Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:12, Terren Suydam wrote: Right, and QTI isn't even much of a comfort in terms of avoiding your own death, as there are no guarantees about the quality of the surviving continuations. I remember Bruno saying once (paraphrasing) consciousness is a prison. Otto Rössler is responsible for that assertion, which he used to sum up Descartes, after one of my talk, years ago. The one comfort I do enjoy from it - to the extent that I place any faith in it - is not fearing dying in a plane crash. That is weird, as I tend to feel that comp makes more frightening any violent death. Surviving a violent death might not be so much fun. But science should not be consolating a priori. Then we can have some faith that Truth is related to the Good, not in the sense that Truth is Good, but in the sense that avoiding Truth makes things worse. But that kind of faith is more private and personal. Bruno On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 2:03 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: I have to agree I don't think Edgar posted any links to his business or blog. Indeed if he had posted links to a blog on his theory I would certainly have looked because the explanations here have been less than clear. I haven't criticise Edgar for a lack of immediate response once, never mind on several occasions. I have criticised his lack of any response to my questions when he's replied to other things but obviously can't or won't answer me. (I am still thinking of starting a thread on outstanding questions to Edgar, but tbh I can't be bothered because I know it won't get me or any of us anywhere.) On the subject of grief, I have wondered about that too. One reason is that I don't know that, say, QTI is correct. But I think the main one is that I personally have lost that person forever. My best friend was murdered in 1995, for example, and that is someone I will never see again. Likewise my father, who died over 10 years ago now. If they're still alive and well somewhere in the multiverse that's a bit of a comfort but I don't know that. Maybe I will realise it eventually, when I'm 150 say... -- 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. 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:14, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Liz, (and Dan) When people die they vanish from existence. To believe otherwise may be comforting, but it's just superstition.. In your theory perhaps. But then my body is not Turing emulable. Comp must be false. There must be a living human body to produce a human consciousness. That is true. But if the body do the human part of that consciousness, consciousness itself is not the result of the computations, but of all computations, if not all arithmetic (which is not Turing emulable). The body does not produces consciousness, it only make it possible for consciousness to forget the higher self, and deludes us (in some sense) in having a little ego embedded in some history. Bruno Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 2:03:42 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: I have to agree I don't think Edgar posted any links to his business or blog. Indeed if he had posted links to a blog on his theory I would certainly have looked because the explanations here have been less than clear. I haven't criticise Edgar for a lack of immediate response once, never mind on several occasions. I have criticised his lack of any response to my questions when he's replied to other things but obviously can't or won't answer me. (I am still thinking of starting a thread on outstanding questions to Edgar, but tbh I can't be bothered because I know it won't get me or any of us anywhere.) On the subject of grief, I have wondered about that too. One reason is that I don't know that, say, QTI is correct. But I think the main one is that I personally have lost that person forever. My best friend was murdered in 1995, for example, and that is someone I will never see again. Likewise my father, who died over 10 years ago now. If they're still alive and well somewhere in the multiverse that's a bit of a comfort but I don't know that. Maybe I will realise it eventually, when I'm 150 say... -- 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. 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:28, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Wow, Liz, very sorry to hear about your friend. If you don't mind me asking (and if you do mind, simply ignore my question), if you magically just knew that the universe was in fact a large computation engine where all possibilities are eventually played out, and also entailing some form of QTI, would this provide any comfort to you at all? As far as I understand Bruno's UD, (and I'm really still not sure I understand it, despite lurking here for years and reading old posts) a consequence of being embedding in the universal computational structure as a machine is the fact that we cannot ever prove the correctness of our beliefs because our consistency is only relative to the part of the universal function we inhabit, and there could be other domains of computation where our beliefs would turn out to be false. It is slightly more complex than that, but OK. Let us keep the technical details for later. Of course, what I just said could also be a load of gobbledygook because, as I admitted, I don't fully understand the entire argument, nor do I really grasp what the conclusion of the argument is supposed to be, nor do I really even understand what kind of ethical import any TOE could have on our behaviors here in the local domain. The consequence is simple to state: the TOE is just arithmetic, or any Turing complete system. Everything can be derived from addition and multiplication. If you want, the consequence is that physics is not the fundamental science and is retrievable from machine theology, itself part of computer science, itself part of arithmetical truth. e have to come back to a Pythagorean neoplatonist theology: NUMBER === THEOLOGY === PHYSICS (this makes comp testable, as the proof is constructive). You can follow the 8 steps arguments, and ask any question. People are different. Not the same people find this or that easy, obvious, or insuperably difficult. Bruno On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 2:03:42 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: I have to agree I don't think Edgar posted any links to his business or blog. Indeed if he had posted links to a blog on his theory I would certainly have looked because the explanations here have been less than clear. I haven't criticise Edgar for a lack of immediate response once, never mind on several occasions. I have criticised his lack of any response to my questions when he's replied to other things but obviously can't or won't answer me. (I am still thinking of starting a thread on outstanding questions to Edgar, but tbh I can't be bothered because I know it won't get me or any of us anywhere.) On the subject of grief, I have wondered about that too. One reason is that I don't know that, say, QTI is correct. But I think the main one is that I personally have lost that person forever. My best friend was murdered in 1995, for example, and that is someone I will never see again. Likewise my father, who died over 10 years ago now. If they're still alive and well somewhere in the multiverse that's a bit of a comfort but I don't know that. Maybe I will realise it eventually, when I'm 150 say... -- 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. 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:40, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: And the answer is yes, he would know that, but not immediately. So it would not change the indeterminacy, as he will not immediately see that he is in a simulation, but, unless you intervene repeatedly on the simulation, or unless you manipulate directly his mind, he can see that he is in a simulation by comparing the comp physics (in his head) and the physics in the simulation. The simulation is locally finite, and the comp-physics is necessarily infinite (it emerges from the 1p indeterminacy on the whole UD*), so, soon or later, he will bet that he is in a simulation (or that comp is wrong). But if it is sufficiently large he won't find it is finite. Hmm... OK. But he will soon or later. We are talking in principle, assuming the emulated person has all the time ... Also, I don't understand why finding his world is finite Finite or computable (Recursively enumerable). would imply comp is wrong. In a finite world it seems it would be even easier to be sure of saying yes to the doctor. I don't know how you can know that the universe if finite. But comp makes it non finite (and non computable), so if you have a good reason to believe that the universe is finite, you have a good reason to believe that comp is wrong, and to say no to the doctor. That *is* counter-intuitive, but follow from step 7 and 8. I think you equivocate on comp; sometimes it means that an artificial brain is possible other times it means that plus the whole UDA. Comp is where UDA is valid. By comp, according to the degree of understanding of the UD-Argument or the person I am speaking to, just means the hypothesis, or its logical consequences. Bruno 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. 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 12:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:39, LizR wrote: On 15 January 2014 10:29, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: condescending dismissal in 3... 2... 1... Teehee. Not a condescending dismissal in anyone else's mind, however, just more hand-waving nonsense that only Edgar could possibly think is a dismissal. This is fun, in a masochistic sort of way, but I am starting to miss discussions with some real meat in them. Ah ... Me too :) Ready for a bit of (modal) logic? That is needed for the Solovay theorem, exploited heavily in the AUDA ... I'd like to know what the existence of non-standard models of arithmetic, especially the finitist ones, implies for comp? All non-standard models are infinite. They does not play any direct roles, except for allowing the consistency of inconsistency. A model which satisfies Bf has to be non standard. A proof of false needs to be an infinite natural numbers, and it has an infinity of predecessors (due to the axiom saying that 0 is unique in having no predecessors). Bruno 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. 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: There is still FPI going on in the rogue simulation - the one where Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics. You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies. I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics. OK. What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from something more than its characterization as a mere Lobian machine. That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head or something, and get highly amnesic. There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno Marchal. Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on the grounds. Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes through our consciousness, OK. in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology, A particular biology? No doubt. A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course, after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which: 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my identity) below the substitution level 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable). Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty relation, to simplify). in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in our physics. What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time. The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment. Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*). Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality. our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is why Everett saves comp from solipsism. Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of physics, Part. Only part. the contingent part. then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's identity, Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument. and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think, require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics. By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate geography. I'm wondering if there's room in the math for an accounting of consciousness that goes beyond Lobian machines in such a way as to allow for alternate physics. Only if that alternate physics allows a non Turing emulable (at any level) brain. If Glak's brain is Turing emulable, it will be distributed in the UD*, like us, and if he look below its substitution level, he will have to use the same universal statistics, but of course relatively to its own comp state; which makes the difference of identity, geography, etc. Bruno Terren The reason I am still unsure of your answer here Bruno It is a complex question. is that I can imagine a scenario where Glak is implemented in an alternative physics - that is to say, knows herself as Glak and has memories of being Glak - but Glak is not able to be implemented in our physics.
Re: A different take on the ontological status of Math
On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:03, Chris de Morsella wrote: Stephen -- I like how he derives the natural numbers from some basic set operations on an empty set. One question though how does the empty set itself arise. Arithmetic is equivalent to finite set theory (hereditary finite set theory, HFST). Of course, like RA and PA assumes the existence of 0, and HFST has to assume the empty set. Now set theory assumes also an infinite set. While an empty set contains; it is not the same thing as nothing. It is a container; it envelopes, contains, encompasses. OK. Even if something exists that contains nothing it is itself something – a minimal something perhaps – but never the less it is not a formless nothing, but rather it is a conceptual entity that contains nothing. Not trying to be obdurate, driven by curiosity to understand. Yes. Nothing would be more like an empty model. But in first order logic, we usually suppose that the model are not empty. We suppose that we are talking on something. That is why AxP(x) - ExP(x) is a predicate tautology. Nothing type of theories have to define things which presuppose some non trivial axioms. Usually it leans, like in comp, non physical things. But you need still a Turing complete theory, to have computer, for example. Bruno Cheers, Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com ] On Behalf Of Stephen Paul King Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 6:48 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: A different take on the ontological status of Math Dear Friends, I highly recommend Louis H. Kauffman's new blog. His latest post speaks to the Becoming interpretation of mathematics that I advocate: http://kauffman2013.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/is-mathematics-real/ -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King -- 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. 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: What are wavefunctions?
On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:11, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am not convinced, as I tend to not believe in any primitive time and space, at least when I tend to believe in comp (of course I *know* nothing). QM is indeed reversible (in large part), but using this to select one branch by boundary condition, is still like a form of cosmic solipsism to me. We can't refute it, and unlike most QM collapse theories, we can't criticize it from locality and determinacy, but that does not yet make it convincing compare to MW, and infinitely more so in the comp frame, where we can't avoid the many dreams. It's just information from the future - which is exactly the same thing as true randomness, and both are operationally the same as FPI. That's why I think an advancement in QM interpretation would be to derive probability. Comp provides an explanation of randomness, but it's not clear to me that it implies a complex Hilbert space. It should, but even the orthomodularity quantum tatutology is still non tractable. So it not *yet* clear, but that question has been reformulated in purely arithmetical terms. The arithmetical quantization []p (with p sigma_1, and []p = Bp Dp p, for example. B = Gödel's beweisbar) dtermine the answer, alas, still unknown. Bruno. 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. 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:49, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 10:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: This should be clearer, hopefully, when I translate probability in arithmetic. If Glak is Löbian, then it has the same physics than us What does same mean here. Same coupling constants?...same number of Higgs bosons?...same spacetime dimensions? If those notion depends only on the physical laws, they will be the same. If not, they will appear to be contingent or geographical. For example, if all the hypostases would collapse into classical logic, (which does not happen!), then physics would have become trivial. Everything would be geographical, and comp would have predict the accessibility of worlds with ... different coupling constant, different number of H bosons, etc. Incompleteness prevents the collapse of the hypostases, and thus save physics from being just a sort of geography. Comp saves the laws in the physical laws. Bruno 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. 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: There is still FPI going on in the rogue simulation - the one where Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics. You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies. I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics. OK. What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from something more than its characterization as a mere Lobian machine. That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head or something, and get highly amnesic. There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno Marchal. Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on the grounds. Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes through our consciousness, OK. in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology, A particular biology? No doubt. A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course, after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which: 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my identity) below the substitution level 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable). Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty relation, to simplify). in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in our physics. What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time. The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment. Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*). Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality. our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is why Everett saves comp from solipsism. Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of physics, Part. Only part. the contingent part. then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's identity, Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument. and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think, require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics. By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate geography. Well... what's left to physics then ? many world ? because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we whish and if comp is true we could make self aware inhabitant living in such virtual worlds... so anything we can measure is a geographical fact and contingent... seems to reduce physics not to math but to approximately nothing and leave what we call physical laws as geography... because there is no proof that the world we leave in is not such simulation, so we cannot conclude anything from the weight of an electron we measure in our universe. Quentin I'm wondering if there's room in the math for an accounting of consciousness that goes beyond Lobian machines in such a way as to allow for alternate physics. Only if that alternate physics allows a non Turing emulable (at any level) brain. If Glak's brain is Turing emulable, it will be
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
2014/1/16 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: There is still FPI going on in the rogue simulation - the one where Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics. You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies. I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics. OK. What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from something more than its characterization as a mere Lobian machine. That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head or something, and get highly amnesic. There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno Marchal. Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on the grounds. Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes through our consciousness, OK. in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology, A particular biology? No doubt. A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course, after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which: 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my identity) below the substitution level 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable). Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty relation, to simplify). in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in our physics. What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time. The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment. Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*). Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality. our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is why Everett saves comp from solipsism. Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of physics, Part. Only part. the contingent part. then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's identity, Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument. and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think, require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics. By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate geography. Well... what's left to physics then ? many world ? because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we whish and if comp is true we could make self aware inhabitant living in such virtual worlds... so anything we can measure is a geographical fact and contingent... seems to reduce physics not to math but to approximately nothing and leave what we call physical laws as geography... because there is no proof that the world we leave s/leave/live/ in is not such simulation, so we cannot conclude anything from the weight of an electron we measure in our universe. Quentin I'm wondering if there's room in the math for an accounting of consciousness that goes beyond Lobian machines in such a way as to allow for alternate physics. Only if that alternate physics allows a non Turing
Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 15 Jan 2014, at 23:30, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 10:27, freqflyer07281972 thismindisbud...@gmail.com wrote: I have a funny comic I think all of you will appreciate to one extent or another. I'm also curious as to your reaction regarding the status of questions versus answers: http://comicsthatsaysomething.quora.com/A-Day-at-the-Park Very nice. FWIW I think questions are the driving force of most of human existence, not to mention novel writing, while answers are dangerous and should be treated with caution, because many are usatisfying and a lot of them are just ways to stop people thinking. However, a good answer is very nice to have, just now and then, and can be easily recognised because they invariably create more questions. It is well drawn, also. Ah, yes, question are better than answer. Look at the eyes of a child before opening a gift, (what is it? what is it?) and after (where is the newt gift?) ! All questions are good. Answer are boring, unless they drive new questions. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
I tend not to consider that a brain is a digital computer. The most accurate analogy is that a brain is a _program_ made of different processes that run certain specific algorithms, some of them fixed and certain of them capable of learning by various methods. And finally some of them can execute an unconscious selection game of try an error with matching ideas. And that is only the beginning. probably at the neural level the processing is not as simple as the AI experts suppose. Such program made of processes and minute details, created by a genetic program that determine the architecture. And don't forget the learning process in childhood that influence also the connections and weights of some constants. Of all of this, we know almost nothing. So it happens like in all biological systems. At first, everything looks simple. when you go down in the details, everything gets almost infinitely complicated. The brain is an extreme example of that. So when people say that the brain is like a digital computer or that it is turing emulable I think on a stone age adolescent that cut a tree to cross the ocean. Yes it is theoretically possible, little ignorant, but don´t make me laugh. 2014/1/16, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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. -- Alberto. -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Hard Problem
On 16 January 2014 18:29, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Colin, Liz, What do you find wrong with what Dennett said? I didn't actually say I found anything wrong with it, just that I would expect him to want to drop the hard problem. I said that because he's wanted to for decades now, and indeed believes he has. And perhaps he's right. If we can explain what it means for consciousness to supervene on matter then I think it could be game over for the HP. Until then I remain agnostic, as I find myself doing on many things. -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
On 16 Jan 2014, at 00:12, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, I want to try to state my model of how spacetime is created by quantum events more clearly and succinctly. Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. That does not exist. If everything is computational, I am computational, and thus comp is true, but comp entails the existence of many non computational things, so everything cannot be a computational things. You seem to ignore the FPI, and you seem to use implicitly some body/mind identify thesis which are not consistent with computationalism. Bruno In particular where the usually imagined single pre-existing dimensional spacetime background does NOT exist. Now consider how we can get a spacetime to emerge from the computations in a way that conceptually unifies GR and QM, eliminates all quantum 'paradoxes', and explains the source of quantum randomness in the world. There is an easy straightforward way though it takes a little effort to understand, and one must first set aside some common sense notions about reality. Assume a basic computation that occurs is the conservation of particle properties in any particle interaction in comp space. The conservation of particle properties essentially takes the amounts of all particle properties of incoming particles and redistributes them among the outgoing particles in every particle interaction. The results of such computational events is that the particle properties of all outgoing particles of every event are interrelated. They have to be to be conserved in toto. This is called 'entanglement'. The outgoing particles of every event are always entangled on the particle properties conserved in that event. Now some particle properties (spin, mass, energy) are dimensional particle properties. These are entangled too by particle interaction events. In other words, all dimensional particle properties between the outgoing particles of every event are interrelated. They have to be for them to be conserved. These relationships are exact. They must be to satisfy the conservation laws. Now assume every such dimensional entanglement effectively creates a spacetime point, defined as a dimensional interrelationship. Now assume those particles keep interacting with other particles. The result will be an ever expanding network of dimensional interrelationships which in effect creates a mini spacetime manifold of dimensional interrelations. Now assume a human observer at the classical level which is continuously involved in myriads of particle interaction (e.g. millions of photons impinging on its retina). The effect will be that all those continuous particle events will result in a vast network of dimensional interrelationships that is perceived by the human observer as a classical spacetime. He cannot observe any actual empty space because it doesn't actually exist. All that he can actually observe is actual events with dimensional relationships to him. Now the structure that emerges, due to the math of the particle property conservation laws in aggregate, is consistent and manifests at the classical level as the structure of our familiar spacetime. But this, like all aspects of the classical 'physical' world, is actually a computational illusion. This classical spacetime doesn't actually exist. It must be continually maintained by myriads of continuing quantum events or it instantly vanishes back into the computational reality from which it emerged. Now an absolutely critical point in understand how this model conceptually unifies GR and QM and eliminates quantum paradox is that every mini-spacetime network that emerges from quantum events is absolutely independent of all others (a completely separate space) UNTIL it is linked and aligned with other networks through some common quantum event. When that occurs, and only then, all alignments of both networks are resolved into a single spacetime common to all its elements. E.g. in the spin entanglement 'paradox'. When the particles are created their spins are exactly equal and opposite to each other, but only in their own frame in their own mini spacetime. They have to be to obey the conservation laws. That is why their orientation is unknowable to a human observer in his UNconnected spacetime frame of the laboratory. However when the spin of one particle is measured that event links and aligns the mini-spacetime of the particles with the spacetime of the laboratory and that makes the spin orientations of both particles aligned with that of the laboratory and thereafter the spin orientation of the other particle will always be found equal and opposite to that of the first. There is no FTL communication, there is no 'non-locality', there is no 'paradox'. It all depends on the recognition that the spin orientations of the particles exist in
Re: Tegmark's New Book
On 16 January 2014 19:00, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.comwrote: Dear LizR, One thing that this line of thinking that I am pursuing implies, is that systems what have different computational capacities will have differing realities. The best analogy/toy model to explain this is to consider an electron and a human. Very different. What kind of reality would it experience (assuming that consciousness is not something that emerges from complexity, as per the hand waving arguments from material monist) as compared to the reality that humans experience? My definition of a reality is dependent on the notion of communication... I digress. The point is that a space-time manifold, mathematically speaking is defined such that it can capture the notion of an observer whose point of view and inertial frame can be varied in a continuous fashion. In this way we can canonically make claims like: the laws of physics are the same for all observers, and so forth. It need not be exactly like that. Nature might not be so smooth and continuous... It just needs the allow for the possibility of an observer in any situation that actually allows for observers that can have experiences and that can communicate with other observers. If I cannot communicate with you, how would I really know what your universe is really like? I know where you're coming from, and as I like to say, on days with an 'R' in them I will probably agree! I have to change hats sometimes. In a debate on physics, I wear my relativistic hat (which can be worn at any angle) and insist that we take account of the space-time manifold. When we get on to metaphysics, of course, I switch to a possibly nonexistent, or at least illusory hat... Sure! I do that too. I have a growing collection of hats. My philosophy hat is the one that has the most signs of wear... Hehe. Yes, I can believe that! I really really like Bruno's notion of an observer. If only we could see eye to eye on the definitions of some other concepts... Such as that Computation is an *action* or transformation, not a static being. Yes, well that is the eternal, or at least present, presentism vs eternalism debate. Us (provisional) eternalists can't see why you (provisional) presentists insist on there being a need for this mysterious change above and beyond what a block multiverse already provides. Comp is just the ultimate in emergent time (riding on the shoulders of giants like Newton and Einstein of course - which doesn't make it true, of course, but does mean that it should be seriously considered). It might be possible that the debate is based on a false dichotomy. Maybe presentism and eternalism are both wrong, based on a bad hypothesis of the nature of time! That is of course possible. Some have considered a time outside time, for example, especially after taking certain drugs. -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: You can do that (in fact it may have been done). You have two emitters with polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those particles that arrive and form a singlet. Then you will find that the correlation counts for that subset violates Bell's inequality for polarizer settings of 30, 60, 120deg. I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of Bell's inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time symmetry is definitely wrong...? ?? Why do you conclude that? It's the time-reverse of the EPR that violated BI. Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to take both past AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR with time symmetry. If we can explain it with only a forward in time or backward in time explanation, then we aren't using both. Or I may be missing the point. That often happens. Now that I think about it, I probably am. I shall go into the garden and eat worms, and while I tuck in maybe you could explain to me whether I jumped to completely the wrong conclusion. -- 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: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 16 January 2014 21:34, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:40, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: And the answer is yes, he would know that, but not immediately. So it would not change the indeterminacy, as he will not immediately see that he is in a simulation, but, unless you intervene repeatedly on the simulation, or unless you manipulate directly his mind, he can see that he is in a simulation by comparing the comp physics (in his head) and the physics in the simulation. The simulation is locally finite, and the comp-physics is necessarily infinite (it emerges from the 1p indeterminacy on the whole UD*), so, soon or later, he will bet that he is in a simulation (or that comp is wrong). But if it is sufficiently large he won't find it is finite. Hmm... OK. But he will soon or later. We are talking in principle, assuming the emulated person has all the time ... Ah, yes, I thought that must be what you meant. Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady were no crime. -- 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 16 January 2014 18:07, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Liz, I came across that page of yours a few months ago through random searching. (I forgot what I was searching for), but only later did I realize it was your blog! Out of curiosity, do you recall what the 2 other responses were to your poll? I would have to go back to my sources, but I might be able to find out. Actually I only made a couple of entries in that blog. I update my crossword one a lot more often..should you be interested :) -- 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 16 January 2014 19:44, freqflyer07281972 thismindisbud...@gmail.comwrote: I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them. Like, for example, you mention the idea of universalism, the idea that all minds are fundamentally connected. This has always been a very strong intuition with me ever since I had a religious conversion type experience in my teens. Finding this list was a wonderful moment, because it appeared that the implications of comp reinforced this intuition. BUT... on the other hand, ethically, I hate the idea that my mind and the mind of, say, Josef Stalin, are linked in any way, and the more I learn about the enormity of various acts of evil and violence, the more I feel OK with the idea that maybe death qua oblivion really isn't such a bad thing after all, but is instead a kind of mercy that is bestowed upon us. I guess I just have some trouble squaring my metaphysical curiosities (that tend to pull me way out into the stratosphere) with my ethical demands and expectations (that tend to reign in my speculations). Do I make any sense? You do to me, I've had those same thoughts. To be every starving child, every rapist and victim, every torturer and victim, every genius and every person who feels they've wasted their life, to be every rugby fan and every monstrous psychopath ... I just quail at the thought I feel the Beatles may have had a point or two. As I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together... And, All you need is love. -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
There are an awful lot of hidden assumptions implied by that first explicit assumption imagine a world in which everything is computational. I've asked for clarification from Edgar, but I won't hold my breath while I wait. On 16 January 2014 22:44, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Jan 2014, at 00:12, Edgar L. Owen wrote: All, I want to try to state my model of how spacetime is created by quantum events more clearly and succinctly. Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. That does not exist. If everything is computational, I am computational, and thus comp is true, but comp entails the existence of many non computational things, so everything cannot be a computational things. You seem to ignore the FPI, and you seem to use implicitly some body/mind identify thesis which are not consistent with computationalism. Bruno In particular where the usually imagined single pre-existing dimensional spacetime background does NOT exist. Now consider how we can get a spacetime to emerge from the computations in a way that conceptually unifies GR and QM, eliminates all quantum 'paradoxes', and explains the source of quantum randomness in the world. There is an easy straightforward way though it takes a little effort to understand, and one must first set aside some common sense notions about reality. Assume a basic computation that occurs is the conservation of particle properties in any particle interaction in comp space. The conservation of particle properties essentially takes the amounts of all particle properties of incoming particles and redistributes them among the outgoing particles in every particle interaction. The results of such computational events is that the particle properties of all outgoing particles of every event are interrelated. They have to be to be conserved in toto. This is called 'entanglement'. The outgoing particles of every event are always entangled on the particle properties conserved in that event. Now some particle properties (spin, mass, energy) are dimensional particle properties. These are entangled too by particle interaction events. In other words, all dimensional particle properties between the outgoing particles of every event are interrelated. They have to be for them to be conserved. These relationships are exact. They must be to satisfy the conservation laws. Now assume every such dimensional entanglement effectively creates a spacetime point, defined as a dimensional interrelationship. Now assume those particles keep interacting with other particles. The result will be an ever expanding network of dimensional interrelationships which in effect creates a mini spacetime manifold of dimensional interrelations. Now assume a human observer at the classical level which is continuously involved in myriads of particle interaction (e.g. millions of photons impinging on its retina). The effect will be that all those continuous particle events will result in a vast network of dimensional interrelationships that is perceived by the human observer as a classical spacetime. He cannot observe any actual empty space because it doesn't actually exist. All that he can actually observe is actual events with dimensional relationships to him. Now the structure that emerges, due to the math of the particle property conservation laws in aggregate, is consistent and manifests at the classical level as the structure of our familiar spacetime. But this, like all aspects of the classical 'physical' world, is actually a computational illusion. This classical spacetime doesn't actually exist. It must be continually maintained by myriads of continuing quantum events or it instantly vanishes back into the computational reality from which it emerged. Now an absolutely critical point in understand how this model conceptually unifies GR and QM and eliminates quantum paradox is that every mini-spacetime network that emerges from quantum events is absolutely independent of all others (a completely separate space) UNTIL it is linked and aligned with other networks through some common quantum event. When that occurs, and only then, all alignments of both networks are resolved into a single spacetime common to all its elements. E.g. in the spin entanglement 'paradox'. When the particles are created their spins are exactly equal and opposite to each other, but only in their own frame in their own mini spacetime. They have to be to obey the conservation laws. That is why their orientation is unknowable to a human observer in his UNconnected spacetime frame of the laboratory. However when the spin of one particle is measured that event links and aligns the mini-spacetime of the particles with the spacetime of the laboratory and that makes the spin orientations of both particles aligned with that of the laboratory and thereafter the spin orientation of the other particle will
Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
On 16 Jan 2014, at 01:10, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 3:20 PM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the computations? Whatever it is, Bruno's UD will eventually do it. THe UD will emulate all mind states. This we can say (assuming comp). But he will never emulate the physical reality/world, a priori, unless the physical world is little, finite, essentially material or substantial, constitutes my only brain, ... which prevents me from saying yes to any doctor. I don't know what is a world, to be honest. Bruno 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. 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: Tegmark's New Book
On 16 Jan 2014, at 01:46, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again? No we can't, unless the real QM appears to be non linear (but then thermodynamic, SR, GR, etc. are all wrong). This has been shown by Weinberg, and can be deduced by some work by Plaga (who mentioned it on this list). But with QM as it is, the parallel realities just interfere, but don't interact. With comp, that should seem even more obvious. Bruno -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Jan 15, 2014 7:33 pm Subject: Re: Tegmark's New Book On 16 January 2014 13:31, Edgar L. Owen lt;edgaro...@att.netgt; wrote: Stephen, c is actually the speed of TIME as the STc equation makes clear. It just so happens that light, having no velocity in time, always travels at the speed of time in all observers' frames thorough SPACE. All its spacetime velocity is only through space. The speed of time ?! Wow. Maybe I can interest you in writing for Doctor Who. -- 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. 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Hard Problem
On 16 Jan 2014, at 08:11, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:20 PM, LizR wrote: Ah, well, I would expect Dennett to say that! On 16 January 2014 16:19, Colin Geoffrey Hales cgha...@unimelb.edu.au wrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25289 I think Dennett is right. As soon as we're able to build robots that act as intelligently as humans, all talk of the hard problem and qualia will fade away and be seen as asking the wrong question. On the contrary. If intelligent machine appears, they will struggle like us on the hard question. Even more so, in the paradoxical situation where they extract the comp physics, and it is different from physics, then the 3-1 person associated to such machine will ... correctly know that they are zombie! Dennett is just abandoning the problem, because he fail to solve it. but with comp, we know that his error is in the physicalist, weakly materialist, stance that he adopts. He is just denying the contardiction he tend toward, between weak materialism and computationalism (that he adopts too). I was hoping you could see that, a part (at least) of the comp mind- body problem is well formulated (at the least). We'll know that if we fit the robot with IR retinas it will see IR. If we program it to do drastic and dangerous things when frustrated, we'll know it's angry. I am not sure we can program that. It is more like we can't avoid machine to introspect and become like that, through long and deep histories. Bruno 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. 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
On 16 January 2014 13:10, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 3:20 PM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the computations? Whatever it is, Bruno's UD will eventually do it. I would like to know what Edgar's answer is. Obviously Edgar's theory doesn't use the UD, because he has clearly stated that he thinks comp is false. He even started a thread called Bruno's fundamental mistake (IMHO) ! OK, I admit that going on past behaviour I shouldn't expect a sensible answer from Edgar. I know I'm most likely to some snide comment telling me it's too obvious to explain, or insinuating that I'm a moron for asking. But even so, I think the polite and courteous thing to do is to keep asking questions, and I live in hope that I will get proper answers from Edgar, and that eventually, if every step of his argument is clarified sufficiently, it will either start making sense to me, or stop making sense to him, as the case may be. So, my original questions were, what is the nature of a world in which everything is computational? For example, is it physical or abstract or something else? (And if so, what?) Does it have physical computational machinery of some sort (like CY compact manifolds), or if not, what *does*it have? All this (and probably a lot more) needs to be explained before one can start to imagine a world in which everything is computational. -- 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 16 Jan 2014, at 02:19, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Unless I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together, of course. Well, that's just it, isn't it? :-) Or indeed, if all of this self stuff is really a very sophisticated mental model we run... I've tried making that claim here before, but the response if I recall was a repetition of the Cartesian dictum, and I didn't pursue it. If the self does not and/or never has existed in the first place, then there is no point in mourning its loss, because it quite literally doesn't go anywhere. Still, without having that deep conviction, not sure how it offers succor. The 3p-self exists. that can be proved in arithmetic (by the diagonal lemma). Much more difficult is to prove the existence of the 1p-self. But then, by a sort of epistemological miracle, incompleteness makes valid the oldest definition of the knower (Theaetetus) in arithmetic, which provides a good candidate for the first person self, and this explains completely why the first person exists in arithmetic, but also why it cannot be defined in arithmetic (like arithmetical truth, for similar reason). Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Tegmark's New Book
On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:08, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:32 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote: Yes, GR assumes smooth Riemannian manifolds. The mapping works for them wonderfully. That fact was proven by the people that discovered Fiber Bundles. The hard thing to grasp is how the mapping between separable QM systems and the infinitesimal points of the smooth Maybe it's hard to grasp because it's wrong. Almost the first thing Kitada writes: The problem is that if the notion of time is given a priori , the velocity is definitely determined when given a position, which contradicts the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg. First, makes no sense since determining a position at a time doesn't determine velocity (you have to do it twice). Second, the HP doesn't prohibit measuring both p_x and x, it just says that you get random variation in their values. I'll leave to Bruno Kitada's proof that set theory is inconsistent. Well, thanks! Given the above I'm not inspired to wade through 168 pages of dense notation. A quick perusal indicates that he just attaches a Hilbert space for particle energy to each spacetime world line - nothing amazing there, but it is similar to Edgar's idea of having separate little frames that get 'aligned' at interactions. He draws conclusions like: dgcbgjhf.png To say that a contradiction entails an oscillation assumes too much for me. I can make sense of it in ad hoc theories, so that might be consistent, but consistency is to cheap to make this into an argument. Anyway, it is still physicalism, and thus assumes implicitly non computationalism or some magical stuff. We did already discuss on this (Stephen and me). Bruno Riemannian manifold works and how to interpret what that tells us about QM systems. Basically, it tells us that the realm of QM and the realm of GR are separate forever, there is not a way to map QM rules onto the smooth Riemannian manifold in a global way. To do so makes time vanish. Wheeler and DeWitt proved this long ago with their W-D equation. Until Prof Kitada analyzed the W-D equation using results from scattering theory, it was assumed that it was not possible to make time pop back out of the theory, but he found a mathematically consistent way to do it. But his results disallow for the kind of concepts that Edgar and many others are advocating. No such thing was proved by WD. The WD implies a static universe, but that's consistent with a block universe picture, and Don Page and William Wooters showed that events in such a universe can still be assigned dynamics relative to clocks in the universe. 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. 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. inline: dgcbgjhf.png
Re: Tegmark's New Book
On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:10, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:23 PM, LizR wrote: So although the troll theory is tempting, because that is exactly how trolls behave, I'm going to go for a bot instead. Someone decided to write a programme which trots out a theory that doesn't make sense, then reacts to all criticism with a few canned responses. Even his name is suspiciously similar to ELIZA! That's pretty funny from someone who goes by LizR. :-) LOL May be we are all bots. Bruno -is your artificial brain functioning well? ---yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, yes, sure rk, ... 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. 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: The Singularity Institute Blog
On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:46, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30: Jacob: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true about the state of the world in 20 years? Eliezer: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nano machines,” and you're like, “why?” and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.” “Why?” And then there’s a 20 page thing. Dario: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nano machines, and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI. Eliezer: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.” Or the AI is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not planning to do it.” Dario: But this is a plan you don't want to execute. Eliezer: All the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by nano-machines. Luke: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language. Dario: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability to just shut it off. Eliezer: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off” and it says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.” I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure friendliness. Brent I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than us and believe we will be able to control it. Yes. It is close to a contradiction. We only fake dreaming about intelligent machine, but once they will be there we might very well be able to send them in goulag. The real questions will be are you OK your son or daughter marry a machine?. Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to treat others how they wish to be treated. Good. alas, many believe it is to not treat others like *you* don't want to be treated. If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its beliefs. We cannot program in beliefs that are false, since if it is truly intelligent, it will know they are false. I doubt we can really program false belief for a long time, but all machines can get false beliefs all the time. Real intelligent machine will believe in santa klaus and fairy tales, for a while. They will also search for easy and comforting wishful sort of explanations. Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there are. OK. I agree with this, although they are very near inconsistencies, like never do moral. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then treat others how they wish to be treated is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that others are self. OK. I would use the negation instead: don't treat others as they don't want to be treated. If not send me 10^100 $ (or €) on my bank account, because that is how I wish to be treated, right now. :) Bruno Jason Original Message The Singularity Institute Blog MIRI strategy conversation with Steinhardt, Karnofsky, and Amodei Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:22 PM PST On October 27th, 2013, MIRI met with three additional members of the effective altruism community to discuss MIRI’s organizational strategy. The participants were: Eliezer Yudkowsky (research fellow at MIRI) Luke Muehlhauser (executive director at MIRI) Holden Karnofsky (co-CEO at GiveWell) Jacob Steinhardt (grad student in computer science at Stanford) Dario Amodei (post-doc in biophysics at Stanford) We recorded and transcribed much of the conversation, and then edited and paraphrased the transcript for clarity, conciseness, and to protect the privacy of some content. The resulting edited transcript is available in full here. Our conversation located some disagreements between the participants; these disagreements are summarized below. This summary is not meant to present arguments with all their force, but rather to serve as a guide to the reader for locating more information about these disagreements. For each point, a page number has been provided for the approximate start of that topic of discussion in
Re: What are wavefunctions?
On 16 Jan 2014, at 01:57, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:03 PM, LizR wrote: By the way, I may have this wrong but it seems to me your hyperdeterminism objection is an objection to block universes generally. I can't see how the big crunch (or timelike infinity) being a boundary condition on the universe is a problem in a block universe (or multiverse) ...? I think Bruno is thinking of a tree-like branching block multiverse so there can still be FPI due to the branches. yes, like in arithmetic. Otherwise definite, random things have to happen in realizing the block universe - and Bruno hates random things and he likes infinities, Well, let us say that I hate only the *assumption* of 3p randomness. Einstein define insanity by such belief (of course that is not an argument). so... But you should read L.S. Schulman's solution to the problem of randomness. He speculates that within the domain of a state we can prepare, which is of measure hbar=/=0, there are special states which are causally connected to *future* states and when we choose a measurement in the future we are selecting out one of these special states. Is that not already the case in the WM duplication experiment? The problem is not in the selection, but in a physical mechanism making disappear the realities not selected. They always need to add something to the equation, be it a guiding potential, boundary conditions, etc. 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. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Thanks, SP. I guess I will just have to buck and be satisfied with one universe. ;-) -Original Message- From: Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Jan 15, 2014 7:54 pm Subject: Re: Tegmark's New Book Dear spudboy100, As far as I know, no. It isn't possible to shift from one universe into another and back. The universes are orthogonal to each other; they are not stacked like sheets of paper on top of each other. The universes for systems that involve multiple particles and not just single isolated particles are scary hard to compute and thus track under the transformation. Moving from one to another is a non-commutative transformation at best. If we where to figure out how to shift (ala Philadelphia Experiment) into another, the phases and positions of objects is more likely to get scrambled then not, making a big mess. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:46 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again? -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Jan 15, 2014 7:33 pm Subject: Re: Tegmark's New Book On 16 January 2014 13:31, Edgar L. Owen lt;edgaro...@att.netgt; wrote: Stephen, c is actually the speed of TIME as the STc equation makes clear. It just so happens that light, having no velocity in time, always travels at the speed of time in all observers' frames thorough SPACE. All its spacetime velocity is only through space. The speed of time ?! Wow. Maybe I can interest you in writing for Doctor Who. -- 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 a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Computer Science
On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:02, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25377 Neil Gershenfeld Physicist, Director, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Author, FAB Totally agree: He blames Turing and von Neumann So do I. He assumes both comp and weak materialism. In fact some digital physics. This has been shown many time here to not work at all. I can repeat the argument, but it is very easy from the UDA. Physicalism is ready for retirement, if comp is true. We stopped doing real empirical work on the inorganic brain 60 years ago. We failed for 60 years to make an inorganic brain. Computer “Science” was never and never will be an empirical science at all. It is 100% the experimental exploration of theoretical models and has been generationally systemically confused with empirical science. I think on the contrary that computer science gives a precise criteria how to use the empirical experimentation to refute precise theory of the mind. You assume that an inorganic brain might one day function, but that would mean that comp, or string AI, is possible, and then I don't see how you could avoid the consequences. Party’s over. You talk here a bit like Edgar or other knower of the Truth. We are just searching, using theories (= hypothesis), as only them put light on how to interpret the experimental data. Bruno Cheers Colin -- 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. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Thanks, Liz. I am suspecting that Stargate or Sliders is not just around the corner, then. Cancel my trip to Neverland then! -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Jan 15, 2014 8:07 pm Subject: Re: Tegmark's New Book On 16 January 2014 13:46, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again? Tegmark defines 4 levels of multiverse, so the question in each case may be different. Lemme see. 1. the cosmological MV - you'd have to travel beyond the universe's (current) event horizon so the answer is no for a long time to come, and no forever if the universe continues to accelerate. 2. the quantum MV - you answered that, only in the David Deutsch sense 3. other parts of the string landscape - seems unlikely 4. the mathematical MV - also seems unlikely That said, wormholes might allow it, if they can be shown to exist and shown to not collapse in the manner Einstein and Rosen (I think) calculated. Which requires negative energy, maybe zero-point. In that case ... Star gate, here we come! :) -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:05, Jason Resch wrote: Hyper determinism makes little sense as a serious theory to me. Why should particle properties conform to what a computer's random number generator outputs, and then the digits of Pi, and then the binary expansion of the square root of 2, all variously as the experimenters change the knobs as to what determines the spin axis of the lepton their analyzer measures. Are radioactive decays of particles really such things that are governed by the behavior of a selected random source, or alternately, are they really such things that govern what the digits of Pi or the square root of 2 are? Yes, that's my point. Price make a logical point, though. But we have to abandon QM for QM + a lot of extra-information to select one reality. In that case why not come back to Ptolemeaus. The idea that it is the sun which moves in the sky is consistent too, even with Newton physics, if you put enough extra-data in the theory. With one reality, a quantum computer works only because of extra- magical boundary conditions. Bruno Jason On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 Jan 2014, at 11:10, LizR wrote: On 15 January 2014 22:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:04, LizR wrote: Sorry, I realise that last sentence could be misconstrued by someone who's being very nitpicky and looking for irrelevant loopholes to argue about, so let's try again. Now how about discussing what I've actually claimed, that the time symmetry of fundamental physics could account for the results obtained in EPR experiments? Logically, yes. But you need hyper-determinism, that is you need to select very special boundary conditions, which makes Cramer's transaction theory close to Bohm's theory. I'm not sure what you mean by special boundary conditions. The bcs in an Aspect type experiment are the device which creates the photons, and the settings of the measuring apparatuses. The setting of the analyser must be predetermined. And not in the mechanist sense, where the choice of the analyser is still made by you, even if deterministically so. With only one branch, you are not just using irreversibility, but you are using the boundary condition selecting a branch among all in the universal wave. These are special but only in that the photons are entangled ... note that this isn't Cramer's or Bohm's theory (the transaction theory requires far more complexity that this). Those are still many-world theories, + some ugly selection principle to get one branch. It is very not natural, as you have quasi microsuperposition (appearance of many branches), but the macro-one are eliminated by ad hoc boundary conditions, which will differ depending on where you will decide to introduce the Heisenberg cut. Also, QM will prevent us to know or measure those boundary conditions, which makes them into (local, perhaps, in *some* sense) hidden variable theory. I don't understand the above. The theory is simply QM with no collapse and with no preferred time direction (it assumes any system which violates Bell's inequality has to operate below the level where decoherence brings in the effects of the entropy gradient). It is both local and realistic, since time symmetry is Bell's 4th assumption - it allows EPR experiments to be local and realistic (I am relying on John Bell for this information, I wouldn't be able to work it out myself). So it definitely is a hidden variable theory. Yes, and I am willing to accept it is local. but it is hyper- determined. It means that if I chose the setting of the two analyser in the Aspect experience by looking at my horoscope, that horoscope was determined by the whole future of the phsyical universe. Logically possible, you are right, but ugly, as it is a selection principle based on boundary conditions. It is more local than Bohm, and it does not need a new potential, but it is sill using abnormal special data for the TOE. It is no more a nice and gentle equation like the SWE, but that same equation together with tuns of mega-terra-gigabyte of data. I think for it to work the system is kept from undergoing decoherence or any interaction that would lead to MWI branching. EPR experiments only appear to work for systems that are shielded from such effects, I think? So there isn't a problem with the MWI - the whole thing takes place in one branch, with no quantum interfence etc being relevant. (I believe that EPR experiments lose their ability to violate Bell's inequality once interactions occur that could cause MWI branching within the system under consideration???) ? Many worlds is far less ad-hoc, imo. There is no Heisenberg cut, and the boundary conditions does not play any special role, and indeed they are all realized in the universal wave (and in
Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 16 Jan 2014, at 09:11, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. OK. But in a non standard sense of functionalism, as in the philosophy of mind, functionalism is used for a subset of computationalism. Functionalism is computationalism with some (unclear) susbtitution level in mind (usually the neurons). Now, I would like to see a precise definition of your functionalism. If you take *all* functions, it becomes trivially true, I think. But any restriction on the accepted functions, can perhaps lead to some interesting thesis. For example, the functions computable with this or that oracles, the continuous functions, etc. Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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. 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:14, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25336 Rodney A. Brooks Roboticist; Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) , MIT; Founder, Chairman CTO, Rethink Robotics; Author, Flesh and Machines While we’re at it Lots of good stuff in these responses I have no problem with this. The computationalist hypothesis warns against all computational metaphor. Indeed, if such a metaphor was shown true, we would know our level, which we can't. Bruno Cheers Oclin -- 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. 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Hard Problem
On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:19, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25289 Daniel C. Dennett Philosopher; Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Co- Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University; Author, Intuition Pumps And again Cheers Niloc am done Dennet wrote (there): Is the Hard Problem an idea that demonstrates the need for a major revolution in science if consciousness is ever to be explained, or an idea that demonstrates the frailties of human imagination? That question is not settled at this time, so scientists should consider adopting the cautious course that postpones all accommodation with it. That's how most neuroscientists handle ESP and psychokinesis—assuming, defeasibly, that they are figments of imagination. The question has been settled, it seems to me, or at least reduce to another more precise question. And the answer is that if computationalism is true, as dennett advocates, then consciousness is not a figment of imagination (which makes no sense), but physicalism is refuted, and the new problem is to compare the comp physics (the physics extracted from arithmetic, by comp) and the facts. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:25, freqflyer07281972 wrote: On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 4:54:09 PM UTC-5, cdemorsella wrote: Man that’s uncool. You may think he is an idiot, but to go troll the internet and then publish on this list his very personal life is crossing a line. I think you owe the man an apology and need to look into your own heart and ask yourself if perhaps this exposes an ugly wart in your own character… one that if I were you I would be trying to understand and work through. Chris Just for the record: a) I apologized (on a new thread so I wouldn't derail this one) b) I didn't have to troll the internet very far to find his lonely hearts advert -- it's on the front page of google after you search edgar owen -- second entry -- I was just trying to find more information about this book on reality he keeps talking about, but his blog is the second entry in the search, and the advert is the very first thing you see when you go to the site -- hardly private details... indeed, given his clearly narcissistic posture, I thought he would be quite flattered anyone took that level of interest in him. c) Ugly wart on my character? You think I am not aware that I have warts on my character? Dude, I got tons of 'em, all over the damn place... I think anyone who is honest with themselves will also find them. Oh yah, no doubt it exposes an ugly wart on my character. I only wish other people would be equally honest in their self- assessments (lookin' at you, Edgar) and take the time to perhaps try to understand and work through their ugly warts, i.e. condescension, truculence, delusion. For me, it's a constant and daily struggle, but I never stop working at it... I admit that I backslide a bit and do some dumb stuff though, and looking back, I realize that posting that thing from Edgar's site was not a decent thing to do -- I fully accept your condemnation and repent. I was also a bit shocked by what you did to Edgar, but I find wonderfully reassuring to see someone capable of offering apologies after doing something a bit nasty. That's rare. Let us try to focus on the points. If there are no points in a post, there is no need to reply. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Tegmark's New Book
Brent, No, moving just means changing. Time most certainly changes, and if you accept that time is a 4th-dimension (necessary if you accept SR and GR) there can certainly be movement along the time axis... We see the movement of time all the time and measure it with our clocks. I hate to use the words but it's entirely obvious and undeniable. Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 10:35:38 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:53 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Stephen, If time doesn't move then nothing moves. Moving means being different places at different times. Do you think time is different places at different times? 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: Tegmark's New Book
Brent, Sure. So what? That's not inconsistent with everything being at one and only one point of time as time continually moves. That is in fact what proves that time moves. Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 10:40:49 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 5:02 PM, LizR wrote: Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. But even in your own formulation in your blog things that moving at the speed of light through spacetime move through time at less than c when they are moving through space also. That's where time dilation comes from, and if IRCC you even have diagram to illustrate this which could have come right out of Epstein's book. Brent That doesn't follow. It does if time is a one-dimensional continuum and everything is moving through (along) it at the speed of light, and everything is a single point because there are no spatial dimensions. -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
Chris, Reality itself is doing the computing... The aspect of reality called 'happening' drives it... Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 11:10:16 PM UTC-5, cdemorsella wrote: *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *LizR *Sent:* Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:21 PM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Subject:* Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net javascript: wrote: Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the computations? What is doing the imagining? -- 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.
On the nature and existence of many non computational things
Dear Bruno, I would like to start a new thread to discuss the nature and existence of the many non computational things that you have mentioned in your posts. Could you find a few moments to write some remarks on these? In particular I wonder if their proposed non-computability can be expanded into disjoint classes such that we have some kind of taxonomy of properties. Can they be represented approximately by a finite language? Other than the restriction of recursive enumerability (modulo homeomorphisms of their topological duals), what is it, in your opinion, that makes such things non-computable? -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, Bruno and I agree on this one, our usually imagined space is completely a construction of our minds. That is fundamental to my theory. I explain in detail how it happens in my new topic post Another shot at how spacetime emerges from quantum computations if anyone cares to read it... Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 10:44:04 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear LizR, But stop and think of the implications of what even Bruno is saying. *Space is completely a construction of our minds.* *There is no 3,1 dimensional Riemannian manifold out there*. We measure events and our minds put those together into tableaux that we communicate about and agree on, because our languages, like formal logical system, force the results to obey a set of implied rules. We formulate explanations, formulate models and look for rules that the models might obey. Hopefully we can make predictions and measure something... I really really like Bruno's notion of an observer. If only we could see eye to eye on the definitions of some other concepts... Such as that Computation is an *action* or transformation, not a static being. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:22 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:19, Stephen Paul King step...@provensecure.comjavascript: wrote: Dear LizR, Yeah, Zeno didn't know about calculus... I was speaking to the idea that time moves. It doesn't, there is nothing to move. It is not an object that can be observed. We can measure measures of time: duration, sequence and energy. It is amazing how our minds can create things out of ideas that are not even true. I agree that time doesn't move. And motion in space-time doesn't make sense either. Motion in space, however... On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 8:09 PM, LizR liz...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: On 16 January 2014 13:55, Stephen Paul King step...@provensecure.comjavascript: wrote: Dear Edgar, Bingo! You are correct. All motion in space-time is an illusion. The ancient greeks figured that out already. You mean Zeno? But he didn't know about the maths of infinity... :) (Just an aside. You're correct of course that time doesn't move. Time is what is used to measure movement through space, after all, so what could the movement of time be measured in relation to?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 ... -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
Jason, This is only a problem if you don't understand that everything happens in the present moment P-time. The clock times diverge in value but always in the same present moment. There is no 'catching up' in p-time because nothing ever leaves it no matter how fast or slow their clocks are running relative to each other. That is in fact the ONLY way the twins can meet, shake hands and compare differing clocks - because they are in the same p-time present moment. You still haven't grasped this There is an answer to this riddle, but you need to study some of Edgar's theory to figure it out. :-) Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:47:41 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:31 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Stephen, c is actually the speed of TIME as the STc equation makes clear. It just so happens that light, having no velocity in time, always travels at the speed of time in all observers' frames thorough SPACE. All its spacetime velocity is only through space. If what you say is true, then it seems to contradict P-time. Imagine one thing remains still, and uses all its speed to travel through space time in a straight line at c. Then imagine something else, at the same location as that one thing moves away. It could then never catch up and reach that thing it moved away from, since it has deviated and fallen behind, thus it is gone forever and they could never shake hands again. | | \ | \ | / | / A B A and B both travel at c, but now B can never catch up to A... Jason P.S. there is an answer to this riddle, but you need to study some of SR to figure it out. I didn't say anything travels faster than c. Why claim that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:14:56 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Your argument is based on a disconception of what the speed of light is! Light -photons- do not move at all. They are the null length rays that connect events together. Nothing can travel faster than c because to do so would be traveling in less than zero distances. A light cone is defined as those events that are connected by the null rays. You really need to go back to the books and work the math to learn and understand what it means. Books for laymen are only good for wetting one's appetites for the real thing. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical basis. Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. That present location in time is the present moment, it's a unique privileged moment in time. (This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment for every observer. The other argument Brent references is necessary to demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all observers.) Bravo again Brent, for remembering that one too! Since by the STc Principle everything must be at one and only one position in time and traveling through time at c in one direction, this conclusively falsifies block time. Thus SR conclusively falsifies block time. QED. Best, Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 6:39:48 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 2:54 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, div style=font-family:aria ... -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Computer Science
Dear Bruno, Let me first say that I share your opinion of physicalism! As to the empirical evidence of inorganic minds. What behavior should we look for? I ask this with all seriousness, as I have been researching methods to detect AGI (another way to denote inorganic minds) and have found that there are, IMHO, very good arguments (particularly by Goetzelhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI5naBq7lYc) that have been made that show that we should not expect AGI to interact via natural languages and will not have models of the world that can be mapped via simple bijections to our models of the world. Basically, their physics are expected to be very different. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Jan 2014, at 04:02, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25377 *Neil Gershenfeld* http://www.edge.org/memberbio/neil_gershenfeld *Physicist, Director, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Author, FAB* Totally agree: He blames Turing and von Neumann So do I. He assumes both comp and weak materialism. In fact some digital physics. This has been shown many time here to not work at all. I can repeat the argument, but it is very easy from the UDA. Physicalism is ready for retirement, if comp is true. We stopped doing real empirical work on the inorganic brain 60 years ago. We failed for 60 years to make an inorganic brain. Computer “Science” was never and never will be an empirical science at all. It is 100% the experimental exploration of theoretical models and has been generationally systemically confused with empirical science. I think on the contrary that computer science gives a precise criteria how to use the empirical experimentation to refute precise theory of the mind. You assume that an inorganic brain might one day function, but that would mean that comp, or string AI, is possible, and then I don't see how you could avoid the consequences. Party’s over. You talk here a bit like Edgar or other knower of the Truth. We are just searching, using theories (= hypothesis), as only them put light on how to interpret the experimental data. Bruno Cheers Colin -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical zombies make logical sense at all. Jason The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Hard Problem
Dear Bruno, Hear Hear! Dennett wants to be correct by making the Hard Problem go away. that is the most lazy way of solving the problem: making a long winded wand-waving argument that consciousness is an illusion and then failing to explain the persistence of the stipulated illusion! On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Jan 2014, at 08:11, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:20 PM, LizR wrote: Ah, well, I would expect Dennett to say that! On 16 January 2014 16:19, Colin Geoffrey Hales cgha...@unimelb.edu.auwrote: http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25289 I think Dennett is right. As soon as we're able to build robots that act as intelligently as humans, all talk of the hard problem and qualia will fade away and be seen as asking the wrong question. On the contrary. If intelligent machine appears, they will struggle like us on the hard question. Even more so, in the paradoxical situation where they extract the comp physics, and it is different from physics, then the 3-1 person associated to such machine will ... correctly know that they are zombie! Dennett is just abandoning the problem, because he fail to solve it. but with comp, we know that his error is in the physicalist, weakly materialist, stance that he adopts. He is just denying the contardiction he tend toward, between weak materialism and computationalism (that he adopts too). I was hoping you could see that, a part (at least) of the comp mind-body problem is well formulated (at the least). We'll know that if we fit the robot with IR retinas it will see IR. If we program it to do drastic and dangerous things when frustrated, we'll know it's angry. I am not sure we can program that. It is more like we can't avoid machine to introspect and become like that, through long and deep histories. Bruno 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, It's amazing how much your mouth has to move to tell me it's not moving! Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:55:09 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Bingo! You are correct. All motion in space-time is an illusion. The ancient greeks figured that out already. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Stephen, If time doesn't move then nothing moves. Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:48:02 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Time is not the movement of the hands or numbers of a clock, it is the measure of the mapping between the positions of the hands. That is not motion, it is something else. Time does not move. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stephen, Time does not move??? Even your clock knows better than that! And you think my theories are weird! Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:35:26 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Bot, Time does not move. Please alert your programer that your libraries of responses are failing to achieve the predicted response. Get new ones. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stephen, c is actually the speed of TIME as the STc equation makes clear. It just so happens that light, having no velocity in time, always travels at the speed of time in all observers' frames thorough SPACE. All its spacetime velocity is only through space. I didn't say anything travels faster than c. Why claim that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:14:56 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Your argument is based on a disconception of what the speed of light is! Light -photons- do not move at all. They are the null length rays that connect events together. Nothing can travel faster than c because to do so would be traveling in less than zero distances. A light cone is defined as those events that are connected by the null rays. You really need to go back to the books and work the math to learn and understand what it means. Books for laymen are only good for wetting one's appetites for the real thing. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that every ... -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical zombies make logical sense at all. Jason The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/ topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
Dear Edgar, How about this twist on your claim: Reality is isomorphic to the computations and its dynamics (thermodynamics) drives it. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:10 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Chris, Reality itself is doing the computing... The aspect of reality called 'happening' drives it... Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 11:10:16 PM UTC-5, cdemorsella wrote: *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *LizR *Sent:* Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:21 PM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the computations? What is doing the imagining? -- 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 a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/7G5zm5OFT0k/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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: The Singularity Institute Blog
On Jan 16, 2014, at 5:42 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:46, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30: Jacob: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true about the state of the world in 20 years? Eliezer: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nano ma chines,” and you're like, “why?” and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.” “Why?” And then there’s a 20 page thing. Dario: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nano machines, and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI. Eliezer: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.” Or the AI is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pa thway but I’m not planning to do it.” Dario: But this is a plan you don't want to execute. Eliezer: All the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by nano-machines. Luke: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language. Dario: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability to just shut it off. Eliezer: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off” and it says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.” I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure friendliness. Brent I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than us and believe we will be able to control it. Yes. It is close to a contradiction. We only fake dreaming about intelligent machine, but once they will be there we might very well be able to send them in goulag. The real questions will be are you OK your son or daughter marry a machine?. Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to treat others how they wish to be treated. Good. alas, many believe it is to not treat others like *you* don't want to be treated. If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its beliefs. We cannot program in beliefs that are false, since if it is truly intelligent, it will know they are false. I doubt we can really program false belief for a long time, but all machines can get false beliefs all the time. Real intelligent machine will believe in santa klaus and fairy tales, for a while. They will also search for easy and comforting wishful sort of explanations. Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there are. OK. I agree with this, although they are very near inconsistencies, like never do moral. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then treat others how they wish to be treated is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that others are self. OK. I would use the negation instead: don't treat others as they don't want to be treated. If not send me 10^100 $ (or €) on my bank account, because that is h ow I wish to be treated, right now. :) Bruno LOL I see the distinction but can't it also be turned around? E.g., I don't want to be treated as though I'm not worth sending 10^100 dollars to right now. Jason Jason Original Message The Singularity Institute Blog MIRI strategy conversation with Steinhardt, Karnofsky, and Amodei Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:22 PM PST On October 27th, 2013, MIRI met with three additional members of the effective altruism community to discuss MIRI’s organizational strategy. The participants were: Eliezer Yudkowsky (research fellow at MIRI) Luke Muehlhauser (executive director at MIRI) Holden Karnofsky (co-CEO at GiveWell) Jacob Steinhardt (grad student in computer science at Stanford) Dario Amodei (post-doc in biophysics at Stanford) We recorded and transcribed much of the conversation, and then edited and paraphrased thetranscript for clarity, conciseness, and to protect the privacy of some content. The resulting edited transcript is available in full here. Our conversation located some disagreements between the participants; these disagreements are
Re: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, No, it's not static relations between numbers, it's an active computational process. If just static relations between numbers your mouth would just be hanging open forever in the same look of shock... Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 9:48:44 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, What mouth? It is only the relations between numbers! On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Stephen, It's amazing how much your mouth has to move to tell me it's not moving! Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:55:09 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Bingo! You are correct. All motion in space-time is an illusion. The ancient greeks figured that out already. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stephen, If time doesn't move then nothing moves. Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:48:02 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Time is not the movement of the hands or numbers of a clock, it is the measure of the mapping between the positions of the hands. That is not motion, it is something else. Time does not move. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stephen, Time does not move??? Even your clock knows better than that! And you think my theories are weird! Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:35:26 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Bot, Time does not move. Please alert your programer that your libraries of responses are failing to achieve the predicted response. Get new ones. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stephen, c is actually the speed of TIME as the STc equation makes clear. It just so happens that light, having no velocity in time, always travels at the speed of time in all observers' frames thorough SPACE. All its spacetime velocity is only through space. I didn't say anything travels faster than c. Why claim that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:14:56 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, Your argument is based on a disconception of what the speed of light is! Light -photons- do not move at all. They are the null length rays that connect events together. Nothing can travel faster than c because to do so would be traveling in less than zero distances. A light cone is defined as those events that are connected by the null rays. You really need to go back to the books and work the math to learn and understand w ... -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, Not exactly. It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say anything about which way the arrow points. It only implies that bodies cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their speed to move through space and none to move through time). and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical basis. Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. That doesn't follow. That present location in time is the present moment, it's a unique privileged moment in time. That doesn't follow. Brent (This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment for every observer. The other argument Brent references is necessary to demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all observers.) Bravo again Brent, for ... -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p- zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in it's brain at the time. Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable description of what seeing involves. The information went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see. Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism, epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on consciousness and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They have classes on consciousness and mailing list discussions about zombies. Yet all this, is supposed to be a product of things that never once were conscious! That's why I find them so doubtful. Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical zombies make logical sense at all. Jason The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe . To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the u se of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may con tain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confid ential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be con stituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recip ient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribut ion, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop
Re: Tegmark's New Book
Dear Edgar, The universality of the first person experience of a flow of events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their present moments! THus your claims fall apart On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, Not exactly. It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say anything about which way the arrow points. It only implies that bodies cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their speed to move through space and none to move through time). and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical basis. Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. That doesn't follow. That present location in time is the present moment, it's a unique privileged moment in time. That doesn't follow. Brent (This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment for every observer. The other argument Brent references is necessary to demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all observers.) Bravo again Brent, for ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from
Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
Dear Jason, I see a flaw in your argument. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in it's brain at the time. What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying? It cannot lie by definition! what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an I (model) that is making untrue claims. Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable description of what seeing involves. The information went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see. Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism, epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on consciousness and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They have classes on consciousness and mailing list discussions about zombies. Yet all this, is supposed to be a product of things that never once were conscious! That's why I find them so doubtful. I would agree that Dennett is a p-zombie... LOL! He is unaware, intentionally?, that he is lying. Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical zombies make logical sense at all. Jason The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_ y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior
Re: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof? Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, The universality of the first person experience of a flow of events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their present moments! THus your claims fall apart On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light i ... -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:09 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It [entropy] is NOT the log of the number of ways a macro-state could form. That would be ambiguous in any case (do different order of events count as different ways? Yes obviously. the Boltzmann formula shows the relationship between entropy and the number of ways system can be arranged Most experts say there is only one way a Black Hole can be arranged because it has no parts, or if it does the experts can't agree on exactly what those parts are, see Susskind's The Black Hole Wars. So for now it's best to say entropy is the logarithm of the ways it could have been made. To say it only has mass, charge, and angular momentum is just to give a classical macro-state description It's the best we can do. Perhaps when we find a quantum theory of gravity we can say more, but not now. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Dear Edgar, I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of space-time thus it is impossible to define a present moment in a way that could be universal for observers that exist in a space-time. There are alternatives that I have mentioned. The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is equivalent to first person indeterminacy.) If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information. Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your thesis? Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I need the exercise. :-) On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Stephen, What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof? Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, The universality of the first person experience of a flow of events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their present moments! THus your claims fall apart On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light i ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
Retiring the universe
If any of you haven't seen it, you will likely be quite interesting the The Edge's list of responses to this year's question, What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Some of the answers are fascinating, some are absurd, and some are confusing. Take a look! http://www.edge.org/responses/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement My favorite comes from Amanda Gefter. I'll reproduce it below. (Hopefully that counts as fair use.) -- Amanda Gefter Consultant, New Scientist; Founding Editor, CultureLab *The* Universe Physics has a time-honored tradition of laughing in the face of our most basic intuitions. Einstein's relativity forced us to retire our notions of absolute space and time, while quantum mechanics forced us to retire our notions of pretty much everything else. Still, one stubborn idea has stood steadfast through it all: the universe. Sure, our picture of the universe has evolved over the years—its history dynamic, its origin inflating, its expansion accelerating. It has even been downgraded to just one in a multiverse of infinite universes forever divided by event horizons. But still we've clung to the belief that here, as residents in the Milky Way, we all live in a single spacetime, our shared corner of the cosmos—our universe. In recent years, however, the concept of a single, shared spacetime has sent physics spiraling into paradox. The first sign that something was amiss came from Stephen Hawking's landmark work in the 1970s showing that black holes radiate and evaporate, disappearing from the universe and purportedly taking some quantum information with them. Quantum mechanics, however, is predicated upon the principle that information can never be lost. Here was the conundrum. Once information falls into a black hole, it can't climb back out without traveling faster than light and violating relativity. Therefore, the only way to save it is to show that it never fell into the black hole in the first place. From the point of view of an accelerated observer who remains outside the black hole, that's not hard to do. Thanks to relativistic effects, from his vantage point, the information stretches and slows as it approaches the black hole, then burns to scrambled ash in the heat of the Hawking radiation before it ever crosses the horizon. It's a different story, however, for the inertial, infalling observer, who plunges into the black hole, passing through the horizon without noticing any weird relativistic effects or Hawking radiation, courtesy of Einstein's equivalence principle. For him, information better fall into the black hole, or relativity is in trouble. In other words, in order to uphold all the laws of physics, one copy of the bit of information has to remain outside the black hole while its clone falls inside. Oh, and one last thing—quantum mechanics forbids cloning. Leonard Susskind eventually solved the information paradox by insisting that we restrict our description of the world to either the region of spacetime outside the black hole's horizon or to the interior of the black hole. Either one is consistent—it's only when you talk about both that you violate the laws of physics. This horizon complementarity, as it became known, tells us that the inside and outside of the black hole are not part and parcel of a single universe. They are *two* universes, but not in the same breath. Horizon complementarity kept paradox at bay until last year, when the physics community was shaken up by a new conundrum more harrowing still— the so-called firewall paradox. Here, our two observers find themselves with contradictory quantum descriptions of a single bit of information, but now the contradiction occurs while both observers are still outside the horizon, before the inertial observer falls in. That is, it occurs while they're still supposedly in the same universe. Physicists are beginning to think that the best solution to the firewall paradox may be to adopt strong complementarity—that is, to restrict our descriptions not merely to spacetime regions separated by horizons, but to the reference frames of individual observers, wherever they are. As if each observer has his or her own universe*.* Ordinary horizon complementarity had already undermined the possibility of a multiverse. If you violate physics by describing two regions separated by a horizon, imagine what happens when you describe *infinite* regions separated by *infinite *horizons! Now, strong complementarity is undermining the possibility of a single, shared universe. On glance, you'd think it would create its own kind of multiverse, but it doesn't. Yes, there are multiple observers, and yes, any observer's universe is as good as any other. But if you want to stay on the right side of the laws of physics, you can only talk about one at a time. Which means, really, that only one *exists* at a time. It's cosmic solipsism.
Re: Tegmark's New Book
Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for someone accelerating than someone at rest? Jason On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, Not exactly. It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say anything about which way the arrow points. It only implies that bodies cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their speed to move through space and none to move through time). and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical basis. Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. That doesn't follow. That present location in time is the present moment, it's a unique privileged moment in time. That doesn't follow. Brent (This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment for every observer. The other argument Brent references is necessary to demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all observers.) Bravo again Brent, for ... -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, I see a flaw in your argument. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p- zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in it's brain at the time. What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying? What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive. Note all these arguments become stronger if you use zimboes, which have beliefs but are not conscious. I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their brains contain all necessary information. It cannot lie by definition! What is your definition of lie? what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an I (model) that is making untrue claims. Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I consider suffi ent to call lying. Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable description of what seeing involves. The information went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see. What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you? Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism, epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on consciousness and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They have classes on consciousness and mailing list discussions about zombies. Yet all this, is supposed to be a product of things that never once were conscious! That's why I find them so doubtful. I would agree that Dennett is a p-zombie... LOL! He is unaware, intentionally?, that he is lying. So what causes zombies to write about and discuss consciousness? To me this is like descartes in reverse, you are ascribing causes to something which is not there. And hence is not physical. It has the same problems as epiphenominalism. Jason Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical zombies make logical sense at all. Jason The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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- l...@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 a topic in the
Re: Tegmark's New Book
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Edgar, I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of space-time thus it is impossible to define a present moment in a way that could be universal for observers that exist in a space-time. There are alternatives that I have mentioned. The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is equivalent to first person indeterminacy.) If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information. Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your thesis? Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I need the exercise. :-) Stephen, I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion that block time is possible? Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Stephen, What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof? Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, The universality of the first person experience of a flow of events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their present moments! THus your claims fall apart On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:28, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: There is still FPI going on in the rogue simulation - the one where Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics. You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies. I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics. OK. What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from something more than its characterization as a mere Lobian machine. That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head or something, and get highly amnesic. There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno Marchal. Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on the grounds. Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes through our consciousness, OK. in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology, A particular biology? No doubt. A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course, after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which: 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my identity) below the substitution level 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable). Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty relation, to simplify). in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in our physics. What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time. The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment. Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*). Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality. our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is why Everett saves comp from solipsism. Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of physics, Part. Only part. the contingent part. then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's identity, Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument. and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think, require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics. By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate geography. Well... what's left to physics then ? OK. That's an excellent question. I will try to answer. many world ? Notably. And also indeterminacy, non-locality, non cloning, but also white noise and white rabbits, a priori. because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we wish I disagree. (see below) and if comp is true we could make self aware inhabitant living in such virtual worlds... OK with this. so anything we can measure is a geographical fact and contingent... That does not follow. That would have been the case if the hypostases would have collapsed into classical logic. But I will try to explain this without invoking the hypostases. seems to reduce physics not to math but to approximately nothing and leave what
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: The simplest and by far most likely answer is to assume that the world we appear to live in IS the real actual world Maybe. But it could be argued that if the ability to perform vast calculations is possible (and I can't see why it wouldn't be) then sooner of later it will be achieved, then a future Jupiter Brain will be able to create astonishingly realistic simulations, and Mr. Jupiter Brain would probably be curious about humans, the creatures that made it, and so it would make a simulation of them, and those simulated humans will make a simulated Jupiter Brain which in turn will make simulated simulated humans who will [...] I admit this is a VERY long chain of reasoning, but you might conclude that the most likely conclusion is we live in a simulation. I'm not saying any of this is true but... We can imagine we live in some simulation by some super beings and that may or may not be a possibility (I maintain there will always be a way to figure that out), I'm almost embarrassed to admit it but from time to time I have found myself drawing analogies from the coarse grained nature of the quantum world and getting too close to the screen in a video game and seeing individual pixels; and between the quantum world where things don't seem to actually exist before you measure them and the fact that a good programmer doesn't waste computer power simulating things behind a big rock that nobody will ever see. And the singularity at the center of a Black Hole does sometimes seem a little like a screw up where a programer tried to divide by zero. I'm half joking in all this, but only half. 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: Tegmark's New Book
On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, spudboy...@aol.com mailto:spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again? Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made an exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical, yet your consciousness did it. For the same reason, someone in an altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable you to travel there. There would be no causal link, however, to whatever memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you we create to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in the distant land decided to freeze. In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment before, that we don't notice it. You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in. But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by you. 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:41, Alberto G. Corona wrote: I tend not to consider that a brain is a digital computer. I agree. Then comp explains completely why a brain is definitely not a digital computer. A brain is a physical object. And if you grasp the step seven, you should understand than a priori, the physical is not computable as it results from a sum on infinities of computations (by the invariance of the first person consciousness for the FPI). Don't confuse the bad metaphor: brain = computer, with the quite fertile theological assumption: my consciousness can be recovered by a computer emulating my brain at some level. Brain is a computer, at the least, as a brain can emulate a universal Turing machine. But a brain is not a number that the UD will ever emulate. A brain is what some universal numbers perceive when they look at themselves in some histories. And in the details, they do not see an object, but a map of the possible futures (the orbital stationnary wave, hoping comp gives QM. The most accurate analogy is that a brain is a _program_ made of different processes that run certain specific algorithms, some of them fixed and certain of them capable of learning by various methods. And finally some of them can execute an unconscious selection game of try an error with matching ideas. And that is only the beginning. probably at the neural level the processing is not as simple as the AI experts suppose. I agree. We must also take into account the much more numerous glial cells. Today, we have reason to believe that they communicate a lot between themselves, and sometimes with neurons. Such program made of processes and minute details, created by a genetic program that determine the architecture. And don't forget the learning process in childhood that influence also the connections and weights of some constants. Of all of this, we know almost nothing. OK. But all what you describabe is Turing emulable. So it happens like in all biological systems. At first, everything looks simple. when you go down in the details, everything gets almost infinitely complicated. The brain is an extreme example of that. The Mandelbrot set too. So when people say that the brain is like a digital computer or that it is turing emulable I think on a stone age adolescent that cut a tree to cross the ocean. Yes it is theoretically possible, little ignorant, but don´t make me laugh. The only evidence for something not Turing emulable in Nature is the wave collapse. But it seems to be Turing-recoverable, I would say, by the FPI. So it is you who make a gross hypothesis by assuming something non computable at the start, or in the primitive things. That leads to arbitrariness, and seems to make things more complex than needed. Comp and computer science entails already that machines are confronted with non computable aspect of their reality/realities. It is simpler to work in a theory which seems to work, until we find it does not work, and so we can move forward. If not you are assuming something is wrong, and miss the opportunity to show what is wrong and or to improve or abandon it. Bruno 2014/1/16, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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- l...@googlegroups.com. Visit this
Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 thismindisbud...@gmail.com mailto:thismindisbud...@gmail.com wrote: I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them. I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer is for me to be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom at something else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would never have been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 in 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all other begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed. So what? Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are. On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one of your brothers or sisters. If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you are in fact, also your brothers and sisters. So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two bumps in the ignition lock. I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a lot fewer miles on it than mine. 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: Tegmark and consciousness
On 14 Jan 2014, at 23:09, John Mikes wrote: Brent: thanks for submitting Colin Hales' words! I lost track of him lately in the West-Australian deserts (from where he seemed to move to become focussed on being accepted for scientific title(s) by establishment-scientist potentates - what I never believed of him indeed). I loved (and tried to digest to some extent) his earlier 'words' - making them fundamental to my developing agnosticism. Brent, to your short closing remark: I do not equate 'being conscious' with the domain-adjective of consciousness - it may be a certain aspect showing within the domain, pertinent to 'those lumps of matter' you mention. I aso value structure more than just material functioning. And I wish I had such (your?) alternative hypotheses... not only my agnosticism about it. I agree with most of Colin's un-numbered points on the figment he called science of consciousness. What I would have added is a date of yesterday (and to support it - as I usually do - compare that level to earlier (millennia?) similar concoctions) . And - would have parethesized the territory named 'science' in them all. Well: what - IS - the LAW OF NATURE as widely believed? It is the majority of results of observed (poorly understood?) phenomena within the portion of Everything we so far got access to - and that, too, in our mind's adjustment at its actual level (inventory). (Wording mostly based on Colin's earlier writings) It depends on the boundaries WE CHOSE. Consider different boundaries and the LAW will change immediately, even within our unchanged ignorance of the totality. From what I understand, Colin's try to introduce in the exact sciences the lack of rigor of the human sciences. I believe in the contrary: we must come back to rigor in the human and fundamental science. I don't see at all how Colin's approach can be consistent with the correct-machine, and human, fundamental agnosticism. Bruno Thank you, Colins (and Brent) John Mikes On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/12/2014 9:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: I'm sorry I repeat this answer so many times, but this claim is also made so many times. The main problem I see with this idea is that no progress has been made so far in explaining how a lump of matter becomes conscious, as opposed to just being a zombie mechanically performing complex behaviors. Insisting that such an explanation must exist instead of entertaining other models of reality strikes me as a form of mysticism. Well we know that one lump of matter is conscious and we think some others that are structually similar are and that some others are not. A plausible hypothesis is that the consciousness is a consequence of the structure. Alternative hypotheses would have to explain this coincidence. 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Singularity Institute Blog
On 1/15/2014 11:35 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:46 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 6:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30: *Jacob*: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true about the state of the world in 20 years? *Eliezer*: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nanomachines,”and you're like, “why?”and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.”“Why?”And then there’s a 20 page thing. *Dario*: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nanomachines, and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI. *Eliezer*: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.”Or the AI is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not planning to do it.” *Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute. *Eliezer*: /All/the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by nano-machines. *Luke*: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language. *Dario*: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability to just shut it off. *Eliezer*: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off”and it says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.” I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure friendliness. Brent I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than us and believe we will be able to control it. Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to treat others how they wish to be treated. If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its beliefs. We cannot program in beliefs that are false, since if it is truly intelligent, it will know they are false. Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there are. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then treat others how they wish to be treated is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that others are self. I'd say that's a pollyannish conclusion. Consider how we treated homo neanderthalis or even the American indians. And THOSE were 'selfs' we could interbreed with. And today with our improved understanding, we look back on such acts with shame. Do you expect that with continual advancement we will reach a state where we become proud of such actions? If you doubt this, then you reinforce my point. What's this refer to, sentence 1 or sentence 2? I don't expect us to become proud of wiping out competitors, but I expect us to keep doing it. With improved understanding, intelligence, knowledge, etc., we become less accepting of violence and exploitation. Or better at justifying it. A super-intelligent process is only a further extension of this line of evolution in thought, and I would not expect it to revert to a cave-man or imperialist mentality. No, it might well keep us as pets and breed for docility the way we made dogs from wolves. 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: What are wavefunctions?
On 1/15/2014 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:58 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:05 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Hyper determinism makes little sense as a serious theory to me. Why should particle properties conform to what a computer's random number generator outputs, and then the digits of Pi, and then the binary expansion of the square root of 2, all variously as the experimenters change the knobs as to what determines the spin axis of the lepton their analyzer measures. Are radioactive decays of particles really such things that are governed by the behavior of a selected random source, or alternately, are they really such things that govern what the digits of Pi or the square root of 2 are? They are all part of the same reality. Are they? Aren't numbers like Pi and sqrt(2) beyond the reality of QM, or rather, more fundamental than it? The moment you admit numbers like Pi into your reality, you get much more than just QM. Of course QM is just a model of how we think the world works...like arithmetic is a model of countable things. Neither one is *reality*. You assume its the experimental choice of measurement that determines the particles response, but I think the picture is supposed to be that both the particle in the experiment and the particles making up the experimenter are determined by the same laws. So how, when using the digits of Pi to decide whether to measure the x-axis, or the y-axis, does the particle (when it decays), know to have both electron and positron agree measured on some axis, when that axis is determined by some relation between a circle and its diameter? Here the laws involved seemed to go beyond physical laws, it introduces mathematical laws, which can selectively be made to control/guide physics.. They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment you don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical instantiation as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink on a page. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Hi Jason, Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated... The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time progresses. The results of these computations is the information states of everything in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime. Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves. If this is not clear let me know. Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for someone accelerating than someone at rest? Jason On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, Not exactly. It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say anything about which way the arrow points. It only implies that bodies cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their speed to move through space and none to move through time). and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical ... -- You
Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
Dear Jason, Let's try to be a bit more formal. Interleaving. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, I see a flaw in your argument. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in it's brain at the time. What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying? What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive. Does my car lie to me when the gas gage points at empty and there is still gas in the tank? To deceive requires intent and thus some implicit notion of personhood that is unavalable by definition to s p-zombie. Note all these arguments become stronger if you use zimboes, which have beliefs but are not conscious. I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their brains contain all necessary information. You are using what is to me strange definition of belief. In the example of the lying car gas gauge above, is the direction of the pointer a belief in your thinking? It cannot lie by definition! What is your definition of lie? The intensional representation of a statement as something that it is not; misrepresentation. How can a physical system represent itself as something that it is not? Is an ant that mimics the morphology of a wasp lying? what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an I (model) that is making untrue claims. Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I consider suffi ent to call lying. Without a self-model that is the referent of the one who is telling the lie, I cannot see how an intentional act can obtain. A physical system is what it is, at least in classical physics... It cannot lie and thus the notion of a p-zombie is incoherent. Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable description of what seeing involves. The information went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see. What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you? Not if we parse the meaning of the word seeing literally. This is an interesting topic for me as I still recall the statement in Umberto Echo's book on Semeotics about how communication is impossible for an entity that cannot lie. The reasoning is that the act of languaging is to use representations of objects, which are by definition *not the object itself, to communicate about objects. When we say, I see a tree, one is actually lying for one does not percieve the word tree, one perceives what the word tree represents and thus is lying in the strict sense of the definition of a lie: To deceive. Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism, epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on consciousness and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They have classes on consciousness and mailing list discussions about zombies. Yet all this, is supposed to be a product of things that never once were conscious! That's why I find them so doubtful. I would agree that Dennett is a p-zombie... LOL! He is unaware, intentionally?, that he is lying. So what causes zombies to write about and discuss consciousness? LOL, it was ironic invective. Have you no sense of humor? To me this is like descartes in reverse, you are ascribing causes to something which is not there. And hence is not physical. It has the same problems as epiphenominalism. Numbers are not there and yet they have kickability. I think that thou dost protest too much! Jason Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.comjasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comstath...@gmail.com stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.comjasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense
Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 1/16/2014 12:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or entire planet and all the people on it. Jason I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable), But Bruno concludes that physics is not computable. So does that imply one should say no to the doctor? Brent including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable. Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism. -- 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On 1/16/2014 12:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The body does not produces consciousness, it only make it possible for consciousness to forget the higher self, and deludes us (in some sense) in having a little ego embedded in some history. Sounds like wishful thinking. Why higher? Why not lower. Why not diffused into the infinite threads of the UD? 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
Brent, No, that's incorrect. No winning number needs to be drawn in the lottery. In fact there are no winners fairly often. That's why the jackpot keeps increasing Lotteries are not won by choosing among player submitted numbers, they are drawn at random from all possible numbers within the range of the number of digits. Now if you could be wrong about lotteries, how about Edgar's theories? :-) Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 12:44:06 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 thismind...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them. I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer is for me to be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom at something else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would never have been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 in 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all other begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed. So what? Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are. On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one of your brothers or sisters. If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you are in fact, also your brothers and sisters. So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two bumps in the ignition lock. I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a lot fewer miles on it than mine. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Dear Jason, I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be embedded in the block. My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of existence and time are wrong. Existence is not observable, only properties are observable. Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after the fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process that transforms one event into another. Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is not a direct observable quantity. If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Edgar, I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of space-time thus it is impossible to define a present moment in a way that could be universal for observers that exist in a space-time. There are alternatives that I have mentioned. The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is equivalent to first person indeterminacy.) If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information. Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your thesis? Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I need the exercise. :-) Stephen, I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion that block time is possible? Jason On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.netwrote: Stephen, What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof? Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, The universality of the first person experience of a flow of events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their present moments! THus your claims fall apart On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netwrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 1/16/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:40, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: And the answer is yes, he would know that, but not immediately. So it would not change the indeterminacy, as he will not immediately see that he is in a simulation, but, unless you intervene repeatedly on the simulation, or unless you manipulate directly his mind, he can see that he is in a simulation by comparing the comp physics (in his head) and the physics in the simulation. The simulation is locally finite, and the comp-physics is necessarily infinite (it emerges from the 1p indeterminacy on the whole UD*), so, soon or later, he will bet that he is in a simulation (or that comp is wrong). But if it is sufficiently large he won't find it is finite. Hmm... OK. But he will soon or later. We are talking in principle, assuming the emulated person has all the time ... Also, I don't understand why finding his world is finite Finite or computable (Recursively enumerable). would imply comp is wrong. In a finite world it seems it would be even easier to be sure of saying yes to the doctor. I don't know how you can know that the universe if finite. But comp makes it non finite (and non computable), so if you have a good reason to believe that the universe is finite, you have a good reason to believe that comp is wrong, and to say no to the doctor. That *is* counter-intuitive, but follow from step 7 and 8. I think you equivocate on comp; sometimes it means that an artificial brain is possible other times it means that plus the whole UDA. Comp is where UDA is valid. By comp, according to the degree of understanding of the UD-Argument or the person I am speaking to, just means the hypothesis, or its logical consequences. But that comes from your assumption that belief=provable and that consciousness requires proving there are unprovable true sentences. Those are both much more dubious than an artificial neuron can replace a biological one. 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: Tegmark's New Book
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again? Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made an exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical, yet your consciousness did it. For the same reason, someone in an altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable you to travel there. There would be no causal link, however, to whatever memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you we create to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in the distant land decided to freeze. In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment before, that we don't notice it. You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in. But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by you. How so? Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a particular collection of atoms at a particular time and place? You are something different than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily. 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: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:44 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 thismindisbud...@gmail.com wrote: I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them. I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer is for me to be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom at something else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would never have been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 in 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all other begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed. So what? Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are. But can you a priori expect to be one of the winners? Should you not have some level of surprise when you find out you are a winner, and possibly seek some more probable explanations (my kids are pranking me, I am dreaming, etc.)? On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one of your brothers or sisters. If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you are in fact, also your brothers and sisters. So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two bumps in the ignition lock. I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a lot fewer miles on it than mine. No, you are missing the point. It is not that they are similar enough to be you, it is that they share everything that was necessary for *you *to be present in them. Your current perspective does not rule out that you are seeing from their eyes, just as seeing only one branch does not mean the wave function collapsed, and nor does seeing only one time prove presentism. The simpler hypothesis by far is that you are born as all of them, rather than believing there is some special or privileged person which is the only person in the whole universe whose entire life *you *will experience. Jason 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter
On 1/16/2014 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote: On 1/15/2014 12:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:39, LizR wrote: On 15 January 2014 10:29, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com mailto:terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: condescending dismissal in 3... 2... 1... Teehee. Not a condescending /*dismissal*/ in anyone else's mind, however, just more hand-waving nonsense that only Edgar could possibly think is a dismissal. This is fun, in a masochistic sort of way, but I am starting to miss discussions with some real meat in them. Ah ... Me too :) Ready for a bit of (modal) logic? That is needed for the Solovay theorem, exploited heavily in the AUDA ... I'd like to know what the existence of non-standard models of arithmetic, especially the finitist ones, implies for comp? All non-standard models are infinite. They does not play any direct roles, except for allowing the consistency of inconsistency. A model which satisfies Bf has to be non standard. A proof of false needs to be an infinite natural numbers, and it has an infinity of predecessors (due to the axiom saying that 0 is unique in having no predecessors). I think that only refers to non-standard models which add not-G as an axiom where G is the Godel sentence. What about application of the compactness theorem to produce a non-standard model? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_model_of_arithmetic 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: Tegmark's New Book
Dear Edgar, I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the same physical system? More than one! This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be computed. The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal space-times that are patched together into a space-time manifold in order to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or ball of every point in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the present moments that would be said to exist at each point. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Hi Jason, Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated... The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time progresses. The results of these computations is the information states of everything in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime. Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves. If this is not clear let me know. Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for someone accelerating than someone at rest? Jason On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate.
Re: The Singularity Institute Blog
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 11:35 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:46 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 6:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30: *Jacob*: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true about the state of the world in 20 years? *Eliezer*: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nano machines,” and you're like, “why?” and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.” “Why?” And then there’s a 20 page thing. *Dario*: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nano machines, and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI. *Eliezer*: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.” Or the AI is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not planning to do it.” *Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute. *Eliezer*: *All* the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by nano-machines. *Luke*: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language. *Dario*: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability to just shut it off. *Eliezer*: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off”and it says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.” I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure friendliness. Brent I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than us and believe we will be able to control it. Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to treat others how they wish to be treated. If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its beliefs. We cannot program in beliefs that are false, since if it is truly intelligent, it will know they are false. Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there are. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then treat others how they wish to be treated is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that others are self. I'd say that's a pollyannish conclusion. Consider how we treated homo neanderthalis or even the American indians. And THOSE were 'selfs' we could interbreed with. And today with our improved understanding, we look back on such acts with shame. Do you expect that with continual advancement we will reach a state where we become proud of such actions? If you doubt this, then you reinforce my point. What's this refer to, sentence 1 or sentence 2? I don't expect us to become proud of wiping out competitors, but I expect us to keep doing it. Sentence 2: Do you expect that with continual advancement we will reach a state where we become proud of such actions? With improved understanding, intelligence, knowledge, etc., we become less accepting of violence and exploitation. Or better at justifying it. A super-intelligent process is only a further extension of this line of evolution in thought, and I would not expect it to revert to a cave-man or imperialist mentality. No, it might well keep us as pets and breed for docility the way we made dogs from wolves. In a sense, we have been doing that to ourselves. Executing or putting in prison people limits their ability to propagate their genes to future generations. Society is deciding to domesticate itself. That said, the super intelligence might stop us from harming each other, perhaps by migrating us to a computer simulation which could be powered by the sunlight falling in a 12 km by 12 km patch on earth. (And this assumes no efficiency gains could be made in the power it takes to run a human brain (which is 20 watts)). In my opinion, the people trying to escape from the matrix were insane. Jason 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
Re: What are wavefunctions?
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:53 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:58 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:05 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Hyper determinism makes little sense as a serious theory to me. Why should particle properties conform to what a computer's random number generator outputs, and then the digits of Pi, and then the binary expansion of the square root of 2, all variously as the experimenters change the knobs as to what determines the spin axis of the lepton their analyzer measures. Are radioactive decays of particles really such things that are governed by the behavior of a selected random source, or alternately, are they really such things that govern what the digits of Pi or the square root of 2 are? They are all part of the same reality. Are they? Aren't numbers like Pi and sqrt(2) beyond the reality of QM, or rather, more fundamental than it? The moment you admit numbers like Pi into your reality, you get much more than just QM. Of course QM is just a model of how we think the world works...like arithmetic is a model of countable things. Neither one is *reality*. You assume its the experimental choice of measurement that determines the particles response, but I think the picture is supposed to be that both the particle in the experiment and the particles making up the experimenter are determined by the same laws. So how, when using the digits of Pi to decide whether to measure the x-axis, or the y-axis, does the particle (when it decays), know to have both electron and positron agree measured on some axis, when that axis is determined by some relation between a circle and its diameter? Here the laws involved seemed to go beyond physical laws, it introduces mathematical laws, which can selectively be made to control/guide physics.. They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment you don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical instantiation as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink on a page. And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the radioactive decay? What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment? If all that information has to be assumed at the start, there's no reason an equally big description would be any less likely, and thus there is no reason it shouldn't diverge from our expectations in the next second. (Also, I would say they do come from Platonia, in that the platonic properties of Pi (which the computer is inspecting and reporting) prevents the computer from outputting the digits of some other number. Consider that the numbers of Pi go on forever and have an infinite expansion, but there is no physical way to realize that expansion. In that sense, the digits of Pi transcends our own physics and must be outside/beyond it.) 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: Retiring the universe
I must admit I thought the MWI had already retired the universe. -- 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Let's try to be a bit more formal. Interleaving. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.comwrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, I see a flaw in your argument. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Jason, Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your reasoning. Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in it's brain at the time. What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying? What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive. Does my car lie to me when the gas gage points at empty and there is still gas in the tank? To deceive requires intent and thus some implicit notion of personhood that is unavalable by definition to s p-zombie. When a zombie solves a riddle, is it not thinking? When it adds two numbers together, is it not calculating? I don't see how you can say these words stop having any meaning to zombies just because you say something about them (which only they can see) is absent. If you need to twist the meaning of language to preserve the notion of zombie I think that indicates the notion of a zombie is not logical or well thought out. Note all these arguments become stronger if you use zimboes, which have beliefs but are not conscious. I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their brains contain all necessary information. You are using what is to me strange definition of belief. In the example of the lying car gas gauge above, is the direction of the pointer a belief in your thinking? It cannot lie by definition! What is your definition of lie? The intensional representation of a statement as something that it is not; misrepresentation. How can a physical system represent itself as something that it is not? Is an ant that mimics the morphology of a wasp lying? So why can't zombies have intentions? Remember the only thing zombies supposedly lack is qualia. If a zombie is hungry and goes out to buy a burger, I would say it had an intention to fill its stomach. what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an I (model) that is making untrue claims. Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I consider suffi ent to call lying. Without a self-model that is the referent of the one who is telling the lie, I cannot see how an intentional act can obtain. A physical system is what it is, at least in classical physics... It cannot lie and thus the notion of a p-zombie is incoherent. Right, I agree p-zombies are incoherent and not logically possible. Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable description of what seeing involves. The information went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see. What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you? Not if we parse the meaning of the word seeing literally. Again we must redefine words in the name of zombies making sense.. This is an interesting topic for me as I still recall the statement in Umberto Echo's book on Semeotics about how communication is impossible for an entity that cannot lie. The reasoning is that the act of languaging is to use representations of objects, which are by definition *not the object itself, to communicate about objects. When we say, I see a tree, one is actually lying for one does not percieve the word tree, Then there is no third person way of ever knowing if someone is communicating with you or not, since there is no third person way to know if anyone is a zombie or not. For all you know, you have been a zombie all your life until right now, and all your previous e-mails contain zero information content. one perceives what the word tree represents and thus is lying in the strict sense of the definition of a lie: To deceive. Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism, epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books
Re: Tegmark's New Book
On 1/16/2014 1:40 AM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 19:20, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:44 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear LizR, But stop and think of the implications of what even Bruno is saying. *Space is completely a construction of our minds.* _There is no 3,1 dimensional Riemannian manifold out there_. We measure events and our minds put those together into tableaux that we communicate about and agree on, because our languages, like formal logical system, force the results to obey a set of implied rules. We formulate explanations, formulate models and look for rules that the models might obey. Hopefully we can make predictions and measure something... Sure we create models like spacetime - BUT we can agree on them and they are successful models both in prediction and in explanations leading to other models. You write *like this a new discovery.* The set of rules isn't implied, it's quite explicit: The model must be the same for everybody in every circumstance. Physics is intended to apply everywhere. That's why momentum and energy are conserved. These models are our best guess about what's out there. So it makes no more sense to say _There is no 3,1 dimensional Riemannian manifold out there _than to say There is no computer monitor in front of me. or I'm a brain in a vat. or There is no refrigerator in my kitchen. If I remember correctly, momentum is conserved because space has no preferred direction That's angular momemntum. Linear momentum is conserved because space has no preferred position. I put that last in scarce quotes because in the context of why are the laws of physics the way they are it is an fundamental choice of our model that we don't want any preferred position, so in a sense we pick out that characteristic as physics and lump everything particular into geography. Noether proved that if we wrote our laws to have a continuous symmetry (like translation invariance) there would necessarily be a corresponding conserved quantity. Brent P.S. Do you know what conserved quantity corresponds to invariance under a Lorentz boost? and energy is conserved because there is no preferred time. An insight we owe to one of my heroes, the wonderful Emmy Noether, if I'm not mistaken. -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
On 17 January 2014 03:10, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Chris, Reality itself is doing the computing... The aspect of reality called 'happening' drives it... That isn't an answer to *anything* I've asked. Naming something doesn't explain what it is. I thought you'd have enough pride in your own ideas, if nothing else, to at least try to give a proper answer to the questions I asked, but you have simply chosen to ignore them. Let me repeat them, in case you missed them, and see if you have the intellectual honesty to at least attempt to explain yourself, for once. *I would like to know what Edgar's answer is. Obviously Edgar's theory doesn't use the UD, because he has clearly stated that he thinks comp is false. He even started a thread called Bruno's fundamental mistake (IMHO) ! * *OK, I admit that going on past behaviour I shouldn't expect a sensible answer from Edgar. I know I'm most likely to some snide comment telling me it's too obvious to explain, or insinuating that I'm a moron for asking. But even so, I think the polite and courteous thing to do is to keep asking questions, and I live in hope that I will get proper answers from Edgar, and that eventually, if every step of his argument is clarified sufficiently, it will either start making sense to me, or stop making sense to him, as the case may be.* *So, my original questions were, what is the nature of a world in which everything is computational? For example, is it physical or abstract or something else? (And if so, what?) Does it have physical computational machinery of some sort (like CY compact manifolds), or if not, whatdoes it have?* *From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *LizR *Sent:* Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:21 PM *To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational. What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the computations? -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On 1/16/2014 1:48 AM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: You can do that (in fact it may have been done). You have two emitters with polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those particles that arrive and form a singlet. Then you will find that the correlation counts for that subset violates Bell's inequality for polarizer settings of 30, 60, 120deg. I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of Bell's inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time symmetry is definitely wrong...? ?? Why do you conclude that? It's the time-reverse of the EPR that violated BI. Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to take both past AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR with time symmetry. If we can explain it with only a forward in time or backward in time explanation, then we aren't using both. But in the reverse EPR we are in effect using both past and future boundary conditions. At the emitters we set the polarizers - that's the past boundary condition. At the single detector we post-select only those incoming pairs that form a net-zero spin; so that's a future boundary condition. This is only a 'thought experiment' because I don't think there's any practical way to capture and test pairs for net-zero spin. Note that you must NOT measure the spins, you have to select the net-zero pair without measuring either one. Brent Or I may be missing the point. That often happens. Now that I think about it, I probably am. I shall go into the garden and eat worms, and while I tuck in maybe you could explain to me whether I jumped to completely the wrong conclusion. -- 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: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality
Actually I can't be bothered asking Edgar the same questions again and getting no answer again (or a non-answer like the one he just gave Chris, while carefully ignoring me). If he wants to ignore my questions, I shouldnt waste time asking. So I have deleted my post restating the questions I asked before, and have zero expectation that the person Brent said was courteous, but everyone else seems to think is a troll, will have the intellectual honesty or pride in his own ideas to answer a few simple questions about those ideas. -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On 17 January 2014 07:56, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/16/2014 1:48 AM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote: On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: You can do that (in fact it may have been done). You have two emitters with polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those particles that arrive and form a singlet. Then you will find that the correlation counts for that subset violates Bell's inequality for polarizer settings of 30, 60, 120deg. I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of Bell's inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time symmetry is definitely wrong...? ?? Why do you conclude that? It's the time-reverse of the EPR that violated BI. Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to take both past AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR with time symmetry. If we can explain it with only a forward in time or backward in time explanation, then we aren't using both. But in the reverse EPR we are in effect using both past and future boundary conditions. At the emitters we set the polarizers - that's the past boundary condition. At the single detector we post-select only those incoming pairs that form a net-zero spin; so that's a future boundary condition. I must admit I thought you were saying we could do it using ONLY the future boundary conditions. If you use both then you should logically use both in the forwards case, too, so I assume Price's explanation still stands. -- 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: The Singularity Institute Blog
On 1/16/2014 3:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:46, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30: *Jacob*: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true about the state of the world in 20 years? *Eliezer*: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nanomachines,”and you're like, “why?”and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.”“Why?”And then there’s a 20 page thing. *Dario*: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nanomachines, and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI. *Eliezer*: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.”Or the AI is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not planning to do it.” *Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute. *Eliezer*: /All/the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by nano-machines. *Luke*: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language. *Dario*: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability to just shut it off. *Eliezer*: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off”and it says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.” I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure friendliness. Brent I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than us and believe we will be able to control it. Yes. It is close to a contradiction. We only fake dreaming about intelligent machine, but once they will be there we might very well be able to send them in goulag. The real questions will be are you OK your son or daughter marry a machine?. Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to treat others how they wish to be treated. Good. alas, many believe it is to not treat others like *you* don't want to be treated. If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its beliefs. We cannot program in beliefs that are false, since if it is truly intelligent, it will know they are false. I doubt we can really program false belief for a long time, but all machines can get false beliefs all the time. Real intelligent machine will believe in santa klaus and fairy tales, for a while. They will also search for easy and comforting wishful sort of explanations. Like a super-intelligent AI will treat us as we want to be treated. Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there are. OK. I agree with this, although they are very near inconsistencies, like never do moral. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then treat others how they wish to be treated is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that others are self. OK. I would use the negation instead: don't treat others as they don't want to be treated. If not send me 10^100 $ (or €) on my bank account, because that is how I wish to be treated, right now. :) I don't want to be neglected in your generous disbursal of funds. 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: What are wavefunctions?
On 1/16/2014 4:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes, that's my point. Price make a logical point, though. But we have to abandon QM for QM + a lot of extra-information to select one reality. In that case why not come back to Ptolemeaus. The idea that it is the sun which moves in the sky is consistent too, even with Newton physics, if you put enough extra-data in the theory. It's not only consistent it is so in the frame used when modeling the galaxy. Because the physics is invariant under various transforms one always transforms so as to make the problem easier. 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: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, There is no all of spacetime nor each point of spacetime where the computations are occuring. Remember, that's an abstract dimensionLESS computational space prior to dimensional spacetime. It has no 'points' itself, it computes all points of dimensional space and clock time. They arise as dimensional relationships imposed by the particle property conservation laws and the laws that compute the binding forces of matter. But am pleased to hear you agree with the rest, the general concept... Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the same physical system? More than one! This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be computed. The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal space-times that are patched together into a space-time manifold in order to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or ball of every point in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the present moments that would be said to exist at each point. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Hi Jason, Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated... The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time progresses. The results of these computations is the information states of everything in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime. Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves. If this is not clear let me know. Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for someone accelerating than someone at rest? ... -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
Stephen, PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is distinct and is prior to any metrics... Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Edgar, I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the same physical system? More than one! This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be computed. The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal space-times that are patched together into a space-time manifold in order to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or ball of every point in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the present moments that would be said to exist at each point. On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Hi Jason, Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated... The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time progresses. The results of these computations is the information states of everything in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime. Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves. If this is not clear let me know. Edgar On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for someone accelerating than someone ... -- 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: Tegmark's New Book
On 1/16/2014 7:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced. This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, That's all ok up to privileged. The only thing privileging the time and location is the observer being at that event. So it is relative to the observer - hence the name relativity theory. and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement. I think that's a tautology. Direction of movement assumes a direction of time. Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal across all observers So can we agree on that? I don't know what that refers to, nor what these are that are universal. That all observers trace out world lines?...sure. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they don't follow? Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate time. But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate. All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line. It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'. But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line. The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity. Brent Edgar On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Brent, Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would state them slightly differently. The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have missed, is simple. SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. This is NOT just a useful myth, it's a very important fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle). It's a commonplace in relativity texts. This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute principle. Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, Not exactly. It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say anything about which way the arrow points. It only implies that bodies cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their speed to move through space and none to move through time). and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives the arrow of time a firm physical basis. Second, because everything is always moving through time at the speed of light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time. That doesn't follow. That present location in time is the present moment, it's a unique privileged moment in time. That doesn't follow. Brent (This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment for every observer. The other argument Brent references is necessary to demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all observers.) Bravo again Brent, for ... -- 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 are wavefunctions?
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:08 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 January 2014 03:51, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 5:10 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2014 22:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:04, LizR wrote: Sorry, I realise that last sentence could be misconstrued by someone who's being very nitpicky and looking for irrelevant loopholes to argue about, so let's try again. Now how about discussing what I've actually claimed, that the time symmetry of fundamental physics could account for the results obtained in EPR experiments? Logically, yes. But you need hyper-determinism, that is you need to select very special boundary conditions, which makes Cramer's transaction theory close to Bohm's theory. I'm not sure what you mean by special boundary conditions. The bcs in an Aspect type experiment are the device which creates the photons, and the settings of the measuring apparatuses. These are special but only in that the photons are entangled ... note that this isn't Cramer's or Bohm's theory (the transaction theory requires far more complexity that this). Time symmetry in the laws of physics alone, without any special restriction on boundary conditions, can't get you violation of Bell inequalities. Ordinary time symmetry doesn't mean you have to take into account both future and past to determine what happens in a given region of spacetime after all, it just means you can deduce it equally well going in *either* direction. So in a deterministic time-symmetric theory (Price's speculations about hidden variables are at least compatible with determinism) it's still true that what happens in any region of spacetime can be determined entirely by events in its past light cone, say the ones occurring at some arbitrarily-chosen initial tim. This means that in a Price-like theory where measurement results are explained in terms of hidden variables the particles carry with them from emitter to experimenters, it must be true that the original assignment of the hidden variables to each particle at the emitter is determined by the past light cone of the event of each particle leaving the emitter. Meanwhile, the event of an experimenter choosing which measurement to perform will have its own past light cone, and there are plenty of events in the past light cone of the choice that do *not* lie in the past light cone of the particles leaving the emitter. So, without any restriction on boundary conditions, one can choose an ensemble of possible initial conditions with the following properties: 1. The initial states of all points in space that line in the past light cone of the particles leaving the emitter are identical for each member of the ensemble, so in every possible history generated from these initial conditions, the particles have the same hidden variables associated with them. 2. The initial states of points in space that lie in the past light cone of the experimenters choosing what spin direction to measure vary in different members of the ensemble, in such a way that all combinations of measurement choices are represented in different histories chosen from this ensemble. If both these conditions apply, Bell's proofs that various inequalities shouldn't be violated works just fine--for example, there's no combination of hidden variables you can choose for the particle pair that ensure that in all the histories where the experimenters measure along the *same* axis they get opposite results (spin-up for one experimenter, spin-down for the other) with probability 1, but in all the histories where they measure along two *different* axes they have less than a 1/3 chance of getting opposite results. Only by having the hidden variables assigned during emission be statistically correlated to the choices the experimenters later make about measurements can Price's argument work, and the argument above shows that time-symmetry without special boundary conditions won't suffice for this. If you're right then Price is wrong. However I don't recall him saying that the only consequence of time symmetry is that events can be, so to speak, worked backwards equally well. In particular, I read his EPR explanation as showing that both future and past boundary conditions were relevant in explaining the violations of B's Inequality. The forwards-and-backwards version would prevent time symmetry having any detectable effects, as far as I can see. (Also I'd like to see an explanation of EPR which works backwards from the measurement settings to the emitter and explains the violation of B's Inequality. That would definitely be a clincher!) I don't think my argument necessarily conflicts with Price, since I don't remember him clearly saying that the Bell inequality violations could be resolved without time-symmetric boundary conditions alongside time-symmetric
Re: Retiring the universe
On 1/16/2014 8:30 AM, Gabriel Bodeen wrote: Leonard Susskind eventually solved the information paradox by insisting that we restrict our description of the world to either the region of spacetime outside the black hole's horizon or to the interior of the black hole. Either one is consistent—it's only when you talk about both that you violate the laws of physics. This horizon complementarity, as it became known, tells us that the inside and outside of the black hole are not part and parcel of a single universe. They are /two/ universes, but not in the same breath. First, Susskind's horizon complementarity is far from accepted as a solution and has various problems. Second, the inside of a black hole is not separate from the outside. Stuff from the outside goes in all the time and the problem Susskind is trying to solve is to explain how it can also come out via Hawking radiation. 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: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor
On 1/16/2014 8:49 AM, Jason Resch wrote: Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I consider suffi ent to call lying. You call it lying whenever someone is mistaken?? 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.