On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 9/26/2011 10:23 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 9:42 PM, Pierz <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I can see that you are actually right in asserting that the UDA's
computations are not random, but I'm not sure that negates
the core of
my objection. Actually what the UDA does is produce a bit field
containing every possible arrangement of bits. Is this not
correct?
I think you are confusing a bit pattern for a computation. A
hard drive can contain any possible bit pattern that will fit on
its platter, but this bit pattern won't contain consciousness.
Conversely, if the computer is powered up and running the
appropriate program, that program may be conscious. This is the
difference between the UD, and the series of integers or the
digits of Pi. The UD executes all possible programs, the set of
Integers is equivalent to all possible bit patterns.
I think what you are saying is that somehow this computation
produces
more pattern and order than a program which simply generates all
possible arrangements of bits. Why? If I were to select at
random some
algorithm from the set of all possible algorithms, it would
be pretty
much noise almost all the time.
I think you could say the program may be uninteresting, or not
contain a mind or minds.
Are you familiar with the Anthropic principle? The idea that
observers will always find themselves in places where they can
exist. They perform the selection by virtue of their existence
and observation of their environment.
The vast majority of programs may not contain observers, but
those few that do will become environments for the minds they host.
*Proving* it is noise is of course
impossible, because meaning is a function of context. You've
selected
out "the program emulating the Heisenberg matrix of the Milky
Way",
but among all the other possible procedures will be a zillion
more
that perform this operation, but also add in various other
quantities
and computations that render the results useless from a
physicist's
point of view. There are certainly all kinds of amazing
procedures and
unfound discoveries lying deep in the UDA's repertoire of
algorithms,
but only when we intelligently derive an equation by some
other means
(measurements, theory, revision, testing etc) can we find out
which
ones are signal and which ones noise.
We can ignore the computations which don't contain observers, and
as far as predicting your own future, we can ignore those that
don't contain you.
You also asked about why not execute them all in parallel.
Every program does exist in math independetly of the UD. I think
the reason Bruno described the UD was that it was a simple single
program he could show exists in math. You also questioned
whether the existence of the UD is something really there or some
mental construction of ours. If you think "17 is prime" is true
independently of your knowledge of it, then the statement "the UD
does not halt" is also true independently of your knowledge of it.
Jason
Jason,
I really would like to understand how it is that the truth
valuation of a proposition is not dependent on our knowledge of it
can be used to affirm the meaning of the referent of that
proposition independent of us?
That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it correctly, you
are asking how a truth, independent of our knowledge, can confer
meaning to something without us?
[SPK]
Essentially, yes.
Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are eventually do
make a difference to beings which are aware of the difference. A
comet colliding with the Earth and hitting a pond of unicellular
organisms may have drastically altered the course of evolution on our
planet. That such a comet impact ocurred is a fact which is either
true or false, despite it being independent of anyone's knowledge of
it. Yet it has perceptable results.
[SPK]
The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the material
universe. I am taking that concept into consideration.
Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth (even if not
comprehended by anyone) can have effects for observers, in fact, it
might explain both the observers themselves and their experiences.
[SPK]
Slow down! "existence of some mathematical truth"??? Do you mean
the truth value of some existing mathematical statement? That is what I
mean in my question by the phrase "truth valuation of a proposition". Is
a truth value something that exists or does not exist?
How does the sentence "17 is prime is a true statement" confer
implicit meaning to its referent?
What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you mean by
"meaning"? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The statement's
existence or non-existence, comprehension or non-comprehension makes
no difference to 17, only what you could say we humans have discovered
about 17.
[SPK]
Is the symbol 17 the same extant as the abstract number it refers
to? Do you believe that symbols and what they represent are one and the
same thing??? How does not the fact that many symbols can represent one
and the same extant disprove this hypothesis? Is the word "tree" have a
brownish trunk and greenish foliage? What about the case where sets of
symbols that have more than one possible referent? Consider the word
FORD. Does it have wheels and a motor? What is the height of the water
that one displaces when we might walk across it? There is a categorical
difference between an object and its representations and the fact that
one subobject of those categories exists is not proof that a subobject
in another category has a given truth value. BTW, truth values are not
confined to {True, False}.
Onward!
Stephen
Jason
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