On 12 Aug 2014, at 18:54, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/12/2014 6:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:17 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 8/11/2014 9:27 PM, LizR wrote:
On 12 August 2014 15:50, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/11/2014 8:26 PM, LizR wrote:
Well, I guess a physical UD would be made robust against quantum
uncertainty, like all computers, but why do we need to assume QM
apply?
The argument assumes it doesn't apply, so that the computation can
be deterministic. I don't know that it affects the argument, but
worries me a little that we make this unrealistic assumption;
especially if we have include a whole 'world context' for the MG
simulation.
Ah, I see. One of the assumptions of comp is that consciousness is
a classical computation. At least I think that's what it means to
say that the Church-Turing thesis applies. I suppose a question
here is whether QM can introduce some "magic" that allows it to
create consciousness from a purely materialistic basis. If so then
there's no need for comp because consciousness isn't classically
emulable....yes?
Although a quantum computer can compute some things much faster
than a classical computer, it still can't compute things that are
Turing uncomputable, so I don't think it provides that kind of
magic. I was thinking more of the fact that the recorded inputs to
B and the response to the projection of the movie onto the graph
will not be perfectly deterministic, but only with high statistical
probability. Also, in QM it generally makes a difference to the
evolution of the system whether other states are available even if
they are never occupied.
This is what I don't see. Why do A's internal processes have
meaning, while B's don't - given that they're physically identical?
B's have meaning too, but it is derivative meaning because the
meanings are copies of A's and A's refer to a world. So it's an
unwarranted conclusion to say, see B is conscious and there's no
physics going on. There's plenty of physics going on in the past
that causally connects B to A's experience. Just because it's not
going on at the moment B is supposed to be experiencing it isn't
determinative. Real QM physics can require counterfactual
correctness in the past (e.g. Wheeler's quantum erasure, Elitzur
and Dolev's quantum liar's paradox).
Well, as I've mentioned previously I think time symmetry may sort
out those awkward retroactive quantum measurements. But anyway, I
guess this is putting the schrodinger's cat before the horse, in
that comp only assumes classical computation and attempts to
derive a quantum world from it. So I guess we can't necessarily
assume real QM physics, or at least not unless we've shown comp to
be based on false premises or internally inconsistent, or have a
rival theory of consciousness arising naturally from qm and
materialism, or some other good reason to do so. I think what I'm
trying to say here is that to assume comp must work with real
physics is to assume from the start that there is no reversal.
Well there's also the question of whether comp and the UD solve the
hard problem any better than psychophysical parallelism.
I'm not sure that comp and UD propose to solve the hard problem, as
much as proposing why it's not solvable.
I agree. I don't think it's solvable in the way people ask for. I
think it's solvable in the engineering sense. The advantage of
Bruno's theory is that, if the theory is right, then he can prove
within it what the hard problem is not solvable and can say why.
OK. Cool.
Pierz did a good job of examining this and I made some comments on
his post. I would like to look at comp+UD as just another
scientific hypothesis which we will adopt when it makes some
surprising prediction which is proved out by tests. Obviously
getting some surprising, trestable prediction out of it is likely
to be very difficulty. But unlike Bruno I'm not much persuaded by
logical inference from logic, Church-Turing, or
Peano arithmetic because I think they aren't "The Truth" but just
models we use in our thinking. Just reflect on how all logicians
and philosophers would have said, "No object can be in two
different places at the same time. It's just logic." - before
quantum mechanics.
It is my impression that progress in logic is done by removing all
that is non-abstract. It's a simplification effort. My difficulties
with logic usually arise from not being able to grasp the counter-
intuitive simple level at which it operates. Confusing common sense
with logic is a common mistake. You see this a lot on you tube
these days, where well-meaning atheists like to say "it's just
logic" when they are in fact referring to scientific common sense.
I am an atheist, an agnostic and a lover of science,
so I never like this -- it's resorting to the tricks of the "enemy".
I'm not sure I follow you here. Why does making the simulation
bigger invalidate the argument? Is there a cut-off point?
I don't know about a cut-off. The argument is a reductio. The
conclusion Bruno makes is that no physical process is necessary to
support consciousness,
OK
consciousness can be instantiated in a Turing machine simulation.
Sorry to split the sentence, but I must admit I thought that
latter part was his initial assumption, rather than his conclusion?
The initial assumption is consciousness can be instantiated by a
physical computation (one that replicates the I/O of your neurons),
but step 8 is to show it must be independent of the physical
computation and can be instantiated by an abstraction.
But my argument is that the simulation must also simulate a world
that the consciousness interacts with, is conscious *of*, that a
physical world is necessary for consciousness. If it's a
simulated consciousness, then it can be a simulated physics but it
has to be some physics.
Right, yes, I see. Or I think I see. That's implying that the comp
argument is assuming what it sets out to show, that is, it sets
out to show that physics can be derived from consciousness as
computation, but if it has to introduce physics to show this, then
the argument has become circular. So if interactions with an
environment are necessary for consciousness to exist (as part of
the definition of consciousness) then the argument is necessarily
circular. The question is whether the interaction is necessary, or
incidental - "incidental" would mean that consciousness has arisen
in a physical world through evolution, and hence is highly
specialised as an agent interacting with that world, but it could
at least in theory arise some other way (e.g. inside a computer).
Although it's hard to imagine how any conscious being could learn
anything useful without interacting with some sort of world - it
would sure be a blank slate otherwise. So I guess the question
boils down to: is a blank slate consciousness - one that isn't
aware of anything (except its own existence, I guess) possible?
It is in Bruno's conception. It is MOST conscious because it can
go anywhere from there, be anybody or any being. That's why he
thinks intelligence, which he deprecates as mere "competence",
detracts from consciousness. It has narrowed or directed
consciousness. As you can see that is quite different from my idea
of consciousness as something that arose as a way for evolution to
take advantage of perception mechanisms in doing learning,
prediction, and planning. I think consciousness is
a certain kind of thought and it's about something. Bruno thinks
it's a mystic property of relations between computations, e.g.
being provable.
In a more naive way, I arrived at the same conclusion before
reading Bruno: that intelligence and consciousness are different
things. I did it through introspection. I know highly intelligent
people that think like you. I know I am being honest and I fully
believe you are being honest too, so I see this divergence as part
of the mystery, that merits investigation.
I agree that intelligence and consciousness are different, and I can
see Bruno's point that competence tends to take away awareness.
OK. usually I distinguish competence (which is domain dependent, and
measurable locally) from intelligence. But it is a good idea to
identify consciousness with intelligence, at least before nuances can
impose itself (intelligence might be close to conscience than
consciousness per se, and requires some more self-referential ability.
Non Löbian machine can be conscious, as I tend to think now that all
universal machine are conscious, even if disconnected from our
reality), and so intelligence is closer to self-consciousness, or
Löbianity. Your 3p description obeys the modesty Löbian formula, that
is you believe []p -> p only if you believe p (formally []([]p -> p) -
> []p).
Knowing a lot about a subject keeps you from seeing it with fresh
eyes.
And worst, it can make you believe that you are intelligent, which is
the root of stupidity---almost a comp sin or blaspheme.
But human-like consciousness entails seeing and distinguishing, it's
model making as a way to seeing the world.
OK.
And mathematics, logic, and arithmetic are models too.
Not OK. You confuse reality (model, in the painter or logician sense)
and model in the sense of physicists, which is mainly the logicians
"theories" or "machines".
PA is a "model" (a theory), but the standard model of arithmetic is
the arithmetical reality, or arithmetical truth, and it is provably
beyond any effective theory (effective means that the proofs are
mechanically checkable).
Platonists just have a prejudice against "material" models - even
though the "material" is Hilbert space or Calabai-Yau manifolds.
Well, with comp, it is no more a prejudice. It is a fact that we have
to explain matter in term of something else. If matter is described
exclusively by Hilbert space or Calabai-Yau manifolds, that has to be
proven from any Turing universal system (or its specification in some
logic).
Bruno
Brent
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