On 12 May 2015, at 02:01, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 10:36:55AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/11/2015 12:14 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
I think this obfuscates the point. One says yes to the doctor not
because one's conscious thought is a computation, but rather because
the doctor proposes to replace part of your brain with something
that will perform ALL the computations that part of the brain could
do. It is not that consciousness is a computation, rather it is a
class of computations that will map all possible (not just actual)
environmental inputs into outputs. And that's why a recording is
ruled out - whether it would be conscious or not; it is not
counterfactually adequate.
I do think this insight is important, but it does require more
explicit treatment than simple dismissal along the lines of "a
recording
is not a computation".
Of course we always meant: a recording of a computation X is not equal
to the computation X.
That a recording can be seen as a computation of something else is not
relevant.
Whether the ultrafinitism is
true or not, our theory of the world and consciousness should not
depend on there being infinities. So within ultrafinitism all TM's
can be replaced by lookup tables. Or looked at the other way
around, a sufficiently enormous lookup table is a computer.
Well, as Bruno points out, a lookup table can never be universal. What
is true is that a lookup table can replace any program that halts, and
the lookup table size is bounded by an exponential function of
whatever bound you wish to apply to the number of steps the program
must halt within. Within ultrafinitism, too, there cannot be lookup
tables
for all TMs because of this exponential relationship.
But the interesting thing about Bruno's theory is that it proposes a
solution to the mind-body problem by making both of them
computations. Aside from the UD, this is not particularly radical.
If you had an intelligent/conscious AI within a virtual environment
then the consciousness of the AI would be relative to that
environment and both of them would be computations. Bruno proposes
that the relation can be expressed in terms of what the AI would
"believe", i.e. able to prove, about the environment. I find this
interesting aside from arguments trying to defeat some imaginary
"primitive physicalists".
I'm not entire convinced they are imaginary. I used to think so, but
John Clark is giving an awfully good impersonation of one.
The UD is interesting because it makes
Tegmarks mathematical-universe idea more specific, something you
might be able to draw inferences from.
Exactly. Regardless of truth, it is an interesting model that could
well inform us about the truth. Provided it is tractable, of course,
which so far it has tended not to be (John Clark's criticism).
No, the UD does not need to be tractable, because the first person are
not aware of the delays.
John simply cannot understand this, because this needs step 3, 4, 5,
6, 7.
Bruno
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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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