On 18 Aug 2014, at 20:11, meekerdb wrote:
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).
... or if you don't know the consequence of comp, where physics is
1) invaruant for all universal machine
2) invariant for all choice of TOE rich enough to define a
universal machine
Emmy Noether stiil needs a notion of space, or direction, and
time ..., or some physical universe; but she makes indeed already a
good deal in the derivation of physical laws from "first principle",
notably that the laws should be invariant for the observer in a
universe (still assumed). Comp generalizes this in the extreme. Note
that all this is in the line of Galilee, Einstein, Noether, and
Everett (and others).
Bruno
> 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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