Re: Fermi's Paradox
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Destroying your species runs counter to evolution. That doesn't mean it can't happen - it only means you weren't the dominant species. I'll rephrase that: everything that happens in nature is by definition in accordance with evolution, but those species that destroy themselves will die out, while those species that don't destroy themselves will thrive. Therefore, there will be selection for the species that don't destroy themselves, and eventually those species will come to predominate. First, that doesn't mean the eventually dominant species will be intelligent - by weight bacteria are the predominant species on Earth. Second, it assumes a kind of static equilibrium. It may be that there are cycles in which similar species become predominant, kill themselves off, and then re-evolve. Or it may be that there is a kind of chaotic succession of different species becoming predominant. When you think about it, the theory of evolution is essentially a tautology: those species which succeed, succeed. I don't think that's a fair chracterization. Darwin said that the species with the highest rate differential reproduction will succeed - and that's separately analyzable attribute. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Fermi's Paradox
Le 06-juil.-06, à 07:38, Norman Samish a écrit : Anyway, all this is beside the point I wanted to make, which is that True Believers, whether Muslim, Christian, or heathen, cause harm, destruction or misfortune, and are therefore evil. I am not so sure. Perhaps I am just over-optimistic but I would say FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is not a problem, and someone who as genuine faith in some fundamental value will not try to impose it or to institutionalize it. I would say that it is mainly those who have bad faith who will try to impose it to others if only to convince themselves. Something like that. For exemple, I separate more and more christianity from its roman abuse. My principal question is this: Is this evil inevitable in intelligent life? Yes. More generally it is the fate of any Universal Machine to discover some form of evil (type of lies), or the possibility of evil, when just introspecting herself deeply enough. But it is exactly for that reason that there is no reason to be fatalist with evil, there is a possibility to learn to handle it, not with universal medicine, but with time, work, ... I suspect it is. And when life gets intelligent enough, and evolved enough, it figures out how to make A-bombs and other WMDs. Then it may exterminate itself or, as you suggested, use up the raw materials accessible to it - and this explains Fermi's Paradox. Hope they are less fatalist speculations about that ... But, given the few we know, perhaps you are right. I guess other explanations are still possible yet. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: SV: Only logic is necessary?
Le 06-juil.-06, à 21:49, Lennart Nilsson a écrit : x-tad-biggerBruno;/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerAccording to Cooper classical analysis is plain bad biology, /x-tad-bigger ? x-tad-biggerand not a matter of subjective judgement or philosophical preferens (such as taking atithmetical truth for granted). /x-tad-bigger ?? x-tad-biggerI think this is where he would say your whole castle in the sky tumbles, and that has nothing to do with trying to find a fault in your argument /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggerJ /x-tad-bigger ??? I don't understand what you are trying to say at all. Perhaps you could elaborate? What do you or Cooper mean by classical analysis is bad biology? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:32, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism. Your version does. Computationalism is standardly the thesis that cognition is computation. Could you define or explain computation without believing that the relations among numbers are independent of you? In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and (standard) computationalism. Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit. But as Dennett and others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp needs Church thesis (if only to be able to take into account negative limitative result), and church thesis need AR. I just make this explicit, if only because I got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result. Remember that AR is just the presupposition that arithmetical truth is not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR is just the non solipsistic view of elementary math. You have bundled them together into comp. Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met someone who does not believe in AR. (I have met mathematicians who does not believe in AR during the week-end, and I have met some philosopher who pretend not believing in AR, but who does. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:56, 1Z a écrit : The Yes-Doctor scenario using Bruno-comp should really be a case of saying yes to the proposal: I'm just going to shoot you. I'm not going to make the slightest effort to reconsitute you, teleport you, computerise you, or anything else. You already exist in Platonia, you always did, and you will continue to Yes, but (importantly) only with your consent. And the doctor will do that only with 1) a promise of (local and relative) reconstitution at some level, 2) an admission that he is just betting on that level 3) a promise of an annihilation less chancy than a bullet (I would prefer anasthesia followed by molecular desintegration). With comp remember we are already in Platonia. A bullet in the brain? Hardly pleasant, even in Platonia. Now, what you are saying could be said of any theory, model, religion ... (whatever) which makes expect you (form of) immortality. Indeed, you talk like a lawyer who explains how much his 'client' is good and scrupulous: true, the guy I am defending is a serial killer. But note that he kills only innocent people (children) so as to send them directly in paradise. He does not take the risk of sending someone in hell (by killing some bad guy for example). Sending someone in paradise is good, no? Some says that God does it all the time, and God is good, no?. My opinion is that such a layer is ... wrong. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
SV: SV: Only logic is necessary?
I see from your questionmarks that an idea like Coopers, that logic is a branch of biology (the subtitle of the book The Evolution of reason) is out of bounds. Från: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] För Bruno Marchal Skickat: den 7 juli 2006 16:11 Till: everything-list@googlegroups.com Ämne: Re: SV: Only logic is necessary? Le 06-juil.-06, à 21:49, Lennart Nilsson a écrit : Bruno; According to Cooper classical analysis is plain bad biology, ? and not a matter of subjective judgement or philosophical preferens (such as taking atithmetical truth for granted). ?? I think this is where he would say your whole castle in the sky tumbles, and that has nothing to do with trying to find a fault in your argument J ??? I don't understand what you are trying to say at all. Perhaps you could elaborate? What do you or Cooper mean by classical analysis is bad biology? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: A calculus of personal identity
Le 07-juil.-06, à 06:45, Lee Corbin a écrit : Bruno writes Actually I was about to say that nominal question are suggestive (anybody can answer by principle of a mailing list), and nominal question when thread interferes makes possible to send less mails. But I agree here I miss miserably ... Not sure what mistake you think you made :-) I see what you mean :) but whatever, it could not have been very important. Well thanks :) I take the opportunity to ask you Lee what is your expectation in front of the running of a Universal Dovetailer? Well, I once got fairly up to speed on the subject of the UD (i.e., I understood it about half as well as you, Hal, Schmidhuber, and the rest of the gang here), but it just didn't grab my enthusiasm. Given that Plato School has been closed for more than 1500 years, and that Aristotelian Naturalism is still the common dogma of most scientist, I do not expect so much *enthusiasm*. Just trying to share plausible *understanding*. As for some practical possible consequences I am not such much enthusiast myself, but then I don't put QM in the trash, despite the A bomb. So I will take the liberty of imagining a scenario that may have a (small) chance of answering your question. Fair enough. I find out that some aliens have set up a colony on the moon. Worse, they've subscribed to the everything list, and having never had had the notion before on their home planet, are designing---AND INTENDING TO CUT LOOSE---a Universal Dovetailer made from some weird computronium substance! This will either be very good news, or very bad news, because the compute speed of their substance is utterly incredible. If they turn the damned thing on for even one whole second, it's easy to calculate that any given human being will have most of his solar system OMs generated by it, all his life on Earth relegated to relative insignificance. I think that I would be in favor. Because I am having a good life (i.e. better than one-percent worth living), and believe than human happiness derives mostly from chemicals in the brain produced by genetic settings. So most of the copies of Lee Corbin that are generated by the UD should, on the average, also have good lives. (It's possible that even miserable people reading this can find solace in supposing that their genetic setting are not an intrinsic part of their identity, and that in most instantiations in most universes, their lives are rather good.) But alas, that's the limit of my knowledge about the UD. Mmmhhh... Given that you told me your lack of enthusiasm for the UD, it will be hard for me to give a detailed comment. But don't hesitate to ask me any explanation for the following statements: 1) the UD needs to run forever to get any interfering probabilistic influence of first person destiny. (Actually, IF Hal Finney UDIST (universal distribution based on Kolmogorov complexity was correct in eliminating both the third person rabbits *and* the first person rabbits, a case could be made that a sufficiently large portion of the UD's trace would be enough, but this needs more work to be make precise ...). 2) You did agree (don't ask me to find the post :) that the proposition W or M was the correct *first person* bet on the most close immediate future personal sensation in the destructive self-duplication experiment, where you are destroyed in Brussels and reconstituted in both Washington and Moscou (with our without delays ?). W is for I will feel to be in Washington, and W = I will feel to be in Moscow. W or M is always correct. W M is always false (with that protocol). 3) If you get the first sixth step of UDA, which means basically that you would understand that the way of quantifying that first person indeterminacy cannot depend on the real/virtual/(arithmetical) nature of the reconstitution, and, most importantly, that it does not change when arbitrary delays of reconstitution are introduced. 4) and the UD is a program which reconstitutes you in your present state(s) (for all your present states, the pasts one, the futures one and all the intermediates and parallels) through all computational histories. You met *the* comp first person indeterminacy. To predict exactly the observable trajectory of the observed (as well as possible) moon, you need ... some first person (plural) computation statistic. If grandmother's physics or quantum field theory gives correct approximate results, it means both should emerge from that 1-computation statistic. And my eyes glaze over every time I come to extended discussions about 1st person, considering as I do those to be a linguistic mistake/death-spiral almost as bad as discussions about qualia. I guess the trouble is exactly there. Thanks for your frankness. But note that in the UDA reasoning (like in Everett QM) we use a rather simple third person approximation of the first
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:32, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism. Your version does. Computationalism is standardly the thesis that cognition is computation. Could you define or explain computation without believing that the relations among numbers are independent of you? I can believe that relations between numbers are epistemically independent of me -- I cannot will them to be different -- without believing they exist ontologically. Furthermore the /locus classicus/ for computation is Turing's work, which defines it in terms an idealisation of humans performing pencil-and-paper procedures. In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and (standard) computationalism. Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit. But as Dennett and others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp needs Church thesis (if only to be able to take into account negative limitative result), and church thesis need AR. Why do you think the Curch thesis needs AR ? Which misunderstanding are you subsribing to ? [*] I just make this explicit, if only because I got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result. Remember that AR is just the presupposition that arithmetical truth is not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR is just the non solipsistic view of elementary math. Well, if it is just an epistemological claim, it is not going to provide you with a universal dovetailer. You have bundled them together into comp. Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met someone who does not believe in AR. Oh yes you have ! (I have met mathematicians who does not believe in AR during the week-end, and I have met some philosopher who pretend not believing in AR, but who does. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ [*] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/ __ Misunderstandings of the Thesis A myth seems to have arisen concerning Turing's paper of 1936, namely that he there gave a treatment of the limits of mechanism and established a fundamental result to the effect that the universal Turing machine can simulate the behaviour of any machine. [...] Turing did not show that his machines can solve any problem that can be solved by instructions, explicitly stated rules, or procedures, nor did he prove that the universal Turing machine can compute any function that any computer, with any architecture, can compute. He proved that his universal machine can compute any function that any Turing machine can compute; and he put forward, and advanced philosophical arguments in support of, the thesis here called Turing's thesis. But a thesis concerning the extent of effective methods -- which is to say, concerning the extent of procedures of a certain sort that a human being unaided by machinery is capable of carrying out -- carries no implication concerning the extent of the procedures that machines are capable of carrying out, even machines acting in accordance with 'explicitly stated rules'. For among a machine's repertoire of atomic operations there may be those that no human being unaided by machinery can perform. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Diagonalization (solution)
Le 07-juil.-06, à 07:23, Tom Caylor a écrit :
Exercise: show that the functions from N to {0,1} are not enumerable,
by a similar proof. Hint: find the appropriate slight change in the
definition of g.
Change g to
g(n) = (Rn(n) + 1) mod 2
OK. other solution, change g to
g(n) = 1 - Rn(n)
One way to think about this is to concatenate the output of each Ri and
put a decimal point (actually binary point) in front of it to make a
number between 0 and 1, expressed in binary. Each Ri is arbitrary,
say,
output of R1 = 0.101...
output of R2 = 0.010...
output of R3 = 0.100...
...
OK. Just be careful: 0.0111... and
0.100... are equal. Find the precise correspondence!
but each R1 is infinitely long, since the domain of each Ri is the
natural numbers N (i.e. each Ri is total). If the domain wasn't all
of N, then the diagonalization wouldn't work. Right?
The diagonalization always work, but it will prove something different.
The fourth case will illustrate that.
So
g(1) = (R1(1) + 1) mod 2 = 0
g(2) = (R2(2) + 1) mod 2 = 0
g(3) = (R3(3) + 1) mod 2 = 1
...
and so concatenating these together into a binary number from 0 to 1
gives
output of g = 0.001...
which is different from any of the Ri's. So here we see Cantor's
original diagonal proof of the uncountability of the real numbers
played out in binary.
Indeed.
I have to repeat though that I have misgivings about using infinite
diagonalization to try to conclude things about real-live reality
(physics, mind/body problem).
Remember that I *assume* comp. Like George Levy says: I assume that
there is a level of description of me such that my personal
experience (consciousness) is invariant for digital substitutions made
at that level. And I assume Church thesis, and AR (Number Realism).
We indeed are using the law of the
excluded middle with an infinite sequence.
Er...
We are saying that since g
cannot be any particular one of the Ri's, then g is not in the whole
infinite list. I know that this particular diagonalization is not one
that is used in your argument,
Nice. Indeed. It is a key point.
Actually, with Loewenheim Skolem, Cantor's diagonalization can be shown
to be relative. The notion of non enumerability is relative to a
theory). I guess you hear about Skolem Paradox?
but I think that the same fault is in
the other diagonalizations.
It is up to you to show this, but Church thesis is exactly what makes
the notion of non recursive enumerability absolute.
Godel didn't want to believe in it, but after reading Turing, he called
it an epistemological miracle.
I think it is the comp possibility of nothing least that a
(neo)platonist negative theology, somehow.
Not that this can't be used to argue about
imaginary mathematical play things like the set of real numbers, or
the other creatures that come out of the following diagonalizations,
but how can we say that these things have anything to do with reality?
Some of those diagonalization shows that computer are always
crashable, a fact which can be of some interest for militaries ...
More seriously, it is normal that once we assume comp, computer
science, especially the fundamental one, can say something about us
(in some large sense of us).
Even more especially after the UDA reasoning shows that physics emerges
from 1-comp indeterminacy.
Remember I was just trying to make more concrete Smullyan's heart of
the matter. The key is Church thesis, and then incompleteness, and then
provable (by the machine) incompleteness.
I will show how to translate the 1-indeterminacy in term of
incompleteness through variant of the self-reference modal logic G and
G*.
I know you'll probably say that it's testable, but I have yet to see
it. Diagonalization is not testing. Diagonalization just produces
negative results. Something doesn't exist. How can we test that?
We can't. But I never need to do that. It is only the physical theory
extracted from the comp hyp which can be tested.
How? Well if the comp-physics predict that an electron weight one ton,
we could have to revised comp, ok?
In this post, you don't say that the functions are effectively
computable, just computable. Is effectiveness implied?
Yes. Even without Church thesis all the following term are equivalent:
Turing computable
Post computable
Java computable
Rational unitary matrices computable,
etc.
With Church thesis, they are all equivalent with:
Intuitively computable
effectively computable
In some (intensional) context effectivity could mean more, but to talk
about that now would be confusing. Could say more after the fourth
diagonalization solution. Not today.
I thought
that computable meant just codable as an algorithm, you can program it,
and effective means it also takes a finite amount of time to produce
its output.
No. If there is an output, you always get it in finite time. Could be
long
Re: Fermi's Paradox
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 06-juil.-06, à 07:38, Norman Samish a écrit : Anyway, all this is beside the point I wanted to make, which is that True Believers, whether Muslim, Christian, or heathen, cause harm, destruction or misfortune, and are therefore evil. I am not so sure. Perhaps I am just over-optimistic but I would say FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is not a problem, and someone who as genuine faith in some fundamental value will not try to impose it or to institutionalize it. Faith usually refers to some belief independent of evidence. Personal values are evident to whoever holds them. Of course saying that others hold these values might be a matter of faith. But the problem with faith, and I assume that means genuine faith, is that there is no compromise or reasoning with it. Christian fundamentalist have faith that God wants them to behave in certain ways in order to achieve immortality in heaven; this is infinitely more important than what happens on Earth. So, for example, many believe that the return of the Jews to their homeland and a great time of tribulation are necessary harbingers of the second coming of Jesus. Thus they act to bring about Israeli expansion and war in the mideast. That this is contrary to the interests of the rest of us who think it is nonsense and would like peace in the mideast is irrelevant to them - because they have faith. I would say that it is mainly those who have bad faith who will try to impose it to others if only to convince themselves. But if you really have faith that whether your children will go to heaven instead of hell depends on believing in a certain God, praying to him, etc., then you are perfectly, rationally justified in preventing atheists or other religionists from speaking. It might cause you child to go to hell through disbelief. Something like that. For exemple, I separate more and more christianity from its roman abuse. Faith is not only the source of the Roman Catholic abuses, but also of Protestant Christian abuses, and Muslim abuses - to say nothing of the cults (i.e. small religions) like Heavens Gate, The Peoples Temple, AUM Shinryko, etc. My principal question is this: Is this evil inevitable in intelligent life? Yes. More generally it is the fate of any Universal Machine to discover some form of evil (type of lies), or the possibility of evil, when just introspecting herself deeply enough. Is that the only evil possible in computationlism - lies? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Existence, individuation, instantiation
Hi Peter, - Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:47 PM Subject: Existence, individuation, instantiation 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. AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any property, including properties that involve some notion of chance. [PJ] The existence of some (abstract, theoretical, hypothetical) thing involves all the properties associated (theoretically) with it. The existence of a camel entails the existence if a hump. The existence of a unicorn would entail the existence of a horn. [SPK] Humm, are you not using semantic inferences here? The notion of a camel entails the notion of a hump, as well as the relation between unicorn and horn, along with all of the other traits/properties that go into the meaning of the thing. I liken this to the meaning of words in a dictionary: every word's meaning is given as its relationship with other words, a *word* that has no relation with any other is by definition thus meaningless! (This may relate to the notion of mutual information...) I like to think of this in terms of graph theory, where each word is a vertex and a definition (the meaning) is given by the graph of edges that connect any one to some other. Note that there is Dominance but no convexity... On the other hand, I was not considering the particularities of properties, I am trying to drill down a bit deeper into the notion of existence itself. Whether or not a Camel or Unicorn exist does not add anything to its properties other than the obvious: The fact that a graph of relations can be constructed that identifies a thing is not necessitated by Existence. Meaning is not the same as existence, or is it...??? snip Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Lee, I have no qualms with your point here, but it seems that we have skipped past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?! In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another. [PJ] Things that physically exist , exist in specific spatio-temporal locations. the fact that something exists in this place rather than that place is indeed a fact over and above the intrinisc properties of the thing. [SPK] I would like to understand the origin of the idea that things have intrinsic properties! It seems to me that we are assuming with this idea that the particularity of properties of things has nothing at all to do this any relationships that some given thing/object has with other object/thing! As I try to show with the idea of a dictionary, a word has no meaning if and unless it has some set of relations with other words. The notion of intrinsic seems to me to be wholly contradictory of this idea and thus I am frankly baffled as to how it is that this notion has survived without inquiry for so long! The entire discussion of the notion of Numbers as Platonic Forms tacitly includes this notion that I am arguing is deeply flawed unless we explicitly reference to the relationships between Numbers from which flows their particular values. What I am arguing is that the mere *existence* of Object is insufficient to necessitate relationships between those objects. The relations are of a different type. I strongly suspect that this claim is deeply embedded in Bruno's theory but has not yet been explored. For example, all of the references to Gödel's incompleteness point to an infinite hierarchy of types of relations, a hierarchy mirrored in the infinity of different infinities. Onward! Stephen --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Hi Peter, - Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:56 PM Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary? 1Z wrote: Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism. Your version does. Computationalism is standardly the thesis that cognition is computation. In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and (standard) computationalism. You have bundled them together into comp. The Yes-Doctor scenario using Bruno-comp should really be a case of saying yes to the proposal: I'm just going to shoot you. I'm not going to make the slightest effort to reconsitute you, teleport you, computerise you, or anything else. You already exist in Platonia, you always did, and you will continue to [SPK] 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. Even worse, your statement here points out that we can not derive the continuance of a 1st person aspect from the mere existence of a number (or class of numbers) that merely exists. We need to have some tacit or explicit *implication* of the number. It is this necessity of implementation of Forms (buying for now into the belief system of Platonia) from which the physical aspect obtains. Onward! Stephen --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Existence, individuation, instantiation
Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Peter, - Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:47 PM Subject: Existence, individuation, instantiation 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. AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any property, including properties that involve some notion of chance. [PJ] The existence of some (abstract, theoretical, hypothetical) thing involves all the properties associated (theoretically) with it. The existence of a camel entails the existence if a hump. The existence of a unicorn would entail the existence of a horn. [SPK] Humm, are you not using semantic inferences here? The notion of a camel entails the notion of a hump, as well as the relation between unicorn and horn, along with all of the other traits/properties that go into the meaning of the thing. I liken this to the meaning of words in a dictionary: every word's meaning is given as its relationship with other words, a *word* that has no relation with any other is by definition thus meaningless! (This may relate to the notion of mutual information...) Well, that's one metaphor. Another is class/object or type/instance in a programming language. I like to think of this in terms of graph theory, where each word is a vertex and a definition (the meaning) is given by the graph of edges that connect any one to some other. Note that there is Dominance but no convexity... On the other hand, I was not considering the particularities of properties, I am trying to drill down a bit deeper into the notion of existence itself. Whether or not a Camel or Unicorn exist does not add anything to its properties other than the obvious: The fact that there are N instances of a thing is not soemthing that can be arrived at by contemplating its Form (or archetype or defintion or class..), so it is an extra item of information, even if not property. Assertons that something-or-other exists *mean* something, they are not hollow tautologies! I think part of the confusion is about which properties belong to a thing, are intrinsic to it. Physical existents have spatial locations , even though a thing's location is not one of its instrinsic properties. http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/met_space.html The fact that a graph of relations can be constructed that identifies a thing is not necessitated by Existence. Meaning is not the same as existence, or is it...??? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
Dear George,
Could it be that Consciousness is more
related and identifiable with the "processing" of Information than with
Information itself? 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
It seems to me that hidden in this idea is
the assumption that it is possible to enumerate all possible responses that a
given object can have with *any other* object and that this enumeration can be
faithfully represented in a finite string of symbols. A simple Diagonalization
argument proves that this is simply impossible, so why does the idea
persist?
Computer scientist of the stature of Peter
Wegner have pointed this out and it seems to have fallen on deaf
ears:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/papers/bcj1.pdf
His proposed solution is to start of by
considering the use of non-well founded set theory and the logic that follows. I
find this proposal to be very interesting because it implicitly involves a means
to represent self-referential statements in a way that is
non-paradoxical...
http://web.mit.edu/dmytro/www/NewSetTheory.htm
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! ;-)
Hopeful!
Stephen
- Original Message -
From:
George Levy
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 6:19
PM
Subject: Symmetry, Invarance and
Conservation (Was Number and function for non-mathematician)
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
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Re: A calculus of personal identity
Hi Lee, I am reminded of the old saw from the Westerns: This town is too small for the both of us! ;-) Could it be that consciousness is statistically Fermionic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi-Dirac_statistics Stephen - Original Message - From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 12:30 AM Subject: RE: A calculus of personal identity Stathis writes and Brent evidently is not one to resist a good pun Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Indeed, I would personally find the idea of clones of myself that I could run into quite disturbing, and the more like me they were, the worse it would be. A sobering reflection. ;-) An interesting psychological difference. About 35 years ago, I asked my long since deceased father what would be his reaction to a duplicate. He was very quick to assert that they would not get along at all. I have always wondered at that: why exactly would someone not like himself? (Of course, the joke would be on me if I found out that all my duplicates had very annoying personal mannerisms, and that the very sounds of their squeeky high pitched voices irritated the hell out of me.) I have always imagined that my duplicates and I would embrace with a love truer than long-lost brothers. I fancy that I would like myself a great deal :-) Lee --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Bruno: I speculated about my problems why I follow your (and others') expressions with difficulty. I was capable to understand concepts in diverse sciences and now I have to reflect about fitting 'comp', 'UDA', 'YesDoctor', even 'arithmetical Plationism' etc. into the flowing considerations. Your remark: ... arithmetical truth is not a personal construction made me muse: is it a Ding an sich? a god? together with your absolutistic fundamental 'number' concept it echoes in my mind how reasonable I found David Bohm's words: there are no numbers in nature, they are human inventions with a rebuff at another list: Are WE not parts of nature? if numbers exist in our mind, are they not IN nature? ... I found both the con and pro reasonable. To combine it with your quoted above statement - which I find no less reasonable - I 'tasted' the personal vs. the human. Add to that your undebatable non-solipsistic as well NOBODY constructs 'arithmetical truth' or 'numbers', yet both are evolutionary features in recent human intellect (2-3millennia). To mediate on my dichotomy: I may have a mental resistance in the way of absorbing comp etc. because I think (new idea, so far not surfaced in my mind) nature (whatever, existence, wholeness, everything or else) is analogue and at the present evolutionary epistemic level we reached the digital logic and thinking, which is a simpler way in its abrupt quantization than the all-encompassing comparative analoguization. I cannot think analogue-ly, such computers are in dreamland and we only have vague notions about it, as e.g. the famous: qualitative is 'bad' quantitative. I like to reverse it: a further evolved less quantitative (sort of analogue) will include wider aspects than included within the limited quanti models and provide more insight in a 'more dimensional' (not meant as a coordinating axis) analogue view... Such (subconscious?) inhibitions might have prevented me of staying with your iridia (in the English version - my 5th language) or in the better explanatory French version, which language I follow even much poorer. The fact that WE evolved into an understanding in the course of human mental development in which things are 'counted' more than just: 1,2,many - is a beginning. We (=humanity) absorbed this mentality as we did the reductionist ways of thinking, the mystique (nobody personally invented the religions) the care for the offsprings, or a regular breath-taking. Yet I contemplate in my wholistic views a wider horizon way, close to what we call analogue today, which the digital logic has yet to attain. The 'next' level of thinking. Maybe oriental thinking is closer to the analogue, because they learn math 101 not digitally as our kids, but pushing 'groups' of beads on the abacus - giving some analogue image of the changing groups to start with. This is not a criticism of western math skills, not an argument against the Plato to Bruno line, it is an idea and I don't intend to persuade anybody to clomply. (Allegedly the early computer-based anti-aircraft gun aiming device of the Bofors Swedish product (WWII, sold for the Germans) - before Turing got widely known - was NOT digitally operated. I don't know about it, but I heard that it worked by 'image-patterns' and anticipated the moves of the airplane. Somebody may know more about it). With unlimited analogous regards John Mikes --- Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 06-juil.-06, � 23:32, 1Z a �crit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism. Your version does. Computationalism is standardly the thesis that cognition is computation. Could you define or explain computation without believing that the relations among numbers are independent of you? In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and (standard) computationalism. Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit. But as Dennett and others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp needs Church thesis (if only to be able to take into account negative limitative result), and church thesis need AR. I just make this explicit, if only because I got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result. Remember that AR is just the presupposition that arithmetical truth is not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR is just the non solipsistic view of elementary math. You have bundled them together into comp. Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met someone who does not believe in AR. (I have met mathematicians who does not believe in AR during the week-end, and I have met some philosopher who pretend not believing in AR, but who does. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: A calculus of personal identity
Dear Lee and Bruno, - Original Message - From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 12:45 AM Subject: RE: A calculus of personal identity Bruno writes Actually I was about to say that nominal question are suggestive (anybody can answer by principle of a mailing list), and nominal question when thread interferes makes possible to send less mails. But I agree here I miss miserably ... Not sure what mistake you think you made :-) but whatever, it could not have been very important. I take the opportunity to ask you Lee what is your expectation in front of the running of a Universal Dovetailer? Well, I once got fairly up to speed on the subject of the UD (i.e., I understood it about half as well as you, Hal, Schmidhuber, and the rest of the gang here), but it just didn't grab my enthusiasm. So I will take the liberty of imagining a scenario that may have a (small) chance of answering your question. I find out that some aliens have set up a colony on the moon. Worse, they've subscribed to the everything list, and having never had had the notion before on their home planet, are designing---AND INTENDING TO CUT LOOSE---a Universal Dovetailer made from some weird computronium substance! This will either be very good news, or very bad news, because the compute speed of their substance is utterly incredible. If they turn the damned thing on for even one whole second, it's easy to calculate that any given human being will have most of his solar system OMs generated by it, all his life on Earth relegated to relative insignificance. [SPK] You might like to know that there is a specific quantity that is the upper bound on the number of computations that can be implemented within a given hyper-volume of Space-time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_Bound Given this value, it should be easy to calculate the amount of computational processing available (in principle) to those aliens with which to run a UD program... I seem to recall that Stephen Wolfram had a thing or two to say that relates to this: From: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html The behavior of a physical system may always be calculated by simulating explicitly each step in its evolution. Much of theoretical physics has, however, been concerned with devising shorter methods of calculation that reproduce the outcome without tracing each step. Such shortcuts can be made if the computations used in the calculation are more sophisticated than those that the physical system can itself perform. Any computations must, however, be carried out on a computer. But the computer is itself an example of a physical system. And it can determine the outcome of its own evolution only by explicitly following it through: No shortcut is possible. Such computational irreducibility occurs whenever a physical system can act as a computer. The behavior of the system can be found only by direct simulation or observation: No general predictive procedure is possible. Computational irreducibility is common among the systems investigated in mathematics and computation theory.[2] This paper suggests that it is also common in theoretical physics. Computational reducibility may well be the exception rather than the rule: Most physical questions may be answerable only through irreducible amounts of computation. Those that concern idealized limits of infinite time, volume, or numerical precision can require arbitrarily long computations, and so be formally undecidable. ... This paper has suggested that many physical systems are computationally irreducible, so that their own evolution is effectively the most efficient procedure for determining their future. As a consequence, many questions about these systems can be answered only by very lengthy or potentially infinite computations. But some questions answerable by simpler computations may still be formulated. end quote Given this argument, it follows that the world we collectively experience can *not* be the the result of a computation that is run *inside* the universe. If it is a grand computation, ala Schmidthuber, Fredkin, etc. then the computer hardware exists, somehow, *outside the Universe! I think that I would be in favor. Because I am having a good life (i.e. better than one-percent worth living), and believe than human happiness derives mostly from chemicals in the brain produced by genetic settings. So most of the copies of Lee Corbin that are generated by the UD should, on the average, also have good lives. (It's possible that even miserable people reading this can find solace in supposing that their genetic setting are not an intrinsic part of their identity, and that in most instantiations in most universes, their lives are rather good.) [SPK] It also seems to follow from Wolfram's argument
Re: Fermi's Paradox
--- Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is not a problem,... And who decides what is a 'false' belief? Do the religious leaders of harm-doing 'believers' educate them that their action is 'false'? Do the US protestant leaders condemn the zealots who kill the abo\rtion performing doctor or bomb trhe clinic? Do Muslim leaders instruct the terrorists that bombing and hostage-beheading gets them to hell? Do the IRA get negatrive instructions from their priests? Was the Inquisition labelled 'false belief, or the puritan burning of witches? Was the shunning for out-of-faith marriage of a daughter deemed false belief by a rabbi, or an Amish pastor? Fundamentalist zealots are by the millions, enlightened private persons a handful and not the 'leaders'. Faith IS a problem because it lifts the personal human responsibility for destructive deeds and puts them into a transcendental (maybe misinterpreted) authorization. Nobody accepts that his 'faith' is false. (And I extend it into 'political' faith as well, be it nationalistic, proletarian, plutocratic, or else). You are right, you ARE over-optimistic. John M (experienced in fighting against diverse zealotry) Le 06-juil.-06, � 07:38, Norman Samish a �crit : Anyway, all this is beside the point I wanted to make, which is that True Believers, whether Muslim, Christian, or heathen, cause harm, destruction or misfortune, and are therefore evil.� I am not so sure. Perhaps I am just over-optimistic but I would say FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is not a problem, and someone who as genuine faith in some fundamental value will not try to impose it or to institutionalize it. I would say that it is mainly those who have bad faith who will try to impose it to others if only to convince themselves. Something like that. For exemple, I separate more and more christianity from its roman abuse. � My principal question is this:� Is this evil inevitable in intelligent life?� Yes. More generally it is the fate of any Universal Machine to discover some form of evil (type of lies), or the possibility of evil, when just introspecting herself deeply enough. But it is exactly for that reason that there is no reason to be fatalist with evil, there is a possibility to learn to handle it, not with universal medicine, but with time, work, ... I suspect it is.� And when life gets intelligent enough, and evolved enough, it figures out how to make A-bombs and other WMDs.� Then it may exterminate itself or, as you suggested, use up the raw materials accessible to it�- and this explains Fermi's Paradox. Hope they are less fatalist speculations about that ... But, given the few we know, perhaps you are right. I guess other explanations are still possible yet. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Re: Fermi's Paradox
--- Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Destroying your species runs counter to evolution. Stathis, 'evolution' does not follow good manners and may not be chisled in stone, I for one identified it (in my narrative) as the entire history of the unioverse from its appearance till its demise (let me skip now the detailed definitions). Destroying one's own species may be beneficial to others in the biosphere... I'll rephrase that: everything that happens in nature is by definition in accordance with evolution, but those species that destroy themselves will die out, while those species that don't destroy themselves will thrive. Did the dinosaurs destroy 'themselves'? No way! they were destroyed by the temporary exclusion of sunlight after the planetesimal-impact's dustclouding. (At least according to a widely publicised story). They were well equipped for the circumstances on the planet that changed abruptly. No self-destruct, just extinction. Nobody is exempt from changes in the wholeness. Therefore, there will be selection for the species that don't destroy themselves, and eventually those species will come to predominate. When you think about it, the theory of evolution is essentially a tautology: those species which succeed, succeed. I like to think that there is more to that. Stathis Papaioannou John M --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
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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Re: Only Existence is necessary?
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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
George Levy wrote: 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. Being self-aware is presumably a high state of consciousness - one that even humans only visit occasionally. I think there are different levels of consciousness. For example, there is awareness of being a physical being in a certain place and time and with certain surrondings and having certain desires, values, emotions. I think animals like dogs have this degree of consciousness and one could argue that a Mars rover does too. In addition a dog recognizes that there are other dogs and people and cooperates with those of his pack and competes against others. Humans go to another level of self-awareness that I think largely depends on language - they produce a narrative account of what they consider important in their thoughts. I think this is a way of feeding memory with what it is useful to keep. There is clearly far too little memory capacity in the brain to store anything like a movie of one's life - so the narrative voice is an inner importance filter. John McCarthy (author of LISP) has several nice essays discussing what it means to make a conscious robot on his website. 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. I agree. Brent Meeker The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. --- Plutarch --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
