On 03 Mar 2012, at 04:44, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/29/2012 9:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 29 Feb 2012, at 13:50, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/28/2012 5:19 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2012/2/28 Stephen P. King <[email protected]>
On 2/28/2012 10:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel
any difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your
brain was substituted for a digital brain.
Hi Quentin,
OK, but could you elaborate on this statement?
It means an hypothetical "you" after mind uploading would feel as
conscious as you're now in your biological body, and you would
steel *feel* and feel being you and conscious and all...
Hi Quentin,
We need to nail down exactly what continuity of self is. if
there is no "you", as Brent wrote yesterday, what is
that which is invariant with respect to substitution?
As I said, Brent made a sort of pedagogical mistake, but a big one,
which is often done, and which explains perhaps why some
materialist becomes person eliminativist.
The "you" is a construct of the brain. It is abstract. You can see
it as an information pattern, but a real stable one which can exist
in many representations.
And you can build it for any machine by using Kleene's "second
diagonalization" construction.
It is the key of the whole thing. So let me explain again. You can
certainly construct a program D capable of doing some simple
duplication of an arbitrary object x and apply any transformation T
that you want on that duplicated object, perhaps with some
parameters:
Dx gives T(...., xx, ....),
Then applying D to itself, that is substituting x for D, leads to a
self-referential program:
DD gives T(...., DD, ...).
You might add "quotes" to prevent an infinite loop:
Dx gives T(...'xx' ...) so that
DD gives T(... 'DD'...).
This is the trick used by Gödel, Kleene, Turing, Church, Post, ...
in all incompleteness and insolubility result, but also, in
abstract biology (see my paper "amoeba, planaria, and dreaming
machine".
That define a relative "you", trivially relative to you. It is the
"I" of computer science. It allows you to write a program referring
to its entire code/body in the course of its execution. In some
programming language, like the object oriented Smalltalk, for
example, it is a build in control structure called SELF.
This gives, unfortunately only a third person notion of self. It is
more "my body" than my "soul", and that if why, to do the math, we
have to use the conjunction of truth, with belief, to get a notion
of first person. By the non definability of truth, this "I" cannot
be defined by the machine concerned, but it still exist, even if
doubly immaterial---because it is abstract, and in relation with
the non definable (by the machine) truth.
Both are invariant, by definition, when the comp substitution is
done at the right level. It means that the reconstituted person
will behave the same, and feel to be the same.
Dear Bruno,
Forgive the obvious question, but what you wrote here should be
the "blue print" for creating an AI, no? All that needs to be done
is to create a special purpose physical machine that can implement a
program with this structure, such that it is implemented "fast
enough" to be able to interact in our world at our level.
Yes. I wrote a self-regenerating programs, doing that. (see "amoeba,
planaria and dreaming machine"). But *any* programs once correct and
rich enough above those laws, and they can know it (in the Theaetus'
sense of knowing).
Is the differentiation that one might feel, given the wrong
substitution level, different from what might occur if a "digital
uploading" procedure is conducted that fails to generate complete
continuity?
It depends on the wrongness of the substitution or the lack of
continuity... it's not binary outcome.
At some point it would have to be, for a digital system has a
fine grained level of sensitivity to differences, no? I am trying
to nail down the details of this idea.
The details are in the mathematics of self-reference.
Where? How is the "degree of resolution" or "scope" of a
computation coded in a computation? It seems that this is assumed in
the notion of computer grammars and semantics but has this question
been address directly in literature?
Gödel 1931.
We can do that with programs, because from outside we already know
that they are program, and we know their substitution level. The
program cannot, but in this case we provide the information (we play
the role of the doctor).
Those "does not feel any difference" terms are a bit ambiguous
and vague, IMHO.
Digital physics says that the whole universe can be substituted
with a program, that obviously imply comp (that we can substitue
your brain with a digital one), but comp shows that to be
inconsistent, because comp implies that any piece of matter is
non-computable... it is the limit of the infinities of
computation that goes through your consciousness current state.
Can you see how this would be a problem for the entire
digital uploading argument if functional substitution cannot
occur in a strictly classical way, for example by strictly
classical level measurement of brain structure?
Yes, and if it is, it is a big indication that comp is somehow
wrong...
AFAIK, it would only prevent the continuation of the idea that
"we are only that which is within our skin". We might finally
escape from the modular clock world of gears and levers that the
Parminidean and Newtonian world view entails.
But comp escapes this. If "I" am a machine, then the reality,
globally cannot be a machine, and from the point of view of any
machine, his 1-I cannot be a machine either, even if it *is* a
machine ... from God (Truth) point of view.
From what I understand of the idea, the "I" is a fixed point
therefore is sensed as "disconnected" from everything else in any
given 1p. Thus it seems that nothing at all within a given 1p is
"machine". This is where your definition of "Free Will" makes a lot
of sense, BTW. You should write more on it as it has very
interesting implications.
Here there is a quite difficult idea, made simple by the self-
reference logic, which is that:
G* proves that Bp is extensionally equivalent to Bp & p. (they
prove the same arithmetical p),
But G, and thus the machine, does not prove that, which makes them
intensionally different. The first obeys to G, and the
second obeys to a logic of knowledge (S4Grz).
OK, this is becoming more clear to me and understood, but in the
sense that I just wrote. So G* is equivalent to a computation that
generates a simulacrum universe within which a 1p is a small portion
concentrated withing some "volume" (bounded by a surface)?
G* knows (in the intuitive sense of producing as true) the truth about
the machine. S4Grz describe the machine's knowledge (1p), and G the
machine's science about itself (3p).
For example, the machine is consistent (G* proves Dt). The machine
cannot know or believe rationnally that she is consistent (G* proves
~BDt). Both the machine and the "divine intellect" knows that (both G
and G* proves Dt -> ~BDt).
And the soul find this trial: S4Grz proves Dt, but of course with Dt
the dual of its knowledge operator. The B and D have different meaning
than the B and D of G and G*.
Any dependence of consciousness on quantum entanglement will
prevent any form of digital substitution. This might not be a bad
thing for Bruno's ontological argument - as it would show that 1p
indeterminacy is a function or endomorphism of entire "universes"
in the many-worlds sense - but would doom any change of
immortality via digital uploading.
Sure, but if the level is that down... then even if it is still
compatible with comp, for all practical purposes, it's the same
as if it was wrong...
I am not so sure. I think that the way that QM systems are
linear will still allow substitution, but not in the usual way of
thinking. The problem that I see is the lack of understanding of
QM's implications.
Comp does not assume QM. It is just not part of the theory. And
then the reasoning shows that as far as QM is a physically correct
law, it has to be derived from comp.
I need more detail on this as I do not understand what you mean
by "COMP does not assume QM".
? It just means that the axiom of QM is not part of the theory.
As far as I understand, COMP makes any theory of a physical world a
matter of 1p contingency and choice,
The exact contrary. COMP makes physics a theorem in arithmetic. It
concerns the correct inference of universal numbers on the universal
numbers which can support it persistently. Physics is not contingent
at all.
therefore whether one is considering "the physics of the world" as
equal to "Newtonian Physics" or equal to "Quantum physics" is
literally irrelevant. It seems to abandon the entire idea of
physical world with their conservation and motion laws as some
secondary afterthought. This is to be expected for any version of
Ideal monism.
Comp refute this. You can guess this already with just UDA. The UD
structure is the same for all numbers, and the statistics on
computations is the same for all machines.
To understand comp, you have to abstract yourself of any *theory*
on the physical reality. It is easy, if you grasp Church thesis,
which makes the definition of computation general enough, and
purely arithmetical.
While that it true, this "abstraction" cannot go so far as to
remove you from the theory completely or one will have a theory that
is incomprehensible.
Which theory? I am saying only that we have to abstract from the
physical theory, which is what we do when we do math.
I hope Quentin will not mind too much I answered the question
addressed to him.
I hope also this helps a bit. You should try to have a complete
understanding of the UDA, which asks only for a passive
understanding of Church thesis and of universal Turing machine,
before digging on the more complex translation of UDA in
arithmetical terms, where the billions of confusions possible are
handled by the nuances made obligatory by the subtle counter-
intuitive logics of self-reference.
I am interested in the long range implications of COMP, that is
where I see the best chance of testing its veracity.
Either the physical reality confirms the physics of the arbitrary
machine (S4Grz1, Z1*, X1*), or it refutes it.
I like COMP, it is very elegant and expressive but seems to have
several blind spots - issues that it does not even consider.
You forget again that the goal is to express the mind-body problem in
the comp framework. First things to grasp: if comp is correct, then
physics is a branch of number theory. I just show that comp makes the
mind-body problem two times more difficult than usual, because now, we
have to justified not just the qualia, but the (appearance of) quanta
too. The result of UDA and AUDA are sequences of mathematical problems.
In my humble opinion this is a problem if it is to be taken as
providing a ontological level explanation of the nature of
Existence. I have spent a lot of time investigating the problem of
time in physics and that time spent has made me very sensitive,
perhaps overly so, to the ontological implications of this problem.
It is my fervent hope that your beautiful result could be expanded
so as to be able to address in a more focused way the problem of time.
And the problem of space, energy, gravitation, etc.
The whole physics *is* the problem. That it is a problem *is* the
result.
I have never pretended that comp is the answer. I show that comp makes
possible to formulate the problem. The physical time is an entire open
problem, but the logic of duration can perhaps be said to be solved,
by the S4Grz1 logic, and its temporal arithmetic intuitionist
interpretation.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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