On 3/24/2012 4:47 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Stephen, thanks for a new English word for me: caterwauling. I like it.
Sun'ichi Amari writes in a field I do not intend to penetrate and I
have a hard time to comprehend videos - even if they are not in
Japanese-English.
I confess: I did not find too much connection in your text to my post.
Maybe it is my fault.
Thanks anyway
JohnM
Dear John,
I think in pictures/sensations and the connections that I see that
exist might only be seen in the visual/proprioceptive mode of thinking.
I am just happy that my posts are not considered as noise. ;-) One more
thing; as I see it, "theories" are much like different points of view of
one and the same object: the totality of that which exists. Sometimes a
person's theory might just be about some small niche in their own minds
and sometimes it might be of some thing that many minds have as a common
commodity. BTW, my concept of the Totality of existence is very much
like that of Hegel, if you are familiar with Hegel's work....
Onward!
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
On 3/23/2012 11:47 AM, John Mikes wrote:
Stephen, - especially to the 2nd part of your reply -
I do not speak about a 'certain' uncertainty (i.e. 'quantum') I
speak about the concept: "uncertainty" is inherent in whatever we
think about, because in our 'model' of the knowable world there
is only part of the total (see the historical additions and
project such to the future) and we THINK about yesterday's
knowable as "all of them". Accordingly EVERYTHING is uncertain.
Logic, too.
Intercourse does not create babies: it gives a chance to a sperm
and egg to find each other in a way to start a genome. You can do
it in a test-tube. And - the babies are human beings, with
(working?) complexity including mental aspects, (even in mentally
impaired persons) which develops in the course of gestation -
according to Princeton's Singer even later, after birth. So
please, do not fall for the political haruspexs who cry 'murder'
in case of an abortion, the murder is saved for killing persons,
i.e. full complexities developed and evolved from the
parasite-state (embryo - fetus) into a substantial HUMAN being.
Now about identicity:
If you look for it... there are similarities in many unexpected
relations between off springs and ancestors, maybe not the total
ones as e.g. a clone, but the
identicity lives on in the genetic sequences.
BTW: what do you mean by "a mind" - to deem it "absolutely NEW"?
I agree with your rejecting 'randomness, or stochasticity' mainly
on the basis of the above mentioned ignorance about the
wholeness, but also on the basis that 'unatached' occurrences
would make ANY ordered description futile.
Russell replied to an earlier such remark of mine with the
correction into (as I recall) "conditional randomness". Which is
not random in my view.
John M
Dear John,
As to uncertainty, it seems to be a quisicrystal-coated
beastie for there are far to many models of it and probabilities
in general. I long for the day when a bright young mind figures of
the path to unify the best of these models and gives us a clear
principle with which to reject the nonsensical ones. The one that
I like is Shun'ichi Amari
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shun%27ichi_Amari>'s "information
geometry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Geometry>" idea
merely because it appeals to my visual type thinking.
Fear not for I was only considering the unassisted version of
procreation as a default that is independent of the technologies
of the time and place... As I see it "personhood" is a function
and not a "thing" so I have a well reasoned (IMHO) aversion to the
caterwaulings of those that would merely appeal to emotion for as
a justification of a claim. Emotional revulsion is never proof to
the contrary or impossibility.
Onward!
Stephen
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
On 3/22/2012 4:47 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/22/2012 1:31 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
>> This illustrates the problem I have with your
ideas, it's not your mathematics it's the
assumption you make right at the start which is the
foundation for everything else.
> Which assumption?
Your assumption that if a identical copy of you is made
everything may seen identical to a third party but to
itself, to the copy and the original, they would somehow
have different viewpoints even if everything they saw was
the same and they remained identical. I think that is just
plain wrong. Lately you seem to be equivocating somewhat on
this point and everybody has a right to change their mind,
but if you do then you'll have to rewrite your proof from
page 1 because that assumption was important.
> Those admit precise and simple definition, related to
the duplication and multiplication thought experience.
First person = content of a diary bring in the
duplication devices.
OK, but the original and the copy will both write in their
diaries "I walked into the duplicating chamber, the machine
was turned on and a copy of me appeared right in front of
me face to face", the copy and the original agree on what
occurred, so according to you the first person perspective,
the one that both you and I believe is most important, is
identical; so there is only one perspective, one
consciousness.
I don't think Bruno disagreed with this. I know I didn't.
The one consciousness only becomes two when there is
something different - in the perception of the outside
(Washington vs Moscow) or some random internal change. Your
thought experiment shows that comp implies that persons
bodies can be duplicated without duplicating their
consciousness (at least for a moment or two). But as I said
I don't see that this invalidates Bruno's argument which I
take to be that quantum uncertainty can be modeled by
uncertainty in personal identity.
Hi Brent,
Could you offer some sketch of how quantum uncertainty
can be modeled by uncertainty in personal identity? The
uncertainty of QM follows from the mathematical properties of
canonical conjugates (roughly, there exists a Fourier
transformation between them) and the general
non-commutativity of observables (roughly, as they have
complex number valued amplitudes). Quantum uncertainty is not
"just randomness" or stochasticity, the evolution of QM
systems is the template of a deterministic process. It is
just that it is impossible to recover the information
required to make a local prediction that makes it seem
"classically random" (aka decoherence). I think that we are
taking the "branching tree" analogy used by many to explain
the many worlds interpretation way too literally here... We
should disabuse ourselves of that concept.
The uncertainty generated by the copy and paste
operations of computation follows from the fissioning of the
first person sense of self, so it is indeed generates a
"branching tree graph" IFF we ignore cul-de-sacs and other
delete operations, cycles and non-monotic relations.
Additionally, we assume that conservation laws, which would
be "no new rules or data" restrictions for computations.
Where is the bridge connecting these concepts? What about the
fact that intercourse between humans create "babies", which
would be entirely new minds? How do they fix into these scheme?
Onward!
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