence in a recognition decision. In other words,
confidence arises as a result of processing in regions associated
with familiarity, on the one hand (and this is where errors
occur), and/or regions that are more closely or directly linked
with the problem at hand - information that is used to solve the
problem without so much digging into our vast data stores.
The second paper goes further and shows the difference between
older and younger adults with respect to high confidence errors,
among other things. The interesting findings, in my opinion,
include the fact that the same brain regions (notably though is
the DLPFC which is becoming ever more important as a region of
interest in cognitive neuroscience- in this case it is thought to
monitor or modulating decision processes across cognitive
functions) are active during low confidence irrespective of
whether or not a condition of true or false recognition was the
case. But during high confidence different brain regions are
active (posterior cingulate in this case) across true recognition
and false recognition.
The conclusion which can be drawn after reading the second paper
is that the MTL (medial temporal lobe, but includes the
hippocampus and parahippocampus among other structures) is
involved in high confidence feelings when the respondent is
actually correct (and in the low confidence and incorrect
condition), and that frontoparietal activity is dominant in cases
where the respondent is highly confident but incorrect (but also
active in cases of low confidence but correct recognition). There
are other differences which can distinguish the results in parens,
but the details are probably not interesting most here. It is
interesting to note however that the activation of the MTL and
frontoparietal regions are virtual mirror images across the high
vs low confidence conditions for true and false recognition -
almost like a see saw. We are dealing with on the one hand direct
recollection in correct cases and familiarity in incorrect cases.
What is amazing here is that the brain processes high-confidence
true and false recognition very differently, yet the feeling of
confidence appears indistinguishable. It might be interesting to
probe this.
The reward system was not a main region of interest in these
studies, however, feelings of confidence are correlated with
dopamine release, which necessarily involves the reward pathways
and hence the basal ganglia. The more often one feels correct
about something, especially in the absence of challenge, the more
it becomes part of a belief system - and the more likely a
statement fits into a belief system the more likely one is to be
confident in that statement. The confirmation of one's belief
system creates a rewarding feeling associated with these pathways.
It is very interesting, but I don't see why "my idea" should
explain those facts.
Because they are about self-reference and true or false beliefs and
as such might be independent of the physical constitution of the
brain.
It is *their* approach which are based on "my idea" (mechanism) at
the start. They discuss the aspects of the actual human mind
implementation in the brain. It illustrates my basic postulates.
You can't mention a paper based on "my" assumption and discard the
conceptual consequences of that same assumption.
Unless, of course, you have seen a reason to doubt the validity of
the UDA argument, in which case it would be nice if you could
elaborate. I did answer your remarks on both step 6, 7, and 8, but
I am willing to explain if it remains something unclear, and I am
willing, at least for awhile to add the 323 principle(*) in the
definition of comp, if that is the problem, although I didn't see
any reason to say "yes" to a digitalist doctor, if the 323
principle was not a consequence of mechanism.
But here too, in our last conversation on the subject, you seem to
agree that comp implies the 323 principle.
No. I didn't. That's what I saw as a tension in the argument. To
say the 323 register is not used is to deny the multiverse
interpretation of QM.
I don't think so. That would be the case if the machine was a quantum
machine. But a quantum machine can be emulated by a classical machine
(not in real time, but the first person is not aware of the delays, so
it changes nothing in the argument).
But I understood that you regarded the Everettian interpretation of
QM as evidence for your theory. If consciousness is only realized
by physical systems, i.e. quantum mechanical ones, then removing a
register may affect that consciousness even though it doesn't affect
the computation (except with very low probability).
But then you can no more say yes to a digitalist surgeon.
One might still say yes to replacement of one's brain with one
equivalent as a classical computer because it would also instantiate
those counterfactual possibilities. But an equivalent Platonic
function would not.
On the contrary, only the platonic function can be said to instantiate
the counterfactuals, as a global mathematical object. A quantum
computer can also instantiate some counterfactual, but in a way which
can be emulated by a classical machine, and for that classical
machine, if the 323-principle goes wrong, then you can no more be said
to be digitally emulable. So if you insist that the computer must be
"physical", you are introducing something which is non turing emulable
in matter, and which play a genuine role in the consciousness
associated to the computation: this means that comp is false. You are
no more saying yes to the digitalist doctor in virtue of being
correctly emulated, but in virtue of some non Turing emulable magic
played by piece of matter having no physical activity at all.
I kno this is a bit subtle. If the 323 register plays a quantum role
in computation for consciousness, it means that we have chosen a too
much high level, but at the lower level, we can emulate the quantum by
a classical machine, and there, to continue to insist of having the
presence of inactive machinery for consciousness means that comp is
false. The physical role of the inactive piece of matter in the
consciousness becomes magical, and necessarily not Turing emulable (if
it where, again, it would mean we have chosen a too much high level),
and we start again ...
Bruno
(*) The 323 principle asserts that if consciousness can be
attributed to a computer running some computation in which the
register n° 323 is not used, then the same consciousness can be
similarly attributed to a computer running that same computation,
but where the register n° 323 has been removed from the computer.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
