On 5/09/2017 2:55 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 11:58:57AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I have no problems with the assumption that all forms of data can be
represented by bitstrings. On the other hand, I do have some
difficulty accepting off-hand that all possible bitstrings exist in
some sense or the other. Quantum MWI does not entail this. It might
be Tegmark's level IV multiverse, but that is problematic too.
They appear in Bruno's theories as the trace of the universal
dovetailer, and also similarly appear in Schmidhuber's Great
Programmer idea, which features a universal dovetailer. As for Tegmark
level 4, that is a rather ambiguous and ill-defined thing, but if you
restricted it to the enumeration of all finite axiomatic systems, you
end up with a pile of bitstrings again.
Undoubtedly there are many different ways in which one can generate a
pile of all possible bitstrings. That does not entail that any such pile
exists in any operational sense.
BTW - my goal is not to explain the observer, but to explain
appearances in terms of the observer. The former is probably all to
hard a nut to crack at present, but the latter might just be doable.
I think that if you are to explain QM in terms of observer moments,
you have to give some account of the observer, and what
distinguishes an observer moment from an arbitrary bit string.
But I do - see the discussion of time and projection postulates in the
book, as well as the evolutionary framework within which it
sits. Obviously, we would like a more detailed account of observation
at some point, but that seems like a good start.
I find the discussion in your book rather cursory, unless I have not
located the relevant passages -- numbers of pages or sections to look at
might help.
But there does seem to be a divide between the starting point of all
possible bitstrings and the operational idea of an observer interpreting
these strings. It seems to me that since the observer must be part of
these bitstrings, you have to make that central. So an observer moment
is the set of all bit sequences that correspond to that moment -- there
being nothing else that relates these strings to each other. A different
OM will be a different set of bit sequences that pass through a separate
moment. I presume you then call on observer self-selection to join
these separate sets into a connected conscious experience. I do not know
how this might be, but that seems to be what is required, if I have
understood the set-up correctly. None of this requires that some set of
bitstrings 'read' or 'interpret' some other set that comprises the data
-- the data present in the observational moment is part of the OM itself.
When an observer gains some new data, that is a new observer moment to
be built up in the same way. The set of bitstrings that go into this new
moment might well be completely disjoint from the previous set, so I
don't see the acquisition of new data as being represented by the
intersection of the sets: that idea seems to depend on a distinct
separation between the observer and data strings; the observer being, in
some sense, a persisting set of strings forming a set that grows or
shrinks according to the new data, but retains some essential identity
over the process. I do not think that this is really consistent with the
starting point you have set up -- the observer and the data are all part
of the same string; the observer being the set of all strings that
instantiate this combination. Separate OMs would be effectively disjoint
sets.
This understanding is probably orthogonal to the picture that you have
in mind, but it is the way in which I can make sense of the plenum from
which you start. The result is that OMs form a set of 'time capsules' of
the sort that Julian Barbour talks about. Continuity of consciousness
then comes from the records of previous OMs that are intrinsic to new
OMs, but the new OMs are not necessarily part of the original
bitstrings. Bitstrings are all just static data -- conscious observers
arise from the connections between these data sets that are intrinsic to
the data itself.
Whether this understanding can be reconciled with your picture is an
open question at the moment. I can expand on the consequences of this
view if you wish. But I think that this approach is probably fatal to
your wish to derive physics from the existence of such OMs or 'time
capsules' -- one has to be the actual observer experiencing this stream
of consciousness in order to have access to the implied physics. From
the outside everything appears to be just random bitstrings, because one
has no independent way of identifying the relevant subsections of the
infinite strings -- they can only be experienced 'from the inside', so
to speak.
Bruce
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