Re: 2C Mary - How minds perceive things and not things
Hi Been lurking a few weeks, feeling a little overwhelmed by how much more everyone seems educated on the topic than I've managed to absorb through my own casual readings. Internet geek, psychonaut from South Africa, no formal education. :-) (Apologies for length - so much I want to cover) R Hlywka wrote: Think of a brain more than just an intake valve, reacting to similar stuff, and not so similar stuff. Yes it may be more than an input valve in the sense that it's an information processing organ, but it's still largely just an automation organ governed by rules, filters and prior knowledge (genetic or learned through bumps on the head as we stumble). A key factor here is the automation element. I don't have the references at hand (but it's available online) in which some researchers (well one in particular whose name escapes me) theorises that as humans we are 99.999% automation, with the only real stream of conscious thought being the 0.001% clean slate we start off with if you take away the predisposed starting conditions of genetics and nurture. My point may not be directly relevant to the thread, but it's useful to remember in the context of the simulation argument. It's much easier to code an automated system (even a self-learning one) than it is to code conscious thought. Given enough processing power and computational cycles, it's possible to accept that the output may so closely resemble conscious thought that it can be defined as such, even if it's only a self-evident to the program itself (i.e. as a starting condition, when X = Y, consider self as Z(en) :-) But that is merely predisposed grow pattern. There is an interesting paradox here though. While we could write off everything we think/do/feel as merely iterations of an existing predisposed grow pattern, and that all external input in addition to the predisposed grow pattern as the same process occuring to external things, we are still faced with the perception (illusion?) that we are conscious and that we can influence the direction in which our lives move forward (or consciously adjust our pattern matching techniques to better suit survival) Then there is the added element of randomness or perhaps entropy ... even in a 100% controlled simulation experiment, with every possible starting condition being accounted for, something new can still enter the equation. In turn this leads to more knowledge about starting conditions, which affects the next simulation, which in turn gives rise to a new random element. What is this random element exactly? I don't know (besides unlearned knowledge). Seems like the more we learn about the universe, the more questions we don't have answers for. In this sense, an infinite number of simulation programs only serve as a filter for discovering a more complete set of starting conditions for each iteration. (Assuming you have an existing 'reality' to compare the simulations to). Anyway, my point is that any predisposed grow pattern is just a filter technique for finding out what has been missed from the initial starting conditions, even if the predisposed grow pattern is an entirely random biological process. (life continues even if the organisms don't) but this is where you get a smart galaxy. it can learn to filter out what it feels it does not need to PAY ATTENTION TO. It's much harder to consiously learn filteration patterns than it is to unconciously learn them. Just observe any child growing up - they take on more of their parents behavioral patterns through unconcious behavioral duplication than anything else. (Kinda in direct opposite to Do as I say, not as I do) The fact that an organ can replicate the filtration processes of other organs in it's sphere of influence does not mean it's smart. Parrots can fool people into thinking they're conscious of the meaning of the words they replicate, but they're not much smarter than any animal that realises it can have an easy ride to food and protection. I'd say that's more instinct than 'smart'. Ditto for humans. Instinctively we replicate the behavioral patterns and learnings of the other humans within our sphere of influence because if we don't - we get rejected (or in some cases killed) because we don't resemble our family/tribe/community closely enough. (You want cultural diversity - come to South Africa - no matter how PC you may feel you are, integration is a massively difficult task for any species, even within the species itself. Even a conscious attempt demonstrates just how preconcieved our thinking patterns really are) We code our memory by the continious rearangement of pathways. This is an entirely unconscious process, born of millions of years of accidental combinations of chemicals and environment. Working just on a sort of game theory principle, even the most simple of single celled organisms would find it beneficial to colocate as a multicellular organism for the simple purpose of reducing the number of functions each
Re: a prediction of the anthropic principle/MWT
John Collins wrote: For instance, our planet might have experienced an unusually high number of 'near misses' with other astronomical bodies. I'm always amused by the sense of deja-vu which occured on mailing lists. There I was looking at the moon, thinking how lucky we are it caught a number of astronomical bodies instead of us, only to come to the computer and find the same/similar topic being broght up. Sit on enough mailing lists and it soon becomes apparent the same/similar thing gets thought of (and at times communicated) by a significant number of people for it to be more than mere co-incidence. (Brings to mind the research being done as to whether a mass concentration of thought can actually affect the outcome of a random computational process - with some successes already being demonstrated) See the Global Consciousness Project http://noosphere.princeton.edu for more information on this. Now that we're here to watch, the universe will be forced to obey the law of averages, so there could be a significantly higher probability of a deadly asteroid collision than would be indicated by the historical frequeny of said events. Perhaps we should carefully compare how often the other planets have been hit with how often we have: They certainly look more craterful See above :-) What if on an purely unconscious level we can manipulate reality itself? If in a group of prepared trials, a number of people concentrating on a single number (all the same number) can cause a computational random number generator to be statistically less than random for the duration of that 'group' thought then maybe the same process can apply outside of merely influencing an electrical process. Maybe it can be extended to matter itself? Perhaps there are two ways of looking at it: a) in any universe which gives rise to complex organisms (perhaps sentient) there is a statistically lower averare of astronomical collissions compared to other bodies in the same region, leading to the argument that the lower than average collisions allowed for complex organisms to form b) in any universe which gives rise to complex organisms, the number of astronomical collisions will decline in proportion to the complexity of the biological organisms present (even if that means sending organisms into space to reroute potential collisions :-P) Bretton -- Cellular: +27.82.494.6902 Yahoo: bretton_cubed ICQ: 175753755 GPG key : http://bretton.hivemind.net/bretton_public.key trends::nu-media::techno-philosophy::ai I suppose the secret to happiness is learning to appreciate the moment. -Calvin
Re: Response to R.Hlywka's brain/mind comments
Eric Hawthorne wrote: I don't remember claiming (maybe someone else claimed) you could copy a mind. It's a dream for many transhumanists :-) and I reckon it will be possible to the extent that external observers can no longer tell the difference, even if the copied mind itself new it wasn't the original.[1] A more interesting question is: Can you reconstruct one? Assuming you had enough prior knowledge of (relevant) starting conditions, would the simulation give rise to the same mind in each instance? Or, assuming you had collected all possible information at point A, and based on information of A + n, could work backwards and determine A - n. In such a case, could you reconstruct the mind itself if you had the ability to simulate the matter, matter location, and biological instances of matter combinations. Bretton [1] Over a period of time replace each nueron with a non-biological equivelent until such time as all nuerons are no longer biological. Snap in RJ45 and #cp brain /dev/hda -- Cellular: +27.82.494.6902 Yahoo: bretton_cubed ICQ: 175753755 GPG key : http://bretton.hivemind.net/bretton_public.key trends::nu-media::techno-philosophy::ai Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. - Philip K. Dick, How to Build a Universe
Re: are we in a simulation?
We exist in an infinite number of simulations. Any arbitrary number of simulations less than infinity would require a reason. We are led to this conclusion by assuming a TOE which by definition has no a-priori reason. (This is the philosophical rationale for postulating the plenitude) Discreteness may be important in our world for the development of consciousness, but it is certainly not necessary across worlds. I believe therefore that the differences between the simulations is infinitesimal - not discrete - and therefore that the number of simulations is infinite like the continuum. Not only is the number of simulations infinite but the number of levels in simulation may also be infinite. The levels are discrete - I cannot imagine how they could be otherwise. Given the above, let's consider one particular conscious being. His awareness of his own states is likely to be uncertain. Another way of saying this is that several states transitions could generate the same consciousness stream. Modeling the state transitions as an algorithm, for example, there may be multiple algorithmic paths that could generate the same output. Hence his consciousness will have "thickness across the multi-worlds," overlapping a set of multi-worlds each slightly differing from the others. How many multi-worlds will it overlap? An infinite number since they differ as in a continuum. Everytime a "measurement" is made, the set of worlds spanned by this consciousness is defined more narrowly, but the number in the set remains infinite. In addition, each simulation in the set need not belong to the same "level." We're faced with the strange possibility that the consciousness spans an infinite number of simulations distributed over widely different levels. Each individual simulation implementation becomes infinitesimal and unimportant in comparison with the the whole infinite set of implementations that the consciousness covers. A particular simulation that stops operating (for example because the plug is pulled) will hardly affect or be missed by the consciousness as a whole. In fact I rather think of the "simulations" as static states in the plenitude, and consciousness as a locus in the plenitude linking these states in a causally and logically significant manner. We live in the plenitude, not in any particular simulation. Each point in the conscious locus perceives the world that gives it meaning. George
