All these phisicalists considerations are extremely interesting, but we can not fall in the temptation to consider them an exhaustive notions of untimate Truth. These considerations take phenomenons as things occurring in the external reality, when really perceptions happens in the mind. In the mind resides all that we can know about reality. And the mind is not a neutral, objective device whose notion of existence is a yes/no switch. The human mind is a tool of survival for which existence is much wider than the phisical concept of existence. For humans the existence of the Moon is beyond doubt. What is debatable is the existence of water on it, or in the past, if it was made of Chess. Note that water and chess have survival values. Never anyone hoped that the moon was made of debris.
I just wanted to warm that at the human scale (considering man as the measure of things), considering what really is worth, phisical considerations have little importance when confronted with the concept of existence, meaning and truth. These concepts like others, are handled in our minds not by phisical, equational or logical considerations, but by survival values, most of the times unconsciously, and these survival values depend on how strong the social group becomes with these concepts (social capital). becaluse the mind creates the reality, we must study this reality of the mind, without pretending to reduce this to a physicalist simplifications, because, in this case, we would be out of syinc with the reality in which we live. 2012/9/26 Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> > On 9/25/2012 4:32 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: > >> Citeren meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>: >> >> On 9/25/2012 8:46 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Roger, >>>> >>>> My idea about this is that the Moon and that we landed on it exists in >>>> parallel with the Moon not existing or existing but we not landing on it, >>>> or we already having a base on the oon etc. etc. etc. Then which of these >>>> possibilities is "real" depends on the knowledge you happen to have, which >>>> undermines the concept of "real". >>>> >>>> I don't think this is an entirely academic matter, e.g. if you could >>>> forget everything about the Moon, all these alternative possibilities >>>> become open to you again, as I point out here: >>>> >>>> http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825 >>>> >>>> >>>> The reality of alternative possibilities may actually be the very thing >>>> that makes us conscious. If you accept machine consciousness, you have the >>>> problem that in a classical picture the machine evolves deterministically >>>> from one state to another, and you can map such a system to a trivial >>>> system (say a clock). To see that a computer is performing a non-trivial >>>> computation requires knowledge of counterfactuals, but then counterfactuals >>>> by definition haven't happened. At any one moment you are in some state >>>> which doesn't contain the information that a computation is carried out. >>>> >>>> A way out of this problem is to look more precisely at what the MWI >>>> really implies for a realistic computer capable of simulating the human >>>> brain. One has to accept here that given what a conscious person is aware >>>> of is only an astronomically small fraction of the information present in >>>> the brain. So, the MWI implies that the so-called branches that are >>>> supposed to be sectors of the multiverse where a peson has observed some >>>> dfinite result, actually consists of an astronomically large number of >>>> unresolved micro-branches, each containing diferent information. The rest >>>> of the universe is, of course, entangled with the observer in these >>>> micro-branches. >>>> >>> >>> But brains, and certainly computers, are almost entirely classical, >>> deterministic systems (and wouldn't be useful otherwise). That seems >>> inconsistent with the picture of astronomically many micro-branches, except >>> that the micro-branches are all close approximations of the classical. >>> >>> Brent >>> >> >> Yes, and these micro-branches are effectively classical because the >> system is entangled with a large number of environmental degrees of >> freedom. Still, you can't identify a conscious observer with a particular >> micro-branch, you need to consider a large number of them, as only then the >> computation that is carried out to render the observer becomes well defined. >> > > Hi, > > I see this statement to be consistent with Bruno's consideration of a > 1p as an intersection (of sorts) between an infinite number of > computations. I just wish Bruno would see that his problem with measures > might be just comp's version of the partition problem for Abelian von > Neumann subalgebras! > > > >> Note that I cannot look into your brain and determine which micro-branch >> you really are in, as that would vastly exceed the maximum capacity of my >> brain. Only for simple systems that can be described in a few bits of >> information can we be aware of the complete information that completely >> fixes the system. >> > > Does not the Bekenstein bound put an upper bound on the classical > information that we can measure? > > > >> >> Saibal >> >> >> >>> In this article: >>>> >>>> http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4472 >>>> >>>> I point out that this structure defines at least partially the >>>> algorithm that is running at any moment. So, the fact that things don't >>>> exist if we don't look may be the very reason why we can exist at all. >>>> >>>> >>>> Saibal >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Citeren Roger Clough <rclo...@verizon.net>: >>>> >>>> Hi smitra >>>>> >>>>> If the moon doesn't exist, how were we able to land men on it ? >>>>> >>>>> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net >>>>> 9/25/2012 >>>>> "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Receiving the following content ----- >>>>> From: smitra >>>>> Receiver: everything-list >>>>> Time: 2012-09-24, 23:04:51 >>>>> Subject: Re: Nonsense! >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Citeren "Stephen P. King" : >>>>> >>>>> On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. >>>>>>> >>>>>> Hi John, >>>>>> >>>>>> I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that >>>>>> "you" are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that >>>>>> there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the >>>>>> observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the >>>>>> presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon >>>>>> becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by >>>>>> the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! >>>>>> >>>>> >> > > -- > Onward! > > Stephen > > http://webpages.charter.net/**stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html<http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html> > > > -- > 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<everything-list@googlegroups.com> > . > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ > **googlegroups.com <everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** > group/everything-list?hl=en<http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en> > . > > -- Alberto. -- 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. 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