Re: KIM 2.3 (was Re: Time)
Hi Kim and all, On 23 Dec 2008, at 11:50, Kim Jones wrote: Bruno, things are starting to hang together in my new digital brain (bright yellow) Good. you wrote the plan: --- A) UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument) 1) I explain that if you are a machine, you are already immaterial. --- Fine. This thought is merely surprising and somewhat (strangely) satisfying. It doesn't affect the way I live my life, but it sure as hell gets me some funny looks from people when I try to explain it to them! Most people think I am identifying the self with the soul or the spirit or some other metaphysical conjecture that they have heard of from religion or from their grandmother. They simply do not buy it when I tell them that all of reality is like this - that the assumption of a primitive, primary material reality is probably a gross error of perception albeit quite an understandable one. People are so hoodwinked by appearances, by their senses. Somehow I still think we are *meant* to be fooled by appearances - although this thought may well be self-contradictory. You are pointing on a difficult point which we will have to address soon or later. It's a good thing I find most things quite unconvincing - including appearances and reality generally! Good to be skeptical. But mind the relativist trap. I am always asking myself What is really going on here? Why are things THIS way, in particular? Why not some other way? I have always been like this. Some people find me quite annoying in this regard... Don't mind this, though. Except during the feast perhaps ... - 2) Mechanism entails the existence of a subjective or first person indeterminacy or uncertainty. - In the sense that I cannot know who or what I am, BEING who or what I am. Correct? Perhaps you are a little too quick here. I would necessarily have to step outside my existence to do so - manifestly impossible, given the laws of physics (or simply given MEC/COMP). I would have to reboot from a different system; be a different entity in fact. This will be possible, in some sense. You are definitely too quick here. Paradox Alert: Without a first person perspective there could be no third person perspectives anyway, isn't that correct? Just by assuming MEC there will be third person realities conceivable without first person. Why then doesn't some part of the first person uncertainty (ie my uncertainty about me) translate into 3rd person perspectives? Ah Ah! Good question. You know, the first person knows always very well who she is, despite she cannot tell. In the frame of the UDA, the first person indeterminacy does not concern who you are (you know that even if you cannot translate that in any third person description), but it concerns the more practical (even physical) question of predicting who you will be in the next instant, like before and after a sequance of self-polyplication. Anything I might say or merely perceive about something or someone else is surely contaminated by my uncertainties...so, in the quest to know myself how can I trust the veracity of any knowledge that comes to me from outside? All knowledge comes via brains (wet, messy ones) and all of these brains are suffering the same uncertainties about their identity as I. That is why we assume comp, and then use logic and computer science. We need a theory to provide light. Note, I am not a solipsist. Very good. Let us decide to abandon the comp hypothesis if it leads us toward solipsism. That may still be possible. Also, you cannot experience the experience that I experience and vice versa. Which is why I think art and music in particular are important revelations of the first person perspective. Yes. Music is an ATTEMPT to overcome first person indeterminacy by universalising certain qualia. Tchaikowsky expects you to BECOME Tchaikowsky when you listen to the first movement of his 6th Symphony. You suffer and agonise and die with him. It's a VR experience. Madonna just doesn't do this for me. Not a chance for Madonna, but apparently she succeeds with some others, and that is fine. I am ok with you here. However, new research has shown that reading the mind is literally possible. We can now assemble an image seen via an optical system transmitted only via the electrical impulses read in a brain system (NewScientist last ed.) Perhaps it is not too far from here to the thought that you and I might swap instantiations for a short time? Maybe it would be fun to think, walk, talk and act like Bruno Marchal, if only for 5 minutes. In fact, I would pay a princely sum to have that experience. In an age when some people will spend gazillions on a space tourist (virtual) reality experience, I would go for the Be Bruno for Five Minutes option long
Re: KIM 2.1
Bruno and Kim, enjoyable discours by two math.-ly impaired minds (excuse me Kim!) - I met several youngsters (up to 70 y.o.) who simply had no 'pitch' to math - yet were good smart artists, even business(wo)men, parents and technicians (not so with politicians, they are not what I call 'smart'). I was deemed at 15 the best mathemathician in the school, because I was lazy to do my homework and was summoned to recite the cosin rule (whatever these terms are in English) and I invented a (not quite fitting?) other one on location. Then I continued 'not learning' and fell back in college, where my elective for a chemical Ph.D. was math. * People are different, Fermi 'dreamed up' a complete electric circuit without the designing work, Mozart popped out a full piece of performable music, Napoleon just knew how to win a battle, Michelangelo saw the Moses statue within the block of marble, to just chip off the excessive material. Etc. Most of them had no comprehension to math problems (may be Fermi had?). It is like a musical gift, or even a good pich. BTW, many mathematicians have a good musical talent, too, beside many have a little 'twitch' in their mind for common things. When Goedel had to apply for US nationalization, he was thoroughly trained by friends not to say anything except for the shortest reply to the very questions (knowing him...). The examining US attorney asked him a question about the Constitution. Goedel: (after a little musing): well, I can tell you what is wrong with the Constitution... - The attorney (who was friendly warned) laughed and let him pass. * Happy New Year! John On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Kim, On 20 Dec 2008, at 06:06, Kim Jones wrote: Hmmm... My diagnostic is that you are suffering from an acute form of math-anxiety. I can cure that! Looks like I have to say Yes, Doctor again! Good! Tell me first if you have been once mentally or physically raped or tortured by a mathematician. Yes. When I was in first class, the school teacher said Stand up and recite your 7 times table. I became anxiety-struck, got sweaty palms and sat down. I think I may have cried. I think I should find this person and bring them to justice, what do you say? The 7 times table? It is a real bastard! If this was a bit systematic, you can bring him or them to justice. Only be sure the judge will not ask you to stand up and recite the seven times table ... Of course there is nothing wrong that a teacher ask a student to stand up and recite the seven times table, but from what has followed and from your previews posts and from my experience I can guess it was a bit more than that. Later on, it was discovered that the part of my brain that does mathematics had somehow mapped itself to the musical part, possibly even at that very moment - so that the musical perception became more finely-grained while the maths-perception missed out I kid you not, a psychologist told me I believe you. Friedrich Gauss said that math is the most easy of all the sciences, and I think he is right. Yes, but he and you probably were not physically abused or tortured by your primary school maths teachers the way I was Actually, I could say that I have been more, and less, lucky. More lucky because in primary school, and in high school, I have been in front of real gentle and good mathematicians almost all the time. This has given to me a solid base. Less lucky because I have been tortured at university, once by a logician in 1977, and again by the same manipulator in 1994, (with a geometer and a philosopher, who were strictly speaking just other victims of that logicians, (actually a brilliant and ingenuous manipulator). You can imagine the scandal. It is so big, that they use, still today a lot of energy to hide it. for just one example which is verifiable on the net, when I got the price of the best thesis in Paris in 1998, see http://www.lemonde.fr/mde/prix/janv99.html they have succeeded, from Brussels, to make that price (money+the publication of the thesis+ promotion of the thesis) disappear. I don't even figure in the list of ancient laureates, see http://www.lemonde.fr/mde/prix/ancienslaureats.html Instead of promotion I got life long defamation and calumnies. The only explanation I got from Paris has been: c'est la vie! I am more lucky than you, Kim, because I was an adult, and all in all, they have only succeeded in deepening my research, in broadening my inquiry, in motivating me eventually to address myself to the most impartial judge ever, the universal machine. They have not succeed to break down my enthusiasm for long, and they have made me eventually an infinitely patient teacher. I have a very positive nature in life, which makes me extract the positive things even from the worst. I have still a little handicap for finishing paper, though, or deciding when a text is
Re: Machines was:Kim 2.1
On 24 Dec 2008, at 16:41, Günther Greindl wrote: Kim, Bruno, Not at all. You have already done the first and last leap of faith of the reasoning when accepting the digital brain at the first step. I am aware that you are not aware of that, because in the reply you seem to believe that the MEC hypothesis can be taken for granted. But it can't. I think you are talking of two different machine conceptions. I would like to quote Steve Harnad: Harnad, S. Can a machine be conscious? How? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2003, 10, 67-75 BEGIN: ...if we do follow this much more sensible route to the definition of machine, we will find that a machine turns out to be simply: any causal physical system, any mechanism. And in that case, biological organisms are machines too, and the answer to our question Can a machine be conscious is a trivial Yes, of course. We are conscious machines. Hence machines can obviously be conscious. The rest is just about what kinds of machines can and cannot be conscious, and how -- and that becomes a standard empirical research program in cognitive science... END QUOTE I think this is the machine concept Kim was using originally (and maybe still has in mind). This conception can, I think, be indeed taken for granted by every scientifically minded person. Why ? It is an assumption too. What could we taken it for granted? And this assumption is quite close to comp in the sense that nobody knows about any natural machine not being turing emulable. Even quantum machine, accepting QM without collapse. Bruno, on the other hand, is talking about the machine concept as it exists in logic: here machine/mechanism - and also the COMP(utationalism) of cognitive science - does not mean any physical causal system, but effective mechanisms - an informal notion formalised (according to Church-Turing Thesis) with UTM/Lambda/Rec. Functions. All known physical causal system are Turing emulable. And COMP is the assumption that we are Turing-emulable (with an UTM for example), not the more trivial hypothesis that we are a physical causal system. And this (COMP), indeed, can't be taken for granted but must be assumed. I don't see why this COMP has to be assumed, and not the other slightly enlarged version. Both are assumption. And none of KIM 2.1 (= UDA 1), nor KIM.2.3 (= UDA 3) assumes the digitality. This is done at step 7. We used only the replicability. I agree that the UDA does not apply to natural machine whose function cannot be replicated. But nobody has ever seen or even conceive such a machine. You have to assume a non repeatable phenomenon, hard to get from QM without collapse. That is non comp, but I doubt Harnad believe in such non-comp. He has to say explicitely the machine have non replicable functions, it seems to me. I have not the paper, and if this what he says, let me known, that would be curious and interesting, but frankly I doubt it. If we (human) understand the functioning of such machine, then we could compute more than a Turing Machine, and Church thesis, in math, would be false. Why not, but this is just saying our assumption could be wrong, but this is always true. Harnad assumption is really comp, unless he mention explicit non replicability, explicit non effective processes. Does it? 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-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Machines was:Kim 2.1
Bruno, I agree with Gunther about the two types of machine. The broader machine is any system that can be logically described-- a system that is governed by rules and has a definite description. Such machines are of course not necessarily computable; oracle machines and so on can be logically described (depending of course on the definition of the word logical, since they cannot be described using 1st-order logic with its standard semantics). The narrower type of machine is restricted to be computable. All known physical causal system are Turing emulable. I am no physicist, but I've been trying to look up stuff on that issue... Schmidhuber asserts in multiple places that the fact that differential equations are used to describe physics does not contradict its computability, but he does not explain. I know that, for example, Wolfram is attempting a computable foundation for physics, but I don't know about any real progress... so any info would be appreciated. --Abram On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Dec 2008, at 16:41, Günther Greindl wrote: Kim, Bruno, Not at all. You have already done the first and last leap of faith of the reasoning when accepting the digital brain at the first step. I am aware that you are not aware of that, because in the reply you seem to believe that the MEC hypothesis can be taken for granted. But it can't. I think you are talking of two different machine conceptions. I would like to quote Steve Harnad: Harnad, S. Can a machine be conscious? How? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2003, 10, 67-75 BEGIN: ...if we do follow this much more sensible route to the definition of machine, we will find that a machine turns out to be simply: any causal physical system, any mechanism. And in that case, biological organisms are machines too, and the answer to our question Can a machine be conscious is a trivial Yes, of course. We are conscious machines. Hence machines can obviously be conscious. The rest is just about what kinds of machines can and cannot be conscious, and how -- and that becomes a standard empirical research program in cognitive science... END QUOTE I think this is the machine concept Kim was using originally (and maybe still has in mind). This conception can, I think, be indeed taken for granted by every scientifically minded person. Why ? It is an assumption too. What could we taken it for granted? And this assumption is quite close to comp in the sense that nobody knows about any natural machine not being turing emulable. Even quantum machine, accepting QM without collapse. Bruno, on the other hand, is talking about the machine concept as it exists in logic: here machine/mechanism - and also the COMP(utationalism) of cognitive science - does not mean any physical causal system, but effective mechanisms - an informal notion formalised (according to Church-Turing Thesis) with UTM/Lambda/Rec. Functions. All known physical causal system are Turing emulable. And COMP is the assumption that we are Turing-emulable (with an UTM for example), not the more trivial hypothesis that we are a physical causal system. And this (COMP), indeed, can't be taken for granted but must be assumed. I don't see why this COMP has to be assumed, and not the other slightly enlarged version. Both are assumption. And none of KIM 2.1 (= UDA 1), nor KIM.2.3 (= UDA 3) assumes the digitality. This is done at step 7. We used only the replicability. I agree that the UDA does not apply to natural machine whose function cannot be replicated. But nobody has ever seen or even conceive such a machine. You have to assume a non repeatable phenomenon, hard to get from QM without collapse. That is non comp, but I doubt Harnad believe in such non-comp. He has to say explicitely the machine have non replicable functions, it seems to me. I have not the paper, and if this what he says, let me known, that would be curious and interesting, but frankly I doubt it. If we (human) understand the functioning of such machine, then we could compute more than a Turing Machine, and Church thesis, in math, would be false. Why not, but this is just saying our assumption could be wrong, but this is always true. Harnad assumption is really comp, unless he mention explicit non replicability, explicit non effective processes. Does it? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- Abram Demski Public address: abram-dem...@googlegroups.com Public archive: http://groups.google.com/group/abram-demski Private address: abramdem...@gmail.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this
