On 8/19/2014 5:53 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 19 August 2014 21:35, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I can agree. But it is not entirely, as I suspect you might prefer, a
reversal
between 3p reality and 1p reality, as we continue to have a big 3p reality:
the
arithmetical reality which contains computer science and the machine's
dream-support (the relevant computations). So the reversal is made possible
and
sensical, because it is supported by the arithmetical relations driving the
"consciousness fluxes" in the relatively most probable continuations.
Yes, I understand. I hope I've shaken off my former "1p absolutism" in the course of
familiarising myself with your ideas. That said, I suspect that there is often an
illegitimate sleight of the imagination in play in discussions of the 3p reality. ISTM
that there is often (though not in your case, I hasten to add) the implicit assumption
of a kind of default or meta- knower that goes on interpreting "what's really there" in
the absence of any other observer. So in that light it just seems "obvious", for
example, that the moon exists primarily as a brute 3p fact and any subsequent
observation of it is merely some contingent secondary relation.
What constitutes "observation" is an active area of research in quantum mechanics. Is any
irreversible record enough or does it take a conscious being, does the conscious being
need a Ph.D.?
It's almost as if we're overcompensating for the infantile belief that objects disappear
when they can't be seen.
I believe experiments with infants show they are surprised when an object does
not persist.
"Today, there is consistent evidence from several different laboratories that infants aged
2.5 months and older believe that (1) a stationary object continues to exist and retains
its location when occluded and (2) a moving object continues to exist and pursues a
continuous path when occluded"
http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/infantlab/articles/aguiar_baillargeon1999.pdf.pdf
I suspect it's hardwired by evolution.
Brent
In comp terms, however, it is clear that the moon can be no such brute fact, but rather
the resultant of a complex potential for the lawlike appearance of a moon under suitable
observational constraints.
In this vein I offer the well-known limerick of Ronald Knox:
There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."
Reply:
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”
David
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