On 8/18/2014 1:49 AM, Pierz wrote:
On Monday, August 18, 2014 5:33:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote:
On 8/17/2014 5:43 AM, Pierz wrote:
> Thank you Bruno for your response. Honestly I don't know if I'd say yes
to the
doctor.
> It's cowardly of me, but I think I'd like to see the device work on
someone else
first.
> If they appear to be fine after the operation then I guess I'll go under
the knife
- and
> have to swallow the logical consequences whole! Your reply helps. I
suppose what I
feel
> is missing from the account is the *necessity* of qualia, because it
seems to me that
> everything that exists, necessarily exists, and as it stands in the comp
account, the
> necessity for there to be an interior to mathematics remains mysterious.
My guess is
> that comp is wrong, but it may be that it is still a whole lot more right
than
> materialism. It may be wrong in the same way that general relativity and
QM are
"wrong",
> i.e., correct, but to some limit. My next step is to read the Amoeba's
Secret and
see if
> I can start to wrap my head around the S4Grz and the []p & p - the maths
is still
> largely a mystery to me.
>
> However I wanted to put some less argumentative and more curious
questions to you
about
> the way you imagine the comp-driven universe to be (yes, there's no
universe, I know,
> but I lack words: this apparent "space" we inhabit?). The question comes
up in the
comp
> account about the physical explanation for the origin of the Löbian
organism the
> self-consistency of whose mind creates the appearance of matter
(allegedly). Liz and
> Brent were throwing around this "if a tree falls in the forest" question
on the MGA
> thread. The account whereby the observer arises out of the long, deep
history of
matter
> sure looks convincing. What is the status of this alternative origin
story if the
> observer is actually grounded in Platonia? I seem to recall you talking
about the
idea
> that the observer's self consistency demands that it also find a
consistent
account of
> itself in the "material hypostases". OK, I can go with that, but
something here still
> troubles me. We can't surely dismiss these origins as fictive any more
than we can
> dismiss the other observers we find in our environment as fictive. How do
you see the
> relationship between these accounts (the exterior physical and the machine
> psychological)? It occurs to me that in some ways the anthropic
explanation of the
fluky
> coincidences of the laws of nature resembles the machine psychology
account - in that
> the requirements of existing as a complex self-aware machine in a sense
"cause"
the laws
> of the universe to be what they are. The need for logical consistency
constrains the
> environment and its laws in very specific, complex ways. It's almost
strange that
it's
> taken us so long to realize just how extraordinary it is that the "laws"
work,
that they
> are capable of creating the complexity and beauty we see.
Check out the book "The Comprehensible Cosmos" by my friend Vic Stenger.
It goes
*part*
way in explaining this.
I'm not sure how much more explanation it requires. The anthropic principle plus
multiverse will do it, won't it?
Stenger's approach to physics is that it is based on point-of-view-invariance, i.e. we
want physical laws to hold for everyone in every time and place and direction and state of
motion, and...whatever else we can include. It's sort of what we mean by "physical law"
in contrast to geographical or historical accident. He shows that we can get a suprising
amount out of this (at least surprising if you don't already know who Emma Noether was).
> Only a huge, unfathomable amount of selective work could lead to a
structure like the
> calabi yau manifolds etc, with its staggeringly elegant capacity to
generate
complexity
> from simplicity. So... that work I describe would be the infinite
computations in the
> UD, and just as all the complexity in the UD is surrounded by a vastly
greater
region of
> garbled junk, so the physical account relies on a similar surrounding
region of
> incoherence. Which makes me wonder: are the two accounts just mirror
images
somehow? Are
> the garbled, dead, sterile, incoherent universes the reflection of those
infinite
> sterile computations? Is there an observer of these dead regions? Or are
the
observers
> like fleeting Boltzmann brain or quantum fuzz in the void: incoherent,
fleeting,
barely
> aware, but just there enough? I hope I make sense...
>
> Now a second thing. Comp suggests, or predicts, Many Worlds, and says
physics arises
> from the measure of the observer computations. But string theory suggests
many
> physics(es!). So this is intriguing. Are we humans (and other animals in
this
> multiverse) bound to one set of physics as it were, while perhaps other
(more
complex?)
> observers occupy a world with different laws? Because it seems we have
only one of
two
> options. Either the other possible physics are all sterile, or there is
something
about
> the types of mathematical structures that we are that keeps us bound to
this
particular
> set of observer states, not letting us "slip over" into universes with
different
laws?
> Might we not be capable of a kind of mathematical state change that
would see us
> metamorphose, wake up in a world with different laws? Might death and
birth not be
such
> state changes? (This last suggestion no doubt getting too mystical for
many whose
> self-appointed job it is to crush any idea that smacks of the Big Guy
Upstairs who
we've
> had so much trouble with in the past, but you're not afraid of the G-word
it
seems, so I
> ask anyway (not that survival of death has to bring God with it, but some
people are
> sensitive about these things.))
Given that you don't remember any past life (though some people claim to)
the
question is,
what survives? Is there a kind of soul that is independent of memory but
is a
"person"?
That is a good question. There is some pretty hard to explain research done by Ian
Stevenson on children who claim to recall past lives. Stevenson is legit, the research
very thorough, and the data just very hard to explain away.
Stevenson questioned thousands of children (many through a translator) and found a few
dozen instances in which evidence he interpreted as showing a past life had no possible
mundane explanation (according to him). He started with a theory that illnesses and
birthmarks can be derived from past lives. His theory was unfalsifiable, but if enough
cases are looked at one may find some confirmation.
I guess if that is right, then comp is false. Or is it necessarily?
It's right in line with comp, at least as interpreted by Bruno. If there's just one
person then obviously that one person is incarnated billions of times.
I haven't tried to think this through rigorously but with the idea of simulators within
simulators perhaps comp might still work? I would say that failure to recall past lives
is absence of evidence of them, not evidence of absence. So it's not argument against
them, only a way to place the burden of proof on the believer. I'm not interested in
trying to prove it because I'm agnostic on what happens after death, and because those
debates are tiring and fruitless, but I am certainly more open to the possibility than I
once was, having looked at the research.
>
> My own pet idea at the moment is a simple rule that seems at the least
strongly
> suggested by scientific experience to date and to me just intuitively
compelling.
It is
> simply that there are no brute facts. Or another way of saying this is
that there
are no
> "hard" ontological boundaries, no places where that which exists nakedly
abuts
> non-existence, in the way that a brute fact is encased as it were in a
boundary of
> nothingness beyond which one cannot travel. So far, wherever we look we
find that
> apparently hard boundaries are illusions. Every apparently closed system
turns out
to be
> incomplete (yes Gödel again),
But the integers were not even apparently closed, ex hypothesi every number
has a
successor, and it's this infinity that leads to incompleteness.
OK, but I'm not invoking Gödel in any rigorous sense to prove my point. I can't prove
it, I merely believe it from intuition, and from extrapolating from the history of
science. Deutsch argues something similar with his idea that explanation will be infinite.
> to be contained as a special case within some more encompassing whole. I
believe
this is
> true infinitely and in all "directions". And so when people pin their
hopes on string
> theory as a Final Explanation, I don't believe it, just as I don't
believe the
spatial
> dimensions will stop at the current count of 11. They can't, if my idea
is correct,
> because that 11th dimension would be a hard boundary. The flower of
knowledge will
keep
> opening and opening.
But you're looking at our theories as reality. If you look at them as
models we
invent to
explain the world then it's not so mystical and it's easy to understand
that not
only does
the flower of knowledge open, it also gets discarded and replaced.
Ah no, I'm not mistaking the map for the territory. I don't know why you say that. I'm
saying the territory is infinite in all directions (according to my guess), but our maps
are finite and so have to have false boundaries drawn around them.
I said that because it is our maps that are infinite. If you take the natural numbers and
arithmetic as the ontology of your TOE, you've assumed an infinite map. There is no
observable infinity, it's an abstraction we've invented. It might be right or it might
not. The very title of this list implies it consists of people whose preferred map is
"everything". So it is not modest agnosticism to suppose the territory is infinite - that
not something known.
Brent
That allows them to be accurate to some approximation, but I am hypothesizing we'll
never close the loop completely.
Brent
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