Re: Against Mechanism
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
> On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
>>>
>>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>>> conscious experience.
>>
>> Isn't this just idealism?
>
> If it were consistent it would be solipism.
By inconsistency I assume that you are referring to my use of "you"
and "your" while claiming that, ultimately, Jason's conscious
experience has nothing to do with my conscious experience?
If there are no causal connections between our experiences then...why
am I addressing him in my emails as though there were?
There are three answers to this question:
1) To be consistent, I have to conclude that ultimately there is no
reason for this. It's just the way things are. That I do this is
just a fact, and not causally connected to any other facts.
2) The related fact that, lacking free will, I have no real choice
but to do this.
3) My "experienced" justification is that these emails are mostly an
opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on
these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it
doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is.
As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean?
Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no.
1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes.
2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything
outside of my mental states. Yes.
3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No.
So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist.
Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of
"personage". It isn't "mental states belonging to Rex" so much as
"mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view".
I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like
point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I find it
entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental
states exist.
But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of
mental states do or don't exist. Maybe Jason's mental states exist,
maybe they don't. It's not really important.
> It's when your conscious
> experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious
> experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the
> experiences is needed. Objective = intersubjective agreement.
And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
of subjective experience.
What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
knowing what conscious experience "is"? It's building a foundation on
top of something which has no foundation.
>From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
behind conscious experience.
As Hans Moravec says:
"A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."
Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
no conclusions that can be drawn.
And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?
Rex
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Re: Brain as quantum computer
Tegmark published a paper which largely refutes the idea that neurons use quantum interference to perform any useful computation: http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009 In short, the brain is far to hot and uncontrolled to maintain decoherence for the time periods involved in neural processes. The appeal for this idea comes from the belief that the brain is too complex to just be a machine, and must be something much more, but the brain is far more complex than any other machine we are familiar with, with 100 billion neurons and 10^15 synapses. It is, however, interesting that while quantum mechanics doesn't explain consciousness, Bruno's UDA shows how consciousness might explain quantum mechanics. Jason On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:35 AM, ronaldheld wrote: > http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0205/0205092v8.pdf > Bruno(and anyone else) >Ronald > > -- > 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: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On 02 Dec 2010, at 15:51, ronaldheld wrote:
Bruno:
I looked at UDA via the SANE paper. I am not certain the the mind is
Turing emulatable, but will move onward.
OK. It is better to say brain instead of mind. The doctor proposes an
artificial digital brain, and keep silent on what is the mind, just
that it will be preserved locally through the running of the adequate
computer.
Using Star Trek transporter
concepts, I can accept steps 1 through 5.
Nice. Note that the Star trek transporter usually annihilates the
original (like in quantum teleportation), but if I am a "program" (a
natural program) then it can be duplicated (cut, copy and paste apply
to it).
Step 6 takes only the mind
(the program, or the digital instantaneous state of a program)
and sends it to a finite computational device or the entire person
into a device similar to a Holodeck,
It is just a computer. A physical embodiment of a (Turing) Universal
Machine. Assuming the "mind state" (here and now) can be captured as
an instantaneous description of a digital program, nobody can feel the
difference between "reality" and its physical digital emulation, at
least for a period (which is all what is needed for the probability or
credibility measure).
where the person is a
Holocharacter?
A person is what appears when the correct program (which exists by the
mechanist assumption) is executed ('runned') in a physical computer.
I am not certain a UD is physically possible in a
finite resource Universe.
You don't need this to get the indeterminacy, non-locality and even
the non clonability, unless you add that the resource are finite and
enough little (in which case you still have the indeterminacy and non-
locality in case of self-duplication in that little universe of course).
After UDA 1-7, you know that if you make a physical experiment, the
result that you will perceive depend on the absence of similar state
of "your body" in the (physical) universe.
Then, with step 8, you can realize that even that move toward a little
physical universe will not help to throw away the 1-indterminacy, non-
locality and non clonability. The reason is that Arithmetical Platonia
becomes the universal "Holodeck", if you want.
UDA 1-7 shows that the mind (the first person) cannot distinguish a
physical reality from a physical emulation of it (for a short time),
but after step 8, we can see that the person cannot even feel the
difference between a physical emulation and an arithmetical emulation,
which exists out of space and time independently of any observers (by
Church thesis, arithmetic and computer science). That is subtler than
UDA 1-7, but it makes the argument a proof, i.e. a proof that physics
just cannot be the fundamental theory, once we assume digital
mechanism. The physical laws have a reason, and even a
"space" (arithmetical truth) where, from the point of view of the
observers, they have been selected.
Thanks for your reply, and ask any supplementary questions if
interested. I am trying to work on the official "english" papers.
After that I will write a book. I have succeeded in explaining step 8
to many different publics now, so that I think I have the whole thing
straight.
AUDA, on the contrary, is well understood only by logicians, but
physicists have still problem with basic logic. There is a real big
gap between logicians and physicists. I was hoping that quantum
computations would make a bridge, but that will still take a long
time. Anyway, UDA is enough to understand the main point.
AUDA is cute, because it shows that the intelligent machine are
already here. It shows also that intelligence is mainly a right, not a
gift (but many people dislike this, and that is hardly astonishing
when you look at the history of humanity: it is the sempiternal fear
of the others).
Bruno
On Nov 28, 5:52 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Nov 2010, at 19:05, ronaldheld wrote:
Jason(and any others)
Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's
reality is equally hard to convincing present.
Ronald
Do you agree/understand that if we are machine then we are in
principle duplicable? This entails subjective indeterminacy.
All the rest follows from that, and few people have problems to
understand UDA 1-7.
UDA-8, which justifies immateriality, is slightly more subtle, but if
you have followed the last conversation on it on the list (with
Jacques Mallah, Stathis, ..) you could understand than to block the
movie graph argument you have to attribute a computational role to
the
physical activity of something having non physical activity, and I
don't see how we could still accept a digital brain in this case.
With
just UDA 1-7 you could already understand that most of quantum
weirdness (indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability) is a
qualitative almost direct consequence of digital mechani
Re: Against Mechanism
On 01 Dec 2010, at 18:48, Pzomby wrote: What if we discover 'curiositon' :) If a ‘curiousaton’ and a beliefiton are ever discovered a biological TOEton may not be far behind. : ) A particle of everything! I'm afraid that for breaking it you will need an accelerator necessarily bigger than everything, making its existence ... forever undecided. That is the reason to make distinct the duality abstract/concrete from immaterial/material. My mind is concrete, moments are concrete, numbers can be considered as concrete, more generally the object of the structure are concrete, as opposed to their possible relations. My (human) consciousness is concrete, (even if it is immaterial and different from my brain). Human conciousness in general is an abstract notion. Notions are abstract, dispositions are abstract, and concreteness will depends on theories, current paradigm, ontological choice or reality, etc. Brunohttp://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text - Your response raises a few more questions but I will state only a couple. I believe I follow your comments but am having trouble with the description of human consciousness (in general) as a ‘notion’. The word means vague or unclear and an antonym of ‘notion’ could only be described as a precise description or understanding of human consciousness (even a concrete reality). As this is more a discussion of semantics. What would be the antonym of notion? Abstract / Concrete, Immaterial / Material, Infinite / Finite, Notion / __ Notion/thing (notion is very near universal-abstract; things are usually more concrete, I would say). Depending on your conception of "consciousness", the "notion of consciousness" might be as absurd as the "notion of milk". Usually "notion" is use for abstract objects. Like in the notion of Hilbert space, or the notion of set, the notion of prime number. But not: the notion of 17. Without mechanism, you will never say: the notion of Leonard de Vinci. But if you can build many "Leonard de Vinci" exemplars, you could develop a notion of "Leonard de Vinci", especially if the exemplars are slightly different. With digital mechanism, we are arguably more of the type of type than of the type of token. From inside we cannot feel this, like in Everett QM, the observer cannot feel the split. Could human consciousness (in general) be correctly described as being: abstract, immaterial, infinite and a notion? Consciousness in general (or the notion of consciousness) might be qualified in some context as abstract. But my consciousness here and now is the most concrete thing I can ever conceive. Immaterial? I agree, and that is what makes Digital Mechanism (DM, or comp) very appalling. Infinite? I can think so about "cosmic consciousness", but that is an altered state of consciousness. Here on earth the experience is finite. Consciousness is related to meaning, and Tarski's theory of truth (and meaning, to simplify a bit) usually connect finite things (representations) to infinite things (the domain of the interpretation of those representations). I agree that consciousness lives near the infinite somehow, but any details on this will refer to the DM theory. The first person notions are related to infinitely many computations and number's relations, but the observers cannot feel that. They can only guess it from indirect reflexions. Other than “notion’, there would be no ‘more or less’ of any of the above, as in alive or dead, on or off, up or down. They are or they are not. I use "notion" for "a type of (often learnable) thing". Perhaps that term should be avoided if ambiguous. I dunno. Best, 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: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Bruno: I looked at UDA via the SANE paper. I am not certain the the mind is Turing emulatable, but will move onward. Using Star Trek transporter concepts, I can accept steps 1 through 5. Step 6 takes only the mind and sends it to a finite computational device or the entire person into a device similar to a Holodeck, where the person is a Holocharacter? I am not certain a UD is physically possible in a finite resource Universe. Ronald On Nov 28, 5:52 am, Bruno Marchal wrote: > On 27 Nov 2010, at 19:05, ronaldheld wrote: > > > Jason(and any others) > > Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's > > reality is equally hard to convincing present. > > Ronald > > Do you agree/understand that if we are machine then we are in > principle duplicable? This entails subjective indeterminacy. > All the rest follows from that, and few people have problems to > understand UDA 1-7. > > UDA-8, which justifies immateriality, is slightly more subtle, but if > you have followed the last conversation on it on the list (with > Jacques Mallah, Stathis, ..) you could understand than to block the > movie graph argument you have to attribute a computational role to the > physical activity of something having non physical activity, and I > don't see how we could still accept a digital brain in this case. With > just UDA 1-7 you could already understand that most of quantum > weirdness (indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability) is a > qualitative almost direct consequence of digital mechanism (even in > presence of a primitively material universe). > > AUDA, the Löbian interview, is another matter because you need > familiarity with mathematical logic and recursion theory. > > Tell me please what you don't understand in the first steps of UDA. I > am always interested to have an idea of what is it that people don't > grasp. I am writing some "official" papers now, and that could help. > Up to now the results are more ignored than criticized, or is > considered as crap by religious atheist/materialist, without rational > arguments. Tell me if you have a problem with the subjective (first > person) indeterminacy. Thanks. > > Bruno > > > > > > > > > On Nov 26, 12:02 am, Jason Resch wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld > >> wrote: > >>> Jason: > >>> I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do > >>> not > >>> know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. > >>> Ronald > > >> Which message in particular do you think is difficult to > >> present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or > >> the > >> suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for > >> exploration? > > >> Jason > > > -- > > 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 > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en > > . > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - -- 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: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On 30 Nov 2010, at 15:15, ronaldheld wrote: Thanks Jason. Not certain how all of that helps. I will have think more before I answer Bruno. Ronald Ronald, I still don't know if you have a problem with the first steps of the UDA. Or if you have only a problem to explain this to others. I have often explained the first six steps of UDA to young people without problem (since many many years). Of course sometimes there is a taste problem. Women often told me that if that theory is true, it should be kept secret! I guess this might be due to the fact that women like the idea of being unique. Well, men also perhaps, but they don't dare to tell me, apparently. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0205/0205092v8.pdf Bruno(and anyone else) Ronald That seems very unclear on both mind and matter, and also on the relations between (it seems to me after a quick reading). Note that UDA works also in case the brain is a quantum computer (like in Hammerof). But it would not work in case Penrose (ultra- speculative) theory is correct, because Penrose makes Mechanism false at the start. His Gödelian argument that man is not a machine contains fatal errors, note. Nevertheless I *like* Penrose's idea that there is a link between consciousness and gravitation (and this is somehow felt in salvia experiences, (!), which alter both consciousness and gravity-feeling. Salvia is *bad* in case of sciatica notably! Bruno On Nov 28, 5:52 am, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 27 Nov 2010, at 19:05, ronaldheld wrote: Jason(and any others) Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's reality is equally hard to convincing present. Ronald Do you agree/understand that if we are machine then we are in principle duplicable? This entails subjective indeterminacy. All the rest follows from that, and few people have problems to understand UDA 1-7. UDA-8, which justifies immateriality, is slightly more subtle, but if you have followed the last conversation on it on the list (with Jacques Mallah, Stathis, ..) you could understand than to block the movie graph argument you have to attribute a computational role to the physical activity of something having non physical activity, and I don't see how we could still accept a digital brain in this case. With just UDA 1-7 you could already understand that most of quantum weirdness (indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability) is a qualitative almost direct consequence of digital mechanism (even in presence of a primitively material universe). AUDA, the Löbian interview, is another matter because you need familiarity with mathematical logic and recursion theory. Tell me please what you don't understand in the first steps of UDA. I am always interested to have an idea of what is it that people don't grasp. I am writing some "official" papers now, and that could help. Up to now the results are more ignored than criticized, or is considered as crap by religious atheist/materialist, without rational arguments. Tell me if you have a problem with the subjective (first person) indeterminacy. Thanks. Bruno On Nov 26, 12:02 am, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld wrote: Jason: I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do not know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. Ronald Which message in particular do you think is difficult to present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or the suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for exploration? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- 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 . 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.
Brain as quantum computer
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0205/0205092v8.pdf Bruno(and anyone else) Ronald -- 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.
