date:20060813


Russell Standish writes:

 Precisely my point!
 
 On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 08:42:04AM -0700, 1Z wrote:
  
  
  Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
  
   By increasing the measure locally in our universe, are you making no 
   difference, or only a
   small amount of difference to the measure overall in Platonia?
  
  You can't make a difference in Platonia. There is no time there,
  no change, and no causality.

It's like making a difference in a material, deterministic world, which we 
assume has time, change 
and causality aplenty. 

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Interested in thoughts on this excerpt from Martin Rees


Russell Standish writes:

 Precisely my point!
 
 On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 08:42:04AM -0700, 1Z wrote:
  
  
  Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
  
   By increasing the measure locally in our universe, are you making no 
   difference, or only a
   small amount of difference to the measure overall in Platonia?
  
  You can't make a difference in Platonia. There is no time there,
  no change, and no causality.

It's like making a difference in a material, deterministic world, which we 
assume has time, change 
and causality aplenty. 

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: The moral dimension of simulation


David Nyman writes:

  They're not just simulating us, are they? They might have just slapped
  together a virtual universe in an idle moment to see how it turns out. Maybe
  they're more interested in star formation, or bacteria or something. Is an 
  E. coli
  in your gut justified in thinking God made the universe, including human 
  guts,
  just for its benefit?
 
 Stathis
 
 I see what you mean, of course. However, it's not really what I was
 trying to elicit by my original post. If I were to try to justify my
 actions to you in the sort of way you describe above, I don't think
 you'd be very accepting of this, nor would much of the rest of society.
 I don't mean to say that there isn't a great deal of hypocrisy and
 deviation from ethical conduct in the real world, but unless one is
 prepared to discard the project of working together to make things
 better rather than worse, I believe that we should take ethical
 dialogue seriously. My sense is that much more advanced civilisations
 would have developed in this area too, not just technologically - for
 one thing, they have presumably found ways to live in harmony and not
 self-destruct.  So at the least these issues would have meaning for
 them.
 
 That's why I feel that your dismissal of the issues isn't very
 illuminating. BTW, I don't intend this as a complaint, I'm just
 clarifying what I had in mind in my original questions - that it would
 be interesting to explore the ethical dimensions of possible simulaters
 and their simulations. I think you're saying that we can't know and
 shouldn't care, which I don't find very interesting.
 
 As a challenge to your view, might I suggest that in your example re
 the E. coli - if we knew that the E. coli was conscious and had
 feelings, we might be more concerned about it. Do you think it's a
 reasonable assumption that technologists capable enough to include us
 in their simulation, regardless of their 'ultimate purpose', would a)
 not know we had consciousness and feelings, or b) not care, and if so,
 on what justification? Or is this simply unfathomable? I'm not asking
 rhetorically, I'm really interested.
 
 David

I am proposing, entirely seriously, that it would only be by incredible luck 
that entities vastly superior to us, or even just vastly different, would 
be able to empathise with us on any level, or share our ethical standards 
or any of our other cultural attributes. Do you *really* think that if we 
somehow discovered E. coli had a rudimentary consciousness we would 
behave any differently towards them? Or even if we discovered that each 
E. coli contained an entire universe full of zillions of intelligent beings, 
so that we commit genocide on a scale beyond comprehension every time 
we boil water? I think we would all just say too bad, we have to look after 
ourselves.

Sentience and intelligence are *not* synonymous with what we think of as 
ethical behaviour. There is no logical contradiction in an intelligent being 
who, 
for example, does not feel physical or psychological pain, or who does but 
devotes his life to wiping out every other sentient being which might compete 
with him. Perhaps we could expect that if we were in a simulation our 
creators might empathise with us if we had been deliberately made in their 
image, but there is no evidence that this is so, any more than there is 
evidence for an omnipotent, personal God. The universe was set in motion 
with the fundamental laws of physics (or whatever), and humans are just a 
tiny and insignificant part of the result, here and gone in an eyeblink. There 
isn't even any evidence that human-level intelligence is an especially useful 
evolutionary strategy.

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Can we ever know truth?


Norman Samish writes:

 In a discussion about philosophy, Nick Prince said, If we are living in a 
 simulation. . .
 To which John Mikes replied, I think this is the usual pretension. . .   I 
 think 'we simulate what we are living in' according to the little we know.  
 Such 'simulation' - 'simplification' - 'modeling' - 'metaphorizing' - or even 
 'Harry Potterizing' things we think does not change the 'unknown/unknowable' 
 we live in.  We just think and therefore we think we are.
 This interchange reminded me of thoughts I had as a child - I used to wonder 
 if if everything I experienced was real or a dream.  How could I know which 
 it was?  I asked my parents and was discouraged, in no uncertain terms, from 
 asking them nonsensical questions.  I asked my playmates and friends, but 
 they didn't know the answer any more than I did.  I had no other resources so 
 I concluded that the question was unanswerable and that the best I could do 
 was proceed as if what I experienced was reality.
 Now, many years later, I have this list - and Wikipedia - as resources.  But, 
 as John Mikes (and others) say, I still cannot know that what I experience is 
 reality.  I can only assume that reality is how things appear to me - and I 
 might be wrong.

I think the young Norman Samish got it right: 

(a) I used to wonder if if everything I experienced was real or a dream.  How 
could I know which it was?

(b) I had no other resources so I concluded that the question was unanswerable 
and that the best I could do was proceed as if what I experienced was reality.

To know the truth is to become godlike, standing outside of the world and 
seeing everything for what it really is... and even then you might ask yourself 
whether you really are omniscient or only *think* you are omniscient. The best 
we can do in science as in everyday life is to accept provisionally that things 
are as they seem. There is no shame in this, as long as you are ready to revise 
your theory in the light of new evidence, and it is certainly better than 
assuming that things are *not* as they seem, in the absence of any evidence. 

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Interested in thoughts on this excerpt from Martin Rees






Bruno Marchal writes:

  I know it looks counterintuitive, but an AI can know which computer is
  running and how many they are. It is a consequence of comp, and the 
  UDA
  shows why. The answer is:
  the computer which is running are the relative universal number which
  exist in arithmetical platonia (arithmetical truth is already a
  universal video game, if you want, and it is the simplest). How many
  are they? 2^aleph_zero.
  I have already explain it here:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@eskimo.com/msg05272.html
 
  It is a key point and we can come back on it if you have some
  difficulties.
 
  Well now I'm confused! I thought the whole point of the earlier part 
  of the UDA
  as discussed in the cited post (and many others of yours) is that you 
  *can't*
  know the details of your implementation, such as what type of computer 
  you are
  being run on, how fast it is running, if there are arbitrary delays in 
  the program,
  and so on. Are you now saying that if I am being run on the 3rd of 100 
  PC's in
  the basement of the local university computer science department, but 
  everyone
  is keeping this a secret from me, there is a way I can figure out 
  what's going on
  all by myself?!
 
 
 
 Did you read my old post to Brett Hall:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@eskimo.com/msg05272.html
 Perhaps you could comment it and tell me what does not convince you. It 
 is indeed correct that the earlier parts of the UD Argument show that a 
 machine cannot know about comp-delays, or about the real/virtual nature 
 of a computer which would support the machine's computation until ... 
 you realize that for exactly those reasons the machine first person 
 expectations can only be computed (exactly and in principle) through a 
 measure on all possible computations (reducing physics to searching 
 such a measure). But then the first person can no more be associated 
 with *any* particular computations. Read the Brett Hall post where I 
 explain more, again in a steppy fashion (but the point is different 
 from the UDA).
 To sum up that point:
 1) comp shows we cannot know which computations supported us.
 2) digging deeper in comp, this means eventually we are supported by 
 *all* (relative) computations (relative to some actual state; the 
 actuality itself is handled in the traditional indexical way, and 
 eventually indexicality is treated through the logic of 
 self-reference (G and G*).
 
I did read the cited post. I can see that given step 7 - from the inside, we 
cannot tell if we are in a physical world emulation or a Platonia emulation - 
we could say that we are emulated by all appropriate computations. [I think 
it is still logically possible that we are emulated at any instant by one 
computation in the ensemble, and that there might still be a separate 
physical world, at this point at least.]  I can see that step 8 is right: 
if we are simulated in a massive real world computer, to make a prediction 
about the future we must take into account all the computations passing 
through our present state and define a measure on them. I will accept step 
9 on your authority, although this seems amazing: we can derive the laws of 
physics from a measure on first person computational histories. Now, step 10 
is my problem: if the laws of physics as per step 9 turn out to match our 
experimentally verifiable reality, then we are no more simulated by the 
physical 
computer than by any of the non-physical ones in Platonia.

Why does it mean that we are no more simulated by the physical computer 
than one of the non-physical ones if the laws of physics match the prediction 
from the assumption that we are being simulated? Surely all that it suggests is 
that we are indeed being simulated - somewhere.

You also state in step 10 that ...to say we belong to the massive computer has 
no real meaning: if it stops, nothing can happen to us for example That 
is 
true, but it does not mean that we are not actually being simulated in a 
particular computer, just that we cannot *know* which computer it is unless 
we have external knowledge. But in any case, this is just what I was saying 
before: you can't know which computer you are being simulated on. Are you 
disagreeing with this statement because you believe you *can* narrow it down 
to knowing that you are not being simulated on a physical computer?

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Are First Person prime?


Peter Jones writes:

   Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist
   does exist, are not well founded empirically.
 
  So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes
  brought by physicists, of block-universe.
 
 
 Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective
 passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of
 time
 as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious
 appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic!

I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective 
passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do 
you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a 
sequential 
series of steps or in parallel, without any external information?

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Are First Person prime?



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

 I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective
 passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do
 you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a 
 sequential
 series of steps or in parallel, without any external information?


If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel
processes are still
processes.


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RE: Can we ever know truth?

2006-08-13 Thread John M


Stathis,

thanks for a reply in reason - you said the million
dollar word. (I will come back to 'quote' it).
 First:
As Norman, I, too, was a very smart kid (and am still
very modest - ha ha) and had ALL my experiences of a
5-year old at 5. Since then I collected 2-3 additional
'experienced' features into my 'mind'. Still unsure if
they 'match' some outside real reality or just being
manufactured by my incredible(!) fantasy. 'Unsure' is
the word. 
Now in your wise position (worth remembering) you
wrote
  The best we can do in science as
 in everyday life is to accept provisionally that
 things are as they seem.   
I agree and thank you for it.
The BIG word is PROVISIONALLY. Then others pick it up,
not only in reply-button list-posts, but in books, in
teaching - over 2500 years and already after some
hundred quotations people grow into believeing it - no
provisioanlly, - as the TRUTH. It became science and
even coomon knowledge.Taught at colleges for
centuries.
When did you last learn that the tenets of ongoing
physics are only provisionally accepted as 'real'? 
(I just wanted to tease members of this list. 
Of course on THIS list 'thinking' people gathered and
such thoughts are not unusual. We are the exception.)
 
An example is the Big Bang. Many scientists almost put
it into their evening prayer. Doubting is heresy. 
This is why I scrutinize what we 'believe in' and try
alternate narratives: do they hold water? Are the new
(alternate) ideas palatable to what (we think) we
experience? 

We shoul not forget that we are products of a long
long 'evolutioary' line of development and responses
arose to phenomena otherwise unexplained like the
hardness of a figment we call 'tble' or the 'pain'
when kicked, all fotted into the most ingenious
edifice of existence - whatever THAT may be. 

Bruno and the numberologists wisely reduce the problem
into 'numbers - math': - that is all. We really cannot
encompass the known and unknown varieties of
everything but I try to face our ignorance-based awe
and 'hope' to open (small) windows into more than we
had earlier. 
The 'number-line' is a good variant, I find it still
insufficient. I don't want to 'numerify' my pleasure
to listen to musical 'art', laugh at a good joke, or
enjoying a Black Forest Cake. Would make me sorry if
it turns out to be true. As George said: I am crazy,
too.

John Mikes

--- Stathis Papaioannou
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 Norman Samish writes:
 
  In a discussion about philosophy, Nick Prince
 said, If we are living in a simulation. . .
  To which John Mikes replied, I think this is the
 usual pretension. . .   I think 'we simulate what we
 are living in' according to the little we know. 
 Such 'simulation' - 'simplification' - 'modeling' -
 'metaphorizing' - or even 'Harry Potterizing' things
 we think does not change the 'unknown/unknowable' we
 live in.  We just think and therefore we think we
 are.
  This interchange reminded me of thoughts I had as
 a child - I used to wonder if if everything I
 experienced was real or a dream.  How could I know
 which it was?  I asked my parents and was
 discouraged, in no uncertain terms, from asking them
 nonsensical questions.  I asked my playmates and
 friends, but they didn't know the answer any more
 than I did.  I had no other resources so I concluded
 that the question was unanswerable and that the best
 I could do was proceed as if what I experienced was
 reality.
  Now, many years later, I have this list - and
 Wikipedia - as resources.  But, as John Mikes (and
 others) say, I still cannot know that what I
 experience is reality.  I can only assume that
 reality is how things appear to me - and I might be
 wrong.
 
 I think the young Norman Samish got it right: 
 
 (a) I used to wonder if if everything I experienced
 was real or a dream.  How could I know which it was?
 
 (b) I had no other resources so I concluded that the
 question was unanswerable and that the best I could
 do was proceed as if what I experienced was reality.
 
 To know the truth is to become godlike, standing
 outside of the world and seeing everything for what
 it really is... and even then you might ask yourself
 whether you really are omniscient or only *think*
 you are omniscient. The best we can do in science as
 in everyday life is to accept provisionally that
 things are as they seem. There is no shame in this,
 as long as you are ready to revise your theory in
 the light of new evidence, and it is certainly
 better than assuming that things are *not* as they
 seem, in the absence of any evidence. 
 
 Stathis Papaioannou
 

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Re: Can we ever know truth?


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 Norman Samish writes:
 
 
 In a discussion about philosophy, Nick Prince said, If we are living
 in a simulation. . . To which John Mikes replied, I think this is the
 usual pretension. . .   I think 'we simulate what we are living in'
 according to the little we know.  Such 'simulation' - 'simplification'
 - 'modeling' - 'metaphorizing' - or even 'Harry Potterizing' things we
 think does not change the 'unknown/unknowable' we live in.  We just
 think and therefore we think we are. This interchange reminded me of
 thoughts I had as a child - I used to wonder if if everything I
 experienced was real or a dream.  How could I know which it was?  I
 asked my parents and was discouraged, in no uncertain terms, from
 asking them nonsensical questions.  I asked my playmates and friends,
 but they didn't know the answer any more than I did.  I had no other
 resources so I concluded that the question was unanswerable and that
 the best I could do was proceed as if what I experienced was reality. 
 Now, many years later, I have this list - and Wikipedia - as resources.
 But, as John Mikes (and others) say, I still cannot know that what I
 experience is reality.  I can only assume that reality is how things
 appear to me - and I might be wrong.
 
 
 I think the young Norman Samish got it right:
 
 (a) I used to wonder if if everything I experienced was real or a dream.
 How could I know which it was?
 
 (b) I had no other resources so I concluded that the question was
 unanswerable and that the best I could do was proceed as if what I
 experienced was reality.
 
 To know the truth is to become godlike, standing outside of the world
 and seeing everything for what it really is... and even then you might
 ask yourself whether you really are omniscient or only *think* you are
 omniscient. The best we can do in science as in everyday life is to
 accept provisionally that things are as they seem. There is no shame in
 this, as long as you are ready to revise your theory in the light of new
 evidence, and it is certainly better than assuming that things are *not*
 as they seem, in the absence of any evidence.
 
 Stathis Papaioannou

Well said.  I would only add that we need not take things as they seem 
simpliciter, but rather as they seem to us on reflection and as our senses 
are extended by our instruments.

Brent Meeker
Thirty one years ago, Dick Feynman told me about his 'sum over
histories' version of quantum mechanics.  The electron does anything it
likes', he said.  It goes in any direction at any speed, forward or
backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up all the
amplitudes and it gives you the wave-function.
I said to him, You're crazy.  But he wasn't.
   --- Freeman J. Dyson, 'Some Strangeness in the Proportion' 1980

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Re: Can we ever know truth?

2006-08-13 Thread Rich Winkel


According to Stathis Papaioannou:
The best we can do in science as in everyday life is to accept
provisionally that things are as they seem. There is no shame in
this, as long as you are ready to revise your theory in the light
of new evidence, and it is certainly better than assuming that
things are *not* as they seem, in the absence of any evidence.

The process isn't quite that benign, especially when applied to
one's treatment of others.  There will always be unknowable truths,
one should proceed with an acute sense of one's own ignorance.  Yet
with each advance in science people and their institutions act
increasingly recklessly with regard to unanticipated consquences.

How can we perceive and measure our own ignorance?

Rich


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .

2006-08-13 Thread jamikes


Communication - human and in language, I suppose, depends on words we say,
understand and assign (some) meaning to. So here is a bit of nitpicking
about the words you used below: (please, Peter, don't take it personally -
thank you):

Properties: Would you reduce them to green, hard, big, hot etc.? Isn't all
that jazz in the physics books about 'properties' in another sense?

Roles to perform: you mean roles we 1.) know about, 2.) accept as 'roles',
or even does everything have to perform a role?

Instantiated: represented by a 'role' we acknowledge. And if we don't? is
nature
subject to our approval (or even knowledge)?

Existence: what is it?

Possible things: possible in OUR (limited) view? or possible, even if we
'think' it is impossible (for us)? BTW Harry Potter things are all
possible, they exist in our universe, since human minds (part of
our universe) have it. So are the numbers (according to D. Bohm:
human inventions) - they are part of nature, since humans as part of
nature invented them with their minds - and now containing the
numbers in nature. (No offense, numberist members!)

Propertiless change: as I assume: existence is a property even of matter.
Destroy matter and its property of 'existence' will change (BH etc.). Of
course the big question remains: is 'radiation' (waves?) matter or not?

Just for a lazy Sunday afternoon, with friendship

John Mikes

- Original Message -
From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: Difficulties in communication. . .




 1Z wrote:

  That is, there is no plurality of substances with essential
  characteristics.
  Just one bare subtrate.

 Matter is a bare substrate with no properties of its own. The question
 may well be asked at this point: what roles does it perform ? Why not
 dispense with matter and just have bundles of properties -- what does
 matter add to a merely abstract set of properties? The answer is that
 not all bundles of posible properties are instantiated. What matter
 adds to a bundle of properties is existence. Thus the concept of matter
 is very much tied to the idea of contingency or somethingism -- the
 idea that only certain possible things exist.
 The other issue matter is able to explain as a result of having no
 properties of its own is the issue of change and time. For change to be
 distinguishable from mere succession, it must be change in something.
 It could be a contingent natural law that certain properties never
 change. However, with a propertiless substrate, it becomes a logical
 necessity that the substrate endures through change; since all changes
 are changes in properties, a propertiless substrate cannot itself
 change and must endure through change.


 


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .



[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Communication - human and in language, I suppose, depends on words we say,
 understand and assign (some) meaning to. So here is a bit of nitpicking
 about the words you used below: (please, Peter, don't take it personally -
 thank you):

 Properties: Would you reduce them to green, hard, big, hot etc.? Isn't all
 that jazz in the physics books about 'properties' in another sense?


Properties are whatever distinguishes one thing from another. Whether
green, hard, big etc are reducible to the properties of physics is
another
question.

 Roles to perform: you mean roles we 1.) know about, 2.) accept as 'roles',
 or even does everything have to perform a role?

 Instantiated: represented by a 'role' we acknowledge. And if we don't? is
 nature
 subject to our approval (or even knowledge)?

 Existence: what is it?

A very tricky question. My take is that ..exists is a meaningful
predicate
of *concepts* rather than things. The thing must exist in some
sense to be talked about ...in what sense ? Initially as a concept,
and then we can say whether or not the concept has something
to refer to. Thus bigfoot exists means the concept 'bigfoot' has
a referent.

 Possible things: possible in OUR (limited) view? or possible, even if we
 'think' it is impossible (for us)? BTW Harry Potter things are all
 possible, they exist in our universe, since human minds (part of
 our universe) have it.

The don't *literally* exist in minds.

  So are the numbers (according to D. Bohm:
 human inventions) - they are part of nature, since humans as part of
 nature invented them with their minds - and now containing the
 numbers in nature. (No offense, numberist members!)

 Propertiless change: as I assume: existence is a property even of matter.
 Destroy matter and its property of 'existence' will change (BH etc.).

How do you destroy matter ?

 Of
 course the big question remains: is 'radiation' (waves?) matter or not?

Mass/energy are interchangeable and are both the substrate..

 Just for a lazy Sunday afternoon, with friendship

 John Mikes

 - Original Message -
 From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 12:30 PM
 Subject: Re: Difficulties in communication. . .



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Re: Are First Person prime?



Brent Meeker wrote:

 1Z wrote:
 
  David Nyman wrote:
 ...
 Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence,
 and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both
 ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing.
 
 
  No. There being something rather than nothing is only
  1 buit of  information: not enough for a universe to
  supervene on.

 This may not be the problem you think it is.  In quantum mechanics there can
 be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the
 universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of
 information.

It would still have to generate localised information, and complex
supervenient properties would still need something complex
to supervene on. A supervenience-base is more than a
necessary precondition.

 Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled
 states by the inflation of the universe.  Unitary evolution of the
 wave-function of the universe must preserve information.  In these theories,
 as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, The universe is just nothing, 
 rearranged.

But entanglement must generate localised information.

 Brent Meeker


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .


1Z wrote:
 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
Communication - human and in language, I suppose, depends on words we say,
understand and assign (some) meaning to. So here is a bit of nitpicking
about the words you used below: (please, Peter, don't take it personally -
thank you):

Properties: Would you reduce them to green, hard, big, hot etc.? Isn't all
that jazz in the physics books about 'properties' in another sense?
 
 
 
 Properties are whatever distinguishes one thing from another. Whether
 green, hard, big etc are reducible to the properties of physics is
 another
 question.
 
 
Roles to perform: you mean roles we 1.) know about, 2.) accept as 'roles',
or even does everything have to perform a role?

Instantiated: represented by a 'role' we acknowledge. And if we don't? is
nature
subject to our approval (or even knowledge)?

Existence: what is it?
 
 
 A very tricky question. My take is that ..exists is a meaningful
 predicate
 of *concepts* rather than things. The thing must exist in some
 sense to be talked about ...in what sense ? Initially as a concept,
 and then we can say whether or not the concept has something
 to refer to. Thus bigfoot exists means the concept 'bigfoot' has
 a referent.

As my physics prof, Jurgen Ehlers used to say, Before we can say whether or 
not a thing exists we must know some of it's properities.  So to know 
whether or not bigfoot exists we need to know enough properties of the 
concept 'bigfoot', like big, hairy, bipedal, lives in woods of the 
Pacific Northwest,...  Given enough properties we may be able to test his 
existence against empirical evidence and reach a provisional conclusion.

So epistemology precedes ontology.

Brent Meeker


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .



Brent Meeker wrote:


 As my physics prof, Jurgen Ehlers used to say, Before we can say whether or
 not a thing exists we must know some of it's properities.  So to know
 whether or not bigfoot exists we need to know enough properties of the
 concept 'bigfoot', like big, hairy, bipedal, lives in woods of the
 Pacific Northwest,...  Given enough properties we may be able to test his
 existence against empirical evidence and reach a provisional conclusion.

 So epistemology precedes ontology.

OTOH, ontology precedes epistemology, because you
can't figure out whether anything else exists unless you exist!


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .

2006-08-13 Thread jamikes


!Z:
Is matter a property vs not matter?
later you substituted 'matter' with 'substrate' when you drew the identity
as being interchangeable to. So is radiation matterly matter or an
interchange? I told you I am nitpicking.
I am not accepting the identification of existence as exist must be. Then
you bring in things and concepts, hard to follow, when you deny the
existence of HP things literally existing ONLY in the mind.
You missed a reply about the numbers.

Destroying 'matter'? one mysterious way is to let it be absorbed in a BH,
the other - with your words - to 'interchange' (I still did not get whether
radiation IS matter or only interchangeable into).

I wanted to illustrate that the words we use are captured by different
persons in different meanings/connotations.
Once it comes to non-conventional thoughts, we do not have the words.

I hope I did not irritate you. I tried hard to be difficult.

John M
- Original Message -
From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: Difficulties in communication. . .




 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Communication - human and in language, I suppose, depends on words we
say,
  understand and assign (some) meaning to. So here is a bit of nitpicking
  about the words you used below: (please, Peter, don't take it
personally -
  thank you):
 
  Properties: Would you reduce them to green, hard, big, hot etc.? Isn't
all
  that jazz in the physics books about 'properties' in another sense?


 Properties are whatever distinguishes one thing from another. Whether
 green, hard, big etc are reducible to the properties of physics is
 another
 question.

  Roles to perform: you mean roles we 1.) know about, 2.) accept as
'roles',
  or even does everything have to perform a role?
 
  Instantiated: represented by a 'role' we acknowledge. And if we don't?
is
  nature
  subject to our approval (or even knowledge)?
 
  Existence: what is it?

 A very tricky question. My take is that ..exists is a meaningful
 predicate
 of *concepts* rather than things. The thing must exist in some
 sense to be talked about ...in what sense ? Initially as a concept,
 and then we can say whether or not the concept has something
 to refer to. Thus bigfoot exists means the concept 'bigfoot' has
 a referent.

  Possible things: possible in OUR (limited) view? or possible, even if we
  'think' it is impossible (for us)? BTW Harry Potter things are all
  possible, they exist in our universe, since human minds (part
of
  our universe) have it.

 The don't *literally* exist in minds.

   So are the numbers (according to D. Bohm:
  human inventions) - they are part of nature, since humans as part of
  nature invented them with their minds - and now containing
the
  numbers in nature. (No offense, numberist members!)
 
  Propertiless change: as I assume: existence is a property even of
matter.
  Destroy matter and its property of 'existence' will change (BH
etc.).

 How do you destroy matter ?

  Of
  course the big question remains: is 'radiation' (waves?) matter or
not?

 Mass/energy are interchangeable and are both the substrate..

  Just for a lazy Sunday afternoon, with friendship
 
  John Mikes
 
  - Original Message -
  From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
  Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 12:30 PM
  Subject: Re: Difficulties in communication. . .
 


 


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 Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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Re: Are First Person prime?


1Z wrote:
 
 Brent Meeker wrote:
 
 
1Z wrote:

David Nyman wrote:

...

Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence,
and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both
ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing.


No. There being something rather than nothing is only
1 buit of  information: not enough for a universe to
supervene on.

This may not be the problem you think it is.  In quantum mechanics there can
be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the
universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of
information.
 
 
 It would still have to generate localised information, and complex
 supervenient properties would still need something complex
 to supervene on. A supervenience-base is more than a
 necessary precondition.
 
 
Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled
states by the inflation of the universe.  Unitary evolution of the
wave-function of the universe must preserve information.  In these theories,
as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, The universe is just nothing, 
rearranged.
 
 
 But entanglement must generate localised information.

It's a somewhat beyond my expertise, but as I understand these theories of 
cosmogony it's analogous to Hawking radiation: Pair production produces a 
virtual quantum particle/anti-particle pair.  Inflation is so rapid that it 
pulls them apart and provides the energy to make the virtual particles real 
particles.  They are entangled but they are now separated by billions of 
lightyears.  So the information (complexity) of the world we see can in 
principle be cancelled out (net zero information as well as matter) as in a 
quantum erasure experiment, but in practice we cannot access the entangled 
particle to do so.

I think this idea of a zero-information universe is implicit in the MWI of 
QM.  Whenever a random event happens it provides information (per Shannon's 
defintion), but in MWI everything happens and that provides no information 
(not that I buy the MWI).

Brent Meeker

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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .


1Z wrote:
 
 Brent Meeker wrote:
 
 
 
As my physics prof, Jurgen Ehlers used to say, Before we can say whether or
not a thing exists we must know some of it's properities.  So to know
whether or not bigfoot exists we need to know enough properties of the
concept 'bigfoot', like big, hairy, bipedal, lives in woods of the
Pacific Northwest,...  Given enough properties we may be able to test his
existence against empirical evidence and reach a provisional conclusion.

So epistemology precedes ontology.
 
 
 OTOH, ontology precedes epistemology, because you
 can't figure out whether anything else exists unless you exist!

That brings us back to Descartes I think therefore I am; which Russell 
pointed out was an unsupported inference.  The most that could be said is, 
There's thinking.  If your ontology includes processes like thinking 
then I suppose it does precede your empistemology.  But you can't kick 
thinking and if you could it wouldn't kick back - unless the ESPers are 
right. ;-)

Brent Meeker

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


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?

 I think is both an *observed fact* as well as an *axiom* from which 
 everything else can be derived. 

I don't think much of anything can be derived from just I think.  For 
example, I think is consistent with Pigs fly and with Pigs don't fly; 
so you can't infer whether or not pigs fly.

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. 

But if you weren't sane you might still think you were.  To hold a rational 
discussion you'd need to assume or prove there's someone to talk to.

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 not.

 
 I think furthermore implies a reflexive quality

Or just assumes it.

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

Did you mean implies??

Brent Meeker

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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 !Z:
 Is matter a property vs not matter?

what would it be  a property *of* ?

 later you substituted 'matter' with 'substrate' when you drew the identity
 as being interchangeable to. So is radiation matterly matter or an
 interchange? I told you I am nitpicking.

The traditional  matter/energy distinction maps onto the fermion/boson
disinction.

 I am not accepting the identification of existence as exist must be.

I don't see what you mean by that.

  Then
 you bring in things and concepts, hard to follow, when you deny the
 existence of HP things literally existing ONLY in the mind.

You don't *literally* have wizards and dragons in your mind.

 You missed a reply about the numbers.

 Destroying 'matter'? one mysterious way is to let it be absorbed in a BH,

Conservation laws are still obeyed.

 the other - with your words - to 'interchange' (I still did not get whether
 radiation IS matter or only interchangeable into).

It is a form of the substrate.

 I wanted to illustrate that the words we use are captured by different
 persons in different meanings/connotations.
 Once it comes to non-conventional thoughts, we do not have the words.

 I hope I did not irritate you. I tried hard to be difficult.

 John M
 - Original Message -
 From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 3:33 PM
 Subject: Re: Difficulties in communication. . .
 
 
 
 


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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .



Brent Meeker wrote:

 That brings us back to Descartes I think therefore I am; which Russell
 pointed out was an unsupported inference.  The most that could be said is,
 There's thinking.  If your ontology includes processes like thinking
 then I suppose it does precede your empistemology.  But you can't kick
 thinking and if you could it wouldn't kick back - unless the ESPers are
 right. ;-)

I don't want my ontology to precede my epistemology. I think
both claims are silly.


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Re: Are First Person prime?



Brent Meeker wrote:


 It's a somewhat beyond my expertise, but as I understand these theories of
 cosmogony it's analogous to Hawking radiation: Pair production produces a
 virtual quantum particle/anti-particle pair.  Inflation is so rapid that it
 pulls them apart and provides the energy to make the virtual particles real
 particles.  They are entangled but they are now separated by billions of
 lightyears.  So the information (complexity) of the world we see can in
 principle be cancelled out (net zero information as well as matter) as in a
 quantum erasure experiment, but in practice we cannot access the entangled
 particle to do so.

 I think this idea of a zero-information universe is implicit in the MWI of
 QM.  Whenever a random event happens it provides information (per Shannon's
 defintion),

Only inasmuch as other events are causally related to it. If you have
nothing
but random events, you would have maximum information by the
Shannon/Entropy measure, and by the Kolmogorov/Chaitin measure...
however by the information is always information about something
pricniple
(and the information is a difference that makes a difference
principle),
you would have no information at all!


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Re: Dual-Aspect Science (a spawn of the roadmap)

2006-08-13 Thread David Nyman


Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:

 ASIDE, for the record, dual aspect science (from the previous post).  I)
 APPEARANCE ASPECT. Depictions (statistics) of regularity (correlations of
 agreed 'objects' within) in appearances
 II) STRUCTURE ASPECT. Depictions (Statistics) of structure of an
 underlying natural world based on organisations of one or more posited
 structural primitives.

 Both have equal access to qualia as evidence. Qualia are evidence for
 both. Whatever the structure is, scientists are made of it and it must
 simultaneously a) deliver qualia and all the rest of the structure in the
 universe(II) and b) deliver the contents of qualia (appearances) that
 result in our correlations of appearances that we think of as empirical
 laws(I). This is a complete consistent set of natural laws, none of which
 literally 'are' the universe but are merely 'about' it.

For the record, how would you contrast this with Chalmers' property
dualism and his programme for 'psycho-physical laws'? Presumably his
'conceivability' of structure (ll) without appearance (l) is sheer
'3rd-person cultism' from your perspective. This is where I part
company from him. My conceivability apparatus just can't come up with
this. For me a situation that isn't self-revealing needs a mediator
(little observer) to do the revealing for it, and we know where that
leads...

 Qualia(appearances) are only intractible because we keep insisting on 
 trying to use qualia (appearances, our scientific evidence) to explain
 them! Is it only me that sees that when the scientific evidence system
 (qualia) is applied to collect evidence in favour of a science of
 qualia, a science of _our evidence system_!!, that the evidence system
 breaks down?

Can you say more about how a structure (ll) science approaches this?

 FYI
 ['unsituated' means that the scientist is, despite the observer dependence
 characterised by quantum mechanics, surgically excised from the universe
 by the demand for an objective view that does not exist. 'Situated'
 science puts the scientist back inside the universe with the studied
 items. Note that science only needs OBJECTIVITY (a behaviour) not a real
 'objective view' to construct correlations of type I (above). Dual aspect
 science disposes of the cultish need for a delusion of a 3rd person view ]

Yes, this is broadly what I was aiming at with '1st-person primacy',
using words like 'embedded', 'present', etc. - but 'situated' is good,
I'll adopt it.

There's another aspect, which I've been musing about again since my
most recent exchanges with Peter. This is that if one takes seriously
(and I do) 'structural' or 'block' views such as MWI, then it seems to
me that whatever is behaving 'perceivingly', 1st-personally', or
'subjectly' (gawd!) is the gestalt, not any particular abstraction
therefrom. It seems to me that this is necessary to yield from an
infinity of recursively nested structure:

1) The unnameability of the 1st-person (i.e. 'this observer situation')
2) The consequential validity (?) of any probability calculus of
observer situations
3) 'Time' as the tension of structure and gestalt - i.e. sensing
situations dynamically
4) 'Coherent observer histories' - i.e. sensing 'meta-situationally'
(is this an adverb?)

Any thoughts on this?

David

 David Nyman [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 
  Yes, and I despair (almost) of remedying this, even if I knew how. My
 own attempts at linguistic 'clarity' seemed destined only to muddy the
 waters further, especially as I'm really trying to translate from
 personal modes that are often more visual/ kinaesthetic than verbal,
 gestalt than analytic.

 I have these very same difficulties and I try my very hardest to use the
 minimal number of most-accessible words in their popular mode. Not always
 successfully...but you have to start somewhere. My origins are as an
 engineer immersed in the natural (electrical) world. Thousands of hours of
 waiting during commissioning, thinking for a couple of decades to
 surface and try to describe what you have seen after this...is a
 challenge.

 
  That said, I rather like your 'adverbial' mode, which I think has also
 cropped up in other contexts (didn't Whitehead attempt something of the
 sort with his process view?) Nominalisation/ reification creates
 conceptual confusions, embedded assumptions spawn others, as in all
 language to do with time, which is already loaded with the assumption of
 experiential dynamism, and hence can do nothing to help explain it.
 
 
 ASIDE, for the record, dual aspect science (from the previous post).  I)
 APPEARANCE ASPECT. Depictions (statistics) of regularity (correlations of
 agreed 'objects' within) in appearances
 II) STRUCTURE ASPECT. Depictions (Statistics) of structure of an
 underlying natural world based on organisations of one or more posited
 structural primitives.

 Both have equal access to qualia as evidence. Qualia are evidence for
 both. Whatever

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

2006-08-13 Thread 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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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .



[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 Possible things: possible in OUR (limited) view? or possible, even if we
 'think' it is impossible (for us)? BTW Harry Potter things are all
 possible, they exist in our universe, since human minds (part of
 our universe) have it. So are the numbers (according to D. Bohm:
 human inventions) - they are part of nature, since humans as part of
 nature invented them with their minds -

Saying that numbers are invented suggests they could
have been invented differently -- it does not capture the necessity
of mathematical truth.


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


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

Brent Meeker

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Re: Difficulties in communication. . .


1Z wrote:
 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
 
Possible things: possible in OUR (limited) view? or possible, even if we
'think' it is impossible (for us)? BTW Harry Potter things are all
possible, they exist in our universe, since human minds (part of
our universe) have it. So are the numbers (according to D. Bohm:
human inventions) - they are part of nature, since humans as part of
nature invented them with their minds -
 
 
 Saying that numbers are invented suggests they could
 have been invented differently -- it does not capture the necessity
 of mathematical truth.

But maybe they are only nomologically necessary, i.e. any cognizant beings 
who evolve will come to distinguish and count things.  I believe that is 
William S. Cooper's argument in The Evolution of Reason.

In general I think terms like possible and necessary lead to confusion 
unless their domain or context is spelled out.


Brent Meeker

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RE: Are First Person prime?


Peter Jones writes:

 Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
  I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective
  passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do
  you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a 
  sequential
  series of steps or in parallel, without any external information?
 
 
 If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel
 processes are still
 processes.

But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a 
difference 
to subjective experience. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the 
subjective
passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but 
lasted for 
a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? Then what 
if you 
make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to 
infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in 
an 
infenitesimal interval? And note that the usual linear view of time is not so 
different 
from this: an infinite sequence of infinitesimals, which somehow add up to the 
effect 
of continuous activity.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: I think, was Difficulties in communication. . .

2006-08-13 Thread 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: Can we ever know truth?






John M writes:

 When did you last learn that the tenets of ongoing
 physics are only provisionally accepted as 'real'? 
 (I just wanted to tease members of this list. 
 Of course on THIS list 'thinking' people gathered and
 such thoughts are not unusual. We are the exception.)
  
 An example is the Big Bang. Many scientists almost put
 it into their evening prayer. Doubting is heresy. 
 This is why I scrutinize what we 'believe in' and try
 alternate narratives: do they hold water? Are the new
 (alternate) ideas palatable to what (we think) we
 experience? 

I'm sure all the Big Bang theorists would say that they would 
change their views if new evidence came to light. Of course, 
there are thousands of ideas out there and most of them are 
pretty crazy, pushed by people who don't understand even 
the basics of what they are criticising, so it is understandable 
that these ideas would sometimes be dismissed out of hand by 
people working in the field. It is also undestandable that 
scientists are only human and get quite attached to the theories 
on which they base their careers, so they may not change as 
quickly as they ought to in the light of new evidence.

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Can we ever know truth?