On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 09:48:10AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > That is right, but fortunately, a computation, when executed, is not > a pile of states, is more like a precisely structured set of states. > We still cannot found the observer there, except for some of them, > but that is not important, because the observer itself can do that. > Bitstring are not enough, here I agree with you.
You have to keep in mind that my theory is a model - the bitstrings are necessary, but not necessarily sufficient. They represent the data interpreted by an observer. Something like a universal dovetailer gives us the bitstrings by virtue of the Washington-Moscow thought experiment. My argument is that since the only thing we can discuss is appearances (basically phenomenal physics), and appearances are observational interpretation of the data, then taking an ensemble of all bitstrings suffices for working out all that appears in a variety of ensemble theories. I well concede that a collection of bitstrings may not be sufficient to explain consciousness itself. We're a long way from knowing what might be sufficient. > > It is enough to use the fact that elementary arithmetic is a "great > programmer". If someone believe that 2+2=4 independently of himself > or of a universe, then, the whole dovetailing is there too. But with > the reals or the bitstring, we get too much things, without enough > structure. You (Russell) are right that the observer recognize its > own computation(s), but you still need the computations for this. > It is fairly uncontroversial to assume that universal computation is necessary for consciousness, since we humans are capable of that. But it may not be sufficient. We have zilch evidence of the latter. Computationalism is the position that it is both necessary and sufficient, of course. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au 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 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.
