Re: UDA query
On 02 Jan 2010, at 17:06, Nick Prince wrote: HI Bruno Thank you so much for your answers to my queries so far. I really need to do some more thinking about all that you have said so far and to understand why I am having difficulty replacing a real physical universal machine existing in the future (like Tipler suggests) or a great programmer existing now (like schmidhuber suggests) with your arithmetical realism. I also need to search some previous posts to make use of past discussion topics that are relevant. Perhaps my background makes me a physicalist who can currently accept a milder form of comp. However, I want to explore your position because I think it makes sense in so far as I think it is less vulnerable to the threat of infinite regressions like in Schmidhuber’s great programmer (or even the greater programmer that programmed him). Your version of computationalism would still be valid if either or both of the two options above were true. Herein lies its appeal to me (both fundamental and universal). My point is that we have no choice in the matter (no pun). Mechanism and materialism are just epistemologically incompatible. Primitive Matter appears to be a mythic product. What Schmidhuber and Tegmark are still a bit naive about is the mind body problem. They does not take the persons view into account, and their explanation of physics relies still on some identity thesis, which are shown not capable of working when we assume comp (mainly by the movie graph argument). I would like to read up on logic and computation as you suggest. I have read about all the books you recommend . However, can you suggest topic areas within these texts which I can focus on to help me get up to speed with the problems I have regarding arithmetical realism with the UDA? I am still not sure to understand what is your difficulty. Arithmetical realism is the belief that the truth of elementary arithmetic does not depend of my consciousness. The fact that all positive integers can be written as the sum of four squares (Lagranges theorem) is true independently of Diophantes and Lagranges (who find and prove the result), even if the big bang did not occur. All mathematicians are arithmetical realists, except a very small (ultrafinitist) minority. There is much that could perhaps be left out on a first reading and to my untrained eyes, it’s difficult to know what to omit (for example what would godels arithmetisation technique come under? (Googling it brings not much up). Sorry but I haven’t ordered any books yet so I can’t look into them. Is there an English translation of your Ph.D. thesis yet? Sorry but I can’t do French. My thanks and best wishes. I feel guilty not writing a long english text, nor submitting papers, but there are some personal reasons for that. Up to now, I realize that physicist have no understanding of logic at all, and logicians have no interest neither in physics, and still less in the philosophy of mind. It is hard to find the right way to introduce all this. The subject is transdiciplinary, and touches very hot (taboo) notions, also. I got all this in the sixties/seventies, and at that time the work has been considered too much simple and obvious (!). I have been mislead. Now I know it is not simple, and that for a physicist, the very introductory part of logic is just impenetrable. I have assisted to many deaf-dialog between logicians and physicists. Big mathematicians like Penrose have shown that it is easy to be rigorous yet wrong on Gödel's theorem, and now many just don't dare to study the subject. But the few who have take the time to really study the work have understood it, and that is why eventually I have defended it as a thesis in computer science in France. In Belgium the thesis has been rejected by literary philosophers who confuse materialism with marxism, and it is just a sort of blasphemy for them to even harbor the shadow of a doubt toward materialism. Of course my PhD thesis says just nothing about marxism, nor any thing political. It is just logic applied to ontological questions at the intersection of physics and cognitive science. But literary continental philosopher have a very long tradition of disliking the scientific attitude in their field. They feel like to be invaded by science, and, be them atheist or christians, they know such kind of attitude could make ridiculous the kind of crap they are teaching, and they would lose power (and they actually defend the idea that scientific truth does not exist, and that all is a question of political power, and they offer me a demonstration of this). At least most Christians are aware of this, and can react in a scientific way, unlike most atheists philosophers who have become more dogmatic than the pope on Aristotelian theology. Freedom of thought just don't exist in some country. Humans loves
Re: UDA query
On 03 Jan 2010, at 14:55, Nick Prince wrote:
Thank you Stathis
This has helped move me on a bit. “The hardwareless computer” has been
giving me some real problems. Let me replay my understanding of what
you said back just to check it is on the right lines.
As a possible example of one of these “lurking computations” we could
consider the one which begins with no-thing and think of the null set
as made of it phi ={ } and then associating it with the number 0. Then
imagine the set { phi} associating it with 1, then{ phi,{phi }}
associating this with 2, then { phi, { phi} , { ,{phi }} },
associating it with 3 etc. Hence we get an infinite sequence of
abstract (platonic) entities which can conjure up (compute) the
natural numbers and the implied successor function simply from the
abstract (platonic) notion of a set and an association rule (also a
platonic relation). More and more structure can be built up until - as
you say - the entire structure of the computation contained in the
mapping can be envisioned. Now although no external observers might be
able to access these computations, the computations might just create
conscious observers – bootstrapped into existence by the special class
of computations which these (internal) observers (if they believed in
comp) would naturally consider as non trivial. As you say the entire
structure of the mapping which describes the computation is a platonic
object too – hence the world comes from nothing and computation.
Have I got this roughly right? I would be grateful for any critical
comments from you, Bruno (or anyone).
Many thanks
Nick
On Jan 3, 11:05 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:
2010/1/3 Nick Prince m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk:
HI Bruno
Thank you so much for your answers to my queries so far. I really
need to do some more thinking about all that you have said so far
and
to understand why I am having difficulty replacing a real physical
universal machine existing in the future (like Tipler suggests) or a
great programmer existing now (like schmidhuber suggests) with your
arithmetical realism. I also need to search some previous posts to
make use of past discussion topics that are relevant. Perhaps my
background makes me a physicalist who can currently accept a milder
form of comp. However, I want to explore your position because I
think it makes sense in so far as I think it is less vulnerable to
the
threat of infinite regressions like in Schmidhuber’s great
programmer
(or even the greater programmer that programmed him). Your
version of
computationalism would still be valid if either or both of the two
options above were true. Herein lies its appeal to me (both
fundamental and universal).
I would like to read up on logic and computation as you suggest. I
have read about all the books you recommend . However, can you
suggest
topic areas within these texts which I can focus on to help me
get up
to speed with the problems I have regarding arithmetical realism
with
the UDA? There is much that could perhaps be left out on a first
reading and to my untrained eyes, it’s difficult to know what to
omit
(for example what would godels arithmetisation technique come under?
(Googling it brings not much up). Sorry but I haven’t ordered any
books yet so I can’t look into them.
Is there an English translation of your Ph.D. thesis yet? Sorry
but I
can’t do French. My thanks and best wishes.
My justification for the hardwareless computer is the fact that any
computation can be mapped onto any physical process, in the same way
that any English sentence can be mapped onto any string of symbols.
Such a post hoc mapping would be useless to an observer trying to
extract meaning from the symbols or the result of a calculation from
the computer, since he would have to figure out the mapping himself
and he would have to know the answer he wants before doing this. With
the right key Bruno's PhD thesis contains an account of next week's
news, but so what? If you look at it the right way the dust swept up
by a storm is implementing a Turing machine calculating the digits of
pi, but what good does that do anyone? The claim that codes and
computations lurk hidden all around us could be taken as true but
trivial, or perhaps defined away as untrue on account of its
triviality. However, there is a special class of computations to
consider: computations that give rise to conscious observers in
virtual universes that do not interact with the environment at the
level of the substrate of implementation. If such computations are
possible (i.e. if comp is true) then it doesn't matter that no
external observers have access to the mapping that would allow them
to
recognise them, for these computations create their own observers,
bootstrapping themselves into non-triviality. The physical process
sustaining the computation need not even be as complex in
Re: UDA query
Thanks Bruno. I'll look this up and also I want to scan through your seven steps series for November. The later posts in these I think will help me make contact with the concepts.I want to be able to understand your Sane paper - especially the later parts. Is there any english translation of your thesis still underway as it says in the pages part of the list? On Jan 4, 1:15 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Nick, Oops, soory. I sent an empty answer. Actually I agree with all you say here, so an empty comment was a good comment! I think all this becomes simpler once you grasp that a computation, in the math sense, is a very well defined object. If a computation exists, it can be proved to exist in elementary arithmetic. And it exists there with a relative measure. This can not necessarily prove in arithmetic (but init can be proved for arithmetic in set theory). But here Stathis' intuition is correct, we don't have to prove in arithmetic the existence of the measure to be able to live it, and develop a first person perspective. An hardwareless computer is well defined mathematical notion. Conceptually, it is even difficult and not yet solved problem to define an hardware computer (despite its common use could give you the contrary feeling). Without the rize of quantum computation, I am not sure I would have ever believed in a notion of physical computation. Cf also, the Mallah implementation problem. Bruno On 03 Jan 2010, at 14:55, Nick Prince wrote: -- 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.
