On 17 Sep 2011, at 23:27, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/17/2011 7:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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<meeke...@verizon.net> 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 only by providing in the emulation that the 323 register is used
(in some fraction of the multiverses of the emulation).
I don't see this. It is true, at this level, for the quantum machine
emulating the classical machine when not using the 323 register. But
when we emulate that quantum machine with a classical machine, not
using the new 324 (say) register, and not using it, we are back at the
original problem. If that 324 register still play a role, we are again
confronted with a kind of magic which prevents us to say "yes" to a
doctor from rationalism and comp.
We can still say yes to the doctor by postulating some form of magic,
but it is no more computationalism.
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.
Sure you can. You just can't count on your consciousness being
exactly the same.
? This is driven us to zombie-like phenomenon. It seems also not
relevant with your explanation above.
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.
OK, I think I understand that. Good point.
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.
Yes, and that's the tension I see. QM implies the 323 principle is
untrue
It does not. It does in case it happens that an absent register,
having no role in a particular computation, appears to have some role
after all: meaning we were not using the right substitution level. But
the QM machine can be emulated by a classical machine, for which, with
or without QM, the 323 principle remains true.
You argument would work perfectly if we have both that:
1) we are quantum machine (the subst level is below the quantum level)
2) quantum digital machine would be not emulable by a classical
digital machine.
But I know that you think that "1)" is not plausible, and, more
importantly, "2)" is false.
and yet you rely on QM and in particular it's multiverse
interpretation as evidence for the Platonic view. Looked at another
way, the 323 principle can be upheld, but only at the expense of
pushing the substitution level all the way down and extending the
emulation to be the whole universe.
Why, not necessarily. For all we know (by biology) we might think that
the level is high. In fine it means that my consciousness is not
related to the physical activity of my brain, but only on the possible
computations that accidentally perhaps, my current brains implement
here and now. This leads to a "many dreams" interpretation of
arithmetic, which is certainly hard to swallow for aristotelian, but
quite natural for an open minded platonician. Anyway, the point is not
that this is true, but that it is testable. If in the logic Z1*, we
find a theorem refuted by nature, we would know that comp is false (or
the classical theory of knowledge). That would be the case if the
physical universe was Newtonian, or just boolean, but here QM comes to
the DM rescue.
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.
It's the same 'magic' as implied by taking one's consciousness to
instantiated by an infinite number of computations going through the
same state.
I disagree. the second magic is just the global first person
indeterminacy of any conscious observer. It is not magic, it is
ignorance. No (universal) machine can know which computation support
her.
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 ...
Right. See above.
See above my answer.
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/
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