On Feb 25, 4:50 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > On 24 Feb 2012, at 23:40, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Feb 23, 9:41 pm, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Let us suppose you're right and... but hold on! We can't do that. > >> That > >> would be "circular". That would be sneaking in the assumption that > >> you're right from the outset. That would be "shifty', "fishy", etc > >> etc. You just don't seem to grasp the rudiments of philosophical > >> reasoning. > > > I understand that it seems that way to you. > > >> 'Yes doctor' is not an underhand move. > > > Not intentionally. > > >> It asks you up-front > >> to assume that comp is true in order then to examine the implications > >> of that, whilst acknowledging (by calling it a 'bet') that this is > >> just a hypothesis, an unprovable leap of faith. > > > I think that asking for an unprovable leap of faith in this context is > > philosophically problematic since the purpose of computation is to > > make unprovable leaps of faith unnecessary. > > This is were you are the most wrong from a theoretical computer > science pov. > It is just an Aristotelian myth than science can avoid leap of faith. > Doubly so for a (meta) theory like comp, where we bet on a form of > reincarnation. > Betting on a reality or on self-consistency gives a tremendous > selective advantage, but it can never be 100% justified rationally. > Comp meta-justifies the need of going beyond pure reason. Correct > betting mechanism cannot be 100% rational. That's what is cute with > incompleteness-like phenomena, they show that reason *can* see beyond > reason, and indeed 99,9% of the self-referential truth belongs to the > unjustifiable. >
How can it really be said to be computational though? 2+2 = unjustifiable self-referential 'truth'...form of reincarnation...faith? > > > > > > > > > > > >> You complain that > >> using the term 'bet' assumes non-comp (I suppose because computers > >> can't bet, or care about their bets), but that is just daft. > > > Saying 'that is just daft' to something which is clearly the honest > > truth in my estimation doesn't persuade me in the slightest. > > >> You might > >> as well argue that the UDA is invalid because it is couched in > >> natural > >> language, which no computer can (or according to you, could ever) > >> understand. If we accepted such arguments, we'd be incapable of > >> debating comp at all. > > > That would be ok with me. I don't see anything to debate with comp, > > because I understand why it seems like it could be true but actually > > isn't. > > But, as you seem to believe yourself, it is just the case that the 1p > cannot feel like comp is true. It is due to the clash between Bp and > Bp & p I have just been talking about in my previous mail. It's not a feeling that comp isn't true, it's an understanding that comp can't be causally efficacious. Computation can only inform those who can be informed by it. To make something happen, information has to be acted upon subjectively through sense and motive. Sense works on multiple levels though, so that we can cajole a computer into opening and closing logic gates which seem meaningful to us, but have no larger coherence to the computer itself. > > > > >> Saying 'no' to the doctor is anyone's right - nobody forces you to > >> accept that first step or tries to pull the wool over your eyes if > >> you > >> choose to say 'yes'. Having said no you can then either say "I don't > >> believe in comp because (I just don't like it, it doesn't feel right, > >> it's against my religion etc)" or you can present a rational argument > >> against it. > > > Or you can be rationally skeptical about it and say "It has not been > > proved" or "I see through the logic and understand the error in its > > assumptions". > > I will never been proved, for purely logical reason. Comp can only be > refuted, or hoped. Comp remains science, at the meta-level, but saying > "yes" to a doctor asks for a leap of faith. I don't think that comp can ask for that. Even within a program, you can't have a GOTO "leap of faith". It is only we who can ask or offer a leap of faith. Computers need to know. Since they don't know where they've been and they don't know who they are, they have nothing to invest in such a leap. If it could then we could beg our ATM that we lost our wallet and it could agree to help us out. > > > > > > > > > > > > >> That is to say, if asked to justify why you say no, you > >> can either provide no reason and say simply that you choose to bet > >> against it - which is OK but uninteresting - or you can present some > >> reasoning which attempts to refute comp. You've made many such > >> attempts, though to be honest all I've ever really been able to glean > >> from your arguments is a sort of impressionistic revulsion at the > >> idea > >> of humans being computers, > > > That is your impressionistic revulsion at the idea of stepping outside > > the entrenched positions of the argument. I have no revulsion > > whatsoever at the idea of humans being computers. As I have mentioned > > several times, I have believed in comp for most of my life, for the > > same reasons that you do. I am fine with being uploaded and digitized, > > but I know now why that won't work. I know exactly why. > > Then you are not a machine. That's possible, but up to now, it is just > a begging type of argument, given that you don't succeed to provide an > argument for how and why you know that. Because I understand what a machine is and what I am. I am the inherent interior experience of an organically evolved animal. A machine is an idea which is enacted artificially on a comparatively inert assembly of components. The continuity of the two is figurative, not literal, so that even though a DVD player plays a movie, it is not watching and enjoying the movie. Nothing in the room, not the TV, the stereo, the furniture, even the cat, can understand the movie except me. This is the symbol grounding problem. Puppets, not zombies. Some things, like a fire, can be experienced by everything in the room. Some things, like a piece of fish on a plate or a flea bite, can be experienced by the cat as well as me, but nothing else. Once that makes sense, there is no temptation to take comp seriously anymore. A puppet can act like a cat as far as I'm concerned, but it need not feel like a cat at all. Blindsight and synesthesia help us know this clearly. Experiences for machines are not automatically required, nor are they forthcoming just because we expect them to in our own experience. There are so many things we have gone over - how children learn gestures and colors before math, how no disembodied machines appear in space or haunting the internet, how machines have intuitively been associated with being unconscious and unfeeling (mechanical, robotic), how computers don't work unless they are constructed from certain kinds of controllable solid objects, etc. I've made lists like these on several occasions. The bottom line is that comp is unfalsifiable logically, but not sensibly. There isn't any common sense experience which supports the idea that computation can take initiative and experience feelings like a living organism can. > The very fact that you feel obliged to mention that you know that can > only make us suspicious that actually you don't have an argument, but > only a feeling. I keep repeating this list, adding more each time. What else can I do. Comp cannot disprove itself, so if you are looking for that to happen then I can tell you already that it won't. I can't prove the existence of color on a black and white TV alone. To prove color exists you have to look away from the TV and see the world with your own eyes. >Then such feeling are already explainable by machine This is the black and white idea of a feeling - function (x) which produces 'belief' (y) which expresses as behavior (k). It's all 3p speculation. There is no belief, only logical constraint. No feeling, only inferred involuntary probabilistic game theory. > Machine also said that they (1p) knows that they are not any machine > we could describe to them, and later, by deepening the introspection > and the study of comp, they can understand that such a knowledge > proves nothing. That's because they have no sense. There's really no point in talking about 'them' since every machine responds the same way. All machines are a single 'it', just as all black and white TVs share in common their lack of color. Craig -- 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.
