On 23 May 2015, at 12:36, LizR wrote:
I'm not sure why comp would predict that physical laws are invariant
for all observers
I can see that it would lead to a sort of super-anthropic-selection
effect, but surely all possible observers should exist somewhere in
arithmetic, including ones who observe different physics (that is
compatible with their existence) ?
Those with different physics will have measure zero. Why? Because the
laws of physics must be given by the sum on all computations below the
substitution level, whatever any universal machine state can be in.
Only geography will need the anthropic element, the physics needs only
a mathematical statistics on all computation, going in "actual state"
which are any state.
Physics become a theorem of machine theology, itself a theorem of
arithmetic (+ comp).
Of course, today, we don't know how much the "standard model" is
contingent or absolute. String theory diminish a large part of the
contingent parts, but introduces complexity in other direction, with
panorama of different sorts of physics. All this are open problem in
comp.
The goal of comp is to provide an explanation of the relation between
consciousness/mind and appearance of matter and persistence, and this
in some testable way. It is an explanation in the form of the
formulation of a problem, or a reduction of a problem into another one.
Bruno
On 23 May 2015 at 21:23, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:
Some time ago on this list I had a fascinating exchange with Bruno
that has stayed with me, fuelling some attacks of 4am philosophical
insomnia - an affliction I imagine I'm not the only person on this
list to suffer from! If you try to nail Bruno down on some aspects
of his theory, he has a tendency to get all Sg Grz* and p[]<>p on
you at a certain point, making it difficult to progress without a
PhD in modal logic - despite the fact that I suspect that the ideas
are fundamentally simple. Nevertheless in the course of the
discussion, Bruno did acknowledge that his theory predicts that the
laws of physics are invariant across space and time, because they
are supposed to arise out of pure arithmetic (being the hypostases
of the FPI bla blas). Indeed, for the dissolution of the material
within the arithmetical to go through (logically), then the
regularities that we call physical law cannot depend on geography,
since ex hypothesi they arise from number relations which are prior
to time and space. Yet physics - or cosmology - seems to be headed
full-steam in a different direction, towards the conclusion that
physical law is indeed dependent on geography, the laws we observe
being dependent upon an observer selection process. That is, we see
physical laws finely honed for life, because life can only exist in
those regions where the laws are conducive to life. I'm less sure
about this, but I think it might still be OK for physical law to
geographically determined in this sense, so long as there are no
other observers in different parts of the multiverse who see
different laws, but to assume such a thing seems foolish. Why should
we believe that of all the possible permutations of the parameters
which determined physical, there is only a single solution which
permits life? There might be many different
So on the face of it, the recent measurements of the mass of the
Higgs boson, which are strongly suggestive of a multiverse might be
seen as empirical evidence against 'comp'. Yet there is a way -
namely an extremely low substitution level. You'll recall that the
substitution level is the level at which a digital substitute can be
made for a brain such that the self (whatever that is) survives the
substitution. This might be quite high - perhaps its sufficient to
mimic neuronal interconnections in software? Or it might be very low
- maybe we need to go down to the molecular level and simulate
chemistry. However, it would be a big surprise I imagine for the
digital survival enthusiasts if the required level was the entire
multiverse! Yet that conclusion seems inescapable if the emerging
multiverse cosmology (and comp) is correct.
Why would a low substitution level save the day for comp? Because,
as stated before, if the physics observed by some conscious being is
dependent solely on number relations (as UDA purports to prove),
and number relations are pure abstractions prior to matter, space
and time, then physics cannot be contingent on geography, because it
is contingent on matter, space and time. So if comp is correct, and
it is also correct that we live in a multiverse such that observers
see different apparent laws in different parts of that structure,
then the only solution (ISTM) is to make the observer large enough
to encompass the geographical variation.
But such a low substitution level seems counter to most of the
common sense assumptions about consciousness that are the basis for
the logic of UDA seeming plausible at all. It would commit us to the
idea that teleportation of the 'same' consciousness from Washington
to Helsinki is impossible, because we couldn't isolate the person's
consciousness within any reasonable physical limits, such as their
brain or body. We'd need to substitute the entirety of everything,
including Helsinki and Washington themselves! But what then is the
status of a teleported person, if such a thing could be achieved? If
we reassemble the exact same organization of molecules such that
nobody, not even the person, could tell the difference, then how has
the substitution level *not* been achieved?
Perhaps the answer to the conundrum lies in the definition of
physical law? Perhaps things like the cosmological constant, the
masses and charges of particles and so on, which I would normally
regard as aspects of the laws of physics (and which recent results
suggest may not be the same in all parts of the multiverse) are not
the real laws of physics. Rather it is the deeper laws which underly
those geographically contingent apparent laws which are the true
laws of physics, and which derive from number relations. However,
that manoeuvre won't save us, because then in order for an observer
to experience a certain set of apparent physical laws, I need to
specify within which branch of computations (multiverse region) I am
instantiating that observer. That is the same as saying that the
substitution level is very, very low, because in order to duplicate
an observer, I need to duplicate the entire universe-generating
computational branch that they are in, not just their personal
memories and so on.
Then again, maybe I should not be surprised by this substitution
level, because if the wave function is the manifestation of my
computational duplicates and their relative measure, then any
genuine duplicate of me would be part of that quantum wave function
measure, and making a copy of me in the same universe would not have
that effect. Only if I could make a fungible duplicate of the
universe and insert it into the deck would I be able to influence
physics and make a real substitution rather than a poor copy.
This suggests to me that either comp has overlooked something about
the nature of consciousness and is wrong, or that cosmology is wrong
and there is only one physics everywhere, or that, even though comp
is right, the artificial duplication of consciousness is impossible
because consciousness is determined by its relationship with the
entirety of existence, perhaps in much the same way that the wave
function of an electron has to "know about" all the other electrons
in existence in order to obey the exclusion principle. The whole
within the part and all that jazz.
Or I missed something, not that that has ever happened before... ;)
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