Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
2008/11/16 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: But if any computation can be mapped onto any physical state, then every computation can be mapped onto one physical state; and why not the null state? I guess I don't really have a clear picture of why the fact that any computation can be mapped onto a physical state should lead to the belief that (say) those mappings somehow support consciousnesses. I'm not very comfortable with the idea that a stone implements all computations. It may in fact be the case that those views are functionally equivalent to my suggestion that mathematical facts of the matter play the role that physical existence is supposed to play for the materialist, but I'm sticking with the latter formulation, because that's the one I actually understand. It's computations supporting consciousness that makes this idea interesting. Otherwise, it's like claiming that a block of marble contains any given statue: in a sense it's true, but you need a sculptor to allow the statue to interact with the outside world. Similarly, if we claim that the vibrating atoms in the block of marble implement a computation, say calculating the product of two numbers, we need to build a computer to do the computation in a conventional way in order to work out what the mapping is. This would also apply if the putative computation were conscious and we wanted to interact with it. But what if we *don't* require that we interact with the computation: that is, what if the computation is of a self-contained virtual world with conscious beings? In that case, working out the mapping explicitly would allow us to observe what's going on in this world, but there's no reason why the consciousness of its inhabitants should be contingent on this occurring. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
2008/11/16 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]: But if any computation can be mapped onto any physical state, then every computation can be mapped onto one physical state; and why not the null state? I'm not sure that works. In the original idea the mapping was to be one-to-one (which is possible since a stone or other physical object has many microscopic states). I don't see why the mapping can't be one(physical-state)-to-many(computation-states). This wouldn't work if you actually tried to keep track of the computation - in that case you would need some sort of index variable - but that isn't a problem if you don't require that the computation interact with the world at the level of substrate of its implementation. If the mapping is something like: computation-state1---map1physical-state0 computation-state2---map2physical-state0 computation-state3---map3physical-state0 ... then the inverse mapping, physical-state0---1map---computation-state1 physical-state0---2map---computation-state2 physical-state0---3map---computation-state3 ... has to implicitly provide it's own order. So for the physical-state0 to implement the computation there would have to be another index variable, like time, to order the inverse mapping. Then it would really be physical-state0@ t=1---1map---computation-state1 physical-state0@ t=2---2map---computation-state2 physical-state0@ t=3---3map---computation-state3 ... Right? Brent. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:22 PM, m.a. wrote: Isn't some sort of substrate necessary for any mathematical event, whether it be a brain or a screen or a universe? And isn't that substrate sufficiently different from the math to be called physical existence? That's certainly the prevailing intuition. My position is that that intuition is incorrect, and that it bears a deep similarity to the (once prevailing) vitalist's intuition that some kind of life force, sufficiently different than inanimate matter, is necessary for life. I'm arguing that mathematical facts-of-the-matter all by themselves fulfill the requirements that the materialist's substrate is supposed to fulfill. The materialists disagree, but then the burden is on them to explain exactly what qualities this substrate needs to have, and why mathematical facts-of-the-matter don't fit the bill. I've never heard a non-question-begging response. What I've heard a lot of is, Mathematical facts-of-the-matter just aren't the kinds of things that can count as a physical substrate. But that's just a restatement of the position that needs to be defended. When the materialists try to describe what kind of thing *would* fit the bill, I find the descriptions as confusing as the vitalist's descriptions of the life-force. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
On 15 Nov 2008, at 12:12, Michael Rosefield wrote:
Yeah, I think that was meat to be either short-sightedness,
racketeering, or just an attempt to push his own reality in a
certain direction on the character's part.
For me, though, the thing about a stone implementing all possible
computations is that you end up with no possible way of knowing
whether you're in the 'stone reality' or some abstraction from it -
you start off with physicalism and end up with some kind of
neoplatonism. Of course, you could still argue that you need some
kind of physical seed, but again what I take from this is that since
you can perform as much abstraction on the substrate as you like, it
doesn't matter how small it is - it can even be completely nothing.
My simplistic version works like this:
'Nothing' := 'Something' - 'Everything'
Hmmm... You go to far. Since the failure of logicism, we know that yoy
will be unable to recover even the natural number from nothing, or
even from logic. To have the number, and thus the programs and the
computations, you need at least ... the numbers.
That is why elementary arithmetic is a good starting ontology. Without
the (natural) numbers, you don't get them, and with them, you can get
everything. And if comp is true, you get them with the right measure,
meaning it is just a mathematical problem to derive the SWE, from
which you can derive F= MA, and all the physical laws.
===
Stathis wrote also:
'Nothing' := 'Something' - 'Everything'
Just what I was saying!
OK, I guess you were meaning by nothing: nothing physical. Of course
this is not nothing at all. We have to postulate the numbers without
which there is no notion of computations.
Even the UD, seen extensionally as a function, is the empty function
from nothing to nothing, given that it has no inputs and no outputs.
Set theoretically it belongs to nothing^nothing, which gives the set
{nothing}, which is a singleton, not an empty set. Of course, the
deployment is not particularly interesting when viewed extensionnaly.
It is then equivalent with the program BEGIN DO NOTHING REPEAT END.
The interest of the UD appears when viewed intensionnaly: it creates
and executes all programs, in all programming language.
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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
Hi Kory, nicely put (the below), it captures my current metaphysical position quite accurately :-) Cheers, Günther Imagine again the mathematical description of Conway's Life applied to the binary digits of PI. Somewhere within that description there may be descriptions of beings who have built their own computers (which would ultimately be made out of gliders and so on). In that mundane sense, those beings perform computations and implement programs within that world. Even if those beings accepted what I'm calling Mathematical Physicalism, they could still talk about un-implemented programs, but they'd just mean unimplemented by us in this particular world. The same goes for existence and non-existence. As a Mathematical Physicalist, I believe that everything exists (at least, everything that's mathematically describable). But it's still convenient to say things like Unicorns don't exist, by which I just mean that they (probably) don't exist in my particular world. (And by my particular world, I really mean the cloud of worlds represented by all my possible future states and all my possible past states. And so on.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
If there is a split, does it create differentiated consciousnesses? I doubt it. Perhaps there are two main causes of splitting: where an event would cause different 'observables', or where an event by necessity breaks the mechanism of consciousness into different streams. In the latter case, there could be a 'connective-tissue' of undecohered universes containing weird brains-in-superposition; these aren't consciousness, but perhaps we get a bit of bleed-through from the edges. Or is that just too darned uninformed and ridiculous...? 2008/11/16 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] For instance, you don't have to perform a QM-experiment with explicit setup, looking around is enough - photons hit your eyes with different polarizations; why should no splitting occur here? Why only in the case where you perform an up/down-amplification experiment? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
*I wonder whether my selves, after a split, retain their memories from the world before the split or now have all the memories appropriate to the self in the new universe. Theoretically of course, they wouldn't know the difference, but it seems strange to think that we might perceive entirely new sets of lifetime memories from Planck-second to Planck-second as we move through the cloud of possible universes. (Or do I have it completely wrong?) marty a. * Michael Rosefield wrote: If there is a split, does it create differentiated consciousnesses? I doubt it. Perhaps there are two main causes of splitting: where an event would cause different 'observables', or where an event by necessity breaks the mechanism of consciousness into different streams. In the latter case, there could be a 'connective-tissue' of undecohered universes containing weird brains-in-superposition; these aren't consciousness, but perhaps we get a bit of bleed-through from the edges. Or is that just too darned uninformed and ridiculous...? 2008/11/16 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For instance, you don't have to perform a QM-experiment with explicit setup, looking around is enough - photons hit your eyes with different polarizations; why should no splitting occur here? Why only in the case where you perform an up/down-amplification experiment? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Surely the split is from a single history to multiple histories consistent with the original? Sure, you could say we move from identity to identity at random, but that is unlikely under QM and should be similarly improbable from any other metatheory. 2008/11/17 m.a. [EMAIL PROTECTED] *I wonder whether my selves, after a split, retain their memories from the world before the split or now have all the memories appropriate to the self in the new universe. Theoretically of course, they wouldn't know the difference, but it seems strange to think that we might perceive entirely new sets of lifetime memories from Planck-second to Planck-second as we move through the cloud of possible universes. (Or do I have it completely wrong?) marty a. * Michael Rosefield wrote: If there is a split, does it create differentiated consciousnesses? I doubt it. Perhaps there are two main causes of splitting: where an event would cause different 'observables', or where an event by necessity breaks the mechanism of consciousness into different streams. In the latter case, there could be a 'connective-tissue' of undecohered universes containing weird brains-in-superposition; these aren't consciousness, but perhaps we get a bit of bleed-through from the edges. Or is that just too darned uninformed and ridiculous...? 2008/11/16 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] For instance, you don't have to perform a QM-experiment with explicit setup, looking around is enough - photons hit your eyes with different polarizations; why should no splitting occur here? Why only in the case where you perform an up/down-amplification experiment? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Nov 2008, at 19:46, Brent Meeker wrote: That was my point. The SWE indicates that every microscopic event that happens or doesn't happen stochastically splits the wave function. But these events don't generally cause a split of Kory or other classical objects. This would contradict the linearity of the tensor product together with the linearity of the evolution of the wave. I think. I don't see this. For a non-materialist it seems that an un- implemented idea or program is an incoherent concept. An un- implemented idea or algorithm makes sense. For example a description of an algorithm A in natural language. Then an implementation of A in the universal language U consists in a formal string X such that if U is given X, UX, and run, the UX behaves like A was supposed to define, except for the unexpected bugs. implementation always means implementation in some language, But does un-implemented mean not implemented in any language? be it immaterial combinators or material hardware. With comp, the point is that material hardware needs itself to be implemented in arithmetic, except here it is not so much a direct implementation (unless Kory's, and Jason's mathematical physicalsim is true) but more like an emergence from all computations (and thus on all possible implementations But all possible implementations is a logical concept that exists only in platonia - so what is the distinction between implemented and un-implemented computations. Brent of all computations in the universal deployment). It is an open problem if the physics which emerge from all computations can be itself capture by one computations. I doubt it. If it exists, then it must have the shape of a sepical Universal Dovetailer, like a quantum Universal Dovetailer (why not, but for me this is very speculative). 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
