On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at 11:21, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> On 18 Apr 2019, at 15:36, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, at 18:45, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 17 Apr 2019, at 08:08, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, at 05:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/16/2019 6:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019, at 03:44, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>>>>>>> You seem to make self-reference into something esoteric. Every Mars
>>>>>>> Rover knows where it is, the state of its batteries, its instruments,
>>>>>>> its communications link, what time it is, what its mission plan is.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't agree that the Mars Rover checking "it's own" battery levels is
>>>>>> an example of what is meant by self-reference in this type of
>>>>>> discussion. The entity "Mars Rover" exists in your mind and mine, but
>>>>>> there is no "Mars Rover mind" where it also exists. The entity "Telmo"
>>>>>> exists in your mind and mine, and I happen to be an entity "Telmo" in
>>>>>> whose mind the entity "Telmo" also exists. This is real self-reference.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Or, allow me to invent a programming language where something like this
>>>>>> could me made more explicit. Let's say that, in this language, you can
>>>>>> define a program P like this:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> program P:
>>>>>> x = 1
>>>>>> if x == 1:
>>>>>> print('My variable x s holding the value 1')
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The above is the weak form of self-reference that you allude to. It
>>>>>> would be like me measuring my arm and noting the result. Oh, my arm is x
>>>>>> cm long. But let me show what could me meant instead by real
>>>>>> self-reference:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> program P:
>>>>>> if length(P) > 1000:
>>>>>> print('I am a complicated program')
>>>>>> else:
>>>>>> print('I am a simple program')
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you accept there is a fundamental difference here?
>>>>>
>>>>> I take your point. But I think the difference is only one of degree. In
>>>>> my example the Rover knows where it is, lat and long and topology. That
>>>>> entails having a model of the world, admittedly simple, in which the
>>>>> Rover is represented by itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would also say that I think far too much importance is attached to
>>>>> self-reference. It's just a part of intelligence to run "simulations" in
>>>>> trying to foresee the consequences of potential actions. The simulation
>>>>> must generally include the actor at some level. It's not some mysterious
>>>>> property raising up a ghost in the machine.
>>>>
>>>> With self-reference comes also self-modification. The self-replicators of
>>>> nature that slowly adapt and complexify, the brain "rewiring itself"...
>>>> Things get both weird and generative. I suspect that it goes to the core
>>>> of what human intelligence is, and what computer intelligence is not
>>>> (yet). But if you say that self-reference has not magic property that
>>>> explains consciousness, I agree with you.
>>>
>>>
>>> You need some magic, but the magic of the truth of “2+3=5” is enough.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On consciousness I have nothing interesting to say (no jokes about ever
>>>> having had, please :). I think that:
>>>>
>>>> consciousness = existence
>>>
>>>
>>> Hmm… That looks like God made it. Or like “it is”.
>>>
>>> Are you OK with the ideas that from the point of view of a conscious
>>> entity, consciousness is something:
>>>
>>> Immediately knowable, and indubitable, (in case the machine can reason)
>>> Non definable, and non provable to any other machine.
>>
>> I agree. Would this not also apply to the concept of "existance”?
>
> I am not sure what you mean by “existence” when used alone. It might be a
> “professional deformation”, but to me existence is a logical quantifier, and
> is not a intrinsic property.
Ok, I see. I'm not sure if the existential qualifier in predicate logic, for
example, points to the same thing I mean.
>
> I think that may be consciousness is a fixed point of existence, in the sense
> that “existence of consciousness” is equivalent with “consciousness”.
>
> If you are using “existence” is a more sophisticated sense, then this should
> be elaborated?
I'm trying to use it in the least sophisticated way possible.
>
> We cannot prove the existence of anything, without assuming the existence of
> something. With mechanism, we have to assume the existence of numbers (or to
> derive from something Turing equivalent, like I did with the combinators), so
> I doubt that existence is immediately knowable, etc. Unless again, you meant
> “existence of consciousness”, but then this cannot apply to define
> consciousness.
>
> You might need to elaborate about what you mean by “existence”, when used
> alone.
I mean there being something rather than nothing, the universe, or multiverse,
or whatever the whole cow is.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>
>>> Then the mathematical theory of self-reference explains why machine will
>>> conclude that they are conscious, in that sense. They will know that they
>>> know something that they cannot doubt, yet cannot prove to us, or to
>>> anyone. And they can understand that they can test mechanism by observation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Existence entails self-referential machines, self-referential evolutionary
>>>> processes, the whole shebang. But not the other way around.
>>>
>>> Existence of the natural numbers + the laws of addition and multiplication
>>> does that, and also justify what you don’t get any of that with any weaker
>>> theory, having less axioms, than Robinson Arithmetic.
>>>
>>> We have to assume numbers if we want just define precisely what a machine
>>> is, but we cannot assume a physical universe: that is the price, we have to
>>> derive it from arithmetic “seen from inside”.
>>
>> I agree.
>>
>> My point is much less sophisticated. It is such a trivial observation that I
>> would call it a Lapalissade. And yet, in out current culture, you risk being
>> considered insance for saying it:
>>
>> Our first-person experience of the world is what exists, as far as we know.
>
> Yes, but as far as we know it for sure, we know only our own personal
> experience here-and-now. We have no other certainties. OK.
Right, but what I mean is that ontologies with particles at the bottom are
favored these days, but there is no particular reason to prefer them to
ontologies with first-person experiences at the bottom.
I subscribe to John Wheeler's view that our universe is participatory. What
there is is something observing itself. The third-person reality is a useful
model, but perhaps it is a second-order thing. The fashionable idea of our
times is that "we" are the second-order thing, not the particles.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*v2X3sbLjk8rs-uFK.
>
>> Everything else is a model, including the third-person view.
>
> Yes. (Of course a logician would call that a theory, as a model = a reality,
> like the painters used that word).
It is very confusing to use these words with mathematicians... :)
>
>> There was no Big Bang at the same ontological level that there is a blue pen
>> in my desk, because the Big Bang is nobody's experience (or is it?).
>
> With resect to Mechanism, the pen of he desk is similar to the Big Bang. We
> believe in them from indirect evidence. It does not seem so for the pen,
> because our brain make the relevant computation mostly unconsciously. For the
> Big Bang, we have used much more brains (using indirectly the brain of
> colleagues, Hubble, Einstein, and using telescope, making the computations
> more consciously, but it is just a matter of degree.
Ok, that's a good point.
>
>> The Big Bang is something that the machine has to answer if you ask it
>> certain questions. As you say, if the machine is consistent then the big
>> bang is "true" in a sense, if the macine is malevolent all bets are off.
>
>
> Gödel proved that “consistent” is the same as having a model (in the logician
> sense of reality, not a theory). So the notion of truth is always relative to
> a model, the reality we are pointing too. In our local reality, there are
> evidence of personal birth, star, galaxies, and the Big Bang. Now if the
> logic of the material modes where contradicted by nature, that would be an
> evidence that the Big Bang, and some physical stuff, is ontologically real,
Ok with the rest, but I don't get this step...
Telmo.
> but thanks to quantum mechanics, we have the contrary evidences, which means
> the Big Bang is more like a percept in some video games (which all exist in
> arithmetic). Below the substitution level, mechanism predict that we can
> “see” (indirectly) the presence of the infinitely many computations which
> support us, and that explain the quantum from the machine’s theory of
> consciousness/knowledge/observation.
>
> The fundamental science is theology, or metaphysics. Physics is a statistics
> deducible from the logic of the first person plural view ([]p & <>t, you can
> read it “p is true in all models é there is one model”): that give the
> probability one for p. ([]p alone cannot work, because of the cul-de-sac
> worlds where []p is vacuously true).
>
> The malevolent machine must be invoked, for being logically correct, even if
> that can be judged non reasonable. I mean, if Z1* departs from nature
> observation, it means that mechanism is false OR we are in a malevolent
> simulation. But up to now, thanks to “many-world QM”, nature confirms
> Mechanism, and thus indirectly the whole theory of consciousness or theology.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Telmo.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Brent
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Telmo
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Whether it is "formalizable" or not would seem to depend on choosing
>>>>>>> the right formalization to describe what engineers already create.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Brent
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 4/15/2019 11:28 AM, za_wishy via Everything List wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hmm... the thing is that what I'm arguing for in the book is that
>>>>>>>> self-reference is unformalizable, so there can be no mathematics of
>>>>>>>> self-reference. More than this, self-reference is not some concept in
>>>>>>>> a theory, but it is us, each and everyone of us is a form of
>>>>>>>> manifestation of self-reference. Self-reference is an eternal logical
>>>>>>>> structure that eternally looks-back-at-itself. And this
>>>>>>>> looking-back-at-itself automatically generates a subjective ontology,
>>>>>>>> an "I am". In other words, the very definition of the concept of
>>>>>>>> "existence" is the looking-back-at-itself of self-reference. So,
>>>>>>>> existence can only be subjective, so all that can exists is
>>>>>>>> consciousness. I talk in the book how the looking-back-at-itself
>>>>>>>> implies 3 properties: identity (self-reference is itself, x=x),
>>>>>>>> inclusion (self-reference is included in itself, x<x) and
>>>>>>>> transcendence (self-reference is more than itself, x>x). And all these
>>>>>>>> apparently contradictory properties are happening all at the same
>>>>>>>> time. So, x=x, x<x, x>x all at the same time. But there is no actual
>>>>>>>> contradiction here, because self-reference is unformalizable. The
>>>>>>>> reason why I get to such weird conclusions is explored throughout the
>>>>>>>> book where a phenomenological analysis of consciousness is done and it
>>>>>>>> is shown how it is structured on an emergent holarchy of levels, a
>>>>>>>> holarchy meaning that a higher level includes the lower levels, and I
>>>>>>>> conclude that this can only happen if there is an entity called
>>>>>>>> "self-reference" which has the above mentioned properties. So as you
>>>>>>>> can see, there pretty much cannot be a mathematics of self-reference.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I will also present about self-reference at The Science of
>>>>>>>> Consciousness conference this year at Interlaken, Switzerland, so if
>>>>>>>> you are there we can talk more about these issues.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thursday, 11 April 2019 02:55:55 UTC+3, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Hi Cosmin,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It seems your conclusion fits well with the conclusion already given
>>>>>>>>> by the universal machine (the Gödel-Löbian one which are those who
>>>>>>>>> already knows that they are Turing universal, like ZF, PA, or the
>>>>>>>>> combinators + some induction principle).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Self-reference is capital indeed, but you seem to miss the
>>>>>>>>> mathematical theory of self-reference, brought by the work of Gödel
>>>>>>>>> and Löb, and Solovay ultimate formalisation of it at the first order
>>>>>>>>> logic level. You cite Penrose, which is deadly wrong on this.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> In fact incompleteness is a chance for mechanism, as it provides
>>>>>>>>> almost directly a theory of consciousness, if you are willing to
>>>>>>>>> agree that consciousness is true, indubitable, immediately knowable,
>>>>>>>>> non provable and non definable, as each Löbian machine is confronted
>>>>>>>>> to such proposition all the “time”. But this enforces also, as I have
>>>>>>>>> shown, that the whole of physics has to be justified by some of the
>>>>>>>>> modes of self-reference, making physics into a subbranch of
>>>>>>>>> elementary arithmetic. This works in the sense that at the three
>>>>>>>>> places where physics should appear we get a quantum logic, and this
>>>>>>>>> with the advantage of a transparent clear-cut between the qualia (not
>>>>>>>>> sharable) and the quanta (sharable in the first person plural sense).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> You seem to have a good (I mean correct with respect to Mechanism)
>>>>>>>>> insight on consciousness, but you seem to have wrong information on
>>>>>>>>> the theory of the digital machines/numbers and the role of Gödel.
>>>>>>>>> Gödel’s theorem is really a chance for the Mechanist theory, as it
>>>>>>>>> explains that the digital machine are non predictable, full of non
>>>>>>>>> communicable subjective knowledge and beliefs, and capable of
>>>>>>>>> defeating all reductionist theory that we can made of them. Indeed,
>>>>>>>>> they are literally universal dissident, and they are born with a
>>>>>>>>> conflict between 8 modes of self-apprehension. In my last paper(*) I
>>>>>>>>> argue that they can be enlightened, and this shows also that
>>>>>>>>> enlightenment and blasphemy are very close, and that religion leads
>>>>>>>>> easily to a theological trap making the machine inconsistent, except
>>>>>>>>> by staying mute, or referring to Mechanism (which is itself highly
>>>>>>>>> unprovable by the consistent machine).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Bruno
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
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