On 10 May 2017, at 04:04, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and
arguments that do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will
try and answer some of your more direct questions. Why do I take
the view that "the experience of a unique agent such as the one
analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be dominated by random events
rather than the order imposed by the predominance of a robust
physical-computational mechanism." The reason is that I am
starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am looking at
the UD as a system in its own right. The questions seem to concern
statistics extracted from the behaviour of this system. When
approaching such a question, I tend to look on the thermodynamic,
or statistical mechanical properties of such a random system. If
you take the UD, with its completely random operation over all
possible (computer) programs, the analogy that comes to mind is
that of thermal equilibrium -- every possible state has equal
probability of occurring. Ergodic theory is possible also
relevant, but I have less familiarity with that, so tend to stick
to ideas deriving from Boltzmann. Given this state of thermal
equilibrium, states of some order -- such as conscious moments --
are going to be unlikely, and fluctuations that give single
conscious moments are overwhelmingly more likely than more
extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related conscious
moments.
Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.
The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the
net result in the infinite UD is random.
Why? How could you know that? How could you assert this, without first
explaining which theory of the first person you take. The simple diary
method works fine in the finite multiplication scenario, and with
clear distinguishable outcome (like Moscow and Washington), but for
the infinite case nothing is obvious, and I use a different definition
of first person, which put a non trivial structure on the space of
sigma_1 sentences/computations.
Think of Boltzmann's case, a gas of a very large number of
molecules. The molecules move and interact according to entirely
deterministic laws, but ergodic theory indicates that after a
suitable time, the motions of the molecules will be effectively
random. I think the same must happen with the dovetailer: although
each program is deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely many
such programs means that sequences of individual steps are random
(or indistinguishable from random).
You are very quick, and seems to not really take into account the
first person views, and the third person views.
What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the
first thing to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first
person (which I take to Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes
it work again, again Socrates opinion).
Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment --
time capsule -- is self contained,
I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment
needs at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an
infinity of them. Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer
moment. the semantic of all first person view (the modalities with
"& p" attached to them) are topological. Consciousness is always on
an interval, not on a discrete point in some time frame.
I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a
"conscious moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the
duration is indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in
the UD, so it is hard to say what a conscious moment might actually
be -- some sequence of computational steps, perhaps -- but how many?
An infinity. What remains open is if it enumerable or bigger. This
comes from the Y = II rules. It is weird, because our consciousness
results from finite computations, but the stability is dependent of
their multiplication in the "future" (defined in the UD by the UD-
steps).
A time capsule is certainly self-contained.
If that is true, then such concept does not make sense if Mechanism is
correct. Computations and their internal possible views are more
intrinsically relational.
A time capsule needs a choice of a universal system.
Whether these overlap or not to give a sense of continuity is
another question, and would seem merely to extend the notion of a
conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?
and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience,
the computations that pass through our conscious moments are
overwhelmingly likely to be random, with just small fluctuations
from equilibrium. I.e., single conscious moments with no
consistent continuation-- going from white noise to white noise.
This is, of course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in a different
guise. The experience of the agent is not random -- they
experience conscious moments with a seemingly coherent chain of
memories giving a comprehensible history -- but there is no reason
to suppose that these memories are veridical.
They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if
computationalism is correct.
The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial --
Assuming a veridical physical realm, where we can expect or hope only
for a relatively normal set of computations.
but that involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful
lot of computations have to come together to make consciousness that
means anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise
smaller and smaller all the time.
You are using implicitly the probability given by the "[]p", at the
place we need to add either "& p" or at least "& <>t". It is like
above, you don't take seriously into account the difference between
first and third person views. I think.
So there is no order imposed by the computational mechanism.
All computation are ordered structure, ordered by the universal
numbers which implement them. But indeed, the first person duration
is not directly ordered by this or that universal numbers, but by
all those who operate the computations which exists below my
substitution level.
Which probably involves the whole universe, from the big bang to the
eventual heat death -- else memories are not veridical.
It involves the whole multiverse, and perhaps the whole multi-muli-
verse, ... It involves the whole UD*, and that is why a priori it is
not computable, and why physics become a mystery, and why we have to
reduce the mind-body problem to a quite complex measure problem.
The statistics over these conscious moments does not give rise to
any consistent physics. I say that "physics has to have an
independent existence" because the failure of the attempt to
extract physics from the UD means that the only way one can
connect these independent 'conscious moments' is if they are,
following Barbour, points in an independently existing
configurations space. Barbour calls this "Platonia", within which
physics is defined, but this is far from the platonia of
arithmetical realism. The upshot is that physics does not come
from the UD, but from somewhere else -- that elsewhere not
necessarily clearly specified at this point.
Since the reversal, or the extraction of physics, seems to me to
be the weak point of Bruno's argument,
Well, the goal of the UDA is just to transform the mind-body
problem into a body problem in arithmetic.
Then what is weak in the AUDA, the math part, is that nobody seems
to be interested in solving the open problems, but that is
contingent. I am not sure you can say that it is weak. It is only
unfinished, but the complexity comes from the difficulty of the
subject, which is naturally reflected in the open problems? To find
quantum logic where it is needed is on the contrary a good sign
that we might extract the full measure, then works à-la-Hardy or
Russell's, can be used to progress.
it is right that we should spend more time looking at alternative
interpretations of the UDA.
UDA is a argument, as such it does not admit any interpretation. It
is valid, or non valid. I guess you mean to search an alternative
to mechanism.
Not really at this stage -- just an alternative understanding of the
dovetailer.
OK, but you will have to elaborate. The UD is the same in all models
of arithmetic. Maybe, like Stephen King suggested once, you could
propose a non standard UD, with "infinite natural numbers",
transfinite computations, etc. leading to a non-standard form of
computationalism, but that can be considered here as form of non
computationalism, as we use the natural numbers in their standard
sense, even if this needs second order logic, or set theory, to be
defined. This is a bit what we call, in french, to escape forward.
Don't know if that exists in english or american or australian tough ...
Bruno
Bruce
This, I would understand if the material hypostases would have
collapsed into classical logic, or would be strongly opposed to
quantum logic, but without evidence for non mechanism, I am not
sure if it is not premature to abandon mechanism , given that
mechanism already give a quantum logic. To abandon computationalism
at this stage, before testing the logic of the observable that we
already have, seems weird to me.
Bruno
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