On 19 Feb 2014, at 15:05, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
Russell,
No, I have not painted myself into any corner.
Second, I reject all the labels you use, and most of the terminology
which is loaded with other labels. Labels are usually excuses not to
consider the actual theory, and not to have to actually think....
You are trying to view my theory in terms of Bruno's which won't
work because Bruno's theory is not relevant to mine.
It seems to me that you agreed that we might survive with a digital
brain. This makes your theory in the spectrum of the consequences of
computationalism.
Then you mention a "computational space", and you have not yet
explained what you mean that that.
I am not someone proposing a new theory. Comp is just a modern digital
version of one of the oldest principle, that you can find in very old
greek, indian and chinese texts. Then it came back nearby with
Descartes, and takes a new dimension with the mathematical (even
arithmetical) discovery of the universal machines (Post, Church,
Turing, Markov).
It's really amazing how so many loyal devotees here think if
anything conflicts with Bruno's comp it has to be wrong, when
Bruno's comp is just a theory which has little or nothing to do with
reality in any demonstrable sense.
It's amazing how people here think what might be a sound theory
about some abstruse nether regions of H-math must necessarily be
applicable to actual reality.
The way to understand what is going on with actual reality is to
OBSERVE it, not to slap some mathematical proof on top of it and
claim reality must conform to it. It's reality itself that decides
what theory it does or doesn't conform to, not some ivory tower H-
mathematician....
But I realize it's very difficult to alter faith based belief
systems....
You are the one invoking "real", "reality" "obvious" etc.
I put the hypothesis on the table which is basically that I can
survive with an artificial digital brain or body.
All the rest is derived from that. It is very general, and it reminds
that science has not yet decided between Plato and Aristotle on the
matter of matter.
The only faith I invoke is when and if, you say "yes" to the doctor
who proposes to you a digital brain copying you at some level
description. The consequences will be independent on the level per se,
only on its existence.
Please avoid the locution "computational space", or make at least the
link with the standard sense.
Have you heard about Church's thesis (also called Church-Turing thesis)?
Church's thesis makes *all* computational spaces; not just those of
Church and Turing and others, belonging to the sigma_1 part of
arithmetic (a tiny part of the whole arithmetic).
Bruno
Edgar
On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:19:20 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish
wrote:
On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:57:04PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>
> Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a
> computational reality, because it leads directly to it.
>
> Edgar
>
So you have just painted yourself into a Platonic idealist corner. The
only ontological properties of relevance is that of universal
computation. We could just as easily be running on the stuff of Peano
arithmetic (as Bruno suggests) as on Babbage's analytic engine in some
fantastic Steampunk scenario. Furthermore, since universal dovetailers
will dominate the measure of conscious programs, we will observe an
FPI-like screen over the activities of those programs - we must be
staring at the "Nothing" I talk about in my book. This is just a
consequence of the UDA.
But the "Nothing" is not an ontology - it is a really a statement that
ontology is unknowable, and not even really meaningful in any sense.
Cheers
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
