On 6/09/2017 2:52 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 11:44:12AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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,
That discussion is rather misleading. You introduce general relativity
to clarify the notion of coordinate time. But all you are actually using
is special relativistic Minkowski space -- in GR time is extremely
problematic since arbitrary coordinate transformations can mix time and
space in arbitrary ways. This is the problem of time in GR, and there is
no generally agreed solution. Julian Barbour's work is a response to
this general problem -- that is really at the base of what I have
proposed later. But I think you 'Time Postulate' in S4.3 is seriously
deficient because you essentially propose a topologically simple time
parameter, which does not exist in general relativity, Your discussion
is deficient in that it does not go beyond special relativity. In S4.3
you quote Wheeler: "Time is what prevents everything happening at once."
But in a timeless block Minkowski universe, everything does, indeed,
happen at once: the observer moment corresponding to you as a baby
co-exists with your present observer moment. There is a temporal
relation between these two events, but that is intrinsic to the events,
not a separate ordering. No general foliation of space-time into a
sequence of spacelike hypersurfaces is possible in GR.
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.
Reliance on an evolutionary argument like this requires a distinction
between the observer and data, and I am doubting the viability of that
distinction.
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).
Well, something has to connect up OMs. That function is performed by
Barbour's time capsules, but these are something that you have not
considered. I do not like the notion that development is simply a
process of accreting bits to the observer string.
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.
But you have not said how one string can read another. Or even what that
might mean.
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.
Not necessarily. That requires your time postulate as a minimum, and
general relativity effective rules that out.
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.
Yes, it seems very much as though I am promoting an absolute version of
self selection. I do not think relative self selection can be justified,
because there is no topologically simple time parameter available. The
pile of bitstrings is a timeless construct, so time has to emerge from
within this random pile. The only way I can see of doing this is if the
temporal relations between different OMs are actually part of the OMs
themselves. In other words, OMs are 'time capsules'.
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.
We have skirted round the coding problem. While I do not for a moment
think that there is any possible coding that can relate every possible
bitstring to my present (or any other) observer moment (there is no
coding that can make a complex entity out of a string consisting
entirely of ones, or of an infinite sequence of alternate 0s and 1s, and
so on), the problem of where the coding comes from, and how it is
interpreted, seems insurmountable. Perhaps that is, in fact, the
Achilles heel of the whole enterprise.
Bruce
--
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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
