On 04 Feb 2014, at 14:32, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, February 4, 2014 9:43:39 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 03 Feb 2014, at 22:40, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, January 17, 2014 9:59:36 PM UTC, Brent wrote:
On 1/17/2014 2:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 16 Jan 2014, at 19:04, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/16/2014 12:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The body does not produces consciousness, it only make it
possible for consciousness to forget the "higher self", and
deludes us (in some sense) in having a "little ego" embedded in
some history.
Sounds like wishful thinking.
That is very subjective. It sounds to me, and to some other
people, (apparently many), that it looks more like some terrifying
thinking.
I agree. But your choice of words gives the opposite impression.
Why "higher"? Why not "lower".
Yes, why not. The standard term is "higher".
Exactly - it is very subjective.
Why not diffused into the infinite threads of the UD?
Why not indeed? Is that a problem? Not sure to see your point.
My point is that you imply we should be happy with the implications
of comp because it implies we really have a "higher self" that
we've merely forgotten and that we are deluded in having a "little
ego". Just consider how different it sounds to say we have
forgotten our real "lower self" and we deluded in thinking our ego
is significant.
Brent
This is very true. I find it strange how much bias of various kinds
gets built into this comp business. It surely can't be possible
that a learned scholar like Bruno doesn't stop to consider whether
he's loading terms in distortive ways. There's no way this is a
language issue, the issue is far too basic.
I hope Bruno takes your advice and tests his choice next time, by
considering its negative.
Can you be more specific, and may be quote my answer to Brent. I
don't want the comp implications to make me happy. On the contrary I
make the hypotheses precise, and then I derive everything by logic
and arithmetic.
If I distorted anything, I would be please you could make a specific
remark.
I don't even see what negative position you are mentioning.
Hi Bruno - I don't think I was being negative in the negative sense.
If that's the impression perhaps I should keep an eye on my style
and see if I can avoid such impressions.
Bruno I'm commenting directly on what Brent just said in the line
above. You used the term "higher" self. So, the suggestion is that
you're building in a bias that your theory doesn't reach to.
OK. My fault. I was alluding to the self of the universal person,
described by the arithmetical hypostases. usually I use "higher self"
more in the context of the some entheogenic experience. The higher
self is, basically, you, when you forget completeley who you are, or
when you dissociate completely from yourself, like in OBE, some lucid
or non lucid dreams, etc.
Brent was illustrating this by suggesting that if you didn't agree,
you should try inserting the opposite of 'higher'.
Yes, the terrestrial self. The one who pays the bills, and answers
mails, and collects the shortcut to heaven ...
Another bias is the way comp is presented as a hierarchy of
acceptance of comp with words like 'courage' associated toward the
higher end of acceptance, and very much the opposite associations
going down the stack. We could talk forever about how
individualistic people are, but the fact is there's a lot of
evidence people can be very vulnerable to this sort of social/
reputation type pressure. That said there's no sign it's purposeful
or devious or anything like that, but even so.
I have no problem with critics, except when they are so fuzzy it is
not even clear they are related to anything I could have said.
Comp needs courage, but then getting an heart operation too. I don't
see what is the problem for you.
Well look, all you had to do to see the point above was the usual
read, read what I was replying to, and figure. There is only one
reference to you in Brent's comment.
What I'm referring to here, is that part of your theory, or your
reading of comp, appears to grade people by the extent they accept
your theory.
Only the understanding is graded. That's what we do in math and science.
That's alright. But as I was saying, there's a risk that arguments
like that in an environment where other people are making up their
mind about your theory, can bias the process due to them
experiencing a kind of social/peer pressure to accept the theory.
Not at all. That is why I insist so much that I am not selling a
theory. I am not sure at all that comp is true. All the contrary. I am
a mathematician, and I just prove a theorem, which is that IF comp is
true, then Plato is mandatory, and Aristotle is refuted, and this in a
testable way.
The miracle is that with comp, some "philosophical" or "theological"
question can be translated into arithmetical problems.
You have to accept that in the same sense that you have to accept that
if the axiom of elementary arithmetic are correct, then, x^2 = 2* y^2
has NO non trivial solution.
I might be wrong, but people saying it is wrong are usually
computationalist who do believe "religiously" in the Aristotelian
dogma (indeed believed by many fundamentalist, in Islam, Christianity,
and even more among the fundamentalists atheists).
For the normal usual agnostic scientists, it is just a theorem in
theoretical cognitive science, or in arithmetical philosophy, or in
computer science.
It is a result in science. And there are some evidence of peer/
pressure to ignore this, but I think this is not even related to the
result itself. It is modest, and it looks radical only to people
having dogma in the field.
My real goal is the same as Gödel. To illustrate that some
*hypotheses* make it possible to tackle "theological" questions, like
afterlife, god, reincarnation, in a purely mathematical way.
Nobody is asked to accept anything by faith. Only to validate or
invalidate a deductive reasoning.
After all, who wants to be at the bottom rung of the hierarchy.
This is pretty well understood stuff. I meancults, and pressure-
scams, use the same kind of thing - obviously in their case malign
and purposeful - to induce a pressured environment to push people
through to whatever they have in store.
I think I'm making really vanilla observations here. I'm not
suggesting there's anything deliberate. I might not be right. Maybe
you don't want to talk about it. Maybe you don't think it matters. I
don't mind. I wasn't planning to launch a campaign. It was just
something I'd been thinking about and I saw Brent's comment and
decided to pass comment.
I just try to share my passion for some fundamental questions, and
advertise the scientific method and the tools and discoveries, we
inherit when we assume computationalism.
Of course this push the level of rigor high, and philosophers often
dislike that.
It put the rigor at the level of convincing, not me, but all universal
machines.
I try to share my awe on our ignorance, and the machine's ignorance,
that can develop when the machine look inward, in some angle.
I hope you have followed the little introduction to modal logic,
because, thanks to a theorem due to Solovay, some modal logic will sum
up well the complexity of the questions, and partial solutions.
I have manage all points in a deduction, so do you understand the
definition of comp, and at which step do you have any problem?
This is really nothing to do with the definition of comp. I'm not
suggesting you are using an illegitimate argument in terms of comp.
OK. Thanks for making this precise. I appreciate.
I'm just pointing to the structure and mentioning that because there
seems to be value attaching up a hierarchy in terms of how much
someone accepts comp, it might not be appropriate in an environment
where people are deciding whether they accept comp.
?
Why? By using steps in the deduction, anyone interested in the
consequence of comp will graded themselves.
Those understanding step 0. (that is not nothing, it is the definition
of comp, and what it means to assume something, then it uses naive and
default hypotheses, without mentionaing Church thesis and the needed
(but very weak) arithmetical realism.
If you grasp this, you have 0/8. because that is really the starting
point.
Then, it is a matter of curiosity to see, for me, if you are OK with
the argument that this leads to step 2 (the "in principle"
possibility of classical teleportation (relatively to some Turing
universal environment).
If you are OK, with this, you grade yourself 1/8. Why not. It is
useful in later discussion to know this.
If you try to make your mind of comp (which I do not, at least
publicly) why would you not be interested in the consequences of comp,
or, of that type of comp, if you can provide an alternate hypothesis
in the cognitive sciences.
It is a bit weird. it is like "don't tell me about the inexistence of
rational numbers before I make my mind on numbers".
Or if it's unavoidable, an appreciation of the risk of bias is worth
having on board because you might be able to minimize that.
There is a bias for the scientific method in the fundamentals, and
computationalism makes this possible, not in practice, but in theory
on the theoretical question.
Something else is that some people don't appear to stick to
published work and consequences when someone less experienced is
undecided. The issue there is that there's a good chance that less
experienced person may not be able to distinguish this for himself,
and may be assuming published work is being stuck to - a reasonable
assumption in my view.
A simple remedy would be to label non published...stuff that are
still at insight stage or whatever, as personal opinion.
?
I explain on this list only published and peer reviewed materials,
or I say explicitly when that is not the case, with all the warnings
(but that is rare).
If I got that wrong, unreserved apology.
No problem. It is the originality of the work: it looks like
philosophy, it handles, and formulate, a problem traditionally
reserved to the philosophers and theologian's territory.
Then amazingly some (rare) scientists acts like "philosophers" and
"theologians".
it is more a battle for keeping curriculum and jobs, it happen all the
time in math when two fields get unified, that's life.
Some student in philosophy told me once that I have not the right to
reason like that. I told her that if you put the cards on the table,
you are only really asking a question, but she remains convinced of
the contrary. philosophers ignore that science is doubt and modesty
before all, including a deep agnosticism in most matter.
The reason I thought not was because....I mean, just that statement
Brent was talking about where you argue consciousness for a higher
self, an spirit or soul. I thought it was established by you and
Brent your theory doesn't establish that this self is 'higher'.
Agreed.
But, to be honest, I didn't think the claim about our consciousness
being facilitated by the body, but that it pre-exists and continues
to exist after death. I dridn't think you say something like that in
a peer journal without extraordinary proof.
Comp does not prove immortality, but it refutes proofs of mortality.
Then like QM without collapse, looking at the third person view, you
have a good qualitative seeing why proving mortality would be a
dauntesc task indeed.
If an amoeba survives one duplication, she survives all duplications
(old formulation of comp/UDA).
Comp makes us more ignorant, and notably extremely ignorant on
question like that.
But if your read Lamettrie and Sade, you can see how the confusion of
mechanism and materialism get to a logic which eliminate persons, and
feel liberate from the fear of death by making it an absolute end. But
both with Everett QM, or simply, computationalism, we are just much
more ignorant.
Some scientists dislike the idea that with comp we can begin to
realise how much we are ignorant in "theology". But I thought that
was obvious, given that the subject is still taboo for many, and is
still traditionally reserved to a vague notion of authorized legal
cults.
That is normal. Humans does not et listen to themselves, and it will
take time for them listening to the machines.
They might wait for when the machine will lie, perhaps.
But if I got that wrong, I'm sorry. That said, the point still
stands about using loaded words like 'higher'.
Honestly, that was a "salvia entheogenic" vocabulary. Let us say that
I defined the higher self by the three primary hypostases. The lower
self is the secondary hypostases.
Follow the course on modal logic, then Solovay theorem, and then the
following will be precise, and somehiow justified by the UDA:
The higher self: ([] is GOdel 1931 beweisbar (provability, in PA,
say, predicate).
p (god, the one, truth (not definable by the machine)),
[]p (the noùs, the intelligible, the eternal ideas, the rational
beliefs, the third person),
[]p & p (the universal soul, the universal person, the knower, the
first person).
The lower self:
[]p & <>t (intelligible matter),
[]p & <>t & p (sensible matter).
You can read my paper on Plotinus. This is part of an interpretation
of Plotinus in purely arithmetical terms.
Once a machine get enough induction ability, it inherits a quite non
trivial theology (defined by all true (arithmetical) propositions
about it, and its possibilities).
All this concerns the ideal case of machines correct about themselves,
at the correct substitution level, or below.
As Brent said, these words have dramatic impacts on meaning.
This is because they are related to intimate conviction, but we have
to go through that by being clear on the points made.
Let us focus on what you seem to not understand. What is it?
Bruno, there's nothing wrong with my understanding. I haven't
suggested anything you've said is wrong by comp. I'm not talking
about that at all. I hope that's more clear now.
OK. No problem.
I have really no clue, but you do seem a bit negative, without
making any explicit points.
All I can say about the negative charge, is that I wasn't but
clearly that was the impression for you, which doesn't help me
either if I want you to talk to me, so I will definitely try to keep
an eye on how I'm presenting.
No problem.
However I think my points were explicit enough. I hope the
clarification was useful. Let me know if you want more information.
I can't promise, but I should think I could probably find you some
information about psychological devices involving building value
judgements about individuals based on their acceptance of something,
into a process where people are deciding whether they want to accept
it. Or you could....there's a strong cult link I think.
I think that with comp we can develop an understanding that we should
not try so much to use science on ourselves, but better follow our
normal intuitions, somehow. You know the problem of the millipede when
asked how he walks with so many legs. Looking inward asks for an
amount of doing nothing, which little machines like PA and ZF do well,
without not being distracted by the senses.
That's a recurent problem that I have with some type of philosophers.
Well now you're being negative. I'm not a philosopher. I wasn't
mentioning philosophical concerns.
No problem ghibbsa. And of course I do like philosophy, but not when
misused notably with respect to validity of a reasoning.
I have stopped a long time ago to do philosophy on this list, to avoid
an easy confusion.
But thank you for reassuring me that you were not doing that.
Some told me: "oh, but if you pretend to do science, it means to
pretend to be true".
Answer: on the contrary, I just interrogate the peers about a question
of validity, which is checkable. I have always believed to be false, I
ask for showing me where.
The very idea is to show that comp (and its many weakening), in the
company of the oldest theory of knowledge, leads to testable
prediction (indeed all quantum tautologies).
If nature violates a theorem of Z1* (the logic of the intelligible
matter). I am less sure I would say yes so easily to the doctor.
Sorry of any misunderstanding of my part,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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