date:20121111



On 10 Nov 2012, at 11:41, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

OK, so it's not numbers alone (pure numbers),
something else is required.


Yes the laws of numbers. We believe in zero, and we believe that zero  
has a successor, and then the successor itself has a successor. Two  
common notation for the successor of x is s(x) and x + 1.
We agree that two different numbers and two different successors, and  
we accept the laws of addition and multiplication:


x + 0 = x
x + (y + 1) = (x + y) + 1

 x *0 = 0
 x*(y + 1) = x*y + x

The crazy thing, but which results from the work of Gödel  Others,  
is that you can already define in that language, the very minimal  
believer in those laws. That one is already intelligent, in the sense  
that he can understand that he can crash. It is the price of  
creativity or universality. The machine is such that if she believes p  
and if she believes p - q, she will soon or later believe q.


To be sure, to define a believer in the laws above, in the language  
using only the logical symbols, and the symbols:  0, s, (, ), +, *,   
is a very long ingenuous but also tedious work, like defining  
correctly a low level programming in itself. I will give some glimpse  
how to do that more quickly by using non trivial result.





At the very minimum that
something else must be intelligence,
the ability to essentially freely make choices of one's own.


You are right. Numbers, then, relatively to other numbers got it.  
Trivially, with comp, and arguably from computer science and the  
classical theory of knowledge.





Nothing can be done without intelligence.

But if you can do that, what's special about numbers ?


Nothing.

Numbers are just easier for most, when reasoning exactly. Programs,  
engrams, digital machines, two dimensional cellular automata, one  
dimensional cellular automata, hereditarily finite sets, hereditarily  
finite n-category, topological computer, modular functor, ... We can  
start from any of those, but we explain more by choosing the simplest.
The universal beings are very multiple, and one you have one of them,  
you automatically inherit all of them. You get also, for the internal  
1p, the result of a sort of competition of all of them below your  
substitution level (the global first person indeterminacy). I think  
the universal numbers (or the Löbian one) play the roles of the  
supreme monads. They are intermediates between earth and heaven.





Geometry, such as created network, would make more sense.
Or natural language. or arithmetic functions.


Keep in mind that I assume comp, and *then* reason in computer science/ 
mathematics/arithmetic.


Bruno






Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-09, 14:26:09
Subject: Re: How can words be transformed into numbers ?


On 09 Nov 2012, at 13:41, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

So how would

I see a cat.

be transformed into numbers ?

Maybe 63 7 89 ?


I am afraid that will not be enough. I see a cat, to get put in
number, with the 1-I and 3-I of you, you will need to scan your brain
at the correct comp subst level (which exist by comp assumption), and
this when you are looking at a cat.
Then the real 1-I is not in that number, but in all the computation
going through the state described by that number relatively to our
most probable environment. The number can be used to reimplement you
in some computer, and then you will be able to manifest your seeing a
cat to us.







I could do that if I indexed all of the words in Roget's thesaurus,
but I don't think the numbers would mean anything besides numbers.
Because the meanings of words come from context -- not only in where
they are placed in a text but how they arose from culture.
Language is culture.


You are right.





And in mandarin, three characters placed together might not
have anything to do with literal meaning. For example, the
characters for

I touch flowers in vase

can mean


Final touch



No problem with this.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/9/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-08, 10:36:49
Subject: Re: Peirce's concept of logical abduction-- a possible
moneymaker


Hi Roger Clough ,

On 08 Nov 2012, at 11:03, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

My principal interest over the years has been to
come up with some self-sustaining self-generating
method of autopoeisis. That's why I found the I Ching
fascinating. It contains sensible links between binary numbers and
metaphors.

When I look up methods of data mining, all they give is
hierarchy diagrams and numbers. How do they link
numbers and metaphors or words in general ?
Perhaps there is some sort of bayesian scheme to do that.

Roget's

Re: Plato's cave analogy



On 10 Nov 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Plato says that we all live in a dark cave, seeing only
shadows on the wall, eager to see the light outside.
So there is at least a duality which I call platonia (heaven)
and contingia (earth).


OK. For example with heaven played by the truth of all the  
propositions. But earth, with comp, belongs to heaven, or at least on  
the path of going back to the one, among many path. The existence of  
the paths are necessary, but the memory of the path is half in heaven,  
and half in particular contingent geographico-historical context.






Platonia contains the necessary stuff, the dark cave we live in
contains the contingent stuff.


The dark cave might be the physical universe.  It is the border of the  
universal mind reality. An object whose mathematics is amenable to  
number theory, or computer science.


We cannot experimentally make the difference between a law, or an  
instantiation of a deeper law. We cannot separate experimentally  
geography and physics, but we can define physics by what gives the  
universal prediction by different universal beings, and with comp this  
is enough to define a precise indeterminacy domain from which the  
universal beings can seen aspects of the universal border.


Comp reopens the debate between Plato and Aristotle. At the least, it  
shows that science has not decided this, and it illustrates, by  
listening what the machines can already say about them,  another  
rationalist conception of reality, which gives sense to the  
Pythagorean neoplatonist negative theology.


Bruno






Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-08, 10:22:14
Subject: Re: Communicability


On 08 Nov 2012, at 14:45, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 11/8/2012 6:43 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

So how does Platonia's perfect necessary classes restrain or
contain this world of contingency ? Or does it ?


Hi Roger,

That is exactly my question! How does Platonism show the
contingent to be necessary? As far as I have found, it cannot show
necessity of the contingent. In the rush to define the perfect, all
means to show the necessity of contingency was thrown out. This is
why I propose that we define existence as necessary possibility; we
have contingency built into our ontology in that definition. ;-)


In which modal logic?

What you say directly contradict G?el's theorem, which shows, at many
different levels the necessity of the possible. We even get that for
all (true) sigma_1 sentences (the atomic events in the UD execution)
p - []p, that is the truth of p implies the necessity of the
possibility of p, with []p = either the box of the universal soul
(S4Grz1), or the box of the intelligible or sensible matter (Z1* and
X1*). The modal logics becomes well defined, and allows, in Platonia,
all the imperfections that you can dream of (which of course is not
necessarily a good news).

Bruno







Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/8/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: meekerdb
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-07, 13:19:38
Subject: Re: Communicability


On 11/7/2012 5:52 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Again: we are still left without an explanation as to how the
accidental coincidence of a Platonic Truth and an actual fact of
the world occurs.

Why do you write 'accidental'? Platonia is our invention to
describe classes of facts by abstracting away particulars.

Brent




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Stephen


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Re: How can words be transformed into numbers ?



On 10 Nov 2012, at 12:34, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

The Devil is in the details,  and why bother with numbers
when you could use words ?


No problem. People know better number operations, than words  
operation, but you can choose any universal system you want, for the  
starting ontology.


Even if you use words, you will have to encode them in the Yin or  
Yand, or 0 and 1, with most existing Turing universal device, like the  
computer you are using just now. Your computer has still a level, of  
whatever you do, it is encoded in numbers, in the hexadecimal systems.


Digital comes from digits, the  number is what you can associate with  
your digits.


If you insist I can use the combinators, or the Lisp expression. All I  
need is one Turing universal being.


Bruno






Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-09, 14:26:09
Subject: Re: How can words be transformed into numbers ?


On 09 Nov 2012, at 13:41, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

So how would

I see a cat.

be transformed into numbers ?

Maybe 63 7 89 ?


I am afraid that will not be enough. I see a cat, to get put in
number, with the 1-I and 3-I of you, you will need to scan your brain
at the correct comp subst level (which exist by comp assumption), and
this when you are looking at a cat.
Then the real 1-I is not in that number, but in all the computation
going through the state described by that number relatively to our
most probable environment. The number can be used to reimplement you
in some computer, and then you will be able to manifest your seeing a
cat to us.







I could do that if I indexed all of the words in Roget's thesaurus,
but I don't think the numbers would mean anything besides numbers.
Because the meanings of words come from context -- not only in where
they are placed in a text but how they arose from culture.
Language is culture.


You are right.





And in mandarin, three characters placed together might not
have anything to do with literal meaning. For example, the
characters for

I touch flowers in vase

can mean


Final touch



No problem with this.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/9/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-08, 10:36:49
Subject: Re: Peirce's concept of logical abduction-- a possible
moneymaker


Hi Roger Clough ,

On 08 Nov 2012, at 11:03, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

My principal interest over the years has been to
come up with some self-sustaining self-generating
method of autopoeisis. That's why I found the I Ching
fascinating. It contains sensible links between binary numbers and
metaphors.

When I look up methods of data mining, all they give is
hierarchy diagrams and numbers. How do they link
numbers and metaphors or words in general ?
Perhaps there is some sort of bayesian scheme to do that.

Roget's thesaurus might also be a starting point,
since they have words of similar meanings clustered,
but where you go from that beats me.


You should perhaps study how works a computer (or a universal  
number).

They transforms numbers into words and actions all the time, and this
in a non metaphorical way. And they can do much more, like referring
to themselves in the 3p but also in the 1p and other senses. There is
no more magic than in computer science, imo.

Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/8/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-07, 12:57:14
Subject: Re: Peirce's concept of logical abduction-- a possible
moneymaker


On 07 Nov 2012, at 18:12, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Cool. Shows you how little I know.




Those things are virtually unknown by most. Computer science is very
technical, and the number of publications is explosive, almost an
industry. It is also a gold mine, alas, most philosophy curriculum
does not have good courses in the field. We separate the human and
the
exact sciences, which does not help.
In science we still kill the diplomats, and this means that science
is
still run by unconscious (pseudo)-religion, if not simply the boss
is
right theory. Of course the degree of graveness is very variable in
time and places.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/7/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-07, 12:05:11
Subject: Re: Peirce's concept of logical abduction-- a possible
moneymaker




Hi Roger Clough,


Hi Bruno Marchal

Yes, by new I mean contingent. But Kant, although his examples
are debatable, at least sought a

Re: the grammar of platonia



On 10 Nov 2012, at 12:39, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Chomsky says in effect that  what we call platonia
is grammatically structured, hence the rapidity
that children learn language. At the least
one can form simple propositions such
I see the cat.


Yes. It is Plato's reminiscence. We can only understand things by  
ourselves. The Others can only help (in the lucky case).






I suggest that these proposations are at first
vocal, as you can see young children moving
their lips when learning to read.


Most plausible. But they are even first lived, when meeting the cat.

Bruno






Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-09, 14:36:40
Subject: Re: 15 22 4




On 09 Nov 2012, at 13:50, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Arithmetic is just numbers.


Not at all. you need laws so that numbers can enter in relation with  
each other.



The relation x  y, for example is Ez(x + z = y)
The relation x divides y, for another example is Ez(x* z = y)


So you need + and *, and you need axioms to relate the laws, like


x + 0 = x
x + (y + 1) = (x + y) + 1


x *0 = 0
x*(y + 1) = x*y + x


And by G del this will capture a tiny part of the arithmetical  
truth, but by Putnam-Davis-Robinson-Matiyasevich (70 years of work  
by quite talentuopus logician) that theory can (at least now) easily  
be shown Turing universal.









They have no meaning
and are (3p) unless observed from a fixed identity (1p).


Yes. But their relations can be such that some 1p emerge. That  
follows either by comp, or by the usual definition of knowledge +  
the incompleteness theorem (see my papers, but of course this needs  
some math and computer science to study)








As proof of that consider these three arithmetic characters from  
mandarin:


??
???

?


The meanings of these are

15
22
4

But you have to makes sense of the characters before you use them.


Absolutely. Chinese baby will learn that ? is the number of digits  
handing the human arm.





In other words, you need a fixed, conscious observer.


Here you made a jump. I agree with you though, but technically  
this might need elaboration.



Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/9/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


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From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-08, 11:00:12
Subject: Re: Leibniz: Reality as Dust




On 08 Nov 2012, at 16:35, Richard Ruquist wrote:


On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:



On 08 Nov 2012, at 14:51, Richard Ruquist wrote:



Stephan,

If the compact manifolds of string theory are all different and

distinct (as I claim in my paper from observations of a variable fine

structure constant across the universe), then the manifolds should

form a Stone space if each manifold instantly maps all the others into

itself, my (BEC physics) conjecture, but also a Buddhist belief-

Indra's Pearls.



If so, youall may be working on implications of string theory- like

consciousness.



However, in my paper I claim that a 'leap of faith' is necessary to go

from incompleteness to consciousness (C). Would you agree? Bruno says

C emerges naturally from comp.





More precisely, I say that consciousness and matter emerges from  
elementary


arithmetic,  *once* you bet on comp, that is the idea that the brain  
or the


body can be Turing emulated at some right level so that you would  
remain


conscious.



Bruno





And of course what I am hoping as a physicist rather than a
mathematician or logician is that the compact manifolds may be the
basis of the elementary arithmetic from which spacetime, matter (ie.,
strings) and consciousness emerge.


Is it not more elegant if we can derived the strings (which are  
rather sophisticated mathematical object) from arithmetic (through  
computationalism)?



It seems to me that string theory assumes or presumes arithmetic.  
Indeed it even assumes that the sum (in some sense, 'course) of  
all natural numbers gives -1/12. In fact all theories assume the  
arithmetical platonia, except some part of non Turing universal  
algebraic structures.









However, I do not understand what
it means to bet on comp.


You bet on comp when you bet that that you can survive with a  
digital brain (a computer) replacing the brain.
Comp is just Descartes Mechanism, after the discovery of the  
universal machine. The biggest discovery that nature do and redo all  
the times.











Does the whole shebang collapse if brains
do not exist?



No.


But brains cannot not exist, as they exist, in some sense, already  
in arithmetic. The whole shebang is a sharable dream. I call the  
computer universal number to help people to keep their arithmetical  
existence in mind.
I will say more in FOAR asap. You can find

Re: Evolutionary logic Re: Some musings on is/ought and modal logic



On 10 Nov 2012, at 13:31, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

I always emphasize that there is a evolutionary logic, which  unlike  
any other logic, is tautological, that is assume no axioms beyond  
natural selection (which is tautological per se)


I will define here this logic as clear as I can.

Therefore evolutionary logic a good foundation for an absolute  
notion of both truth (including existence) and morals. Because is- 
ougth is unified under this logic.  This logic is rougly speaking  
convergent with the classical philosophical-religious logic of  
common sense. Besides being materialistic, it debunk the humean  
nominalist-positivist reductionsisms and, as i said, return back to  
the classical philosophical notions.


Really all the modal logics are parts of this evolutionary logic.  
The directions of the arrows of the modal logics have a clear  
evolutionary background. for example G x - x, Ox -x, [] x - x, Bx  
- x, there is a evolutionary reason behind


What is this evolutionary logic?

Under evolutionary logic, truth, existence and goodness  becomes  
different aspects of the same essence, which have different names  
when seen from the point of view of logic, epistemology or morals.


The truth of this logic is by definition  equal to  the-continuation- 
of-the-mind-in-the-world.
The non sequitur, the definition of false, is the non-continuation- 
of-the mind-in-the-world.
Everything that contributes to the continuation of the mind is true,  
exist and is good. Everything that does not contribute does not  
exist, is false and is evil.


If a notion contributes to the mind dead, this notion is, evidently  
non existent (is disappearing or will disappear soon). It is false  
(non-sequitur). And it is not good (contributes to the death of the  
holder and his society)


Therefore It is a fuzzy logic which assign various degrees of truth,  
existence and godness depending on the degree, immediacy and clarity  
with which something contributes to the persistence of the mind.


There immediate evident, and universally consensuated  concepts that  
are truth, exist and are good: For example, that persons are males  
and females, the existence of persons, to preserve persons  
lifes.These sentences are respectively true, exist and is morally  
good because the knowledge included in these statements contribute  
inmediately and universaly to the persistence of the human minds in  
a social environment.


In the other extreme of fuzziness are  more subtle and long term  
facts that  does not produce an inmediate persistence of the mind,  
but are long term,and in some circumstances  The existence of the  
electron, the existence of God, drug prohibition, the platonic realm  
etc.


The accumulation of knowledge of evolutionary truths happens by many  
mechanism: biological darwinism, that develop specific circuirtry to  
recognize humans, recognize human faces,  handle social reasoning   
(This instantiates in brain hardware the above statements about  
persons). There are also social mechanisms of accumulation of  
evolutionary knowledge, by tradition, philosophical, scientific  
debates, and also violent confrontation. among peoples and  
countries. The reason why Lamarkism is not true is more a factual  
consequence of the defeat of the USSR than a direct consequence of  
scientific debate.


I doubt this.



It may be said that lisenko Lamarkism was disastrous because ti  
contributed to the defeat of the USSR. But had the USSR won the cold  
war, we would accept the scientific truth of lamarkism, since  
socialism would have been sucessful and lamarkism is the only  
coherent evolutionary theory compatible with marxism, and darwinism  
is not.


You are quick.



It would be far more painful and long term to convince people to get  
rid of it .


All these processes are instances of a single process operating at  
differente levels: Natural selection. the proces of variation and  
selection at the biological, social political etc levels.


Althougn this is formulated in crude materialistic terms,  This is  
identical to the classical philosophical and religious logic, that  
takes into account the reality of the whole experience of existence  
of the mind-soul in the word in all the dimensions: social and  
individual.   You may find Biblical and Philosophical texts that  
assimilate truth, existence and the good.


I have seen some physical terms, but no materialistic term.

To provide the logic, you need to gives the axioms to which the B, O,  
[], etc. obey, and you should provide semantics, and make clear the  
relation between the symbols, and the reality you are betting on, as  
this would be an exercise in applied logic. An expression like  
natural selection presuppose a lot, including quite different  
possibilities.


Bruno







2012/11/10 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net


Is/ought and modal logic

1) Hume's universe

The skeptic Hume said that there is the world of is, which we

Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?

On 10 Nov 2012, at 17:44, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/9/2012 3:26 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

It seems to me that we automatically get a 'fixed identity'
when we consider each observer's 1p to be defined by a bundle or
sheaf of an infinite number of computations. The chooser of A and
of B is one and the same if and only if the computational bundle
that make the choice of A also make the choice of B. What you are
considering is just an example of my definition of reality.

But what makes the bundle or sheaf stay together? As computations
why don't they quickly diverge? That's the question I was raising
in the Moscow/Washington thought experiment. We know the M-man and
the W-man diverge because they experience different things. But
they experience different things because their physical eyes/skin/
ears... are in differenct physical places? And those experiences
form two different sheafs of computation that have a lot in common
within each and differences between them. But there is no
computational explanation of why that should be so. Computationally
there could be just one sheaf including the M-man and the W-man just
as the drone pilot has a sheaf that includes Florida and
Afghanistan. So the argument for comp seems to rely on physics.

No, it can't. It has to rely on the infinitely many computations which
exists once you postulate one Turing universal
realm. So physics has to emerged from the first plural indeterminacy.
Plural means that when I diverge, a similar proportion of copies of
you, too, so that we share the indeterminacy. Then we must seen it
when looking close enough, and that is confirmed by QM (without
collapse).

If you attribute the physical to one universal machine, but with comp
that one universal machine, if it exists must be justified by being
the unique solution to the comp measure problem.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Evolutionary logic Re: Some musings on is/ought and modal logic



On 11 Nov 2012, at 01:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

It  is an observable fact.   is obviously true that if you live in a  
society where everyone take something as true , no matter what, then  
it is true for one of its members, you, for example.


That's correct. But that still does not make it true. Sometimes  
everybody can be wrong.


Bruno




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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

On 11 Nov 2012, at 02:14, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 1:31 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

No problem. UDA shows the equivalent propositions: (MAT is weak
materialism: the doctrine that there is a primitive physical reality)

COMP - NOT MAT
MAT - NOT COMP
NOT MAT or NOT COMP

I keep COMP as a working hypothesis, as I have no clue what really
MAT means or explains, and we don't find a contradiction, just a
weirdness close to quantum Everett.

But more accurately, we have not yet found a contradiction. There
may be a contradiction with empirical observation, but COMP has not
made many definite predictions that could be contradicted.

The modal logics Z1*, X1*, and S4Grz1 generates an infinity of
experiences testing the logic of the observables. Those obtained have
been tested, as they corrresponds to orthomodularity, existence of a
quatization, etc. It is just an open problem if they can emulate a
quatum computer, as they should.

That's why I brought up the location of consciousness. Empirically
consciousness is associated with a center body (an essential point
of the duplication experiment), yet so far as I can see COMP would
predict that a consciousness should have no particular location and
not reason to be associated with a particular body.

Yes, there is. the fact that you are indeterminate on an infinity of
computational histories, which can be relatively deep, making us
relatively rare and computationally costly, and yet mutiplied into
continuum of very simlar computations, given a notion of Gaussian
normality.

Of course it is only a beginning. But it has to work if comp + the
classical theory of knoweldge are correct, and it is the only theory
which separates naturally the quanta as particular qualia, and give an
arithmetical interpretation for the mystical conception of reality
(Plato, Plotinus).

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

On 11 Nov 2012, at 02:44, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 05:14:47PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 1:31 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

No problem. UDA shows the equivalent propositions: (MAT is weak
materialism: the doctrine that there is a primitive physical
reality)

COMP - NOT MAT
MAT - NOT COMP
NOT MAT or NOT COMP

I keep COMP as a working hypothesis, as I have no clue what really
MAT means or explains, and we don't find a contradiction, just a
weirdness close to quantum Everett.

But more accurately, we have not yet found a contradiction. There
may be a contradiction with empirical observation, but COMP has not
made many definite predictions that could be contradicted. That's
why I brought up the location of consciousness. Empirically
consciousness is associated with a center body (an essential point
of the duplication experiment), yet so far as I can see COMP would
predict that a consciousness should have no particular location and
not reason to be associated with a particular body.

I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.

The sharing of vast bunch of computations. The existence of first
person plural realities. The entanglement (the contagion of the
duplications) in the statistics on computations.

Personally, I think the association is required for self-awareness,
leading me to the conclusion that self-awareness (aka Loebianity) is
required for consciousness. I know that I disagree with Bruno on this
matter, who sees consciousness everywhere,

Not everywhere. I suggest only that a disconnected form of
consciousness might exist already for the universal numbers.

but Loebianity more restricted.

Loebianity is needed for self-consciousness, the bet on reality,
others, etc.

Bruno

Cheers

Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

On 11 Nov 2012, at 05:00, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 07:02:04PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 5:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.

But how does the requirement for intersubjectivity follow from COMP?
Is it just an anthropic selection argument?

Brent

I'm not sure how Bruno argues for it, but my version goes something
like:

1) Self-awareness is a requirement for consciousness

2) We expect to find ourselves in an environment sufficiently rich and
complex to support self-aware structures (by Anthropic Principle), but
not more complex than necessary (Occams Razor). Sort of like
Einstein's principle As simple as possible, and no simpler.

3) The simplest environment generating a given level of complexity is
one that has arisen as a result of evolution from a much simpler
initial state. This is the evolution in the multiverse observation,
that evolution is the only creative (or information generating)
process.

4) Evolutionary proccesses work with populations, so automatically,
you must have other self-aware entities in your world, and
consequently intersubjectivity.

Note that Bruno does not agree with 1). So I'm not quite sure how he
gets to the anti-solipsist veiwpoint.

By praying, mainly. (grin).
It is not excluded that comp leads to solipsism, especially after or
near death, but even after death, it is not guarantied either.
Solipsism is avoided by the first person plural, when the entire
population of universal beings is multiplied into coherent
continuation. There might be anthropic, or consciousness-tropic
conditions justifying this. I do think that the adding of Dt makes
the job (and the 1p, redemolish it for the qualia and sensations).

Everett QM illustrate very well the 'contagion of duplications',
making us sharing normal histories. Empirically, Everett saves comp
from solipsism, but to be sure, assuming comp, we have to derive
Everett QM from all computations (a concept that Church Thesis makes
utterly mathematically clear, as you can choose any Turing universal
system to be define it mathematically).

1) comes from the fact that applying 2), without something like 1)
being true, leads to the Occam catastrophe, namely we should expect to
find ourselves in a very simple boring world with nothing complex like
brains in it. Given that we can conceive of ourselves as being born
into a virtual reality (eg matrix style) where the virtual reality
generator renders nothing at all, the occams catastrophe situation is
certainly conceivable. Hence my interest at what happens in sensory
deprivation experiments. If you put a newborn baby in one of those, it
may never become conscious (not that that experiment is ethical
though!).

It may hard for him/her to become self-conscious, but there are
evidence that ape embryo already dream that they climb in trees, so I
think the new born baby is conscious. But if you put it in a tank, his
consciousness might quite similar to the disconnected consciousness of
a Robinsonian arithmetic. This is not used in UDA. The salvia reports,
but also the reports of people having been victim of some trauma might
suggest this.

Bruno

Cheers

Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: Against Mechanism



On 11 Nov 2012, at 18:09, John Clark wrote:


On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

You said the Helsinki man will survive in two examples, in M AND  
in W.


This follows from the comp assumption.

I no longer know what comp means much less what the comp  
assumption is;



Comp is the same. You mean that you don't see how comp entails the  
first person indterminacy. Comp is just the digital version of  
Descartes mechanism. Some sums it by no magical trick.





at one time I thought I did but you tell me over and over again that  
I don't,


I am only saying that in step 3 you confuse the 3-view on the 1-views  
(yes, there are two people alive and believing being John Clark in W  
and M), and the 1-views on the 1-view obtained. (each obtained John  
Clark has to notice one result of self-localization; which can only be  
W, or M.




and as the term is not in common usage and you invented it then you  
are the final authority on that question.


I did not invent it. Come one. the version I give is more precise, as  
it single out the choice of substitution level.
It is implied by all other forms in the literature. So its  
consequences are very general.





If you say I don't understand comp then I believe you, however  
that doesn't mean that I also believe that you understand comp.


You understand comp, which is step 0, but you have a difficulty to  
handle the 1p and 3p views.






 and then ask if the Helsinki man will survive in M OR W; so who's  
the one that's really confused around here?


  Read the precise sentence. I ask to the guy in Helsinki how he  
evaluates the chance to feel to be the one in Moscow.


That's another reason your thought experiment is worthless, you ask  
how he will evaluate his chances and that depends entirely on  
the prejudices and whims of the individual involved, perhaps he  
thinks he will enter oblivion or perhaps he thinks that he  
will feel to be in heaven.


That's true also for any physical experience.




But the main problem is that you're striving to somehow get the  
Helsinki man to remember the future,


To predict it.
Precisely to predict its personal memory of the past, in the future.  
This is what we do already when we throw a coin.


Suppose I iterate the duplication, but actually I lied to you, and I  
after anesthesy I use plane, and coin to decide between W and M. Would  
you been able to tell the difference (without looking at the other  
city)?





and there is just no way to do that.


But the helsinki guy is sure that it will be W or M. So he has partial  
information at least, and P(W) = P(M) = 1/2, in that protocole is  
justified by the numerical identity of the two person just before they  
open the door.





What you can do is get the Washington and Moscow man to remember the  
past, and BOTH of them remember being the Helsinki man.


Indeed. that is why both knows that the prediction W  M is wrong, as  
both lived only W, or only M. Both understand that W or M was  
correct, unless a copy comes back from Vienna, but that is impossible,  
given the protocol.





And if by Helsinki man you mean the guy experiencing Helsinki with  
a body in that city and you say the body read in Helsinki is  
annihilated then the Helsinki man doesn't remember anything at all  
after the experiment.  If the Helsinki body is not destroyed and is  
allowed to function after the duplication then the Helsinki man  
remembers remaining to be the Helsinki man and remembers going about  
his business as usual in Helsinki with nothing at all odd going on  
and never having a single thought about either Washington or Moscow.


To be a valid you've got to observe things before and after the  
experiment and ask the various parties involved after the experiment  
what they remember, you just can't ask them before the experiment to  
remember the future.


But I ask only to predict it, with some measure of chance for the  
outcomes.





And in general thought experiments are worthwhile when they involve  
questions like what do you see? or what can you discriminate  
between? or what do you remember?  NOT what do you believe you  
will feel?


But this is needed to keep in mind that we don't ask for a body  
localization, but for a first person experience, which is the key  
object in cognitive science, especially in the mind-body problem.





or what would you prefer?


OK.




and certainly not  what do you remember about the future?.


This has never been asked.

We only ask to the Helsinki guy where he expect to feel after being  
duplicated.  A 12 years old can understand that he can only be  
indeterminate, and say something like W or M, but not both.


You are just confusing the 3-view on the 1-views, with the 1-views  
themselves.



Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Against Mechanism

2012-11-11 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  the main problem is that you're striving to somehow get the Helsinki
 man to remember the future,


  To predict it. Precisely to predict its personal memory of the past, in
 the future.


I have no idea what  its personal memory of the past in the future means
or who its refers to but I can predict that in the future there will be 2
people who call themselves John Clark and BOTH of them will remember being
me, the Helsinki man of right now. I can also predict that one of those
people will feel like he's in Washington and only Washington and the other
will feel like he's in Moscow and only Moscow. So Bruno, what part of my
prediction do you think I got wrong? Just like any prediction the only way
to tell if it was correct or not it to wait until the future arrives and
examine the evidence, in this case that means interviewing the Washington
man and the Moscow Man and BOTH will say that my prediction was 100%
correct.

Speaking of predictions I can predict what you're response to this will be,
you'll start peeing again and insisting that I'm confused. But the fact is
you can't interview the Helsinki man of right now after the experiment
and see if he still thinks his prediction is (was?) correct because the
Helsinki man of right now will not exist in the future and nobody can
remember the future, only the past.

 But the helsinki guy is sure that it will be W or M.


That's one reason this thought experiment is so weak, it depends entirely
on who the Helsinki man is; if he's you then yes he is sure it will be W or
M, but if he's me then no because he is sure it will be W AND M.  And it's
important to keep in mind that predicting is not the same as remembering
and being sure is not the same as being correct.

  John K Clark

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/10/2012 8:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 05:14:47PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 1:31 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

No problem. UDA shows the equivalent propositions:  (MAT is weak
materialism: the doctrine that there is a primitive physical
reality)

COMP   - NOT MAT
MAT - NOT COMP
NOT MAT or NOT COMP

I keep COMP as a working hypothesis, as I have no clue what really
MAT means or explains, and we don't find a contradiction, just a
weirdness close to quantum Everett.

But more accurately, we have not yet found a contradiction.  There
may be a contradiction with empirical observation, but COMP has not
made many definite predictions that could be contradicted.  That's
why I brought up the location of consciousness.  Empirically
consciousness is associated with a center body (an essential point
of the duplication experiment), yet so far as I can see COMP would
predict that a consciousness should have no particular location and
not reason to be associated with a particular body.


I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.

Dear Russell,

This is the same idea that I have been trying to address with 
Bruno. He does not seem to notice that without a means to define a 3p 
localizability that there is no way for minds to distinguish themselves 
from each other. This leads, it seems to me, to a solipsism situation 
for a mind.





Personally, I think the association is required for self-awareness,
leading me to the conclusion that self-awareness (aka Loebianity) is
required for consciousness.


But is Loebianity necessary for the ability of a consciousness to 
know that it is conscious or is it necesary just to be conscious w/o 
knowning that it is? I am ignoring considerations of reportability for 
now...



  I know that I disagree with Bruno on this
matter, who sees consciousness everywhere, but Loebianity more restricted.


Does Bruno agree with panprotopsychism?



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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/10/2012 10:02 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 5:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 05:14:47PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 1:31 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

No problem. UDA shows the equivalent propositions:  (MAT is weak
materialism: the doctrine that there is a primitive physical
reality)

COMP   -  NOT MAT
MAT -  NOT COMP
NOT MAT or NOT COMP

I keep COMP as a working hypothesis, as I have no clue what really
MAT means or explains, and we don't find a contradiction, just a
weirdness close to quantum Everett.

But more accurately, we have not yet found a contradiction. There
may be a contradiction with empirical observation, but COMP has not
made many definite predictions that could be contradicted. That's
why I brought up the location of consciousness.  Empirically
consciousness is associated with a center body (an essential point
of the duplication experiment), yet so far as I can see COMP would
predict that a consciousness should have no particular location and
not reason to be associated with a particular body.


I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.


But how does the requirement for intersubjectivity follow from COMP?  
Is it just an anthropic selection argument?

Hi Brent,

This is what I wish to know and understand as well! AFAIK, comp 
seems to only define a single conscious mind! Bruno talks about 
plurality but never shows how the plurality of numbers and their mutual 
exclusive identities transfers onto a plurality of minds. It seems to me 
that if we allow got Godel numbering schemes to code propositions then 
we cause the uniqueness of number identity to become degenerate. For 
example: 0123456789 can mean many things. It can be a particular number, 
it can be a Godel code for some other number, it can be a string of 
numbers...





Brent



Personally, I think the association is required for self-awareness,
leading me to the conclusion that self-awareness (aka Loebianity) is
required for consciousness. I know that I disagree with Bruno on this
matter, who sees consciousness everywhere, but Loebianity more 
restricted.


Cheers






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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/10/2012 11:43 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 8:00 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 07:02:04PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 5:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.

But how does the requirement for intersubjectivity follow from COMP?
Is it just an anthropic selection argument?

Brent


I'm not sure how Bruno argues for it, but my version goes something
like:

1) Self-awareness is a requirement for consciousness

2) We expect to find ourselves in an environment sufficiently rich and
complex to support self-aware structures (by Anthropic Principle), but
not more complex than necessary (Occams Razor). Sort of like
Einstein's principle As simple as possible, and no simpler.


But this is the step I questioned.  Why not be like the Borg, i.e. one 
consciousness with many bodies?


Don't forget the problem of whose point of view is that of the 
consciousness of the Borg! I guess we can think of each Borg cyberbody 
as a sense organ for the Collective, but how is all that data correlated 
into a single Boolean Satisfiable whole? Satisfiability requires that 
all of the propositions of the BA(lgebra) are mutually consistent, no?


  I think we only 'expect' to find ourselves as we are because we 
don't have good theory about how we might be otherwise.


LOL, yeah!


  COMP proposes to explain how we are by the UDA, but it needs to 
explain why we are associated with bodies - not just assume it to 
avoid solipism.


Absolutely! This is more than the arithmetic body problem; this is 
a book keeping problem - how do the bodies locate themselves such that 
even if they have identical minds they can use their differences in 
location to define a 'external' 3p'ish difference?




Brent



3) The simplest environment generating a given level of complexity is
one that has arisen as a result of evolution from a much simpler
initial state. This is the evolution in the multiverse observation,
that evolution is the only creative (or information generating)
process.

4) Evolutionary proccesses work with populations, so automatically,
you must have other self-aware entities in your world, and
consequently intersubjectivity.

Note that Bruno does not agree with 1). So I'm not quite sure how he
gets to the anti-solipsist veiwpoint.

1) comes from the fact that applying 2), without something like 1)
being true, leads to the Occam catastrophe, namely we should expect to
find ourselves in a very simple boring world with nothing complex like
brains in it. Given that we can conceive of ourselves as being born
into a virtual reality (eg matrix style) where the virtual reality
generator renders nothing at all, the occams catastrophe situation is
certainly conceivable. Hence my interest at what happens in sensory
deprivation experiments. If you put a newborn baby in one of those, it
may never become conscious (not that that experiment is ethical 
though!).


Cheers






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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/11/2012 12:24 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 08:43:29PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 8:00 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I'm not sure how Bruno argues for it, but my version goes something
like:

1) Self-awareness is a requirement for consciousness

2) We expect to find ourselves in an environment sufficiently rich and
complex to support self-aware structures (by Anthropic Principle), but
not more complex than necessary (Occams Razor). Sort of like
Einstein's principle As simple as possible, and no simpler.

But this is the step I questioned.  Why not be like the Borg, i.e.
one consciousness with many bodies?  I think we only 'expect' to

Quite possibly because Borgs have lower measure for the anthropic
selection to work on than single body minds, particularly with mortal
bodies, as I would assume a Borg mind is effectively immortal.


Yes, the Borg mind would be, literally, independent of the 
existence of any subset of its collective bodies.




I have always felt that one resolution of the Doomsday Argument is
that humanity mind melds (or uploads, Singularity-style) so that
effectively no new minds get born.


Is this a good thing?



I haven't quite figured out what happens if we invert the relationship
- many minds to a body. Why don't we all exhibit multiple personality
disorder?


yeah! We see in the cases of MPD that each personality does not 
know of the existence of the others until that fact is forced on them.



  It probably has to do with the embodiment of the mind, but
still I don't know how this connects to the Anthropic Principle.


How do you define the AP? My definition is: An observer cannot 
experience itself existing in a world whose rules contradict its 
existence in that world. Its just a self-consistency rule.



find ourselves as we are because we don't have good theory about how
we might be otherwise.  COMP proposes to explain how we are by the
UDA, but it needs to explain why we are associated with bodies - not
just assume it to avoid solipism.


Absolutely agree. In fact COMP exacerbates the situation, in that it
is a form of idealism, making the Anthropic Principle mysterious
rather than ordinary. Whilst this is definitely a strike in favour of
materialism, there are so many other disadvantages of materialism that
it is worth trying to nut out how COMP can support the Anthropic Principle.



I agree 100%

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Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?

On 11/11/2012 12:53 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 06:44:36PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 5:37 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

Only for some extended, loose definition of rational. The
non-deterministic choices themselves are not rationally determined.

Of course not by your definition of rational for in that case they
would be deterministic and potentially predictable and hence
worthless in the game.

But the definitions I find in Dictionary of Philosophy by Angeles:

1. Containing or possessing reason or characterized by reason.
2. Capable of functioning rationally.
3. Capable of being understood.
4. In comformity with reason. Intelligble.
5. Adhering to qualities of thought such as consistency, coherence,
simplicity, abstractness, completeness, order, logical structure.

or online:

*1. * Having or exercising the ability to reason.
*2. * Of sound mind; sane.
*3. * Consistent with or based on reason; logical: rational
behavior. See Synonyms at logical
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/logical.

/a/ *:* having reason or understanding
/b/ *:* relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason *:

I'm sure you would agree that none of those definitions are technical
in nature - they are more like what you'd find in a regular English
dictionary - so are of little help.

*Or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/

'Bayesian epistemology' became an epistemological movement in the
20^th century, though its two main features can be traced back to
the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701-61). Those two features
are: (1) the introduction of a /formal apparatus/ for inductive
logic; (2) the introduction of a /pragmatic self-defeat test/ (as
illustrated by Dutch Book Arguments) for /epistemic/ /*rationality*/
as a way of extending the justification of the laws of deductive
logic to include a justification for the laws of inductive logic

I agree, a rational agent should never choose an action that can be
exploited by a Dutch book. I would say this supports my claim that the
rational agent doesn't have a free choice in the matter.

Dear Russell,

Does not this definition assume perfect knowledge or omniscience of
all rational agents?

There are 915 entries turned up by searching the SEP for rational
I looked a about a dozen and found nothing that would require
rational to be deterministic.

I have never come across the term rational agent applying to a
stochastic one in the literature. By contrast, I see definitions such
as the one I quoted from Wikipedia's article indicating that rational
agents are strictly deterministic.

In looking at my dictionaries of philosophy I find nothing saying
that rational implies deterministic. And it's common knowledge that
stochastic decisions can be optimal in games - so I don't see how
you can call them anything but rational. The same Wikipedia article
you cited goes on to say,A *rational* decision is one that is not
just reasoned, but is also optimal for achieving a goal or solving a
problem.

Correct. A stochastic decision is obviously not reasoned, so the
decision itself cannot be rational.

The question is whether an agent using a stochastic strategy can be
said to be behaving rationally. I do see your point that the choice of
strategy is rational, but then in that case the strategy choice is
deterministic. What is hard to get a grips on is how the term is used
in the literature, particularly vis-a-vis iterated games, where
stochatsic strategies can have better payoff.

The following thread is interesting, as it would appear the situation
is rather more murky than the black-and-white positions we've been
arguing.

http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/126310-economic-definition-rationality-irrationality.html

I like this definition that was posted in that forum: *An agent is
rational if he/she does whatever the modeler (i.e. economist) would do
in his/her position.*

But for instance the example of me buying an apple instead of
an orange one day, then buying an orange instead of an apple the next
is usually explained in terms of time dependent utility, rather than
me as behaving irrationally!

Could we say that an agent is rational iff there exists a model
that is transitive (ala
http://blogginthequestion.blogspot.com/2007/07/money-pump-argument-by-stuart-yasgur.html)?

The Cambridge Philosophical Dictionary cited in the Wikepedia entry
on Rationality doesn't actually have an entry defining
rationality (although the word rational appears about a 100
times). It has one on rationalism which is contrasted with
empiricism. The definition of rationality on page 772 is part of
a discussion of rationalism, moral.

Not much help then. Thanks for looking it up!

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Re: Re: 14 billion years ago there was a huge explosion

2012-11-11 Thread Russell Standish

Rubbish, it not a measurement of the age of the universe, but rather
of the Hubble constant. It only corresponds to the age of the universe
in the context of a specific theory, usually the Friedmann universe,
which is one of the simplests solutions to Einstein's theory of
general relativity.

Journalists tend to oversimplify things, and get it so wrong.

Cheers

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 08:01:46AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Russell Standish

It's not theory, it's measurement to 4 figures, with an error of plus or
minus 0.87 %:

http://www.universetoday.com/13371/1373-billion-years-the-most-accurate-measurement-of-the-age-of-the-universe-yet/

13.73 Billion Years -- The Most Precise Measurement of the Age of the
Universe Yet
by Ian O'Neill on March 28, 2008
Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

NASA? Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has taken the best
measurement of the age of the Universe to date.
According to highlyprecise observations of microwave radiation observed all
over the cosmos, WMAP scientists now have the
best estimate yet on the age of the Universe:
13.73 billion years, plus or minus 120 million years (that's an error margin
of only 0.87% ! not bad really).

The WMAP mission was sent to the Sun-Earth second Lagrangian point (L2),
located approximately 1.5 million km
from the surface of the Earth on the night-side (i.e. WMAP is constantly in
the shadow of the Earth) in 2001.

The reason for this location is the nature of the gravitational stability in
the region and the lack of
electromagnetic interference from the Sun. Constantly looking out into
space, WMAP scans the
cosmos with its ultra sensitive microwave receiver, mapping any small
variations in the background temperature (anisotropy) of the universe. It can
detect microwave radiation in the wavelength range of 3.3-13.6 mm
(with a corresponding frequency of 90-22 GHz). Warm and cool regions of space
are therefore mapped, including the radiation polarity.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/11/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen

- Receiving the following content -
From: Russell Standish
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-10, 17:39:09
Subject: Re: 14 billion years ago there was a huge explosion

Not quite. It has measured that the universe 14 billion year ago was
very different from now, ie very hot and dense. All else is theory -
some theories have a beginning, others don't.

Cheers

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 05:50:38AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Stephen,

Science has meaured the beginning of the universe
to have occured about 14 billion years ago.
So it has a beginning.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen

- Receiving the following content -
From: Hal Ruhl
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-09, 12:26:47
Subject: RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum

Hi Stepen:

Interesting post.

I indicated in the initiating posts that life should rapidly appear where
the conditions supporting it are found.

I suspect that in most cases the sphere of influence for a particular
instance of a biosphere is small when compared to the size of the universe.

Therefore I propose to change heat death to operative heat death re
your
finite resolving power for observers. This should allow for the
possibility of an open universe.

I am also considering changing purpose of life to function of life.

Thanks

Hal

Dear Hal,

What consequences would there be is the Universe (all that exists) is
truly infinite and eternal (no absolute beginning or end) and what we
observe as a finite (spatially and temporally) universe is just the result
of our finite ability to compute the contents of our observations? It is
helpful to remember that thermodynamic arguments, such as the heat engine
concept, apply only to closed systems. It is better to assume open systems
and finite resolving power (or equivalently finite computational abilities)

for observers.

--
Onward!

Stephen

Re: Plato's cave analogy


On 11/11/2012 10:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Nov 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Plato says that we all live in a dark cave, seeing only
shadows on the wall, eager to see the light outside.
So there is at least a duality which I call platonia (heaven)
and contingia (earth).


OK. For example with heaven played by the truth of all the 
propositions. But earth, with comp, belongs to heaven, or at least on 
the path of going back to the one, among many path. The existence of 
the paths are necessary, but the memory of the path is half in heaven, 
and half in particular contingent geographico-historical context.






Platonia contains the necessary stuff, the dark cave we live in
contains the contingent stuff.


The dark cave might be the physical universe.  It is the border of the 
universal mind reality. An object whose mathematics is amenable to 
number theory, or computer science.


We cannot experimentally make the difference between a law, or an 
instantiation of a deeper law. We cannot separate experimentally 
geography and physics, but we can define physics by what gives the 
universal prediction by different universal beings, and with comp this 
is enough to define a precise indeterminacy domain from which the 
universal beings can seen aspects of the universal border.


Comp reopens the debate between Plato and Aristotle. At the least, it 
shows that science has not decided this, and it illustrates, by 
listening what the machines can already say about them,  another 
rationalist conception of reality, which gives sense to the 
Pythagorean neoplatonist negative theology.


Bruno




Dear Bruno,

This is wonderful! Now, all I want from you is that you consider 
the idea that knowledge is not free. There is a cost in resource 
utilization (or entropy generation) to gain knowledge. I hope to have a 
more coherent formula involving the Blum measure soon.


--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?


On 11/11/2012 11:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Nov 2012, at 17:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 11/9/2012 3:26 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
It seems to me that we automatically get a 'fixed identity' when 
we consider each observer's 1p to be defined by a bundle or sheaf of 
an infinite number of computations. The chooser of A and of B is one 
and the same if and only if the computational bundle that make the 
choice of A also make the choice of B. What you are considering is 
just an example of my definition of reality.


But what makes the bundle or sheaf stay together?  As computations 
why don't they quickly diverge?  That's the question I was raising in 
the Moscow/Washington thought experiment.  We know the M-man and the 
W-man diverge because they experience different things.  But they 
experience different things because their physical eyes/skin/ears... 
are in differenct physical places?  And those experiences form two 
different sheafs of computation that have a lot in common within each 
and differences between them.  But there is no computational 
explanation of why that should be so.  Computationally there could be 
just one sheaf including the M-man and the W-man just as the drone 
pilot has a sheaf that includes Florida and Afghanistan.  So the 
argument for comp seems to rely on physics.







No, it can't. It has to rely on the infinitely many computations which 
exists once you postulate one Turing universal
realm. So physics has to emerged from the first plural indeterminacy. 
Plural means that when I diverge, a similar proportion of copies of 
you, too, so that we share the indeterminacy. Then we must seen it 
when looking close enough, and that is confirmed by QM (without collapse).


If you attribute the physical to one universal machine, but with comp 
that one universal machine, if it exists must be justified by being 
the unique solution to the comp measure problem.


Bruno


Dear Bruno,

 Why do you only consider a single universal machine and only one 
solution to the comp measure problem? Do you not see that this implies 
that the one is solipsistic? What if only many local approximations to 
the ideal are possible? Let not the perfect be the enemy of the possible!



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Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/11/2012 11:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 11 Nov 2012, at 02:14, meekerdb wrote:


On 11/10/2012 1:31 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
No problem. UDA shows the equivalent propositions:  (MAT is weak 
materialism: the doctrine that there is a primitive physical reality)


COMP   - NOT MAT
MAT - NOT COMP
NOT MAT or NOT COMP

I keep COMP as a working hypothesis, as I have no clue what really 
MAT means or explains, and we don't find a contradiction, just a 
weirdness close to quantum Everett. 


But more accurately, we have not yet found a contradiction.  There 
may be a contradiction with empirical observation, but COMP has not 
made many definite predictions that could be contradicted.


The modal logics Z1*, X1*, and S4Grz1 generates an infinity of 
experiences testing the logic of the observables. Those obtained have 
been tested, as they corrresponds to orthomodularity, existence of a 
quatization, etc. It is just an open problem if they can emulate a 
quatum computer, as they should.


Dear Bruno,

Of that collection of an infinity of experiences, is there a 
single Boolean Algebra for all of the experiences?




That's why I brought up the location of consciousness.  Empirically 
consciousness is associated with a center body (an essential point of 
the duplication experiment), yet so far as I can see COMP would 
predict that a consciousness should have no particular location and 
not reason to be associated with a particular body.


Yes, there is. the fact that you are indeterminate on an infinity of 
computational histories, which can be relatively deep, making us 
relatively rare and computationally costly, and yet mutiplied into 
continuum of very simlar computations, given a notion of Gaussian 
normality.


For me it is important to look at how the infinity of computational 
histories can be partitioned up into mutually consistent histories. We 
may need consider multiple narratives, one for each observer. There are 
good arguments against the idea of a single history or narrative. 
http://phys.columbia.edu/~judes/qm/10_30_PhilQM.mov 
http://phys.columbia.edu/%7Ejudes/qm/10_30_PhilQM.mov




Of course it is only a beginning. But it has to work if comp + the 
classical theory of knoweldge are correct, and it is the only theory 
which separates naturally the quanta as particular qualia, and give an 
arithmetical interpretation for the mystical conception of reality 
(Plato, Plotinus).


Sure.



Bruno




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Stephen

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/11/2012 12:20 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 11 Nov 2012, at 05:00, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 07:02:04PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/10/2012 5:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I think the argument is that association with a body (or brain)
is required for intersubjectivity between minds. It is an
anti-solipsism requirement.


But how does the requirement for intersubjectivity follow from COMP?
Is it just an anthropic selection argument?

Brent



I'm not sure how Bruno argues for it, but my version goes something
like:

1) Self-awareness is a requirement for consciousness

2) We expect to find ourselves in an environment sufficiently rich and
complex to support self-aware structures (by Anthropic Principle), but
not more complex than necessary (Occams Razor). Sort of like
Einstein's principle As simple as possible, and no simpler.

3) The simplest environment generating a given level of complexity is
one that has arisen as a result of evolution from a much simpler
initial state. This is the evolution in the multiverse observation,
that evolution is the only creative (or information generating)
process.

4) Evolutionary proccesses work with populations, so automatically,
you must have other self-aware entities in your world, and
consequently intersubjectivity.

Note that Bruno does not agree with 1). So I'm not quite sure how he
gets to the anti-solipsist veiwpoint.


By praying, mainly. (grin).
It is not excluded that comp leads to solipsism, especially after or 
near death, but even after death, it is not guarantied either. 
Solipsism is avoided by the first person plural, when the entire 
population of universal beings is multiplied into coherent 
continuation. There might be anthropic, or consciousness-tropic 
conditions justifying this. I do think that the adding of Dt makes 
the job (and the 1p, redemolish it for the qualia and sensations).


Everett QM illustrate very well the 'contagion of duplications', 
making us sharing normal histories. Empirically, Everett saves comp 
from solipsism, but to be sure, assuming comp, we have to derive 
Everett QM from all computations (a concept that Church Thesis makes 
utterly mathematically clear, as you can choose any Turing universal 
system to be define it mathematically).




Dear Bruno,

Everett's MWI avoids solipsism by defining an observer in physical 
terms! Read his paper for yourself to see this.







1) comes from the fact that applying 2), without something like 1)
being true, leads to the Occam catastrophe, namely we should expect to
find ourselves in a very simple boring world with nothing complex like
brains in it. Given that we can conceive of ourselves as being born
into a virtual reality (eg matrix style) where the virtual reality
generator renders nothing at all, the occams catastrophe situation is
certainly conceivable. Hence my interest at what happens in sensory
deprivation experiments. If you put a newborn baby in one of those, it
may never become conscious (not that that experiment is ethical 
though!).


It may hard for him/her to become self-conscious, but there are 
evidence that ape embryo already dream that they climb in trees, so I 
think the new born baby is conscious.


To be conscious does not demand that the entity is conscious of its 
consciousness, IMHO.


But if you put it in a tank, his consciousness might quite similar to 
the disconnected consciousness of a Robinsonian arithmetic. This is 
not used in UDA.


Could you elaborate on the disconnected consciousness of a 
Robinsonian arithmetic a bit?


The salvia reports, but also the reports of people having been victim 
of some trauma might suggest this.


Salvia seems to work by suppressing memory, by making it so that 
the person under the influense only is aware of the present moment with 
no thoughts of previous moments of experience.


--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

2012-11-11 Thread freqflyer07281972



On Saturday, November 10, 2012 3:00:33 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

 On 11/10/2012 1:11 AM, freqflyer07281972 wrote: 
  Hey all on the list, 
  
  Bruno, I must say, thinking of the UDA. The key assumption is this 
 teleportation 
  business, and wouldn't it really be quite Ockham's Razorish to simply 
 conclude from the 
  entire argument that the correct substitution level is, in principle, 
 not only not 
  knowable, but not achievable, which means: 
  
  congratulations, you have found a convincing thought experiment proof 
 that teleportation 
  is impossible in any cases greater than, say, 12 atoms or so (give me a 
 margin of error 
  of about plus/minus 100) ... this is very reminiscent of the way that 
 time travel 
  theorists use some of godel's closed timelike curve (CTC) solutions to 
 einstein's 
  relativity to argue that time travel to the past is possible. The 
 problem is, the 
  furthest back you can go is when you made the CTC, and yet in order to 
 make the CTC, the 
  formal and physical conditions require that you already have to have a 
 time machine. 
  This, of course, leads to paradox, because in order to travel in the 
 time machine in the 
  first place, you have to have had a time machine to use as a kind of 
 mechanism for the 
  whole project. 
  
  In the same way, I think, does your ingenious UDA lead not to the 
 conclusion you want it 
  to, (i.e. we are eternal numbers contained in the computation of some 
 infinite computer) 
  but rather the less appealing conclusion that, perhaps, the 
 teleportation required in 
  your entire thought experiment is simply impossible, for much of the 
 same reasons as 
  time travel is impossible. 

 I don't see the parallel.  Can you spell it out? 

 Brent 

 Sure, I'll try.

Regarding time travel, there are many reasons for thinking that this is 
simply impossible. This comes from Sean Carroll's excellent book 'From 
Eternity to Here' -- I'm just gonna quote it to save time and get on to the 
teleportation part: 

In 1967, theoretical physicist Robert Geroch investigated the question of 
wormhole construction, and he showed that you actually could create a 
wormhole by twisting spacetime in the appropriate way, but only if, as an 
intermediate step in the process, you created a closed time like curve. In 
other words, the first step to building a time machine by manipulating a 
wormhole is to build a time machine so you can make a wormhole. (p. 115)

Now, the analogy I see is this: A person wants to make a teleportation 
device. Well, in order to teleport object A to some location X, you need to 
specify the minimum amount of information that A must contain in order to 
continue having the experience of being A. This is what I take to be 'the 
substitution level,' (i.e. the level of fine-graining necessary to take a 
solid person, turn them into some kind of digital representation, send the 
digital representation at the speed of light across a vast distance, and 
then reconstitute them at the destination. My thinking is that, much like 
the wormhole, the substitution level, if known or achievable, would imply 
that we could build a teleportation device, but we'd need to confirm we had 
the right substitution level by building a working teleportation device -- 
in other words, it's a catch-22 - you need the teleportation device capable 
of dealing with the appropriate amount of information (I'm envisioning a 
super powerful computer combined with a beam splitter, and a super 
amazingly written piece of software - i.e. one must never crash!!! because 
if it does, there is the potential that the person you are teleporting 
could be lost in the ether!) and yet you need the substitution level to 
design and build the device properly.

In practice, from what I understand, they have been able to teleport 
systems of a couple or a few particles over 100 kilometres. Also, there's 
the no-teleportation theorem of quantum physics that would seem to suggest 
it's impossible, although I am aware that this doesn't strictly apply in 
the thought experiment, because the substitution level is something above 
the quantum level (am I right about this? I think it's implied by the 
condition that there is 'ambient organic material' in the container at the 
destination(s))

So why the big fuss over teleportation when the UDA is really all about 
establishing that comp is consistent and implies computational/machine 
metaphysics rather than materialism? Well, it would seem to me the entire 
argument stands or falls on this teleportation business, and if it's not 
possible, then the argument for the UD doesn't seem to get off the ground. 

That's what I meant by the comparison, I hope I'm clear. 

Cheers,

Dan



 

  
  It's still an important result, but perhaps not as profound as you think 
 if we admit 
  that the teleportation required in your thought experiment is simply not 
 possibly for 
  purely naturalistic (and therefore not computational, or

Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

2012-11-11 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 04:13:38PM -0800, freqflyer07281972 wrote:
 
 
 On Saturday, November 10, 2012 3:00:33 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
 
  On 11/10/2012 1:11 AM, freqflyer07281972 wrote: 
   but rather the less appealing conclusion that, perhaps, the 
  teleportation required in 
   your entire thought experiment is simply impossible, for much of the 
  same reasons as 
   time travel is impossible. 
 
  I don't see the parallel.  Can you spell it out? 
 
  Brent 
 
  Sure, I'll try.
 
 Regarding time travel, there are many reasons for thinking that this is 
 simply impossible. This comes from Sean Carroll's excellent book 'From 

And many good reasons for thinking it is possible in a Multiverse, as
pointed out by David Deutsch. Time travel into the past is simply
equivalent to going somewhere else in the Multiverse, or to use the
Borge Library of Babel analogy, selecting a book from the Library of
Babel.

It doesn't run into the grandfather paradox, because even when you go
back into the past, and kill your grandfather, because multiple
futures really do exist in the multiverse, you will just end up in a
history that never has the past you growing up in it, just the current
you living your life from where you reentered history. Meanwhile, your
childhood will still exist in a history where you failed to kill your
grandfather, or never even made the attempt.

Just as the grandfather paradox seems to show that past time travel is
impossible unless we live in a Multiverse, the UDA seems to show that
teleportation is impossible unless we live in a Multiverse.

So there may well be a connection between the two, as speculated by
the OP.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Arithmetic doesn't even suggest geometry, let alone awareness.

2012-11-11 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Saturday, November 10, 2012 12:15:59 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Fri, Nov 9, 2012  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

  If numbers exist then so does geometry, that is to say numbers can be 
 made to change in ways that exactly corresponds with the way objects move 
 and rotate in space. 


  I'm saying that there would be no such thing as objects, movement, 
 space, or rotation in a comp universe. 


 I don't know what a comp universe is because I no longer know what 
 comp means and I no longer believe that Bruno, the inventor of the term, 
 does either.  But I do know that over the past year you have told this list 
 that information does not exist, and neither do electrons or time or space 
 or bits or even logic, so I don't see why the nonexistence of movement in a 
 comp universe or any other sort of universe would bother you.


It bothers me because it doesn't make sense to suggest that a universe of 
experiences full of objects and positions can be reduced to a mechanism for 
which objects and positions are meaningless. What I am pointing out is that 
what comp implies is a universe which looks and feels nothing like the one 
which we actually live in. It does present a plausible range of logical 
functions which remind us of some aspects of our minds, but I think that 
there is another reason for that, which has to do with the nature of 
arithmetic. Comp mistakes the lowest common denominator universality of 
arithmetic for a claim to primitive authenticity and causal efficacy, when 
in fact numbers by themselves don't even have a use for geometric forms.


  You can prove this by understanding that there are no objects or spaces 
 actually moving around in the chips of your computer. 


 Electrons move around the chips in your computer, and potassium and sodium 
 ions move around the Cerebral Cortex of your brain.  


That doesn't matter. My point is that our senses require a particular 
presentation of forms and experience for us to consciously make sense, 
whereas a computer does not need any such thing. The fact that we have ion 
pumps does not allow us to forego the luxury of having a screen and GUI to 
use our computer geometrically. Servers don't need GUIs to communicate with 
each other, but more importantly, no kind of computer will ever benefit 
from any kind of geometric presentation of data.
 


  make the Real numbers be the horizontal axis of a graph and the 
 imaginary numbers be the vertical axis, now whenever you multiply a Real or 
 Imaginary number by i you can intuitively think about it as rotating it by 
 90 degrees in a counterclockwise direction. 


  Do you understand why computers don't need to do that? 


 I said a lot of stuff so I'm not sure what that refers to (sometimes 
 pronouns can really suck) but apparently you believe that computers have 
 some innate ability that humans lack, there is something computers already 
 know and so don't need to do that.


It's not that they have an ability that humans lack, it is that humans are 
privileged with the sense of forms and objects, while computers are forever 
confined to the intangible (if there were any subject there to act as 
having a computer's point of view - which there isn't.)
 


 I do know that computers calculate with complex numbers all the time, 
 especially when rotation in 3D is important, such as calculations involving 
 Maxwell's or Schrodinger's equation. 

  This is my point, we have visual intuition because we have visual sense 
 as a method of participating in a universe of sense. It would be 
 meaningless in a universe of arithmetic.


 I would maintain that computers are already far better than humans in 
 determining what a complex object will look like when it is rotated. 


I would agree that it is better at plotting such a complex object rotation 
on a screen for us to admire, but the computer itself wouldn't know an 
object from a string of bank transactions. Computers know nothing, they 
think of nothing, they understand nothing. What a computer does is no 
different than what a lever does when a metal ball falls on to one side of 
it and the other side rises. You will likely tell me again that potassium 
ions are no different, and you aren't wrong, but the difference is that we 
know for a fact that potassium ions are part of an evolved self organizing 
biological system that thinks and feels while no inorganic lever system 
seems to aspire to anything other than doing the same thing over and over 
again. Instead of trying to sweep this obvious and important difference 
under the rug, I suggest that the difference in structural organization is 
not the whole story, and that experience itself, accumulated through time, 
contributes to the life represented by the bodies of such self-dividing 
systems.
 


  I am saying, IF the universe were purely functional,


 I don't know what that means, is the universe broken?  


No, it means that comp is digital

Re: Evolutionary logic Re: Some musings on is/ought and modal logic


On 11/11/2012 8:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


I have seen some physical terms, but no materialistic term.

To provide the logic, you need to gives the axioms to which the B, O, [], etc. obey, and 
you should provide semantics, and make clear the relation between the symbols, and the 
reality you are betting on, as this would be an exercise in applied logic. An expression 
like natural selection presuppose a lot, including quite different possibilities.


It is pretty much the project of William S. Cooper in his book The Origin of Reason to 
explain how logic, mathematics, and decision theory would have developed by evolutionary 
processes.


Brent

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RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum

2012-11-11 Thread Hal Ruhl

I have tried to post this several times.  It appears I am again having
issues with my email software.  I am sorry if it eventually posts multiple
times.
 
Hi John and Russell:
 
As far as I know all the Laws of Physics are based on observation and are
absent closed form proof.
 
Given the data I have seen, resource consumption and real GDP follow similar
size trajectories.  Twenty or more years ago I played with ideas on how they
[using quality of life experience for which real GDP would be a reasonable
proxy] might be decoupled to the benefit of species survival .   This
included consideration of what I now call pAP1.  Recently I had reason to
resurrect these old unpublished writings.   Review of these writings,
conversations  with  associates and the vantage point of 20 more years of
observation have caused me to believe that pAP1 has a global and unbreakable
hold on human behavior.   I believe even outliers such as survivalists if
subjected to accurate energy flow analysis would be shown to be fully in its
grasp. The consequences of this would be rather unpleasant as I indicated
and Russell appears to support.   Thus my recent posts looking for a
falsification of pAP1.  [I am  currently rewriting the early post to improve
clarity.] 
 
John: I think my response to Stephen re his finite resolution. responds to
your post also.
 
Hal 
 
AFAIK, there is no requirement for resource consumption to be proportional
to GDP. So it should be possible to save the economy without wrecking the
planet.
 
But yes, ultimately life will have to move on from H. Sapiens...
 

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Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?


On 11/11/2012 12:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
I like this definition that was posted in that forum: *An agent is rational if 
he/she does whatever the modeler (i.e. economist) would do in his/her position.*


The problem is with does.  Flipping a coin and doing X if heads and Y if tails can be 
the same optimum strategy for the modeler and the rational agent.  Yet if it comes up 
heads for the modeler but tails for the rational agent they will *do* different things.


Brent

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Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?

On 11/11/2012 4:13 PM, freqflyer07281972 wrote:

On Saturday, November 10, 2012 3:00:33 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 11/10/2012 1:11 AM, freqflyer07281972 wrote:
Hey all on the list,

Bruno, I must say, thinking of the UDA. The key assumption is this
teleportation
business, and wouldn't it really be quite Ockham's Razorish to simply
conclude
from the
entire argument that the correct substitution level is, in principle, not
only not
knowable, but not achievable, which means:

congratulations, you have found a convincing thought experiment proof that
teleportation
is impossible in any cases greater than, say, 12 atoms or so (give me a
margin of
error
of about plus/minus 100) ... this is very reminiscent of the way that
time travel
theorists use some of godel's closed timelike curve (CTC) solutions to
einstein's
relativity to argue that time travel to the past is possible. The problem
is, the
furthest back you can go is when you made the CTC, and yet in order to
make the
CTC, the
formal and physical conditions require that you already have to have a
time machine.
This, of course, leads to paradox, because in order to travel in the time
machine
in the
first place, you have to have had a time machine to use as a kind of
mechanism for
the
whole project.

In the same way, I think, does your ingenious UDA lead not to the
conclusion you
want it
to, (i.e. we are eternal numbers contained in the computation of some
infinite
computer)
but rather the less appealing conclusion that, perhaps, the teleportation
required in
your entire thought experiment is simply impossible, for much of the same
reasons as
time travel is impossible.

I don't see the parallel. Can you spell it out?

Brent

Sure, I'll try.

Regarding time travel, there are many reasons for thinking that this is simply
impossible. This comes from Sean Carroll's excellent book 'From Eternity to Here' -- I'm
just gonna quote it to save time and get on to the teleportation part:

In 1967, theoretical physicist Robert Geroch investigated the question of wormhole
construction, and he showed that you actually could create a wormhole by twisting
spacetime in the appropriate way, but only if, as an intermediate step in the process,
you created a closed time like curve. In other words, the first step to building a time
machine by manipulating a wormhole is to build a time machine so you can make a
wormhole. (p. 115)

Now, the analogy I see is this: A person wants to make a teleportation device. Well, in
order to teleport object A to some location X, you need to specify the minimum amount of
information that A must contain in order to continue having the experience of being A.
This is what I take to be 'the substitution level,' (i.e. the level of fine-graining
necessary to take a solid person, turn them into some kind of digital representation,
send the digital representation at the speed of light across a vast distance, and then
reconstitute them at the destination. My thinking is that, much like the wormhole, the
substitution level, if known or achievable, would imply that we could build a
teleportation device, but we'd need to confirm we had the right substitution level by
building a working teleportation device -- in other words, it's a catch-22 - you need
the teleportation device capable of dealing with the appropriate amount of information
(I'm envisioning a super powerful computer combined with a beam splitter, and a super
amazingly written piece of software - i.e. one must never crash!!! because if it does,
there is the potential that the person you are teleporting could be lost in the ether!)
and yet you need the substitution level to design and build the device properly.

First, you don't necessarily have to confirm it's function for it to function - if that
were the case nothing functional could ever be built. Second, you'd test it by
teleporting something across a room, and then a hamster, and then a person, and then
across the street, and... Third, that someone might be destroyed is not an argument that
it won't work. It's easy to get killed trying to fly a rocket to the Moon, that doesn't
mean there's some contradiction in rocketry.

In practice, from what I understand, they have been able to teleport systems of a couple
or a few particles over 100 kilometres. Also, there's the no-teleportation theorem of
quantum physics that would seem to suggest it's impossible, although I am aware that
this doesn't strictly apply in the thought experiment, because the substitution level is
something above the quantum level (am I right about this? I think it's implied by the
condition that there is 'ambient organic material' in the container at the destination(s))

There's a no-cloning theorem, i.e. you can't make a copy of an unknown quantum state. But

Re: Doesn't UDA simply imply that teleportation is impossible?


On 11/11/2012 4:45 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

And many good reasons for thinking it is possible in a Multiverse, as
pointed out by David Deutsch. Time travel into the past is simply
equivalent to going somewhere else in the Multiverse, or to use the
Borge Library of Babel analogy, selecting a book from the Library of
Babel.

It doesn't run into the grandfather paradox, because even when you go
back into the past, and kill your grandfather, because multiple
futures really do exist in the multiverse, you will just end up in a
history that never has the past you growing up in it, just the current
you living your life from where you reentered history. Meanwhile, your
childhood will still exist in a history where you failed to kill your
grandfather, or never even made the attempt.


Just because it doesn't produce a contradiction doesn't mean it's nomologically 
possible.

Brent

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Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?


On 11/12/2012 12:15 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/11/2012 12:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
I like this definition that was posted in that forum: *An agent is 
rational if he/she does whatever the modeler (i.e. economist) would 
do in his/her position.*


The problem is with does.  Flipping a coin and doing X if heads and 
Y if tails can be the same optimum strategy for the modeler and the 
rational agent.  Yet if it comes up heads for the modeler but tails 
for the rational agent they will *do* different things.


Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Sure, but we don't consider a single situation to give a general 
definition of a behavior. The case of the mismatch of the coin flips 
goes away when we look at many cases. There is a case to be made for 
statistics in figuring out the definitions of rationality, no? Dogs do 
not always bite the postman


--
Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Where's the fixed identity in turing machines and comp ?