ADMIN: cross-postings
I would like to avoid too much cross posting between this mailing list and other mailing lists, such as the Fabric of Reality. The reason is that people might be subscribed to both, in which case they'll get duplicate copies, or they may be subscribed to only one, in which case their responses will be rejected by the other list. If you want to post something here that is also of interest to members of another mailing list, go ahead, but please note in the post which list follow-up discussion should be directed to. Anyone who wants to repond should do so in that list.
Re: JOINING posts
I have not posted to this list before, but I have read many posts with interest. Professionally, I do modeling and simulation of air transportation systems, including some applications of agent-based modeling, game theory and decision analysis. I have a few publications in these areas. I have a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy (Carnegie-Mellon) and M.S. in Physics (Cornell). I participate in Santa Fe Institute meetings a couple of times per year and have a general interest in complex adaptive systems. Although I'm not a Buddhist scholar by any means, I'm a practicing Buddhist and have a basic knowledge of some Buddhist philosophical schools. Personally, I am interested in ontology, and in linking Buddhist philosophy to Western scientific ideas. I've read or perused various books and articles (Dennett, Chalmers, Wheeler,... plus various Buddhist texts) relevant to this. Thanks to everyone on the list, Len Wojcik Arlington, VA US Wei Dai wrote: > > I find that I often have trouble understanding posts on this mailing list, > given the wide range of intellectual ground that it covers. It seems that > people sometimes assume a background in an academic field, and I'm not > even sure what the field is, or how to get up to date or at least familiar > with it. On the other hand, sometimes a poster is just a crank and isn't > making any sense at all. It can be hard to tell the difference. > > Perhaps it would help if list members each posts a short biography of > themselves, and tell us their intellectual backgrounds. What fields are > you familiar with, what relevant books/papers have you read, etc.? This > way, if you don't understand someone's post, you can look up his JOINING > post in the archive and figure out what background he is assuming. I got > this idea from the SL4 mailing list; maybe it will work here as well. > > To begin with myself, I work as a cryptographic engineer, which means I > design and implement computer security mechanisms, with a focus on the > cryptographic parts. I have a BA in computer science, and have taken > courses in linguistics, theory of computation, number theory, algebra, > probability theory, and game theory. > > I think I first encountered the idea that all possible universes exist in > the novel _Permutation City_ by Greg Egan, and then in Tegmark and > Schmidhuber's papers. I started this mailing list after reading both of > those papers. > > I've scanned through _An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its > Applications_, Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi, and read parts of it in enough > detail to have found several previously unreported errors. It's about > algorithmic information theory, and I personally think it is the single > most important book for list members to read. > > Here are some other books that I've read outside of formal education that > seem relevant. > > _The Selfish Gene_, Richard Dawkins. Theory of evolution. > _Gödel, Escher, Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid_, Douglas Hofstadter. On > self-reference. > _Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computation_. Entropy and the > physics of computation. > _Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology_, Stewart Shapiro. > > I'm finding that I don't have enough knowledge about foundations of > mathematics, foundations of decision theory, and quantum mechanics. I'm > currently reading the following books to rectify the situation: > > _The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory_, James Joyce > _A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics_, John S. Townsend > _Foundations Without Foundationalism : A Case for Second-Order Logic_, > Stewart Shapiro > > Ok, who wants to go next?
Re: JOINING posts
Dear All, I've been lurking for a while while I try to figure out something useful to contribute, but figured you should at least know I'm here... I'm a postdoctoral research fellow at Cambridge (UK), working in palaeontology - specifically, the early evolution of various invertebrate groups, and the relationship of physiochemical environmental factors to evolutionary patterns. I also have an outside interest in such matters as self-organised criticality, in relation to the origin and evolution of life. I have a slightly mathematical background, in that I intended to pursue theoretical physics before discovering as an undergrad that I enjoyed looking at fossils even more. I have practically no background in computing. My interest in this area lies primarily in the philosophical perspective, and I admit, in a somewhat less rigorous style than I've experienced here. Saibal invited me to this list after reading some comments on another message board discussing whether information merely describes physicality, or actually defines it. My approach to the area is largely non-mathematical, involving mainstream philosophy, and a large pinch of oriental philosophical/religious aspects combined with parapsychology. As you can imagine, it has been difficult trying to usefully find a way into the discussions! As a brief introduction to the sorts of things I've been reading, try: Penrose, R. The emperors's new mind. Capra, F. The Tao of Physics Dennett, D. Consciousness Explained Evolution books by Steve Jones, Dawkins, Gould etc., as well as a large number of specialised papers on Proterozoic and early Phanerozoic evolution. Complexity and chaos-based books, including those by Kauffman, Lewin and Gleick Various oriental texts, but particularly the Wen Tzu, Tao Te Ching, poems of Li Po, "Cultivating Stillness" David-Neel, A. With mystics and Magicians in Tibet Plus several of the "classic" books on philosophy - Hume, Berkeley, Descartes, and anything else I can find, for background. For the parapsychological side, try the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (very mixed content, but some definitely interesting bits - I recommend browsing) As you can tell, this is a slightly unorthodox selection. However, I am, like you, a professional scientist, so please try to think of it merely as a different approach to the same problems, rather than a frivolous pursuit to be immediately dismissed! I look forward to the point when I can follow your arguments fully enough to be able to join in... All the best, Joe Botting - Department of Earth Sciences University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3EQ Phone: ( +44 ) 1223 333400 Fax: ( +44 ) 1223 333450
Re: JOINING posts
My formal education ended back in the beginnings of the seventies with a finished MA in sociology and an invitation to get a doctors degree at the University of Stockholm. But life got in the way. When my wife died two years ago I decided to write a book in order to understand better some of my thinkings during all those years. I finished the book in seven months and have since been trying to get it published. That has proven very hard since Swedish is a small language. Max Tegmark, who is swedish, even though he works in USA has read my manuscript and promised to write a forward if I could get a bookcompany to publish it. He said he was impressed and thought that my work was a fascinating hike in the territory between philosophy and physics and that it was full of original ideas! Unfortunately I don´t suppose many on this list is fluent in swedish, but to give you an idea where I´m at I can show you the bibliography from the book: Bibliografi Barrow, John D.: Universums födelse, Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1995 Blackmore, Susan: The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press, New York 1999 Casti, John L.: Searching for certainty, Scribners, London 1992 Close, Frank: Lucifer´s Legacy, Oxford University Press, New York 2000 Davies, Paul: Superforce, Unwin Paperbacks, London 1985 Davies, P.C.W.; Brown J. (eds.): Superstrings - A Theory of Everything?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988 Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, London 1988 Dawkins, Richard: Livets flod, Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1996 Dennet, Daniel C.: Consciousness Explained, Penguin Books, London 1992 Dennet, Daniel C.: Darwin´s Dangerous Idea, Touchstone, New York 1996 Dennet, Daniel C.: Kinds of Minds - Toward an Understanding of Consciousness, BasicBooks, New York 1996 Deutsch, David: The Fabric of Reality, Penguin Books, London 1997 Gell-Mann, Murray: Kvarken och Jaguaren, ICA-förlaget, Västerås 1994 Greene, Brian: The elegant universe, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1999 Guttmann Y.M.: The concept of probability in statistical physics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999 Hawking, Stephen W.: Kosmos - En kort historik, Rabén Prisma, Stockholm 1992 Hawking, Stephen W.: Svarta hål och universums framtid, Rabén Prisma, Stockholm 1994 Hoffmeyer, Jesper: Livstecken, Bonnier Alba, Stockholm 1997 Hutten, Ernest H.: The Ideas of Physics, Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1967 Jaynes, Julian: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1982 Livio, Mario: The Accelerating Universe, John Wiley & Sons, New York 2000 Monod, Jacques: Slump och nödvändighet, Aldus/Bonniers, Stockholm 1972 Smolin, Lee: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2000 Wick, David: The Infamous Boundary, Springer-Verlag, New York 1995 Artiklar David Deutsch: Comment on "'Many Minds' Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics by Michael Lockwood", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 222-8 (1996) David Deutsch: Proceedings of the Royal Society A455, 3129-3197 Quantum Theory of Probability and Decisions (1999) David Deutsch: Proceedings of the Royal Society A456, 1759-1774 Information Flow in Entangled Quantum Systems (2000) David Deutsch, Artur Ekert, Rossella Luppachini: Machines, Logic and Quantum Physics, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 3, 3 (September 2000) David Deutsch: The Structure of the Multiverse, opublicerad artikel som blev framsidesstoff i New Scientist (14 Juli 2001) Horava & Witten: Eleven-dimensional supergravity on a manifold with boundary, Nucl. Phys. B475 (1996) Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhard, Turok: The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes and the Origin of the Hot Big Bang, arXiv:hep-th/0103239 (Mars 2001) Tegmark & Wheeler: 100 Years of the Quantum, Scientific American (Februari 2001) Max Tegmark: Is ``the theory of everything'' merely the ultimate ensemble theory?, Annals of Physics 270, 1-51 (November 1998) Michael Brooks: Enlightenment in the barrel of a gun, The Guardian (1997) Anne Runehov: Mind, Brain, Quantum & Time: A Lockwoodian perspective, Magisteruppsats vis Stockholms Universitet Filosofiska Institutionen (1999) Steane & van Dam: Quantum entanglement looks like telepathy when three physicist get together on a game show, Physics Today 35-39, (Februari 2000) Webbpublikationer E. T. Jaynes: Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, fragment till ett bokmanuskript från Juni 1994, PDF-format på webbadressen bayes.wustl.edu (Augusti 2001) Christoph Schiller: Motion Mountain - Hiking beyond space and time along the concepts of modern physics, lärobok i fysik under utarbetande, PDF-format på webbadressen dse.nl/motionmountain/welcome.html (Augusti 2001) - Original Message - From: "Wei Dai" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 7:47 PM Subject: JOINING posts > I find that I often have trouble understanding posts on this mailing list, > given the wide range of intellectual ground that it covers. It seem
