On 27 Feb 2012, at 21:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:
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'...f
?
orm of
reincarnation...faith?
Yes. Comp is a scheme of possible theologies.
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.
You beg the question.
Computation can only inform those
who can be informed by it.
You beg the question.
To make something happen, information has
to be acted upon subjectively through sense and motive.
OK.
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.
Provably wrong in comp. You forget that we can define self-referential
machine, and even study their "non definable" knowledge.
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".
The contrary is true. Self-referential programs cannot avoid the leap
of faith.
Consciousness itself is plausibly based on an unconscious leap of faith.
It is only we who can ask or offer
a leap of faith.
That's anthropocentrism.
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.
You beg the question.
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.
Nobody, nor even God, can understand completely what a universal
machine or number is.
I am the
inherent interior experience of an organically evolved animal.
L'habit ne fait pas le moine, we say in french. "the clothes does not
define the priest".
A
machine is an idea which is enacted artificially
The difference between natural and artificial is artificial (and thus
natural when machines get big egos).
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.
DVD player have no self-referential abilities. Unlike machines like
PA, ZF.
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.
Because you chose to compare human with puppet machine, and not with
the machines having already high cognitive ability. You could as well
say that all numbers are smaller than 20, because 5, 6, 9, and 12 are.
Some
things, like a fire, can be experienced by everything in the room.
This seems to contradict your own theory, of to make it so fuzzy, that
you can answer everything, meaning that it is not even a theory, or
that it is inconsistent.
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,
It does not. But even if it did, making sense is not enough for having
a theory.
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.
Machine have belief, knowledge, observation abilities, once you take
the standard definition, and take into account computer science.
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,
See my previous post. You need to understand that comp defines
physics, so it is the most easily (conceptually) refutable theory you
can ever imagine.
but not sensibly.
That's your sensibility. It is a form of racism.
There isn't any common sense experience
which supports the idea that computation can take initiative and
experience feelings
There are. Just study computer science.
like a living organism can.
OK. But there is no reason that they become like cat. Spiders are also
different from cat, and humans too.
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.
Answer the argument, make more clear you assumption.
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.
This shows only that qualia are not communicable. Be them lived by
humans, machines or aliens. You keep begging the question by thinking
that only human can think humanly, which is true, but beg the question
of thinking in general.
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).
Not at all. The machine's qualia are not 3p notion, despite a part of
their logic can be described in 3p terms. Don't confuse the qualia of
the machine with the machine's theory of the machine's qualia. I told
you this before.
It's all 3p
speculation.
It is 3p hypothesis. Science is always speculative.
When science stop being speculative, it becomes pseudo-science, or
pseudo-religion.
There is no belief, only logical constraint.
Not only. Arithmetic is beyond logic already.
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.
If only my computer could listen to you!
All machines
are a single 'it', just as all black and white TVs share in common
their lack of color.
You keep begging the question.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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