On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 11:41 AM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
Jason thinks I must be suffering from buyer's remorse because I "spent $80,000 when he is already saved by arithmetic" he concludes this because on December 26 2012 at 12:34 PM I said " *A better question is do the natural numbers need a reason to exist? I don't know the answer to that but my hunch is no*". However in another post on December 26 2012 at 1:26 PM, less than 2 hours later I said "*it is a fact that thinking of information as something physical has over the last century proven itself to be remarkably fertile and has led to the discovery of new knowledge, while thinking of information as ethereal was found to be sterile and has led to nowhere and nothing*". The existence of the natural numbers may or may not be a brute fact, but it is certainly NOT a brute fact that we teach our children the particular metric to measure the distance a natural number is from zero that yields results such as 2+2=4 and not one of the infinite number of other self consistent ones that the P-adic metric can provide. It is not a brute fact because there is a reason for it, we teach that one and only that one to children because it is the only one that is consistent with the physical world. And because that one is far more intuitive than any P-adic one. And it is more intuitive precisely because it is consistent with the physical world we see around us and P-adic is not. > > *However he uses the static nature of arithmetical truth to presume > that it cannot represent "real computations". * > There is a easy way to tell a "real computation" from the other sort. Your computer can make one sort of computation without a battery or a AC power outlet, but for the other sort your computer needs electricity. And you can *do* something with one sort of calculation, but you can't *do* anything with the other sort of "calculation". *> But he has not indicated why fundamental change (which I take to mean > successive creation and destruction of states) should be necessary to > computation,* > Do I really need to indicate why you can't create or destroy something without making a change? I don't think so. But I think you need to indicate how, out of the set of all computations, you can pick the correct ones from the incorrect ones without the help of matter that obeys the laws of physics. I think meaning needs contrast. Michelangelo's David was carved from a single huge block of marble that was a 100 million years old, but it would be silly to say David was 100 million years old and Michelangelo did nothing but unpack it from the marble that was not part of David. And to make a real calculation rather than a pretend toy one you have to differentiate the correct from the incorrect, you not only have to mention the correct answer you have to make it clear that all the other answers, and there are a infinite number of them, are wrong. And for that you need a physical machine. * > I think John has also argued against philosophical zombies.* I have indeed. > > > *John's theory that fundamental change is required leads to an infinity > of philosophical zombies existing within the arithmetical computations,* > My theory is NOTHING exists within arithmetical computations because arithmetical computations don't exist (existence being defined as stuff that can *do* things), but physical computations certainly exist and can *do" all sorts of things. > *> 1. Can the time evolution of John Clark's brain be described by the > solutions to a particular Diophantine equation? (e.g. an equation with > variables t and s, where t = number of Plank times since start of > emulation, and s = the wave function describing all the particles in your > skull)* > It can unless physics needs Real Numbers and it probably doesn't. Yes Schrodinger's equation uses Real Numbers because it assumes space and time are continuous, but that is probably only approximately true. And there are a infinite number of equations and mathematically there is absolutely nothing special about Schrodinger's equation, the only thing special about that particular equation is it conforms with our observations of how the physical world behaves. And I'm very surprised that as soon as you mentioned the Planck Time in the above you didn't realize you had left the world of pure dimensionless number sand was talking numbers with physical units associated with them, like measures of time and space and mass and energy and electrical charge. *> 2. Are those brain states found in the collection of solutions to that > equation reflective of a philosophical zombie?* > No. > *could we build a John Clark robot that behaved exactly as John Clark > would by searching for solutions to this equation, which would not be > conscious* > No. And it would not behave exactly like John Clark, it would not behave at all because without physics there would be no way to search through solutions to that equation or to any other. 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv25UYFmakWOt%2Bp%2BakA7NvadzGD830p5GYjr%3DVXp7S%3DkEw%40mail.gmail.com.
