On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 05:39:07PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: > 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.
My point about GR is the distinction it makes between coordinate time and proper time. Proper time is the relevant concept for the TIME postulate. As you know, GR permits closed spacetime loops in some rather exotic situations in such a case a given spacetime coordinate (event) can be visited multiple times with different proper times. How to interpret what that all means is, of course, an open question. > 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. Topology applies to coordinate time. Not to proper time, which even in GR is still a simple 1D real parameter. > 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. > Which I've never implied. The importance of Wheeler's quote is that events need to be separated in time to allow an observer to measure a difference (that makes a difference). One wonders if spatial separation should be enough, but it appears that observers are not actually spatially extended things - I forget now all the details, but this seems to be the conclusion of a number of people in this area: Daniel Dennett and Michael Lockwood to name two. > > 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. > I think there must always be a self-other distinction, a distinction between observer and er environment. Consequently, there will be a distinction between observer and observed (data). Brent Meeker has also been banging on a bit about this over the years, particularly in relation to the MGA. > >>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. > I haven't considered it explicitly because it is something people are in general very confused about. Yes, Barbour's time capsules is one approach, but it doesn't deal with memory erasure particularly well as one of its problems. > >>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. > I haven't said how a string can be conscious either. Of course not - that would be providing a solution to Chalmers' hard problem. But if a string can be conscious, then it is capable of reading and interpreting any string you provide it. > >>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. I don't see this. See above comments on proper time. > > >>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'. > I think I'll let others comment on this for now. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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]. 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