Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. -- 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: R/ASSA query
2010/1/19 Nick Prince m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk: Perhaps you misunderstood my reference to the use of copies. What I meant was why they are considered as an indication of measure at the beginning of thought experiments such as the one you discussed (tea/ coffe). Jaques Mallah uses them too (I’d like to discuss one of these on the list at a later time). I am not sure why we cannot consider the experiment as just happening to a single copy. That way there would be no confusion regarding whether “differentiation” is playing an important role. Otherwise I have no difficulty in realising the value of using the copy idea. If we did the experiment with a single copy that would completely change it. The copy would have a 90% chance of dying, a 3% of surviving and getting coffee and a 7% of surviving and getting tea. In particular, my views on personal identity have been shaped by these, and I especially can relate to Bruno's ideas the (eight steps of his SANE paper) at least up to the stage just before he discusses platonic realism as a source of a UD which actually existsplatonically rather than concretely. I do need to think more about this part though. In short the idea that a copy of me can/could be made, to such a level of detail so that it is essentially me, I feel intuitively is correct in principle. However I am concerned that the no clone theorem might be a problem for the continuity of personhood. If the no clone theorem were a problem then you could not survive more than a moment, since your brain is constantly undergoing classical level changes. From what I can gather Bruno seems to think not - or at least not important for what he wants to convey - but I would want to explore this at some stage. Otherwise I can feel that there should be no reason why copies should not have continuity of personhood over spatio-temporal intervals and feel themselves to be identical (I think of identity as continuity of personhood) - or at least consistent extensions of the original person. Moreover I also believe that if a suitable computer simulation can be built to the right level of detail, which contained the copy as a software construct, then this copy could be a virtual implementation within a rendered environment that would indeed similarly believe himself/ herself to be a consistent extension of the original. I suppose I am essentially a computationalist, although I am not clear as to the difference between it and functionalism yet apart from Turing emulability. I am also comfortable with the idea of differentiation so that if copies can be placed in lock step, as they presumably are across worlds, then 10, 20 or 2000 copies will be felt to be the same conscious entity. You will see that I accept the many worlds theory too. These beliefs are based on either my own prejudice or my intuition but are really more like working hypotheses rather than fixed beliefs and are certainly open to revision or modification. I find the QTI difficult to swallow which is why I want to understand the definitions and concepts associated with it. I want to be able to understand the heated debate about it and QS between Jack and Russell. What do you think could happen if there were 100 copies of you running in parallel and 90 were terminated? If you think you would definitely continue living as one of the 10 remaining copies then to be consistent you have to accept QTI. If you think there is a chance that you might die I find it difficult to understand how this could be reconciled with any consistent theory of personal identity. -- 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: R/ASSA query
On 18 Jan 2010, at 19:40, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Jan 2010, at 09:11, Brent Meeker wrote: Brent The reason that there is Something rather than Nothing is that Nothing is unstable. -- Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate, phyiscs 2004 So, why is Nothing unstable? Because there are so many ways to be something and only one way to be nothing. I suspect Frank Wilczek was alluding to the fact that the (very weird) quantum vacuum is fluctuating at low scales. Indeed in classical physics to get universality you need at least three bodies. But in quantum physics the vacuum is already Turing universal (even /quantum/ Turing universal). The quantum-nothing is already a quantum computer, although to use it is another matter, except that we are using it just by being, most plausibly right here and now. Nothing is more theory related that the notion of nothing. In arithmetic it is the number zero. In set theory, it is the empty set. In group theory, we could say that there is no nothing, no empty group, you need at least a neutral element. Likewize with the combinators: nothing may be tackle by the forest with only one bird, etc. Maybe you're a brain in a vat, or a computation in arithmetic. I'm happy to contemplate such hypothesis, but I don't find anything testable or useful that follows from them. So why should I accept them even provisionally? We may accept them because it offers an explanation of the origin of mind and matter. To the arithmetical relations correspond unboundedly rich and deep histories, and we can prove (to ourselves) that arithmetic, as seen from inside leads to a sort of coupling consciousness/realities. (Eventually precisely described at the propositional by the eight hypostases, and divided precisely into the communicable and sharable, and the non communicable one). This can please those unsatisfied by the current physicalist conception, which seems unable to solve the mind body problem, since a long time. It took over three hundred years from the birth of Newton and the death of Gallileo to solve the problem of life. The theory of computation is less than a century old. Neurophysiology is similarly in its infancy. But I do think that the computationalist hypothesis leads indeed to a conceptual solution of the mind body problem. The self-reference logics explain the gap quanta-qualia, free-will in a deterministic frame, etc. Yet, I insist that for such a solution really working, we have to derive the physical laws from it. In that sense, the solution is in its infancy. Why shouldn't we ask the question where and how does the physical realm come from?. Comp explains: from the numbers, and in this precise way. What not to take a look? I have taken a look, and it looks very interesting. But I'm not enough of a logician and number theorist to judge whether you can really recover anything about human consciousness from the theory. My impression is that it is somewhat like other everything theories. Because some everything is assumed it is relatively easy to believe that what you want to explain is in there somewhere and the problem is to explain why all the other stuff isn't observed. I consider this a fatal flaw in Tegmark's everything mathematical exists theory. Not with yours though because you have limited it to a definite domain (digital computation) where I suppose definite conclusions can be reached and predictions made. OK. The main point is that the comp everything, which is very robust thanks to Church thesis, leads to the idea that matter is a sum on the everything. This is arguably the case in empiric physics as exemplified by Feynman quantum sum. If this was not the case, David Deutsch critic on Tegmark would apply to comp. The explanation would be trivial. Again, the big advantage here is that we get the whole physical with a clear explantion why some of it is sharable (quanta) and some of its is personal and unsharable (qualia). To take the physical realm for granted is the same philosophical mistake than to take god for granted. It is an abandon of the spirit of research. It is an abstraction from the spirit of inquiry. Physicalism is really like believing that a universal machine (the quantum machine) has to be priviledged, because observation says so. I show that if I am turing emulable, then in fine all universal machines play their role, and that the mergence of the quantum one has to be explained (the background goal being the mind body problem). But if you follow the uda, you know (or should know, or ask question) that if we assume computationalism, then/ we have just no choice in the matter/. Unless we assume matter is fundamental, as Peter Jones is fond of arguing, and some things happen and some don't. Well, - either that fundamental matter is Turing emulable, and then
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
People seem to be predisposed to accept AI programs as human(oid) if one can judge by reactions to Hal, Colossus, Robby, Marvin etc. m.a. - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 6:09 PM Subject: Re: on consciousness levels and ai silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. 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 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. -- 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: on consciousness levels and ai
On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote: I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the deterministic frame. But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could contradict the prediction. If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I live. If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am just obeying the physical laws. This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying myself to the physical laws. That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain consciousness away. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear less solid). An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance. Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation. Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level. When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by referring to a low level. 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: on consciousness levels and ai
Dear Bruno, you picked my 'just added' small after-remark from my post and I thought for a second that it was Brent's reply. Then your signature explained that it was YOUR stance on life (almost) (- I search for even more proper distinctions to that term). Maybe we should scrap the term altogether and use it only as 'folklore' - applicable as in conventional 'bio'. . Considering 'conscious' (+ness?) the responsiveness (reflexively?) to *any*relations is hard to separate from the general idea we usually carry as *'life'.* I like your bon mot on 'artificial' putting me into my place in 'folklore' vocabulary. Indeed, - in my naive meanings - whatever occurs occurs by a mechanism - entailed by relations - is considerable as artificial (or: *naturally occurring change*), be it by humans or by a hurricane. what I may object to, is your ONLY in the last par: it presumes omniscience. Even your 'lived experience' is identified in anthropomorphic ways (*they have our experiences). * ** *Thanks for the reply* ** *JohnM* ** ** ** On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Jan 2010, at 16:35, John Mikes wrote: Is a universal mchine 'live'? I would say yes, despite the concrete artificial one still needs humans in its reproduction cycle. But we need plants and bacteria. I think that all machines, including houses and garden are alive in that sense. Cigarets are alive. They have a a way to reproduce. Universal machine are alive and can be conscious. If we define artificial by introduced by humans, we can see that the difference between artificial and natural is ... artificial (and thus natural!). Jacques Lafitte wrote in 1911 (published in 1931) a book where he describes the rise of machines and technology as a collateral living processes. Only for Löbian machine, like you, me, but also Peano Arithmetic and ZF , I would say I am pretty sure that they are reflexively conscious like us. Despite they have no lived experiences at all. (Well, they have our experiences, in a sense. We are their experiences). 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.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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: on consciousness levels and ai
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. But it also needs to be similar enough to us that we can intuit what hurts is and what doesn't, to empathize that it may feel pain. If my car runs out of oil does it feel pain? I'm sure my 1966 Saab doesn't, but what about my 1999 Passat - it has a computer with an auto-diagnostic function? 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: R/ASSA query
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/19 Nick Prince m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk: Perhaps you misunderstood my reference to the use of copies. What I meant was why they are considered as an indication of measure at the beginning of thought experiments such as the one you discussed (tea/ coffe). Jaques Mallah uses them too (I’d like to discuss one of these on the list at a later time). I am not sure why we cannot consider the experiment as just happening to a single copy. That way there would be no confusion regarding whether “differentiation” is playing an important role. Otherwise I have no difficulty in realising the value of using the copy idea. If we did the experiment with a single copy that would completely change it. The copy would have a 90% chance of dying, a 3% of surviving and getting coffee and a 7% of surviving and getting tea. In particular, my views on personal identity have been shaped by these, and I especially can relate to Bruno's ideas the (eight steps of his SANE paper) at least up to the stage just before he discusses platonic realism as a source of a UD which actually existsplatonically rather than concretely. I do need to think more about this part though. In short the idea that a copy of me can/could be made, to such a level of detail so that it is essentially me, I feel intuitively is correct in principle. However I am concerned that the no clone theorem might be a problem for the continuity of personhood. If the no clone theorem were a problem then you could not survive more than a moment, since your brain is constantly undergoing classical level changes. From what I can gather Bruno seems to think not - or at least not important for what he wants to convey - but I would want to explore this at some stage. Otherwise I can feel that there should be no reason why copies should not have continuity of personhood over spatio-temporal intervals and feel themselves to be identical (I think of identity as continuity of personhood) - or at least consistent extensions of the original person. Moreover I also believe that if a suitable computer simulation can be built to the right level of detail, which contained the copy as a software construct, then this copy could be a virtual implementation within a rendered environment that would indeed similarly believe himself/ herself to be a consistent extension of the original. I suppose I am essentially a computationalist, although I am not clear as to the difference between it and functionalism yet apart from Turing emulability. I am also comfortable with the idea of differentiation so that if copies can be placed in lock step, as they presumably are across worlds, then 10, 20 or 2000 copies will be felt to be the same conscious entity. You will see that I accept the many worlds theory too. These beliefs are based on either my own prejudice or my intuition but are really more like working hypotheses rather than fixed beliefs and are certainly open to revision or modification. I find the QTI difficult to swallow which is why I want to understand the definitions and concepts associated with it. I want to be able to understand the heated debate about it and QS between Jack and Russell. What do you think could happen if there were 100 copies of you running in parallel and 90 were terminated? If you think you would definitely continue living as one of the 10 remaining copies then to be consistent you have to accept QTI. If you think there is a chance that you might die I find it difficult to understand how this could be reconciled with any consistent theory of personal identity. It's a straightforward consequence of a materialist theory of personal identity. Whether you survive or not depends on which body you are and whether it died. 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: R/ASSA query
If the no clone theorem were a problem then you could not survive more than a moment, since your brain is constantly undergoing classical level changes. How interesting!! I had forgotten that most people believe that consciousness is a classical rather than quantum process (Penrose excepted). Thank you for bringing this to my attention. So the no clone theorem should not pose a problem for copy builders after all. What do you think could happen if there were 100 copies of you running in parallel and 90 were terminated? If you think you would definitely continue living as one of the 10 remaining copies then to be consistent you have to accept QTI. If you think there is a chance that you might die I find it difficult to understand how this could be reconciled with any consistent theory of personal identity. I know. To be consistent with my other assumptions I would have to believe in QTI but it is just so difficult to swallow. I think the hardest bit comes when we think of what we would experience. Suppose I lived in 200BC or before. It's hard to think of ways you could keep on surviving apart from alien visitations with copying machines etc. This is one reason I have looked in some detail into Tiplers omega point theory. I don't think this should be written off as being too whacky just because others have got onto the Tipler bashing bandwagon. It has not been refuted yet in terms of the accelerated expansion of the universe or for other reasons which I can eloborate on - but that is besides the point. If Tiplers final simulation is a Universal Dovetailer then anyone who has ever lived in the past could in principle find themselves as a consistent extension in that simulation. This is one explanation how people could avoid ending up in a cul de sac branch. According to RSSA and the RSSA your absolute measure in the multiverse decreases with each branching as versions of you die. According to the RSSA this doesn't matter as at least one of you is left standing; according to the ASSA, this does matter and you eventually die. The only way I can make sense of the latter is if you have an essentialist view of personal identity. Under this view if a copy is made of you and the original dies, you die. Under what Parfit calls the reductionist view of personal identity, you live. Hmm.. I think that what I am calling absolute measure you think of as relative measure or something like it. I thought absolute measure was the total measure of my existence across the whole multiverse. If I cannot die then RSSA implies this would be conserved. As you traverse down a particular branch though, your measure would indeed decrease for both RSSA and ASSA but it would eventually decrease to zero for ASSA when you died! With RSSA it could only decrease asymptotically to zero, but never completly disappear. Best wishes Nick Prince -- 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: R/ASSA query
On Jan 19, 6:43 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/19 Nick Prince m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk: Perhaps you misunderstood my reference to the use of copies. What I meant was why they are considered as an indication of measure at the beginning of thought experiments such as the one you discussed (tea/ coffe). Jaques Mallah uses them too (I d like to discuss one of these on the list at a later time). I am not sure why we cannot consider the experiment as just happening to a single copy. That way there would be no confusion regarding whether differentiation is playing an important role. Otherwise I have no difficulty in realising the value of using the copy idea. If we did the experiment with a single copy that would completely change it. The copy would have a 90% chance of dying, a 3% of surviving and getting coffee and a 7% of surviving and getting tea. In particular, my views on personal identity have been shaped by these, and I especially can relate to Bruno's ideas the (eight steps of his SANE paper) at least up to the stage just before he discusses platonic realism as a source of a UD which actually existsplatonically rather than concretely. I do need to think more about this part though. In short the idea that a copy of me can/could be made, to such a level of detail so that it is essentially me, I feel intuitively is correct in principle. However I am concerned that the no clone theorem might be a problem for the continuity of personhood. If the no clone theorem were a problem then you could not survive more than a moment, since your brain is constantly undergoing classical level changes. From what I can gather Bruno seems to think not - or at least not important for what he wants to convey - but I would want to explore this at some stage. Otherwise I can feel that there should be no reason why copies should not have continuity of personhood over spatio-temporal intervals and feel themselves to be identical (I think of identity as continuity of personhood) - or at least consistent extensions of the original person. Moreover I also believe that if a suitable computer simulation can be built to the right level of detail, which contained the copy as a software construct, then this copy could be a virtual implementation within a rendered environment that would indeed similarly believe himself/ herself to be a consistent extension of the original. I suppose I am essentially a computationalist, although I am not clear as to the difference between it and functionalism yet apart from Turing emulability. I am also comfortable with the idea of differentiation so that if copies can be placed in lock step, as they presumably are across worlds, then 10, 20 or 2000 copies will be felt to be the same conscious entity. You will see that I accept the many worlds theory too. These beliefs are based on either my own prejudice or my intuition but are really more like working hypotheses rather than fixed beliefs and are certainly open to revision or modification. I find the QTI difficult to swallow which is why I want to understand the definitions and concepts associated with it. I want to be able to understand the heated debate about it and QS between Jack and Russell. What do you think could happen if there were 100 copies of you running in parallel and 90 were terminated? If you think you would definitely continue living as one of the 10 remaining copies then to be consistent you have to accept QTI. If you think there is a chance that you might die I find it difficult to understand how this could be reconciled with any consistent theory of personal identity. It's a straightforward consequence of a materialist theory of personal identity. Whether you survive or not depends on which body you are and whether it died. Brent- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Are you saying that you do not subscribe to differentiation? Nick Prince -- 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: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote: I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the deterministic frame. But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could contradict the prediction. If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I live. If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am just obeying the physical laws. This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying myself to the physical laws. That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain consciousness /away/. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear less solid). An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance. And to the level of understanding of the person to whom you are explaining. Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation. Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level. When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by referring to a low level. You may certainly explain it at a lower level than the rules or lower than you might explain strategy to a human player. For example you could describe alpha-beta tree search or a look-up-table for openings. Brent Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- 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. -- 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: R/ASSA query
Something vs Nothing? I played with this so a decade+ ago and found that by simply realizing the term *NOTHING* we achieved *'something*' so the *nothing* is gone. While, however, going from *'something'* to the (elusive?) 'nothing', we have to cut out *EVERYTHING* that may interfere with 'nothing', a task immensely difficult and unlimited. No matter how one tries to define nothing, ANY point makes it into a something (even the negative). At that time I still abode in believeing in 'ontology' and my 'something' started easily from nothing. (Since then I refuse 'ontology', which is a STATIC imaging of nature, nonexistent in the continually changing complexity of 'everything' (and all their relatedness). Conventional sciences - and the philosophy on its teats - consider such 'snapshots' in the continuous change and such snapshots represent the statically existent (so bielieved!) status, called ontology of the world. Such snapshot-view led to Darwin's evolution and to physical laws. Two subsequent snapshots show change, - omitting the steps in between, hence the term 'random mutation'. Only the timeless continuality includes the deterministic entailment that represents the dynamics of the world (nature? totality, wholeness, everything). Sorry for a partially obsolete rambling. John M On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Jan 2010, at 09:11, Brent Meeker wrote: Brent The reason that there is Something rather than Nothing is that Nothing is unstable. -- Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate, phyiscs 2004 So, why is Nothing unstable? Because there are so many ways to be something and only one way to be nothing. I suspect Frank Wilczek was alluding to the fact that the (very weird) quantum vacuum is fluctuating at low scales. Indeed in classical physics to get universality you need at least three bodies. But in quantum physics the vacuum is already Turing universal (even /quantum/ Turing universal). The quantum-nothing is already a quantum computer, although to use it is another matter, except that we are using it just by being, most plausibly right here and now. Nothing is more theory related that the notion of nothing. In arithmetic it is the number zero. In set theory, it is the empty set. In group theory, we could say that there is no nothing, no empty group, you need at least a neutral element. Likewize with the combinators: nothing may be tackle by the forest with only one bird, etc. Maybe you're a brain in a vat, or a computation in arithmetic. I'm happy to contemplate such hypothesis, but I don't find anything testable or useful that follows from them. So why should I accept them even provisionally? We may accept them because it offers an explanation of the origin of mind and matter. To the arithmetical relations correspond unboundedly rich and deep histories, and we can prove (to ourselves) that arithmetic, as seen from inside leads to a sort of coupling consciousness/realities. (Eventually precisely described at the propositional by the eight hypostases, and divided precisely into the communicable and sharable, and the non communicable one). This can please those unsatisfied by the current physicalist conception, which seems unable to solve the mind body problem, since a long time. It took over three hundred years from the birth of Newton and the death of Gallileo to solve the problem of life. The theory of computation is less than a century old. Neurophysiology is similarly in its infancy. Why shouldn't we ask the question where and how does the physical realm come from?. Comp explains: from the numbers, and in this precise way. What not to take a look? I have taken a look, and it looks very interesting. But I'm not enough of a logician and number theorist to judge whether you can really recover anything about human consciousness from the theory. My impression is that it is somewhat like other everything theories. Because some everything is assumed it is relatively easy to believe that what you want to explain is in there somewhere and the problem is to explain why all the other stuff isn't observed. I consider this a fatal flaw in Tegmark's everything mathematical exists theory. Not with yours though because you have limited it to a definite domain (digital computation) where I suppose definite conclusions can be reached and predictions made. To take the physical realm for granted is the same philosophical mistake than to take god for granted. It is an abandon of the spirit of research. It is an abstraction from the spirit of inquiry. Physicalism is really like believing that a universal machine (the quantum machine) has to be priviledged, because observation says so. I show that if I am turing emulable, then in fine all universal machines play their role, and that the mergence of the quantum one has to be explained (the background goal
Re: R/ASSA query
Nick Prince wrote: On Jan 19, 6:43 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/19 Nick Prince m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk: Perhaps you misunderstood my reference to the use of copies. What I meant was why they are considered as an indication of measure at the beginning of thought experiments such as the one you discussed (tea/ coffe). Jaques Mallah uses them too (I d like to discuss one of these on the list at a later time). I am not sure why we cannot consider the experiment as just happening to a single copy. That way there would be no confusion regarding whether differentiation is playing an important role. Otherwise I have no difficulty in realising the value of using the copy idea. If we did the experiment with a single copy that would completely change it. The copy would have a 90% chance of dying, a 3% of surviving and getting coffee and a 7% of surviving and getting tea. In particular, my views on personal identity have been shaped by these, and I especially can relate to Bruno's ideas the (eight steps of his SANE paper) at least up to the stage just before he discusses platonic realism as a source of a UD which actually existsplatonically rather than concretely. I do need to think more about this part though. In short the idea that a copy of me can/could be made, to such a level of detail so that it is essentially me, I feel intuitively is correct in principle. However I am concerned that the no clone theorem might be a problem for the continuity of personhood. If the no clone theorem were a problem then you could not survive more than a moment, since your brain is constantly undergoing classical level changes. From what I can gather Bruno seems to think not - or at least not important for what he wants to convey - but I would want to explore this at some stage. Otherwise I can feel that there should be no reason why copies should not have continuity of personhood over spatio-temporal intervals and feel themselves to be identical (I think of identity as continuity of personhood) - or at least consistent extensions of the original person. Moreover I also believe that if a suitable computer simulation can be built to the right level of detail, which contained the copy as a software construct, then this copy could be a virtual implementation within a rendered environment that would indeed similarly believe himself/ herself to be a consistent extension of the original. I suppose I am essentially a computationalist, although I am not clear as to the difference between it and functionalism yet apart from Turing emulability. I am also comfortable with the idea of differentiation so that if copies can be placed in lock step, as they presumably are across worlds, then 10, 20 or 2000 copies will be felt to be the same conscious entity. You will see that I accept the many worlds theory too. These beliefs are based on either my own prejudice or my intuition but are really more like working hypotheses rather than fixed beliefs and are certainly open to revision or modification. I find the QTI difficult to swallow which is why I want to understand the definitions and concepts associated with it. I want to be able to understand the heated debate about it and QS between Jack and Russell. What do you think could happen if there were 100 copies of you running in parallel and 90 were terminated? If you think you would definitely continue living as one of the 10 remaining copies then to be consistent you have to accept QTI. If you think there is a chance that you might die I find it difficult to understand how this could be reconciled with any consistent theory of personal identity. It's a straightforward consequence of a materialist theory of personal identity. Whether you survive or not depends on which body you are and whether it died. Brent- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Are you saying that you do not subscribe to differentiation? Nick Prince I'm not sure what you mean by differentiation, but I don't subscribe to one theory or another - I just consider them. Above I was only pointing out that there are theories (in fact the most common theory) in which there is no QTI and in fact QTI might be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against the MWI. 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: R/ASSA query
Are you saying that you do not subscribe to differentiation? Nick Prince I'm not sure what you mean by differentiation, but I don't subscribe to one theory or another - I just consider them. Above I was only pointing out that there are theories (in fact the most common theory) in which there is no QTI and in fact QTI might be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against the MWI. Brent- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - point taken! I should have said are you considering differentiation as an implausible hypothesis. By differentiation I mean that instead of supervening on a single world line, the same consciousness supervenes on all identical world lines until they split as in many worlds. When they split the 1st person experience is then indeterminate. Russells book P144 Best wishes Nick -- 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: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 8:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? I don't know, that's what I'm trying to determine. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. But the basic question is; can you create this entity from scratch, using a computer? And if so, do you owe it any obligations? -- 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.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 antagonist PATRIARCHATE scatterbrained professorship VENALLY bankrupt adversity bored = unint... -- 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: on consciousness levels and ai
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote:
I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I
suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer
- know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what
degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations.
I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of
free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the
deterministic frame.
My opinion is that we don't have free will, and my definion of free-will
in this context is being able to do something that our programming doesn't
allow us to do.
For example, people explain free-will as the ability to decide whether or
not you pick up a pen. Sure, you can do either things, and no matter which
you do, you are exercising a choice. But I don't consider this free.
It's just a pre-determined as a program looking at some internal state and
deciding which branch to take:
if ( needToWrite notHoldingPen ){ grabPen(); }
It goes without saying that it's significantly more complicated, but the
underlying concept remains.
I define free will as the concept of breaking out of a branch completely,
stepping outside the program. And clearly, from within the program (of
human consciousness) it's impossible. Thus, I consider free will as a
completely impossible concept.
If we re-define free will to mean the ability to choose between two actions,
based on state (as I showed above), then clearly, it's a fact of life, and
every single object in the universe has this type of free will.
But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could
contradict the prediction.
If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change
the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I
live.
If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say
to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am
just obeying the physical laws.
This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still
condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying
myself to the physical laws.
That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain
consciousness *away*. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear
less solid).
An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance.
Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying
to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation.
Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work
as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level.
When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to
eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable
in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by
referring to a low level.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/
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http://www.mirios.com.au/
http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20
UNBOUNDED-reconcilable crow's-feet; COKE? Intermarriage distressing: puke
tailoring bicyclist...
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