On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
> On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
>
>> On 9/26/2011 10:23 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 9:42 PM, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> 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?
>
>
I am not sure what you mean by "exists" in this case so let me say this, the
state of being true, or the state of being false, for the proposition in
question, was settled before a human made a determination regarding that
proposition.
>
> 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?
>
No, as I mentioned to Brent in a post the other day, we ought not confuse
the label for the thing. Nor should we confuse our idea of a thing for the
thing itself.
> Do you believe that symbols and what they represent are one and the same
> thing???
>
No, we can apply some simple rules to the symbols in certain way to learn
things about the object in question.
> 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}.
>
For well-defined propositions regarding the numbers I think the values are
confined to true or false.
Jason
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