Re: UDA query
On 06 Jan 2010, at 19:57, Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/6 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I can understand that view, but in that case why consider them computations? Why not just suppose all states of your consciousness (and even other parts of the world) exist. If they can be glued together by inherent features or simply experienced without even an implicit order, then computation seems irrelevant. Of course that leaves the apparent lawfulness of physics even further from possible explanation than the UD theory. We start off with what we observe: apparently there is a physical world, and some parts of this physical world, called brains, seem to give rise to consciousness. There is reason to think that computers running a program can also give rise to consciousness. Taking this hypothesis of computationalism seriously then leads to interesting questions, such as whether there is a reason to suppose that consciousness happens only when the computations are physically instantiated (and what exactly that means), or whether their status as platonic objects is enough to generate the associated consciousness. In other words, there is a series of rational steps starting from what we observe, and if any step is faulted the whole edifice falls; whereas imply assuming idealism from the start is ad hoc and unfalsifiable. I think what I asked about is different from simply assuming idealism. It is carrying your thread of reasoning a few steps further. Suppose Platonic objects exist. Suppose computations, as Platonic objects, are enough to instantiate consciousness. Suppose consciousness consists of discrete states of this computation. I will insist that consciousness cannot consists of discrete states of computation. It may be associated to, attached to, etc. Consciousness is a first person notion, and computational state are third person notions. We cannot identify them. It is the same mistake than identifying mind and brain. Brain are assembly of molecules, minds are memories, informations, logical and pragmatical dispositions, etc. In some thread this can be just an irrelevant detail, but as we are going to the crux of the reasoning, we will have to be very careful. The devil is in the detail ... Suppose the fact that the states are connected by the computation is irrelevant to their instantiation of consciousness. The states are themselves Platonic objects. So if we assume Platonic objects exist we will already have assumed these states to exist and consciousness to have been instantiated by them - with no reference to computation. OK. I think Bruno avoids this by saying consciousness consists of computationally connected sequences thru a given state - not the state itself - but I'm not sure why that should be. Assuming digital mechanism, we can associate consciousness to a computation. This computation makes sense only with respect to a number or a machine which do (platonically) that computation. If not, all number can be said to code a computational state, and all sequence of states could define a computations, and the computations would be non enumerable, but the computations (without oracle), and considered in the third person way are enumerable: it is always generated by a precise phi_i(j). Now, to associate a consciousness to a computation is not enough. The association has to be 1-person statistically stable. We have to take into account the global first person indeterminacy, which involved all computations. I will come back on this in my comment to Nick's last post. 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: UDA query
2010/1/7 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: A program that generates S2 as it were out of nowhere, with false memories of an S1 that has not yet happened or may never happen, is a perfectly legitimate program and the UD will generate it along with all the others. If the UD is allowed to run forever, this program will be a lower measure contributor to S2 than the program that generates it sequentially; How do you know this? Why S2 is unlikely to appear out of nowhere is equivalent to the White Rabbit problem in ensemble theories, which has been often discussed over the years on this list. Russell's Theory of Nothing book provides a summary. The general idea is that structures generated by simpler algorithms have higher measure, and it is simpler to write a program that computes a series of mental states iteratively than one that computes a set of disconnected mental states from ad hoc data. and similarly in any physicalist theory. But although S2 may guess from such considerations that he is more likely to have been generated sequentially, the point remains that there is nothing in the nature of his experience to indicate this. That is, the fact that S2 remembers S1 as being in the past and remembers a smooth transition from S1 to S2 is no guarantee that S1 really did happen in the past, or even at all. We're assuming that thought is a kind of computation, a processing of information. And we're also assuming that this processing can consist of static states placed in order. So given two static states, what is the relation that makes their ordering into a computational process? One answer would be that they are successive states generated by some program. But you seem to reject that. To say that S2 remembers S1 doesn't seem to answer the question because remembering is itself a process, not a static state. I tried to phrase it in terms of the entropy, or information content, of S1 and S2 which would be a static property - as for example, if S2 simply contained S1. But that hardly seems a proper representation of states of consciousness - I'm certainly not conscious of my memories most of the time. Even as I type this I obviously remember how to type (though maybe not how to spell :-) ) but I'm not conscious of it. You've made this point in the past but I still don't understand it. If S1 and S2 are periods of experience generated consecutively in your brain in the usual manner, do you agree that you would still be experience them as consecutive if they were generated by chance by causally disconnected processes? The requirement would be only that the respective experiences have the same subjective content in both cases. Memory is only one aspect of subjective content, if an important one. If S1-S2 spans the typing of a sentence, then both S1 and S2 have to remember how to type and what the sentence they are typing is. It may seem to be unconscious but obviously it can't be completely unconscious, otherwise it could be left out without making any difference. Your digestion is an example of a completely unconscious process that need not be taken into account in a simulation of your mind. Another example is your name: you may have no awareness at all of your name during S1-S2 so it could safely be left out of the simulation, although at S3 when you reach the end of your post and you need to sign it you need to remember what it is. -- 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: UDA query
2010/1/7 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I think what I asked about is different from simply assuming idealism. It is carrying your thread of reasoning a few steps further. Suppose Platonic objects exist. Suppose computations, as Platonic objects, are enough to instantiate consciousness. Suppose consciousness consists of discrete states of this computation. Suppose the fact that the states are connected by the computation is irrelevant to their instantiation of consciousness. The states are themselves Platonic objects. So if we assume Platonic objects exist we will already have assumed these states to exist and consciousness to have been instantiated by them - with no reference to computation. That could be and in fact it is probably closer to what Plato himself meant. But mathematical objects seem to have a special status in that they necessarily exist, whereas everything else (including God) exists only contingently. You can't imagine the number 7 not existing or not being prime. The special sense in which mathematical objects and relationships exist (maybe not the right word) independently of any material world is their Platonic realm, but it doesn't follow having accepted this that other objects also exist in a separate Platonic realm. However, if consciousness supervenes on computation and it does not require actual physical implementation of the computation, then consciousness piggybacks on the Platonic existence of computation. -- 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: UDA query
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/7 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: A program that generates S2 as it were out of nowhere, with false memories of an S1 that has not yet happened or may never happen, is a perfectly legitimate program and the UD will generate it along with all the others. If the UD is allowed to run forever, this program will be a lower measure contributor to S2 than the program that generates it sequentially; How do you know this? Why S2 is unlikely to appear out of nowhere is equivalent to the White Rabbit problem in ensemble theories, which has been often discussed over the years on this list. Russell's Theory of Nothing book provides a summary. The general idea is that structures generated by simpler algorithms have higher measure, and it is simpler to write a program that computes a series of mental states iteratively than one that computes a set of disconnected mental states from ad hoc data. and similarly in any physicalist theory. But although S2 may guess from such considerations that he is more likely to have been generated sequentially, the point remains that there is nothing in the nature of his experience to indicate this. That is, the fact that S2 remembers S1 as being in the past and remembers a smooth transition from S1 to S2 is no guarantee that S1 really did happen in the past, or even at all. We're assuming that thought is a kind of computation, a processing of information. And we're also assuming that this processing can consist of static states placed in order. So given two static states, what is the relation that makes their ordering into a computational process? One answer would be that they are successive states generated by some program. But you seem to reject that. To say that S2 remembers S1 doesn't seem to answer the question because remembering is itself a process, not a static state. I tried to phrase it in terms of the entropy, or information content, of S1 and S2 which would be a static property - as for example, if S2 simply contained S1. But that hardly seems a proper representation of states of consciousness - I'm certainly not conscious of my memories most of the time. Even as I type this I obviously remember how to type (though maybe not how to spell :-) ) but I'm not conscious of it. You've made this point in the past but I still don't understand it. If S1 and S2 are periods of experience generated consecutively in your brain in the usual manner, do you agree that you would still be experience them as consecutive if they were generated by chance by causally disconnected processes? No, I don't. Of course if they had durations of seconds or minutes, I would experience much the same thing. But it is not at all convincing to me that the experience at the beginning and end of the period would be identical - and hence in the limit of infinitesimal duration, discrete states I'm not sure what the experience would be, if any at all. The requirement would be only that the respective experiences have the same subjective content in both cases. Memory is only one aspect of subjective content, if an important one. If S1-S2 spans the typing of a sentence, then both S1 and S2 have to remember how to type and what the sentence they are typing is. But here you have allowed S1 and S2 to be processes with significant duration and even overlap. They are no longer discrete, static states. It may seem to be unconscious but obviously it can't be completely unconscious, otherwise it could be left out without making any difference. Your digestion is an example of a completely unconscious process that need not be taken into account in a simulation of your mind. Another example is your name: you may have no awareness at all of your name during S1-S2 so it could safely be left out of the simulation, although at S3 when you reach the end of your post and you need to sign it you need to remember what it is. You are relying on the idea of a digital simulation which is described by a sequence of discrete states. But in an actual realization of such a simulation the discrete states are realized by causal sequences in time which are not of infinitesimal duration and overlap. Brent -- 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: Why I am I?
pretty cool thread (read most but skimmed thru some of it though). I've spent the past 35 or so years (i'm now 56) pondering the subject of why I am I and doing thought experiment after thought experiment with cloning, copies, changing I one particle at a time until I am you or someone else, and ultimately came to the conclusion as someone posted midway thru this thread of the concept of the universal person or universal soul... consciousness is basically universal, there is no priority of one bit of consciousness over the other. Within just my own life, the organism I was 35 years ago is not the organism I am today, I am only connected to that former organism by sequential events in time and space, threaded together. With an advanced technology I could become Tom Cruise by sequential changes particle by particle, memory by memory, thought by thought, until I became the currently existing Tom Cruise. Would my I which changed over the course of 35 years from my former I be any different than Tom Cruise's I that was changed over time (bit by bit) from my former I? Thought experiments like these made me realize we're all essentially the same universal concept, we're all just unique pieces of the whole of the everything. It's just really cool to find like thinking by a string search on the web, having done all this thinking in isolation and coming to the same conclusion as other minds have. What brought me to this site was a string search for everything possible exists, something I now believe and was just curious if there was any text on the web with the same line of thinking. It was my answer to the other question I've always had as to why does the universe exist at all? I came to my own conclusion that if anything exists (which apparently it does), then every possible event must exist, every possible outcome from one state to the other must exist, and if it existed once, nothing stops it from existing again, and actually, every possible event not only exists but has always existed and will always exist. Kind of expands the universe quite a bit, virtually infinite. There's not only me, but every possible outcome of my life. There's every possible outcome of my mom dad's reproduction, some of which produce me but nearly infinitely conditions that do not produce my starting organism. My dad wouldn't have existed, if it weren't for the lightning strike that killed his mom's first husband. So I'm here because I am just one of nearly infinite possibilities of consciousness. Disconcerting, at times, where I used to think, glad it's them and not me (like tortured terrorist victims), well, we're all the same basically, and while the whole of everything contains terrible things, including the very worst of possibilities, it also contains the very best as well. Having figured this much out to my satisfaction actually gives me a very contented, peaceful and secure feeling. - Roy -- 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: Why I am I?
pretty cool thread (read most but skimmed thru some of it though). I've spent the past 35 or so years (i'm now 56) pondering the subject of why I am I and doing thought experiment after thought experiment with cloning, copies, changing I one particle at a time until I am you or someone else, and ultimately came to the conclusion as someone posted midway thru this thread of the concept of the universal person or universal soul... consciousness is basically universal, there is no priority of one bit of consciousness over the other. Within just my own life, the organism I was 35 years ago is not the organism I am today, I am only connected to that former organism by sequential events in time and space, threaded together. With an advanced technology I could become Tom Cruise by sequential changes particle by particle, memory by memory, thought by thought, until I became the currently existing Tom Cruise. Would my I which changed over the course of 35 years from my former I be any different than Tom Cruise's I that was changed over time (bit by bit) from my former I? Thought experiments like these made me realize we're all essentially the same universal concept, we're all just unique pieces of the whole of the everything. It's just really cool to find like thinking by a string search on the web, having done all this thinking in isolation and coming to the same conclusion as other minds have. What brought me to this site was a string search for everything possible exists, something I now believe and was just curious if there was any text on the web with the same line of thinking. It was my answer to the other question I've always had as to why does the universe exist at all? I came to my own conclusion that if anything exists (which apparently it does), then every possible event must exist, every possible outcome from one state to the other must exist, and if it existed once, nothing stops it from existing again, and actually, every possible event not only exists but has always existed and will always exist. Kind of expands the universe quite a bit, virtually infinite. There's not only me, but every possible outcome of my life. There's every possible outcome of my mom dad's reproduction, some of which produce me but nearly infinitely conditions that do not produce my starting organism. My dad wouldn't have existed, if it weren't for the lightning strike that killed his mom's first husband. So I'm here because I am just one of nearly infinite possibilities of consciousness. Disconcerting, at times, where I used to think, glad it's them and not me (like tortured terrorist victims), well, we're all the same basically, and while the whole of everything contains terrible things, including the very worst of possibilities, it also contains the very best as well. Having figured this much out to my satisfaction actually gives me a very contented, peaceful and secure feeling. RMahoney -- 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: UDA query
Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2010/1/8 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/7 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com: A program that generates S2 as it were out of nowhere, with false memories of an S1 that has not yet happened or may never happen, is a perfectly legitimate program and the UD will generate it along with all the others. If the UD is allowed to run forever, this program will be a lower measure contributor to S2 than the program that generates it sequentially; How do you know this? Why S2 is unlikely to appear out of nowhere is equivalent to the White Rabbit problem in ensemble theories, which has been often discussed over the years on this list. Russell's Theory of Nothing book provides a summary. The general idea is that structures generated by simpler algorithms have higher measure, and it is simpler to write a program that computes a series of mental states iteratively than one that computes a set of disconnected mental states from ad hoc data. and similarly in any physicalist theory. But although S2 may guess from such considerations that he is more likely to have been generated sequentially, the point remains that there is nothing in the nature of his experience to indicate this. That is, the fact that S2 remembers S1 as being in the past and remembers a smooth transition from S1 to S2 is no guarantee that S1 really did happen in the past, or even at all. We're assuming that thought is a kind of computation, a processing of information. And we're also assuming that this processing can consist of static states placed in order. So given two static states, what is the relation that makes their ordering into a computational process? One answer would be that they are successive states generated by some program. But you seem to reject that. To say that S2 remembers S1 doesn't seem to answer the question because remembering is itself a process, not a static state. I tried to phrase it in terms of the entropy, or information content, of S1 and S2 which would be a static property - as for example, if S2 simply contained S1. But that hardly seems a proper representation of states of consciousness - I'm certainly not conscious of my memories most of the time. Even as I type this I obviously remember how to type (though maybe not how to spell :-) ) but I'm not conscious of it. You've made this point in the past but I still don't understand it. If S1 and S2 are periods of experience generated consecutively in your brain in the usual manner, do you agree that you would still be experience them as consecutive if they were generated by chance by causally disconnected processes? No, I don't. Of course if they had durations of seconds or minutes, I would experience much the same thing. But it is not at all convincing to me that the experience at the beginning and end of the period would be identical - and hence in the limit of infinitesimal duration, discrete states I'm not sure what the experience would be, if any at all. The requirement would be only that the respective experiences have the same subjective content in both cases. Memory is only one aspect of subjective content, if an important one. If S1-S2 spans the typing of a sentence, then both S1 and S2 have to remember how to type and what the sentence they are typing is. But here you have allowed S1 and S2 to be processes with significant duration and even overlap. They are no longer discrete, static states. It may seem to be unconscious but obviously it can't be completely unconscious, otherwise it could be left out without making any difference. Your digestion is an example of a completely unconscious process that need not be taken into account in a simulation of your mind. Another example is your name: you may have no
