Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On 17 Feb 2013, at 19:44, meekerdb wrote: On 2/17/2013 7:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 Feb 2013, at 04:29, socra...@bezeqint.net wrote: After proving Euler's identity during a lecture, Benjamin Peirce, a noted American 19th-century philosopher, mathematician, and professor at Harvard University, stated that it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth. # Stanford University mathematics professor Keith Devlin said, Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler's Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler's_identity =.. it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, . . . . .’ . . . but . . . ‘ Euler's Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence. ===.. Yes. Euler identity is wonderful. It amazes me also that it makes the square of any complex number into a (non normalized) gaussian: (e^ix)^2 = e^(-x^2) ?? (e^ix)^2 = e^(2ix) Of course. Gosh, where was my mind at? Thanks for correcting! Bruno Brent I love also Euler even deeper identity relating the square of the integers and the prime numbers: Sum from n = 1 to infinity of 1/n^s = Product on all primes p of (1/ (1- 1/p^s). This led Riemann to the deeper of all open problem in math (Riemann hypothesis). Ramanujan found quite amazing number relations. Some are so deep that they link gravitation, quantum computing, prime numbers, string theory and the arithmetic of the integers, all given a key role to the number 24. Jacobi found amazing relations too, involving 24. Math is full of surprising relations. That's a reason, I think, to believe in their objectivity or 3p-independence. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On 17 Feb 2013, at 23:54, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/17/2013 10:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes. Euler identity is wonderful. It amazes me also that it makes the square of any complex number into a (non normalized) gaussian: (e^ix)2 = e^(-x2) I love also Euler even deeper identity relating the square of the integers and the prime numbers: Sum from n = 1 to infinity of 1/n^s = Product on all primes p of (1/ (1- 1/p^s). This led Riemann to the deeper of all open problem in math (Riemann hypothesis). Ramanujan found quite amazing number relations. Some are so deep that they link gravitation, quantum computing, prime numbers, string theory and the arithmetic of the integers, all given a key role to the number 24. Jacobi found amazing relations too, involving 24. Math is full of surprising relations. That's a reason, I think, to believe in their objectivity or 3p-independence. Bruno Dear Bruno, Why is it surprising? We have finite brains that can only know so much and have languages that can only represent a finite number of possibilities. So why are we acting surprised that we 'discover' relations in mathematics and from that surprise make claims of independence for the math? I find this to be a tacit prejudice of our own importance. On the contrary. It is the admission of our ignorance. But then it is our ignorance with respect to something independent of us. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On 18 Feb 2013, at 06:39, socra...@bezeqint.net wrote: Klein Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY – The Adventure of Physics. =. Mathematics is an indispensable and powerful tool where it has been demonstrated that it applies to a real world experience. However, it is inappropriate and, as Dingle points out, potentially dangerous, to give credence to deductions arising purely from the language of mathematics. The problem is that mathematicians now dominate physics and it is fashionable for them to follow Einstein’s example, with fame going to those with the most fantastic notions that defy experience and common sense. So we have the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings, wormholes in space, time travel, and so on and on. It has driven practically minded students from the subject. There is an old Disney cartoon where the scientist is portrayed with eyes closed, rocking backwards in his chair and sucking on a pipe, which at intervals emits a smoke-cloud of mathematical symbols. Much of modern physics is a smoke-screen of Disneyesque fantasy. Inappropriate mathematical models are routinely used to describe the universe. Yet the physicists hand us the ash from their pipes as if it were gold dust. If only they would use the ashtrays provided. “It seems that every practitioner of physics has had to wonder at some point why mathematics and physics have come to be so closely entwined. Opinions vary on the answer. Bertrand Russell acknowledged “Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little.” … Mathematics may be indispensable to physics, but it obviously does not constitute physics.” Assuming physicalism, but my main point is that computationalism cannot work with physicalism. Russell is just wrong when he says Mathematics may be indispensable to physics, but it obviously does not constitute physics.. The obviously comes from an implicit Aristotelian premise. Socratus, are you able to doubt that physics is the fundamental science? Bruno Klein Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY – The Adventure of Physics. ===… -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On Feb 18, 12:19 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Socratus, are you able to doubt that physics is the fundamental science? Bruno = In Physics we trust. / Tarun Biswas / http://www.engr.newpaltz.edu/~biswast/ Of course, it is correct, because only Physics can logically explain us the Existence and the Ultimate Nature of Reality. But . . . but . . . . . . . . ‘ . . .science is not always as objective as we would like to believe.’ / Book: The holographic universe. Page 6. By Michael Talbot. / Why? Because as Einstein said: “ One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” ==. ‘ . . . all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike’ … -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Simulated Intelligence Mini-Manifesto
On Sunday, February 17, 2013 1:11:05 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Feb 2013, at 22:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 14, 2013 11:20:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 Feb 2013, at 23:37, Stephen P. King wrote, to Craig Weinberg Baudrillard is not talking about consciousness in particular, only the sum of whatever is in the original which is not accessible in the copy. His phrase 'profound reality' is apt though. If you don't experience a profound reality, then you might be a p-zombie already. Right! Right? Here Craig is on the worst slope. It looks almost like if *you* believe that a machine is not a zombie, it means that you are a zombie yourself. No, I was saying that if you don't believe that your own experience is profoundly real, then you are a zombie yourself. I remain anxious because you seem to believe that a computer cannot support a profoundly real person experience. I don't think that it can unless it is made of living beings, who are the baton holders if you will of a biological history that is grounded in the catastrophe of vulnerability that those experiences are composed of. The bits of the computer which are not assembled - the silicon and plastic substance, does have an experience, but not as a person or animal or even bacteria. Without that history being embodied physically, I don't expect that it has any resources to draw upon with which to feel 'profound' realism in the way that we feel it, and other animals. The sense is that vegetables do not have the same sort of realism in their experiences as animals when we kill them and eat them, and even if that is untrue, our humanity and sanity may depend on believing the lie on some level. I think that it is probably not a lie though, and our intuition is not completely wrong about the sliding scale of quality in the natural world. We don't see the vegetable equivalent of primates. Maybe there's a reason? They will persecuted the machines and the humans having a different opinion altogether. Craig reassure me. he is willing to offer steak to my sun in law (who get an artificial brain before marriage). But with Baudrillard, not only my sun in law might no more get his steak, but neither my daughter! Brr... Hahaha. How about your son in law gets a simulation of steak which is beneath his substitution level? He will be completely satisfied. Thanks for him. Even better, I just hack into his hardware and move one of his memories of eating steak up on the stack so it seems very recent. Again, he will be completely satisfied. But my daughter will be sad, as she want to enjoy eating the meal together with him. That's good that your position is consistent. Why have a universe at all though? Why not just have a memory of it? Is your brother in law racist against simulated steaks as memory implants? Not at all. Since he got an artificial brain, he uploaded already many entire lives from the CGSN (Cluster-Galactica-Super-Net), and I have to ask him to restrain himself, as I am the one paying the bill :) You know, in 43867 after JC, they will succeed in recovering the brain-state of any existing human states, just by looking of the tiny actions of their brain on the environment. We always leave traces. You will be download, for the first time, in 44886, for example. It is bad news, as all the humans having existed before 33000 (+/-) will be freely downloadable. After that date, most humans will got sophisticated quantum keys protecting them from such possible futures. That why some researcher will say, that with comp, we have the solution of who go in hell and who go in heaven. All humans having live before 33000 go to hell, and all the infinitely many others go to heaven. Of course this is still a rather gross simplification, and it concerns only the minority who want explore and pursue the Samsara exploration. Nice. Or maybe by 2200 we can just simulate the brain state of someone who would be alive in that era and save ourselves 30 or 4 years. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group,
Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On 18 Feb 2013, at 14:35, socra...@bezeqint.net wrote: On Feb 18, 12:19 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Socratus, are you able to doubt that physics is the fundamental science? Bruno = In Physics we trust. / Tarun Biswas / http://www.engr.newpaltz.edu/~biswast/ Of course, it is correct, because only Physics can logically explain us the Existence and the Ultimate Nature of Reality. Why? The UDA shows that if the brain works like a machine, then this is definitely not the case. Physics assumes (primitive) physical objects, like particles, or waves, or space, or spin, or strings, or forces, etc. Why do you think that all this might not been explained, for example as an illusion in some arithmetical matrix. After all, we know that arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical original sense, all computations, and thus all subjective experiences, ... But . . . but . . . . . . . . ‘ . . .science is not always as objective as we would like to believe.’ / Book: The holographic universe. Page 6. By Michael Talbot. / Why? Because as Einstein said: “ One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” ==. ‘ . . . all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike’ … Quite wise statements indeed. But is that not a reason to be cautious with general statement like you did above in the Biswas quote ? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The duplicators and the restorers
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Feb 2013, at 18:09, Jason Resch wrote: Thanks to everyone who replied to this post. So far Stathis and Bruno both answered that both cases are equivalent. Is there anyone willing to argue against either: 1. you don't experience torture when your memory of it is wiped, or 2. you don't experience torture when your perfect duplicate is tortured? Those are interesting questions, but they ask for thought experiences with amnesia, which can quickly, too much quickly, makes you suspicious that personal identity is an illusion. My experience is that when people begin to grasp this, they can feel quite uneasy. A related question, that I ask to you, Jason. Would you accept to sleep in my sleep-laboratory. I pay you 100$ or even more. But I tell you in advance that you will live your worst nightmare. I tell you also that I have the means to make you, in the morning after, completely forgetting that nightmare. Are you OK? Are you OK that your son or daughter makes money in that way? Can this be legal? Is it equivalent with this: I duplicate you and torture the copy for one hour, and then I kill that copy (assuming I can)? Is this not equivalent with a forgotten dream of torture? Are you OK that your daughter makes money in that way? Bruno There used to be a drug administered for childbirth which would allow the mother-to-be- to experience excruciating pain as evidenced by her behavior during the birthing process yet afterwards she would have no memory of that pain. Doctors found that acceptable and assumed there was no lasting trauma. My opinion is that there is lasting trauma that has to be consciously re-experienced to be resolved. So one may as well experience childbirth without drugs to begin with. BTW- off-list topic?? Jason On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 6:58 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Consider the following thought experiment, called The Duplicators: At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. The aliens will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. These aliens possess technology far in advance of our own. They have the ability to scan and replicate objects down to the atomic level and the aliens use this technology to create an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself, which they call you2. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them What about the pain experiments? and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthanized. You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your duplicate rather than you. Now consider the slightly different thought experiment, called The Restorers: At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. Unlike the aliens with the duplication technology (the duplicators), these aliens possess a restorative technology. They can perfectly erase memories and all other physical traces to perfectly restore you to a previous state. The aliens will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. They then proceed to brutually torture you for many hours, conducting test after test on pain. Afterwards, they erase your memory of the torture and all traces of injury and stress from your body. When they are finished, you are atom-for-atom identical to how you were before the torture began. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them What about the pain experiments? and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthenized. You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your duplicate rather than you. My questions for the list: 1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If not, why not. 2. If yes, do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of the Duplicators? If yes, please explain, if not, please explain. 3. If you could choose which aliens would abduct you, is there one you would prefer? If you have a preference, please provide some justification. Thank you. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe
Re: Chosen-ness
Very Brunoish! besides: you may invest in an s at the end of my (last) name, my son even puts sh as an ending. I don't care if John Mike is duplicated anywhere. John Mikes (active on THIs list since ~1998?) On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Feb 2013, at 21:36, John Mikes wrote: Bruno - we, at least, having learned the English language, should 'dig' into the meaning of the words. Chosen is the result of a selection from more than one alternates. Who are the others, from which WE may be CHOSEN? Perhaps those who don't handle so well the english language. (I am joking). Look, I am not the one saying that we have been chosen. On the contrary, I defended the Copernician idea, that we are not chosen at all. Like I said below, comp explain why we *might* feel like having been chosen. the devils in hell, or the angels in heaven? or the other animals? This is why I like to clarify the WORDS before submerging into verbose treatises on debatable concepts. Then again: chosen is ambiguous, e.g. in a certain decimation (war? revolution?) the 'chosen' get executed, so it is not such a joy to be CHOSEN. You are right. Anyone surviving a crash plane, among many passengers who died, develops a kind of guilt and a feeling of having been chosen, but this is an illusion easily explained by comp (and accepted by those surviving passengers most of the time, but this might not change their direct feeling). If you are duplicated into Washington and Moscow, in the usual manner, both the copies will feel like having be chosen for that city, but there is only memories, personal diaries and direct access to them. Now comp is not developed so much that we can be sure that we are NOT chosen, independently of the fact that we might find this not really reasonable to think. That might indeed remain forever undecided, except locally, when, after dying you wake up in a matrix build by our descendant 10^4 after JC, and remembering things like Oh, I will try to relive that John's Mike life which looks interesting. Then, you will know, locally, who made the choice of being John Mike, for awhile. Perhaps a descendent of you. Bruno John Mikes On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 27 Jan 2013, at 23:35, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Hey everyone, I've been following this group a lot. I read it everyday and enjoy all of the wonderful stuff that comes up, even if some of it tends towards ad hominem, argument from authority, and petitio principi. Hey, we're humans, right? That means we get to make these fallacies, in good conscience or bad. Anyway, I wondered about what anyone/everyone thought about the notion of 'chosenness' as a way to understand where we are here in the world. It seems to me that concepts like MWI, Bruno's comp/mech hypothesis and the 'dreams of numbers' ideas of subjectivity, and even Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds' don't actually do something like flee away from our everyday responsibility to accept the basic fact that we have been CHOSEN -- and when I say this, please don't immediately put a bunch of theological baggage on it. I'm not saying God chose this reality as opposed to another, although this might be a convenient shorthand. But what I am saying is that, out of all the staggering possibilities that we know exist with regards to our universe, our galaxy, our solar system, our planet, our society, and even our individual selves, things could have very easily turned out to be different than they were. The fact that they have turned out in just this way and not another indicates this kind of chosenness, and along with it, comes a certain degree of responsibility, I guess? It seems to me that all the various 'everything' hypotheses (MWI, comp, Leibniz, and others) try to apply the Copernican principle to its breaking point. True enough, there is from a purely 3p point of view nothing special about our cosmic situation re: our planet and our sun. BUT, from an existential 1p point of view there is a huge privilege that we have, i.e. we are sentient observers, who love, feel pain, feel desire, and long for transcendence. Moreover, the 3p point of view is a pure abstraction, kind of like eating the picture of a meal rather than the actual meal. How do we know what any kind of 3p account of truth would be? What would it even look like? A universe with no observers. A falling tree without a hearer/listener. This, to me, is nonsense. Aren't things like MWI of quantum physics and comp hypothesis of universal dovetailer trying to, at a fundamental and existential level, an attempt to try to run away from the concreteness and absolute 'givenness' (gift) of the world as we find it? Those things are not necessarily in opposition, once we find a way to attribute first-person-ness to some entities. We only try to figure out what is happening.
Re: the character of the god of comp
Terren, (without taking the connotation seriously) *... if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist?... * does that mean: we are just a joke? JM On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.comwrote: If God is arithmetical truth, then what if anything is there to be said about its character? I know from a formal perspective the answer is nothing, because nothing formal can be said about truth. This is more of an informal question, and comes out of my innate desire to anthropomorphize. If we accept the God of comp, and come to see our experience as the view from the inside of a particular infinity of universal machines, then is there something to be said about what corners of arithmetical truth we must (or most probably) be in that can help us relate in a more personal sense to this god? A crude example question might be, if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist? You could substitute other characterizations for other questions. Given that we could in principle derive physics from the math of the UD - providing a (partial) answer to the measure problem - could we not also solve for the character of God? Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: the character of the god of comp
On 2/18/2013 11:47 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: If God is arithmetical truth, then what if anything is there to be said about its character? I know from a formal perspective the answer is nothing, because nothing formal can be said about truth. This is more of an informal question, and comes out of my innate desire to anthropomorphize. Why would you suppose that your desire to anthropomorphize is anything other than wishful thinking? Do you also have a desire to anthropormorphize the periodic table? the solar system? the infinitesimal calculus? If we accept the God of comp, See, Bruno, this is what your use of God language leads to. You protest that you're just making a scientific theory of what is fundamental - but already people are turning it back toward a guy with a beard in the clouds. Brent and come to see our experience as the view from the inside of a particular infinity of universal machines, then is there something to be said about what corners of arithmetical truth we must (or most probably) be in that can help us relate in a more personal sense to this god? A crude example question might be, if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist? You could substitute other characterizations for other questions. Given that we could in principle derive physics from the math of the UD - providing a (partial) answer to the measure problem - could we not also solve for the character of God? Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6110 - Release Date: 02/17/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: the character of the god of comp
Hi Brent, No, I don't have any desire to anthropomorphize those things you mentioned, but I think it's fair to say we are all wired to want to anthropomorphize things in general - especially things we can't predict that have some kind of impact on us, like the weather. That said, I don't have a particular *need* to do so, and if the god of comp is best understood as nothing but the cold calculus of logic, so be it. But the indeterminacy embodied by comp as Bruno has exposed opens the door to potentially many interpretations of Truth... so it got me to thinking about if there were ways in which solving the measure problem might end up characterizing the nature of the kind of mathematical truth that could support the experience we are having right now. I think it's an interesting question. Believe me, I am as far from talking about the bearded guy as any diehard atheist, so don't take this as a question that leads anywhere in particular. I have no agenda here, I promise. I walk a path somewhere between atheism and a full-blooded embrace of divinity (a wide range I know), and I make no claims to having any kind of consistent position. Bruno's idealism does appeal to me though, and I am exploring that. Terren On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:18 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/18/2013 11:47 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: If God is arithmetical truth, then what if anything is there to be said about its character? I know from a formal perspective the answer is nothing, because nothing formal can be said about truth. This is more of an informal question, and comes out of my innate desire to anthropomorphize. Why would you suppose that your desire to anthropomorphize is anything other than wishful thinking? Do you also have a desire to anthropormorphize the periodic table? the solar system? the infinitesimal calculus? If we accept the God of comp, See, Bruno, this is what your use of God language leads to. You protest that you're just making a scientific theory of what is fundamental - but already people are turning it back toward a guy with a beard in the clouds. Brent and come to see our experience as the view from the inside of a particular infinity of universal machines, then is there something to be said about what corners of arithmetical truth we must (or most probably) be in that can help us relate in a more personal sense to this god? A crude example question might be, if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist? You could substitute other characterizations for other questions. Given that we could in principle derive physics from the math of the UD - providing a (partial) answer to the measure problem - could we not also solve for the character of God? Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6110 - Release Date: 02/17/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: the character of the god of comp
On 2/18/2013 2:54 PM, John Mikes wrote: Terren, (without taking the connotation seriously) */... if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist?... /* does that mean: we are just a joke? JM Who would be the one to laugh? On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com mailto:terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: If God is arithmetical truth, then what if anything is there to be said about its character? I know from a formal perspective the answer is nothing, because nothing formal can be said about truth. This is more of an informal question, and comes out of my innate desire to anthropomorphize. If we accept the God of comp, and come to see our experience as the view from the inside of a particular infinity of universal machines, then is there something to be said about what corners of arithmetical truth we must (or most probably) be in that can help us relate in a more personal sense to this god? A crude example question might be, if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist? You could substitute other characterizations for other questions. Given that we could in principle derive physics from the math of the UD - providing a (partial) answer to the measure problem - could we not also solve for the character of God? Terren -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: the character of the god of comp
On 2/18/2013 5:40 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:54 PM, John Mikes wrote: Terren, (without taking the connotation seriously) */... if God did not have a sense of humor, could we exist?... /* does that mean: we are just a joke? JM Who would be the one to laugh? God is a comedian, playing before an audience that's afraid to laugh. -- Voltaire -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
“The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen. Instead, humans will assimilate machines. Miguel Nicolelis http://www.nicolelislab.net/, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is “a bunch of hot air.” “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,” says Nicolelis, author of several pioneering papers on brain-machine interfaces. The Singularity, of course, is that moment when a computer super-intelligence emerges and changes the world in ways beyond our comprehension. Among the idea’s promoters are futurist Ray Kurzweil, recently hired on at Google as a director of engineering and who has been predicting that not only will machine intelligence exceed our own but that people will be able to download their thoughts and memories into computers (see “Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Google—and Have It Serve Youhttp://www.technologyreview.com/view/510121/ray-kurzweil-plans-to-create-a-mind-at-google-and-have-it-serve-you/ ”). Nicolelis calls that idea sheer bunk. “Downloads will never happen,” Nicolelis said during remarks made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Sunday. “There are a lot of people selling the idea that you can mimic the brain with a computer.” The debate over whether the brain is a kind of computer has been running for decades. Many scientists think it’s possible, in theory, for a computer to equal the brain given sufficient computer power and an understanding of how the brain works. Kurzweil delves into the idea of “reverse-engineering” the brain in his latest book, *How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealedhttp://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0670025291 *, in which he says even though the brain may be immensely complex, “the fact that it contains many billions of cells and trillions of connections does not necessarily make its primary method complex.” But Nicolelis is in a camp that thinks that human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells, Nicolelis says. “You can’t predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you can’t compute it,” he says. “You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.” The neuroscientist, originally from Brazil, instead thinks that humans will increasingly subsume machines (an idea, incidentally, that’s also part of Kurzweil’s predictions). In a study published last week http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403583, for instance, Nicolelis’ group at Duke used brain implants to allow mice to sense infrared light, something mammals can’t normally perceive. They did it by wiring a head-mounted infrared sensor to electrodes implanted into a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex. The experiment, in which several mice were able to follow sensory cues from the infrared detector to obtain a reward, was the first ever to use a neural implant to add a new sense to an animal, Nicolelis says. That’s important because the human brain has evolved to take the external world—our surroundings and the tools we use—and create representations of them in our neural pathways. As a result, a talented basketball player perceives the ball “as just an extension of himself” says Nicolelis. Similarly, Nicolelis thinks in the future humans with brain implants might be able to sense X-rays, operate distant machines, or navigate in virtual space with their thoughts, since the brain will accommodate foreign objects including computers as part of itself. Recently, Nicolelis’s Duke lab has been looking to put an exclamation point on these ideas. In one recent experiment, they used a brain implant so that a monkey could control a full-body computer avatar, explore a virtual world, and even physically sense it. In other words, the human brain creates models of tools and machines all the time, and brain implants will just extend that capability. Nicolelis jokes that if he ever opened a retail store for brain implants, he’d call it *Machines“R”Us*. But, if he’s right, us ain’t machines, and never will be. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/18/2013 9:30 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/ There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Hi Stathis, I agree with you Stathis, but effective non-computability is just as strong as in principle non-computability. The issue of resource availability cannot be ignored. Stephen Wolfram's article on the intractability of simulating physical systems pretty much nails this argument down: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/18/2013 7:51 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/18/2013 9:30 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/ There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Hi Stathis, I agree with you Stathis, but effective non-computability is just as strong as in principle non-computability. The issue of resource availability cannot be ignored. Stephen Wolfram's article on the intractability of simulating physical systems pretty much nails this argument down: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html Right, no brain can hope to compute what a sufficiently large electronic computer can. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Science is a religion by itself.
On Feb 18, 5:28 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Quite wise statements indeed. But is that not a reason to be cautious with general statement like you did above in the Biswas quote ? Bruno == Oh, we are very careful. We do every thing to escape infinity and nothingness. And, indeed, who had no fear of the Infinite, of the nothingness? But what to do if they exist ? To cry or to laugh ? = -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: the character of the god of comp
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 3:18 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/18/2013 11:47 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: If God is arithmetical truth, then what if anything is there to be said about its character? I know from a formal perspective the answer is nothing, because nothing formal can be said about truth. This is more of an informal question, and comes out of my innate desire to anthropomorphize. Why would you suppose that your desire to anthropomorphize is anything other than wishful thinking? Do you also have a desire to anthropormorphize the periodic table? the solar system? the infinitesimal calculus? Within comp, there are many minds that have infinite computations resources at their disposal. They can evolve forever, and approach infinite intelligence and knowledge. They all explore the same mathematical truth and thus having the same data (that of mathematical truth they explore) together with near infinite intelligence, they are almost never wrong on any question or matter. Thus, despite possibly different origins, they are all of a like mind, opinion, and possibly character. The number of fundamental questions on which these super intelligence disagree goes towards zero as their intelligence goes towards infinity. With infinite computational power, these God-like super intelligences have the power to save other beings (regardless of what universe the other being hails from). These God-minds are in a position to help, and thus responsible for the outcome if they fail to act. There is much suffering of conscious beings in the physical universes. With infinite computing power at their disposal, these super intelligences can determine re-create any conscious being from the moment of its physical death and ressurect it to a existence of that being's desires. This is not to say this is what they would do, but if it is the right decision to make, then nearly all super-intelligences will agree it is the right thing to do and will do it. In this sense, there can be a anthropomorphic character to mathematical truth, which comes into existence an infinite number of times and ways but in most appearances, behaves similarly to all its other incarnations. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
