On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 11:17:33AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 23 Dec 2011, at 00:19, Russell Standish wrote: > > > >Because in the latter case, the "inactive" machinery is not really > >inactive. It is only inactive in one branch. > > If the activity of the piece in another branch plays an active role > in the computation "here and now", then it is part of the > computation, and I have to ask the doctor that the artificial brain > takes the other branches into account.
Exactly. > > > > > >> > >>Either that other mechanism is Turing emulable, or not. If it is, > >>MGA will apply, unless you are using a supervenience violating 323. > >>This needs magic, it seems to me. The kind of magic whose existence > >>would make me doubt that I can survive "qua computatio". > > > >By the sounds of things from what you've described above, I am using > >supervenience violating 323. And no, I wouldn't describe it as > >magical, no more magical than the fact that the irreverible 2nd of > >thermodynamics supervenes on reversible Newtonian dynamic. > > It is different. We have an explanation of why 2nd emerges, from the > laws of big numbers. > But you are asking for a physically inactive object (with respect to > a computation) to have a physical role. Why do you think that we couldn't find a similar sort of explanation for why the activity in other branches is relevant to consciousness (assuming that it is the case, of course). Before Boltzmann, the irreversibility of the second law was totally mysterious, but I doubt anyone seriously thought it magical. My point is only that Maudlin has not ruled this out. And I fail to see an easy way of ruling it out - emulating the Multiverse doesn't really seem to do it. > (Although you seem to abandon that idea for saying that the film > (projection in time and place) is conscious). I'm trying to abandon discussion of the MGA at present as an unnecessary complication, as I understand that argument even less. > > > > >But I don't > >need to provide a mechanism to find a flaw in the argument - the > >argument needs to prove that no such mechanism can possibly exist, and > >I don't think it does that. > > If such a mechanism exist, it can be simulated. if not, comp is false. Maybe consciousness is possible without physics, maybe not. Why should COMP hinge upon that fact? > > > > > >In any case, Maudlin's argument does not assume the 323 principle, > >even implicitly. > > Yes, that's the role of the Klara, but it concludes that we have to > provide a physical activity to something which, for a particular > computation is physically inactive, and functionally equivalent to > the absence of those piece. In the case of Klara, the Klaras are physically active as extended multiversal object. With your register 323, the register is also a physically active extended multiversal object too. Your "323 principle" states that one can remove the 323 register without affecting the computation. But it seems to me it does, or at least it is far from obvious that you can remove the register without affecting the computation - ie I don't believe your 323 principle, as you are now stating it. ... > > > >Because the MGA aims to show something stronger - that primitive > >matter is actually incompatible with COMP. > > It shows it to be useless both for consciousness and the appearance > of matter. > It seems to me that Kant already did this ca 200 years ago. Without even invoking the concept of COMP. > > > > > > >>> > >>>Why does supervenience over multiple parts require that the parts > >>>interact? Are you invoking emergence here? > >> > >>If they don't interact, they don't play any role in the computation. > > > >How does that work? > > By definition of a computation. Like with QM, independence is > isolation. Computation relies on the causal, or arithmetical, > relations between parts. Non interacting parts can play a role in > the measure on computations, not on any singular computations. The parts of the computation are extended multiversal objects. The division into branches is a distinction made by the consiousness. The word part here is being used somewhat ambiguously. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
