Re: A challenge for Craig
On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. What can be computed other than quantities? Quantities are easily computed by stopping machines, but most machines does not stop, and when they introspect, the theory explains why they get troubled by consciousness, qualia, etc. Those qualia are not really computed, they are part of non computable truth, but which still bear on machines or machine's perspective. Then you still have an explanatory gap. But that is a good point for comp, as it explains why there is a gap, and it imposes on it a precise mathematical structure. How can anything which is non-computable bear on the computation of an ideal machine? That is the whole subject of en entire field: recursion theory, or theoretical computer science. What connects the qualia to the quanta, and why isn't the qualia just quantitative summaries of quanta? Qualia are not connected to quanta. Quanta are appearances in the qualia theory, and they are not quantitative, they are lived at the first person plural views. If Arithmetic truth is full of non nameable things, what nameable things does it also contain, The numbers, the recursive properties, the recursively enumarable properties, the Sigma_i truth, well a lot of things. You have the recursive (the simplest in our comp setting), then the recursively enumerable (the universal machines, notably), then a whole hierarchy of non computable, but still nameable set of numbers, or machine's properties, You say they are nameable, but I don't believe you. It is not as if a number would ever need to go by some other name. Why not refer to it by its precise coordinate within Arithmetic Truth? Because it is independent of the choice of the computational base, like volume in geometry. If you can name something with fortran, then you can name it with numbers, combinators, etc. Nameability is machine independent, like the modal logics G, G*, Z, etc; then you got the non nameable properties, like true (for number relations) but very plausibly, things like consciousness, persons, etc. Some of those non nameable things can still be studied by machines, through assumptions, and approximations. Above that you have the truth that you cannot even approximated, etc. Arithmetical truth is big, *very* big. Big, sure, but that's exactly why it needs no names at all. It is worst than that. Many things cannot have a name. Each feature and meta-feature of Arithmetic truth can only be found at its own address. What point would there be in adding a fictional label on something that is pervasively and factually true? In science it is not a matter of decision, but of verifiable facts. and what or who is naming them? The machines. (in the comp setting, despite the machines theology does refer to higher non-machine entities capable of naming things. That's the case for the first order logical G* (which I note usually qG*, this one needs more than arithmetical truth, but it is normal as it describes an intensional (modal) views by a sort of God (Truth) about the machine. here the miracle is that its zero order logical (propositional) part is decidable. I don't think that names and machines are compatible in any way. Programmers of machines might use names, but once compiled, all high level terms are crushed into the digital sand that the machine can digest. No trace of proprietary intent remains. Not at all. The whole point is that such proprietary are invariant for the high or low level implementations. Otherwise wouldn't it be tautological to say that it is full of non nameable things, as it would be to say that water is full of non dry things. ? (here you stretch an analogy to far, I think). Could be, but I don't know until I hear the counter-argument. (Stretched) analogy are immune to argumentation. It seems to me that we can use arithmetic truth to locate a number within the infinity of computable realtions, but any 'naming' is only our own attempt to attach a proprietary first person sense to that which is irreducibly generic and nameless. The thing about qualia is not that it is non-nameable, it is the specific aesthetic presence that is manifested. Names are
Re: AUDA and pronouns
On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:35, meekerdb wrote: On 10/8/2013 2:51 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 10:20:14AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Oct 2013, at 07:36, Russell Standish wrote: ... and Bpp as he knows p, so the person order of the pronoun is also not relevant. Yes, you can read that in that way, but you get only the 3-view of the 1-view. Let us define [o]p by Bp p I am just pointing on the difference between B([o]p) and [o]([o]p). Isn't B(Bp)=Bp so: Bp - B(Bp) but B(Bp) does not necessarly imply Bp. B(Bp p) =? B(Bp p) (Bp P) Why would that be? [o](Bp p) = B(Bp p) (Bp p), but not B(Bp p), because B(Bp p) does not imply Bp p. Bp =? Bp p - false And so, this does not follow. (Keep in mind that Bp does not imply p, from the machine's point of view). Think about Bf, if it implies f, we would have that the machine would know that ~Bf, and knows that she is consistent. She can't, if she is correct. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr.
Re: And the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to…
On 08 Oct 2013, at 23:56, LizR wrote: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/10/08/and-the-2013-nobel-prize-in-physics-goes-to/ Today the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to François Englert (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) and Peter W. Higgs (University of Edinburgh, UK). The official citation is “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” I know him very well. I begun my work in his team, with Robert Brout. He asked me how to apply QM in cosmology, and I refer to the MWI. He added some footnote in one of his papers, just referring to Everett's original work, without any detail. He didn't like this, but somehow understood it is hard to make sense of quantum cosmology without it. I am happy that after 50 years he is recognized as one the main discover of the Higgs boson. I am happy for Higgs too. Now, the Nobel prize itself has been obscured by Obama's peace prize, like if it was giving him the right to use drones to kill civilians, or to sign the NDAA ... Englert should have refuse it, perhaps, like Sartre in France or Perelman in Russia, ... I am not really serious, as it seems than the scientific Nobel prize is more seriously attributed. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:25 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html Humans 1, Robots 0 Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans—and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch—when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks—along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines—share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout—a low-wage job that doesn't require much training—sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year-old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr. Levy said. But it's nowhere near anything like that. You have certain
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
The point is not that they are stupid, its that they are much stupider about aesthetic realities than quantitative measurements, which should be or *at least could be* be a clue that there is much more of a difference between mathematical theory and experienced presence than Comp can possibly consider. This is not generalized from a particular case, it is a pattern which I have seen to be common to all cases, and I think that it is possible to understand that pattern without it being the product of any phobia or bias. I would love computers to be smarter than living organisms, and in some way, they are, but in other ways, it appears that they will never be, and for very good reasons. Craig On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:37:15 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl javascript: wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? Because it's a very straightforward way to use the human brain as a test for how well a machine performs a human task. It's a fair test. Once convenience is at stake, humans lie less. Pinocchio is an excellent example. Suppose there's some TV show that needs a boy to play a role. They would not be happy with Pinocchio, but one day they might be happy with a robot. Then we will know that some progress has been made. So I'm basically challenging the Humans - 1, Machines - 0 assertion. One day the automatic cashier will be able to recognise vegetables better than any human. When this day comes, you will complain that the automatic cashier doesn't really mean it when it wishes you a nice day. More importantly: you set a standard that can never be achieved and then you point out that it wasn't achieved by any artificial entity we throw at you. Then you conclude that this is meaningful evidence for your theory, but it's circular. On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. 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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A challenge for Craig
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:18:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. It doesn't have to follow, but it can be a clue. The Higgs is a particular type of elementary phenomenon which is not accessible to us directly. That would not be the case with Comp if we were in fact using only computation. If our world was composed on every level by computation alone, it wouldn't make much sense for people to have to learn to count integers only after years of aesthetic saturation. What can be computed other than quantities? Quantities are easily computed by stopping machines, but most machines does not stop, and when they introspect, the theory explains why they get troubled by consciousness, qualia, etc. Those qualia are not really computed, they are part of non computable truth, but which still bear on machines or machine's perspective. Then you still have an explanatory gap. But that is a good point for comp, as it explains why there is a gap, and it imposes on it a precise mathematical structure. But there's nothing on the other side of the gap from the comp view. You're still just finding a gap in comp that comp says is supposed to be there and then presuming that the entire universe other than comp must fit in there. If there is nothing within comp to specifically indicate color or flavor or kinesthetic sensations, or even the lines and shapes of geometry, then I don't see how comp can claim to be a theory that relates to consciousness. How can anything which is non-computable bear on the computation of an ideal machine? That is the whole subject of en entire field: recursion theory, or theoretical computer science. Ok, so what is an example of something that specifically bridges a kind of computation with something personal that comp claims to produce? What connects the qualia to the quanta, and why isn't the qualia just quantitative summaries of quanta? Qualia are not connected to quanta. Then what is even the point of Comp? To me quanta = all that relates to quantity and certain measurement. If they are not connected to quanta then a machine that is made of quanta can't possibly produce qualia that has no connection to it. That's no better than Descartes. Quanta are appearances in the qualia theory, and they are not quantitative, they are lived at the first person plural views. Quanta aren't quantitative? If Arithmetic truth is full of non nameable things, what nameable things does it also contain, The numbers, the recursive properties, the recursively enumarable properties, the Sigma_i truth, well a lot of things. You have the recursive (the simplest in our comp setting), then the recursively enumerable (the universal machines, notably), then a whole hierarchy of non computable, but still nameable set of numbers, or machine's properties, You say they are nameable, but I don't believe you. It is not as if a number would ever need to go by some other name. Why not refer to it by its precise coordinate within Arithmetic Truth? Because it is independent of the choice of the computational base, like volume in geometry. If you can name something with fortran, then you can name it with numbers, combinators, etc. Nameability is machine independent, like the modal logics G, G*, Z, etc; What you are calling names should be made of binary numbers though. I'm asking why binary numbers should ever need any non-binary, non-digtial, non-quantitative names. then you got the non nameable properties, like true (for number relations) but very plausibly, things like consciousness, persons, etc. Some of those non nameable things can still be studied by machines, through assumptions, and approximations. Above that you have the truth that you cannot even approximated, etc. Arithmetical truth is big, *very* big. Big, sure, but that's exactly why it needs no names at all. It is worst than that. Many things cannot have a name. what can they have? Each feature and meta-feature of Arithmetic truth can only be found at its own address. What point would there be in adding a fictional label on something that is pervasively and factually true? In science it is
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
Citeren Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine asks you, the customer, to type in a code for every leafy green in your cart. Many times you'll have to look up the code in an on-screen directory. If a human checker asked you to remind him what that bunch of the oblong yellow fruit in your basket was, you'd ask to see his boss. This deficiency extends far beyond the checkout lane. In the '60s people assumed you'd be reading X-rays and CT scans by computers within years, Mr.
Re: A challenge for Craig
On 09 Oct 2013, at 15:43, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:18:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. It doesn't have to follow, but it can be a clue. The Higgs is a particular type of elementary phenomenon which is not accessible to us directly. That would not be the case with Comp if we were in fact using only computation. If our world was composed on every level by computation alone, Hmm It is not obvious, and not well known, but if comp is true, then our world is not made of computations. Our world is only an appearance in a multi-user arithmetical video game or dream. it wouldn't make much sense for people to have to learn to count integers only after years of aesthetic saturation. What can be computed other than quantities? Quantities are easily computed by stopping machines, but most machines does not stop, and when they introspect, the theory explains why they get troubled by consciousness, qualia, etc. Those qualia are not really computed, they are part of non computable truth, but which still bear on machines or machine's perspective. Then you still have an explanatory gap. But that is a good point for comp, as it explains why there is a gap, and it imposes on it a precise mathematical structure. But there's nothing on the other side of the gap from the comp view. You're still just finding a gap in comp that comp says is supposed to be there and then presuming that the entire universe other than comp must fit in there. If there is nothing within comp to specifically indicate color or flavor or kinesthetic sensations, or even the lines and shapes of geometry, then I don't see how comp can claim to be a theory that relates to consciousness. There is something in the comp theory which specifically indicate qualia. The gaps in the intensional nuances could very well do that. How can anything which is non-computable bear on the computation of an ideal machine? That is the whole subject of en entire field: recursion theory, or theoretical computer science. Ok, so what is an example of something that specifically bridges a kind of computation with something personal that comp claims to produce? That is technical, and you need to study AUDA. I would say that *all* statements in X1* minus X1 produces that. No doubt many open problems have to be solved to progress here. But even if that fails, you have not produced an argument that it is not possible. What connects the qualia to the quanta, and why isn't the qualia just quantitative summaries of quanta? Qualia are not connected to quanta. Then what is even the point of Comp? To me quanta = all that relates to quantity and certain measurement. If they are not connected to quanta then a machine that is made of quanta can't possibly produce qualia that has no connection to it. That's no better than Descartes. I realize that you have not yet really study comp. Physical Machine are not made of quanta. Quanta appears only as first person plural sharable qualia. They are observable pattern common to people belonging to highly splitting or differentiating computations, most plausibly the linear computations (like in QM). Quanta are appearances in the qualia theory, and they are not quantitative, they are lived at the first person plural views. Quanta aren't quantitative? They might be. The fact that they come from qualia does not prevent that they have quantitative aspect. If Arithmetic truth is full of non nameable things, what nameable things does it also contain, The numbers, the recursive properties, the recursively enumarable properties, the Sigma_i truth, well a lot of things. You have the recursive (the simplest in our comp setting), then the recursively enumerable (the universal machines, notably), then a whole hierarchy of non computable, but still nameable set of numbers, or machine's properties, You say they are nameable, but I don't believe you. It is not as if a number would ever need to go by some other name. Why not refer to it by its precise coordinate within Arithmetic Truth? Because it is independent of the choice of the computational base, like volume
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 09 Oct 2013, at 14:19, Craig Weinberg wrote: The point is not that they are stupid, its that they are much stupider about aesthetic realities than quantitative measurements, which should be or *at least could be* be a clue If that were true ... But you don't really address the critic made against that idea. You seem just to have a prejudice against the possible relation between machines and aesthetic realities. Your argument takes too much into account the actual shape of current machines. that there is much more of a difference between mathematical theory and experienced presence than Comp can possibly consider. ? I keep trying to point to you that there is a mathematical theory of the experienced presence. Of course the mathematical theory itself is not asked to be an experienced presence, but it is a theory about such presence. You confuse the menu and the food. This is not generalized from a particular case, it is a pattern which I have seen to be common to all cases, We cannot see infinitely many examples. I guess you mean that there is a general argument, but you don't provide it. and I think that it is possible to understand that pattern without it being the product of any phobia or bias. I would love computers to be smarter than living organisms, and in some way, they are, but in other ways, it appears that they will never be, and for very good reasons. That we still ignore. As I said, the phenomenology that you describe fits well in the machine's machine qualia theory. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 10:18:12 AM UTC-4, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be javascript:: On 08 Oct 2013, at 22:22, smi...@zonnet.nl javascript: wrote: Citeren Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html *Humans 1, Robots 0* Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store Computers seem to be replacing humans across many industries, and we're all getting very nervous. But if you want some reason for optimism, visit your local supermarket. See that self-checkout machine? It doesn't hold a candle to the humans-- and its deficiencies neatly illustrate the limits of computers' abilities to mimic human skills. The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply. At my neighborhood big-box suburban supermarket, the lines for human checkers are often three or four deep, while the self-checkout queue is usually sparse. Customers who are new to self-checkout might take their short lines to mean that the machines are more efficient than the humans, but that would be a gross misunderstanding. As far as I can tell, the self-checkout lines are short only because the machines aren't very good. They work well enough in a pinch--when you want to check out just a handful of items, when you don't have much produce, when you aren't loaded down with coupons. But for any standard order, they're a big pain. Perversely, then, self-checkout machines' shortcomings are their best feature: because they're useless for most orders, their lines are shorter, making the machines seem faster than humans. In most instances where I'm presented with a machine instead of a human, I rejoice. I prefer an ATM to a flesh-and-blood banker, and I find airport check-in machines more efficient than the unsmiling guy at the desk. But both these tasks--along with more routine computerized skills like robotic assembly lines--share a common feature: They're very narrow, specific, repeatable problems, ones that require little physical labor and not much cognitive flexibility. Supermarket checkout--a low-wage job that doesn't require much training--sounds like it should be similarly vulnerable to robotic invasion. But it turns out that checking out groceries requires just enough mental-processing skills to be a prohibitive challenge for computers. In that way, supermarket checkout represents a class of jobs that computers can't yet match because, for now, they're just not very good substituting key human abilities. What's so cognitively demanding about supermarket checkout? I spoke to several former checkout people, and they all pointed to the same skill: Identifying fruits and vegetables. Some supermarket produce is tagged with small stickers carrying product-lookup codes, but a lot of stuff isn't. It's the human checker's job to tell the difference between green leaf lettuce and green bell peppers, and then to remember the proper code. It took me about three or four weeks to get to the point where I wouldn't have to look up most items that came by, said Sam Orme, a 30-year- old grad student who worked as a checker when he was a teenager. Another one-time checker, Ken Haskell, explained that even after months of doing the job, he would often get stumped. Every once in a while I'd get a papaya or a mango and I'd have to reach for the book, he said. In a recent research paper called Dancing With Robots, the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane point out that computers replace human workers only when machines meet two key conditions. First, the information necessary to carry out the task must be put in a form that computers can understand, and second, the job must be routine enough that it can be expressed in a series of rules. Supermarket checkout machines meet the second of these conditions, but they fail on the first. They lack proper information to do the job a human would do. To put it another way: They can't tell shiitakes from Shinola. Instead of identifying your produce, the machine
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: [your] body-copy will be in two places, [you] can feel to be in only one place. If the copies are really identical then you feel to be in only one place (insofar as spatial position has any meaning when talking about consciousness) because you really are in only one place, regardless of how many copies are made or where those bodies are. The question is which city will [he] observed. The question is will he turn into the Moscow Man or the Washington Man, and that depends on one thing and one thing only, what information he receives. It can only be one city, unless you introduce some non-comp telepathy. No idea what that means. John K Clark -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:19 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: How do you explain quantum mechanical probabilities in the Many Worlds interpretation? Not very well, assigning probabilities is unquestionably the weakest part of the Many Worlds theory. True, Everett derived the Born Rule from his ideas, but not in a way that feels entirely satisfactory, not that its competitors can do better. The Many Worlds interpretation is the best bad explanation of why Quantum Mechanics works. John K Clark -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
This thread reminds me of the following cartoon from: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/only-humans-cartoon.jpg Jason On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-listhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A challenge for Craig
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 11:18:03 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Oct 2013, at 15:43, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:18:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. It doesn't have to follow, but it can be a clue. The Higgs is a particular type of elementary phenomenon which is not accessible to us directly. That would not be the case with Comp if we were in fact using only computation. If our world was composed on every level by computation alone, Hmm It is not obvious, and not well known, but if comp is true, then our world is not made of computations. Our world is only an appearance in a multi-user arithmetical video game or dream. That's the problem though, what is an appearance? How can an arithmetic game become video or dreamlike in any way? This is what I keep talking about - the Presentation problem. Comp is pulling aesthetic experiences out of thin air. without a specific theory of what they are or how they are manufactured by computation or arithmetic. it wouldn't make much sense for people to have to learn to count integers only after years of aesthetic saturation. What can be computed other than quantities? Quantities are easily computed by stopping machines, but most machines does not stop, and when they introspect, the theory explains why they get troubled by consciousness, qualia, etc. Those qualia are not really computed, they are part of non computable truth, but which still bear on machines or machine's perspective. Then you still have an explanatory gap. But that is a good point for comp, as it explains why there is a gap, and it imposes on it a precise mathematical structure. But there's nothing on the other side of the gap from the comp view. You're still just finding a gap in comp that comp says is supposed to be there and then presuming that the entire universe other than comp must fit in there. If there is nothing within comp to specifically indicate color or flavor or kinesthetic sensations, or even the lines and shapes of geometry, then I don't see how comp can claim to be a theory that relates to consciousness. There is something in the comp theory which specifically indicate qualia. The gaps in the intensional nuances could very well do that. But flavors and colors aren't gaps. It would be like painting with invisible paint. How does theory become visible to itself, and why would it? How can anything which is non-computable bear on the computation of an ideal machine? That is the whole subject of en entire field: recursion theory, or theoretical computer science. Ok, so what is an example of something that specifically bridges a kind of computation with something personal that comp claims to produce? That is technical, and you need to study AUDA. I would say that *all* statements in X1* minus X1 produces that. No doubt many open problems have to be solved to progress here. But even if that fails, you have not produced an argument that it is not possible. What is an example of an X1* minus X1 statement that produces something personal and non-computable? What connects the qualia to the quanta, and why isn't the qualia just quantitative summaries of quanta? Qualia are not connected to quanta. Then what is even the point of Comp? To me quanta = all that relates to quantity and certain measurement. If they are not connected to quanta then a machine that is made of quanta can't possibly produce qualia that has no connection to it. That's no better than Descartes. I realize that you have not yet really study comp. Physical Machine are not made of quanta. Quanta appears only as first person plural sharable qualia. They are observable pattern common to people belonging to highly splitting or differentiating computations, most plausibly the linear computations (like in QM). I can agree with all of that, I would say that quanta is the splitting of qualia. Arithmetic truth, computation,.etc is all the splitting of primordial qualia. The split is generic and universal, but that which has been split - qualia, is diffracted - smeared across the split like the visible spectrum.
Re: AUDA and pronouns
On 10/9/2013 12:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:35, meekerdb wrote: On 10/8/2013 2:51 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 10:20:14AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Oct 2013, at 07:36, Russell Standish wrote: ... and Bpp as he knows p, so the person order of the pronoun is also not relevant. Yes, you can read that in that way, but you get only the 3-view of the 1-view. Let us define [o]p by Bp p I am just pointing on the difference between B([o]p) and [o]([o]p). Isn't B(Bp)=Bp so: Bp - B(Bp) but B(Bp) does not necessarly imply Bp. ?? That seems like strange logic. How, in classical logic, can you prove that p is provable and yet not conclude that p is provable. I understand that the set of true propositions is bigger than the provable propositions, but I don't see that the set of provably provable propositions is smaller than the provable propositions? B(Bp p) =? B(Bp p) (Bp P) Why would that be? [o](Bp p) = B(Bp p) (Bp p), but not B(Bp p), because B(Bp p) does not imply Bp p. Not that I wrote =? meaning is it equal?, not asserting it was equal, and I concluded below they were not equal. Brent Bp =? Bp p - false And so, this does not follow. (Keep in mind that Bp does not imply p, from the machine's point of view). Think about Bf, if it implies f, we would have that the machine would know that ~Bf, and knows that she is consistent. She can't, if she is correct. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: And the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to…
On 10/9/2013 12:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 23:56, LizR wrote: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/10/08/and-the-2013-nobel-prize-in-physics-goes-to/ Today the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/ was awarded to François Englert (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) and Peter W. Higgs (University of Edinburgh, UK). The official citation is “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” I know him very well. I begun my work in his team, with Robert Brout. He asked me how to apply QM in cosmology, and I refer to the MWI. He added some footnote in one of his papers, just referring to Everett's original work, without any detail. He didn't like this, but somehow understood it is hard to make sense of quantum cosmology without it. I am happy that after 50 years he is recognized as one the main discover of the Higgs boson. I am happy for Higgs too. The seminal papers suggesting the higgs-field were written independently about the same time by Higgs, by Englert and Brout, and also by Kibble, Gaulnik, and Hagen. I've often thought the it came to called the higgs boson just because it's a lot easier to say higgs than englert-brout or kibble-gaulnik-hagen. I understand that Peter Higgs is a very nice, modest man and is a little embarassed by having the particle named after him, although he did develop the idea a little more than the others and is certainly deserving. But in my view, even more deserving are the thousands of engineers, technicians, and physicists who designed and built the LHC and the ATLAS and CMS detectors. Surely the most amazing machine ever built. Now, the Nobel prize itself has been obscured by Obama's peace prize, like if it was giving him the right to use drones to kill civilians, or to sign the NDAA ... Englert should have refuse it, perhaps, like Sartre in France or Perelman in Russia, ... I am not really serious, as it seems than the scientific Nobel prize is more seriously attributed. Fortunately. The Nobel Peace Prize has been wielded as a tool of political influence and has thereby become almost meaningless. Obama got it for being a little less bellicose that George Bush. Brent Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. --- Tom Lehrer -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 2:17:34 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: This thread reminds me of the following cartoon from: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/only-humans-cartoon.jpg Jason On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Why does the relation of aesthetic experience to computation have to be reduced to a simple question about convenience? If I don't want to be a ventriloquist's dummy does that mean I should keep quiet about Pinocchio not being a real boy? On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:04:41 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Craig, a simple question: would you rather put up with the limitations of automatic cashiers or have to work as a cashier sometimes? Craig -- 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. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-listhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://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-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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: AUDA and pronouns
Thanks for this response. It'll take me a while to digest, but I'll get back with the inevitable questions :). On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 08:17:17PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 11:51, Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 10:20:14AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Oct 2013, at 07:36, Russell Standish wrote: Unfortunately, the thread about AUDA and its relation to pronouncs got mixed up with another thread, and thus got delete on my computer. Picking up from where we left off, I'm still trying to see the relationship between Bp, Bpp, 1-I, 3-I and the plain ordinary I pronoun in English. As I said, in natural language we usually mix 1-I (Bp) and 3-I (Bp p). The reason is that we think we have only one body, and so, in all practical situation it does not matter. (That's also why some people will say I am my body, or I am my brain, like Searles, which used that against comp, but if that was valid, the math shows that machines can validly shows that they are not machine, which is absurd). The difference 1-I/3-I is felt sometimes by people looking at a video of themselves. The objective situation can describe many people, and you feel bizarre that you are one of them. That video lacks of course the first person perspective. The distinction is brought when we study the mind body problem. You might red the best text ever on this: the Theaetetus of Plato. But the indians have written many texts on this, and some are chef-d'oeuvre (rigorous). OK, although I don't have time to read those ancient texts, alas :(. OK. I can understand. The Theaetetus is very short, though. I understand Bp can be read as I can prove p, and Bpp as I know p. But in the case, the difference between Bp and Bpp is entirely in the verb, the pronoun I stays the same, AFAICT. Correct. Only the perspective change. Bp is Toto proves p, said by Toto. Bp p is Toto proves p and p is true, as said by Toto (or not), and the math shows that this behaves like a knowledge opertaor (but not arithmetical predicate). It's the same Toto in both cases... What's the point? The difference is crucial. Bp obeys to the logic G, which does not define a knower as we don't have Bp - p. At best, it defines a rational believer, or science. Not knowledge. But differentiating W from M, is knowledge, even non communicable knowledge. You can't explain to another, that you are the one in Washington, as for the other, you are also in Moscow. Knowledge logic invite us to define the first person by the knower. He is the only one who can know that his pain is not fake, for example. So, the ideally correct machine will never been able to ascribe a name or a description to it. Intuitively, for the machine, that I is not assertable, and indeed such opertair refer to something without a name. What does it mean to assert an I? I was meaning to assert I, with the idea that you refer to something understandable for another. You can assert the 3-I, in this sense, but not the 1-I. Now, without duplication, it looks all the time like there is a simple link between 3-I, and 1-I, and that is why we confuse them, but with the experience of duplication, at some point, the distinction is unavoidable, and crucial, and the simple link between is broken, forcing the reversal between math and physics (arithmetic and physics). Also, switching viewpoints, one could equally say the Bp can be read as he can prove p, but the point is that it is asserted by he, in the language of he. But the statements can also be asserted by some other agent? Of course. But in that case it is no more a third person *self*-reference (3-I). My hat is green contains a third person self-reference. My wife's hat is green contains a third person self-reference. The hat of Napoleon is green does not. Only third person references. The logic of provable (third person) self-reference is given by the modal logic G (by Gödel, Löb, Solovay). The logic of true (third person) self-reference is given by G*. It always concerns, in our setting, what an ideally correct machine can rationally believe on itself. The interesting thing is that G* proves Bp - (Bp p), but G does not prove it. It shows that both the rational believer and the knower see the same (tiny) part of Arithmetic, yet see it from different points of view, and the logic will mathematically differ. The logic of B is G, and the logic of Bp p is S4Grz. and Bpp as he knows p, so the person order of the pronoun is also not relevant. Yes, you can read that in that way, but you get only the 3-view of the 1-view. Let us define [o]p by Bp p I am just pointing on the difference between B([o]p) and [o]([o]p). ??? B([o]p) is the statement made by the ideal rationalist believer (B) on a first person point of view ([o]). Here [o]p can be seen
Re: A challenge for Craig
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 11:18:03 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Oct 2013, at 15:43, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:18:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. It doesn't have to follow, but it can be a clue. The Higgs is a particular type of elementary phenomenon which is not accessible to us directly. That would not be the case with Comp if we were in fact using only computation. If our world was composed on every level by computation alone, Hmm It is not obvious, and not well known, but if comp is true, then our world is not made of computations. Our world is only an appearance in a multi-user arithmetical video game or dream. That's the problem though, what is an appearance? How can an arithmetic game become video or dreamlike in any way? This is what I keep talking about - the Presentation problem. Comp is pulling aesthetic experiences out of thin air. without a specific theory of what they are or how they are manufactured by computation or arithmetic. No, that is you and your personalized definition of aesthetic experience that has nothing to do with any standard interpretation of the term, and where you default to what I like about aesthetic... free association to fit your current mood and the exchange you're involved in, when prompted these days. Comp doesn't need to pull aesthetic experience, in it's standard interpretations from anywhere. In the case of music, the vast majority of music theories, if not all, are number based. Multisense realism is puling aesthetic experience from thin air, as you constantly evade the question: I can see how I can derive music and improvisation from counting and numbers; can multisense realism show me how to do the same? Because given all the claims on how central aesthetic experience is, it should at least offer some clues, if not be even better than numbers. it wouldn't make much sense for people to have to learn to count integers only after years of aesthetic saturation. What can be computed other than quantities? Quantities are easily computed by stopping machines, but most machines does not stop, and when they introspect, the theory explains why they get troubled by consciousness, qualia, etc. Those qualia are not really computed, they are part of non computable truth, but which still bear on machines or machine's perspective. Then you still have an explanatory gap. But that is a good point for comp, as it explains why there is a gap, and it imposes on it a precise mathematical structure. But there's nothing on the other side of the gap from the comp view. You're still just finding a gap in comp that comp says is supposed to be there and then presuming that the entire universe other than comp must fit in there. If there is nothing within comp to specifically indicate color or flavor or kinesthetic sensations, or even the lines and shapes of geometry, then I don't see how comp can claim to be a theory that relates to consciousness. There is something in the comp theory which specifically indicate qualia. The gaps in the intensional nuances could very well do that. But flavors and colors aren't gaps. You do not know what Bruno is referring to and are changing the question. If you do know which intensional nuances he is referring to, then explain them and why gaps as colors would be inappropriate. It would be like painting with invisible paint. UV paint. 5.40$ at Ebay. How does theory become visible to itself, and why would it? Black lights. To party and have indiscriminate fun, in this case. PGC -- 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. 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
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 10 October 2013 06:35, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: The Many Worlds interpretation is the best bad explanation of why Quantum Mechanics works. Nicely summed up! -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 10/9/2013 10:35 AM, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:19 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: How do you explain quantum mechanical probabilities in the Many Worlds interpretation? Not very well, assigning probabilities is unquestionably the weakest part of the Many Worlds theory. True, Everett derived the Born Rule from his ideas, but not in a way that feels entirely satisfactory, not that its competitors can do better. The Many Worlds interpretation is the best bad explanation of why Quantum Mechanics works. So you recognize that it has the same difficulties with probability and personal identity as Bruno's teleportation. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A challenge for Craig
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:56:45 PM UTC-4, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 11:18:03 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Oct 2013, at 15:43, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 3:18:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 20:12, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:34:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Oct 2013, at 17:59, Craig Weinberg wrote: Why isn't computationalism the consequence of quanta though? Human computationalism does. But I want the simplest conceptual theory, and integers are easier to define than human integers. I'm not sure how that relates to computationalism being something other than quanta. Humans are easier to define to themselves than integers. A baby can be themselves for years before counting to 10. Phenomenologically? Yes. Fundamentally? That does not follow. It took a long time before discovering the Higgs-Englert-Brout Boson. It doesn't have to follow, but it can be a clue. The Higgs is a particular type of elementary phenomenon which is not accessible to us directly. That would not be the case with Comp if we were in fact using only computation. If our world was composed on every level by computation alone, Hmm It is not obvious, and not well known, but if comp is true, then our world is not made of computations. Our world is only an appearance in a multi-user arithmetical video game or dream. That's the problem though, what is an appearance? How can an arithmetic game become video or dreamlike in any way? This is what I keep talking about - the Presentation problem. Comp is pulling aesthetic experiences out of thin air. without a specific theory of what they are or how they are manufactured by computation or arithmetic. No, that is you and your personalized definition of aesthetic experience that has nothing to do with any standard interpretation of the term It's not a personalized definition, it is an uncontroversial comment about the nature of appearance versus the nature of that which has no appearance. If your arm is in pain, you can have a local *anesthetic* at the site so that the pain disappears, or you can have a general *anesthetic* and your entire experience disappears. When you wake up and your experience appears, or when your arm appears to hurt again, it should not be a problem to describe that* what has returned is a non-an-esthetic, therefore aesthetic*. It's not a definition, it's a description. , and where you default to what I like about aesthetic... free association to fit your current mood and the exchange you're involved in, when prompted these days. Let the unsupported accusations begin. Comp doesn't need to pull aesthetic experience, in it's standard interpretations from anywhere. Why would that be true? Aesthetics exist, do they not? There is a difference between feeling pain and pain relief, right? So why would a computation hurt? Before you answer, you have to ask whether your justification for the existence of pain isn't based entirely in experience rather than computation. Certainly, were it not for your own experience of pain, there would be no reason to invent such a thing to explain anything that happens in a computation. In the case of music, the vast majority of music theories, if not all, are number based. Music theory is not music though. Numbers do not create music. Music, like computation, can only exist as a consequence of awareness, not as a replacement for it. Multisense realism is puling aesthetic experience from thin air, as you constantly evade the question: Just the opposite. Sense is in the name. I start from aesthetic experience. It could just as easily be called 'Pan-aesthetic Realism'. By aesthetic I mean sense - experiential contents. I can see how I can derive music and improvisation from counting and numbers; Can you teach a pocket calculator to make music without adding anything? Why not? can multisense realism show me how to do the same? You can't derive music from anything except human experience. MSR begins by acknowledging that instead of denying it. There is no theory of non-human music. Numbers do not turn into sounds when they leave Platonia and teleport into our eardrums. Because given all the claims on how central aesthetic experience is, it should at least offer some clues, if not be even better than numbers. The clues that MSR offers lie in the superposition of the totality of experience (eternity) and particular experience. Music is an irreducibly anthropological qualia. It is of the moment and it is timeless. It exploits metric isomorphisms between qualia on the personal level and the sub-personal physiological levels and the super-personal archetypal levels. Music is indeed
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:52:46 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I don't think that people are machines. A machine is assembled intentionally from unrelated substances to perform a function which is alien to any of the substances. Living organisms are not assembled, they grow from a single cell. They have no unrelated substances and all functions they perform are local to the motives of the organism as a whole. This is an even bigger deal if I am right about the universe being fundamentally a subdividing capacity for experience rather than a place or theater of interacting objects or forces. It means that we are not our body, rather a body is what someone else's lifetime looks like from inside of your lifetime. It's a token. The mechanisms of the brain do not produce awareness as a product, any more than these combinations of letter produce the thoughts I am communicating. What we see neurons doing is comparable to looking at a satellite picture of a city at night. We can learn a lot about what a city does, but nothing about who lives in the city. A city, like a human body, is a machine when you look at it from a distance, but what we see of a body or a city would be perfectly fine with no awareness happening at all. Thanks, Craig -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do, it's that they can't experience anything. Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I think Craig would say he does think computers (and many/all other things) do experience something, just that it is necessarily different from what we experience. The reason for this has something to do with our history as biological organisms (according to his theory). 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: WSJ Article On Why Computers Make Lame Supermarket Cashiers
On 10 October 2013 13:03, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:52:46 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: On 10 October 2013 09:47, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that computers can't do what humans do,* it's that they can't experience anything.* Mozart could dig a hole as well as compose music, but that doesn't mean that a backhoe with a player piano on it is Mozart. It's a much deeper problem with how machines are conceptualized that has nothing at all to do with humans. So you think strong AI is wrong. OK. But why can't computers experience anything, in principle, given that people can, and assuming people are complicated machines? I don't think that people are machines. A machine is assembled intentionally from unrelated substances to perform a function which is alien to any of the substances. Living organisms are not assembled, they grow from a single cell. They have no unrelated substances and all functions they perform are local to the motives of the organism as a whole. I believe that, at least in discussions such as this one, defining people as machines has nothing to do with how or why they are constructed, and eveything to do with ruling out any supernatural components. Anyway, allow me to rephrase the question. I assume from the underlined comment that you think that strong AI is wrong, and that we will never be able to build a conscious computer. How do you come to that conclusion? This is an even bigger deal if I am right about the universe being fundamentally a subdividing capacity for experience rather than a place or theater of interacting objects or forces. It means that we are not our body, rather a body is what someone else's lifetime looks like from inside of your lifetime. It's a token. The mechanisms of the brain do not produce awareness as a product, any more than these combinations of letter produce the thoughts I am communicating. What we see neurons doing is comparable to looking at a satellite picture of a city at night. We can learn a lot about what a city does, but nothing about who lives in the city. A city, like a human body, is a machine when you look at it from a distance, but what we see of a body or a city would be perfectly fine with no awareness happening at all. Insofar as I understand it, I agree with this. I often wonder how a load of atoms can have experiences so to speak. This is the so-called hard problem of AI. It is (I think) addressed by comp. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Bruno I don't see why. There is a chance of 1/2 to feel oneself in M, and of 1/2 to feel oneself in W, but the probability is 1 (assuming comp, the protocol, etc.) to find oneself alive. This begs the question. And the probability of finding oneself alive is 1 in both your view and mine. P(W v M) = P(W) + P(M) as W and M are disjoint incompatible (first person) events. That they are disjoint is fine. And they are incompatible only insofar as no person, Bruno-Helsinki, Bruno-Washington or Bruno-Moscow, in the experiment will experience both simultaneously. But Bruno-Helsinki will experience each outcome. Whats missing here is a discussion about what conditions are required in order to induce a feeling of subjective uncertainty in Bruno-Helsinki. I think what is required is some ignorance over the details of the situation, but there are none. Bruno-Helsinki knows all there is to know about the situation that is relevant. He knows that in his future there will be two 'copies' of him; one in Moscow, one in Washington. By 'yes doctor' he knows that both these 'copies' are related to him in a manner that preserves identity in exactly the same way. There will be no sense in which Bruno-Washington is more Bruno-Helsinki than Bruno-Moscow. That is the essence of 'yes doctor'. So, at the point in time when Bruno-Helsinki is asked what he expects to see, there are no other relevant facts. Consequently there is no room for subjective uncertainty. It would therefore be absurd of Bruno-Helsinki to assign a probability of 50% to either outcome. It would be like saying only one of the future Bruno's shares a relationship of identity with him. This is why I say your analysis violates the yes doctor axiom. This can be contrasted with a response from either of the copies when asked the same question. If asked before opening their eyes, both Bruno-Washington and Bruno-Moscow are ignorant of their location. Ofcourse, apart from the fact that asking the question at this point is far too late for Bruno-Helsinki, this is not a relevent fact for him. Because he has no doubt that an identity maintaining version of him will be in each location. I have to admit, what with you being a professor and all that, I did begin to feel like I was going mad. Luckily, the other day I found a paper by Hillary Greaves Understanding Deutcsh's Probability in a Deterministic Multiverse. Section 4.1 discusses subjective uncertainty in a generalized setting and argues for the exact same conclusions I have been reaching just intuitively. This doesn't make either of us right or wrong, but it gives me confidence to know that subjective uncertainty is not a foregone conclusion as I sometimes have felt it has been presented on this list. It is an analysis that has been peer reviewed and deemed worthy of publishing and warrants more than the hand waving scoffs some academics here have been offering. All the best Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 15:36:12 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 10/9/2013 10:35 AM, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:19 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: How do you explain quantum mechanical probabilities in the Many Worlds interpretation? Not very well, assigning probabilities is unquestionably the weakest part of the Many Worlds theory. True, Everett derived the Born Rule from his ideas, but not in a way that feels entirely satisfactory, not that its competitors can do better. The Many Worlds interpretation is the best bad explanation of why Quantum Mechanics works. So you recognize that it has the same difficulties with probability and personal identity as Bruno's teleportation. 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. 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. For more options, visit
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
If Helsinki man understands the situation, he will assign a 100% probability to him being duplicated and ending in both places. Similarly a physicist who believes in MWI will assign a 100% probability to him splitting and observing all possible outcomes. This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man *then* has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). However this is only really quibbling about the fact that our everyday attitude often doesn't cover the realities of how the universe works. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 10/9/2013 6:37 PM, LizR wrote: If Helsinki man understands the situation, he will assign a 100% probability to him being duplicated and ending in both places. Similarly a physicist who believes in MWI will assign a 100% probability to him splitting and observing all possible outcomes. This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, The physicist is only interested in what he can publish in PhysRev. He knows that replication is essential. So goes back to Helsinki and tries is again...and again...and again... And he keeps careful notes. After a few thousand replications he is ready to publish his findings that the probability of arriving in Washington via teleportation from Helsinki is 0.48_+_0.06. Of course JKC will complain that I have used an ambiguous pronoun he, but in this case, except for a group of vanishing measure, it doesn't matter which he is meant. Brent and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man /then/ has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). However this is only really quibbling about the fact that our everyday attitude often doesn't cover the realities of how the universe works. -- 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. 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: 2014.0.4142 / Virus Database: 3609/6736 - Release Date: 10/09/13 -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Liz This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. But Bruno is not talking about everyday people or everyday life. He is talking about people who are 'comp practitioners', and people who say 'yes doctor'. If someone genuinely believed in MWI and was aware of all possible outcomes under MWI, then he would not actually experience any uncertainty. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man then has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. I explicitly dealt with that situation, Liz. And Moscow man might feel uncertainty. He might feel all manner of things. But it is not Moscow man who is asked the question, is it? Its Helsinki man. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). How exactly do Moscow/Washington men's uncertainty effect Helsinki man, given Helsinki man is no longer around to be effected? Moreover, Bruno can not on the one hand stipulate that the people in the experiment are 'comp practitioners' who willingly say 'yes doctor' and then on the other hand stipulate their attitudes would actually conform to our 'folk psychology'. Either I am a 'comp practitioner' and my attitudes reflect that, or I am not a 'comp practitioner' would not say 'yes doctor' and my attitudes reflect 'folk psychology'. All the best Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:37:12 +1300 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com If Helsinki man understands the situation, he will assign a 100% probability to him being duplicated and ending in both places. Similarly a physicist who believes in MWI will assign a 100% probability to him splitting and observing all possible outcomes. This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man then has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). However this is only really quibbling about the fact that our everyday attitude often doesn't cover the realities of how the universe works. -- 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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Brent But one of the essential things about quantum mechanics is futures are uncertain even give complete knowldge. I disagree. This is still 'up for grabs' and dependent on whether the interpretation is indeterminsitic (copenhagen,etc) or deterministic (MWI). Its a feature of MWI that all outcomes get their branch, there isn't uncertainty about that. If you use MWI then you expect that after observing a quantum random outcome that there will be two (or more) copies of you that share the same memories up to the observation, but are different after. So Bruno is just trying to show that the uncertainty can be in which copy is observing instead of which value was observed. I think which copy is observing and which value was observed are functionally equivolent vis a vis the step 3 experiment. Nevertheless, the question asked is definately 'what value will you see?' Whether this uncertainty can be represented as a probability is, I think, a problem in both Bruno's thought experiment and in MWI of QM. There are two problems I think. firstly, is there room for subjective uncertainty? and secondly, how does the proportionality of a 'copenhagen' random event get represented. MWI has the problem that if the outcome depends on say 1/3 vs 2/3 the world will still split into just 2 outcomes, with nothing to represent proportionality. Im not sure Bruno's UD suffers from that issue, though being 'comp' and presumably therefore dealing with things discretely, there maybe issues whenever irrational numbers appear in denominators. 1/PI vs. 1-1/PI as you have said before. All the best. From: chris_peck...@hotmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: What gives philosophers a bad name? Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 02:21:01 + Hi Liz This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. But Bruno is not talking about everyday people or everyday life. He is talking about people who are 'comp practitioners', and people who say 'yes doctor'. If someone genuinely believed in MWI and was aware of all possible outcomes under MWI, then he would not actually experience any uncertainty. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man then has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. I explicitly dealt with that situation, Liz. And Moscow man might feel uncertainty. He might feel all manner of things. But it is not Moscow man who is asked the question, is it? Its Helsinki man. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). How exactly do Moscow/Washington men's uncertainty effect Helsinki man, given Helsinki man is no longer around to be effected? Moreover, Bruno can not on the one hand stipulate that the people in the experiment are 'comp practitioners' who willingly say 'yes doctor' and then on the other hand stipulate their attitudes would actually conform to our 'folk psychology'. Either I am a 'comp practitioner' and my attitudes reflect that, or I am not a 'comp practitioner' would not say 'yes doctor' and my attitudes reflect 'folk psychology'. All the best Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:37:12 +1300 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com If Helsinki man understands the situation, he will assign a 100% probability to him being duplicated and ending in both places. Similarly a physicist who believes in MWI will assign a 100% probability to him splitting and observing all possible outcomes. This is not, however, how people normally view these matters. The physicist feels that he had a (say) 50% chance of him observing spin-up despite his knowledge of the MWI, and I guess Helsinki man feels the same way about arriving in Moscow, if only because our brains are wired to think in terms of the single universe view. I think Bruno's take on this is acceptable in terms of how we think about things in everyday life. Once the duplication has been performed, one copy of the man then has a 50% chance of being Moscow man, and his (spurious) sense of always only being the single unique copy of himself would lead him to feel that this was the chance beforehand. So it's fair for Bruno to ask Helsinki man how he estimates his chances of arriving in Moscow, assuming folk psychology is involved (ditto for the physicist). However this is only really quibbling
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I still think this is quibbling. I at least believe I know what Bruno means when he asks H-man to assign a probability to his chances of appearing in Moscow. Perhaps Bruno is being sloppy in talking about probabilities, because the whole situation is deterministic, but it does at least give a post-facto indeterminism like a quantum measurement does, so it's valid to the extent that we talk about probabilities at all (assuming the MWI). (Which is to say, it isn't *really *valid at all, but I still think I know what is intended!) Oh dear, I think I will go and lie down now. (Or then again, I won't...) -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Liz Oh dear, I think I will go and lie down now. (Or then again, I won't...) Precisely. Being a true MWI believer you can be certain of both. :) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:35:56 +1300 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com I still think this is quibbling. I at least believe I know what Bruno means when he asks H-man to assign a probability to his chances of appearing in Moscow. Perhaps Bruno is being sloppy in talking about probabilities, because the whole situation is deterministic, but it does at least give a post-facto indeterminism like a quantum measurement does, so it's valid to the extent that we talk about probabilities at all (assuming the MWI). (Which is to say, it isn't really valid at all, but I still think I know what is intended!) Oh dear, I think I will go and lie down now. (Or then again, I won't...) -- 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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I will also be spontaneously combusting, rocketing to the Moon, and being proclaimed Queen of the Universe. On 10 October 2013 16:50, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Liz * * *Oh dear, I think I will go and lie down now. * * * * * *(Or then again, I won't...)* Precisely. Being a true MWI believer you can be certain of both. :) -- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:35:56 +1300 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com I still think this is quibbling. I at least believe I know what Bruno means when he asks H-man to assign a probability to his chances of appearing in Moscow. Perhaps Bruno is being sloppy in talking about probabilities, because the whole situation is deterministic, but it does at least give a post-facto indeterminism like a quantum measurement does, so it's valid to the extent that we talk about probabilities at all (assuming the MWI). (Which is to say, it isn't *really *valid at all, but I still think I know what is intended!) Oh dear, I think I will go and lie down now. (Or then again, I won't...) -- 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. 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. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
