Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 09 Jan 2012, at 19:36, acw wrote: On 1/9/2012 19:54, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 12:00 pm, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference between finite and infinite. The modern notion has been discovered independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc. With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are somehow made of (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be sure) computations. They are making those discoveries by using their physical brain though. Sure, but that requires one to better understand what a physical brain is. In the case of COMP(given some basic assumptions), matter is explained as appearing from simpler abstract mathematical relations, in which case, a brain would be an inevitable consequence of such relations. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write. Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology. Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j) depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable function in an enumeration based on some universal system). The whole idea of truth or falsity in the first place depends on humans capacities to interpret experiences in those terms. We can read this quality of truth or falsity into many aspects of our direct and indirect experience, but that doesn't mean that the quality itself is external to us. If you look at a starfish, you can see it has five arms, but the starfish doesn't necessarily know it had five arms. Yet that the fact the starfish has 5 arms is a fact, regardless of the starfish's awareness of it. It will have many consequences with regards of how the starfish interacts with the rest of the world or how any other system perceives it. If you see something colored red, you will know that you saw red and that is 'true', and that it will be false that you didn't see 'red', assuming you recognize 'red' the same as everyone else and that your nervous system isn't wired too strangely or if your sensory systems aren't defective or function differently than average. Consequences of mathematical truths will be everywhere, regardless if you understand them or not. A circle's length will depend on its radius regardless if you understand the relation or not. Any system, be they human, computer or alien, regardless of the laws of physics in play should also be able to compute (Church-Turing Thesis shows that computation comes very cheap and all it takes is ability of some simple abstract finite rules being followed and always yielding the same result, although specific proofs for showing Turing-universality would depend on each system - some may be too simple to have such a property, but then, it's questionable if they would be powerful enough to support intelligence or even more trivial behavior such as life/replicators or evolution), and if they can, they will always get the same results if they asked the same computational or mathematical question (in this case, mathematical truths, or even yet unknown truths such as Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach conjecture, and so on). Most physics should support computation, and I conjecture that any physics that isn't strong enough to at least support computation isn't strong enough to support intelligence or consciousness (and computation comes very cheap!). Support computation and you get any mathematical truth that humans can reach/talk about. Don't support it, and you probably won't have any intelligence in it. To put it more simply: if Church Turing Thesis(CTT) is correct, mathematics is the same for any system or being you can imagine. I am not sure why. Sigma_1 arithmetic would be the same; but higher
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 1/10/2012 12:03, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 19:36, acw wrote: On 1/9/2012 19:54, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 12:00 pm, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference between finite and infinite. The modern notion has been discovered independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc. With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are somehow made of (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be sure) computations. They are making those discoveries by using their physical brain though. Sure, but that requires one to better understand what a physical brain is. In the case of COMP(given some basic assumptions), matter is explained as appearing from simpler abstract mathematical relations, in which case, a brain would be an inevitable consequence of such relations. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write. Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology. Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j) depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable function in an enumeration based on some universal system). The whole idea of truth or falsity in the first place depends on humans capacities to interpret experiences in those terms. We can read this quality of truth or falsity into many aspects of our direct and indirect experience, but that doesn't mean that the quality itself is external to us. If you look at a starfish, you can see it has five arms, but the starfish doesn't necessarily know it had five arms. Yet that the fact the starfish has 5 arms is a fact, regardless of the starfish's awareness of it. It will have many consequences with regards of how the starfish interacts with the rest of the world or how any other system perceives it. If you see something colored red, you will know that you saw red and that is 'true', and that it will be false that you didn't see 'red', assuming you recognize 'red' the same as everyone else and that your nervous system isn't wired too strangely or if your sensory systems aren't defective or function differently than average. Consequences of mathematical truths will be everywhere, regardless if you understand them or not. A circle's length will depend on its radius regardless if you understand the relation or not. Any system, be they human, computer or alien, regardless of the laws of physics in play should also be able to compute (Church-Turing Thesis shows that computation comes very cheap and all it takes is ability of some simple abstract finite rules being followed and always yielding the same result, although specific proofs for showing Turing-universality would depend on each system - some may be too simple to have such a property, but then, it's questionable if they would be powerful enough to support intelligence or even more trivial behavior such as life/replicators or evolution), and if they can, they will always get the same results if they asked the same computational or mathematical question (in this case, mathematical truths, or even yet unknown truths such as Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach conjecture, and so on). Most physics should support computation, and I conjecture that any physics that isn't strong enough to at least support computation isn't strong enough to support intelligence or consciousness (and computation comes very cheap!). Support computation and you get any mathematical truth that humans can reach/talk about. Don't support it, and you probably won't have any intelligence in it. To put it more simply: if Church Turing Thesis(CTT) is correct, mathematics is the same for any system or being you can imagine. I am not sure why. Sigma_1 arithmetic would be the same; but higher mathematics (set theory, analysis) might still be
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On Jan 10, 12:40 am, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No free will = no hunger. No need for it. No mechanism for it. No logic to it. Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII sequence free will means. The old 'stick your fingers in your ears and say lalalalalala' trick. Impressive, but deciding to do such a thing would require FREE WILL. That was my point. Knowing how to eat does not require logic or induction. But your question was Is it induction that provides our understanding of how to swallow?, you asked about understanding; for prediction induction alone is enough but for understanding you need logic, and for some things neither is required. A rock can stay on the ground even though it's not very good at induction and nobody has a deep understanding of gravity yet. There is more to understanding than logic. You need a subject who is motivated to make sense out of something. They can employ logic, intuition, induction, insight, memory, etc. Lots of modes of sense making. The genetic code in DNA could not be more digital, and it was good enough to build your brain and every other part of you out of simple amino acid molecules; if you look at the details of the assembly process biology uses to make complex things, like your brain, you find its amazingly computer-like. That may not be true even for DNA: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110525/full/473432a.html http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/53 DNA translates its information into RNA It's true that the RNA bases are informed by the DNA bases (just because RNA is motivated to mirror each base of the DNA) , just as a baseball game is informed by the score in each inning, but there is no actual 'information'. and RNA tells the ribosomes what linear sequence of amino acid molecules to make, after the ribosomes are finished the linear sequence folds up into very complex shapes forming proteins, and that makes you including your brain. This controversial experiment (as I said no experiment is finished until it is repeated) says that there is a unknown mechanism that sometimes makes minor changes in the DNA to RNA part of that chain. In no place in that paper is it suggested that the unknown mechanism (assuming it even exists) is analog and for a very good reason, indeed it is very clear that there is no way it could be analog. It says very clearly that the changes are not random - ie, they are intentionally edited. That's not about analog vs digital, it is about crushing the delusion of the machine metaphor in biology. Think of your father and grandfather and great grandfather and all the millions of individuals in the past that led up to you; every one of those individuals got old and died but their genetic legacy remains as vital as is was the day they were born thousand or millions of years ago, and there is absolutely no way that could happen if the information was encoded in a analog manner. But I'm not my father or grandfather or great grandfather, nor am I a combination of my mother and father. The digital aspects are complemented - always - by analog processes. Do you remember the old analog cassette tapes, if you made a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a music tape pretty soon the resulting tape had so many errors in it that it could no longer be called music and was unlistenable; that was because with analog copying the errors are cumulative, but that is not the case with digital copying. It doesn't matter though because eventually the music has to be output to an analog audio device to make sense to your analog inner ear. You are just talking about encoding and recording, not the qualities that the production of musicality (or life, or consciousness) entails. If the internet was based on analog technology the big music companies would have had no problem with bootleg copies of their product, but it uses digital methods so they had a very big problem indeed. Not true. Music companies had a problem with cassettes too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music. Recording devices have always been forbidden at popular movies and concerts. The primary sequence of DNA is just part of the story though. Secondary and tertiary epigenetic factors are can determine which genes are used and which are not, and they are not digital. Of course they're digital!! Cytosine and guanine are 2 of the 4 bases in DNA and it is the variation in the sequence of these 4 bases that carry the genetic code. The epigenetic factors you're talking about happens because sometimes at the point where cytosine and guanine meet a molecule called a methyl group is sometimes attached. A methyl group is a very small molecule consisting of just one carbon atom connected to three hydrogen atoms, and the existence of a methyl group changes the way the sequence of bases in DNA is translated into a sequence of amino acids in a
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 10 Jan 2012, at 12:58, acw wrote: On 1/10/2012 12:03, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 19:36, acw wrote: To put it more simply: if Church Turing Thesis(CTT) is correct, mathematics is the same for any system or being you can imagine. I am not sure why. Sigma_1 arithmetic would be the same; but higher mathematics (set theory, analysis) might still be different. If it's wrong, maybe stuff like concrete infinities, hypercomputation and infinite minds could exist and that would falsify COMP, however there is zero evidence for any of that being possible. Not sure, if CT is wrong, there would be finite machines, working in finite time, with well defined instructions, which would be NOT Turing emulable. Hypercomputation and infinite (human) minds would contradict comp, not CT. On the contrary, they need CT to claim that they compute more than any programmable machines. CT is part of comp, but comp is not part of CT. Beyond this, I agree with your reply to Craig. In that response I was using CT in the more unrestricted form: all effectively computable functions are Turing-computable. I understand, but that is confusing. David Deutsch and many physicists are a bit responsible of that confusion, by attempting to have a notion of effectivity relying on physics. The original statement of Church, Turing, Markov, Post, ... concerns only the intuitively human computable functions, or the functions computable by finitary means. It asserts that the class of such intuitively computable functions is the same as the class of functions computable by some Turing machine (or by the unique universal Turing machine). Such a notion is a priori completely independent of the notion of computable by physical means. It might be a bit stronger than the usual equivalency proofs between a very wide range of models of computation (Turing machines, Abacus/ PA machines, (primitive) recursive functions (+minimization), all kinds of more current models of computation, languages and so on). Yes. I even suspect that CT makes the class of functions computable by physics greater than the class of Church. If hypercomputation was actually possible that would mean that strong variant of CT would be false, because there would be something effectively computable that wasn't computable by a Turing machine. OK. In a way, that strong form of CT might already be false with comp, only in the 1p sense as you get a free random oracle as well as always staying consistent(and 'alive'), but it's not false in the 3p view... Yes. Comp makes physics a first person plural reality, and a priori we might be able to exploit the first plural indeterminacy to compute more function, like we know already that we have more processes, like that free random oracle. The empirical fact that quantum computer does not violate CT can make us doubt about this. Also, I do wonder if the same universality that is present in the current CT would be present in hypercomputation (if one were to assume it would be possible) Yes, at least for many type of hypercomputation, notably of the form of computability with some oracle. - would it even retain CT's current immunity from diagonalization? Yes. Actually the immunity of the class of computable functions entails the immunity of the class of computable functions with oracle. So the consistency of CT entails the consistency of some super-CT for larger class. But I doubt that there is a super-CT for the class of functions computable by physical means. I am a bit agnostic on that. As for the mathematical truth part, I mostly meant that from the perspective of a computable machine talking about axiomatic systems - as it is computable, the same machine (theorem prover) would always yield the same results in all possible worlds(or shared dreams). I see here why you have some problem with AUDA (and logic). CT = the notion of computability is absolute. But provability is not absolute at all. Even with CT, different machine talking or using different axiomatic system will obtain different theorems. In fact this is even an easy (one diagonalization) consequence of CT, although Gödel's original proof does not use CT. provability, nor definability is not immune for diagonalization. Different machines proves different theorems. Although with my incomplete understanding of the AUDA, and I may be wrong about this, it appeared to me that it might be possible for a machine to get more and more of the truth given the consistency constraint. That's right both PA + con(PA) and PA + ~con(PA) proves more true arithmetical theorems than PA. And PA + con(PA + con(PA + con (PA + con PA)) will proves even more theorems. The same with the negation of those consistency. Note that the theory PA* = PA* + con(PA*), which can be defined finitely by the use of the Kleene recursion fixed point
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 1/10/2012 7:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In a way, that strong form of CT might already be false with comp, only in the 1p sense as you get a free random oracle as well as always staying consistent(and 'alive'), but it's not false in the 3p view... Yes. Comp makes physics a first person plural reality, and a priori we might be able to exploit the first plural indeterminacy to compute more function, like we know already that we have more processes, like that free random oracle. The empirical fact that quantum computer does not violate CT can make us doubt about this. I don't think that is so clear. Nielsen has written some papers on computations in QM that are not Turing emulable, essentially relying on the fact that QM uses real numbers. He suggests that QM should be restricted to avoid this kind of hypercomputation by dropping the assumption that all unitary operators are allowed. 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-list@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: An analogy for Qualia
On 1/10/2012 12:48 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 1/10/2012 7:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In a way, that strong form of CT might already be false with comp, only in the 1p sense as you get a free random oracle as well as always staying consistent(and 'alive'), but it's not false in the 3p view... Yes. Comp makes physics a first person plural reality, and a priori we might be able to exploit the first plural indeterminacy to compute more function, like we know already that we have more processes, like that free random oracle. The empirical fact that quantum computer does not violate CT can make us doubt about this. I don't think that is so clear. Nielsen has written some papers on computations in QM that are not Turing emulable, essentially relying on the fact that QM uses real numbers. He suggests that QM should be restricted to avoid this kind of hypercomputation by dropping the assumption that all unitary operators are allowed. Brent Hi Brent, Could we achieve the same thing by restricting the vector (Hilbert) space of linear functionals to a finite (but very large) field? Another possibility is that there is a local preference of basis for a given set of homomorphisms between the Hilbert spaces of a given pair of interacting quantum systems. Here is a nice video lecture on the math of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkU1UdS4Dpsfeature=related Onward! Stephen -- 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 at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 10 Jan 2012, at 18:48, meekerdb wrote: On 1/10/2012 7:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In a way, that strong form of CT might already be false with comp, only in the 1p sense as you get a free random oracle as well as always staying consistent(and 'alive'), but it's not false in the 3p view... Yes. Comp makes physics a first person plural reality, and a priori we might be able to exploit the first plural indeterminacy to compute more function, like we know already that we have more processes, like that free random oracle. The empirical fact that quantum computer does not violate CT can make us doubt about this. I don't think that is so clear. Nielsen has written some papers on computations in QM that are not Turing emulable, essentially relying on the fact that QM uses real numbers. He suggests that QM should be restricted to avoid this kind of hypercomputation by dropping the assumption that all unitary operators are allowed. Yes. e^i * OMEGA *t is a solution of the SWE. With OMEGA = Chaitin's incompressible real number. But are the real numbers physically real? Open problem in comp, and in our observable universe. Nielsen is aware that, would we met such a quantum wave, we would be unable to recognize it or to distinguish it from quantum noise. Which follows from comp indeed. More interestingly e^i * POST *t, with POST = Post creative number, which decimal codes the stopping problem, would be a quantum universal dovetailer. Here the wave will have the computations redundancy needed to give sense to the measure problem. With the incompressible OMEGA you get a shallow description of all there is by doing a highly non constructive reduction of the measure. OMEGA evacuates the redundancy of POST. POST is deep (in Bennett sense). But I am not sure that the decimals in the wave plays any relevant computational role. Unless some very low level number conspiracy? The UD is dumb enough to dovetail all program executions with their products with *all* approximations of all real numbers, so, so some exploitation of the continuum is what to be expected for the most stable realities configuration, and it is hard to avoid, logically, that some infinite non computable constant might play a role, but why would we postulate something like that? 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-list@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: An analogy for Qualia
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: There is more to understanding than logic. If you know the logic behind something then you understand it and if you understand it you know the logic behind it. It says very clearly that the changes are not random - ie, they are intentionally edited. It's not even very clear that these changes exist, it's all very tentative, and as far as your theories go it does not matter if its random or not because one thing is certain, if the changes are real one of two things is true, the changes happened for a reason or the changes did not happen for a reason. That's not about analog vs digital, You said it's not digital, I insist it must be. it is about crushing the delusion of the machine metaphor in biology. Just like everything else a biological effect has a cause or it does not have a cause, it's deterministic or it's random, it's a cuckoo clock or a roulette wheel. But I'm not my father or grandfather or great grandfather That's right you are not them and yet you have some of the same genes that they had, (yeah I know what's coming, genes don't exist either) so the genes had to make copies of themselves to go into the next generation. If the copying process had been analog there would be so many errors in your genes that you'd be dead because the errors are cumulative, but the copying was digital so you are fine. This Email had to go through a long chain of copying and retransmitting before you got it but it was all digital so you can read it, if it had been analog it would be nothing but a big blur. Not true. Music companies had a problem with cassettes too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music. Recording devices have always been forbidden at popular movies and concerts. You only went down one generation in those examples, from a master tape to copies, good analog can handle a few generations but not dozens, and with biology you have many millions of generations so it can't be analog. There is nothing particularly digital about the folding problem. It is an analog process Bullshit! Every protein ever made starts out in life as a linear sequence of amino acids like beads on a string, and that linear sequence was determined by a linear sequence of bases in RNA, and that linear sequence was determined by the linear sequences of bases in DNA. Its only after the protein leaves the ribosome does this linear sequence fold up into the enormously complex shapes of the functional protein. At the temperatures and pH conditions found in cells any linear protein string with the same sequence of amino acids ALWAYS folds up into exactly precisely the same shape. Different sequence different shape, same sequence same shape. which occurs through concrete chemical interaction Certainly, but the same linear sequence of amino acids gives you the exact same super complex shape that those hyper complex concrete chemical interactions twist those straight linear strings into. And it's true we are not very good at calculating from first principles what shape any given sequence of linear amino acids will twist into because it's so astronomically complex, but we are getting better and we do know for a fact that the same sequence always gives the same shape. And its not like any of this is cutting edge news, its been known since 1953; but I guess it takes time for that sort of scientific information to trickle down so that even philosophers know about it. Oops sorry I forgot, information does not exist. There is not a person on this planet who knows what will happen if you program a computer to find the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two prime numbers and then stop. That can only mean that you are admitting that the brain is not a computer. How on earth do you figure that? A brain can't know what a computer or other brain will do or even what he himself will do until he does it; and a computer can't know what another computer or a brain will do or what it itself will do until it does it. It means MWI is born of desperation to preserve the machine metaphor of the universe. All interpretations of the way things behave when they become very very small are desperate because in that realm things just act weird, your interpretation is more desperate than most, you just say nothing is real; I think you should add including this theory. Quantum mechanics predicts it [the magnetic moment of the electron] will Be 1.00115965246 and that agrees well with the experimental value of 1.00115965221. What does your theory predict the value will be? My theory predicts that electrons seem one way to electronic instruments, another way to human brains, and another way to human minds interpreting the exterior behavior of electronic instruments. The difference between a scientific theory of physics and flatulent philosophical gas is not that one is right and the other wrong
