Re: Perpetual Motion Machines

[George Levy]

Brent,

You are ignoring the fact that Dr. Katz is in a superposition of states.

Bruno, one can assume that he wears a lead apron to protect him from 
radioactivity - but not from the explosion. But I agree with you with 
regards Everett, or Mechanism cannot make sense in the first person 
view. No 1p-diary can contain the statement “I did not survive”.


In my post I am trying to lead to this question: Are the laws of physics 
/anthropically and independently/ determined by each observer?


From Katz's point of view he is conducting a quantum Zeno experiment 
(well known effect that suppresses quantum transitions when measurements 
are performed very frequently). From the point of view of a person 
outside the chamber, he is conducting a Tegmark style suicide experiment.


We may take for granted that /from his point of view/ the radium near 
the counter is not radioactive. We are faced with a counterfactual:  
since the radium is not radioactive, turning off the counter would not 
make any difference from Katz's point of view.


Another question is whether /identical /radium samples far away from the 
counter would have the same radioactivity as the one near the counter, 
(even though the counter is not operative.) Why or why not?


In other words are /the fundamental forces that control radioactivity/ 
affected throughout Katz's lab?


The second part of my post had to do with the second law. What would 
Katz perceive if the radium source was replaced by a heat flow device 
designed to trigger the explosive? Would he perceive /heat quantization/ 
as an anthropically determined phenomenon (in analogy to the 
quantization of electron's orbit in our world)?


George

On 12/31/2019 7:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 31 Dec 2019, at 05:02, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:




On 12/30/2019 5:44 PM, George Levy wrote:

On 12/29/2019 4:34 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

George,
Does your interpretation of Boltzmann's view on the conservation of 
energy invoke any observer like Boltzmann's Brain or Wigner's Friend?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
You know, we need all the Friends we can get? ;-D


We are all Wigner’s friends, aren’t we?

Except that Wigner still had some objectivism left in him, which led 
him to ask a friend to act as an intermediary between him and 
Schrodinger’s cat when he could have stepped into Schrodinger’s 
chamber and conducted the experiment himself.


Writing the paper “Loschmidt’s paradox, extended to CPT symmetry…” 
led me to question how natural laws such as forces, conservation, 
quantization and the second law emerge from Quantum Mechanics. The 
following thought experiments involve Dr. Katz, a very dear, close 
and nonfactual colleague of Schrodinger and Wigner. You could call 
him Schrodinger’s Katz.


Dr. Katz has a PhD in physics. As a a pure subjectivist, he 
volunteers in experiments conducted in the famous Schrodinger’s 
chamber which contains a radium sample, near a Geiger counter, 
connected to a detonator set to trigger one ton of TNT (replacing, a 
la Tegmark, the original vial of cyanide envisaged by Schrodinger.)


These experiments involve the first and second laws of 
thermodynamics. I do not have any firm answer to any of these 
experiments, but I think they are worth sharing.


1)*First Law -* These experiments aim at determining whether the 
forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak 
forces) are constant from the point of view of an observer.


*a)*Dr. Katz measures the radioactivity of the radium sample near 
the Geiger counter. Does the measurement show that radium is /not 
radioactive/?


*b)*He then measures the radioactivity of a /second radium sample 
far away/ from the counter. Is it radioactive? Is there a difference 
between the radioactivity of the two samples? Why or why not?


*c)*Dr. Katz may conclude that radium is simply not radioactive and, 
therefore, the radium-counter-explosive link is not operational. He 
turns off the inoperational counter and again measures the 
radioactivity of both radium samples (near and far from the counter) 
Is there any change in the measurements?


*d)*He then measures the radioactivity of a polonium sample far from 
the counter. What does he find?


*e)*Finally, he opens (from the inside) the door of the chamber, 
steps outside, and repeat radioactivity measurement on radium and 
polonium samples located outside. What does he find? The same as or 
different from the inside?


How does Dr. Katz explain his findings? Are the (electromagnetic, 
strong, weak) forces the same inside and outside the chamber? Is 
energy conserved?


2)*Second Law.* (These experiments attempt to link quantization to 
the second law)


Dr. Schrodinger replaces the radium sample and Geiger counter by a 
heat flow device comprised of a metal bar, hot at one end and cold 
at the o

Re: Perpetual Motion Machines

[George Levy]

On 12/29/2019 4:34 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

George,
Does your interpretation of Boltzmann's view on the conservation of 
energy invoke any observer like Boltzmann's Brain or Wigner's Friend?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
You know, we need all the Friends we can get? ;-D


We are all Wigner’s friends, aren’t we?

Except that Wigner still had some objectivism left in him, which led him 
to ask a friend to act as an intermediary between him and Schrodinger’s 
cat when he could have stepped into Schrodinger’s chamber and conducted 
the experiment himself.


Writing the paper “Loschmidt’s paradox, extended to CPT symmetry…” led 
me to question how natural laws such as forces, conservation, 
quantization and the second law emerge from Quantum Mechanics. The 
following thought experiments involve Dr. Katz, a very dear, close and 
nonfactual colleague of Schrodinger and Wigner. You could call him 
Schrodinger’s Katz.


Dr. Katz has a PhD in physics. As a a pure subjectivist, he volunteers 
in experiments conducted in the famous Schrodinger’s chamber which 
contains a radium sample, near a Geiger counter, connected to a 
detonator set to trigger one ton of TNT (replacing, a la Tegmark, the 
original vial of cyanide envisaged by Schrodinger.)


These experiments involve the first and second laws of thermodynamics. I 
do not have any firm answer to any of these experiments, but I think 
they are worth sharing.


1)*First Law -* These experiments aim at determining whether the forces 
of nature (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces) are 
constant from the point of view of an observer.


*a)*Dr. Katz measures the radioactivity of the radium sample near the 
Geiger counter. Does the measurement show that radium is /not radioactive/?


*b)*He then measures the radioactivity of a /second radium sample far 
away/ from the counter. Is it radioactive? Is there a difference between 
the radioactivity of the two samples? Why or why not?


*c)*Dr. Katz may conclude that radium is simply not radioactive and, 
therefore, the radium-counter-explosive link is not operational. He 
turns off the inoperational counter and again measures the radioactivity 
of both radium samples (near and far from the counter) Is there any 
change in the measurements?


*d)*He then measures the radioactivity of a polonium sample far from the 
counter. What does he find?


*e)*Finally, he opens (from the inside) the door of the chamber, steps 
outside, and repeat radioactivity measurement on radium and polonium 
samples located outside. What does he find? The same as or different 
from the inside?


How does Dr. Katz explain his findings? Are the (electromagnetic, 
strong, weak) forces the same inside and outside the chamber? Is energy 
conserved?


2)*Second Law.* (These experiments attempt to link quantization to the 
second law)


Dr. Schrodinger replaces the radium sample and Geiger counter by a heat 
flow device comprised of a metal bar, hot at one end and cold at the 
other, and a differential thermometer that measures the temperature 
difference between the two ends of the bar. When the difference falls 
below a predetermined value, the thermometer triggers the explosive. Dr. 
Katz is willing to conduct experiments in this new chamber.


*a)*Dr. Katz measures the temperature difference of the bar. Again, 
following Tegmark’s cue, one may believe that the temperature difference 
never falls below the predetermined value.


*b)*Dr. Katz measures heat flow in a metal bar far away from the 
thermometer. Does he observe the same kind of anomaly as close to the 
thermometer? How does Katz explain what he measures?Does his explanation 
involve quantization of thermal energy?


*c)*What if he opens the door and steps outside the chamber? Does he 
observe any difference in heat flow?


I do not have any firm answers to any of these thought experiments - 
just guesses. Do you know the answers?


George



-Original Message-----
From: George Levy 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Mon, Dec 23, 2019 10:11 pm
Subject: Re: Perpetual Motion Machines

Hi everyone
I do not post often, but now is an opportune time to post on perpetual 
motion machines and the second law.

John Clark posted

"The other type of Perpetual Motion Machine would violate the
second law of thermodynamics, you couldn't create energy from
nothing but you could keep recycling the same energy and keep
extracting work out of it forever. That would violate not just a
law of physics but a law of logic too. If you could do that then
you could also make entropy decrease, but that would be illogical
because there is no getting around the fact that there are just
more ways something can be disorganized than organized.

and quoting Hawking:
Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction 
in which disorder increases. — Stephen W. Hawking 
<https://toda

Re: Perpetual Motion Machines

[George Levy]

Hi everyone

I do not post often, but now is an opportune time to post on perpetual 
motion machines and the second law.


John Clark posted

   "The other type of Perpetual Motion Machine would violate the second
   law of thermodynamics, you couldn't create energy from nothing but
   you could keep recycling the same energy and keep extracting work
   out of it forever. That would violate not just a law of physics but
   a law of logic too. If you could do that then you could also make
   entropy decrease, but that would be illogical because there is no
   getting around the fact that there are just more ways something can
   be disorganized than organized.

and quoting Hawking:

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in 
which disorder increases. — Stephen W. Hawking 
<https://todayinsci.com/H/Hawking_Stephen/HawkingStephen-Quotations.htm>


https://todayinsci.com/QuotationsCategories/A_Cat/ArrowOfTime-Quotations.htm

In other words systems are more likely to change from organized to 
disorganized.  There is an arrow of time and the second law as currently 
understood supervenes on it.


The problem with this approach is that relying on time asymmetry alone 
is narrow-focused and very much 19th century thinking. Physics of the 
20th and 21st century taught us that time symmetry must be considered in 
combination with charge and parity. Therefore, to be accurate, one must 
consider the second law in the context of full-fledged CPT symmetry.


I just published a paper discussing this very topic.

Loschmidt’s Paradox, Extended to CPT Symmetry, Bypasses Second Law 
<https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=97267>


(The html version at the site does not render the drawings properly, you 
will need to download the pdf version to display the drawings)


The original Loschmidt's paradox states:

   if all physical processes are truly microscopically time-reversible,
   then any entropy increasing process is as probable as a
   corresponding entropy decreasing process. Therefore, according to
   physical laws the change in entropy must be zero.

However, as proven by Boltzmann in his H-Theorem, entropy must increase 
with time.


This paper extends Loschmidt's paradox to CPT symmetry: if the laws of 
nature are truly CPT symmetrical and reversible, then a system could 
return to a previous state /even in the presence of an arrow of time,/ 
thereby restoring its entropy to its original value. This version of the 
paradox renders moot the arrow of time assumption and bypasses the 
H-Theorem.


The paper includes a theoretical discussion, simulation and experimental 
data.


George Levy

Irvine California

On 11/29/2019 6:56 AM, John Clark wrote:
All this talk about energy conservation has got me thinking about 
Perpetual Motion Machines, there are 2 types, both are impossible but 
one is more impossible than the other. One type would violate the 
known laws of physics, or maybe not; it seems to me that in an 
accelerating universe it would be possible, at least in theory, to 
extract work (force over a distance) from nothing and keep doing so 
forever.


The other type of Perpetual Motion Machine would violate the second 
law of thermodynamics, you couldn't create energy from nothing but you 
could keep recycling the same energy and keep extracting work out of 
it forever. That would violate not just a law of physics but a law of 
logic too. If you could do that then you could also make entropy 
decrease, but that would be illogical because there is no getting 
around the fact that there are just more ways something can be 
disorganized than organized.


John K Clark
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Re: Quantum Mechanics Violation of the Second Law

[George Levy]

Thanks Bruno


On 11/11/2015 12:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Hi George,

Congratulations!

Best wishes for you and your amazing work. I am not convinced but that 
might only be due to my incompetence in the field. I will make a 
further look.


Bruno


On 10 Nov 2015, at 23:10, George Levy wrote:

I would like to update the members of this list on what I have been 
up to recently (and revive an old thread). My latest paper "Quantum 
Game Beats Classical Odds - Thermodynamics Implications" has just 
been published by the Journal Entropy under the section "Statistical 
Mechanics" after a strict and thorough peer review. The implications 
are that it is possible to beat the laws of Classical Physics using a 
Quantum Mechanical effect. Given the right conditions it should be 
possible to produce a spontaneous temperature gradient in a 
thermoelectric material without any electrical input - and vice 
versa, to produce an electrical output without a temperature 
difference input.


Here is the link to the paper at the Journal Entropy:

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/17/11/7645

I presented an earlier paper in Vancouver, Canada, which was also 
approved for publication by the /11th International Conference on 
Ceramic Materials & Components for Energy & Environmental 
Applications/. It is now undergoing editorial and format changes.


The paper is currently available at ResearchGate at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283645102_Anomalous_Temperature_Gradient_in_Non-Maxwellian_Gases


Best

George



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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>



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Re: Quantum Mechanics Violation of the Second Law

[George Levy]

I would like to update the members of this list on what I have been up 
to recently (and revive an old thread). My latest paper "Quantum Game 
Beats Classical Odds - Thermodynamics Implications" has just been 
published by the Journal Entropy under the section "Statistical 
Mechanics" after a strict and thorough peer review. The implications are 
that it is possible to beat the laws of Classical Physics using a 
Quantum Mechanical effect. Given the right conditions it should be 
possible to produce a spontaneous temperature gradient in a 
thermoelectric material without any electrical input - and vice versa, 
to produce an electrical output without a temperature difference input.


Here is the link to the paper at the Journal Entropy:

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/17/11/7645

I presented an earlier paper in Vancouver, Canada, which was also 
approved for publication by the /11th International Conference on 
Ceramic Materials & Components for Energy & Environmental Applications/. 
It is now undergoing editorial and format changes.


The paper is currently available at ResearchGate at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283645102_Anomalous_Temperature_Gradient_in_Non-Maxwellian_Gases


Best

George


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Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse

[George Levy]

Hi John

Thanks for your appreciation.

John Mikes wrote:

Dear George,
I was missing more of your contributions on this list lately (years?). 
Let me reflect to a few of your topics:
 
*Chaos.*
A decade or so ago I was named 'resident chaotician' on another list - 
later changed my mind when I was disenchanted by the 'physical 
chaologists' who picked some 'chaotic' problems that seemed to them as 
calculable in the original (greek mythological) chaos: the 
unfathomable uncalculable (pre-geometrical?) plenitude of which the 
Chronos-Zeus family derived our "Kraxlwerk" (world). Since then I put 
'chaos' into the maze of scale-differences (more than just SOME orders 
of magnitude?) that conflate our math-based thinking. We learn to 
think about 'chaotic' (very slowly, but we do, indeed).
Thank you for leading (me?) towards Tohu-va-Bohu (what I always wrote 
in one 'tohuvabohu' in ANY language and applied it for some 
unresolvable mixup in a conglomerate.
 
The Tohu va Bohu is the nothingness full of potentiality. It reminds me 
of my son's room when he was a teenager.
*"And God saw the light and it was good"* is translated in some other 
languages as "And God saw THAT the light was good" (Rabbit: which one 
is close to the original?)
With my limited knowledge of Hebrew I can translate it as And God saw 
the light "because-good" (ki-tov). I will let the rabbi confirm.
Interestingly it is the first mention of "good" therefore you can take 
it as a "definition". Pursuing the reasoning in my previous post,  
Goodness is defined as the awakening consciousness coemergent with, and 
creating, the world. In other words creation is goodness itself.
Does not underline an omniscient God. Now - your God = Consciousness 
is to my liking: I could not identify either of them. I consider 
Ccness a covering noumenon of many phenomena detected over a long 
cultural history and in my speculations I boiled it down to 
"responding to information" - self-recursively, or not. E.g. the 
response of an electron to a + charge etc.
So it really covers the entire World as you connotation would imply 
for God = Consciousness.
Yes. God=Consciousness=World kind of a trinity...(please 
take this as a joke) :-)
From this position it is obvious that I am not much for the Anthropic 
Principle. It is a backwards thinking from visualizing "US" (as God's 
children?) as the main actors in the world. We are not.


George

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Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse

[George Levy]

Dear Rabbi

Rabbi Rabbit wrote:

What is
surprising about Abulafia is that he did not reach this state by
suppressing his conscious mind, as most mystics do by repetition of a
single formula/mantra, but by overstimulating it with letter
combinations accompanied by body motions.
  
Too much information is no information at all and a white sheet of paper 
carries just as much information as a black one. So overstimulating 
one's mind with a barrage of letters may achieve the same results as 
understimulating it. Abulafia may have been suppressing his conscious 
mind by overstimulating it.

I haven't thought enough how the technique of letter combinations
could be related to consciousness. Any ideas?
  
Numbers and more generally mathematics and logic (more precisely self 
referential logic) is an essential requirement of consciousness. Using 
the same Anthropic reasoning that I used in my previous post, one could 
infer that mathematics and logic also co-emerged with consciousness and 
the world out of chaos. - Bruno is an expert in the field of self 
referential logical system.  Who knows, self referential logical systems 
implemented in software may become a reality within our lifetime.


George





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Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse

[George Levy]

Hi Rabbi Rabbit.

Welcome

I haven't contributed to this list for a while but I have been reading it.

Here is a possible connection between the Kabbalah and the Multiverse, 
which I will describe in a bulleted fashion for brevity.


The initial chaos, "Tohu va Bohu," (from which the French word tohu 
bohu) is equivalent to what is known in this list as the Plenitude.


The first light "Or" is not a physical light at all but it is the 
awakening of consciousness.


The separation that God performs (And God divided the light from the 
darkness), is mediated by what is called on this list the Anthropic 
Principle. In essence, the just awakened consciousness can only be aware 
of the part of the Tohu va Bohu that can support the consciousness's own 
existence. Consciousness can only see order in the world that it perceives.


The sentence "And God saw the light and it was good" is interesting 
because consciousness is a self referencing phenomenon. God saw the 
light but consciousness also saw the light - itself. This means that God 
and consciousness are identical.


God, consciousness and the world co-emerge out of chaos. Consciousness 
filters the world out of Chaos. More specifically, _any instance_ of 
consciousness "to be what it is" (in the human experience, with 
consistent memories and logical capabilities) requires the corresponding 
world "to be what it is" (to be ordered, with  consistent histories and 
logical physical laws). Consciousness and the world mirror each other 
and therefore, they are in their own image. There can be many different 
consciousnesses, each one being in fact a whole world.


Best Regards

George

Rabbi Rabbit wrote:

Dear Jason,

My assumption is that the Name of God, according to Abraham Abulafia,
could be made of any possible combination of the 22 letters, as long
as this name does not exceed 22 characters. This includes repetitions
of letters and any combination between 1 and 22 characters.

Thank you for your wise remark, it was indeed not clear enough as I
formulated it previously.

Yours truly,

R. Rabbit

  


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Re: The seven step-Mathematical preliminaries

[George Levy]

A good model of the naturalist math that Torgny is talking about is the 
overflow mechanism in computers.
For example in a 64 bit machine you may define overflow for positive 
integers as  2^^64 -1. If negative integers are included then the 
biggest positive could be 2^^32-1.
Torgny would also have to define the operations +, - x / with specific 
exceptions for overflow.
The concept of BIGGEST needs to be tied with _the kind of operations you 
want to apply to_ the numbers.

George

Brent Meeker wrote:
> Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>   
>> You have to explain why the exception is needed in the first place...
>>
>> The rule is true until the rule is not true anymore, ok but you have
>> to explain for what sufficiently large N the successor function would
>> yield next 0 and why or to add that N and that exception to the
>> successor function as axiom, if not you can't avoid N+1. But torgny
>> doesn't evacuate N+1, merely it allows his set to grows undefinitelly
>> as when he has defined BIGGEST, he still argues BIGGEST+1 makes sense
>> , is a natural number but not part of the set of natural number, this
>> is non-sense, assuming your special successor rule BIGGEST+1 simply
>> does not exists at all.
>>
>> I can understand this overflow successor function for a finite data
>> type or a real machine registe but not for N. The successor function
>> is simple, if you want it to have an exception at biggest you should
>> justify it.
>> 
>
> You don't justify definitions.  How would you justify Peano's axioms as being 
> the "right" ones?  You are just confirming my point that you are begging the 
> question by assuming there is a set called "the natural numbers" that exists 
> independently of it's definition and it satisfies Peano's axioms.  Torgny is 
> denying that and pointing out that we cannot know of infinite sets that exist 
> independent of their definition because we cannot extensively define an 
> infinite 
> set, we can only know about it what we can prove from its definition.
>
> So the numbers modulo BIGGEST+1 and Peano's numbers are both mathematical 
> objects.  The first however is more definite than the second, since Godel's 
> theorems don't apply.  Which one is called the *natural* numbers is a 
> convention 
> which might not have any practical consequences for sufficiently large 
> BIGGEST.
>
> Brent
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Re: Consciousness is information?

[George Levy]

Kelly Harmon wrote:
>
> What if you used a lookup table for only a single neuron in a computer
> simulation of a brain?
>   
Hi Kelly

Zombie arguments involving look up tables are faulty because look up 
tables are not closed systems. They require someone to fill them up.
To resolve these arguments you need to include the creator of the look 
up table in the argument. (Inclusion can be across widely different time 
periods and spacial location)

George

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Re: Changing the past by forgetting

[George Levy]

I agree with Anna. In addition, it all depends on where you define the 
boundary of the self. Just the brain? Brain + body? Brain + body + 
immediate surrounding (prescription glasses being worn, automobile being 
driven, binoculars or computer being used) ? Brain + body + Whole 
causally connected universe (CCU)?

There are good arguable reasons for including the CCU as part of the 
self. Forgetting would then mean resetting the  CCU  to  the last 
"remembered" state. In this case we have an identity relationship 
between the self and the universe it inhabits. Resetting the self is the 
same as resetting the universe. No more problem or paradox associated 
with forgetting!

George


A. Wolf wrote:
>> Thanks!  This is like undoing historical events. If you forget about the
>> fact that dinosaurs ever lived on Earth and there is an alternative 
>> history
>> that led to your existence in the multiverse, and you do the memory 
>> erasure
>> also in sectors were dinosaurs never lived, you have some nonzero
>> probability of finding yourself on an Earth were the dinosaurs never 
>> lived.
>> 
>
> The problem I'm having with this line of reasoning is that "memory" isn't a 
> fixed physical object.  Memory is reconstructive, and depends upon emotional 
> triggers both at the time when the memory was encoded and at the time when 
> it re-examined in the conscious mind.  No memories are particularly 
> accurate.
>
> Most of the time, I'm not aware that dinosaurs existed because I'm not 
> thinking about it, or any other part of Earth's history, for that 
> matter...but I don't seem to have the experience that my environment is 
> impoverished of history altogether just because I hadn't been thinking hard 
> enough about it.  As another example, people who have false recovered 
> memories through psychotherapy invariably end up unable to confirm them when 
> they look for facts to back up their new memories, and that happens in my 
> universe even though I personally don't have any information to confirm or 
> deny their memories.
>
> In other words, I don't see why forgetting something is any more likely to 
> change events than simply being wrong about having the memory in the first 
> place, the latter of which happens constantly.  If you want to argue about 
> what nonzero probability implies, you'd have a hard time showing that 
> anything non-contradictory at all has a nonzero probability of being true. 
> :)
>
>   
>> Because of the entanglement, I don't think you can, in general, reverse 
>> the spin
>> state of the  particle without reversing what is known about it by "the 
>> rest of
>> the world".
>> 
>
> The rest of the world?  What's that?
>
> Anna
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Re: Changing the past by forgetting

[George Levy]

I agree with Anna. In addition, it all depends on where you define the 
boundary of the self. Just the brain? Brain + body? Brain + body + 
immediate surrounding (prescription glasses being worn, automobile being 
driven, binoculars or computer being used) ? Brain + body + Whole 
causally connected universe (CCU)?

There are good arguable reasons for including the CCU as part of the 
self. Forgetting would then mean resetting the  CCU  to  the last 
"remembered" state. In this case we have an identity relationship 
between the self and the universe it inhabits. Resetting the self is the 
same as resetting the universe. No more problem or paradox associated 
with forgetting!

George


A. Wolf wrote:
>> Thanks!  This is like undoing historical events. If you forget about the
>> fact that dinosaurs ever lived on Earth and there is an alternative 
>> history
>> that led to your existence in the multiverse, and you do the memory 
>> erasure
>> also in sectors were dinosaurs never lived, you have some nonzero
>> probability of finding yourself on an Earth were the dinosaurs never 
>> lived.
>> 
>
> The problem I'm having with this line of reasoning is that "memory" isn't a 
> fixed physical object.  Memory is reconstructive, and depends upon emotional 
> triggers both at the time when the memory was encoded and at the time when 
> it re-examined in the conscious mind.  No memories are particularly 
> accurate.
>
> Most of the time, I'm not aware that dinosaurs existed because I'm not 
> thinking about it, or any other part of Earth's history, for that 
> matter...but I don't seem to have the experience that my environment is 
> impoverished of history altogether just because I hadn't been thinking hard 
> enough about it.  As another example, people who have false recovered 
> memories through psychotherapy invariably end up unable to confirm them when 
> they look for facts to back up their new memories, and that happens in my 
> universe even though I personally don't have any information to confirm or 
> deny their memories.
>
> In other words, I don't see why forgetting something is any more likely to 
> change events than simply being wrong about having the memory in the first 
> place, the latter of which happens constantly.  If you want to argue about 
> what nonzero probability implies, you'd have a hard time showing that 
> anything non-contradictory at all has a nonzero probability of being true. 
> :)
>
>   
>> Because of the entanglement, I don't think you can, in general, reverse 
>> the spin
>> state of the  particle without reversing what is known about it by "the 
>> rest of
>> the world".
>> 
>
> The rest of the world?  What's that?
>
> Anna
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Re: language, cloning and thought experiments

[George Levy]

Jack,

You say "Q_i (which is _your_ utility per unit measure for the observer i)."
 This is an oxymoron. How can observer i know or care what YOUR Q 
(Quality) is? How can this observer feel what it feels being you?. The 
only observer that matters in evaluating your Q is you as a 
self-observer. The sum is no sum at all:

U = M_o Q_o  where o = you as observer.

George

Wei Dai wrote:
> Jack Mallah wrote:
>   
>> They might not, but I'm sure most would; maybe not exactly that U, but a 
>> lot closer to it.
>> 
>
> Can you explain why you believe that?
>
>   
>> No.  In U = Sum_i M_i Q_i, you sum over all the i's, not just the ones 
>> that are similar to you.  Of course your Q_i (which is _your_ utility per 
>> unit measure for the observer i) might be highly peaked around those that 
>> are similar to you, but there's no need for a precise cutoff in 
>> similarity.  And it's even very likely that it will have even higher peaks 
>> around people that are not very much like you at all (these are the people 
>> that you would sacrifice yourself for).
>>
>> By contrast, in your proposal for U, you do need a precise cutoff, for 
>> which there is no justification.
>> 
>
> Ok, I see what you're saying, and it is a good point. But most people 
> already have a personal identity that is sufficiently well-defined in the 
> current environment where mind copying is not possible, so in practice 
> deciding which i's to sum over isn't a serious problem (yet).
>  
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Re: Measure Increases or Decreases? - Was adult vs. child

[George Levy]

Jack Mallah wrote:
> Hi George.  The everything list feels just like old times, no?  Which is nice 
> in a way but has a big drawback - I can only take so much of arguing the same 
> old things, and being outnumbered.  And that limit is approaching fast again. 
>  At least I think your point here is new to the list.
>   
I have also been overwhelmed by the volume on this list. The idea is not 
to take more than you can chew.
> --- On Wed, 2/11/09, George Levy  wrote:
>   
>> One could argue that measure actually increases continuously and corresponds 
>> to the increase in entropy occurring in everyday life. So even if you are 90 
>> or 100 years old you could still experience an increase in measure.
>> 
>
> I guess you are basing that on some kind of branch-counting idea.
>
> If that were the case, the Born Rule would fail.  Perhaps the probability 
> rule would be more like proportionality to norm^2 exp(entropy) instead of 
> just norm^2.  If that was it, then for example unstable nuclei would be 
> observed to decay a lot faster than the Born Rule predicts.
>   

Yes I am linking the entropy to MW branching. So if you start with a low 
entropy state such as the Big Bang or having $1 million after a QS your 
entropy is going to increase. (There are many ways I could spend that 
million). The number of possible states you can reach increases, hence 
your entropy increases.

You say that the Born Rule would fail if measure *increases*. Here is a 
counterexample:
Using your own argument I could say that the Born rule would fail if 
measure *decreases *according to function f(t). For example it could be 
norm^2 f(t) . So using your own argument since the Born rule is only  
norm^2 therefore measure stays constant?
I do not understand why you say that the Born rule would fail.

Linking entropy with measure may bring some interesting insights. Let's 
see how far we can go with this.

George
>
>
>   
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Measure Increases or Decreases? - Was adult vs. child

[George Levy]

Hi Jack

Nice to see you again.

The assumption that measure decreases continuously has been accepted too 
easily. This is, however, really the crux of the discussion.

One could argue that measure actually increases continuously and 
corresponds to the increase in entropy occurring in everyday life. So 
even if you are 90 or 100 years old you could still experience an 
increase in measure.

On the other hand, when you are really close to a near death event then 
you may argue that measure decreases.

Whether the increase compensates for the decrease is debatable.

In any case, measure is measured over a continuum and its value is 
infinite to begin with. So whether it increases or decreases may be a 
moot point.

This being said, this issue is not easily dismissed and will impact 
ethics and philosophy for years to come.

As I said, the increase or decrease in measure is at the crux of this 
problem.Your paper really did not illuminate the issue in a satisfactory 
manner.

George

Jack Mallah wrote:
> --- On Sun, 2/8/09, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>   
>>> Suppose you differentiate into N states, then on
>>>   
>> average each has 1/N of your original measure.  I guess
>> that's why you think the measure decreases.  But the sum
>> of the measures is N/N of the original.
>>
>> I still find this confusing. Your argument seems to be that you won't live 
>> to 1000 because the measure of 1000 year old versions of you in the 
>> multiverse is very small - the total consciousness across the multiverse is 
>> much less for 1000 year olds than 30 year olds. But by an analogous 
>> argument, the measure of 4 year old OM's is higher than that of 30 year old 
>> OM's, since you might die between age 4 and 30.
>> But here you are, an adult rather than a child.
>> 
>
> You might die between 4 and 30, but the chance is fairly small, let's say 10% 
> for the sake of argument.  So, if we just consider these two ages, the 
> effective probability of being 30 would be a little less than that of being 4 
> - not enough less to draw any conclusions from.
>
> The period of adulthood is longer than that of childhood so actually you are 
> more likely to be an adult.  How likely?  Just look at a cross section of the 
> population.  Some children, more adults, basically no super-old folks.
>
>   
>> Should you feel your consciousness more thinly spread or something?
>> 
>
> No, measure affects how common an observation is, not what it feels like.
>
>
>
>
>   
>
>
> >
>
>   


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Re: Probability

[George Levy]

Hi

I haven't contributed to the list recently but probability is a topic 
that interests me and which I discussed several years ago. I have a 
"relativist" interpretation of the MW.

To apply Probabilities to the MW _every probability should be stated as 
a conditional probability, that is conditional on the existence of the 
observer:_

For example:
P{event X} is meaningless
P{ event X / observer A} is the probability that observer A sees event X.

Obviously we have:
P{ Observer A / Observer A } = 1

Things become interesting when we have two observers A and B observing 
the same event X. (Recall Einstein thought experiment on simultaneity).

_Case 1: Classical case: Event X totally decoupled from the existence of 
observer A and B_

When the existences of A and B are not contingent on X we have

P{X/A} = P{X/B}

and both A and B agree on the "objectivity" of their observation. They 
call this probability P{X} even though strictly speaking P{ X} is 
meaningless.

This case represents the classical case: all observers see an objective 
reality in which all events have the same probabilities.



_Case 2: Tegmark case: Existence of A is 100% contingent on X._

In this case, the observed probabilities are different:

P{X/A} <> P{X/B}

For example let's consider Tegmark Quantum Mechanics suicide thought 
experiment. Let us say that A is the observer playing the lottery event 
X and B is passive.

B may observe the probability of A winning the lottery as

P{ X/B } = 0.01
Since A is contingent on X:
P{ A/B} = 0.01

Note that if B attempts to use Bayes rule to compute "P{X}" (or "P{A}")  
he'll use

P{X} = P{X/B} P{B}; However B has no access to P{B}. He actually uses 
P{B/B}. So for B Bayes rule becomes:
P{X} = P{X/B} P{B/B} = 0.01 x 1 = 0.01  ; B is a "third person." 
Most of the time he sees A dying.

Since A is 100% contingent on X and vice versa, A observes

P{X/A} = 1

If A attempts to compute "P{X}" using Bayes rule he'll get:

P{X} = P{X/A} P{A}; However P{A} does not make sense. A must use P{A/A}. 
So for A Bayes rule becomes:
P{X} = P{X/A} P{A/A} = 1 x 1 = 1; A is the first person. He always sees 
himself alive.

_Case 3. Both A and B are contingent on X in different degrees._
Assume that A is test pilot flying a very dangerous plane. B is in the 
control tower. C is far away.
X is a successful flight;  X1 is a plane crash on the ground killing A; 
X2 is the plane crashing in the control tower killing A and B.
Let P{X/C} = 0.7; P{X1/C} = 0.2, P{X2/C} = 0.1
P{X} as seen by C = 0.7.

Calculating P{X} according to B is more tricky. The events that B sees 
are the successful flight and the crash in the ground. He does not see 
the crash in the control tower.

To get P{X} as seen by B we need to normalize the probability to cover 
only the events seen by B:
According to B:   P{X} + P{X1} = 1
Therefore: P{X} = 0.7/(0.7+0.2) = 0.77   and P{X1} = 0.23.
So according to B P{X} = 0.77.

A does not see any of the crashes. So:
P{X} as seen by A = 1.0

This last example illustrates how three different observers can see 
three different probabilities.

George Levy


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Re: RE : Re: Discussion of the MUH

[George Levy]

Hi Brian

As Russell said, we have been discussing this topic for at least a 
decade. We all respect each other. I am sure that Bruno did not mean 
harm when he made his comment.

You bring up an interesting question: the relationship between Fuzzy 
logic and the MUH and you state that Fuzzy logic is a superset of 
deterministic logic. Isn't true that Fuzzy Logic can be implemented by 
means of a Turing Machine? Since a Turing Machine is purely 
deterministic it means that Fuzzy logic is actually a subset of logic. 
Hence the ad hoc introduction of Fuzzy logic may be unnecessary in the 
context of MUH.

I don't think that the indeterminacy that we are considering here is 
fundamental or derives from an axiomatic approach. It is rather a 
consequence of living in many worlds simultaneously. When "I" make a 
measurement, a number of "I"'s make(s) a measurements. The result of the 
measurement that each "I" perceive(s) defines the world where the "I" 
actually am (is). As you can see English is not rich enough to talk 
about "I" in the third person or in the plural.

If there is a need for Fuzzy Logic, it would have to be a kind of logic 
adapted to deal with the MUH. I don't know enough to say if there is 
such a logic.

George

Brian Tenneson wrote:
>> We get Tegmark on this list occasionally. He, like you, needs to
>> acquaint himself more with the core concepts of THIS discussion.
>> In his last post to us he admitted as much.
>> 
>
>
> By THIS discussion, did you mean the aspects of the connections to
> Fuzzy Logic and the MUH that I am discussing in THIS thread?
>
> Can we +please+ either talk about the first post on THIS thread or
> anything at least somewhat related or post in a different thread?
>
> I did not come here to argue about who is diverting the topic away.
>
> Please don't reply in THIS thread if you aren't going to discuss THIS
> topic (connections between Fuzzy Logic and the MUH).  Thanks.
>
>
>
>
> I did not post my ideas in a random person's thread.  If I did, I
> would be called a troll, perhaps, or at least, unnecessarily diverting
> the thread.
>
>
>
>
>
> It is insulting to me to be said I'm looking for attention.  Why use
> THIS thread's bandwidth to analyze my psychological makeup?
>
> Thanks.
> >
>
>   


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Re: dark energy

[George Levy]

Hal

Ok, there is no feeling but there is motivation. There is no feeling of 
motivation and there is motivation without feeling. This is totally 
alien or the English language is broken.

George

Hal Ruhl wrote:

> Hi George:
>
> I see no "feeling" of anything in a Something.   There is only an 
> absence of the information needed to answer meaningful questions that 
> are asked and must is be answered. 
>
> Hal Ruhl
>
> At 11:13 PM 1/17/2008, you wrote:
>
>> Hal,
>> Allright. You are saying that incompleteness is the (only) motivator 
>> of the members. In other words the members feel motivated by 
>> incompleteness. They do have the feeling of being incomplete that 
>> motivates their behavior.  Is this correct?
>> George
>>
>> Hal Ruhl wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Hi George:
>>>
>>>I see no motivator to any dynamics within the Everything other than 
>>>the incompleteness of some of its members and the unavoidable 
>>>necessity to progressively resolve this incompleteness.
>>>
>>>Hal Ruhl
>>>
>>>At 12:29 AM 1/17/2008, you wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>>  
>>>

Hal Ruhl wrote:

   


>
>This is an automatic process like a mass has to answer to the
>forces
>[meaningful questions] applied to it.
> 
>  
>

What in the psyche of the mass makes it answer to the forces?

George


   


>>>
>>>
>>> 
>>>  
>>>
>>
>>
>
> >


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Re: dark energy

[George Levy]

Hal,
Allright. You are saying that incompleteness is the (only) motivator of 
the members. In other words the members feel motivated by 
incompleteness. They do have the feeling of being incomplete that 
motivates their behavior.  Is this correct?
George

Hal Ruhl wrote:

>Hi George:
>
>I see no motivator to any dynamics within the Everything other than 
>the incompleteness of some of its members and the unavoidable 
>necessity to progressively resolve this incompleteness.
>
>Hal Ruhl
>
>At 12:29 AM 1/17/2008, you wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hal Ruhl wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>This is an automatic process like a mass has to answer to the forces
>>>[meaningful questions] applied to it.
>>>  
>>>
>>What in the psyche of the mass makes it answer to the forces?
>>
>>George
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>>
>
>  
>


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Re: dark energy

[George Levy]

Hal Ruhl wrote:

>
> This is an automatic process like a mass has to answer to the forces 
> [meaningful questions] applied to it.


What in the psyche of the mass makes it answer to the forces?

George

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Re: dark energy

[George Levy]

Hal,

I cannot follow you: one the one hand you say:

Something if incomplete will have to 
increase its completeness to answer meaningful questions

which implies volition and therefore spirit;
and on the other hand you say:

There is no intent to imply some sort of choice on 
the part of the Something.  

which denies spirit,
and on the third hand:

the quest is an ... system induced need for a 
ongoing influx of information   

in which the term "need" goes back to supporting a spirit-based system.

George

Hal Ruhl wrote:

>Hi George:
>
>I use the term "quest" because a Something if incomplete will have to 
>increase its completeness to answer meaningful questions that get 
>asked but it can not answer.  The motivator is partly external - an 
>answer [mostly more than one is available] is "out there" in the 
>unexplored Everything and partly internal - the particular question 
>must be answered.  There is no intent to imply some sort of choice on 
>the part of the Something.  To use your last thoughts below the quest 
>is an [Everything, Something, Nothing] system induced need for a 
>ongoing influx of information into the particular Something from the 
>Everything [the boundary of the particular Something with the 
>Everything alters to include more of the Everything.  The Something 
>encompasses an ever increasing portion of the Everything but it must do so.
>
>In this case I currently see no higher level of driver for any sub 
>component of the Something including what one might call an 
>observer.  I may need to reconsider when I get to that point in 
>Russell's book but my time restraints force me to take considerable 
>time doing so.
>
>Hal Ruhl
>
>At 02:21 PM 1/16/2008, you wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hi Hal,
>>This topic interests me, but I find it difficult to go past the second
>>sentence in your post. The phrase "Something is on a quest" carries a
>>lot of baggage, in particular that "Something" has intention,  purpose
>>and motivation. Either we have to assume that this intention is produced
>>by a fundamental "spirit" or "soul" that you have assigned to the
>>Something, or that the intention is emergent from a complex
>>consciousness simulation possibly involving Quantum Mechanics. If
>>you assume a spirit or soul you are making a quasi religious assumption.
>>Is this what you want? How do we explain spirit or soul? If you are
>>assuming a complex consciousness simulation, there is a whole layer that
>>needs to be explained which no one has yet fully explained yet.
>>Usually scientists use objective and impersonal criteria such as "energy
>>minimization" to explain how a reaction is driven in one particular
>>direction. In chemistry, for example, "Le Chatelier Principle" is used.
>>
>>George
>>
>>Hal Ruhl wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I have touched on this subject before but the following is my current
>>>view of "Dark Energy"
>>>
>>>In my approach a Something is on a quest for completeness within the
>>>Everything.
>>>
>>>Based on this, the following points can be made:
>>>
>>>1) The number of current incompleteness sites for a given Something
>>>would be at least proportional to the surface area of its boundary
>>>with the rest of the Everything if not proportional to its volume.
>>>
>>>2) Thus the larger [more information content] a Something is [has]
>>>the more such sites it has and the larger any given step in the 
>>>  
>>>
>>quest can be.
>>
>>
>>>3) This gives an increase in the average information influx as the
>>>quest progresses.
>>>
>>>4) If the universe described by that Something has a maximum finite
>>>information packing density in its "space" then an accelerating
>>>increase in the size of that space should be "observed" since both
>>>the volume and surface area of a Something inside the Everything
>>>increases as the quest progresses.
>>>
>>> Hal Ruhl
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>>
>
>  
>


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Re: dark energy

[George Levy]

Hi Hal,
This topic interests me, but I find it difficult to go past the second 
sentence in your post. The phrase "Something is on a quest" carries a 
lot of baggage, in particular that "Something" has intention,  purpose 
and motivation. Either we have to assume that this intention is produced 
by a fundamental "spirit" or "soul" that you have assigned to the 
Something, or that the intention is emergent from a complex 
consciousness simulation possibly involving Quantum Mechanics. If 
you assume a spirit or soul you are making a quasi religious assumption. 
Is this what you want? How do we explain spirit or soul? If you are 
assuming a complex consciousness simulation, there is a whole layer that 
needs to be explained which no one has yet fully explained yet.
Usually scientists use objective and impersonal criteria such as "energy 
minimization" to explain how a reaction is driven in one particular 
direction. In chemistry, for example, "Le Chatelier Principle" is used.

George

Hal Ruhl wrote:

>I have touched on this subject before but the following is my current 
>view of "Dark Energy"
>
>In my approach a Something is on a quest for completeness within the 
>Everything.
>
>Based on this, the following points can be made:
>
>1) The number of current incompleteness sites for a given Something 
>would be at least proportional to the surface area of its boundary 
>with the rest of the Everything if not proportional to its volume.
>
>2) Thus the larger [more information content] a Something is [has] 
>the more such sites it has and the larger any given step in the quest can be.
>
>3) This gives an increase in the average information influx as the 
>quest progresses.
>
>4) If the universe described by that Something has a maximum finite 
>information packing density in its "space" then an accelerating 
>increase in the size of that space should be "observed" since both 
>the volume and surface area of a Something inside the Everything 
>increases as the quest progresses.
>
>  Hal Ruhl
>
>
>>
>
>  
>


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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

Bruno
Yes I am particularizing things... But "the end justifies the means". I 
am being positivist, trying to express these rules as a function of an 
observer. In any case, once the specific example is worked out, we can 
fall back on the general case.
Your feedback about "exist" not really being adequate to express truth 
is well noted. Let me change the proposed rules to express truth as a 
function of an axiomatic system A existing as data  either in the 
memory of M  or as a axiomatic substrate for a simulated world 
W.  Let's try the following:


In a world W simulated according to the axiomatic data system A, there 
is a machine M, data p and data q such that
1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. 
(exist=being simulated in W according to A )
2) If M has access to p, then M  has access to the access point to p.
3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if 
M has access to p, it also has access to q.

Now we can make the statements reflexive ( I don't know if this is the 
right word) by setting data p = Machine description M.

In a simulated world W following the axiomatic data system A there is a 
machine M=p and data q such that
1) If M has access to M  then M exists in W. (reflexivity?)
2) If M has access to M, then M  has access to the access point to M. 
(Infinite reflexivity? - description of consciousness?)
3) If M has information describing q as a consequence of M in accordance 
with A, then if M has access to M, it also has access to q. (This is a 
form of Anthropic principle)

I am not sure if this is leading anywhere, but it's fun playing with it. 
Maybe a computer program could be written to express these staqtements.

George

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> George, you can do that indeed, but then you are particularizing 
> things. This can be helpful from a pedagogical point of view, but the 
> advantage of the axiomatic approach (to a knowledge theory) is that 
> once you agree on the axioms and rules, then you agree on the 
> consequences independently of the particular instantiation you think 
> about. Word like "machine", "access", "memory", "world", data, are, 
> fundamentally harder than the simple idea of knowledge the modal S4 
> axioms convey. Using machines, for example, could seem as a 
> computationalist restriction, when the axioms S4 remains completely 
> neutral, etc. Also, acceding a memory is more "opinion" than knowledge 
> because we can have false memory for example. (And then what are the 
> inference rules of your system?).
>
> S4 is a normal modal logic with natural Kripke referentials 
> (transitive, reflexive accessibility relations).
>
> A bit more problematic is your identification of "true" with "exist". 
> This hangs on possible but highly debatable and complex relations 
> between truth and reality. This is interesting per se, but imo a bit 
> out of topics, or premature (in current thread). Perhaps we will have 
> opportunity to debate on this, but I want make sure that what I am 
> explaining now does not depend on those possible relations (between 
> truth and reality).
>
> Bruno
>
> Le 24-nov.-07, à 21:23, George Levy a écrit :
>
> Bruno thank you for this elaborate reply. I would like these three
> statements to make use of cybernetic language, that is to be more
> explicit in terms of the machine or entity to which they refer.
> Would it be correct to rephrase the statements in the active
> tense, using the machine as the subject, replacing proposition p
> by the term data and replacing "true" by "exist"? The statements
> would then be:
>
> In a world W there is a machine M, data p and data q such that
> 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W.
> 2) If M has access to p, then M  has access to the access point to p.
> 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q
> then if M has access to p, it also has access to q.
>
> I assumed that the term "has access" means "in its memory"... but
> it does not have to.
> I also assumed in statements 3 that the multiple uses of M refers
> to the same machine. I guess there may be cases where multiple
> machines can have access to the dame data.
> Same with statement 4
>
> George
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit :
> Hi Bruno,
> I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year
> old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling
> conclusions.
> Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écr

Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

Bruno thank you for this elaborate reply. I would like these three 
statements to make use of cybernetic language, that is to be more 
explicit in terms of the machine or entity to which they refer. Would it 
be correct to rephrase the statements in the active tense, using the 
machine as the subject, replacing proposition p by the term data and 
replacing "true" by "exist"? The statements would then be:

In a world W there is a machine M, data p and data q such that
1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W.
2) If M has access to p, then M  has access to the access point to p.
3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if 
M has access to p, it also has access to q.

I assumed that the term "has access" means "in its memory"... but it 
does not have to.
I also assumed in statements 3 that the multiple uses of M refers to the 
same machine. I guess there may be cases where multiple machines can 
have access to the dame data.
Same with statement 4

George

Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit :
Hi Bruno,
I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) 
which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions.
    Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit :
Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to

> make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me
> can
> really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in
> some way.
> Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a
> knower, and
> in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms
> for
> knowing. That is:
>
> 1) If p is knowable then p is true;
> 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable;
> 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable
> then q is
> knowable
>
> (+ some logical rules).
>
>
>
> Bruno, what or who do you mean by "it" in statements 2) and 3).
>
>
>
>
>
> The same as in "it is raining". I could have written 1. and 2. like
>
> 1) knowable(p) -> p
> 2) knowable(p) -> knowable(knowable(p))
>
> In this way we can avoid using words like "it", or even like "true". 
> "p" is a variable, and is implicitly universally quantified over. 
> "knowable(p) -> p" really means that whatever is the proposition p, if 
> it is knowable then it is true. The false is unknowable (although it 
> could be conceivable, believable, even provable (in inconsistent 
> theory), etc. The "p" in 1. 2. and 3. is really like the "x" in the 
> formula (sin(x))^2 + (cos(x))^2 = 1.
>
> "knowable(p) -> p" really means that we cannot know something false. 
> This is coherent with the natural language use of know, which I 
> illustrate often by remarking that we never say "Alfred knew the earth 
> is flat, but the he realized he was wrong". We say instead "Alfred 
> believed that earth is flat, but then ...". . The axiom 1. is the 
> incorrigibility axiom: we can know only the truth. Of course we can 
> believe we know something until we know better.
> The axiom 2. is added when we want to axiomatize a notion of knowledge 
> from the part of sufficiently introspective subject. It means that if 
> some proposition is knowable, then the knowability of that proposition 
> is itself knowable. It means that when the subject knows some 
> proposition then the subject will know that he knows that proposition. 
> The subject can know that he knows.
>
>
>
>
>
> In addition, what do you mean by "is knowable", "is true" and
> "entails"?
>
>
>
>
> All the point in axiomatizing some notion, consists in giving a way to 
> reason about that notion without ever defining it. We just try to 
> agree on some principles, like 1.,2., 3., and then derives things from 
> those principles. Nuance can be added by adding new axioms if necessary.
> Of course axioms like above are not enough, we have to use deduction 
> rules. In case of the S4 theory, which I will rewrite with modal 
> notation (hoping you recognize it). I write Bp for B(p) to avoid 
> heaviness in the notation, likewize, I write BBp for B(B(p)).
>
> 1) Bp -> p (incorrigibility)
> 2) Bp -> BBp (introspective knowledge)
> 3) B(p->q) -> (Bp -> Bq) (weak omniscience, = knowability of the 
> consequences of knowable propositions).
>
> Now with such axioms you can derive no theorems (except the axiom 
> themselves). So you 

Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

One more question: can or should p be the observer?
George
George Levy wrote:

> Hi Bruno,
>
> I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found 
> very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions.
>
> Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit :
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to
>
> make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can
> really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some
> way.
> Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower,
> and
> in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for
> knowing. That is:
>
> 1) If p is knowable then p is true;
> 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable;
> 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then
> q is
> knowable
>
> (+ some logical rules).
>
> Bruno, what or who do you mean by "it" in statements 2) and 3). In 
> addition, what do you mean by "is knowable", "is true" and "entails"? 
> Are "is knowable", "is true" and "entails" absolute or do they have 
> meaning only with respect to a particular observer? Can these terms be 
> relative to an observer? If they can, how would you rephrase these 
> statements?
>
> George
>
>
>
>
> >


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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

Hi Bruno,

I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very 
intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions.

Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit :

Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to

make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can
really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way.
Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and
in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for
knowing. That is:

1) If p is knowable then p is true;
2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable;
3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is
knowable

(+ some logical rules).

Bruno, what or who do you mean by "it" in statements 2) and 3). In 
addition, what do you mean by "is knowable", "is true" and "entails"? 
Are "is knowable", "is true" and "entails" absolute or do they have 
meaning only with respect to a particular observer? Can these terms be 
relative to an observer? If they can, how would you rephrase these 
statements?

George




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Theory of Everything based on E8 by Garrett Lisi

[George Levy]

A theory of everyting is sweeping the Physics community.


The theory by Garrett Lisi is explained in this Wiki entry. 



A simulation of E8 can be found a the New Scientist. 



The Wiki entry  on E8 
is also interesting.


George

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Re: OM measure and universe size

[George Levy]

Sorry the nice equation formats did not make it past the server. Anyone 
interested in the equations can find them at the associated wiki links.

George

Russell Standish wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 12:20:35PM -0700, George Levy wrote:
>  
>
>>Russel,
>>
>>We are trying to related the expansion of the universe to decreasing 
>>measure. You have presented the interesting equation:
>>
>>H = C + S
>>
>>Let's try to assign some numbers.
>>1) Recently an article 
>><http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12853-black-holes-may-harbour-their-own-universes.html>
>> 
>>appeared in New Scientist stating that we may be living "inside" a black 
>>hole, with the event horizon being located at the limit of what we can 
>>observe ie the radius of the current observable universe.
>>2) Stephen Hawking 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics> showed that the 
>>entropy of a black hole is proportional to its surface area.
>>
>>S_{BH} = \frac{kA}{4l_{\mathrm{P}}^2}
>>
>>where where k is Boltzmann's constant 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann%27s_constant>, and 
>>l_{\mathrm{P}}=\sqrt{G\hbar / c^3} is the Planck length 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length>.
>>
>>Thus we can say that a change in the Universe's radius corresponds to a 
>>change in entropy dS. Therefore, dS/dt is proportional to dA/dt and to 
>>8PR(dR/dt)  R being the radius of the Universe and P = Pi. Let's assume 
>>that dR/dt = c
>>Therefore
>>
>>dS/dt = (k/4 L^2) 8PRc = 2kPRc/ L^2
>>
>>Since Hubble constant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law> is 
>>71 ± 4 (km <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometer>/s 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second>)/Mpc 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaparsec>
>>
>>which gives a size of the Universe 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe> from the Earth to the 
>>edge of the visible universe. Thus R = 46.5 billion light-years in any 
>>direction; this is the comoving radius 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radius> of the visible universe. (Not the 
>>same as the age of the Universe because of Relativity considerations)
>>
>>Now I have trouble relating these facts to your equation H = C + S or 
>>maybe to the differential version dH = dC + dS. What do you  think? Can 
>>we push this further?
>>
>>George
>>
>>
>>
>
>I think that the formula you have above for S_{BH} is the value that
>should be taken for the H above. It is the maximum value that entropy
>can take for a volume the size of the universe. 
>
>The internal observed entropy S, will of course, be much lower. I
>don't have a formula for it off-hand, but it probably involves the
>microwave background temperature.
>
>Cheers
>
>
>  
>


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Re: OM measure and universe size

[George Levy]

Russel,

We are trying to related the expansion of the universe to decreasing
measure. You have presented the interesting equation:

H = C + S

Let's try to assign some numbers. 
1) Recently an article
appeared in New Scientist stating that we may be living "inside" a
black hole, with the event horizon being located at the limit of what
we can observe ie the radius of the current observable universe.
2) Stephen
Hawking showed that the entropy of a black hole is proportional to
its surface area. 


  

where where k is Boltzmann's constant, and  is the Planck
length.

Thus we can say that a change in the Universe's radius corresponds to a
change in entropy dS. Therefore, dS/dt is proportional to dA/dt and to
8PR(dR/dt)  R being the radius of the Universe and P = Pi. Let's assume
that dR/dt = c 
Therefore 

dS/dt = (k/4 L^2) 8PRc = 2kPRc/ L^2 

Since Hubble
constant is 71 ± 4 (km/s)/Mpc

which gives a size of the
Universe from the Earth to the edge of the visible universe. Thus R
= 46.5 billion light-years in any direction; this is the
comoving radius
of the visible universe. (Not the same as the age of the Universe
because of Relativity considerations)

Now I have trouble relating these facts to your equation H = C + S or
maybe to the differential version dH = dC + dS. What do you  think? Can
we push this further?

George


Russell Standish wrote:

  On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 05:11:01PM -0700, George Levy wrote:
  
  
Could we relate the expansion of  the universe to the decrease in 
measure of a given observer? High measure corresponds to a small 
universe and conversely, low measure to a large one.  For the observer 
the decrease in his measure would be caused by all the possible mode of 
decay of all the nuclear particles necessary for his consciousness. 
Corresponding to this decrease, the radius of the observable universe 
increases to make the universe less likely.

This would provide an experimental way to measure absolute measure.

I am not a proponent of ASSA, rather I believe in RSSA and in a 
cosmological principle for measure: that measure is independent of when 
or where the observer makes an observation. However, I thought that 
tying cosmic expansion to measure may be an interesting avenue of inquiry.

George Levy


  
  
There is a relationship, though perhaps not quite what you think. The
measure of an OM will be 2^{-C_O}, where C_O is the amount of
information about the universe you know at that point in time
(measured in bits). The physical complexity C of the universe at a point
in time is in some sense the limit of all that is possible to know
about the universe, ie C_O <= C.

C is related to the size of the universe by the equation H = C + S,
where S is the entropy of the universe (measured in bits), and H is
the maximum possible entropy that would pertain if the universe were
in equilibrium. H is a monotonically increasing function of the size
of the universe - something like propertional to the volume (or
similar - I forget the details). S is also an increasing function (due
to the second law), but doesn't increase as fast as H. Consequently C
increases as a function of universe age, and so C_O can be larger now
than earlier in the universe, implying smaller OM measures.

However, it remains to be seen whether the anthropic reasons for
experiencing a universe 10^9 years and of large complexity we
currently see is necessary...

  

Re: What are the consequences of UD+ASSA?

[George Levy]

Could we relate the expansion of  the universe to the decrease in 
measure of a given observer? High measure corresponds to a small 
universe and conversely, low measure to a large one.  For the observer 
the decrease in his measure would be caused by all the possible mode of 
decay of all the nuclear particles necessary for his consciousness. 
Corresponding to this decrease, the radius of the observable universe 
increases to make the universe less likely.

This would provide an experimental way to measure absolute measure.

I am not a proponent of ASSA, rather I believe in RSSA and in a 
cosmological principle for measure: that measure is independent of when 
or where the observer makes an observation. However, I thought that 
tying cosmic expansion to measure may be an interesting avenue of inquiry.

George Levy


Rolf Nelson wrote:

>(Warning: This post assumes an familiarity with UD+ASSA and with the
>cosmological Measure Problem.)
>
>Observational Consequences:
>
>1. Provides a possible explanation for the "Measure Problem" of why we
>shouldn't be "extremely surprised" to find we live in a lawful
>universe, rather than an extremely chaotic universe, or a homogeneous
>cloud of gas.
>
>2. May help solve the Doomsday Argument in a finite universe, since
>you probably have at least a little more "measure" than a typical
>specific individual in the middle of a Galactic Empire, since you are
>"easier to find" with a small search algorithm than someone surrounded
>by enormous numbers of people.
>
>3. For similar reasons, may help solve a variant of the Doomsday
>Argument where the universe is infinite. This variant DA asks, "if
>there's currently a Galactic Empire 1 Hubble Volumes away with an
>immensely large number of people, why wasn't I born there instead of
>here?"
>
>4. May help solve the Simulation Argument, again because a search
>algorithm to find a particular simulation among all the adjacent
>computations in a Galactic Empire is longer (and therefore, by UD
>+ASSA, has less measure) than a search algorithm to find you.
>
>5. In basic UD+ASSA (on a typical Turing Machine), there is a probably
>a strict linear ordering corresponding to when the events at each
>point in spacetime were calculated; I would argue that we should
>expect to see evidence of this in our observations if basic UD+ASSA is
>true. However, we do not see any total ordering in the physical
>Universe; quite the reverse: we see a homogeneous, isotropic Universe.
>This is evidence (but not proof) that either UD+ASSA is completely
>wrong, or that if UD+ASSA is true, then it's run on something other
>than a typical linear Turing Machine. (However, if you still want use
>a different machine to solve the "Measure Problem", then feel free,
>but you first need to show that your non-Turing-machine variant still
>solves the "Measure Problem.")
>
>
>Decision Theory Consequences (Including Moral Consequences):
>
>Every decision algorithm that I've ever seen is prey to paradoxes
>where the decision theory either crashes (fails to produce a
>decision), or requires an agent to do things that are bizarre, self-
>destructive, and evil. (If you like, substitute 'counter-intuitive'
>for 'bizarre, self-destructive, and evil.') For example: UD+ASSA,
>"Accepting the Simulation Argument", Utilitarianism without
>discounting, and Utilitarianism with time and space discounting all
>have places where they seem to fail.
>
>UD+ASSA, like the Simulation Argument, has the following additional
>problem: while some forms of Utilitarianism may only fail in
>hypothetical future situations (by which point maybe we'll have come
>up with a better theory), UD+ASSA seems to fail *right here and now*.
>That is, UD+ASSA, like the Simulation Argument, seems to call on you
>to do bizarre, self-destructive, and evil things today. An example
>that Yudowsky gave: you might spend resources on constructing a unique
>arrow pointing at yourself, in order to increase your measure by
>making it easier for a search algorithm to find you.
>
>Of course, I could solve the problem by deciding that I'd rather be
>self-destructive and evil than be inconsistent; then I could consider
>adopting UD+ASSA as a philosophy. But I think I'll pass on that
>option. :-)
>
>So, more work would have to be done the morality of UD+ASSA before any
>variant of UD+ASSA can becomes a realistically palatable part of a
>moral philosophy.
>
>-Rolf
>
>
>>
>
>
>  
>


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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Sorry Bruno, no disrespect, I meant to type "Hi Bruno".
George

George Levy wrote:

> Ho Bruno
>
> Sorry, I have been unclear with myself and with you. I have been 
> lumping together the assumption of an "objective physical world" and 
> an "objective platonic world". So you are right, I do reject the 
> objective physical world, but why stop there? Is there a need for an 
> objective platonic world? Would it be possible to go one more step - 
> the last step hopefully - and show that a the world that we perceive 
> is solely tied to our own consciousness? So I am more extreme than you 
> thought. I believe that the only necessary assumption is the 
> subjective world. Just like Descartes said: Cogito...
>
> I think that the world and consciousness co-emerge together, and the 
> rules governing one are tied to the rules governing the other. In a 
> sense Church's thesis is tied to the Anthropic principle.  Subjective 
> reality also ties in nicely with relativity and with the relative 
> formulation of QT.
>
> This being said, I am not denying physical reality or objective 
> reality. However these may be derivable from purely subjective 
> reality. Our experience of a common physical reality and a common 
> objective reality require the existence of common physical frame of 
> reference and a common platonic frame of reference respectively.  A 
> common platonic frame of reference implies that there are other 
> platonic frames of references.This is unthinkable... literally.  
> Maybe I have painted myself into a corner Yet maybe not... No one 
> in this Universe can say...
>
> George
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>Hi George,
>>
>>I think that we agree on the main line. Note that I never have 
>>pretended that the conjunction of comp and weak materialism (the 
>>doctrine which asserts the existence of primary matter) gives a 
>>contradiction. What the filmed-graph and/or Maudlin shows is that comp 
>>makes materialism
>>empty of any explicative power, so that your "ether" image is quite 
>>appropriate. Primary matter makes, through comp, the observation of 
>>matter (physics) and of course qualia, devoied of any explanation power 
>>even about just the apparent presence of physical laws.
>>I do think nevertheless that you could be a little quick when asserting 
>>that the mind-body problem is solved at the outset when we abandon the 
>>postulate of an objective (I guess you mean physical) world. I hope you 
>>believe in some objective world, being it number theoretical or 
>>computer science theoretical, etc.
>>You point "3)" (see below) is quite relevant sure,
>>
>>Bruno
>>
>>
>>Le 08-oct.-07, à 05:10, George Levy a écrit :
>>
>>  
>>
>>>Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I think that Maudlin refers to the conjunction of the comp hyp and
>>>>supervenience, where consciousness is supposed to be linked (most of
>>>>the time in a sort of "real-time" way) to the *computational activity*
>>>>of the brain, and not to the history of any of the state occurring in
>>>>that computation.
>>>>
>>>>If you decide to attach consciousness to the whole physical history,
>>>>then you can perhaps keep comp by making the substitution level very
>>>>low, but once the level is chosen, I am not sure how you will make it
>>>>possible for the machine to distinguish a purely arithmetical version
>>>>of that history (in the arithmetical "plenitude" (your wording)) from
>>>>a "genuinely physical one" (and what would that means?). Hmmm...
>>>>perhaps I am quick here ...
>>>>
>>>>May be I also miss your point. This is vastly more complex than the
>>>>seven first steps of UDA, sure. I have to think how to make this
>>>>transparently clear or ... false.
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>As you know I believe that the physical world can be derived from
>>>consciousness operating on a platonic "arithmetic plenitude."
>>>Consequently, tokens describing objective instances in a physical world
>>>cease to be fundamental. Instead, platonic types become fundamentals. 
>>>In
>>>the platonic world each type exists only once. Hence the whole concept
>>>of indexicals looses its functionality. Uniqueness of types leads
>>>naturally to the "merging universes:" If two observers together with 
>>>the
>>>world that they observe (within a light cone for exa

Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Ho Bruno

Sorry, I have been unclear with myself and with you. I have been lumping 
together the assumption of an "objective physical world" and an 
"objective platonic world". So you are right, I do reject the objective 
physical world, but why stop there? Is there a need for an objective 
platonic world? Would it be possible to go one more step - the last step 
hopefully - and show that a the world that we perceive is solely tied to 
our own consciousness? So I am more extreme than you thought. I believe 
that the only necessary assumption is the subjective world. Just like 
Descartes said: Cogito...

I think that the world and consciousness co-emerge together, and the 
rules governing one are tied to the rules governing the other. In a 
sense Church's thesis is tied to the Anthropic principle.  Subjective 
reality also ties in nicely with relativity and with the relative 
formulation of QT.

This being said, I am not denying physical reality or objective reality. 
However these may be derivable from purely subjective reality. Our 
experience of a common physical reality and a common objective reality 
require the existence of common physical frame of reference and a common 
platonic frame of reference respectively.  A common platonic frame of 
reference implies that there are other platonic frames of 
references.This is unthinkable... literally.  Maybe I have painted 
myself into a corner Yet maybe not... No one in this Universe can say...

George


Bruno Marchal wrote:

>Hi George,
>
>I think that we agree on the main line. Note that I never have 
>pretended that the conjunction of comp and weak materialism (the 
>doctrine which asserts the existence of primary matter) gives a 
>contradiction. What the filmed-graph and/or Maudlin shows is that comp 
>makes materialism
>empty of any explicative power, so that your "ether" image is quite 
>appropriate. Primary matter makes, through comp, the observation of 
>matter (physics) and of course qualia, devoied of any explanation power 
>even about just the apparent presence of physical laws.
>I do think nevertheless that you could be a little quick when asserting 
>that the mind-body problem is solved at the outset when we abandon the 
>postulate of an objective (I guess you mean physical) world. I hope you 
>believe in some objective world, being it number theoretical or 
>computer science theoretical, etc.
>You point "3)" (see below) is quite relevant sure,
>
>Bruno
>
>
>Le 08-oct.-07, à 05:10, George Levy a écrit :
>
>  
>
>>Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I think that Maudlin refers to the conjunction of the comp hyp and
>>>supervenience, where consciousness is supposed to be linked (most of
>>>the time in a sort of "real-time" way) to the *computational activity*
>>>of the brain, and not to the history of any of the state occurring in
>>>that computation.
>>>
>>>If you decide to attach consciousness to the whole physical history,
>>>then you can perhaps keep comp by making the substitution level very
>>>low, but once the level is chosen, I am not sure how you will make it
>>>possible for the machine to distinguish a purely arithmetical version
>>>of that history (in the arithmetical "plenitude" (your wording)) from
>>>a "genuinely physical one" (and what would that means?). Hmmm...
>>>perhaps I am quick here ...
>>>
>>>May be I also miss your point. This is vastly more complex than the
>>>seven first steps of UDA, sure. I have to think how to make this
>>>transparently clear or ... false.
>>>  
>>>
>>As you know I believe that the physical world can be derived from
>>consciousness operating on a platonic "arithmetic plenitude."
>>Consequently, tokens describing objective instances in a physical world
>>cease to be fundamental. Instead, platonic types become fundamentals. 
>>In
>>the platonic world each type exists only once. Hence the whole concept
>>of indexicals looses its functionality. Uniqueness of types leads
>>naturally to the "merging universes:" If two observers together with 
>>the
>>world that they observe (within a light cone for example) are identical
>>then these two observers are indistinguishable from themselves and are
>>actually one and the same.
>>
>>I have argued (off list) about my platonic outlook versus the more
>>established (objective reality) Aristotelian viewpoint and I was told
>>that I am attempting to undo more than 2000 years of philosophy going
>>back to Plato. Dealing with types only presents formidable logical
>>difficulties:  How can type

Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> I think that Maudlin refers to the conjunction of the comp hyp and 
> supervenience, where consciousness is supposed to be linked (most of 
> the time in a sort of "real-time" way) to the *computational activity* 
> of the brain, and not to the history of any of the state occurring in 
> that computation.
>
> If you decide to attach consciousness to the whole physical history, 
> then you can perhaps keep comp by making the substitution level very 
> low, but once the level is chosen, I am not sure how you will make it 
> possible for the machine to distinguish a purely arithmetical version 
> of that history (in the arithmetical "plenitude" (your wording)) from 
> a "genuinely physical one" (and what would that means?). Hmmm... 
> perhaps I am quick here ...
>
> May be I also miss your point. This is vastly more complex than the 
> seven first steps of UDA, sure. I have to think how to make this 
> transparently clear or ... false.

As you know I believe that the physical world can be derived from 
consciousness operating on a platonic "arithmetic plenitude." 
Consequently, tokens describing objective instances in a physical world 
cease to be fundamental. Instead, platonic types become fundamentals. In 
the platonic world each type exists only once. Hence the whole concept 
of indexicals looses its functionality. Uniqueness of types leads 
naturally to the "merging universes:" If two observers together with the 
world that they observe (within a light cone for example) are identical  
then these two observers are indistinguishable from themselves and are 
actually one and the same.

I have argued (off list) about my platonic outlook versus the more 
established (objective reality) Aristotelian viewpoint and I was told 
that I am attempting to undo more than 2000 years of philosophy going 
back to Plato. Dealing with types only presents formidable logical 
difficulties:  How can types exist without tokens?  I find extremely 
difficult to "prove" that the absence of an objective reality at the 
fundamental level. Similarly, about a century ago people were asking how 
can light travel without Ether. How can one "prove" that Ether does not 
exist? Of course one can't but one can show that Ether is not necessary 
to explain wave propagation. Similarly, I think that the best one can 
achieve is to show that the objective world is not necessary for 
consciousness to exist and to perceive or observe a world.

However, some points can be made: getting rid of the objective world 
postulate has the following advantages:

1) The resulting theory (or model) is simpler and more universal (Occam 
Razor)
2) The mind-body problem is eliminated at the outset.
3) Physics has been evolving toward greater and greater emphasis on the 
observer. So why not go all the way and see what happens?

I don't find Maudlin argument convincing. Recording the output of a 
computer and replaying the recording spreads out the processing in time 
and can be used to link various processes across time but does not prove 
that the consciousness is independent of a physical substrate. 
Rearranging a tape interferes with the thought experiment and should not 
be allowed if we are going to play fair. By the way, I find the phrases 
"supervenience" and "physical supervenience" confusing. At first glance 
I am not sure if physical supervenience means the physical world 
supervening on the mental world or vice versa. I would prefer to use the 
active tense and say  "the physical world supervening on the mental 
world," or even use the expression "the physical world acting as a 
substrate for consciousness".

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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Oops: replace Newton's demon by Maxwell's demon.
George

George Levy wrote:

> Hi Bruno,
> Yes I am still on the list, barely trying to keep up, but I have been 
> very busy. Actually the ball was in my court and I was supposed to 
> answer to your last post to me about a year ago!!!. Generally I agree 
> with you on many things but here I am just playing the devils' 
> advocate. The Maudlin experiment reminds me of an attempt to prove the 
> falsity of the second law of thermodynamics using Newton's demon. As 
> you probably know, this attempt fails because the thermodynamics 
> effect on the demon is neglected when in fact it should not be The 
> Newton Demon experiment is not thermodynamically closed. If you 
> include the demon in a closed system, then the second law is correct.
> Similarly, Maudlin's experiment is not informationally closed because 
> Maudlin has interjected himself into his own experiment! The 
> "accidentally" correctly operating machines need to have their tape 
> rearranged to work correctly and Maudlin is the agent doing the 
> rearranging.
>
> So essentially Maudlin's argument is not valid as an attack on 
> physical supervenience. As you know, I am at the extreme end of the 
> spectrum with regards the physical world supervening on consciousness. 
> (Mind over  matter instead of matter over mind), so I would very much 
> like to see an argument that could prove it, but in my opinion 
> Maudlin's does not cut it.  More comments below.
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>Hi George,
>>
>>Are you still there on the list?
>>I am really sorry to (re)discover your post just now, with a label 
>>saying that I have to answer it, but apparently I didn't. So here is 
>>the answer, with a delay of about one year :(
>>
>>
>>
>>Le 08-oct.-06, à 08:00, George Levy wrote :
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>Finally I read your filmed graph argument which I have stored in my
>>>computer. (The original at the Iridia web site
>>>http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/Volume3CC/3%20%202%20.pdf
>>>is not accessible anymore. I am not sure why.)
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>Apparently it works now. You have to scroll on the pdf document to see 
>>the text.
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>In page TROIS -61 you describe an experience of consciousness which is
>>>comprised partially of a later physical process and partially of the
>>>recording of an earlier physical process.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>Right.
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>It is possible to resolve the paradox simply by saying that
>>>consciousness involves two partial processes ...
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Why? With comp, consciousness can be associated with the active boolean 
>>graph, the one which will be recorded. No need of the second one.
>>
>>  
>>
> Yes, but in the eyes of a materialist but I have restored  the 
> possibility that consciousness can supervene on the physical. I have 
> exposed Maudlin's trickery. I agree that consciousness can be 
> associated with a boolean graph and that there is no need for physical 
> substrate. However, Maudlin does not prove this case because he got 
> involved in his own experiment.
>
>>>... each occupying two
>>>different time intervals, the time intervals being connected by a
>>>recording, such that the earlier partial process is combined with the
>>>later partial process, the recording acting as a connection device.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>But is there any sense in which consciousness can supervene on the 
>>later partial process? All the trouble is there, because the later 
>>process has the same physical process-features than the active brain, 
>>although by construction there is no sense to attribute it any 
>>computational process (like a movie).
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>I am not saying that consciousness supervene on the physical substrate.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>ok.
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>All I am saying is that the example does not prove that consciousness
>>>does not supervene the physical.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>Yes, you are right from a logical point of view, but only by assuming 
>>some form of non-computationalism.
>>With comp + physical supervenience, you have to attach a consciousness 
>>to the active boolean graph, and then, by physical supervenience, to 
>>the later process, whic

Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Hi Bruno,
Yes I am still on the list, barely trying to keep up, but I have been 
very busy. Actually the ball was in my court and I was supposed to 
answer to your last post to me about a year ago!!!. Generally I agree 
with you on many things but here I am just playing the devils' advocate. 
The Maudlin experiment reminds me of an attempt to prove the falsity of 
the second law of thermodynamics using Newton's demon. As you probably 
know, this attempt fails because the thermodynamics effect on the demon 
is neglected when in fact it should not be The Newton Demon experiment 
is not thermodynamically closed. If you include the demon in a closed 
system, then the second law is correct.
Similarly, Maudlin's experiment is not informationally closed because 
Maudlin has interjected himself into his own experiment! The 
"accidentally" correctly operating machines need to have their tape 
rearranged to work correctly and Maudlin is the agent doing the rearranging.

So essentially Maudlin's argument is not valid as an attack on physical 
supervenience. As you know, I am at the extreme end of the spectrum with 
regards the physical world supervening on consciousness. (Mind over  
matter instead of matter over mind), so I would very much like to see an 
argument that could prove it, but in my opinion Maudlin's does not cut 
it.  More comments below.

Bruno Marchal wrote:

>Hi George,
>
>Are you still there on the list?
>I am really sorry to (re)discover your post just now, with a label 
>saying that I have to answer it, but apparently I didn't. So here is 
>the answer, with a delay of about one year :(
>
>
>
>Le 08-oct.-06, à 08:00, George Levy wrote :
>
>
>  
>
>>Finally I read your filmed graph argument which I have stored in my
>>computer. (The original at the Iridia web site
>>http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/Volume3CC/3%20%202%20.pdf
>>is not accessible anymore. I am not sure why.)
>>
>>
>
>
>Apparently it works now. You have to scroll on the pdf document to see 
>the text.
>
>
>
>  
>
>>In page TROIS -61 you describe an experience of consciousness which is
>>comprised partially of a later physical process and partially of the
>>recording of an earlier physical process.
>>
>>
>
>
>Right.
>
>
>
>  
>
>>It is possible to resolve the paradox simply by saying that
>>consciousness involves two partial processes ...
>>
>>
>
>Why? With comp, consciousness can be associated with the active boolean 
>graph, the one which will be recorded. No need of the second one.
>
>  
>
Yes, but in the eyes of a materialist but I have restored  the 
possibility that consciousness can supervene on the physical. I have 
exposed Maudlin's trickery. I agree that consciousness can be associated 
with a boolean graph and that there is no need for physical substrate. 
However, Maudlin does not prove this case because he got involved in his 
own experiment.

>>... each occupying two
>>different time intervals, the time intervals being connected by a
>>recording, such that the earlier partial process is combined with the
>>later partial process, the recording acting as a connection device.
>>
>>
>
>
>But is there any sense in which consciousness can supervene on the 
>later partial process? All the trouble is there, because the later 
>process has the same physical process-features than the active brain, 
>although by construction there is no sense to attribute it any 
>computational process (like a movie).
>
>
>
>  
>
>>I am not saying that consciousness supervene on the physical substrate.
>>
>>
>
>
>ok.
>
>
>
>  
>
>>All I am saying is that the example does not prove that consciousness
>>does not supervene the physical.
>>
>>
>
>
>Yes, you are right from a logical point of view, but only by assuming 
>some form of non-computationalism.
>With comp + physical supervenience, you have to attach a consciousness 
>to the active boolean graph, and then, by physical supervenience, to 
>the later process, which do no more compute. (And then Maudlin shows 
>that you can change the second process so that it computes again, but 
>without any physical activity of the kind relevant to say that you 
>implement a computation. So, physical supervenience is made wrong.
>
>  
>

Yes but Maudlin cheated by interjecting himself into his experiment. So 
this argument does not count.

>>The example is just an instance of
>>consciousness operating across two different time intervals by mean of 
>>a
>>physical substrate and a physical means (recording) of connecting these
>>two time 

Re: Justifying the Theory of Everything

[George Levy]

Hi Jason

I have not contributed to the list for a while but your question 
interests me.
I do not accept as primitive an independent mathematicalism/arithmetical 
realism. I think that math and logic are co-emergent with the 
consciousness of the observer. In addition physics is also co-emergent 
with the observer. So in a sense the "I" or first person is 
primitive-emergent. "I", math and physics are all anthropically linked.

The information of the plenitude being zero is the simplest case that 
requires the least explanation. Any other information content would have 
to be justified, and that would force us an endless causal chain. Now 
let me qualify that the "perceived" information of the plenitude is 
definitely not zero because it is contingent on the observer. Here the 
causal chain can begin at the observer.

The simplest theory of everyting is that everything exists. But this is 
hardly satisfying. A useful theory of everything should bring in the 
observer as a boundary condition. The theory, more precisely, which 
physical model is "true," may be indeterminate. This indeterminacy would 
be analogous to quantum indeterminacy applied to the cosmic scale. This 
would correspond to the "I" being equally "at home" in multiple 
different worlds or equivalently that multiple worlds would be in a 
superposition with respect to the "I."

George

Jason wrote:

>I have seen two main justifications on this list for the everything
>ensemble, the first comes from information theory which says the
>information content of everything is zero (or close to zero).  The
>other is mathematicalism/arithmatical realism which suggests
>mathematical truth exists independandly of everything else and is the
>basis for everything.
>
>My question to the everything list is: which explaination do you
>prefer and why?  Are these two accounts compatible, incompatible, or
>complimentary?  Additionally, if you subscribe to or know of other
>justifications I would be interesting in hearing it.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jason
>
>
>>
>
>
>  
>


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Re: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

[George Levy]

> <>Brent meeker writes:

>It could be argued that not even God could create a world in which there are 
>no accidents, 
>conflicts of interest, disappointments, and so on, at least not without 
>severely limiting 
>his creatures' freedom. However, it would have been possible for God to limit 
>the capacity 
>for suffering, favouring pleasure rather than avoidance of pain as a 
>motivating factor. 
>
A sado-masochistic world would do the trick, wouldn't it?

George :-)


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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 09-oct.-06, à 21:54, George Levy a écrit :
  
  
   To observe a split consciousness, you need an observer
who
is also split, 
  
  
?
  

This is simple. The time/space/substrate/level of the observer must
match the time/space/substrate/level of what he observes.  The Leibniz
analogy is good. In your example if one observes just the recording
without observing the earlier creation of the recording and the later
utilization of the recording, then one may conclude rightfully that the
recording is not conscious.


  in sync with the split consciousness, across time, space,
substrate and level (a la Zelazny - Science Fiction writer). In your
example, for an observer to see consciousness in the machine, he must
be willing to exist at the earlier interval, skip over the time delay
carrying the recording and resume his existence at the later interval.
If he observes only a part of the whole thing, say the recording, he
may conclude that the machine is not conscious.

  
  
This is unclear for me. Unless you are just saying like Leibniz that
you will not "see" consciousness in a brain by examining it under a
microscope.
  
  
Note also that I could attribute consciousness to a recording, but
this makes sense only if the recording is precise enough so that I
could add the "Klaras" or anything which would make it possible to
continue some conversation with the system. And then I do not
attribute consciousness to the physical appearance of the system, but
to some people which manifests him/it/herself through it.
  

Adding Klaras complicate the problem but the result is the same. Klaras
must be programmed. Programming is like recording, a means for
inserting oneself at programming time for later playback at execution
time. I have already shown that Maudlin was cheating by rearranging his
tape, in effect programming the tape. So I agree with you if you agree
that programming the tape sequence is just a means for connecting
different pieces of a conscious processes where each piece operates at
different times.

   In addition, if we are going to split consciousness
maximally in this fashion, the concept of observer becomes important,
something you do not include in your example.
  
Could you elaborate. I don't understand. As a consequence of the
reasoning the observer (like the knower, the feeler) will all be very
important (and indeed will correspond to the hypostases (n-person pov)
in the AUDA). But in the reasoning, well either we are valid going
from one step to the next or not, and I don't see the relevance of
your point here. I guess I miss something.
  
  

I do not understand the connection with the hypostases in the AUDA.
However, it is true that the conscious machine is its own observer, no
matter how split its operation is. (i.e., time sharing, at different
levels... etc). However, the examples will be more striking if a
separate observer is introduced. Of course the separate observer will
have to track the time/space/substrate/level of the machine to observe
the machine to be conscious (possibly with a Turing test). Forgive me
for insisting on a separate observer, but I think that a relativity
approach could bear fruits.

You could even get rid of the recording and replace it with random
inputs (happy rays in your paper). 

As you can see with random inputs, the machine is not conscious to an
observer anchored in the physical. The machine just appears to follow a
random series of states.

But if the machine can be observed to be conscious if it is observed
precisely at those times when the random inputs match the
counterfactual recording. So the observer needs to "open his eyes"
precisely only at those times. So the observer needs to be linked in
some ways to the machine being conscious. 

If the observer is the (self reflecting) machine itself there is no
problem, the observer will automatically be conscious at those times.

If the observer is not the machine, we need to invoke a mechanism that
will force him to be conscious at those times. It will have to be
almost identical to the machine and will have to accept the same random
data So in a sense the observer will have to be a parallel machine with
some possible variations as long as these variations are not large
enough to make the observer and the machine exist on different
time/space/substrate/level. 

Therefore from the point of view of the second machine, the first
machine appears conscious. Note that for the purpose of the argument WE
don't have to assume initially that the second machine IS conscious,
only that it can detect if the first machine is conscious. Now once we
establish that the first machine is conscious we can infer that the
second machine is also conscious simply because it is identical. 

The example is of course a representation of our own (many)world. 


  
  (**) I am open to thoroughly discuss this, for
example
in november. 
Right now I

Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

David Nyman wrote:

  

On Oct 9, 8:54 pm, George Levy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

  
  
To observe a split consciousness, you need an observer who is also
split, in sync with the split consciousness, across time, space,
substrate and level (a la Zelazny - Science Fiction writer). In your
example, for an observer to see consciousness in the machine, he must be
willing to exist at the earlier interval, skip over the time delay
carrying the recording and resume his existence at the later interval.
If he observes only a part of the whole thing, say the recording, he may
conclude that the machine is not conscious.

  
  
Careful, George. Remember the observer *is* the machine. Consequently
he's never in a position to 'conclude that the machine is not
conscious', because in that case, it is precisely *he* that is not
conscious. 

There is no question that the machine needs to be conscious - this is
the whole point of the experiment - The observer *may* be the machine,
but does not have to be (we could conduct a Turing test for example).
In any case I think there may be great benefit in decoupling the
observer function explicitely. The presence of such an observer and its
location with respect the machine will force the issue on the first and
third person perspective.

In fact the consciousness of the observer is not really at issue. What
I think is at issue is the consciousness of the machine as seen from
different perspectives. It may even be sufficient to make the observer
some kind of testing program running on a computer. 


  But you're right IMO that the the concatenation of these
observer moments represents the observer's conscious 'existence in
time' . The 1-person narrative of this concatenation is what comprises
IMO, the A-series (i.e. the conscious discriminability of observer
moments arising from the consistent 1-person compresence of global and
local aspects of the observer), whereas any 3-person account of this is
necessarily stripped back to a B-series that reduces, ultimately, to
Planck-length 'snapshots' devoid of temporality.

David

  
  


  



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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 08-oct.-06, à 08:00, George Levy a écrit :

  
  
Bruno,

Finally I read your filmed graph argument which I have stored in my
computer. (The original at the Iridia web site
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/Volume3CC/3%20%202%20.pdf
is not accessible anymore. I am not sure why.)

  
  
Thanks for telling. I know people a reconfiguring the main
server at IRIDIA, I hope it is only that.



  
  
In page TROIS -61 you describe an experience of consciousness which is
comprised partially of a later physical process and partially of the
recording of an earlier physical process.

It is possible to resolve the paradox simply by saying that
consciousness involves two partial processes each occupying two
different time intervals, the time intervals being connected by a
recording, such that the earlier partial process is combined with the
later partial process, the recording acting as a connection device.

  
  
I mainly agree. But assuming comp it seems to me this is just a 
question of "acceptable" implementation of consciousness.
Once implemented in any "correct" ways, the reasoning shows, or is 
supposed to show, that the inner first person experience cannot be 
attributed to the physical activity. The "physical" keep an important 
role by giving the frame of the possible relative manifestations of the 
consciousness. But already at this stage, consciousness can no more 
been attached to it. On the contrary, keeping the comp hyp, the 
physical must emerge from the coherence of "enough" possible relative 
manifestations.



  
  
I am not saying that consciousness supervene on the physical substrate.
All I am saying is that the example does not prove that consciousness
does not supervene the physical. The example is just an instance of
consciousness operating across two different time intervals by mean of 
a
physical substrate and a physical means (recording) of connecting these
two time intervals.

  
  
In this case, would you take this as an argument for the necessity of 
the physical, you would change the notion of physical supervenience a 
lot. You would be attaching consciousness to some history of physical 
activity. 

I agree with all this. I would be changing the notion of physical
supervenience such that the physical substrate can be split into time
intervals connected by recordings. . But why stop here. We could create
an example in which the substrate is maximally split, across time,
space, substrate and level.

On the other hand, widening the domain of supervenience (time, space,
substrate and level) does not seem to eliminate the need for the
physical. Here I am arguing against myself... We may solve the problem
if we make supervenience recursive, i.e.. software supervening on
itself without needing a physical substrate just like photons do not
need Ether.

In addition, if we are going to split consciousness maximally in this
fashion, the concept of observer becomes important, something you do
not include in your example. 

To observe a split consciousness, you need an observer who is also
split, in sync with the split consciousness, across time, space,
substrate and level (a la Zelazny - Science Fiction writer). In your
example, for an observer to see consciousness in the machine, he must
be willing to exist at the earlier interval, skip over the time delay
carrying the recording and resume his existence at the later interval.
If he observes only a part of the whole thing, say the recording, he
may conclude that the machine is not conscious.


  But if you keep comp, you will not been able to use genuinely 
that past physical activity. If you could, it would be like asking to 
the doctor an artificial brain with the guarantee that the hardware of 
that brain has been gone through some genuine physical stories, 
although no memory of those stories are needed in the computation made 
by the new (artificial) brain; or if such memory *are* needed, it would 
mean the doctor has not made the right level choice.
Now, when you say the reasoning does not *prove* that consciousness 
does not supervene the physical, you are correct. But sup-phys says 
there is no consciousness without the physical, i.e. some physical 
primary ontology is needed for consciusness, and that is what the 
reasoning is supposed to be showing absurd: not only we don't need the 
physical (like thermodynamicians do not need "invisible horses pulling 
cars"),  but MOVIE-GRAPH + UDA (*) makes obligatory the appearance of 
the physical emerging from *all* (relative) computations, making twice 
the concept of primitive matter useless.
OK? ...I realize I could be clearer(**)

(*) Caution: in "Conscience et Mecanisme" the movie-graph argument 
precedes the UD argument (the seven first step of the 8-steps-version 
of the current UDA). In my Lille thesis, the movie graph follows the UD 
argument for eliminating t

Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno,

Finally I read your filmed graph argument which I have stored in my 
computer. (The original at the Iridia web site 
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/Volume3CC/3%20%202%20.pdf
is not accessible anymore. I am not sure why.)

In page TROIS -61 you describe an experience of consciousness which is 
comprised partially of a later physical process and partially of the 
recording of an earlier physical process.

It is possible to resolve the paradox simply by saying that 
consciousness involves two partial processes each occupying two 
different time intervals, the time intervals being connected by a 
recording, such that the earlier partial process is combined with the 
later partial process, the recording acting as a connection device.

I am not saying that consciousness supervene on the physical substrate. 
All I am saying is that the example does not prove that consciousness 
does not supervene the physical. The example is just an instance of 
consciousness operating across two different time intervals by mean of a 
physical substrate and a physical means (recording) of connecting these 
two time intervals.

George

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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

List members

I scanned Maudlin's paper. Thank you Russell. As I suspected I found a
few questionable passages:

Page417: line 14: 
"So the spatial sequence of the troughs need not reflect their
'computational sequence'. We may so contrive that any sequence of
address lie next to each other spatially."
  
Page 418 line 5:
"The first step in our construction is to rearrange Klara's tape so
that address T[0] to T[N] lie spatially in sequence, T[0] next to T[1]
next to T[2], etc...

How does Maudlin know how to arrange the order of the tape locations?
He must run his task Pi in his head or on a calculator.

Maudlin's reaches a quasi religious conclusion when he states:
"Olympia has shown us a
least that some other level beside the computational must be sought.
But until we have found that level and until we have explicated the
relationship between it and the computational structure, the belief
that ...of pure computationalism will ever lead to the creation of
artificial minds or the the understanding of natural ones, remains only
a pious hope."


Let me try to summarize:

Maudlin is wrong in concluding that there must be something
non-computational necessary for consciouness. 

Maudlin himself was the unwitting missing consciousness piece inserted
in his machine at programming time  i.e., the machine's consciouness spanned
execution time and programming time. He himself was the unwitting
missing piece when he design his tape.

The correct conclusion IMHO is that consciousness is independent of
time, space, substrate and level and in fact can span all of these just
as Maudlin partially demonstrated - but you still need an
implementation -- so what is left? Like the Cheshire cat, nothing
except the software itself: Consistent logical links operating in a
bootstrapping reflexive emergent manner.

Bruno is right in applying math/logic to solve the
consciousness/physical world (Mind/Body) riddle. Physics can be derived
from machine psychology. 

George


Russell Standish wrote:

  If I can sumarise George's summary as this:

In order to generate a recording, one must physically instantiate the
conscious computation. Consciousness supervenes on this, presumably.

Maudlin say aha - lets take the recording, and add to it an inert
machine that handles the counterfactuals. This combined machine is
computationally equivalent to the original. But since the new machine
is physically equivalent to a recording, how could consciousness
supervene on it. If we want to keep supervenience, there must be
something noncomputational that means the first machine is conscious,
and the second not.

Marchal says consciousness supervenes on neither of the physical
machines, but on the abstract computation, and there is only one
consciousness involved (not two).

Of course, this all applies to dreaming machines, or machines hooked
up to recordings of the real world. This is where I concentrate my
attack on the Maudlin argument (the Multiverse argument).

Cheers

  



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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Oops. Read: IF (Input = 27098217872180483080234850309823740127)
George 


George Levy wrote:

  
  
Bruno, Stathis,
  
Thank you Stathis for the summary. I do have the paper now and I will
read it carefully. Based on Sathis summary I still believe that Maudlin
is fallacious. A computer program equivalent to Maudlin's construction
can be written as:
  
IF (Input = -27098217872180483080234850309823740127) 
THEN (Output = 78972398473024802348523948518347109)
ELSE Call Conscious_Subroutine
ENDIF.
  
If the input 27098217872180483080234850309823740127 is always given
then the ELSE clause is never invoked. The point is that to write
the above piece of code, Maudlin must go through the trouble of
calculating perhaps on his hand calculator the answer
78972398473024802348523948518347109 that the Conscious_Subroutine would
have produced had it been called. (Notice the conditional tense
indicating the counterfactual). He then inserts the answer in the IF
clause at programming time. In so doing he must instantiate in his own
mind and/or calculator the function of the Conscious_Subroutine for the
particular case in which input = 27098217872180483080234850309823740127,
  
If the single numeral input is replaced by a function with multiple
numerical inputs, Maudlin trick could be expanded by  using tables to
store the output and instead of using an IF statement, Maudlin could
use a CASE statement. But then, Maudlin would have to fill up the whole
table with  the answers that the Conscious_Subroutine would have
produced. In the ultimate case you could conceive of a huge table that
contains all the answers that the Conscious_Subroutine would ever
answer to any question. This table however must be filled up. In the
process of filling up the table you must instantiate all state of
consciousness of the Conscious_Subroutine.
  
Bruno, says:
  
  BTW I thought you did understand the physics/psychology
(theology/computer-science/number-theory) reversal. What makes you
changing your mind? (just interested). 
  
  
I did not change my mind. I just believe that Maudlin's reasoning is
faulty.
  
By calculating the output Maudlin inserts himself and possibly his
calculator in the conscious process. To understand the insertion of
Maudlin into the consciousness of The Conscious_Subroutine, you must
agree that this consciousness is independent of
time, space, substrate and level. This Maybe is the Moral of Maudlin's
Machinations...?
  
George
  
Bruno Marchal wrote:
  

Le 03-oct.-06, à 21:33, George Levy a écrit : 

 Bruno, 
  
I looked on the web but could not find Maudlin's paper. 



Mmh... for those working in an institution affiliated to JSTOR, it is
available here: 
http://www.jstor.org/view/0022362x/di973301/97p04115/0


I will search if some free version are available elsewhere, or put a
pdf-version on my web page. 





So I just go by what you are saying. 
  
I still stand by the spirit of what I said but I admit to be
misleading in stating that Maudlin himself is part of the machine. It
is not Maudlin, but Maudlin's proxy or demon, the Klaras which is now
parts of the machine. Maudlin used the same trick that Maxwell used.
He used a the demon or proxy to perform his (dirty) work. 
  
It seems to me that if you trace the information flow you probably
can detect that Maudlin is cheating: How are the protoolympia and the
Klaras defined? 



Maudlin is cheating ? No more than a doctor who build an artificial
brain by copying an original at some level. Remember we *assume* the
comp hypothesis. 




To design his protoolympia and the Klaras he must start
with
the information about the machine and the task PI. If he changes task
from PI to PIprime than he has to apply a different protoolympia and
different Klaras, and he has to intervene in the process! 


Yes but only once. Changing PI to PIprime would be another thought
experiment. I don't see the relevance. 
I know you got the paper now. It will help in this debate. 



Maudlin's argument is far from convincing. 


BTW I thought you did understand the physics/psychology
(theology/computer-science/number-theory) reversal. What makes you
changing your mind? (just interested). 

Bruno 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




  
  
  
  



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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno, Stathis,

Thank you Stathis for the summary. I do have the paper now and I will
read it carefully. Based on Sathis summary I still believe that Maudlin
is fallacious. A computer program equivalent to Maudlin's construction
can be written as:

IF (Input = -27098217872180483080234850309823740127) 
THEN (Output = 78972398473024802348523948518347109)
ELSE Call Conscious_Subroutine
ENDIF.

If the input 27098217872180483080234850309823740127 is always given
then the ELSE clause is never invoked. The point is that to write
the above piece of code, Maudlin must go through the trouble of
calculating perhaps on his hand calculator the answer
78972398473024802348523948518347109 that the Conscious_Subroutine would
have produced had it been called. (Notice the conditional tense
indicating the counterfactual). He then inserts the answer in the IF
clause at programming time. In so doing he must instantiate in his own
mind and/or calculator the function of the Conscious_Subroutine for the
particular case in which input = 27098217872180483080234850309823740127,

If the single numeral input is replaced by a function with multiple
numerical inputs, Maudlin trick could be expanded by  using tables to
store the output and instead of using an IF statement, Maudlin could
use a CASE statement. But then, Maudlin would have to fill up the whole
table with  the answers that the Conscious_Subroutine would have
produced. In the ultimate case you could conceive of a huge table that
contains all the answers that the Conscious_Subroutine would ever
answer to any question. This table however must be filled up. In the
process of filling up the table you must instantiate all state of
consciousness of the Conscious_Subroutine.

Bruno, says:

BTW I thought you did understand the physics/psychology
(theology/computer-science/number-theory) reversal. What makes you
changing your mind? (just interested).
  


I did not change my mind. I just believe that Maudlin's reasoning is
faulty.

By calculating the output Maudlin inserts himself and possibly his
calculator in the conscious process. To understand the insertion of
Maudlin into the consciousness of The Conscious_Subroutine, you must
agree that this consciousness is independent of
time, space, substrate and level. This Maybe is the Moral of Maudlin's
Machinations...?

George

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 03-oct.-06, à 21:33, George Levy a écrit :
  
  
   Bruno,


I looked on the web but could not find Maudlin's paper. 
  
  
  
Mmh... for those working in an institution affiliated to JSTOR, it is
available here:
  
http://www.jstor.org/view/0022362x/di973301/97p04115/0
  
  
I will search if some free version are available elsewhere, or put a
pdf-version on my web page.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  So I just go by what you are saying. 

I still stand by the spirit of what I said but I admit to be
misleading in stating that Maudlin himself is part of the machine. It
is not Maudlin, but Maudlin's proxy or demon, the Klaras which is now
parts of the machine. Maudlin used the same trick that Maxwell used.
He used a the demon or proxy to perform his (dirty) work. 

It seems to me that if you trace the information flow you probably
can detect that Maudlin is cheating: How are the protoolympia and the
Klaras defined? 
  
  
  
Maudlin is cheating ? No more than a doctor who build an artificial
brain by copying an original at some level. Remember we *assume* the
comp hypothesis.
  
  
  
  
  
  To design his protoolympia and the Klaras he must start
with
the information about the machine and the task PI. If he changes task
from PI to PIprime than he has to apply a different protoolympia and
different Klaras, and he has to intervene in the process!

  
  
Yes but only once. Changing PI to PIprime would be another thought
experiment. I don't see the relevance.
  
I know you got the paper now. It will help in this debate.
  
  
  
  
Maudlin's argument is far from convincing.

  
  
BTW I thought you did understand the physics/psychology
(theology/computer-science/number-theory) reversal. What makes you
changing your mind? (just interested).
  
  
Bruno
  
  
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
  
  
  
  



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Re: Maudlin's Demon (Argument)

[George Levy]

Bruno,

I looked on the web but could not find Maudlin's paper. So I just go by
what you are saying. 

I still stand by the spirit of what I said but I admit to be misleading
in stating that Maudlin himself is part of the machine. It is not
Maudlin, but Maudlin's proxy or demon, the Klaras which is now parts of
the machine. Maudlin used the same trick that Maxwell used. He used a
the demon or proxy to perform his (dirty) work. 

It seems to me that if you trace the information flow you probably can
detect that Maudlin is cheating: How are the protoolympia and the
Klaras
defined? To design his protoolympia and the Klaras he must start with
the information about the machine and the task PI. If he changes task
from PI to PIprime than he has to apply a different protoolympia and
different Klaras, and he has to intervene in the process!

Maudlin's argument is far from convincing.

George


Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 03-oct.-06, à 06:56, George Levy a écrit :
  
  
   Bruno Marchal wrote in explaining Maudlin's argument:


"For any given precise running computation associated
to some
inner experience, you
  
can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical
activity involved is
  
arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no
inputs and no outputs.
  
Now, having suppressed that physical activity present in the running
computation, the
  
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only
for that precise computation,
  
with unchanged environment. If it is changed a little bit, it will
make the machine running
  
computation no more relatively correct. But then, Maudlin ingenuously
showed that
  
counterfactual correctness can be recovered, by adding non active
devices which will be
  
triggered only if some (counterfactual) change would appear in the
environment. 
  



To reduce the machine's complexity Maudlin must perform a modicum of
analysis, simulation etc.. to predict how the machine performs in
different situations. Using his newly acquired knowledge, he then 
maximally reduces the machine's complexity for one particular task,
keeping the machine fully operational for all other tasks. In effect
Maudlin has surreptitiously inserted himself in the mechanism. so now,
we don't have just the machine but we have the machine plus Maudlin.
The machine is not simpler or not existent. The machine is now Maudlin!

  
  
  
(We can come back on this real critics, but here is a short answer for
those who have Mauldlin's paper, we can find a version on the net now).
  
  
Olympia is "proto-olympia" + "the Klaras". Maudlin assumes comp and he
needs only the description of the original machine to build the Klaras
(for regaining counterfactual correctness) and add them to the
proto-olympia (the machine with no physical activity which is only
accidentally correct). Once added, the composed, Olympia =
"proto-olympia + Klara", is independent of Maudlin, and is
computationnaly equivalent with the original machine).
  
  
So Olympia, once build, does not need Maudlin's at all. Of course
with comp the building itself cannot influence the future possible
supervenience, for the same reason that if a doctor give you an
artificial brain, the story of each individual components has no
relation with the later use of it (if not it means the comp level has
not been chosen correctly).
  
  
  
  
  
In conclusion, the following conclusion reached by Maudlin and Bruno
is fallacious.


"Now this shows that any inner experience can be
associated
with an arbitrary low (even null) physical
  
activity, and this in keeping counterfactual correctness. And that is
absurd with the
  
conjunction of both comp and materialism."
  



I think the paradox can be resolved by tracing how information flows
and Maudlin is certainly in the circuit, using information, just like
Maxwell's demon is affecting entropy.

  
  
  
Once Olympia is build, Maudlin's is completely out of the circuit. I
think you forget the purpose of the Klaras. 
  
At least, George, this is a real attempt to find an error, and in the
8th step ! I appreciate your try, but it seems to me you have just
forgot that Maudlin's did *program* his intervention: through the
Klaras, so that keeping comp at this stage makes Maudlin's special
role irrelevant. OK?
  
  
Bruno
  
  
  
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
  
  
  
  



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Maudlin's argument

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote in explaining Maudlin's argument:

"For any given precise running computation associated to
some inner experience, you
can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical
activity involved is
arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no
inputs and no outputs.
Now, having suppressed that physical activity present in the running
computation, the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only for
that precise computation,
with unchanged environment. If it is changed a little bit, it will make
the machine running
computation no more relatively correct. But then, Maudlin
ingenuously showed that
counterfactual correctness can be recovered, by adding non active
devices which will be
triggered only if some (counterfactual) change would appear in the
environment. 
  

I believe the argument is erroneous. Maudlin's argument reminds me of
the fallacy in Maxwell's demon. 

To reduce the machine's complexity Maudlin must perform a modicum of
analysis, simulation etc.. to predict how the machine performs in
different situations. Using his newly acquired knowledge, he then 
maximally reduces the machine's complexity for one particular task,
keeping the machine fully operational for all other tasks. In effect
Maudlin has surreptitiously inserted himself in the mechanism. so now,
we
don't have just the machine but we have the machine plus Maudlin. The
machine is not simpler or not existent. The machine is now Maudlin!

In conclusion, the following conclusion reached by Maudlin and Bruno is
fallacious.

"Now this shows that any inner experience can be associated
with an arbitrary low (even null) physical
activity, and this in keeping counterfactual correctness. And that is
absurd with the
conjunction of both comp and materialism."

Maudlin's argument cannot be used to state that "any inner experience
can be associated with an arbitrary low (even null) physical activity."
Thus it is not necessarily true that comp and materialism are
incompatible.

I think the paradox can be resolved by tracing how information flows
and Maudlin is certainly in the circuit, using information, just like
Maxwell's demon is affecting entropy.

George


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Re: Solipsism unplugged

[George Levy]

The scientist could prove that he is not alone by invoking the
principle of sufficient reason: nothing is arbitrary and exist with no
reason. If something exists in a particular arbitrary way (himself)
with no reason for him to be in that particular way, then all
other alternatives of him must also exist (the Plenitude).
Hence he is not alone. Solipsism is dead.

George 

Colin Hales wrote:

  This is an extract from the full work on solipsism. It is one special
section written in the first person, for what else could a solipsist
scientist do? I'd be interested in any comments... it paints a rather
bizarre picture of science.
-
I, Solipsist Scientist

Copyright(c) 2006. Colin Hales. All rights reserved.
-
I am a solipsist scientist in that I accept that my mind, which is producing
the dialogue you now read, is the one and only conclusively proven mind and
possibly the only mind. My mind is an image in a kind of mirror; a
phenomenal mirror. The image I see and feel and smell and taste is all I
have to enact my craft, my science. Modern neuroscience shows me my brain in
the act of being a mirror for me. The image is what philosophy calls my
phenomenal consciousness or my phenomenality. I can experiment on my own
phenomenality say, by closing my eyes, which I note has a dramatic effect on
my ability to do science. When I sleep dreamlessly my phenomenality is
absent and when I awake the apparent external world in my mirror is
consistently behaving as if it recently had me asleep in it. Yet, as a
solipsist I am forced to question the actual existence of what is depicted
in my mirror. It is only an image, after all, and images can be fabricated.
As a solipsist I attribute this apparent external world depicted within my
mirror to be the work of the 'magical fabricator'.

At the same time I must find it remarkable that my phenomenality somehow,
via the mysterious solution to the 'hard problem', appears to intimately
connect me to an external world. I know that my sensory data (nerve signals
from the peripheral nervous system that have no innate phenomenality) are
used by my apparent brain to create my phenomenality. As a scientist my job
is to extract and depict regularity in the appearances within my phenomenal
mirror's image as scientifically justified beliefs in the form of useful,
predictive generalisations. I know that when I do science what I am doing is
correlating the appearances of the contents of my phenomenality. The most
obvious evidence of this in any of my scientific papers is that of the
'test' subject in contrast to the 'control' subject. In the case of
Newtonian dynamics I would be correlating the behaviour of a mass and the
space it inhabits. All of this makes very good sense to me. Yet I am
troubled.

Within my mirror's image are what appear to be other scientists with brains
that look the same as mine. These scientists are merely fabrications in my
own mirror's image. Yet despite being mere fabrications they appear, to me,
to do science on exquisitely novel things just as well as I do using my real
mind. At the same time I cannot see the image in their mirror and vice
versa. All report seeing only brain material. I take this as lending support
to my solipsism in that I can claim their minds not to exist, which is
consistent with my conviction that the external world does not exist. If I
am right, and my image(mind) is the only image(mind), then their science is
done without any image of their own. The 'magical fabricator' of my image
goes to an amazing amount of trouble to make it appear 'as-if' the external
world shown to me in my mirror does exist. The scientists within it behave
'as-if' they had the kind of mind I know I must have to do science.

To be a solipsist scientist in this circumstance is to live in cooperation
with this extravagant fabrication including apparent scientists as adept as
myself. As a solipsist scientist, inwardly and silently I deny (remain
scientifically unable to confirm) that an external world exists. But as a
scientist within this apparent world I am fundamentally conflicted. To be
consistent with the behaviour of all the other scientists, outwardly I am
forced to act 'as-if' there was an external reality. Also, inwardly I know
my mind is the only proven reality, yet to my scientist colleagues, to
remain consistent I must deny my own mind as much as I deny theirs. I live
in this situation of denial that I have something more than my colleagues
have. I am thus doubly conflicted, for I must also act 'as-if' I have no
mind, for to declare otherwise is to be inconsistent with my claims about my
scientist colleagues, to whom I am identical.

Yet despite this odd personal situation the system works, in a way. My
scientist colleagues continue to act as-if they had minds. Their scientific
lives - our lives - of appearance correlation go on as usual. The whole
system is cons

It's a mad mad mad world (was computationalism and supervenience)]

[George Levy]

Slight correction:



If you are sane then you're not sure that you are sane, then you would
have to be crazy to say
"Yes Doctor."..
...yet a man could say it but not a "sane" machine.

Bruno's quest based on machine psychology runs the risk of leaving
unanswered the really big quest based on human psychology.

George



Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Le 21-août-06, à 07:11, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

  
  
It seems to me that there are two main sticking points in the 
discussions on
several list threads in recent weeks. One is computationalism: is it 
right or wrong?
This at least is straightforward in that it comes down to a question 
of faith, in the
final analysis, as to whether you would accept a digital replacement 
brain or not
(Bruno's "yes doctor" choice).

  
  
Yes. Unfortunately this gives not a purely operational definition of 
comp.
Someone could say yes to the doctor, just thinking that God exists, and 
that God is infinitely Good so that he will manage to resuscitate him 
through the reconstitution (he believes also God is infinitely 
powerful).
So comp is really the belief that you can survive with an artificial 
brain *qua computatio", that is, through the respect of some digital 
relation only.



  
  
The other sticking point is, given computationalism
is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have 
been arguments
that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, 
Searle, Moravec)
and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal).

  
  


OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like 
me) that we have:

NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE

But apparently Maudlin want to keep physical supervenience, and thus 
concludes there is a problem with comp. I keep comp, and thus I 
conclude there is a problem with physical supervenience.
Actually I just abandon the thesis of the physical supervenience, to 
replace it by a thesis of number-theoretical supervenience.


  
  
The discussion about Platonism
and the ontological status of mathematical structures, in particular, 
relates to this
second issue. Bruno alludes to it in several papers and posts, and 
also alludes to his
"movie graph argument", but as far as I can tell that argument in its 
entirety is only
available in French.

  
  

That's true. I should do something about that. I don't feel it is so 
urgent in the list because there are more simple problem to tackle 
before, and also, most "MWI", or "Everything"-people can easily imagine 
the UD doesn't need to be run. But this is a subtle problem for those 
who have faith in their uniqueness or in the uniqueness of the world. 
Still you are right, I should write an english version of the movie 
graph.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





  





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It's a mad mad mad world (was computationalism and supervenience)

[George Levy]

If you're not sure that you are sane, then you must be crazy to say
"Yes Doctor."..
...yet a man could say it but not a "sane" machine.

Bruno's quest based on machine psychology runs the risk of leaving
unanswered the really big quest based on human psychology.

George



Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 21-août-06, à 07:11, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

  
  
It seems to me that there are two main sticking points in the 
discussions on
several list threads in recent weeks. One is computationalism: is it 
right or wrong?
This at least is straightforward in that it comes down to a question 
of faith, in the
final analysis, as to whether you would accept a digital replacement 
brain or not
(Bruno's "yes doctor" choice).

  
  
Yes. Unfortunately this gives not a purely operational definition of 
comp.
Someone could say yes to the doctor, just thinking that God exists, and 
that God is infinitely Good so that he will manage to resuscitate him 
through the reconstitution (he believes also God is infinitely 
powerful).
So comp is really the belief that you can survive with an artificial 
brain *qua computatio", that is, through the respect of some digital 
relation only.



  
  
The other sticking point is, given computationalism
is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have 
been arguments
that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, 
Searle, Moravec)
and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal).

  
  


OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like 
me) that we have:

NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE

But apparently Maudlin want to keep physical supervenience, and thus 
concludes there is a problem with comp. I keep comp, and thus I 
conclude there is a problem with physical supervenience.
Actually I just abandon the thesis of the physical supervenience, to 
replace it by a thesis of number-theoretical supervenience.


  
  
The discussion about Platonism
and the ontological status of mathematical structures, in particular, 
relates to this
second issue. Bruno alludes to it in several papers and posts, and 
also alludes to his
"movie graph argument", but as far as I can tell that argument in its 
entirety is only
available in French.

  
  

That's true. I should do something about that. I don't feel it is so 
urgent in the list because there are more simple problem to tackle 
before, and also, most "MWI", or "Everything"-people can easily imagine 
the UD doesn't need to be run. But this is a subtle problem for those 
who have faith in their uniqueness or in the uniqueness of the world. 
Still you are right, I should write an english version of the movie 
graph.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





  



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Re: I think, was "Difficulties in communication. . ."

[George Levy]

Hi John,
I may have picked up the humor from some high school hungarian friends
in Montreal 1957-1960 just after the hungarian revolution. There were
amongst them some of the most dry-witted people I have ever met. 

George

John M wrote:

  George:

I enjoyed your wits, in Hungarian we call that 
"to chase one's brain". 
I am also happy that you use "sane" instead of
"normal" because the "norm" is insane. 

Please do not cut this line (style) of yours!

John Mikes

--- George Levy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

  
  
Bruno Marchal wrote:



  Le 13-août-06, à 23:48, George Levy a écrit :

 

  
  
"I think" also implies the concept of sanity.

  

Unless you assume the


  
first step "I think" and that you are sane, you

  

can't take any rational


  
and conscious second step and have any rational

  

and conscious thought


  
process. You wouldn't be able to hold any rational

  

discussion. Inherent


  
in any computational process is the concept of

  

sanity. Maybe this is


  
what Bruno refers to as "sane machine."
   


  
  All right. The point will be that all machine
  

strongly-believing or 


  communicating or proving their own sanity will
  

appear to be (from 


  purely number-theoretical reasons) insane and even
  

inconsistent. Note 


  that machines communicating that they are *insane*
  

(instead of sane) 


  *are* insane, but remains consistent.
This should please crazy John Mikes :)
 

  

 This only proves that a "sane" machine cannot be
sure that it thinks 
correctly.

So the sane machine would say: "I think but, since I
may be insane,  I 
am not sure if I am."
Only the insane machine would positively assert "I
think therefore I am!"
So we know now where Descartes belongs: in an insane
asylum, so do most 
philosophers, religious leaders and politicians.
Some mathematicians may 
be exempt, but only if they don't claim that Godel
is right!
Don't quote me!

George






  
  




  



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Re: I think, was "Difficulties in communication. . ."

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 13-août-06, à 23:48, George Levy a écrit :

  
  
"I think" also implies the concept of sanity. Unless you assume the
first step "I think" and that you are sane, you can't take any rational
and conscious second step and have any rational and conscious thought
process. You wouldn't be able to hold any rational discussion. Inherent
in any computational process is the concept of sanity. Maybe this is
what Bruno refers to as "sane machine."

  
  
All right. The point will be that all machine strongly-believing or 
communicating or proving their own sanity will appear to be (from 
purely number-theoretical reasons) insane and even inconsistent. Note 
that machines communicating that they are *insane* (instead of sane) 
*are* insane, but remains consistent.
This should please crazy John Mikes :)
  

 This only proves that a "sane" machine cannot be sure that it thinks
correctly.

So the sane machine would say: "I think but, since I may be insane,  I
am not sure if I am." 
Only the insane machine would positively assert "I think therefore I
am!"
So we know now where Descartes belongs: in an insane asylum, so do most
philosophers, religious leaders and politicians. Some mathematicians
may be exempt, but only if they don't claim that Godel is right!
Don't quote me!

George


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Re: I think, was "Difficulties in communication. . ."

[George Levy]

Brent Meeker wrote:

  George Levy wrote:
  
  
Brent Meeker wrote:



  George Levy wrote:
 

  
  
Brent Meeker wrote:


   



  That brings us back to Descartes "I think therefore I am"; which Russell 
pointed out was an unsupported inference. 


 

  

IMHO everything hinges on "I think." "I think" MUST BE THE STARTING 
POINT - for any conscious observer THERE IS NO OTHER OBSERVABLE STARTING 
POINT!
   


  
  Are you disputing Russell's point that "I" is a construct and "thinking" is 
all you have without inference?

 

  

Yes. I am disputing what Russell said: "I think" IS THE ONE AND ONLY 
STARTING POINT for any conscious thought process. It is both an 
observation and an axiom. Developing the concept of "I think" in a 
formal mathematical fashion as Bruno is attempting to do is IMO the 
right way to proceed. I also believe that "I think" leads to a relative 
(or relativistic) TOE - probably a very extreme view.

George

  
  
As I understand him, Bruno agrees with Russell that "I" is a construct or 
inference.  

I think you are right. Bruno is not as extreme as I am but I am not
sure exactly where he stands. He may be non-committed or he may not
know how to reconcile my viewpoint with his math. It would be nice if
we could reconcile the two viewpoints!!!

  That's why there can be 1st-person indeterminancy.
  

No. This is not why. In fact, first person indeterminacy probably
reinforces my point. First person indeterminacy comes about because
there are several links from one observer moment (could be called "I"
state) to the next logical (or historically consistent) logical moment.
As you can see everything hinges on the "I" states. You can view I
states either as nodes or as branches depending how you define the
network. Of course those logical links are emergent as figment of
imagination of the "I" in an anthropy kind of way.

George



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Re: I think, was "Difficulties in communication. . ."

[George Levy]

Brent Meeker wrote:

  George Levy wrote:
  
  
Brent Meeker wrote:




  That brings us back to Descartes "I think therefore I am"; which Russell 
pointed out was an unsupported inference. 


  


IMHO everything hinges on "I think." "I think" MUST BE THE STARTING 
POINT - for any conscious observer THERE IS NO OTHER OBSERVABLE STARTING 
POINT!

  
  
Are you disputing Russell's point that "I" is a construct and "thinking" is 
all you have without inference?

  

Yes. I am disputing what Russell said: "I think" IS THE ONE AND ONLY
STARTING POINT for any conscious thought process. It is both an
observation and an axiom. Developing the concept of "I think" in a
formal mathematical fashion as Bruno is attempting to do is IMO the
right way to proceed. I also believe that "I think" leads to a relative
(or relativistic) TOE - probably a very extreme view. 

George

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I think, was "Difficulties in communication. . ."

[George Levy]

Brent Meeker wrote:

>That brings us back to Descartes "I think therefore I am"; which Russell 
>pointed out was an unsupported inference. 
>  
>

IMHO everything hinges on "I think." "I think" MUST BE THE STARTING 
POINT - for any conscious observer THERE IS NO OTHER OBSERVABLE STARTING 
POINT!

"I think" is both an *observed fact* as well as an *axiom* from which 
everything else can be derived. So you could argue that the observation 
of "I think" supports the axiom "I think." In fact any conscious 
observation of the world also necessitates the "I think" observation and 
the "I think" assumption.

"I think" also implies the concept of sanity. Unless you assume the 
first step "I think" and that you are sane, you can't take any rational 
and conscious second step and have any rational and conscious thought 
process. You wouldn't be able to hold any rational discussion. Inherent 
in any computational process is the concept of sanity. Maybe this is 
what Bruno refers to as "sane machine."

"I think" also implies a certain logical/mathematical system (which 
Bruno is working on).

"I think" furthermore implies a reflexive quality which is essential for 
consciousness. This reflexive quality is also included in Bruno's 
logical/mathematical system.

"I think" also infers a "relativity" of information. Possibly different 
logico/mathematical processes may result in different qualities of 
consciousness i.e., any given modality for a thought process results in 
a different modality of consciousness. i.e. "I think *what* I think"..

George


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Re: Are First Person prime? - time

[George Levy]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Bruno, I spent some (!) time on speculating on 'timelessness' - Let me tell
up front: I did not solve it.

Hi John

For example, we can conceive of a consciousness generated by a computer
operating in a time share mode where the time share occur every
thousand years. The important thing is that there should be a logical
flow in the computation, and it really does not matter what is the time
scale, the sampling, in which dimension you operate or the level of
computation. (you could be operating across several levels)  The only
thing that matters is that each point of the computation be connected
to the next one by a valid logical link, as in a network. This logical
network in fact frees you from having to specify a dimension such as
time or a level of computation. The logical connections (or consistent
histories as Bruno calls them) in the network are in fact emergent
according to the Anthropic principle. The logical links (or
consistencies) exist because you are there to observe them. Just as a Rorschach test . You are making the links as you go
along.

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

David Nyman wrote:

  George Levy wrote:

  
  
Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only
relevent contingency is: If  the observed event will result in different
probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then
our perceptions will be different.

  
  
I understand this way of putting it.

  
  
Third person perception comes about when several observers share the
same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies
on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of
reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have
discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all
these observer have a first person perspective, however this first
person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and
therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective
can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same
only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of
objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher
level and accept that different observers will predictably see different
things, just like in relativity theory different observers may
predictably make different measurements of the same object.

  
  
Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of
reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge
base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse.  What you are saying
above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy
and the nature of 3-person.  Any comments on those?

David
  


Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not
deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is
secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers
share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of
identical contingencies on their existence. 

I have a little bit of trouble understanding your terms: "shared
knowledge base" and interpersonal discourse. One way to force your
nomenclature and mine to be identical is to say that "share knowledge
base" and interpersonal discourse" are completely dependent on physical
laws which are completely dependent of the shared contingencies. Thus
our basic thinking process is rooted in the physical objects comprising
our brain. These physical objects owe their existence to our shared
contingencies. Here we are developing an equivalence between mental
processes and physical processes. In other words I can imagine any
process that the universe is capable of supporting, and it is possible
to simulate in the universe any thought process that I am capable of
imagining.

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

David Nyman wrote:

  
Third person perception comes about when several observers share the
same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies
on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of
reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have
discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all
these observer have a first person perspective, however this first
person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and
therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective
can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same
only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of
objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher
level and accept that different observers will predictably see different
things, just like in relativity theory different observers may
predictably make different measurements of the same object.

  
  
Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of
reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge
base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse.  What you are saying
above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy
and the nature of 3-person.  Any comments on those?
  


I am sorry David, I have not been following all threads very closely -
It would take a full time commitment to do so. Perhaps each post,
especially the long ones, should be preceded by an abstract.  ;-)  Could you point me in
the right direction?

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

David Nyman wrote:

  George Levy wrote:

  
  
Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own
existence is contingent on our observation.

  
  
Hi George

I think I agree with this.  It could correspond with what I'm trying to
model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as:

First person perception of the world comes about when our own
observation and existence are mutually contingent
  

Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only
relevent contingency is: If  the observed event will result in
different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing
me, then our perceptions will be different. 


  
  
  
Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence
is not contingent on our observation.

  
  
Now here I'm not so clear.  


  In sum, I'm not clear what sort of observation is *not* contingent on
our existence, except someone else's observation, and so far as I can
see this is always first person by your definition.  Do you simply mean
to define any observation not involving ourselves as 'third person'
from our point-of-view?  
  
  

Third person perception comes about when several observers share
the same perception because they share the same environmental
contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share
the same "frame of reference." I see many similarities with relativity
theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past.
Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective,
however this first person perspective appears to be the same across
observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers.
This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind
that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same.
Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the
meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably
see different things, just like in relativity theory different
observers may predictably make different measurements of the
same object.

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

1Z wrote:

  
I don't even know what you mean by "first person".


  
  David Nyman wrote:
Peter

It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what
I mean by first person'!  However, I'll have another go.  I'm concerned
to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes
a lot of confusion:

1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by
an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant
when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person.

2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as
modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or
'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose
presumed referent is an FP1i person.
  

Here is an explanation more grounded in Physics:
The concept of "first person" comes directly from the Everett
manyworlds,  Schoedinger cat experiment and the quantum suicide
(thought) experiment. In a quantum suicide the subject of the
experiment does not see himself dying. He can only see himself
continuing living along a branch of the manyworld in which his
experiment went awry. His perception is first person. Witnesses to the
experiment are likely to see the subject die and their point of view is
third person. Thus first person and third person imply some kind of
"relativity" contingent on the  observer's own existence. 

More generally, one can assume that the laws of physics themselves are
contingent on the observer -ie. the world is being destroyed every
nanoseconds or faster when it diverges into MW branches not supporting
life. - the only worlds we can observe are those worlds upholding those
physical laws supporting life. According to this hypothesis our primary
perception of the world is first person. 

Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own
existence is contingent on our observation.
Third person perception comes about in situations when our own
existence is not contingent on our observation.

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

1Z wrote:

  
George Levy wrote:

  
  
A conscious entity is also information.

  
  


I am assuming here that a conscious entity is essentially "software." 

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

   Would it be possible to map your three axiomatic lines
replacing "knowable" by "think" and "true" by "exist." ...

  
See my conversation with 1Z (Peter D. Jones). I will define "exist" by
" "exist" is true". 
  Then we have:

 1 If p thinks then p exists;

  
This does not make sense at all, I prefer to say honestly. It is not
the proposition p which thinks, and I don't understand what would it
means that a proposition exists. 
I dont' really see any problem if we think of a conscious entity just
like a proposition as information. Proposition p is information which
can be either true or false. A conscious entity is also information. In
this case, if the information is true then the entity exists.
I guess you are perhaps saying here
that If a Machine(entity) thinks then it exists. Then OK. But as you
know I don't believe the reverse is true. In particular I belief that
the square root of two exist (perhaps under the form of a total
computable function), but I would not say that the square root of two
thinks.
The English language is treacherous. we have to be careful when we use
the word "exist." I think there are several kinds of existence. In any
case to assert that the square root of two exists is assigning to the
square root of two an existence independent of any observer, thereby
negating the primacy of first person.

 I do think that the multiverse even got rich but devoid
of
consciousness (immaterial) comp-branches.
  
  
 2 If p thinks then it is thinkable that p thinks;

  
All right with the interpretation that "p" is some entity, not a
proposition. Perhaps you are identifying machines and propositions?
This can be done  with the Fi and Wi , and it needs many
cautions.
  

Yes I am saying that machines, propositions, databases, programs, and
conscious minds are different words for the same thing: information.
Thus information can be true, false or unknown.

  
 3 If it is thinkable that p entails q, then if p
thinks then q thinks.
  

  

One of the problem lies with the "it" word as in: "if 'it' is knowable"
or  "If 'it' is thinkable". What or who is "it?" Here again the English
or French languages can be treacherous.


  
 1 If p thinks then p exists; (This maps nicely with
Descartes as
stated from a third person)
  
2 If p thinks then p think that p thinks; (This is nice reflective
statement essential to consciousness)
  
3 If p think that p entails q, then if p thinks then q thinks. (The
phrase "p entails q" reminds me vaguely of the Anthropic principle. I
am not sure what to make of this. My children think???)
  

  
Your way of talking is a bit confusing as you seem to see by yourself
:)
  

The first two statements are relatively easy to understand. The first
one is more or less what Descartes said. The second one is a reflective
form probably necessary for consciousness. 
The third statement taken seriously is intringing. If entity p thinks
that entity q is necessary for p's existence, then if p thinks then q
thinks. In other words all necessary conditions for my own existence
form a conscious entity. This is weird. It is as if I had my own
personal Personal God or guardian angel.

George

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Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  I think that if you want to 
make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can 
really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. 
Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and 
in that case, are you willing to  accept the traditional axioms for 
knowing. That is:

1) If p is knowable then p is true;
2) If  p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable;
3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is 
knowable

(+ some logical rules).

  

Bruno,

I like where this may be leading This may be the first step to your
roadmap. As you know I have been a supporter of first person primitive
for a long time. My roadmap was simple. It is a chain rule a la
Descartes. I mentionned it before. Let me repost it:

  
I think therefore I am  (Descartes)
I am therefore the world is (Anthropic principle)
The world is therefore the plenitude is. (Principe of
sufficient reason: if something is observed to be arbitrary and without
any cause, then all other alternatives must also be realized)

  

Let me make these statements more precise:

  
 I think what I think, therefore I am what I am. (Descartes
augmented by defining my consciousness and being as a function of my
thought process)
I am what I am, therefore the world is what it is. (Anthropic
principle augmented by defining the world in more precise terms as a
function of exactly who I am - There is a strange echo from the burning
bush in Exodus)
The world is what it is, therefore the plenitude is.

  

Would it be possible to map your three axiomatic lines replacing
"knowable" by "think" and "true" by "exist." Then we have:

  
If p thinks then p exists;
If p thinks then it is thinkable that p thinks;
If it is thinkable that p entails q, then if p thinks then q
thinks.

  

The phrase "it is thinkable" is undefined possibly because of third
person (it?) inferencing. If we make it squarely first person then we
have:

  
If p thinks then p exists; (This maps nicely with Descartes as
stated from a third person)
If p thinks then p think that p thinks; (This is nice
reflective statement essential to consciousness)
If p think that p entails q, then if p thinks then q thinks.
(The phrase "p entails q" reminds me vaguely of the Anthropic
principle. I am not sure what to make of this. My children think???)

  

George Levy

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Re: K the Master Set (+ partial answer to Tom's Diagonalization)

[George Levy]

Hi Bruno

Each one of us like to do what we do best and we apply our preferred
techniques to the problem at hand. Thus a mechanic may solve the
pollution problem by building electric cars, and the cook may solve the
same problem by preparing vegetarian meals.

As a mathematician you are trying to compose a theory of everything
using mathematics, this is understandable, and you came up with COMP
which is strongly rooted in mathematics and logic.

I came up independently with my own concept involving a generalization
of relativity to information theory ( my background is
engineering/physics) and somehow we seem to agree on many points.
Unfortunately I do not have the background and the time to give my
ideas a formal background. It is just an engineering product and it
feels right.

I believe that what you are saying is right,  however I am having some
trouble following you, just like Norman Samish said. It would help if
you outlined a roadmap. Then we would be able to follow the
roadmap without having to stop and admire the mathematical scenery at
every turn even though it is very beautiful to the initiated, I am
sure. For example you could use several levels of explanation: a first
level would be as if your were talking to your grandmother; a second
level, talking to your kids (if they listen); a last level, talking to
your colleagues. 

George


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Re: Theory of Nothing available

[George Levy]

Russell

Congratulation on your book. I intend to buy the hard copy. I can't wait 
to read it!

George


Russell Standish wrote:

>I'm pleased to announce that my book "Theory of Nothing" is now for
>sale through Booksurge and Amazon.com. If you go to the Booksurge
>website (http://www.booksurge.com, http://www.booksurge.co.uk for
>Brits and http://www.booksurge.com.au for us Aussies) you should get
>the PDF softcopy bundled with the hardcopy book, so you can
>start reading straight away, or you can buy the softcopy only for a
>reduced price. The prices are USD 16 for the hardcopy, and USD 7.50
>for the softcopy.
>
>In the book, I advance the thesis that many mysteries about reality can be
>solved by connecting ideas from physics, mathematics, computer
>science, biology and congitive science. The connections flow both ways
>- the form of fundamental physics is constrained by our psyche, just
>as our psyche must be constrained by the laws of physics. 
>
>Many of the ideas presented in this book were developed over the years
>in discussions on the Everything list. I make extensive references
>into the Everything list archoives, as well as more traditional scientific and
>philosophical literature. This book may be used as one man's synthesis
>of the free flowing and erudite discussions of the Everything list.
>
>Take a look at the book. I should have Amazon's "search inside"
>feature wokring soon. In the meantime, I have posted a copy of the
>first chapter, which contains a precis of the main argument, at
>http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/ToN-chapter1.pdf
>
>  
>


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

[George Levy]

Stephen Paul King wrote:

>little discussion has 
>been given to the implications of taking the 1st person aspect as primary or 
>fundamental. Could you point me toward any that you have seen?
>  
>

Hi Stephen

Alas, I am a mere engineer, not a philosopher. The only author I can 
point you to is John Locke who I was told had some view similar to the 
ones I expressed. I have formed my opinions  mostly independently in the 
process of writing a book (unpublished :'( )  I think that science is 
moving gradually toward first person - starting with Galileo's 
relativity, then Einstein's relativity and finally with QM (MWI). As 
science had progressed, the observer has acquired a greater and greater 
importance. Extrapolating to the limit, "I" becomes central and its 
existence anthropically defines (creates) the world where it resides.

George

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

[George Levy]

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

>I would like to point out that you may have inadvertently veered into 
>the problem that I see in the "Yes Doctor" belief! It is entirely 
>unverifiable. 
>
It is unverifiable from the 3rd person perspective. From the first 
person perspective it is perfectly verifiable. "I" will not observe any 
changes in "myself" after the (brain) substitution. This is a 
fundamental invariance and it is another argument why the first person 
perspective should be the primary one and the 3rd one should be the 
derived one. And here again specifying the frame of reference is 
important to avoid confusion.

George Levy

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Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation

[George Levy]

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

  
  
  
  
  Dear George,
   
      Could it be that Consciousness is more
related and identifiable with the "processing" of Information than with
Information itself?

I agree that consciousness is not just information. As you say,
consciousness seems to be associated with processing of information.
However, even "processing of information" is not sufficient. For
example a computer processes information but is not conscious. There is
also a need for self referentiality.


   Consider the example often raised (I do not know
the original source) of a Book that contained a "complete description"
of Einstein's Brain. It was claimed that this book was in fact
equivalent to Einstein himself even to the degree that one could "have
a conversation with Einstein" by referencing the book. (Never mind the
fact that QM's non-cummutativity of canonical conjugate observables
make it impossible for *any* classical object to be completely
specified in a way that is independent of observational frame, but I
digress...)
   
  http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/intro/notes/einstein.html
   

I am questioning the idea that there can be a book containing a
"complete description" of Einstein's Brain that can be "read"
independently of your frame of reference. Is the book containing a
snapshot of the brain at a particular microsecond in Einstein's life?
In this case I doubt whether this book can be called conscious. 

Or is it a video book containing the whole life history of Einstein's
brain? In which case,  you'll have trouble "reading" the book unless
you change your frame of reference. If you push the "play" button on
the video player all you will see is a movie of Einstein brain
INTERACTING WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT  - NOT YOUR ENVIRONMENT. (This is like
a hologram. Did you know that an object seen in a hologram casts a
shadow in the environment where the hologram is created but not in the
viewing environment?)  Changing your frame of reference to Einstein's
environment would be extremely difficult - you'll need a time machine.

The only "practical?" way to get a good rendition of Einstein's brain
THAT INTERACTS WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT  is to simulate it on a computer.
Then you can call it conscious.

[snip]
   
      Could it be that the "hard Problem" of
consciousness follows inevitably from our hard-headed insistence that
the Universe is Classical ("object have definite properties in
themselves") in spite of the massive pile of unassailable evidence
otherwise? If we treat Consciousness as "what a quantum
computer (brain!) does", i.e. process qubits, instead of a classical
object, maybe, just maybe we might find the "problem" not to be so
intractably "hard" after all! ;-)

You remind me of Penrose with whom I disagree. Using the quantum
computer paradigm is like shoving the mind-body and consciousness
problem under the quantum carpet. We must first get a good
understanding of self referential systems, classical or quantum. Bruno
seems to be on the right track but I think we are still waiting for the
linkage between diagonalization and self referentiality and
consciousness... (forgive me if I have missed something in his
argument) 

   
  
"The message needs no medium!" Marshall McLuhan got it all wrong! :-) 

George Levy

  



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Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation (Was Number and function for non-mathematician)

[George Levy]

In the July 1-7 2006 edition of New Scientist there is a review of the
book "The Comprehensible Cosmos" by Victor Stenger. You can see here a power
point presentation on symmetry by Stenger.

Stenger discusses the idea of symmetry, in particular the work of Emmy
Noether who proved that the conservation of energy is a direct
consequence of time translation symmetry: the same result is obtained
if an experiment is performed now or at a different time. 

Other natural laws can be traced to other symmetries: i.e.,
conservation of momentum to space translation symmetry etc... 

I think it may be valuable to express some of our ideas as
symmetries/invariances/conservation/equivalence. For example the
invariance/conservation of information with regard to the recording
substrate is obvious. Information does not change if you transfer it
from your hard drive to your floppy (ie., hardware translation
symmetry.) This fact, however, may be of far reaching consequence. If
one assumes that consciousness is a type of information then
consciousness become independent of its physical basis: "The message is
independent of the medium!" Or even better: "The message needs no
medium!" Marshall McLuhan got it all wrong!
:-) 

George Levy

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 05-juil.-06, à 20:36, George Levy a écrit :
  
  
   My background is more engineering and physics than
mathematics and I do share some of Norman misgivings. Some of it has
to do with terminology. For example the term "COMP hypothesis" does
not carry any information. 
  
  
One of my old name for it was "digital mechanism hypothesis"
  
  
  
  Would it be more appropriate to rename it as an
invariance,
equivalence or conservation law? For example would it be appropriate
to call it "invariance of consciousness with (change in physical)
substrate?"

  
  
It is more the assumption that there is a level of description of
myself such that my consciousness is indeed invariant for functional
digital substitution made at that level.
  
You can invoke "physical" but then you must make the proof a bit
longer. This is due to the fact that the UDA put doubt on the very
meaning of the word physical, so you need to justify that the use of
"physical" is harmless in the definition of comp.
  
  
Bruno
  
  
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
  
  
  
  



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Re: Number and function for non-mathematician

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hi Norman,
  
  
Le 20-juin-06, à 04:04, Norman Samish a écrit :
  
  
  
  I've endured this thread long
enough!  Let's get back to something I can understand!

  


My background is more engineering and physics than mathematics and I do
share some of Norman misgivings. Some of it has to do with terminology.
For example the term "COMP hypothesis" does not carry any information.
Would it be more appropriate to rename it as an invariance, equivalence
or conservation law? For example would it be appropriate to call it
"invariance of consciousness with (change in physical) substrate?" 

George

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Re: A calculus of personal identity

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 23-juin-06, à 07:29, George Levy a écrit :

  
  
In Bruno's calculus what are the invariances? (Comment on Tom Caylor's 
post)

  
  

Logicians, traditionally, are interested in deduction invariant with 
respect of the interpretation. A typical piece of logic is that: from 
"p & q" you can infer "p". And the intended meaning of this, is that 
that deduction is always valid: it does not depend of the 
interpretations of "p" and "q".

Those who remember the Kripke semantics of the modal logical systems 
remember perhaps that a logical theory is an invariant for the trip 
from world to world when accessible, making the theorems true in all 
(locally and currently perhaps) accessible worlds.
  


I suggest the following invariances which are possibly identical to the
above statement about Kripke semantic, but have a more "physical" point
of view. They may also be related to Church's thesis: 
1) Invariance in the perception of one's own consciousness with changes
in the substrate implementation : "Yes doctor" I agree that a
prosthesis of part of my brain will not affect my consciousness.
2) Invariance in the perception of one's own consciousness with the MW
branching: Bruno in Washington will feel just like Bruno in Moscow
except for his perception of the  environment.
3) Invariance in the laws of physics with substrate implementation:
simulation performed on different computers are indistinguishable if
they perform the same algorithms or functions. (Note that Invariance in
the laws of physics is a general relativity postulate.)
4) Invariance in the laws of physics with MW branching: This invariance
may be grounded in the requirement that consciousness must require
physics with consistent histories and the absence of white rabbits

Notice the parallel between consciousness and the laws of physics.


George

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Re: A calculus of personal identity

[George Levy]

Lee Corbin wrote:

>I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective,
>actually. They also lead to inconsistencies and unnecessary
>differences of opinion. 
>
Interestingly the geocentric Aristotelian system was replaced by the 
heliocentric Copernican system. Then Relativity and Quantum Theory came 
along and restored the centrality of the observer with a vengence. Now 
the frame of reference that defines what is to be observed is not the 
Earth anymore but the observer himself or herself. Different observers 
make different observations, however the important thing is to find the 
invariances.
In Bruno's calculus what are the invariances? (Comment on Tom Caylor's post)

>In history, the 1st person experience
>(e.g. the stars revolve around the Earth) are always upstaged
>sooner or later by actual, objective data.
>  
>
Objective data can only be deduced after all invariances are taken into 
account. Until then all data is subjective.

George

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

[George Levy]

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

  
Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the
mind-body problem.

  
  
[SPK]

I agree! What is an Observer?
  


If we are to use an axiomatic formulation of a TOE then the observer
should be an axiom or even "The Axiom": ala Descartes "I think" and
possibly more precisely and reflexively "I think what I think" 
with all the implied logical meaning and/or axiomatic system:  This
should cut through the Gordian Knot of the mind-body problem. We'll
have to refer to Bruno's work to flesh out this idea in a formal
fashion.

George

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

[George Levy]

Hi Lee,

Lee Corbin wrote:

  George writes

  
  
Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This 
is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain 
the physics and the objects.

This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether 
for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry 
their own "physical substrate." They can be waves and/or particles. 
Similarly there should be equivalence between information and 
matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within 
itself its own physical substrate.

  
  
Well, that sounds good to me, but what do I know.

  
  
Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us 
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have 
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the 
mind-body problem.

  
  
But why can't photographic apparatuses, or amoeba, count as observers?
(They don't have minds, right, or, uh, do they?)

I really confess to not understanding the claim that information is
observer dependent; if a region contained one of thirty-two possible
binary bit strings of length 5, it seems to me that it would contain
five bits, even if no light from it ever reached other parts of the
universe.

Lee

  

If I say something to you in Sanskrit you will likely not understand
it. It will carry zero information. However If I say it in English you
will be much more likely to understand it. 

If I say to you that your name is Lee Corbin, it will not add any
information to what you already know. Again, it will carry zero
information. 

This is what Shannon calls Mutual Information. In the first
case *you* don't have the decoder to translate Sanskrit to
English. In the second case you have the decoder but for *you*,
the information is not new: you already know that your name is
Lee Corbin. Old information is no information at all.
 
Received mutual information is dependent on the information that
already exists in the mind of the receiver (or observer). In this sense
Shannon's information theory is a relativity theory of information just
like Galileo's dynamics and Einstein's relativity are relativity
theories of physics and just like Everett's interpretation is a
relativity theory of quantum events.  

This is the reason I believe that the observer is at the nexus of the
mind-body problem and that eventually we'll find that the "mind" and
the "body" are two aspects of the same thing. Bruno seems to be in the
right track in developing a calculus of the soul (or consciousness).

George


  



  



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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

[George Levy]

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

>Dear Quentin et al,
>
>I keep reading this claim that "only the existence of the algorithm 
>itself is necessary" and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for 
>mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation 
>in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that can 
>be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
>  
>

Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This 
is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain 
the physics and the objects.

This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether 
for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry 
their own "physical substrate." They can be waves and/or particles. 
Similarly there should be equivalence between information and 
matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within 
itself its own physical substrate.

Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us 
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have 
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the 
mind-body problem.

George

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Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

>Proceeding that way you will run into trouble. But it is very easy to 
>find the k.
>Let us be specific and let us imagine you have already written in 
>Fortran a generator of all programs of the one-variable partial 
>computable functions: F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 ...
>The list of programs is P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 ... Each Pi(n) computes  Fi(n)
>
>Now program G in "Fortran". It is something like that:
>
>Begin G
>Read X
>Call the generator of program up to X, giving PX
>Apply PX on X, and put the result in register 439
>Add 1 to the content of register 439
>Output the content of register 439
>End
>
>Now, look at your list of programs Pi until you find it, and look at 
>his number code (where n is the number code of Pn by definition). 
>Finding your program in your list of programs should be easy given that 
>the list P1 P2 P3 ... is ordered lexicographicaly (by length, and by 
>alphabetical order for those of same length). So you can find it 
>easily. Is number code is the number k. If you run G on k, your fortran 
>interpreter will run for ever (and your fortran compiler will generate 
>a code which run for ever). Speaking just a little bit loosely.
>
>  
>
Let's be more specific.
Begin G
Read X
Call generator of program which produces P1, P2, P3..in sequence. Select 
Program PX.
Compute the value PX(X).
Save the value into register 439
Add 1 to content of register 439. Call this value Y

Now look at the list of all programs P1(1), P2(2) The scanning 
program could be:

i = 1(initiate counter i to 1)
Start Loop
If Pi(i) = Y then k=i; Exit
Else i=i+1
End if
End Loop

My point is that the loop will never end and you will never find k. If 
you did find k then Pk(k) = P(k)+1 which is impossible.
However, I don't see any problem in using P(x) for computing G(x) for any x

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Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)

[George Levy]

I went on a 10 day trip during which I had no access to email... a lot 
has happened on this list since then.

Bruno Marchal wrote:

>And fortran programs 
>are fortran generable, so I can generate a sequence of all fortran 
>one-variable program F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8  ("all" means that 
>soon or later this sequence goes trough any fortran programs: it is of 
>course an infinite set)
>
>So, given that the sequence F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, ... is generable, the 
>corresponding diagonal function G defined by
>
>G(n) = Fn(n) + 1
>
>*is* programmable in fortran. So there *is* a k such that G = Fk
>
>And what will happen if I apply G on its own number-code k?
>
>Just this: your machine will crash! The fortran interpreter will go in 
>loop or in an infinite computations.
>
>  
>
Ok. G(n) = Fn(n)+1 is computable. The hard part is finding the k such 
that G(k)=Fk(k). I could try scanning all instances of Fk(k) from k=0 to 
a very large number. The scan will never find a match.because there is 
no k that satisfies both G(k) = Fk(k)+1 and G(k)=Fk(k).

>The key point if, I may insist, is that
>
>1) the superset (of programmable functions, not everywhere defined) is 
>MECHANICALLY enumerable. You can write a fortran program generating 
>their codes.
>2) the subset of (computable function from N to N) is enumerable, but 
>is NOT MECHANICALLY enumerable. The bijection with N exists, but is not 
>programmable, in *any* programming language!
>
>
>George ? Are you ok. 
>  
>
Hanging on Remember, I would like to know how all this relates to *me.*

George




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Re: Reasons and Persons

[George Levy]

Russell Standish wrote:

  
This would imply that there exist "islands" of indentity, and having
limited awareness in time and multispace, we can only ever be aware of
one instance from each island, but that might change with technology.

BTW another analogy is the islands of geneflow within biological
species. Within biology, we have such things as ring species, where
two species at a location (eg Britain) cannot interbreed, yet can
interbreed with neighbouring species to the east and west in an
interrupted chain that circumnavigates the pole. (Sorry I may not be
explaining the concept of ring species too well - look up Wikipedia).

In such a case, perhaps "ring identities" such as Jesse Mazer <->
Bruno Marchal do exist - but I'd like to be surer of the analogy. Also
ring species are the exception, not the rule, in Nature.
  


If we can define an intermediary state common to all species then we
will have bridged all the isolated island. 
It seems that at the embryonic stage and possibly at the fetus stage,
rhe nervous circuitry is so simple that it may be common between all
individual of a specie and there are no identity islands. So we could
say with near certainty that Bruno Marchal and Jesse Mazer used to
be one and the same. 
In addition we may assume that embryonic and fetal development allows
for a continuous distribution of neurons in the brain rather than in
discrete space positions, and an incremental connectivity of the
neurons such that any particular  neuron may differ by a single
connection. With these assumptions we may infer that there is a
continuity in personal identity from anyone to anyone. 

George

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Re: Ascension (was Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example)

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

>Meanwhile, I 
>would like to ask George and the others if they have a good 
>understanding of the present thread, that is on the fact that growing 
>functions has been well defined, that each sequence of such functions 
>are well defined, and each diagonalisation defines quite well a precise 
>programmable growing function (growing faster than the one in the 
>sequence it comes from).
>Just a tiny effort, and I think we will have all we need to go into the 
>"heart of the matter", and to understand why comp makes our "universe" 
>a godelized one in the Smullyan sense.
>  
>

To speak only for myself,  I think I have a sufficient understanding of 
the thread. Essentially you have shown that one cannot form a set of all 
numbers/functions because given any set of numbers/functions it is 
always possible, using diagonalization,  to generate new 
numbers/functions: the Plenitude is too large to be a set. This leads to 
a problem with the assumption of the existence of a Universal Dovetailer 
whose purpose is to generate all functions. I hope this summary is accurate.

George

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Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

[George Levy]

One can create faster and faster rising functions and larger and larger
number until one is blue in the face. The point is that no matter how
large a finite number n one defines, I can stand on the
shoulder of giants and do better by citing n+1 using simple addition. 

Now if somehow one came up with a finite number n so large that I
am not allowed to say n+1 as if I was up against an overflow
limitation similar to that found in computers, then there would be no
physical way for me to invent or cite a larger number.  So it seems
that if we are to define a largest finite number we must define
it in conjunction with the number b of bits that we are allowed
to use to express this number. For a given number of bits b the largest
number would be n(b).

If we use the Ackerman series of functions we need 1 bit for addition,
2 bits for multiplication, 3 bits for exponentiation, 4 bits for
tetration etc... These bits are required in addition to the bits for
the input parameter(s) of the function.

What is the largest number of bits which are available to me to
define an Ackerman function or some other fast rising function?
Possibly the number of particles in the universe? I  don't know if the
fairy would be satisfied or if I could personally herd all those bits.
Is she expecting me to hand in a piece of paper with the number written
on it? Maybe then the answer would be the number generated by the
largest Ackerman function that I can write with a very fine pen on this
piece of paper.

George


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Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Now I think I should train you with diagonalization. I give you an 
exercise: write a program which, if executed, will stop on the biggest 
possible natural number. Fairy tale version: you meet a fairy who 
propose you a wish. You ask to be immortal but the fairy replies that 
she has only finite power. So she can make you living as long as you 
wish, but she asks precisely how long. It is up too you to describe 
precisely how long you want to live by writing a program naming that 
big (but finite) number. You have a limited amount of paper to write 
your answer, but the fairy is kind enough to give you a little more if 
you ask.
You can ask the question to very little children. The cutest answer I 
got was "7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 7" (by a six year old). Why seven? It was the 
age of his elder brother!

Hint: try to generate an infinite set S of more and more growing and 
(computable) functions, and then try to diagonalize it. S can be 
{addition, multiplication, exponentiation,   (?)}. More hints 
and answers later. I let you think a little bit before. (Alas it looks 
I will be more busy in may than I thought because my (math) students 
want supplementary lessons this year ...).

  

Any potentially largest finite number n that I could name could be
incremented by 1 so this finite number could not be the largest. The
trick is not to name a particular number but to specify a method to
reach the unreachable.

Method 1) Use the fairy power against her. She says she has "finite
power". Ask for precisely the largest number of days she can provide
with her "finite power." This method is similar to the robber's
response when the victim asks him "how much money do you want?": "All
the money in your pocket."

Method 2) Use the concept of "limits" Ask for as many days it would
take to obtain a sum of 2 as terms in the series 1+1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +
1/16. If the fairies knows any math she may argue that the series
never reaches 2. On the other hand I may argue that "in the limit" it
does reach 2.

Method 3) Come up with a unprovably non-halting problem: For
example ask for as many days as required digits in PI to prove that PI
has a single repetition of a form such that digits 1 to n match
digits  n+1 to 2n. For example 2^0.5 = 1.4142135... has a  single
repetition (1 4 match 1 4) in which digits 1 to 2 match digits 3 to 4.
Similarly  79^0.5=8.8881944 and 147^0.5= 12.12435565. Note that the
repetition must include all numbers 1 to n from the beginning and match
all number n+1 to 2n The problem with this approach is I don't know for
sure if PI is repeatable or non-repeatable (according to above
requirements.)  I don't even know if this problem is unprovable. All I
know is that the probability for any irrational to have a single repeat
is about 0.. For PI the probability is much lower since I already
know PI to a large number of digits and as far as I can see it does not
repeat. However, with this approach I could be taking chances.

Diagonalization clearly allows you to specify a number outside any
given set of number, but I have not been able to weave it into this
argument. 

George

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Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

[George Levy]

Bruno,

Thank you for still working on my post. I am working on the reply, in 
particular designing the set of function or number that can be 
diagonalized to generate a large number. I shall be busy this weekend 
with family matters but I will reply to you in detail.

I agree that the idea of quantum suicide did not originate with Tegmark, 
even though he is the one who popularized it. The idea also came to me 
independently in the early 1990's as I was pondering the Scroedinger cat 
experiment. What if I was the cat? How would I feel? What if I was the 
scientist conducting the experiment and I was inside a larger box 
enclosing the whole experiment? Would I feel the superposition? These 
are very obvious questions to ask. This Scroedinger cat experiment 
approximately dates to the 1920-1930's (?) and it is very well possible 
that others have had the same thought.

George

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The Riemann Zeta - Trouble opening posts

[George Levy]

I have had trouble opening "The Riemann Zeta Pythagorean TOE" posts. As 
soon as I open the post my mail software (in Netscape) closes. I think 
there is an invisible character or command associated with the subject 
line, that forces the software to close.

I have also experienced the same effect on two other occasions. The 
first required the word "sponsor" to be in the subject line. The second 
required the "!!!" to be in the subject line. My virus software did not 
detect any virus. If you continue this thread could you please erase the 
subject line and retype it. This should get rid of the phantom command.

Has anyone else have the same problem?

George

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Re: The Riemann Zeta Pythagorean TOE

[George Levy]

I think there is a need for one more person. This is how I would define
first person pov and third person pov:

Third person is a single history pov that requires the
observation of
an event whose existence does not correlate with the existence of the
observer. This is the classical, objective, scientific pov.

First person is a single history pov that requires the
observation of an event whose existence correlates with the existence
of the observer. Thus in a Quantum suicide experiement the bomb never
goes off from the first person pov but almost always goes off from the
third person pov.

The additional required person(s) is/are the plural, in which one would
be aware of all the histories. There may even be a need for a first
person plural and a third person plural:  in other words, even in the
plural our observation of multiple histories may be affected if the
event we are observing bears on our own existence. This is the pov in
experiments involving quantum superposition.

Tom, your definition of 3rd person is more like my definition of 3rd
person plural. 
First person is a single history and corresponds to: "I" AND "the bomb
does not go off.". 
Third person is a single history and corresponds to "I" AND the bomb
goes off/probability{bomb goes off}. 
Plural person is multiple histories regarding the bomb, and corresponds
to "I" AND ("the bomb goes off" inclusive OR "the bomb does not go
off".) = "I"

George Levy


Tom Caylor wrote:

  Bruno,

I have a couple of random thoughts, but I hope they are not too
incoherent (decoherent?) for someone to understand and see if it leads
anywhere.

First, it seems that the comp distinction between 1st and 3rd person
point-of-view can be expressed roughly as OR vs. AND respectively.  In
other words, from the 1st person pov, I am either in one history OR the
other (say Moscow or Washington).  From the 3rd person pov, someone is
both in one history AND the other history at the same time (perhaps
like quantum superposition?).  Now roughly when we OR independent
probabilities we use ADDITION, and when we AND them we use
MULTIPLICATION.  This rings a bell with Godel's sufficiently rich set
of axioms.  It similarly rings a bell with the prime numbers.  Could
there be a connection here through this means?

Secondly, conversely to your thoughts, perhaps given the above
connection to help out, could the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis
supply the elimination of white rabbits from comp?

Tom




  



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Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
<>
Le 25-mars-06, à 00:51, George Levy a écrit :
  
Smullyan's white knigth had the mission to teach me about the logic of 
G
and G*. Sorry, he failed.
  
  
All right, but this is just because he miss Church Thesis and Comp. His 
purpose actually is just to introduce you to Godel and Lob theorems, 
not to computer science. The heart of the matter is that mathematical 
systems (machines, angels, whatever)  cannot escape the diagonalisation 
lemma, and so life for them is like the life of those reasoners 
travelling on fairy knight Knave island with curious self-referential 
question.
With comp *we* cannot escape those diagonal propositions.

  

I am looking forward to examples involving people being
diagonalized...hmmm Hilbert did come up with a thought experiment with
an infinite number of people lodged in a hotel actually we want to
go further than that and assume an infinite number of selves in the
many-worldOnce upon many times (Ils etaient des fois...), there
were several princesses...they looked into self referential magic
mirrorsand they lived ever after.


  
I would like someone to come up with an extreme adventure story like 
the
travelling twin, Schroedinger's cat, or Tegmark's suicide experiment to
illustrate G and G*. For example this story would describe a close 
brush
with death.. It would create a paradox by juxtaposing 1) classical or
common sense logic assuming a single world,

  
  
  
   I think you miss the diagonalization 
notion. I will work on that. 

I am looking forward to being diagonalized. I hope it won't hurt too
much.

  I will give you "real examples", but don't 
throw out FU to quickly. \
  

OK.

George

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Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

[George Levy]

Dear members of the list, Bruno and those who understand G.

I have read or rather tried to read Smullyan's book. His examples are 
totally fabricated. I will never meet the white knight in the island of 
liars and truthtellers. I need examples which are relevant to life, at 
least the way I understand it in the context of the many-worlds.

Einstein (or maybe someone writing about relativity) came up with the 
paradox of the travelling aging twin. Schroedinger came up with his 
cat's paradox. Tegmark came up with the quantum suicide experiment. 
Granted, I will never travel near the speed of light; I will never put a 
cat in a box equipped with a random and automatized killing device; and 
I will not attempt suicide; my wife would just kill me. However, these 
examples fired up my imagination: travelling near the speed of light, 
existing in a superposition of state, surviving a nuclear bomb under 
your chair.

Smullyan's white knigth had the mission to teach me about the logic of G 
and G*. Sorry, he failed. The white knight does not fire up my 
imagination. I don't care about his island and about his questions. 
However I do care about life, death and immortality. The many-world does 
seem to guarantee a form of immortality, at least according to some 
interpretations. I consider this issue to be very relevant since sooner 
or later each one of us will be facing the issue of death or of non-death.

I would like someone to come up with an extreme adventure story like the 
travelling twin, Schroedinger's cat, or Tegmark's suicide experiment to 
illustrate G and G*. For example this story would describe a close brush 
with death.. It would create a paradox by juxtaposing 1) classical or 
common sense logic assuming a single world, 2) classical or common sense 
logic assuming the many-world, and 3) G/G* logic assuming the many-world.

What would the white knight do if he were living in the many-world? What 
kind of situations would highlight his talent to think in G. Would his 
behavior appear to be paradoxical from our logical point of view?

George Levy

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Re: Numbers

[George Levy]

Quentin Anciaux wrote:

  Le Samedi 18 Mars 2006 01:58, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :
  
  
Ground them operationally, then. Real things have real properties and
unreal
things don't. Real properties can be observed empirically. Primeness
then is not
a real property.


  
  
I have to ask you one more time, but I'll reverse the question, what does it 
means for an object not to be real (hence being abstract) ? it is not a joke, 
I want to know. 

I will insert my grain of salt in a very active thread

In my opinion, reality is relative, more precisely, the perception of
reality depends on the level of implementation or the level of
illusion. 

Here I use the term implementation to refer to third person perception
and illusion to refer to first person perception. 

For example, a simulated character perceives simulated objects as real.
He has the illusion that they are real. 

Similarly we perceive our world to be real. It kicks back. We have the
illusion that our world is real. Is it? It all depends how you look at
it. One could say that our consciousness is emergent by the
bootstrapping of reflexive illusions: our world is an illusion that
allows us to have the illusion that we exist.

(I am not sure but it may be that  my term "illusion" has the same
meaning as the term "dream" that Bruno very often uses as in "we are
dreaming machines." )

Thus, in my opinion, there is no absolute reality. All we have is the
implementation/illusion of reality at our level of
implementation/illusion.


George Levy

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Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?

[George Levy]

Norman Samish wrote:

  
  
  
  Thanks to all who replied to my question.  This
question has bothered me for years, and I have hopes that some progress
can be made towards an answer.
  on.  
   
  A state of pure "NO THING" would forbid even the
existence of numbers, or of empty space, or of an empty set.  It would
be non-existence.  
   
  Non-existence seems so much simpler
than the infinity of things, both material and immaterial, that
surrounds us.  So why are things here?  (I'm grateful that they are, of
course.)
   
  Is this a self-consistent, if unanswerable,
question?


If nothingness did exist, that would be an arbitrary state which
therefore would require a cause. 

If something did exist by itself and nothing else, that would also be
arbitrary and would also require a cause. 

The only state that is completely acausal is the plenitude. It is not
arbitrary because all possibilities are there. It also contains zero
information (a form of nothingness without being nothingness).

George

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Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?

[George Levy]

Norman Samish wrote:

>"Why is there something rather than nothing?"
>
>When I heard that Famous Question, I did not assume that "nothing" was 
>describable - because, if it was, it would not be "nothing."  I don't think 
>of "nothing" as an empty bitstring - I think of it as the absence of a 
>bitstring - as "no thing."
>
>Given that definition, is there a conceivable answer to The Famous Question?
>
>Norman
>  
>

It's always easy to answer a hard question with a question. So here are 
possible answers:

Why not?

or

One could equate everything with total absence of information = nothing. 
So we get: "Why is there something rather than everything?" That 
question can be answered by invoking the Anthropic Principle.

George

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Unprovable Physical Truths and Unwinnable Arguments

[George Levy]

There is a great article entitled "The Limts of Reason" by Gregory
Chaitin in the March Issue of  Scientific American page 74. I quote:
 "So perhaps mathematicians should not try to prove
everything. Sometimes they should try to add new axioms. That is what
you have got to do when you are faced with an irreducible fact.
Physicists are willing to add new principles, new scientific laws, to
understand new domains of experience...


 This caused me to think about unprovable physical truths or impossible
measurements. A simple one includes a nice reflective component: "what
do you look like in the mirror with the eyes closed?"

I tried it on my wife when she was in a good mood. "Darling", I said,
"did you ever think about what you look like in the mirror with your
eyes closed?" 
"I know what I look like," she said. "I can imagine it."
"Yeah, but you don't really know for sure."
"I can find out by taking a photograph of myself with my eyes closed,
if I wanted to, but that would be a really stupid thing to do."
Ah ha! Now we are getting somewhere, I thought. Maybe I could squeeze
in the concept of simultaneity a la Einstein. 
Then I turned to her and gave her the coup de grace, "Yeah but you
won't know what you look like at the precise time you look in the
mirror."
She looked at me straight in the eyes and said, "George, you are giving
me a headache!"

The moral of the story is: do not experiment or argue with your wife.
You always come out the loser, even if you win.

George

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Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
George Levy writes:
  
  One more point for Stathis: If atheism is not
a religion, then zero is not a number.

  
There is a clear difference between, on the one hand, believing x
despite the lack of any supporting evidence and, on the other hand, not
believing x because of the lack of any supporting evidence 


As far as I know atheists believe in  no god ( B~G  or
equivalently B( G=f )  ) and agnostics do not commit themselves to
believing in god. (~BG) . In that sense atheists are true believers.
You are confusing the instance with the class. The fact that zero
represents a null value does not mean that its status as a number is
nil. The fact that atheists believe in zero god does not mean
they do not believe in anything.

George

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

Bruno
I am still thinking about the naming issue and I am not 100% satisfied 
with any suggestion. The field we are discussing is really at the 
intersection of three subjects: Theology, Physics and Psychology. This 
reminds me that about six years ago I wrote a book which was never 
published (I did not have the credentials and/or the book was too "far 
out" for the editors). I entitled the book "God, the World and I."  In 
terms of your theory "God, the World and I" may correspond to G*, G and 
the first person.


I am not sure how this could affect the naming issue. Trying to combine 
these three concepts we could get titles such as:


First person Theological Physics? First-person Theo-Mechanics? 
First-person Physical Theology? First-person Machine Theology?? 
Theological Physical Psychology?


Psychology is not really satisfying... I should really be the science of 
the "first-person, the "self" or the "observer" possibly the term 
for it is "relativistic" instead of "psychology")...so we get 
"Relativistic Theological Physics"  or  "Relativistic Theological 
Mechanics".h Upon hearing these words, people may decide to 
lock us up in an insane asilum. :-\


George

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

I understand Bruno's stand on Machine Theology. After all we are really 
talking about the "soul in the machine." It is really controversial but 
so what? It will certainly drive the point home.


One more point for Stathis: If atheism is not a religion, then zero is 
not a number.



George

Re: Lobian Machine

[George Levy]

Stathis,
All I have to do is to use Godel second incompleteness theorem to prove 
that the psychiatrist cannot be sure of his own sanity. We'll have to 
assume that the psychiatrist can follow a mathematical argument. And if 
he doesn't I'll just go to the local university math department to back 
me up. The psychiatrist will then be forced either to lock up the whole 
math department or to accept what they say. Once the  psychiatrist is 
convinced that he may not be sane himself, it'll be a piece of cake to 
convince him to take antipsychotic drugs. And maybe at this point he'll 
really go crazy and leave me alone. :-)


I bet you never had to deal with patients as wily as me. Aye, there is 
method in my madness! :-P


George

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



George Levy writes:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

Godel's result, known as Godel's second incompleteness theorem,  is 
that no consistent machine can prove its own consistency:


IF M is consistent then M cannot prove its consistency




Bruno,

After I read your email, we had a gathering of family and friends, 
and my head being full of the subject of this post. I wanted to test 
the idea of Godel's second incompleteness theorem on the average 
people just to see how they would respond. I found the right place in 
the discussion to insert the paraphrase:


If I am sane, it is impossible to know for sure that I am sane.

This povoked some hilarity, especially with my kids (young adults) 
who probably view me as some kind of nutty professor. While this 
statement is mathematically true, it was not considered serious by 
the people I was talking with. I guess that the average human has no 
doubt about his own sanity.(But my kids had some doubts about mine) 
One way to prove that you are crazy is to assert that you are sane. 
This means that the average human is crazy! :-)



"If I am sane, it is impossible to know for sure that I am sane."

Everybody believes he is sane, whether he is sane or not, and nobody 
can prove he is sane.  In psychiatry, this is the key problem with 
delusions. If it were possible in general to prove one's own sanity, 
then deluded patients, who more often than not retain their ability to 
think logically, would be able to demonstrate to themselves that they 
were deluded. But by definition of a delusion, this is impossible.


If you want to know what it is like for a psychotic patient to have 
forced treatment, imagine that people from the local psychiatric 
facility knock on your door tonight and, after interviewing you, 
politely explain that your belief that you are an engineer, married 
with adult children, own the house you are living in and the car in 
the driveway, and so on, is actually all a systematised delusion. All 
the evidence you present to show you are sane is dismissed as part of 
the delusion, and all the people you thought you could trust explain 
that they agree with the psychiatric team. You are then invited to 
start taking an antipsychotic drug which, over time, will rectify your 
deranged brain chemistry so that you come to understand that your 
current beliefs are delusional. If you refuse the medication, you will 
be taken to the psychiatric ward with the help of police, if 
necessary, where you will again be offered medication, perhaps in 
injection form if you continue to refuse tablets.


Frightening, isn't it?

Stathis Papaioannou

_
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FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

Re: Lobian Machine

[George Levy]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Godel's result, known as Godel's second incompleteness theorem,  is 
that no consistent machine can prove its own consistency:


IF M is consistent then M cannot prove its consistency



Bruno,

After I read your email, we had a gathering of family and friends, and 
my head being full of the subject of this post. I wanted to test the 
idea of Godel's second incompleteness theorem on the average people just 
to see how they would respond. I found the right place in the discussion 
to insert the paraphrase:


If I am sane, it is impossible to know for sure that I am sane.

This povoked some hilarity, especially with my kids (young adults) who 
probably view me as some kind of nutty professor. While this statement 
is mathematically true, it was not considered serious by the people I 
was talking with. I guess that the average human has no doubt about his 
own sanity.(But my kids had some doubts about mine) One way to prove 
that you are crazy is to assert that you are sane. This means that the 
average human is crazy! :-)


George

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

Naming this field is difficult. This is why I made several suggestions 
none of which I thought were excellent.


Bruno Marchal wrote:

I don't think it is a question of vocabulary, 


It is only a question of vocabulary if you intend to communicate with 
other people. And this is where the difficulty lies. If you make the 
name too esoteric they will not even understand what the field is about.


and actually I am not sure we are not in, well *perfect* perhaps not, 
but at least in an a larger matching area than you think.
Perhaps, like so many, you have not yet really understand the impact 
of the discovery by Turing and its relation with Godel's theorem.
When I talk on Platonia, it is really "Platonia" updated by Godel's 
and Lob's theorem. I hope you are open to the idea I could perhaps 
progress in my way of communicating that. It really concerns machines 
and even many non-machines. I think about abandoning comp for ind, 
where ind is for indexical, given that G and G* applies to almost 
anything self-referentially correct.
I knew this for long, the comp hyp just makes the reasoning and the 
verification easier.  


I can already say that I disagree the word "quantum" should be in it. 
The name should not issue what will or should be derived by the theory. 



I do not fully understand the full ramification of how indexical relates 
to this field. However, I think that to use Indexical now is like 
Heisenberg using Entanglement instead of Quantum. Nobody would have 
understood what he was talking about. It was hard enough already to 
understand Quantum.


BTW, COMP is not very good, because you have to explain what it is. At 
first glance it appears to be the Mechanist Philosophy and this is what 
I originally thought.


I think the best approach is to use a compound expression to bridge the 
gap between different fields. (i.e., Quantum electro-chromo dynamics, 
electro-magnetism, physical chemistry)


There is nothing surprising that quantum physics could be derived from 
quantum psycho mechanics. 



Of course it is surprising...not to you or me or others on the list 
because we have been talking about it for so long... but to the average 
scientist in the street... or the university. And these are the people 
you intend to communicate with.


Plato is the one who introduced the word "theology" with the meaning 
of "Science of Gods", and by extension I take it as the science of 
what we can hope or bet upon.  It is just the truth *about* machine, 
and we can talk and reason about it without ever knowing that truth, 
given that no scientist at all can *know* the truth, at least as knowed.


I think this science relates primarily to the "self." As I said before, 
I think that it it the "I" that creates the (orderliness in the) world. 
This is not a new idea. Some philosophers have asserted this idea 
before.  Does this makes "I" a god? Not in the traditional sense of 
"Theology" which carries too much baggage.  This is my own emphasis 
which may not be shared by everyone on this list.
I am aware of the popular meaning of "psycho" = crazy as John mentioned. 
We could draw from other language than the Greek (auto, psyche) or Latin 
(anima, spiritus) but we lose the ability to be widely understood: 
Hebrew: nefesh, neshamah Japanese: tamashii.  Neshamah Mechanics is not 
going to fly. Tamashii Mechanics sounds like sushi to the average westerner.


To talk on immortality issues (cf: quantum immortality or 
comp-immortality) without accepting we are doing theology is perhaps a 
form of lack of modesty. Nobody would dare to try to help me making a 
case for the use of the word "theology"?


Of course we are doing theology but don't say it too loud or you'll get 
involved in a religious war. I think theology has too much baggage and 
is populated by people with faith - a virtue for them, a vice for us. :-)


George

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

Bruno, John and Stephen

More on naming:

I think the name should include the following concepts
1) modal or relativistic or relative formulation or first person,
2) quantum or quantics,
3) psycho or psyche or consciousness or ego,
4) mechanics or theory.

So, picking one term from each row we could get names such as
first person quantum psychomechanics or
relative formulation of quantum psyche theory (this alludes to Everett's 
interpretation)


Sounds impressive!  :-)
George

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[George Levy]

Bruno

I don't think either "machine psychology" or "machine theology" work
because of the baggage those field already carry. In any case the
attribute "machine" sends the wrong picture. And as you have pointed
out the terms "computer science"  and "number theory" do not capture
the real issue of machine consciousness. In fact I do not think
there is any word in English or French to describe what you are up to.

Why don't you use a new word with no baggage to describe what you are
doing?

"Psychomechanics" is not listed in most dictionaries
. Unfortunately, this word has already been invented. It can be found
on Google
in the context of animation and games and possibly Linguistics.

It may be that others in this list  can think of a better word. 

George

Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow

[George Levy]

Le 14-déc.-05, à 01:34, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

In the multiverse, only other people end up in dead ends. Although 
from a third person perspective every entity in the multiverse could 
be said to exist only transiently because at every point of an 
entity's history we can say that there sprouts a dead end branch of 
zero extent, from a first person perspective, these branches cannot 
by definition ever be experienced.


If the laws of physics are contingent on the continuation of 
consciousness, it is very well possible that a very large majority of 
branches are very short and dead ends. In other words every nanoseconds 
we suffer a thousand deaths through events which are perceived to be 
unlikely due to the  apparent stability of the physical laws, events 
such as proton decay, beta capture, nuclear fusion due to nucleus 
tunneling, etc...


Bruno Marchal wrote:


I know you have solved the "only if" part of following exercise:

(W, R) is reflexive iff  (W,R) respects Bp -> p.

I will come back on the "if" part later.

Have you done this: showing that

(W,R) is a "Papaioannou multiverse"   iff(W,R) respects Dt 
-> D(Bf).


Note that this question is a little bit academical. I have already 
explain how I will choose the modal logics. Actually I will not choose 
them, I will extract them from a conversation with the machine (and 
its "guardian angel"). This will leave no choice. It will happen that 
the formula
Dt -> D(Bf) will appear in the discourse machine; indeed perhaps some 
of you know already that this is just the second incompleteness of 
Godel, once you interpret Bp by "the machine proves p", coded in some 
language the machine can use.



George

Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow

[George Levy]

Jesse Mazer wrote:


Also, I'm still confused about your original argument:

"Since you agree that the number of histories is on a continuum, you 
must accept that no matter how large or small a segment of the 
continuum is considered, the number of histories is the same. Hence 
measure is the same for any observer."


What is the "number of histories" that is the same here? Weren't you 
saying the number is infinity? And do you agree that in general it is 
not correct to say that because two sets contain an infinite number of 
elements, that means their measure must be the same?



Jesse,
I am only talking about the cardinality of the continuum as applied to 
the number of histories and its implication regarding measure: Since the 
number of histories included in the past of an observer - and consistent 
with his present - has the same  infinity as the continuum, then this 
cardinality is the same for any observer. To ask an observer about his 
own measure (when he is alive of course) is meaningless.


As an example consider the following hypothetical situation: suppose 
that one of the greatest scientist such as Isaac Newton had never been 
born. Classical Mechanics would still have been invented, but years 
later, maybe centuries later and the course of our civilazation would 
have been different. Surely his birth was an unlikely event. Does it 
mean that our civilizaton has a low measure compared to retarded 
civilization where he was never born? It sure does not "feel" like it - 
from a first person point of view.


The only way to talk meaningfully about measure is when you can compare 
two situations from a third person point of view: for example, if you 
witness someone die from a freak event you could conclude that he 
continued living in a world with lower measure than yours. This is a 
third person point of view. However, from that person's point of view 
(first person), the freak event never happened and therefore he will 
consider his measure to be just as high as yours.


George

Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow

[George Levy]

Jesse Mazer wrote:



George Levy wrote:



Jesse Mazer wrote:


George Levy:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

we are "conscious" only because we belong to a continuum of 
infinite never ending stories ...
...that's what the lobian machine's "guardian angel"  G* says 
about that: true and strictly unbelievable.



Bruno
Since you agree that the number of histories is on a continuum, you 
must accept that no matter how large or small a segment of the 
continuum is considered, the number of histories is the same. Hence 
measure is the same for any observer.




The whole concept of "measure" is based on assigning different 
probabilities to different infinite sets--the fact that two sets 
have the same cardinality doesn't imply they must have the same 
measure. For example, any continuous probability distribution used 
in statistics (the bell curve, for example) can be used to assign a 
measure to an arbitrary finite interval (which necessarily contains 
an infinite number of points), the measure just being the area under 
the curve over that interval.


Jesse




Jesse I agree with you from the third person perspective. You can 
only take a measure of infinite sets when you have more then one set 
. In other words you need at least two sets so you can compare them. 
However in the case of first person perspective, the observer has 
only his own set. All he has is the cardinality of the set and he has 
only one set. No other set to compare it to. The cardinality is the 
same for all first person observers.


George



But if you have one set with an infinite number of elements, you can 
assign different measures to different infinite subsets of that set. 
And weren't you talking about an infinite "number of histories" above?


Jesse


Jesse,
the infinite number of histories refer to the continuum of histories. 
The first person observer can only perceive through his own experiments 
that physics in his own world, provides a infinite number of histories 
as large as the continuum.  All he knows is that his own history  is 
embedded in a continuum of histories.


George