On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 1:57 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 8/11/2014 5:13 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:22 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Having now read the paper, >> > > Ok, I finished it too. Russell's "state of the art" is a very nice > introduction to the MGA and Maudlin's argument. Very clear and concise, > helped me organize my thoughts on these. > > >> ISTM that the "counterfactual" part of the argument is the only part >> that I *really* don't get. Or rather ISTM that it demonstrates that >> consciousness can't supervene on physical computational states, because >> those states can't know anything about these counterfactuals, which by >> definition don't happen. >> > > I think the point here is that if we assume consciousness supervenes on > matter, then we are forced to reject comp, by reductio ad absurdum. > > > I think the mistake, the reductio, is the assumption that consciousness > can supervene on this piece of matter without reference to the world in > which the matter exists. > This smells of dualism. What is "the world in which the matter exists" if not matter? > This fallacy is encouraged by considering conscious thoughts to be about > abstractions like arithmetic and dreams (as though dreams did not derive > from reality). > Dreams both derive from and are reality. Reality is everything that is, no? Telmo. > > Brent > > > Any computation supported by matter on which consciousness would > supervene could be replaced with a dumb playback of the sequence of states > produced by the computation (contradicting comp). In the Klara / Olympia > case, Olympia could be made compatible with comp by being replaceable by > Klara to deal with counterfactuals that would never happen. Enabling / > disabling the Olympia / Klara connection would turn consciousness on or off > (contradicting primitive matter, because the possibility of enabling > material computations that would never happen would determine the presence > of absence of consciousness). > > I am writing this to help organize my own thoughts, and hope to be > corrected if I am making a mistake. > > >> Then again, I also have some trouble with the multiverse part. A MV "is" >> a quantum computer? How do we know that, without even knowing the laws of >> physics? >> > > I think Russell is referring to a MWI multiverse which is necessarily a > quantum computer (we are assuming the wave equation with MWI, so the laws > of physics are known). > > I am not convinced that the MWI + the anthropic principle is equivalent > to the subset of the universal dovetailer computations that supports all > possible human experiences. I am also not convinced that the set of all > possible human experiences is finite. Russell, could you elaborate on these? > > (I am going to comment on the blog post too, in a rather redundant way) > > Cheers > Telmo. > > > -- > 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/d/optout. > -- 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/d/optout.
