On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 11:44:12AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: > 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.
Not in general, agreed - but if you start from a number of everything theories, this is entailed. I gave three examples above. > > > > >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. > Time is discussed in S4.3, the projection postulate is described as really anthropic selection, a concept discussed in S5.3. Lewontin's principles are described in S6.1. S6.4 is an argument that we must live in an evolutionary universe. Putting it all together for deriving QM is discussed in S7.1. > 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. Presumably, although I don't address this in the book, largely because there is no concensus as to how to go about doing this. > I do not know how this might be, but > that seems to be what is required, if I have understood the set-up > correctly. You haven't convinced me that it is required (yet). > 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. > I agree that the anthropic principle prohibits some (or indeed most) strings from being observed by a given observer, but nevertheless, an OM is a set of strings, so different strings can be read and interpreted by an observer. > 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, Why would you propose this? It seems counter-intuitive. Intuitively, one would expect a successor OM to build on its predecessor. > 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. > This is reminiscent of the ASSA vs RSSA "wars" that took place earlier in the list history. IIUC, what you are proposing might belong to the ASSA camp, but I'm not sure, as it is very different to the theory I've been promoting, which falls in the RSSA camp. > 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. > I'm sure you appreciate that there is no such "outside view". More importantly, I'm sure you appreciate that codings are also entirely arbitrary, that every possible bitstring will represent the OM of me sitting at this keyboard typing to you under some coding. It is only by fixing a coding that we can talk about bit strings having meaning, ie some bitstrings represent (eg the aforementioned OM) whilst others don't. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
