On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 11:02 AM, Lawrence Crowell < [email protected]> wrote:
*> The MH spacetimes have Cauchy horizons that because they pile up > geodesics can be a sort of singularity.* That’s not the only thing they have, MH spacetimes also have closed timelike curves and logical paradoxes produced by them, one of them being the one found by Turing. They also have naked singularities that nobody has ever seen the slightest hint of. And if you need to go to as exotic a place as the speculative interior of a Black Hole to find a reason why Cryonics might not work I am greatly encouraged. *> The subject of NP-completeness came up because of my conjecture about > there being a sort of code associated with a conscious entity that is not > computable or if computable is intractable in NP. * NP-completeness is sorta weird and consciousness is sorta weird, but other than that is there any reason to think the two things are related? *> It could have some bearing on the ability to emulate consciousness in a > computer.* How do you figure that? Both my brain and my computer are made of matter that obeys the laws of physics, and matter that obeys the laws of physics has never been observed to compute NP-complete problems in polynomial time, much less less find the answer to a non-computable question, like “what is the 7918th Busy Beaver number?”. The Busy Beaver function is far worse than NP complete, it starts out modestly enough but soon becomes non-computable. Scott Aaronson rigorously proved two years ago that BB(7918) is not computable, even a Jupiter Brain will never know what that number is because although it is finite even the very laws of physics don't know what it is. But much smaller Busy Beaver numbers might also be non-computable. We can compute the first 4 Busy Beaver numbers, and they are 1, 6, 21 and 107, but after that things go nuts. We know that BB(5) might be 47,176,870 but might be much larger, and BB(6) might be 7.4*10^36534 but might be much larger, and BB(7) is greater than 10^10^10^10^10^7 but how much greater nobody knows. *> The "map" being a mathematical system that pertains to mathematics is a > case of a map to a map. This is different from a "map" that is mathematical > or in the syntax of mathematics, and territory that is physical reality.* As I said, a Ulam spiral is a map of the prime numbers and that map is the territory. And the prime number 7 has as much or as little physical reality as my consciousness does. * > the idea the two can be made identical strikes me as a piece of > untestable metaphysics.* True but you are saying they are not identical and that is also untestable metaphysics. In cases like this Occam razor is helpful, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then its a duck, and if a computer behaves just like me then it is conscious just like me. > *> When given the choice of ending my life 20 or 30 years prematurely * I never said anything about you ending your life 20 or 30 years prematurely but suppose a doctor told you that you had a disease that would destroy your brain in a few months and turn you into vegetable, although your heart may keep beating for another 20 or 30 years; would you give uploading a second look then? *> with the promise of being uploaded into a computer for nearly eternal > life, or spending a few hours this day at a pub drinking beer, I will go > with the beer thank you.* Well I guess not, you’d trade a nearly eternal life for a few hours of pub drinking. Well to each there own. As for me I’m very curious about what the future holds so I generally prefer existence over oblivion, but there is no disputing matter of taste although I do wonder if you oppose Cryonics because you think it won’t work or because you think it might. *> I don't think evolution tells us much about consciousness. * If intelligent behavior doesn't produce consciousness please explain why Evolution bothered to make you conscious. And if it does then please explain why you don't conclude that a intelligently behaving computer is not conscious. John K Clark -- 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.
