Re: language, cloning and thought experiments
2009/3/11 Wei Dai wei...@weidai.com: Jack Mallah wrote: They might not, but I'm sure most would; maybe not exactly that U, but a lot closer to it. Can you explain why you believe that? No. In U = Sum_i M_i Q_i, you sum over all the i's, not just the ones that are similar to you. Of course your Q_i (which is _your_ utility per unit measure for the observer i) might be highly peaked around those that are similar to you, but there's no need for a precise cutoff in similarity. And it's even very likely that it will have even higher peaks around people that are not very much like you at all (these are the people that you would sacrifice yourself for). By contrast, in your proposal for U, you do need a precise cutoff, for which there is no justification. Ok, I see what you're saying, and it is a good point. But most people already have a personal identity that is sufficiently well-defined in the current environment where mind copying is not possible, so in practice deciding which i's to sum over isn't a serious problem (yet). The same problem would apply to calculating probabilities. If one copy of me will see heads and a million copies of me who have a one millionth degree of similarity to me will see tails, what is my expectation of heads? I suggest introducing a factor R, a number between 0 and 1 representing the degree of similarity to the original: Pr(H) = M1R1 / (M1R1 + M2R2) = (1*1) / (1*1 + 10^6*10^-6) = 1/2 The analogous equation for utility, where Q is the absolute utility experienced by an individual copy, is then: U = (M1R1Q1 + M2R2Q2) / (M1R1 + M2R2) -- 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 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: Reality as simplicity
I thought I would add the paper:Temporal Platonic Metaphysics:arxiv.org:0903.18001v1 On Mar 9, 12:26 pm, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Not certain what thread this belongs in so I started up a new one. arxiv.org:0903.1193v1 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Mikovi´c's Temporal Platonic Metaphysics
Hi Ronald, Thank you for recommending this paper. While I recognize many of the ideas in it, it bothers me that there is no explicit attempt to explain the beliefs (other that vague references to other papers/books). As I understand the paper, Mikovi´c is propossing a type of psycho-physical parallelism of a vast kind. Instead of a single branging tree representing the MWI splitting and attempting to map this into the Platonic Realm of Mathematics, we seem to be told of a pair of trees that somehow match at every occasion of perseption but only one of the trees is mapped into Platonia. The Psy tree does not have a substructure supporting it. Is this more like a Tree and its Shadow? The former has roots that tie it to a substrate that connects to Platonia, but the Shadow tree is ephemeral and transient. Of course this implies that Free Will is a complete delusion! I do appresiate Mikovi´c's attempt and the work in writting his paper. I just wish that he would explain himself more. Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com To: Everything List everything-l...@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 7:47 AM Subject: Re: Reality as simplicity I thought I would add the paper:Temporal Platonic Metaphysics:arxiv.org:0903.18001v1 On Mar 9, 12:26 pm, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Not certain what thread this belongs in so I started up a new one. arxiv.org:0903.1193v1 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Changing the past by forgetting
Nice! I did refer often to the Saibal Mitra backtracking procedure (in immortality discussions). I will take a further look on your paper. If valid, it should work in the comp frame. Amnesia could lead you to the original singularity, which could be a kind of blind spot of universal consciousness, except that with comp such a singularity should looks like a little Mandelbrot set, at first sight, I mean something like a compact view of a universal dovetailing. Bruno On 10 Mar 2009, at 19:55, Saibal Mitra wrote: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825 I've written up a small article about the idea that you could end up in a different sector of the multiverse by selective memory erasure. I had written about that possibility a long time ago on this list, but now I've made the argument more rigorous. 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: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]
On 11 Mar 2009, at 02:25, Günther Greindl wrote: Hi Bruno, The idea was that the numbers encode moments which don't have successors (the guy who transports), that's why there exist alien-OMs encoded in numbers which destroy all the machines (if we assume that arithmetic is consistent). Hmmm (Not to clear for me, I guess I miss something. I can build to much scenario from you say here). Ok: if you make OM's correspond to numbers, then QI holds if for all OM's (encoded by some n) there are some (at least one) f(n) so that it is a continuation. Only 3-OM correspond to (relative) number. I prefer to call them states or worlds. 1-OM, (by step 7, correspond to infinity (aleph_zero) of 3-OMs, themselves embedded in bigger infinities (2^aleph_zero) of computations going trough their corresponding states. Between you-in-the-living room, and you-in-the-kitchen there is already a continuum of stories/computations. If the aliens destroy all the reconstitution machines (and the person beaming over does not find the beaming to have failed), this would mean that there exists a number n (=OM) for which there is no f(n) which encodes a continuation. The alien should be able to shut down the universal dovetailer. By step 8, they have to shut down elementary arithmetic. If they can do that from inside elementary arithmetic, it means elementary arithmetic is inconsistent. Robinson arithmetic would be inconsistent. So there can't both be a continuation OM (f(n) for n) _and_ aliens destroying _all_ the machines in the multiverse - which would say there is _no_ such f(n), for some given n (the teleportation n). Maybe the confusion arises because we are talking on 2 levels: the platonic view (numbers) and the inside view (OMs). What is determined in the one (platonic relations) decides what is possible in the OMs. The 3-OM are determined in the little arithmetical Platonia. The 1-OM of the humans lives in the first person plenitude, which escapes provably (assuming the humans to be machine) the humans mathematics. But the 1-OM of a simpler (than us) Lobian machine, like Peano Arithmetic is still tractable by a much richer Lobian machine like Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory. I think you (momentarily perhaps?) forget the full consequence of the seventh uda step. You, in the next instant, is literally determined by a continuum of computations+oracles executed by the UD. Thanks to empirical QM, we have good objective (sharable) reason we share most of those histories. Best regards, 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: Mikovi´c's Temporal Platonic Metaphysics
Hi, this paper (Mikovic) is unfortunately not very good. I quote: There are strong arguments that the human mind is not computable, based on Goedel’s theorems in logic, see [3]. 3 refers to Penrose's Emperor's new mind. I don't think that I have to comment this fallacy on this list. (Bruno has written enough on this already) ;-) Also, his main assumption of time as fundamental introduces more problems than it solves. Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]
Hi Bruno, 1-OM, (by step 7, correspond to infinity (aleph_zero) of 3-OMs, themselves embedded in bigger infinities (2^aleph_zero) of computations going trough their corresponding states. Between you-in-the-living room, and you-in-the-kitchen there is already a continuum of stories/computations. I'm fine up to here. The alien should be able to shut down the universal dovetailer. By No, they need not - see below. I think you (momentarily perhaps?) forget the full consequence of the seventh uda step. You, in the next instant, is literally determined by a continuum of computations+oracles executed by the UD. Thanks to I am aware of Step 7: but I don't agree that all computations need correspond to a continuation of an OM. You agree that some continuations can actually be a non-continuation, don't you? For instance, in Quantum suicide, there are versions of you which die (visibly for other observers) - so there are continuations of your state which code your termination. I do not see following from UDA that all computational continuations need correspond to OMs. For instance, in step 1 we say yes doctor, but we don't say yes to every doctor, for instance to the one arriving with some cogwheels - no doctor ;-) So, what I am saying is that maybe in some cases (cul de sac) _all_ (2^aleph_zero) continuations actually code for termination (=the teleport fails completely, but annihilation unfortunately succeeds). How can you exclude that? Are you assuming that _every_ computation is conscious qua computation? (then I would agree - QI; but I don't share that assumption, and I don't see it anywhere in UDA) Best Wishes, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Wolfram Alpha
Kim, great post, thanks! You may enjoy this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html As to your laughing friend, I also know some such people, they have in truth not understood what science is about: asking questions, being critical (especially self-critical!); science is a method, an algorithm for arriving at knowledge, never the current canon of knowledge (which will be an old hat in a decade). People which laugh at everything that does not fit into their world-view are not scientific, just dogmatic. They believe in textbook knowledge from college times, which may be the snapshot of scientific modelling at a particular time, but, it's still not the _idea_ of science. Cheers, Günther Kim Jones wrote: Let's keep it simple. Schools and universities (globally identifiable as 'the education industry') have traditionally fulfilled the role of fountains of knowledge. This is fine, up to the point where we realise that we no longer need to attend these places if all we want is knowledge (accumulated expertise, understanding of a field, the specific technical low-down necessary to gain a foothold in a certain area.) Increasingly the Internet fulfils this function in a direct and powerful way. It also presents a lot of pratfalls as well - as Brent was very hasty in pointing out, but then I would call 'using the Internet responsibly' a skill that probably cannot be learnt easily from the Internet. This is an example of what I mean when I say education should now teach skills rather than knowledge. I am not talking either about the vocational skills that many employers hotly desire from the education sector although nobody could deny that those skills should be taught as well. Above all what needs to be taught is the skill of thinking. Not compartmentalised, specialised, academic thinking, but OPERACY - how to get a result in a real and changing world. Bruno has referred (in his 'amoebas dissertation) to the value of posing questions in a childlike manner. Children have not yet submitted to the brainwashing known as academic specialisation. He has uttered a profound and above all, a useful truth in mentioning this, IMO. Have you ever tried to stand upright on a carpet that somebody is pulling along the floor from one end? Difficult. Ever learnt to ride a surfboard? Similar skill. The world around you is changing fast and you must strive to maintain some kind of relation to it that is useful. My point is that education fails badly to teach this kind of skill. Every banker, every businessman, every politician, every company boss, every worker, everybody in fact is flying by the seat of his pants right now but education remains smugly complacent about it's self-serving tradition. Kids go to school and learn to memorise a bunch of stuff, they sit for exams and in so doing mandate the school to set those exams and teach the stuff in the first place. The more you think about it the more circular it seems. It's not for nothing that we talk often about the 'education bubble'. By this we mean that in a certain sense, education is not the real world. The teacher puts something in front of the student. The student reacts to this using the vocabulary of knowledge taught up to that point. This means the teacher is always ahead of the student which is what lends the teacher their air of authority. In the 'real world' it isn't as simple as that. You have to invent initiatives and use risk-taking strategies to get ahead, increasingly we must do this on a daily basis now to even survive. There is no school subject, for example, that teaches economic survival following job redundancy, yet millions of people are facing precisely this dilemma right now. In a certain sense their education has taught them little of real value. Don't forget about the archway effect. This states that if a number of brilliant people are sent under an archway, then it is highly likely that from that archway will stream a number of brilliant people. You have to be brilliant to get in to Harvard. They don't take in the class 'dunce' in these institutions. The institution thus benefits more from the quality of the students than the students benefit from the quality of the institution. Because of the unavoidable tradition of historical continuity in education - which grew up, after all in the church, the least likely institution to welcome any form of new knowledge or innovation - education is marked by all the drawbacks associated with an overweening respect for 'historical continuity'. It is difficult to break with the patterns of the past. Teaching, education - call it whatever you want, was for a long time in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities who founded the vast majority of our elite educational institutions (not ULB - a good point in its favour) and so
Re: Changing the past by forgetting
--- On Tue, 3/10/09, Saibal Mitra smi...@zeelandnet.nl wrote: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825 I've written up a small article about the idea that you could end up in a different sector of the multiverse by selective memory erasure. I had written about that possibility a long time ago on this list, but now I've made the argument more rigorous. Saibal, I have to say that I disagree. As you acknowledge, erasing memory doesn't recohere the branches. There is no meaningful sense in which you could end up in a different branch due to memory erasure. You admit the 'effect' has no observable consequences. But it has no unobservable meaning either. In fact, other than what I call 'causal differentiation', which clearly will track the already-decohered branches (so you don't get to reshuffle the deck), there is no meaningful sense in which you will end up in one particular future branch at all. Other than causal differentiation tracking, either 'you' are all of your future branches, or 'you' are just here for the moment and are none of them. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
