Short responses-
But that has nothing to do with sciences. if tomorrow we get evidences that GOD
is a cuttlefish, or that it follows from an hypothesis we want to keep, we have
to learn to live, and survive with that.
I think it would be fascinating if something like this is true. It's an
optimistic cuttlefish we'd have to get to know. This is learning, this is by my
values, quite good.
But who are we? Humans? Mammals?, Animals?, Earth life forms?, Organic
machines?, Löbian Numbers?, Universal Numbers?
Any and all and possibly much more? All of your answers sound like new
opportunities for us.
The Löbian machine needs are infinite. Satisfying all its needs is an infinite
tasks. politically, I am in favor of harm reduction
Surely the noblest of meta goals?
Yes, sub-universality is an interesting notion. It has led john Case and
students to study an interesting notion of succinctness.
It reminds me, somehow of Rudy Rucker's love affair with Sub-d's or
subdimensions, that he postulates exist below Planck Lengths.
Finally: Faith in math or physics is akin to confidence, merely. It's a faith
one may infer, or tests that can be run to support a conclusion.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Jul 27, 2015 12:16 pm
Subject: Re: David Deutsch and Constructor Theory
On 26 Jul 2015, at 21:05, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
I understand the need and curiosity to finally know what is true.
In science that never happen. On the most interesting thing we need even to
remain forever undecided. That is why, if we are rational enough, we develop
faith.
F
This is what draws the brightest people to science and math. They like
uncovering, in a Platonic manner, and testing it, in an Aristotelian manner.
Yes, but the test never prove anything, except when it is negative, which
actually proves nothing but suggest we revise the beliefs / theories.
We must not confuse the serach of truth, with the search of benefice for
humans.
For myself, the benefit to our species (maybe all others?) should never
be lost.
Well, as a fellow human, I can relate with the idea of maximizing the chance of
survival, and the quality of lives, of our species (which implies some taking
care of some other species as well, of course).
But that has nothing to do with sciences. if tomorrow we get evidences that GOD
is a cuttlefish, or that it follows from an hypothesis we want to keep, we have
to learn to live, and survive with that. The human benfits are important, but
should not been used as a *truth* criterium.
Perhaps, this is maddening to the extremely bright people like yourself?
No, but it is politics. politics is very important, like food and drugs, but
the human goal should be separated from politics, like religion must be
separated to. At least a priori.
For me, at the end of the day, we must never forget who we are,
But who are we? Humans? Mammals?, Animals?, Earth life forms?, Organic
machines?, Löbian Numbers?, Universal Numbers?
and where we are at, right now.
I am at thinking I might do a cup of coffee.
I speak of all human needs, including the existential.
The Löbian machine needs are infinite. Satisfying all its needs is an infinite
tasks. politically, I am in favor of harm reduction, and case by case solutions
as much as possible, because we have differentiate a lot, in the ocean and out
of the ocean, and we are very different.
Because the task is so enormous, people have a hard time dealing with it
at all, and move forward with their research. I sympathize completely. I
suspect that evolution may be the program pushing many in this direction, or it
may just be my particular neurosis, or, both could be the same.
The subuniversal numbers things seems somehow intriguing. Possibly, related to
your observations, Steinhart, during an older interview, said that he likes
doing maths for a sense of calmness and beauty.
Like all drugs, it has to be consumed with some moderation, and if you search
the truth, a warning is that math can contain a lot of chimera and daemon
leading you ... well, possibly far from truth. Then sometimes to get truth, you
need to explore a vaster territory and admit bizarre relations among the
numbers, like complex multiplication or 1+2+3+... = -1/12, and even to give
names to infinities. The problem, already in arithmetic, is that the numbers
needs to invent "more than numbers" to understand themselves, but that very
process, although it simplifies things locally, makes the whole thing quite
more complex. In arithmetic, life is running forward all the time.
Yes, sub-universality is an interesting notion. It has led john Case and
students to study an interesting notion of succinctness. Note that there are no
universal sub-universal machine, which explains why the notion is better
described as sub-creative (Post creative set = Turing universal machine,
universal with respect to computability).
Bruno
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal < marc...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list < everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Jul 26, 2015 12:26 pm
Subject: Re: David Deutsch and Constructor Theory
On 26 Jul 2015, at 14:48, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Heh! I have read Deutsches thesis on Constructor Theory a few times
and I cannot really grasp it, intellectually, except as a spin-off of Von
Newmann's cellular automata.
That looks more like a critics of Wolfram. Deutch found the universal Turing
machine, or if you prefer the Quantum computer. It has been foreseen by others,
notably and famously by Feynman, and I can understand the appeal for the
physicalist. So it is more a quantum cellular automata.
Progress in that direction might help for the testing of the computationalist
hypothesis.
Save, that it applies at a cosmological level, rather then a
mathematical sense, or on a Conway's Life computer screen. I don't know
philosophically, if it means anything beneficial to humans, or, I wonder if
this applies to physics as well?
We must not confuse the serach of truth, with the search of benefice for
humans.
Now Platonist believe that the search of justice requires the search of truth,
but evolution pressure and short term goal favorize lies (as darwing saw, only
a small percentage of orchids offer nectar or mating-perfume to bees and insect
pollinators: the majority contends themselves in false advertizing of it).
So lies are beneficial, but can be fatal on the longer run, especially at the
level brains and other universal numbers lead us, as they accelerate the
computations. Universal numbers, already the "subuniversal numbers" are
relative self-accelerators, mainly. (By work by Blum and Marquez).
Ok, we have tiny parts, that make bigger parts, and so on, and so
forth, till they hit a level of complexity.
You hit it already with the two equations Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz), or with
the elementary axioms of Robinson arithmetic. That is the Turing universality
level. Then you hit a second treshold with Löbianity, which is when the
universal number knows (in a weak technical sense) that it is itself universal.
But this is the moement where the universal machine understand that she knows
about nothing with respect to the arithmetical reality and its many non
arithmetical internal points of view.
I can explain all the details, but you can read books. Actually the Turing
universality of the SK-combinators is rather well done by Smullyan in his book
"How to Mock a Mocking Bird".
I am a computationalist, myself, (a.k.a Digitalist), and like this
sort of thing, but, ...meh! I don't see how this work informs us?
Deutsch seems to be not aware that if computationalism is true, then the
existence of the quantum computer around us must be justified in arithmetic,
or from the two SK equation above. Then by using the Löbian machine, you can
not only explain the qubits from the bits, but you can distinguish those having
incommunicable but undoubtable qualitative 1p-attributes from those 100% 3p
sharable. Comp + self-reference explains both quanta and qualia, using no more
than the two simple assumption Kxy = y, and Sxyz = xz(yz).
Bruno
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Kellett < bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
To: everything-list < everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Jul 26, 2015 7:16 am
Subject: David Deutsch and Constructor Theory
David Deutsch has some things to say which are relevant to discussions
of
computationalism.
http://edge.org/conversation/constructor-theory
"One of
the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new
foundation
for information theory. There's a notorious problem with
defining information
within physics, namely that on the one hand
information is purely abstract,
and the original theory of computation
as developed by Alan Turing and others
regarded computers and the
information they manipulate purely abstractly as
mathematical objects.
Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that
information is
physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract
computer. Only a
physical object can compute things."
And
later:
"Several strands led towards this. I was lucky enough to be placed in
more than one of them. The main thing was that starting with Turing and
then
Rolf Landauer (who was a lone voice in the 1960s saying that
computation is
physics—because the theory of computation to this day is
regarded by
mathematicians as being about abstractions rather than as
being about
physics), Landauer realized that the concept of a purely
abstract computer
doesn't make sense, and the theory of computation has
to be a theory of what
physical objects can do to information. Landauer
focused on what restrictions
the laws of physics imposed on what kinds
of computation can be done."
"The
notion of a purely abstract computer doesn't make sense!" I find
myself to be
sympathetic with this view.
Bruce
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