On 3/29/2012 11:46 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/29/2012 7:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 3/29/2012 9:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb<[email protected]> wrote:
You don't know that. It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does. But if
conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
time. Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W. Or The
Borg of Star Trek. Of course that experience would be strange and we would
tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness." So then the question
becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication? Is it a mere
tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?
Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp? IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp. Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".
AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness. Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.
Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective. But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs. Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!
"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts. Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen. Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner. BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late". I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour. This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.
David
Hi David and Brent,
I have a question. Could it be that the "sense of self as
being-in-the-world" (ala Nagel's bat) is a phenomenon not at all
unlike the uniqueness of a fixed point
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_%28mathematics%29> on a
manifold?
Under what mapping?
Hi Brent,
The moment to moment passage of time. Think about it, our bodies
are constantly in flux and we are never in the same place, and yet we
have this strange sense of "I am what I remember myself to be" that
persists. How is that? Sure, we can think of moments individually in
terms of infinite computations, but what is dovetailing them? We can
postulate a "universal dovetailer", but how does it work for multiple
and distinct 1-p? I am not you and we are not the Man in Washington nor
the Man in Moscow, but those ideas are considerations of individual
snapshots and we have a movie to explain. We are many disjoint
observers, each in our very own version of a universe and yet have the
illusion that we are all "in" the same space-time... Maybe our universes
just are similar enough that we happen to be able to agree on "facts"
... Nevertheless, even taking Bruno's COMP seriously, we cannot all be
one and the same computation for it can only have one and only one
"inside" view.
It seems to me that one of the key aspects of the sense of self or
"I" that it is unique in its association with its location and its
memories.
Location is just part of one's model of their body. If you had two
bodies, one in Moscow and one in Washington, you'd have two viewpoints
in 3-space and you'd develop a model of having bodies in both places.
And what exactly is the point of view that has these two in its
frame? This entire conversation tacitly assumes that somehow we can step
into a frame of reference that makes us a voyeur looking down from above
and being able to see and know some 3-p and simultaneously have the 1-p
that you have right now as you read this. This simply does not happen.
We only experience one point of view at a time. How is that?
Being in two places at the same time would at least be confusing, Try
navigating with a combination of two maps - overlay the maps of
Washington and Moscow and try to figure out where you are.
Ask someone who flies radio control planes. They become able to
'place themselves' in the plane.
Surely, but that is missing my point. The simple fact is that we
always find our self in one place, never more. This fact must not be
glossed over. The model plane analogy is a good one and it is the same
thing as the immersion effect that one experiences in MMORP games. I am
trying to focus attention on the question as to exactly how that occurs.
I offer the movie "12 Monkeys
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Monkeys>" as a fictional narrative
exploring what happens when one's localization is split in the time
sense. In my studies, I have considered how the various pathologies
of consciousness sketch for us some of the fundamental aspects of
consciousness in a 3-p'ish way. For example, the various
dissassociative disorders ranging from phantom limb to multiple
personality disorders and schizophrenia tell us that an individual's
sense of self is strongly correlated with the synchronization of both
temporal and spatial queues both internal to the brain and of a
person's location. Thus "being in two places at the same time" is not
that much different from "having two sets of sense data that are
disjoint" (in the being in Moscow and Washington) such that unless a
single reconciliation of the two is possible, there will be
inevitably a splitting of the "I"'s or 1-p.
Not at all. I take the opposite lesson. Your brain invents your sense
of self. The difference between the schizophrenic hearing voices in
his head and you thinking thoughts is that you recognize the voice as
being yourself. The reason people have phantom limbs is that their
body is an internal model.
OK, I'll take your tact here, it works for me. How is this
"internal model" such that it is always centered in a world and
synchronized with the events in that world. If we are just some kind of
digital simulation or "internal view of a computation", why the extra
subroutine, why the internal view at all? Why does it seem so
inescapably necessary?
BTW, this line of reasoning argues strongly against the "Borg"
group-mind idea as possibly yielding a consciousness of the same kind
as the one that we have because of the inability to define a single
"point of view" given the wide and even disjoint nature of the
panorama of sense data that would be involved.
It might not be possible for humans, because they evolved to integrate
the vision from two eyes; but in principle I think a person could
learn to see the point of view at two different locations. I
certainly see nothing logically contradictory or nomologically
impossible.
I ask that you talk your way through this idea, tell me how it can
be compiled such that nothing akin to data collisions occurs. What you
are assuming is that the equivalent to a SAT (Boolean satisfiability
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem>) problem
"just happens" and there is nothing logically contradictory or difficult
involved. You guys need to seriously look at the concurrency problem in
computer science
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrency_%28computer_science%29>!
Consciousness is, I argue, fixed to a single point and cannot be
distributed. Distributed behavior would more correlate to what the
psychologist like to call "the unconscious". Consciousness, or at
least self-aware-consciousness, emerges from the unconscious only if
and when a fixed point like function can be defined on it.
(Compactness and closure properties must exist...)
Take my favorite thought experiment. Suppose I design two Mars Rovers
and I want them to coordinate their movements in order to round up
Martian sheep. I can easily distribute the artificial intelligence
between the two of them, using data links so whatever one sees the
other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what combat aircraft
software does now) and so there is a single top level decision routine
on top of local decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles
and managing internal states.
OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of the
two pieces of hardware, this is no different than how Watson
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-14-ibm-jeopardy_N.htm> runs
on a much of connected servers. But think about it, does not the data
correlated to the sensors on one of the Rovers have to be synchronized
with the data from the other Rover so that their manuevering can be
controled. How exactly is the internal model of this system built so
that it can 'consider itself' as being both exploring some pile of rocks
east of Mt. Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in
some crater 500 kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed points
to exist on one compact and closed manifold. You can only have one at a
time. What you describe is more like a Rover with a multiple personality
disorder.
Onward!
Stephen
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