Re: Is information physical?
On 27 February 2014 21:35, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: When I last took a look at constructor theory, it wasn't much of a theory. I know David's been working on it, when he's not doing the chat show circuit, but hadn't heard any major development in it announced, so haven't taken another look. Do you have any papers on it? This is the most recent, I think: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7439 He says the paper is philosophical rather than technical. David -- 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: Is information physical?
All, In the computational theory of reality I present in my book, information is not physical, but it is real and is the fundamental component of reality, Information is what computes physicality, or more accurately what is interpreted as physicality in the minds of organismic beings in their personal simulations of reality. Yet this information does need a substrate in which to manifest. This substrate is simply the existence space of reality itself, what I call ontological energy, which is not a physical energy, but simply the locus (non-dimensional) of the presence of reality, the living happening of being. A good way to visualize this is that ontological energy is like a perfectly still sea of water, and the various waves, currents, eddies etc. that can arise within the water are all the forms of information that make up and compute the universe. They have no substance of their own other than the underlying water (existence) in which they arise. And of course the nature of water determines what forms can arise within it just as the underlying nature of existence determines the types of information forms that can arise within our universe. In this theory EVERYTHING without exception is information only. It is only abstract computationally interacting forms that continually compute the current information state of the universe. In fact, if one observes reality with trained eyes, one can actually directly observe that the only thing out there is just various kinds of information. After all ANYTHING that is observable is by definition information. Only information is observable, ONLY information exists... It is the fact that this information exists in the actual realm of existence that makes it real and actual and enables it to compute a real information universe. Edgar On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:34:32 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: http://edge.org/conversation/constructor-theory I don't recall if the list has discussed these ideas of David Deutsch recently. The link is to an Edge interview in which he discusses his view that mathematicians are mistaken if they believe that information or computation are purely abstract objects. He says that both are in fact physical, but to justify that assertion we may need deeper principles of physics than the existing ones. He proposes constructor theory as a candidate. Implications for comp (or anything else for that matter)? David -- 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a resolution of the dichotomy between apparently disparate accounts in a more powerful explanatory framework; one that could, for example, explain how *just this kind of infrastructure* might emerge as the mise-en-scène for *just these kinds of dramatis personae*. Comp is a candidate for that framework if one accepts at the outset that there is some functional level of substitution for the brain. If one doesn't, there is certainly space for alternatives, but it is fair to demand a similar reconciliatory account in all cases, rather than a distortion of particular facts to suit one's preference. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It seems to me that your argument fails', it only makes me more suspicious that there is no legitimate objection. I can't relate to it, since as far as I know, my objections are always in the form of an explanation - what specifically seems wrong to me, and how to see it differently so that what I'm objecting to is not overlooked. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. That's because you are only considering the modus ponens view where since functionalism implies that a malfunctioning brain would produce anomalies in conscious experience, it would make sense that AHS affirms functionalism being true. I'm looking at the modus tollens view where since functionalism implies that brain function requires no additional ingredient to make the function of conscious machines seem conscious, some extra, non-functional ingredient is required to explain why AHS is alarming to those who suffer from it. Since the distress of AHS is observed to be real, and that is logically inconsistent with the expectations of functionalism, I conclude that the AHS example adds to the list of counterfactuals to CTM/Functionalism. It should not matter whether a limb feels like it's 'yours',* functionalism implies that the fact of being able to use a limb makes it feel like 'yours' by definition*. This is the entire premise of computationalist accounts of qualia; that the mathematical relations simply taste like raspberries or feel like pain because that is the implicit expression of those relations. I think if you consider my comments
Re: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Chris, For a computational universe to even exist it must be consistently logico-mathematical. If it weren't the inconsistencies would cause it to tear itself apart and thus it couldn't exist. This is where the math comes from. If a computational universe exists, and ours does, it must be structured logico-mathematically. But this does NOT men all human H-math exists, it just means that a fundamental logico-mathematical structure I call R-math (reality math) exists. Just the minimum that is necessary to compute the actual universe is all that is needed. All the rest is H-math, and we can't assume that H-math is part of R-math. In fact it is provably different. The big mistake Bruno makes is assuming that H-math is R-math. It isn't. H-math is a generalized approximation of R-math, which is then vastly extended far beyond R-math. In the computational theory of reality I present in my book, information is not physical, but it is real and is the fundamental component of reality, Information is what computes physicality, or more accurately what is interpreted as physicality in the minds of organismic beings in their personal simulations of reality. Yet this information does need a substrate in which to manifest. This substrate is simply the existence space of reality itself, what I call ontological energy, which is not a physical energy, but simply the locus (non-dimensional) of the presence of reality, the living happening of being. A good way to visualize this is that ontological energy is like a perfectly still sea of water, and the various waves, currents, eddies etc. that can arise within the water are all the forms of information that make up and compute the universe. They have no substance of their own other than the underlying water (existence) in which they arise. And of course the nature of water determines what forms can arise within it just as the underlying nature of existence determines the types of information forms that can arise within our universe. In this theory EVERYTHING without exception is information only. It is only abstract computationally interacting forms that continually compute the current information state of the universe. In fact, if one observes reality with trained eyes, one can actually directly observe that the only thing out there is just various kinds of information. After all ANYTHING that is observable is by definition information. Only information is observable, ONLY information exists... It is the fact that this information exists in the actual realm of existence that makes it real and actual and enables it to compute a real information universe. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 2:20:23 AM UTC-5, cdemorsella wrote: Personally the notion that all that exists is comp information – encoded on what though? – Is not especially troubling for me. I understand how some cling to a fundamental material realism; after all it does seem so very real. However when you get right down to it all we have is measured values of things and meters by which we measure other things; we live encapsulated in the experience of our own being and the sensorial stream of life and in the end all that we can say for sure about anything is the value it has when we measure it. I am getting into the interesting part of Tegmark’s book – I read a bit each day when I break for lunch – so this is partly influencing this train of thought. By the way enjoyed his description of quantum computing and how in a sense q-bits are leveraging the Level III multiverse to compute every possible outcome while in quantum superposition; a way of thinking about it that I had never read before. Naturally I have been reading some of the discussions here, and the idea of comp is something I also find intuitively possible. The soul is an emergent phenomena given enough depth of complexity and breadth of parallelism and vastness of scale of the information system in which it is self-emergent. Several questions have been re-occurring for me. One of these is: Every information system, at least that I have ever been aware of, requires a substrate medium upon which to encode itself; information seems describable in this sense as the meta-encoding existing on some substrate system. I would like to avoid the infinite regression of stopping at the point of describing systems as existing upon other and requiring other substrate systems that themselves require substrates themselves described as information again requiring some substrate… repeat eternally. It is also true that exquisitely complex information can be encoded in a very simple substrate system given enough replication of elements… a simple binary state machine could suffice, given enough bits. But what are the bits encoded on? At some point reductionism can no longer reduce…. And then we are back to where we first started…. How did that arise or
Re: Is information physical?
On 27 February 2014 22:22, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Only when interpreted by an observer. An electrical circuit has only voltages and currents, not bits. To an observer, a voltage on a data line might be interpreted as 1 if it is greater than 3V, and zero if it is less than 1V. In between those two thresholds, the voltage might be determinate, but the information is not. AFAICT observers don't seem central to constructor theory - it seems to be (or aims at being) an objective theory from which everything else of relevance will be emergent. From what I remember of the topic in FOR, David isn't an avowed eliminativist on consciousness but on the whole seems content to sideline it as a subsidiary problem for psychologists. That said, do you feel that his information-is-physical position, even in the case that physics-is-construction, is in effect crypto-eliminativism? David -- 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: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 26 Feb 2014, at 03:31, LizR wrote: On 26 February 2014 15:16, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Liz In the MWI you do see spin up every time! ,,, if the definition of you has been changed to accommodate the fact that you've split. Well what definition of 'you' do you suggest we use? What is your criterion for identity over time? Assuming comp it appears to be the state(s) that could follow on from your current brain state via whatever transitions rules are allowed by OK. - I assume - logical necessity. Perhaps Bruno can explain. There is no problem of identity. With comp, we can considered both the W-person and the M-person genuine H-person, and that is why the 1p- identity can be defined by the content of the personal memory, written in the diary that the experiencer takes with him/her/it. But in this case, the transition does not follow logic, as the fact that I am in W, or that I am in M is contingent, from the 1p view. They know that they could have been the other one. Bt W and M are consistent with H. Of course W M is inconsistent, as comp makes it impossible (without further transformations) to make H experiencing simultaneously W and M in the 1p view. Again, in the 3-1 view, from an outsider, which attribute politely consciousness and 1p subjective life to the both copies, H does experience W and M simultanepously, yet not from his personal views. He will never open the door of the reconstitution telebox and write I see W and M. In fact, those saying that H = M and H = W, (despite M ≠ W), should agree that we experience all the experience of all conscious creature simultaneously, wchi might make sense in God's eye, but not in our particular eyes. But this identity point is of no use in the reasoning presented here. With regards to Bruno's steps, at this point I actually don't feel I need a criterion myself. What I have instead is the yes-doctor assumption. In other words, whatever criterion is adopted it must satisfy the condition that whenever I am copied, destroyed and reconstructed somewhere else, the reconstruction IS me. Otherwise, unless suicidal, I would never say yes to the doctor. This is why I used to argue Bruno was hoist by his own petard because its his yes-doctor assumption that forces me to 'accommodate the fact that Ive split'. Indeed. I have mentioned at times that if you accept Yes Doctor the rest of comp follows. Which I realise isn't quite true, ? You might elaborate on this. What is the rest, and why do you think it does not follow? Of course I define comp by yes doctor + Church's thesis. Bruno but that's the big leap. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:46:47 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Chris, For a computational universe to even exist it must be consistently logico-mathematical. If it weren't the inconsistencies would cause it to tear itself apart and thus it couldn't exist. Unless consistency itself is local. We see this when we wake up from dreams. It is shockingly easy for our minds to adopt dream surreality as logical and consistent. This is where the math comes from. If a computational universe exists, and ours does, it must be structured logico-mathematically. That doesn't mean that logico-mathematical structure itself must be primitive, only that the sensory modes which we use to address universal conditions use logical and mathematical methods of representation. The presence of sense itself, however, and the capacity for sense to be channeled into different modes in the first place, is not proscribed by logic or mathematics, nor can it be explained adequately (only as a skeletal reflection). But this does NOT men all human H-math exists, it just means that a fundamental logico-mathematical structure I call R-math (reality math) exists. But R-math, and 'existence' require an even more fundamental capacity to appreciate and participate in what would later be partially abstracted as R-math, which would itself be partially abstracted as H-math. Just the minimum that is necessary to compute the actual universe is all that is needed. All the rest is H-math, and we can't assume that H-math is part of R-math. In fact it is provably different. The big mistake Bruno makes is assuming that H-math is R-math. It isn't. H-math is a generalized approximation of R-math, which is then vastly extended far beyond R-math. If the universe could be reduced to the minimum that is necessary to compute, then consciousness would not serve any function. Since the whole point of reducing the real universe to a computation is to pursue the supremacy of function, we have to decide whether computationalism is wrong or whether we are wrong for thinking that there is any such thing as conscious experience. In the computational theory of reality I present in my book, information is not physical, but it is real and is the fundamental component of reality, Information is what computes physicality, or more accurately what is interpreted as physicality in the minds of organismic beings in their personal simulations of reality. Yet this information does need a substrate in which to manifest. This substrate is simply the existence space of reality itself, what I call ontological energy, which is not a physical energy, but simply the locus (non-dimensional) of the presence of reality, the living happening of being. If information needs a substrate, then it is the substrate which is actually what the universe is made of. I disagree that it is simply anything, and would say that it is not non-dimensional but trans-dimensional, as by definition it must include all opportunities to discern dimension. This foundation, which I call sense, I suggest is the presence not just of reality, but fantasy as well, and not just ontological energy, but the sole meta-ontological capacity - the primordial identity of pansentivity. A good way to visualize this is that ontological energy is like a perfectly still sea of water, and the various waves, currents, eddies etc. that can arise within the water are all the forms of information that make up and compute the universe. They have no substance of their own other than the underlying water (existence) in which they arise. And of course the nature of water determines what forms can arise within it just as the underlying nature of existence determines the types of information forms that can arise within our universe. In this theory EVERYTHING without exception is information only. I agree that the wave vs water is a fair metaphor for information vs sense, but I would say the opposite. Without exception everything is sense only. Information is only the refreshment of sense, and it is through information that sense is constantly changing. Besides being pure and clear like water, sense is also timeless, so that it is full of fish eating each other from the past and the hypothetical futures. It is only abstract computationally interacting forms that continually compute the current information state of the universe. Do computational forms really interact with each other, or do we invest their simple inertia with the pathetic fallacy? In fact, if one observes reality with trained eyes, one can actually directly observe that the only thing out there is just various kinds of information. Most of my life contains no meaningful information. It is all sensory interactions. It is not just about about doing and knowing, but feeling and appreciating. After all ANYTHING that is observable is by
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 26 February 2014 17:04, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi David, On 24 Feb 2014, at 17:32, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 15:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Feb 2014, at 02:41, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 01:04, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: *This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome.* Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. Correct me if I'm misremembering Chris, but I seem to recall proposing to you on a previous occasion that Hoyle's pigeon hole analogy can be a useful way of tuning intuitions about puzzles of this sort, although I appear to be the sole fan of the idea around here. Hoyle's idea is essentially a heuristic for collapsing the notions of identity, history and continuation onto the perspective of a single, universal observer. From this perspective, the situation of being faced with duplication is just a random selection from the class of all possible observer moments. Well, the just might be not that easy to define. If the universal observer is the universal machine, the probability to get a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you. But how would you remember that? By noting it in my diary, by inquesting my past, and hacking data banks, or reading book on my origin. Well, I'm not sure if it makes sense to say the Hoyle's universal observer is the universal machine. I don't know to what extent his idea is compatible with comp. But to be clear, you suggested above that a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you, so I asked you how Bruno, for example, could remember that, meaning to suggest that of course you could not. I suppose it would be some sort of problem for Hoyle's idea if one suspected not simply that certain classes of non-human observer vastly out-numbered human ones, but that they were likely to be asking themselves similar sorts of questions. IOW, what might constitute an appropriate equivalence class for ourselves? I am not sure that the notion of observer moment makes sense, without a notion of scenario involving a net of computational relative states. I think the hypostases describe a universal person, composed from a universal (self) scientist ([]p), a universal knower ([]p p), an observer ([]p p), and a feeler ([]p p p)). But I would not say that this universal person (which exist in arithmetic and is associated with all relatively self-referential correct löbian number) will select among all observer moment. Well, perhaps eventually it will select all of them, if we can give some relevant sense to eventually in this context. Is this not done by simple 3p arithmetical realism? Not, I think, in the 1p sense, without a certain amount of equivocation. There is a sense God select them all, but they inter-relations are indexicals. Yes, but the inner God cannot select them all simultaneously, without the equivocation to which I refer. And I suppose Hoyle's point is that if one imagines a logical serialisation of all such moments, its order must be inconsequential because of the intrinsic self-ordering of the moments themselves. That is the mathematical conception of an order, and there are dualities between those ways of considering a structure. You can already see that with the modal logic, where properties of accessibility will characterize modal formula and theories. Essentially he is saying that the panoptic bird view is somehow preserved at the frog level, at the price of breaking the simultaneity of the momentary views. I am not sure I understand. I think he is saying (as did Schroedinger) that the frog must see every indexical reality, but cannot see them all simultaneously. The hypostatic universal person is more like a universal baby, which can split in a much larger spectrum of future 1p histories, but from its first person perspective it is like it has still to go through the histories to get the right relative statistics on his
Re: Digital Neurology
On 26 Feb 2014, at 13:08, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 26 February 2014 04:51, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The point of this is that if the brain is responsible for consciousness it is absurd to suppose that the brain's behaviour could be replaced with a functional analogue while leaving out any associated qualia. This constitutes a proof of functionalism, and of its subset computationalism if it is further established that physics is computable. ? On the contrary if computationalism is correct the physics cannot be entirely computable, some observable cannot be computed (but it might be no more that the frequency-operator, like in Graham Preskill. But still, we must explain why physics seems computable, despite it result of FMP on non computable domains). If you start with the assumption that the physics relevant to brain function is not computable then computationalism is false: it would be impossible to make a machine that behaves like a human, either zombie or conscious. I agree with you, the physics *relevant* to brain function has to be computable, for comp to be true. But the point is that below the substitution level, the physical details are not relevant. Then by the FPI, they must be undetermined, and this on an infinite non computable domain, and so, our computable brain must rely on a non computable physics, or a non necessarily computable physics, with some non computable aspect. This is what comp predicts, and of course this is confirmed by QM. Again, eventually, QM might to much computable for comp to be true. That is what remain to be seen. Also,you are not using functionalism in its standard sense, which is Putnam names for comp (at a non specified level assumed to be close to neurons). What do you mean by function? If you take all functions (like in set theory), then it seems to me that functionalism is trivial, and the relation between consciousness and a process, even natural, become ambiguous. But if you take all functions computable in some topos or category, of computability on a ring, or that type of structure, then you *might* get genuine generalization of comp. What I mean by functionalism is that the way the brain processes information, its I/O behaviour, is what generates mind. This implies multiple realisability of mental states, insofar as the same information processing could be done by another machine. If the machine is a digital computer then functionalism reduces to computationalism. If the brain utilises non-computable physics then you won't be able to reproduce its function (and the mind thus generated) with a digital computer, so computationalism is false. However, that does not necessarily mean that functionalism is false, since you may be able to implement the appropriate brain function through some other means. For example, if it turns out that a digital implementation of the brain fails because real numbers and not approximations are necessary, it may still be possible to implement a brain using analogue devices. OK, but that functionalism seems to me trivially true. How could such functionalism be refuted, if you can invoke arbitrary functions? (Also, functionalism is used for a stringer (less general) version of computationalism, by Putnam, so this use of functionalism is non standard and can be confusing. Last remark, I am not sure that the notion of information processing can make sense in a non digital framework. In both quantum and classical information theory, information is digital (words like bits and qubits come from there). I don't think we have to settle for Bruno's modest assertion that comp is a matter of faith. It has to be, from a theoretical point of view. Assuming you are correct when betting on comp, you cannot prove, even to yourself (but your 1p does not need that!) that you did survive a teleportation. Of course I take proof in a rather strong literal sense. Non comp might be consistent with comp, like PA is inconsistent is consistent with PA. What can be proved is that if consciousness is due to the brain then replicating brain function in some other substrate will also replicate its consciousness. OK. What I meant is that we cannot prove that consciousness is due to the brain. 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
Re: Block Universes
On 26 Feb 2014, at 15:32, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Stathis, At least we AGREE there is NO empirical evidence for a block universe. There is no evidence for a universe. (in the usual aristotelian sense of the word). But there is OVERWHELMING evidence for flowing time and a present moment. Not 3p evidences, and the relativity theory makes it senseless (as Jesse made rather clear here). Your p-time seems transitive, and this implies p-time is block-time. The experience of our existence in a present moment is the most fundamental empirical observation of our existence. It is a 1p evidence. It is not sharable. Using that type of evidence is not allow in polite conversation. And all science, all knowledge, is based on empirical observation. OK. But consciousness and flowing time are not empirical evidence. They are complex data top explain, but cannot be taken for granted, or even well defined. So, in the face of this obvious weight of evidence, why do you insist on a block universe instead of a universe in which time flows? Isn't it crazy to reject what there is enormous evidence for and accept what there is NO evidence for? That is what you do. There are no evidence for any universe, and indeed, as you assume comp, you could understand that there is no universe. The notion is close to inconsistent, and explanatively empty. Physicists measure numbers, and infer relation among numbers. Then even cosmological theories usually avoid metaphysical commitment. This is done by physicalist philosophers, and can make sense, but then not together with the assumption that the brain functions mechanically at some level. If you doubt this, then you must find a flaw in the UD Argument. Bruno Edgar On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 5:39:21 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 08:07, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stathis, I know that's your point. You are just restating it once again, but you are completely UNABLE TO DEMONSTRATE IT without using some example in which time is already FLOWING. Since you can't demonstrate it, there is no reason to believe it. Belief in a block universe becomes a matter of blind faith, rather than a logical consequence of anything, and it is certainly NOT based on any empirical evidence whatsoever. I'm not arguing that there is empirical evidence for a block universe, just that a block universe is consistent with our experience. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Craig, Well again, since you have such an anthropomorphized view of reality in which everything in the universe seems to be modeled on human functioning, I don't see any meaningful way we can discuss these issues Best, Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:29:14 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:46:47 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Chris, For a computational universe to even exist it must be consistently logico-mathematical. If it weren't the inconsistencies would cause it to tear itself apart and thus it couldn't exist. Unless consistency itself is local. We see this when we wake up from dreams. It is shockingly easy for our minds to adopt dream surreality as logical and consistent. This is where the math comes from. If a computational universe exists, and ours does, it must be structured logico-mathematically. That doesn't mean that logico-mathematical structure itself must be primitive, only that the sensory modes which we use to address universal conditions use logical and mathematical methods of representation. The presence of sense itself, however, and the capacity for sense to be channeled into different modes in the first place, is not proscribed by logic or mathematics, nor can it be explained adequately (only as a skeletal reflection). But this does NOT men all human H-math exists, it just means that a fundamental logico-mathematical structure I call R-math (reality math) exists. But R-math, and 'existence' require an even more fundamental capacity to appreciate and participate in what would later be partially abstracted as R-math, which would itself be partially abstracted as H-math. Just the minimum that is necessary to compute the actual universe is all that is needed. All the rest is H-math, and we can't assume that H-math is part of R-math. In fact it is provably different. The big mistake Bruno makes is assuming that H-math is R-math. It isn't. H-math is a generalized approximation of R-math, which is then vastly extended far beyond R-math. If the universe could be reduced to the minimum that is necessary to compute, then consciousness would not serve any function. Since the whole point of reducing the real universe to a computation is to pursue the supremacy of function, we have to decide whether computationalism is wrong or whether we are wrong for thinking that there is any such thing as conscious experience. In the computational theory of reality I present in my book, information is not physical, but it is real and is the fundamental component of reality, Information is what computes physicality, or more accurately what is interpreted as physicality in the minds of organismic beings in their personal simulations of reality. Yet this information does need a substrate in which to manifest. This substrate is simply the existence space of reality itself, what I call ontological energy, which is not a physical energy, but simply the locus (non-dimensional) of the presence of reality, the living happening of being. If information needs a substrate, then it is the substrate which is actually what the universe is made of. I disagree that it is simply anything, and would say that it is not non-dimensional but trans-dimensional, as by definition it must include all opportunities to discern dimension. This foundation, which I call sense, I suggest is the presence not just of reality, but fantasy as well, and not just ontological energy, but the sole meta-ontological capacity - the primordial identity of pansentivity. A good way to visualize this is that ontological energy is like a perfectly still sea of water, and the various waves, currents, eddies etc. that can arise within the water are all the forms of information that make up and compute the universe. They have no substance of their own other than the underlying water (existence) in which they arise. And of course the nature of water determines what forms can arise within it just as the underlying nature of existence determines the types of information forms that can arise within our universe. In this theory EVERYTHING without exception is information only. I agree that the wave vs water is a fair metaphor for information vs sense, but I would say the opposite. Without exception everything is sense only. Information is only the refreshment of sense, and it is through information that sense is constantly changing. Besides being pure and clear like water, sense is also timeless, so that it is full of fish eating each other from the past and the hypothetical futures. It is only abstract computationally interacting forms that continually compute the current information state of the universe. Do computational forms really interact with each other, or do we invest their simple inertia with the pathetic fallacy? In fact, if one observes
Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3
On 26 Feb 2014, at 16:18, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Jason, This initially interesting post of course exposes fundamental flaws in its logic and the way that a lot of people get mislead by physically impossible thought experiments such as the whole interminable p-clone, p-zombie discussion on this group. First there is of course no physical mechanism that continually produces clones and places them in separate rooms, nor is there any MW process that does that, so the whole analysis is moot, and frankly childish as it doesn't even take into consideration what aspects of reality change randomly and which don't. Specifically it's NOT room numbers that seem random, it's quantum level events. If anyone is looking for the source of quantum randomness I've already provided an explanation. It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. But sadly no one on this group is interested in quantum theory, only relativity, and far out philosophies such as 'comp'. This list started from QM and Everett-QM. Then comp generalizes Everett embedding of the physicist in the physical reality, to an embedding of the mathematicians in arithmetic, with an indeterminacy occurring for a similar reason. Bruno Edgar If you read carefully it assumes a single real present moment self that has the experience of being in one room or the other. On Wednesday, February 26, 2014 8:49:03 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote: I came upon an interesting passage in Our Mathematical Universe, starting on page 194, which I think members of this list might appreciate: It gradually hit me that this illusion of randomness business really wasn't specific to quantum mechanics at all. Suppose that some future technology allows you to be cloned while you're sleeping, and that your two copies are placed in rooms numbered 0 and 1 (Figure 8.3). When they wake up, they'll both feel that the room number they read is completely unpredictable and random. If in the future, it becomes possible for you to upload your mind to a computer, then what I'm saying here will feel totally obvious and intuitive to you, since cloning yourself will be as easy as making a copy of your software. If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. In other words, causal physics will produce the illusion of randomness from your subjective viewpoint in any circumstance where you're being cloned. The fundamental reason that quantum mechanics appears random even though the wave function evolves deterministically is that the Schrodinger equation can evolve a wavefunction with a single you into one with clones of you in parallel universes. So how does it feel when you get cloned? It feels random! And every time something fundamentally random appears to happen to you, which couldn't have been predicted even in principle, it's a sign that you've been cloned. 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. 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: Block Universes
Bruno, Your contention that there is no evidence for a universe is simply delusional. The very fact you can make any statement absolutely PROVES a universe of some kind. Your contention is so absurd it's laughable.. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 10:14:29 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 26 Feb 2014, at 15:32, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Stathis, At least we AGREE there is NO empirical evidence for a block universe. There is no evidence for a universe. (in the usual aristotelian sense of the word). But there is OVERWHELMING evidence for flowing time and a present moment. Not 3p evidences, and the relativity theory makes it senseless (as Jesse made rather clear here). Your p-time seems transitive, and this implies p-time is block-time. The experience of our existence in a present moment is the most fundamental empirical observation of our existence. It is a 1p evidence. It is not sharable. Using that type of evidence is not allow in polite conversation. And all science, all knowledge, is based on empirical observation. OK. But consciousness and flowing time are not empirical evidence. They are complex data top explain, but cannot be taken for granted, or even well defined. So, in the face of this obvious weight of evidence, why do you insist on a block universe instead of a universe in which time flows? Isn't it crazy to reject what there is enormous evidence for and accept what there is NO evidence for? That is what you do. There are no evidence for any universe, and indeed, as you assume comp, you could understand that there is no universe. The notion is close to inconsistent, and explanatively empty. Physicists measure numbers, and infer relation among numbers. Then even cosmological theories usually avoid metaphysical commitment. This is done by physicalist philosophers, and can make sense, but then not together with the assumption that the brain functions mechanically at some level. If you doubt this, then you must find a flaw in the UD Argument. Bruno Edgar On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 5:39:21 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 08:07, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stathis, I know that's your point. You are just restating it once again, but you are completely UNABLE TO DEMONSTRATE IT without using some example in which time is already FLOWING. Since you can't demonstrate it, there is no reason to believe it. Belief in a block universe becomes a matter of blind faith, rather t ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On Friday, February 28, 2014 10:14:56 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, Well again, since you have such an anthropomorphized view of reality in which everything in the universe seems to be modeled on human functioning, I don't see any meaningful way we can discuss these issues I could say that your view is merely mechanemorphized, in which everything in the universe seems to be realized in the absence of direct experience. My view is intentionally designed to recognize that these two extremes define the continuum of sense, which, although is ultimately slightly more anthropomorphic than mechanemorphic, it has nothing to do with human experience in particular. It is 'reality' which is anthropomorphized - I submit that the foundation of the universe transcends realism. Thanks, Craig Best, Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:29:14 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:46:47 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Chris, For a computational universe to even exist it must be consistently logico-mathematical. If it weren't the inconsistencies would cause it to tear itself apart and thus it couldn't exist. Unless consistency itself is local. We see this when we wake up from dreams. It is shockingly easy for our minds to adopt dream surreality as logical and consistent. This is where the math comes from. If a computational universe exists, and ours does, it must be structured logico-mathematically. That doesn't mean that logico-mathematical structure itself must be primitive, only that the sensory modes which we use to address universal conditions use logical and mathematical methods of representation. The presence of sense itself, however, and the capacity for sense to be channeled into different modes in the first place, is not proscribed by logic or mathematics, nor can it be explained adequately (only as a skeletal reflection). But this does NOT men all human H-math exists, it just means that a fundamental logico-mathematical structure I call R-math (reality math) exists. But R-math, and 'existence' require an even more fundamental capacity to appreciate and participate in what would later be partially abstracted as R-math, which would itself be partially abstracted as H-math. Just the minimum that is necessary to compute the actual universe is all that is needed. All the rest is H-math, and we can't assume that H-math is part of R-math. In fact it is provably different. The big mistake Bruno makes is assuming that H-math is R-math. It isn't. H-math is a generalized approximation of R-math, which is then vastly extended far beyond R-math. If the universe could be reduced to the minimum that is necessary to compute, then consciousness would not serve any function. Since the whole point of reducing the real universe to a computation is to pursue the supremacy of function, we have to decide whether computationalism is wrong or whether we are wrong for thinking that there is any such thing as conscious experience. In the computational theory of reality I present in my book, information is not physical, but it is real and is the fundamental component of reality, Information is what computes physicality, or more accurately what is interpreted as physicality in the minds of organismic beings in their personal simulations of reality. Yet this information does need a substrate in which to manifest. This substrate is simply the existence space of reality itself, what I call ontological energy, which is not a physical energy, but simply the locus (non-dimensional) of the presence of reality, the living happening of being. If information needs a substrate, then it is the substrate which is actually what the universe is made of. I disagree that it is simply anything, and would say that it is not non-dimensional but trans-dimensional, as by definition it must include all opportunities to discern dimension. This foundation, which I call sense, I suggest is the presence not just of reality, but fantasy as well, and not just ontological energy, but the sole meta-ontological capacity - the primordial identity of pansentivity. A good way to visualize this is that ontological energy is like a perfectly still sea of water, and the various waves, currents, eddies etc. that can arise within the water are all the forms of information that make up and compute the universe. They have no substance of their own other than the underlying water (existence) in which they arise. And of course the nature of water determines what forms can arise within it just as the underlying nature of existence determines the types of information forms that can arise within our universe. In this theory EVERYTHING without exception is information only. I agree that the wave vs water is a fair metaphor for information vs sense, but I would say the opposite.
Re: Is information physical?
Ok, Thanks. We're back to the Observer again, where all things are decided at the quantum. From here on the questions tumble forth as a cascade, on whether the Observer is conscious, who is the Observer, what is the Observer? -Original Message- From: Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 5:15 pm Subject: Re: Is information physical? On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 05:01:51PM -0500, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Not to be a dick, but is not information or data perforations, and pulses, in mater and energy? This is how we recognize information from background noise, correct? Is there a third state of reality that is not matter or energy? Only when interpreted by an observer. An electrical circuit has only voltages and currents, not bits. To an observer, a voltage on a data line might be interpreted as 1 if it is greater than 3V, and zero if it is less than 1V. In between those two thresholds, the voltage might be determinate, but the information is not. The third state, as you call it, is a semantically different picture where things are described in terms of whether some physical state is the same as, or different from, some other physical state, according to the interpretation of an observer. From that, comes bits, and all the other information-based quantities. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: The solar example of a town in Germany
It does. You cannot fake electricity. You cannot fake electric current. If you are depending on solar power for 20% of your electricity supply, and the rest for coal, because coal is reliable on a 7 x 24 basis, you can only rely on solar for a slim fraction of electricity. You haven't solved the problem in a technical manner, all one is doing is employing solar for a fraction of total electricity consumption, to make ones self feel better. This is not engineering, it is ideology- a faith movement to make one feel better, without providing clean power to power one's civilization. How long must we wait for miracle power sources, if the shadow of Climate Change is overwhelming us all? It is politics and not health, and not engineering that is driving this issue, right? Mitch -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 6:17 pm Subject: Re: The solar example of a town in Germany Why does it matter if London can produce 4x the energy it uses? This is why we have national grids (which would be helped even more by being linked up across national borders...oh hang on they already are, aren't they?) This is why there are people in power stations keeping an eye on the load and bringing different sources online as needed. If you have all rooftops covered in PV then you *will* need to burn less fossil fuel, even if you have to fill in the gaps with coal or oil or hydro or nuclear. I can't see the point of this it has to be all or nothing argument. -- 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: Block Universes
Jesse, With regards to your contention in your first paragraph below it may express the correct view of frame DEPENDENT simultaneity, but that is NOT the point I'm making. I'll try to explain more clearly. This example is revised to attempt to conform with your previous objections so please bear with me. I'll keep it short... Take twins who start and finish a trip with the same proper ages. Define their trips as symmetric in the sense they both experience exactly equivalent proper accelerations at the exact same moments by their own proper clocks. (This is a new definition of symmetric.) This is why their ages must be the same when they meet. Now first I still maintain that in this case it is simple logic to conclude that there is a 1:1 correlation of their proper times during the trip, but I think we can now do better than that. Take the beginnings and ends of every phase of their acceleration changes, beginning with the start of the trip, as event markers. Now you, yourself, tell us that the proper times between every one of these markers is invariant. Now the question is whether these two invariant proper time sequences are synchronized or not. Whether there is a 1:1 correlation of proper times as each twin passes through these event markers that are defined identically in terms of each twin's proper acceleration? You point out that from the POV of all arbitrary frames they won't be, BUT the point is we MUST use a frame that MAINTAINS the real and actual symmetry to determine the ACTUAL REALITY of this situation. In any frame that PRESERVES that symmetry the observer WILL conclude that the proper times of both twins between all markers will be exactly the same, and thus the proper times of the twins at every one of these symmetric markers will be equal. Thus we do have a natural 1:1 correlation between the proper times of the twins that is also consistent with the direct observational agreement of proper times at start and finish, which we must account for in any accurate analysis. So my point is that there is a REAL AND ACTUAL SYMMETRY between the trips of the twins, and thus to get an accurate view of that real symmetry we must analyze it in a frame that preserves that symmetry. And when we do this we DO achieve a 1:1 correlation of proper ages during the trip, which must obviously be correct if they are to meet with the same ages. My whole approach depends on recognizing the difference between what is REALLY HAPPENING to someone as opposed to how any other observer may VIEW what is happening to that OTHER person. It is always what is actually happening to someone that is the reality irrespective of other's VIEWS of that reality. You consistently present the correct relativistic analysis of relativistic VIEWS without recognizing there is an ACTUAL REALITY involved that can be properly analyzed only by frames that recognize and preserve that reality. Do you agree that if we choose a frame that preserves the real and actual symmetry of the trip that we do get EQUAL proper times between all markers on the twins respective trips? And thus that we CAN establish a 1:1 correlation of proper times in this case? Edgar On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:11:08 PM UTC-5, jessem wrote: On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Jesse, My understanding of the first part of your reply is though proper time is ONLY one's reading of one's own clock (as I stated) it IS possible for any other observer to calculate that proper time and always come up with the same answer. Is that correct? For a given clock C, it is possible for any observer to calculate the proper time between events ON C'S OWN WORLDLINE, and everyone will get the same answer (it is frame-invariant). But what is NOT frame-invariant is the answer to a question like what is the proper time on that distant clock RIGHT NOW, at the same moment that my own clock shows some specific time T--in that case you aren't talking about a specific event on C's worldline, you're talking about a specific event on your worldline (the event of your clock showing time T), and asking which event on C's worldline is simultaneous with that. Since simultaneity is frame-dependent in relativity, there is no frame-invariant answer to this second type of question. If so that's precisely what I've been claiming all along! That it's always possible for any observer to calculate any other observer's PROPER TIME. Why did I get the strong impression you were claiming that wasn't so from your previous replies? That is precisely the whole crux of my case, and precisely what I've been claiming In my view that is exactly what is necessary to establish a 1:1 correlation between proper times. If everyone can always calculate everyone's proper times including their own in an UNAMBIGUOUS INVARIANT WAY then why isn't it possible to
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 26 Feb 2014, at 19:37, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: provide the algorithm of prediction. Why? What does that have to do with the price of eggs? FPI is about the feeling of self and prediction has nothing to do with it. FPI = first person indeterminacy Sorry, I was guessing something along the lines of FPI = first person interpretation. ??? You are the one describing the FPI as a crazy discovery. You keep seeing ambiguity, but you take not the times to simply focus on the point. Your obscure homemade acronym for something that already has a perfectly good name, uncertainty, has tripped me up yet again. No one is interested in your personal problem. And I'm afraid I can't do as you request, I am unable to provide an algorithm that can correctly predict all external events that could effect me. You said that we have to interview all copies and I agree. After the interviews this is what we find: W has not refuted it. M has not refuted it. W M have confirmed it. In the 3-1 views. I guess you're right, after all you invented the 3-1 views so you must know what it means. I wish I did. You, sir, are quite a challenge. (AUDA shows that all lobian numbers can understand UDA) You miss this only by confusing the 3-1 view and the 1-view, Who's the 1-view? Each of them. Who is this Mr. them who has the 1-view? We don't need to know that to make the reasoning. We can stay in the usual 3p description, where the 1p are defined by the personal content of the individual diaries. Take the iterated WM-self duplication, then, here, at some stage, I can interview one of the 2^n copies, which really means that there are 2^n diaries, that is 2^n 1-views. It is an exercise to show that most get algorithmically incompressible but has a normal distribution. The *typical* subjective 1p life of a copy is a WWWMWMMMWMM...M and in his diary is a refutation of all previews attempt to predict the future of his diary. Hope this helps. Bruno 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. 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: Is information physical?
Spud, Based on a computational universe all things are just information states. Thus computational changes to any information state constitutes a generic experience (what I call an Xperience). Thus any information state is in effect a generic observer. This is a neat and useful definition because then human observers are seen as just special cases of a universal phenomenon and we neatly incorporate observers as an essential aspect of reality. We can then even view the universe as consisting of Xperience only. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 10:51:00 AM UTC-5, spudb...@aol.com wrote: Ok, Thanks. We're back to the Observer again, where all things are decided at the quantum. From here on the questions tumble forth as a cascade, on whether the Observer is conscious, who is the Observer, what is the Observer? -Original Message- From: Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au javascript: To: everything-list everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript: Sent: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 5:15 pm Subject: Re: Is information physical? On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 05:01:51PM -0500, spudb...@aol.com javascript: wrote: Not to be a dick, but is not information or data perforations, and pulses, in mater and energy? This is how we recognize information from background noise, correct? Is there a third state of reality that is not matter or energy? Only when interpreted by an observer. An electrical circuit has only voltages and currents, not bits. To an observer, a voltage on a data line might be interpreted as 1 if it is greater than 3V, and zero if it is less than 1V. In between those two thresholds, the voltage might be determinate, but the information is not. The third state, as you call it, is a semantically different picture where things are described in terms of whether some physical state is the same as, or different from, some other physical state, according to the interpretation of an observer. From that, comes bits, and all the other information-based quantities. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au javascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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.com javascript:. 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:29:52 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien?When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). That's even more eliminativist IMO. To say that consciousness is identical to the function of a machine at least acknowledges that phenomenology is causally efficacious. To add in supervenience to non-computational epiphenomena is not really functionalism or digital functionalism or computationalism. What is overlooked is that supervenience and emergence both depend themselves on consciousness to provide a perspective in which some phenomena appear to 'emerge' from the supervening substrate. From the point of view of computation, surely computationalism cannot allow that consciousness comes as a surprise. From any comp perspective, we humans can define consciousness as emergent or supervenient, but surely arithmetic itself would not define its own conscious functionality as non-computational. But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. What self-sufficient functional history do you mean? When I use history I'm generally talking about a collection of aesthetic resources which have been accumulated through direct experience and remain present implicitly locally and explicitly in the absolute sense. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? Semi remember. However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a resolution of the dichotomy between apparently disparate accounts in a more powerful explanatory framework; one that could, for example, explain how *just this kind of infrastructure* might emerge as the mise-en-scène for *just these kinds of dramatis personae*. Comp is a candidate for that framework if one accepts at the outset that there is some functional level of substitution for the brain. If one doesn't, there is certainly space for alternatives, but it is fair to demand a similar reconciliatory account in all cases, rather than a distortion of particular facts to suit one's preference. I agree. Who is calling for facts to be distorted? Once you have pansensitivity as the primordial identity, then computation becomes explainable as the skeletal reflection of sense through insensitivity (pan-entropy (pan-negentropy)). This replaces UDA and places a limit on computation to the context of public facing communication/encapsulation and leaves some aspect of privacy trans-measurable and locally omnipotent. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It
Re: Block Universes
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: You point out that from the POV of all arbitrary frames they won't be, BUT the point is we MUST use a frame that MAINTAINS the real and actual symmetry to determine the ACTUAL REALITY of this situation. Why? You give no rational justification for why reality should coincide with the frame where the coordinates assigned to their paths are symmetrical as opposed to any other frame which makes the same physical predictions, this just seems like a quasi-aesthetic intuition on your part. But I also have a more definitive argument against identifying simultaneity in the frame where their paths look symmetrical with any sort of absolute simultaneity--because, as I have said over and over, it leads directly to contradictions when we consider multiple symmetrical pairs of observers, and the transitive nature of absolute simultaneity/p-time. If you will just respond to my Feb 24 post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/dM2tcGYspfMJ as you promised to do earlier, then as soon as we are completely settled on the matter of whether events that have the same space and time coordinates in an inertial frame must have happened at the same p-time, we can go back and look at the Alice/Bob/Arlene/Bart example at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/pxg0VAAHJRQJwhich PROVES that a contradiction follows from your assumptions, given the premise that events with the same space and time coordinates in an inertial frame happened at the same p-time. Do you agree that if we choose a frame that preserves the real and actual symmetry of the trip that we do get EQUAL proper times between all markers on the twins respective trips? And thus that we CAN establish a 1:1 correlation of proper times in this case? The real and actual symmetry is that they have symmetrical proper accelerations as a function of proper time, but ALL frames preserve this symmetry. I agree that we are free to use a frame where their coordinate velocities and proper time as a function of coordinate time are ALSO symmetrical, but these are simply statements about coordinates, I see no reason to consider them any more real and actual than the coordinates assigned to their paths in any other frame. Jesse -- 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: Block Universes
Jesse, First I would appreciate it if you didn't snip my proximate post that you are replying to... Anyway we MUST choose a frame that preserves the symmetry because remember we are trying to establish a 1:1 proper time correlation BETWEEN THE TWINS THEMSELVES (not them and anyone else), and it is only a symmetric frame that preserves the facts as EXPERIENCED BY THE TWINS THEMSELVES. ALL we need to do in my p-time theory is demonstrate that each twin can correlate his OWN proper time with that of the other twin. All the other frames are the views of OTHER observers, not the views of the twins themselves which is all that we need to consider to establish whether the TWINS THEMSELVES can establish a 1:1. Obviously if all observers agreed on an invariant 1:1 correlation we never would have to establish the 1:1 on a successive observer pair basis and then try to prove it transitive as I've consistently worked on doing. MY theory establishes this 1:1 correlation BETWEEN THE ACTUAL TWINS THEMSELVES on a pairwise basis, not on the basis of any invariance. Therefore it obviously uses a symmetric frame that is consistent with how those two twins experience their own and each other's realities and doesn't require input from any other frames to do that. MY theory then attempts to prove these correlations are transitive on a pair by pair basis, not by considering all irrelevant frames and trying to establish some invariance that I agree is impossible. Does this make it clear what my theory is trying to do? The theory is based on pair wise correlations, not invariance Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 11:55:40 AM UTC-5, jessem wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: You point out that from the POV of all arbitrary frames they won't be, BUT the point is we MUST use a frame that MAINTAINS the real and actual symmetry to determine the ACTUAL REALITY of this situation. Why? You give no rational justification for why reality should coincide with the frame where the coordinates assigned to their paths are symmetrical as opposed to any other frame which makes the same physical predictions, this just seems like a quasi-aesthetic intuition on your part. But I also have a more definitive argument against identifying simultaneity in the frame where their paths look symmetrical with any sort of absolute simultaneity--because, as I have said over and over, it leads directly to contradictions when we consider multiple symmetrical pairs of observers, and the transitive nature of absolute simultaneity/p-time. If you will just respond to my Feb 24 post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/dM2tcGYspfMJas you promised to do earlier, then as soon as we are completely settled on the matter of whether events that have the same space and time coordinates in an inertial frame must have happened at the same p-time, we can go back and look at the Alice/Bob/Arlene/Bart example at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/pxg0VAAHJRQJwhich PROVES that a contradiction follows from your assumptions, given ... -- 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: Block Universes
On 27 Feb 2014, at 04:45, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Can you agree to this at least? To repeat what I said in my second-to-last post: 'If you continue to ask me Do you agree? type questions while ignoring the similar questions I ask you, I guess I'll have to take that as a sign of contempt, in which case as I said I won't be responding to further posts of yours. Any response is better than just completely ignoring questions, even if it's something like I find your questions ambiguous or you've asked too many questions and I don't have time for them all right now, please narrow it down to one per post.' If you decide to treat me with the same basic level of respect I have treated you, rather than making a show of asking me questions while you contemptuously ignore my requests that you address mine, then I will keep going with this. If not, I have better things to do. I think some people does not argue, they fake it only. Edgar does not answer the question asked. Bruno Jesse -- 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: Block Universes
On 28 Feb 2014, at 00:10, LizR wrote: Any attempt to separate out time from space-time and remain within the context of special relativity is bound to fail, because SR is the unification of space and time. In Newtonian theory there was absolute space and absolute time. In SR there is only absolute space- time (in the sense of invariant distances through space-time). In SR, time is relative, and lunch time doubly so. :) 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 16:44, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:29:52 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien?When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). That's even more eliminativist IMO. I wouldn't disagree. You should have read on a bit further. To say that consciousness is identical to the function of a machine at least acknowledges that phenomenology is causally efficacious. Not really. Only in a crypto-eliminativist sense, which is to say no sense at all. To add in supervenience to non-computational epiphenomena is not really functionalism or digital functionalism or computationalism. What is overlooked is that supervenience and emergence both depend themselves on consciousness to provide a perspective in which some phenomena appear to 'emerge' from the supervening substrate. From the point of view of computation, surely computationalism cannot allow that consciousness comes as a surprise. From any comp perspective, we humans can define consciousness as emergent or supervenient, but surely arithmetic itself would not define its own conscious functionality as non-computational. Slipping surely into a sentence doesn't make a contention any the more plausible. It is certainly not obvious how one can begin from arithmetic and arrive at consciousness. I have already argued that the assumption of a first-personal reality, transcending any third-personal description of it, is necessitated from the outset in any theory that purports to take consciousness seriously (and that includes comp, by definition). The theory must then show how this reality comes to be discoverable under the appropriate conditions, but it doesn't thereby pull it out of a hat by magic. I think it would be foolish to expect that the consequences of any theory dealing with such fundamental questions would be obvious and therefore criticisms on the grounds of its failure to meet uninformed expectation are beside the point. . But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. What self-sufficient functional history do you mean? The physical history of the systems in question, for example. When I use history I'm generally talking about a collection of aesthetic resources which have been accumulated through direct experience and remain present implicitly locally and explicitly in the absolute sense. You could hardly call that a functional history though. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? Semi remember. Well, the analogy was that fact that the pixels are an adequate infrastructure for the portrayal of any possible drama that will fit within their confines doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of those dramas. Analogously, the fact that we can give a functional account of the brain doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of consciousness. Since we can't appeal to an external source of interpretation as we can in the analogy, we must look for a schema that can make sense of internal interpretation. If comp is correct, that interpretation requires us to cast our net pretty wide. However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Sorry, I was guessing something along the lines of FPI = first person interpretation. ??? !!! You are the one describing the FPI as a crazy discovery. No, I'm the one who keeps saying that first person indeterminacy (I dislike homemade acronyms) was discovered not by you but by Mr. Og the caveman. AUDA shows that all lobian numbers can understand UDA Google has more information than any human being but even Google doesn't know what lobian numbers are. And Google doesn't know what AUDA is. And Google doesn't know what UDA is. That's 9 words with 4 of them made up and used by nobody in any language except by you. Well, at least 56% were real words. Who is this Mr. them who has the 1-view? We don't need to know that to make the reasoning. We can stay in the usual 3p description, where the 1p are defined by the personal content of the individual diaries. There are no diaries there is only a diary and it was written by the Washington Man AND the Moscow Man. The *typical* subjective 1p life of a copy is a WWWMWMMMWMM...M Finding an infinite regress at the heart of a idea doesn't necessarily mean it's worthless, but it's never a good sign. and in his diary is a refutation of all previews attempt to predict the future of his diary. Two people wrote that diary Mr. Washington and Mr. Moscow, and I don't know who Mr. his is. Hope this helps. It does not. 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: Block Universes
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Jesse, First I would appreciate it if you didn't snip my proximate post that you are replying to... Anyway we MUST choose a frame that preserves the symmetry because remember we are trying to establish a 1:1 proper time correlation BETWEEN THE TWINS THEMSELVES (not them and anyone else), and it is only a symmetric frame that preserves the facts as EXPERIENCED BY THE TWINS THEMSELVES. ALL we need to do in my p-time theory is demonstrate that each twin can correlate his OWN proper time with that of the other twin. But you agreed earlier (in your post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/PYrVLII1ClYJ ) that the idea of calling the comoving inertial frame of an observer their own frame is purely a matter of CONVENTION, not anything imposed on them by reality. So, we could easily choose a different convention--one in which each twin defines their own frame, or what they experience themselves, as the inertial frame in which they have a velocity of 0.99c along the x-axis. If they both agreed to define the facts as experienced by the twins themselves in this way, by convention, they could also agree on a 1:1 correlation between their proper times, one that would be different from the 1:1 correlation they'd get if they used the comoving frame. Do you wish to take back your earlier agreement that phrases like their own frame, their view, what they observe/experience are only by CONVENTION understood to refer to the comoving inertial frame, that this isn't something forced on us by reality? If you still agree this is a matter of convention, then it seems to me that trying to use something that's merely a matter of human linguistic convention to prove something absolute about reality is obviously silly, like trying to prove something about the essential nature of God by noting that according to the spelling conventions of English, God is dog spelled backwards. All the other frames are the views of OTHER observers, not the views of the twins themselves which is all that we need to consider to establish whether the TWINS THEMSELVES can establish a 1:1. Obviously if all observers agreed on an invariant 1:1 correlation we never would have to establish the 1:1 on a successive observer pair basis and then try to prove it transitive as I've consistently worked on doing. MY theory establishes this 1:1 correlation BETWEEN THE ACTUAL TWINS THEMSELVES on a pairwise basis, not on the basis of any invariance. Therefore it obviously uses a symmetric frame that is consistent with how those two twins experience their own and each other's realities and doesn't require input from any other frames to do that. That isn't obvious at all--I don't see how the symmetric frame reflects their experience in any way that isn't purely a matter of convention, they certainly don't experience their proper times and velocities being equal at each coordinate time if they don't CHOOSE to use a particular coordinate system. All that they directly experience in a way that doesn't depend on coordinate systems is the way that their proper acceleration varied as a function of their proper time. MY theory then attempts to prove these correlations are transitive on a pair by pair basis, not by considering all irrelevant frames and trying to establish some invariance that I agree is impossible. Does this make it clear what my theory is trying to do? The theory is based on pair wise correlations, not invariance My proof of a contradiction in your ideas about p-time doesn't consider the other frames you consider irrelevant either, it is based SOLELY on the following premises: 1. If a pair of inertial observers are at rest relative to one another, then events (like clock readings) that are simultaneous in their comoving frame are also simultaneous in p-time 2. Any two events that happen at precisely the same position and time coordinate in a particular inertial frame must be simultaneous in p-time 3. p-time simultaneity is transitive Your only response was to dispute premise #2, but subsequent discussion suggested you were originally misunderstanding what I meant by same position and time coordinate and that properly understood, you would most like agree with premise #2 after all. That's why I want you to address my last few questions about the same position and time coordinate issue at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/jFX-wTm_E_Q/dM2tcGYspfMJwhich you promised to address earlier, but have subsequently ignored all my requests to get back to. Once again, if you continue to just ignore the requests, that indicates a lack of respect for me and for the two-way nature of discussions. Here, I'll even repost those questions to save you the time of going back through your inbox to find the original post to reply to: On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 6:53 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.netwrote: Jesse, Well, I
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Why bother with all these other power sources when you have a fusion reactor in the astronomical backyard? Because the energy density decreases with the square of the distance and the fusion reactor is 93 million miles away, and because the energy drops to zero for at least half the time. It still delivers thousands of times more energy to earth than human civilisation uses. Yes but economically the total amount of energy, or of anything else for that matter, is not important, the important thing is the amount per unit volume. Only 174,000* tons *of gold has been mined in all of human history and right now in seawater there is 69 thousand times as much, 12 billion tons. And yet nobody bothers to extract gold from seawater because the concentration is so dilute (about 5 parts in a trillion) that it would not be economical to do so. 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: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 12:45 AM, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.comwrote: Well if you can store 61 times more energy, that just means there's room for improvement in the existing batteries... Good news, if nature was able to do it so can we I hope. Zinc-air batteries, offers about twice the gravimetric density Who gives a damn about (Wh/kg) and three times the volumetric density (Wh/L) of Li-ion technology. Lithium air has a theoretical specific energy of 11,140 wh/kg (lithium metal is around 45 Mj/kg) - you could fly an all-electric turbine jet with that kind of energy density. Le 28 févr. 2014 00:50, LizR lizj...@gmail.com a écrit : On 28 February 2014 07:47, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Lithium batteries are the most energy dense batteries in use today and also the most expensive, they can store .72 megajoules per kilogram, gasoline stores 44 megajoules per kilogram; so gasoline is 61 times more energy dense than the best batteries and is far far far cheaper. Are you talking about the real costs here or just the cost at the pump (which is of course subsidised massively by ignoring its environmental effects) ? I mean the real cost MAY be cheaper but you have to factor in saving the Earth... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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: Block Universes
On 28 Feb 2014, at 16:20, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Bruno, Your contention that there is no evidence for a universe is simply delusional. I meant the Aristotelian universe, where physics is supposed to describe the fundamental ontology, or what is. Of course I believe in something, and I take very seriously the appearance of some physical reality into account. The very fact you can make any statement absolutely PROVES a universe of some kind. I agree. And I tend to believe in the arithmetical reality. The computable is a part of the arithmetical reality, which is larger. It happens that the arithmetical computable part can infer and even mirror larger and larger part of the non computable. See the book by Matiyasevich to see how diophantine relations can simulate Turing machines. Bruno Your contention is so absurd it's laughable.. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 10:14:29 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 26 Feb 2014, at 15:32, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Stathis, At least we AGREE there is NO empirical evidence for a block universe. There is no evidence for a universe. (in the usual aristotelian sense of the word). But there is OVERWHELMING evidence for flowing time and a present moment. Not 3p evidences, and the relativity theory makes it senseless (as Jesse made rather clear here). Your p-time seems transitive, and this implies p-time is block-time. The experience of our existence in a present moment is the most fundamental empirical observation of our existence. It is a 1p evidence. It is not sharable. Using that type of evidence is not allow in polite conversation. And all science, all knowledge, is based on empirical observation. OK. But consciousness and flowing time are not empirical evidence. They are complex data top explain, but cannot be taken for granted, or even well defined. So, in the face of this obvious weight of evidence, why do you insist on a block universe instead of a universe in which time flows? Isn't it crazy to reject what there is enormous evidence for and accept what there is NO evidence for? That is what you do. There are no evidence for any universe, and indeed, as you assume comp, you could understand that there is no universe. The notion is close to inconsistent, and explanatively empty. Physicists measure numbers, and infer relation among numbers. Then even cosmological theories usually avoid metaphysical commitment. This is done by physicalist philosophers, and can make sense, but then not together with the assumption that the brain functions mechanically at some level. If you doubt this, then you must find a flaw in the UD Argument. Bruno Edgar On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 5:39:21 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 08:07, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Stathis, I know that's your point. You are just restating it once again, but you are completely UNABLE TO DEMONSTRATE IT without using some example in which time is already FLOWING. Since you can't demonstrate it, there is no reason to believe it. Belief in a block universe becomes a matter of blind faith, rather t ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. 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: Turning the tables on the doctor
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:30:22 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 12:36, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Identity isn't self contained in MSR. All identity is leased within some perspective. The more common the perspective, the longer the lease, and the more 'seems like' or 'has a similar quality' appears stabilized as 'is equal'. What is a perspective, and how would I construct or discover or recognise one without using any underlying theory of identity? A perspective is a perceptual-inertial frame. Everything that we can construct, recognize, or discover is filtered through all of the contexts of the encounter. I don't see identity as a requirement. Every human experience is filtered through their own individual frame which is dynamically compounded with each additional experience. The individual frame overlaps and underlaps with social frames, anthopological frames, zoological, biological, chemical-geological, and astrophysical-quantum frames. -- 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: Is information physical?
On 28 Feb 2014, at 13:09, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 21:35, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: When I last took a look at constructor theory, it wasn't much of a theory. I know David's been working on it, when he's not doing the chat show circuit, but hadn't heard any major development in it announced, so haven't taken another look. Do you have any papers on it? This is the most recent, I think: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7439 He says the paper is philosophical rather than technical. I agree on that. When scientists says this, it means they want to abandon rigor and scientific method. Might take closer look later, but if his point is correct, it should be testable, and would probably refute comp or put our level in the very very low. Or require a small physical universe, and an error in MGA. Bruno David -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 28 Feb 2014, at 08:20, Chris de Morsella wrote:
Personally the notion that all that exists is comp information -
encoded on what though? - Is not especially troubling for me. I
understand how some cling to a fundamental material realism; after
all it does seem so very real. However when you get right down to it
all we have is measured values of things and meters by which we
measure other things; we live encapsulated in the experience of our
own being and the sensorial stream of life and in the end all that
we can say for sure about anything is the value it has when we
measure it.
I am getting into the interesting part of Tegmark's book - I read a
bit each day when I break for lunch - so this is partly influencing
this train of thought. By the way enjoyed his description of quantum
computing and how in a sense q-bits are leveraging the Level III
multiverse to compute every possible outcome while in quantum
superposition; a way of thinking about it that I had never read
before.
Naturally I have been reading some of the discussions here, and the
idea of comp is something I also find intuitively possible. The soul
is an emergent phenomena given enough depth of complexity and
breadth of parallelism and vastness of scale of the information
system in which it is self-emergent.
Several questions have been re-occurring for me. One of these is:
Every information system, at least that I have ever been aware of,
requires a substrate medium upon which to encode itself; information
seems describable in this sense as the meta-encoding existing on
some substrate system. I would like to avoid the infinite regression
of stopping at the point of describing systems as existing upon
other and requiring other substrate systems that themselves require
substrates themselves described as information again requiring some
substrate... repeat eternally.
It is also true that exquisitely complex information can be encoded
in a very simple substrate system given enough replication of
elements... a simple binary state machine could suffice, given enough
bits.
But what are the bits encoded on?
At some point reductionism can no longer reduce And then we are
back to where we first started How did that arise or come to be?
If for example we say that math is reducible to logic or set theory
then what of sets and the various set operations? What of
enumerations? These simplest of simple things. Can you reduce the {}
null set?
What does it arise from?
Perhaps to try to find some fundamental something upon which
everything else is tapestried over is unanswerable; it is something
that keeps coming back to itch my ears.
Am interested in hearing what some of you may have to say about this
universe of the most simple things: numbers, sets; and the very
simple base operators -- {+-*/=!^()} etc. that operate on these
enumerable entities and the logical operators {and, or, xor}
What is a number? Doesn't it only have meaning in the sense that it
is greater than the number that is less than it less than the one
greater than it? Does the concept of a number actually even have any
meaning outside of being thought of as being a member of the
enumerable set {1,2,3,4,... n}?In other words '3' by itself means
nothing and is nothing; it only means something in terms of the set
of numbers as in: 234... n-1n
And what of the simple operators. When we say a + b = c we are
dealing with two separate kinds of entities, with one {a,b,c} being
quantities or values and {+,=} being the two operators that relate
the three values in this simple equation.
The enumerable set is not enough by itself. So even if one could
explain the enumerable set in some manner the manner in which the
simple operators come to be is not clear to me. How do the addition,
assignment and other basic operators arise? This extends similarly
to the basic logic operators: and, or, xor, not - as well.
Thanks
Those kind of questions are more less clarified. You cannot prove the
existence of a universal system, or machine, or language, from
anything less powerful, but you can prove the existence of all of
them, from the assumption of only one. I use elementary arithmetic,
because it is already taught in school, and people are familiar with it.
The TOE extracted from comp assumes we agree on the laws of addition
and multiplication, and on classical logic. From this you can prove
the existence of the universal numbers and or all their computations,
and even interview the Löbian numbers, on what is possible for them,
in different relative sense.
So, math comes from arithmetic, and arithmetic can explain why it is
impossible to explain arithmetic from less than arithmetic, making
arithmetic (or Turing equivalent) a good start.
God created the Integers. All the rest came when God added Add and
Multiply.
Basically.
Bruno
--
Re: Block Universes
Bruno, Nonsense. You continually ask the exact same questions which I answered several times but just ignore my answers and keep asking the same questions, and when you rarely do respond to my answers you do so incoherently and only in terms of your own very rigid worldview. Well perhaps that's the way that 1p zombies 1p clones operate? Anyway I do answer all serious questions... Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 12:42:26 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 27 Feb 2014, at 04:45, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: Can you agree to this at least? To repeat what I said in my second-to-last post: 'If you continue to ask me Do you agree? type questions while ignoring the similar questions I ask you, I guess I'll have to take that as a sign of contempt, in which case as I said I won't be responding to further posts of yours. Any response is better than just completely ignoring questions, even if it's something like I find your questions ambiguous or you've asked too many questions and I don't have time for them all right now, please narrow it down to one per post.' If you decide to treat me with the same basic level of respect I have treated you, rather than making a show of asking me questions while you contemptuously ignore my requests that you address mine, then I will keep going with this. If not, I have better things to do. I think some people does not argue, they fake it only. Edgar does not answer the question asked. Bruno Jesse -- 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+unsubscribe javascript: ... -- 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: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 28 Feb 2014, at 15:28, David Nyman wrote: On 26 February 2014 17:04, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi David, On 24 Feb 2014, at 17:32, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 15:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Feb 2014, at 02:41, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 01:04, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome. Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. Correct me if I'm misremembering Chris, but I seem to recall proposing to you on a previous occasion that Hoyle's pigeon hole analogy can be a useful way of tuning intuitions about puzzles of this sort, although I appear to be the sole fan of the idea around here. Hoyle's idea is essentially a heuristic for collapsing the notions of identity, history and continuation onto the perspective of a single, universal observer. From this perspective, the situation of being faced with duplication is just a random selection from the class of all possible observer moments. Well, the just might be not that easy to define. If the universal observer is the universal machine, the probability to get a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you. But how would you remember that? By noting it in my diary, by inquesting my past, and hacking data banks, or reading book on my origin. Well, I'm not sure if it makes sense to say the Hoyle's universal observer is the universal machine. OK, but in this setting, the universal observer was the universal machine from the observable points of view. It is not just the universal machine. The point is that if we assume comp, it seems there is room only for the indexical self-ordering leading to rational (or over-rational) sort of past. I don't know to what extent his idea is compatible with comp. OK. But to be clear, you suggested above that a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you, so I asked you how Bruno, for example, could remember that, meaning to suggest that of course you could not. I suppose it would be some sort of problem for Hoyle's idea if one suspected not simply that certain classes of non-human observer vastly out-numbered human ones, but that they were likely to be asking themselves similar sorts of questions. IOW, what might constitute an appropriate equivalence class for ourselves? It is very complex, and I try to make sense first, then see if it make sense in comp, and from which points of view. I am not sure that the notion of observer moment makes sense, without a notion of scenario involving a net of computational relative states. I think the hypostases describe a universal person, composed from a universal (self) scientist ([]p), a universal knower ([]p p), an observer ([]p p), and a feeler ([]p p p)). But I would not say that this universal person (which exist in arithmetic and is associated with all relatively self-referential correct löbian number) will select among all observer moment. Well, perhaps eventually it will select all of them, if we can give some relevant sense to eventually in this context. Is this not done by simple 3p arithmetical realism? Not, I think, in the 1p sense, without a certain amount of equivocation. Ah... this I don't know. There is a sense God select them all, but they inter-relations are indexicals. Yes, but the inner God cannot select them all simultaneously, without the equivocation to which I refer. ? And I suppose Hoyle's point is that if one imagines a logical serialisation of all such moments, its order must be inconsequential because of the intrinsic self-ordering of the moments themselves. That is the mathematical conception of an order, and there are dualities between those ways of considering a structure. You can already see that with the modal logic, where properties of accessibility will characterize modal formula and theories. Essentially he
Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 12:45 AM, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.comwrote: Well if you can store 61 times more energy, that just means there's room for improvement in the existing batteries... Good news, if nature was able to do it so can we I hope. Zinc-air batteries, [...] offers about twice the gravimetric density Who cares about gravimetric density? (Wh/kg) and three times the volumetric density (Wh/L) of Li-ion technology. And per weight that's about one thirtieth as much energy as gasoline can store, and they tend to stop working after about 3 years. Lithium air has a theoretical specific energy of 11,140 wh/kg (lithium metal is around 45 Mj/kg) That's about the same as gasoline, and although no machine ever operates at its theoretical maximum if and when Lithium air batteries ever become practical and move out of the laboratory it will change the world. But there are huge technological challenges that must be overcome before that can happen, larger than what it would take to put a LFTR online although probably not as large as what it would take to put a fusion reactor online. 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On Friday, February 28, 2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:54:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 28 February 2014 01:05, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? I don't know why you distinguish between a function such as moving the hand and identifying the hand as your own. Because there is nothing that functionalism could allow 'your own' to mean other than 'it is available to be used by the system'. The alien hand is available to be used, but that is perceived to be irrelevant. That is consistent with consciousness being a set of aesthetic qualities and direct participation, but not consistent with consciousness being a complex set of generic skills. There must be some difference in the input from the hand or its subsequent neural processing for it to be identified as foreign, and this is consistent with the fact that there is a brain lesion in alien hand syndrome. Both of these depend on correctly working brain circuitry, which is why a brain lesion can cause paralysis but can also cause alien hand syndrome. The fact that the circuitry is damaged is irrelevant. The point is that functionalism could never allow consciousness to become separated from the functions of something else. Dis-ownership of yourself or parts of yourself doesn't make sense if the function is still there. How can you say that the fact that the circuitry is damaged is irrelevant? It shows that what you consider mysterious consciousness stuff is actually dependent on well defined physical processes. The alternative which would have made your point would be if the consciousness changed but the
Re: Block Universes
On 1 March 2014 04:14, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 26 Feb 2014, at 15:32, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Stathis, At least we AGREE there is NO empirical evidence for a block universe. There is no evidence for a universe. (in the usual Aristotelian sense of the word). True. If only because evidence isn't for things. But in any case, Edgar doesn't appear to grasp what a block universe is, as he proves by his continual meaningless comments about it. He has some weird idea that has nothing to do with the scientific concept expounded in relativity, and that's what he's arguing against. So, rather like the discussion Jesse has been having with him about p-time, this is a pointless discussion. As I mentioned (it must have been some weeks ago now) with regard to Edgar-ism, you can't argue with a religious fanatic who refuses to consider any opposing viewpoint, and who sees everything you say through the lens of his own fantasy. -- 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: Block Universes
On 1 March 2014 06:42, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 27 Feb 2014, at 04:45, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Can you agree to this at least? To repeat what I said in my second-to-last post: 'If you continue to ask me Do you agree? type questions while ignoring the similar questions I ask you, I guess I'll have to take that as a sign of contempt, in which case as I said I won't be responding to further posts of yours. Any response is better than just completely ignoring questions, even if it's something like I find your questions ambiguous or you've asked too many questions and I don't have time for them all right now, please narrow it down to one per post.' If you decide to treat me with the same basic level of respect I have treated you, rather than making a show of asking me questions while you contemptuously ignore my requests that you address mine, then I will keep going with this. If not, I have better things to do. I think some people does not argue, they fake it only. Edgar does not answer the question asked. On most forums he would have been banned as a troll, because either (a) he is too stupid to grasp the arguments of his opponents and give a rational response or (b) he is deliberately refusing to do so. The polite assumption is (b), which makes him a troll - someone who deliberately tries to provoke arguments for their own malicious amusement. If this forum wasn't full of saints, everyone would by now have given up talking to him. Instead, because we tend to believe that everyone is rational and can be educated if we try hard enough, we keep trying (I did for quite a while). But of course a troll is, in game-theoretic terms, a defector in what is mostly a community of co-operators. Hence they flourish for a while, until everyone gets tired of hitting their head against a brick wall. -- 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: Is information physical?
Surely information is an emergent concept, like entropy? Hence it isn't physical, because the physical MAY be fundamental - but even if it isn't, it's at a lower level than information. It might happen to turn out that information underlies the physical - it from bit - but that would not be what we normally consider information (i.e. the stuff that has meaning to us, stored in books and computers and minds) I think. -- 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: Is information physical?
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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: Digital Neurology
On 2/28/2014 6:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: If you start with the assumption that the physics relevant to brain function is not computable then computationalism is false: it would be impossible to make a machine that behaves like a human, either zombie or conscious. I agree with you, the physics *relevant* to brain function has to be computable, for comp to be true. But the point is that below the substitution level, the physical details are not relevant. Then by the FPI, they must be undetermined, and this on an infinite non computable domain, and so, our computable brain must rely on a non computable physics, or a non necessarily computable physics, with some non computable aspect. This is what comp predicts, and of course this is confirmed by QM. Again, eventually, QM might to much computable for comp to be true. That is what remain to be seen. If you're going to invoke uncomputable physics at low level isn't that the same as assuming inherent randomness at that low level? 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: Is information physical?
John, I agree that the substrate that information manifests in is NOT physical, it is abstract in the sense of no physicality. But the information that constitutes the universe is REAL, so the substrate it exists within is the real actual presence of existence itself. That's what brings it to life and makes it real and actual... And yes that's me. Thanks for your kind comment! Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:54:19 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript: wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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: Is information physical?
On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:04:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: John, I agree that the substrate that information manifests in is NOT physical, it is abstract in the sense of no physicality. But the information that constitutes the universe is REAL, so the substrate it exists within is the real actual presence of existence itself. That's what brings it to life and makes it real and actual... If the real actual presence of 'existence' itself is what brings information to life and makes it real and actual, why isn't that substrate what we call physics and what REALLY constitutes the universe? If information cannot be or do anything without the substrate, then how can we say that information is the important part? And yes that's me. Thanks for your kind comment! Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:54:19 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. -- 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 UDA step 3
Now on to chapter 2 and it's really good as a popular science book - lively and informative, and showing just how clever our ancestors were. Science as a detective story is a very good analogy, of course, so that helps. On 28 February 2014 12:12, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: I have just received Max's book from Amazon. I've read the first page or two. So far he has been killed by a truck in (I think) 1975. I eagerly await developments. -- 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 UDA step 3
On 27 February 2014 04:18, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: Jason, This initially interesting post of course exposes fundamental flaws in its logic and the way that a lot of people get mislead by physically impossible thought experiments such as the whole interminable p-clone, p-zombie discussion on this group. Yeah, stuff starting with p- seems to be bad news. First there is of course no physical mechanism that continually produces clones and places them in separate rooms, nor is there any MW process that does that, so the whole analysis is moot, and frankly childish as it doesn't even take into consideration what aspects of reality change randomly and which don't. Specifically it's NOT room numbers that seem random, it's quantum level events. This is the point of Schrodinger's cat - if you magnify a quantum event, it could be used to do macroscopic things, e.g. put people in separate rooms. If anyone is looking for the source of quantum randomness I've already provided an explanation. It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. OK, I'll bite. Show us the maths and the experts can see how it stacks up against Everett et al. But sadly no one on this group is interested in quantum theory, only relativity, and far out philosophies such as 'comp'. How sad it was that no one discussed QM on this list until you came along. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. 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: The solar example of a town in Germany
On 1 March 2014 04:59, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: It does. You cannot fake electricity. You cannot fake electric current. If you are depending on solar power for 20% of your electricity supply, and the rest for coal, because coal is reliable on a 7 x 24 basis, you can only rely on solar for a slim fraction of electricity. You haven't solved the problem in a technical manner, all one is doing is employing solar for a fraction of total electricity consumption, to make ones self feel better. This is not engineering, it is ideology- a faith movement to make one feel better, without providing clean power to power one's civilization. How long must we wait for miracle power sources, if the shadow of Climate Change is overwhelming us all? It is politics and not health, and not engineering that is driving this issue, right? I don't see what you're saying here. Indeed, you appear to be contradicting yourself. If solar provides 20% of your power, it provides 20% of your power. There is nothing faith based about that, assuming it's a fact (e.g. about 70% of New Zealand's power is provided by hydro, on average - that's not faith, or a miracle, or a conspiracy, it's just a fact). If solar can provide X% of your power, on average, then that means only 100-X% has to rely on fossil fuels. Hence you can reduce your fossil fuel usage by that amount, and provide that much more of a distance between civilisation and any future effects of pollution, climate change, and resource depletion. Sorry, what don't you understand here? -- 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 UDA step 3
On 2/28/2014 2:43 PM, LizR wrote: If anyone is looking for the source of quantum randomness I've already provided an explanation. It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. OK, I'll bite. Show us the maths and the experts can see how it stacks up against Everett et al. But sadly no one on this group is interested in quantum theory, only relativity, and far out philosophies such as 'comp'. On the contrary, I am interested in your theory of quantum randomness IF you can flesh it out. For example how do you describe a Stern-Gerlach experiment, a Vaidman no-interaction measurment, an EPR experiment, Bose-Einstein condensate,...? 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
bruno: God created the Integers. All the rest came when God added Add and
Multiply.
richard: I trhink the multiply mat be redundant. Is that a useful property?
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
On 28 Feb 2014, at 08:20, Chris de Morsella wrote:
Personally the notion that all that exists is comp information - encoded
on what though? - Is not especially troubling for me. I understand how some
cling to a fundamental material realism; after all it does seem so very
real. However when you get right down to it all we have is measured values
of things and meters by which we measure other things; we live encapsulated
in the experience of our own being and the sensorial stream of life and in
the end all that we can say for sure about anything is the value it has
when we measure it.
I am getting into the interesting part of Tegmark's book - I read a bit
each day when I break for lunch - so this is partly influencing this train
of thought. By the way enjoyed his description of quantum computing and how
in a sense q-bits are leveraging the Level III multiverse to compute every
possible outcome while in quantum superposition; a way of thinking about it
that I had never read before.
Naturally I have been reading some of the discussions here, and the idea
of comp is something I also find intuitively possible. The soul is an
emergent phenomena given enough depth of complexity and breadth of
parallelism and vastness of scale of the information system in which it is
self-emergent.
Several questions have been re-occurring for me. One of these is: Every
information system, at least that I have ever been aware of, requires a
substrate medium upon which to encode itself; information seems describable
in this sense as the meta-encoding existing on some substrate system. I
would like to avoid the infinite regression of stopping at the point of
describing systems as existing upon other and requiring other substrate
systems that themselves require substrates themselves described as
information again requiring some substrate... repeat eternally.
It is also true that exquisitely complex information can be encoded in a
very simple substrate system given enough replication of elements... a simple
binary state machine could suffice, given enough bits.
But what are the bits encoded on?
At some point reductionism can no longer reduce And then we are back to
where we first started How did that arise or come to be? If for example
we say that math is reducible to logic or set theory then what of sets and
the various set operations? What of enumerations? These simplest of simple
things. Can you reduce the {} null set?
What does it arise from?
Perhaps to try to find some fundamental something upon which everything
else is tapestried over is unanswerable; it is something that keeps coming
back to itch my ears.
Am interested in hearing what some of you may have to say about this
universe of the most simple things: numbers, sets; and the very simple base
operators -- {+-*/=!^()} etc. that operate on these enumerable entities and
the logical operators {and, or, xor}
What is a number? Doesn't it only have meaning in the sense that it is
greater than the number that is less than it less than the one greater
than it? Does the concept of a number actually even have any meaning
outside of being thought of as being a member of the enumerable set
{1,2,3,4,... n}?In other words '3' by itself means nothing and is
nothing; it only means something in terms of the set of numbers as in:
234... n-1n
And what of the simple operators. When we say a + b = c we are dealing
with two separate kinds of entities, with one {a,b,c} being quantities or
values and {+,=} being the two operators that relate the three values in
this simple equation.
The enumerable set is not enough by itself. So even if one could explain
the enumerable set in some manner the manner in which the simple operators
come to be is not clear to me. How do the addition, assignment and other
basic operators arise? This extends similarly to the basic logic operators:
and, or, xor, not - as well.
Thanks
Those kind of questions are more less clarified. You cannot prove the
existence of a universal system, or machine, or language, from anything
less powerful, but you can prove the existence of all of them, from the
assumption of only one. I use elementary arithmetic, because it is already
taught in school, and people are familiar with it.
The TOE extracted from comp assumes we agree on the laws of addition and
multiplication, and on classical logic. From this you can prove the
existence of the universal numbers and or all their computations, and even
interview the Löbian numbers, on what is possible for them, in different
relative sense.
So, math comes from arithmetic, and arithmetic can explain why it is
impossible to explain arithmetic from less than
Re: Is information physical?
Craig, I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. The substrate is itself formless (somewhat analogous to the concept of Tao). Within that arises all the forms whose computational interactions compute the current state of the universe. These computations compute on the basis of the laws of nature which in this model are just as much a part of reality as the information states they compute. So what we call physics is how humans mentally model and try to understand this system in terms of their H-math. Or if you wanted you could say that R-computations are the actual R-physics to distinguish that from H-physics. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:34:10 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:04:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: John, I agree that the substrate that information manifests in is NOT physical, it is abstract in the sense of no physicality. But the information that constitutes the universe is REAL, so the substrate it exists within is the real actual presence of existence itself. That's what brings it to life and makes it real and actual... If the real actual presence of 'existence' itself is what brings information to life and makes it real and actual, why isn't that substrate what we call physics and what REALLY constitutes the universe? If information cannot be or do anything without the substrate, then how can we say that information is the important part? And yes that's me. Thanks for your kind comment! Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:54:19 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Brent, Yes, that's consistent with the theory I present in my book. Specifically that computational reality itself is continuous in the sense that there are NO separate individual things. This continuous reality does however contain overlapping computational domains based on dynamic computational boundaries that emerge naturally at various scales. However it is very difficult for organisms to compute their functioning on this basis so they had to evolve a different method to improve their functioning. So part of what organisms do in the mental simulations of reality on the basis of which they compute their functioning, is to model the actual continuous information of reality into discrete things and their relationships. This is done because it is much easier to compute organismic functioning on the basis of a small set discrete individual classical scale things than a huge dynamic mass of continuous elemental information. The computations become many orders of magnitude simpler. So as Cooper apparently suggests, the notion of a world consisting of distinct objects, is how humans model reality rather than reality itself. This also alludes to the origin of H-math from R-math. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:58:13 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. 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 UDA step 3
Brent, Are you addressing that question to me? You are responding to a post by Liz talking about your theory. If so I'll be glad to answer. Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 6:14:42 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:43 PM, LizR wrote: If anyone is looking for the source of quantum randomness I've already provided an explanation. It occurs as fragmentary spacetimes are created by quantum events and then merged via shared quantum events. There can be no deterministic rules for aligning separate spacetime fragments thus nature is forced to make those alignments randomly. OK, I'll bite. Show us the maths and the experts can see how it stacks up against Everett et al. But sadly no one on this group is interested in quantum theory, only relativity, and far out philosophies such as 'comp'. On the contrary, I am interested in your theory of quantum randomness IF you can flesh it out. For example how do you describe a Stern-Gerlach experiment, a Vaidman no-interaction measurment, an EPR experiment, Bose-Einstein condensate,...? 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: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 1 March 2014 03:22, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 26 Feb 2014, at 03:31, LizR wrote: Indeed. I have mentioned at times that if you accept Yes Doctor the rest of comp follows. Which I realise isn't quite true, ? You might elaborate on this. What is the rest, and why do you think it does not follow? I mean the rest as I understand it. Yes Doctor implies that identity relies on a capsule memory, and hence that H=M and H=W, and also that H=simulated M / W, H = M+100 years, and so on. Of course I define comp by yes doctor + Church's thesis. That is why I realise it isn't quite true that YD implies everything, because you need CT and AR. But if you accept the Doctor's offer then you are committing to a capsule theory of identity which implies most of what you have said about duplication experiments with delays, VR, and so on. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 1 March 2014 11:58, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. It isn't just us. Subatomic physics indicates that the world consists of distinct objects, and keeps track of the number of them. -- 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: Block Universes
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 04:14:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: Isn't it crazy to reject what there is enormous evidence for and accept what there is NO evidence for? That is what you do. There are no evidence for any universe, and indeed, as you assume comp, you could understand that there is no universe. The notion is close to inconsistent, and explanatively empty. Physicists measure numbers, and infer relation among numbers. Then even cosmological theories usually avoid metaphysical commitment. This is done by physicalist philosophers, and can make sense, but then not together with the assumption that the brain functions mechanically at some level. Sorry to be pernicketty, but if you are working in a theory that makes no ontologicical commitment (or metaphysical, which I assume is the same thing), then how does that contradict your reversal result? It is only a theory _about_ phenomena, not about what's ontologically real. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
The great thing is, we don't need to *store* all the energy we use. Quite a lot of it is generated on the basis of the load being drawn from a grid, and that energy can be created by any means available, or indeed a mixture, with the undesirable (polluting/running out) forms being replaced whenever possible with sustainable sources. So arguing that solar power etc are of no use because the power can't be stored very efficiently, and that therefore we shouldn't bother, is as daft as arguing that if solar only contributed 20% of our power needs it wouldn't be worthwhile. -- 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.
The way the future was
Dear old Isaac Asimov's predictions for the distant future of 2014. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asimov-predictions-from-1964-brief-report-card/ -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:32:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. These shapes appear to be letters and words also, but they aren't. All it takes is a small chemical change in your brain and 1+1 could = mustard. Even in a completely normative state of mind, 1+1 = 2 doesn't apply to everything. Once cloud plus one cloud equals one large cloud, or maybe one raining cloud. Math is about a very specific aspect of sense - the sense which objects make when we count them. That sense is abstracted into a language which extends it beyond literal objects to virtual objects, but no matter what you do with math, it has no subjective interior. It's about doing and knowing that is desired by what which is already feeling and being. Doing and knowing by itself, if such a thing could exist, would be information, but it could never feel or be anything. -- 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: Is information physical?
On Friday, February 28, 2014 7:30:22 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Craig, I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. The substrate is itself formless (somewhat analogous to the concept of Tao). Within that arises all the forms whose computational interactions compute the current state of the universe. Then the substrate is not formless, is all trans-formal. All forms are produced, preserved, and dissolved within it, through it, for it, etc. The substrate is sense - the capacity for appreciation and participation which records itself as form. Information is what sense does and knows, not what it is and experiences. These computations compute on the basis of the laws of nature which in this model are just as much a part of reality as the information states they compute. If the substrate is sense, then you don't need to have laws of nature. Sense is intrinsically sensible. It acts lawfully as well as spontaneously and creatively. It cheats at its own rules and then pretends to forget that it cheated. So what we call physics is how humans mentally model and try to understand this system in terms of their H-math. Or if you wanted you could say that R-computations are the actual R-physics to distinguish that from H-physics. I agree, but I'm saying that what we call information is how humans mentally model and try to understand how the system is measured in terms of their H-Math. The R is not physics or computation, it is aesthetic participation. R-Math is a silhouette of that which we mistake for the essence. Math is not the essence of consciousness or presence, it is the essence of distance and absence. Craig Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:34:10 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:04:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: John, I agree that the substrate that information manifests in is NOT physical, it is abstract in the sense of no physicality. But the information that constitutes the universe is REAL, so the substrate it exists within is the real actual presence of existence itself. That's what brings it to life and makes it real and actual... If the real actual presence of 'existence' itself is what brings information to life and makes it real and actual, why isn't that substrate what we call physics and what REALLY constitutes the universe? If information cannot be or do anything without the substrate, then how can we say that information is the important part? And yes that's me. Thanks for your kind comment! Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:54:19 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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: Is information physical?
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 10:51:00AM -0500, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Ok, Thanks. We're back to the Observer again, where all things are decided at the quantum. From here on the questions tumble forth as a cascade, on whether the Observer is conscious, who is the Observer, what is the Observer? Interesting questions, to be sure, but all quite irrelevant to information theory. All an observer needs to do for information theory is detect a difference (that makes a difference). Cheers -Original Message- From: Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 5:15 pm Subject: Re: Is information physical? On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 05:01:51PM -0500, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Not to be a dick, but is not information or data perforations, and pulses, in mater and energy? This is how we recognize information from background noise, correct? Is there a third state of reality that is not matter or energy? Only when interpreted by an observer. An electrical circuit has only voltages and currents, not bits. To an observer, a voltage on a data line might be interpreted as 1 if it is greater than 3V, and zero if it is less than 1V. In between those two thresholds, the voltage might be determinate, but the information is not. The third state, as you call it, is a semantically different picture where things are described in terms of whether some physical state is the same as, or different from, some other physical state, according to the interpretation of an observer. From that, comes bits, and all the other information-based quantities. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 2/28/2014 5:09 PM, LizR wrote: On 1 March 2014 11:58, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. It isn't just us. Subatomic physics indicates that the world consists of distinct objects, and keeps track of the number of them. Of course that's *our theory of subatomic physics*. Naturally we explain the world in terms we understand. But in fact the objects, e.g. the quarks in a nucleus are not really that distinct. And remember how states Boltzmann counted as distinct turned out to need Bose-Einstein counting. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 2:36 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:32:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. These shapes appear to be letters and words also, but they aren't. All it takes is a small chemical change in your brain and 1+1 could = mustard. Even in a completely normative state of mind, 1+1 = 2 doesn't apply to everything. Once cloud plus one cloud equals one large cloud, or maybe one raining cloud. (I'll try to elaborate and clarify in MSR terms; apologies if I get it wrong or miss the topic, as it is very high level stuff...) And since every raindrop can in principle be assigned to a cloud, the number of raindrops equals the number of possible clouds which also equal one (because normative brain cloud), which equals two (as sense is abstracted into a language which extends it beyond literal objects to virtual objects with no subjective interior, so who cares, right?), which equals mustard in your sense brain individuality map, which isn't the territory, as you all know by now. I just asked my mustard bottle in the fridge, and it confirmed no desire for a subjective interior feeling of being, with its silence. Why would an entity be silent if it had subjective interior feeling? You don't think mustard bottles chat on internet lists about their internal state while staying silent via some mustard-yellow-spicy-wireless LAN emergent qualia fridge intelligence, do you? Ha, gottcha! That's where we miss perhaps the subtleties of MSR. I really wish this would be the final word and champion MSR as the final TOE, because the day we can convince our banks of this point, everybody with a positive balance becomes infinitely rich and everybody with negative balance gets some fuzzy amount of mustard. Maybe then I could afford the time to thoroughly understand MSR's main points, which again, as enumerated and therefore arithmetic points, all abstract themselves into a language which extend it beyond literal objects to virtual objects with no subjective interior desire territories, thus boiling it down to one brain point wherein, to my amazement, Silicon Valley, MSR, NSA meet, chanting: the cloud! The cloud as the mustard of sense. But I don't know if I have that time to really grasp MSR yet. It's my first post working with it... so how am I doing, Craig? PGC Math is about a very specific aspect of sense - the sense which objects make when we count them. That sense is abstracted into a language which extends it beyond literal objects to virtual objects, but no matter what you do with math, it has no subjective interior. It's about doing and knowing that is desired by what which is already feeling and being. Doing and knowing by itself, if such a thing could exist, would be information, but it could never feel or be anything. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 1 March 2014 15:48, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 5:09 PM, LizR wrote: On 1 March 2014 11:58, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. It isn't just us. Subatomic physics indicates that the world consists of distinct objects, and keeps track of the number of them. Of course that's *our theory of subatomic physics*. Naturally we explain the world in terms we understand. But in fact the objects, e.g. the quarks in a nucleus are not really that distinct. And remember how states Boltzmann counted as distinct turned out to need Bose-Einstein counting. Well obviously it could be wrong, like any theory, but it looks to me as though it contains distinct objects, and does some form of accounting on them. For example colliding an electron and positron creates a gamma ray of a specific wavelength, which could be turned back into the particles again under some circumstances. (Also, you are slightly begging the question. *Why* do we understand the world in those terms?) -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 1 March 2014 14:36, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 5:32:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. These shapes appear to be letters and words also, but they aren't. All it takes is a small chemical change in your brain and 1+1 could = mustard. Even in a completely normative state of mind, 1+1 = 2 doesn't apply to everything. If it's a fact, it's irrelevant whether my brain thinks it's mustard. Once cloud plus one cloud equals one large cloud, or maybe one raining cloud. Math is about a very specific Please don't come out with the cloud example, I've heard that so many times but it's never become any more relevant. Surely you know I'm talking about the abstract concepts? aspect of sense - the sense which objects make when we count them. That sense is abstracted into a language which extends it beyond literal objects to virtual objects, but no matter what you do with math, it has no subjective interior. It's about doing and knowing that is desired by what which is already feeling and being. Doing and knowing by itself, if such a thing could exist, would be information, but it could never feel or be anything. Well, that's me told. Next time I want to make a point with you is it OK if I quote I am the Walrus ? -- 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 situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Friday, February 28, 2014 12:23 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 12:45 AM, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com wrote: Well if you can store 61 times more energy, that just means there's room for improvement in the existing batteries... Good news, if nature was able to do it so can we I hope. Zinc-air batteries, [...] offers about twice the gravimetric density Who cares about gravimetric density? Evidently you don't; that much is clear. The automobile companies that are moving towards electric vehicles care - and care a lot. Just because you don't give a fig does not mean that your opinion is universally shared. Increasing the storage potential per unit of mass - say as wh/kg for example - is critical in order to extend the range of electric vehicles. (Wh/kg) and three times the volumetric density (Wh/L) of Li-ion technology. And per weight that's about one thirtieth as much energy as gasoline can store, and they tend to stop working after about 3 years. Internal combustion (ICE) motors are only between 15% to 25% efficient - so only a small fraction of the potential energy stored in the gasoline is transmitted to the wheel as useful work. Electric motors are around 80% efficient. So to compare the energy in the battery with the potential energy in the gasoline is an unfair comparison - which I am sure you are aware of (would hope so at least); but you do it, in any case, because it suits the point you are arguing. Lithium air has a theoretical specific energy of 11,140 wh/kg (lithium metal is around 45 Mj/kg) That's about the same as gasoline, and although no machine ever operates at its theoretical maximum if and when Lithium air batteries ever become practical and move out of the laboratory it will change the world. But there are huge technological challenges that must be overcome before that can happen, larger than what it would take to put a LFTR online although probably not as large as what it would take to put a fusion reactor online. The advanced battery field is moving very fast and the problems are being solved - often in parallel. Lithium air batteries would store more usable work per unit of mass than gasoline because of the inefficiency of combustion engines - even modern gas turbines are around 50% efficient. It may surprise you but I wish the US would start up an LFTR program. in fact, I wish the 8+ billion dollar loan guarantee now earmarked to fund those nuclear white elephants in Georgia was instead - much more wisely IMO - being used to kick start an LFTR program. Chris 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. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Somehow I do not find that satisfying; in what way and by what evidence does this occur? Especially - as I had posited if math is the fundamental thing - even more fundamental than the emergent material universe. I could see this logic in a pre-existing universe replete with 10 to a very large number of atoms, but if math is to be the superstructure underlying everything then I - speaking for myself - am not satisfied by saying it just is a fact. Chris -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Nevertheless, it does seem to be. That is, 17 is a prime number regardless of whether anyone knows it is, or even knows what numbers are, or indeed whether anyone is even alive (e.g. it was prime in the first instants of the big bang - maths has been used to work out what happened in the early universe, with observable consequences now). There's a lot of hand waving going on to deny this, but I haven't seen a knock down argument (or even a suggestion of one) to indicate otherwise. On 1 March 2014 18:16, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Somehow I do not find that satisfying; in what way and by what evidence does this occur? Especially - as I had posited if math is the fundamental thing - even more fundamental than the emergent material universe. I could see this logic in a pre-existing universe replete with 10 to a very large number of atoms, but if math is to be the superstructure underlying everything then I - speaking for myself - am not satisfied by saying it just is a fact. Chris -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. In that case math would emerge from our conscious minds -- growing out of our making sense of the world. Is math the fundamental basis of reality, or is it an emergent phenomena? Chris 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: The solar example of a town in Germany
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR On 1 March 2014 04:59, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: It does. You cannot fake electricity. You cannot fake electric current. If you are depending on solar power for 20% of your electricity supply, and the rest for coal, because coal is reliable on a 7 x 24 basis, you can only rely on solar for a slim fraction of electricity. You haven't solved the problem in a technical manner, all one is doing is employing solar for a fraction of total electricity consumption, to make ones self feel better. This is not engineering, it is ideology- a faith movement to make one feel better, without providing clean power to power one's civilization. How long must we wait for miracle power sources, if the shadow of Climate Change is overwhelming us all? It is politics and not health, and not engineering that is driving this issue, right? I don't see what you're saying here. Indeed, you appear to be contradicting yourself. If solar provides 20% of your power, it provides 20% of your power. There is nothing faith based about that, assuming it's a fact (e.g. about 70% of New Zealand's power is provided by hydro, on average - that's not faith, or a miracle, or a conspiracy, it's just a fact). If solar can provide X% of your power, on average, then that means only 100-X% has to rely on fossil fuels. Hence you can reduce your fossil fuel usage by that amount, and provide that much more of a distance between civilisation and any future effects of pollution, climate change, and resource depletion. Sorry, what don't you understand here? Another thing he does not understand is the concept of marginal value. If renewables contributed say one third of the power mix the marginal impact would be very large. It would mean aging, dirty coal fired plants could be retired more quickly than they could be absent this contribution. They would provide a resilience and stability to the grid - by lessening the exposure to interruptions in the supply o fuels from distant regions. Localized roof top solar especially will also lessen the load that the grid needs to carry. the grid, in the US and other industrialized nations is already pretty much at full capacity and it is very hard to increase this capacity. Rooftop solar provides grid stability services (an important value, ask anyone who lived through the great blackout of 2003 when NYC went dark); it does so by offloading demand from the grid by being able to supply a portion of that demand straight from the rooftop. Solar power also coincides with peak demand - it maps very nicely onto it. Some are making much about the need for 24 hours of power a day - but they neglect to mention that in fact there is very little demand for electric power in the wee hours of the morn - in fact this is a huge current and on-going problem, and at night wind power in Europe is on occasion even driving the spot wholesale price for electricity into negative territory.. Electric producers have to pay to put the power onto the grid. So much for the argument of this vital necessity that solar power be able to continue to be able to generate power - to supply the voracious appetite for electricity prevailing during the wee morning hours. Chris -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 2/28/2014 7:25 PM, LizR wrote: On 1 March 2014 15:48, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 5:09 PM, LizR wrote: On 1 March 2014 11:58, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 2:32 PM, LizR wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Or it comes from our conceptualizing the world as consisting of distinct objects and counting them, c.f. William S. Cooper The Origin of Reason and Lakoff and Nunez Where Mathematics Comes From. It isn't just us. Subatomic physics indicates that the world consists of distinct objects, and keeps track of the number of them. Of course that's *our theory of subatomic physics*. Naturally we explain the world in terms we understand. But in fact the objects, e.g. the quarks in a nucleus are not really that distinct. And remember how states Boltzmann counted as distinct turned out to need Bose-Einstein counting. Well obviously it could be wrong, like any theory, but it looks to me as though it contains distinct objects, and does some form of accounting on them. For example colliding an electron and positron creates a gamma ray of a specific wavelength, which could be turned back into the particles again under some circumstances. (Also, you are slightly begging the question. /Why/ do we understand the world in those terms?) We're big macroscopic things and the stuff important for our survival and reproduction is big macroscopic stuff. And big macroscopic stuff tends to keep it's identity over the time scales of our reproduction. If you draw the Feynman diagrams for that electron/positron annihilation you find that there are infinitely many of them with all kinds of loops with all kinds of particles which are improbable but not impossible; and what our theory really says is that all those things happen at once and we're just summing them all up to get the Green's function. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 2/28/2014 9:22 PM, LizR wrote: Nevertheless, it does seem to be. That is, 17 is a prime number regardless of whether anyone knows it is, or even knows what numbers are, or indeed whether anyone is even alive (e.g. it was prime in the first instants of the big bang - maths has been used to work out what happened in the early universe, with observable consequences now). There's a lot of hand waving going on to deny this, but I haven't seen a knock down argument (or even a suggestion of one) to indicate otherwise. To deny what? That 17 is prime? That's a tautology. It's our theory that the world consists of countable things - whether it really is, is questionable. 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 UDA step 3
On 26 Feb 2014, at 14:49, Jason Resch wrote: I came upon an interesting passage in Our Mathematical Universe, starting on page 194, which I think members of this list might appreciate: It gradually hit me that this illusion of randomness business really wasn't specific to quantum mechanics at all. Suppose that some future technology allows you to be cloned while you're sleeping, and that your two copies are placed in rooms numbered 0 and 1 (Figure 8.3). When they wake up, they'll both feel that the room number they read is completely unpredictable and random. If in the future, it becomes possible for you to upload your mind to a computer, then what I'm saying here will feel totally obvious and intuitive to you, since cloning yourself will be as easy as making a copy of your software. If you repeated the cloning experiment from Figure 8.3 many times and wrote down your room number each time, you'd in almost all cases find that the sequence of zeros and ones you'd written looked random, with zeros occurring about 50% of the time. In other words, causal physics will produce the illusion of randomness from your subjective viewpoint in any circumstance where you're being cloned. The fundamental reason that quantum mechanics appears random even though the wave function evolves deterministically is that the Schrodinger equation can evolve a wavefunction with a single you into one with clones of you in parallel universes. So how does it feel when you get cloned? It feels random! And every time something fundamentally random appears to happen to you, which couldn't have been predicted even in principle, it's a sign that you've been cloned. That's comp. Tegmark refers to my work in a draft of some of its early paper, but, I guess, was not allowed to keep the reference for publishing, as the publication avoids to refer to it, and I know he knows my paper. I have perhaps survived in some acknowledgement, but I am not sure. We did talk on all this, and so his I gradually hit above is a bit disingenuous. More young students, in Paris, but also elsewhere, told me that it was impossible to refer to my work, and in one instance that they were explicitly asked to refer it to other people! This confirms my feeling that my academical problem is not related to the subject, but to the fact that I am a witness of some very bad facts involving some people in some academy, and of course the disparition of the price that I got, is of the same kind. Like the clergy, academy protects itself in the hiding of scandalous affairs. At least this shows that Tegmark has no problem with step 3, and the FPI. Not sure he has seen the full consequence of computationalism, though. Bruno 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. 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: For John Clark
On 26 Oct 2013, at 19:09, Jason Resch wrote: John, I came across this today, which you might find of interest: http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9709032v1.pdf In particular section 3 goes to great pains to describe the importance of the first person / third person distinction. From the paper: A. It doesn't explain why we perceive randomness Everett's brilliant insight was that the MWI does explain why we perceive randomness even though the Schrodinger equation itself is completely causal. To avoid linguistic confusion, it is crucial that we distinguish between * the outside view of the world (the way a mathematical thinks of it, i.e., as an evolving wavefunction), and * the inside view, the way it is perceived from the subjective frog perspective of an observer in it. Therefore, the 1st / 3rd person views are not just some obscure aspect of Bruno's theory that is unknown or unused in any other part of science, it is critical in other theories of science too. You dismiss it as pee pee and that is what prevents you from arriving at the correct conclusion, I think. If you take into account the first person inside view or frog perspective, you get a different result than when you use only the third person outside view or bird perspective. Your confusion regarding the third step has nothing to do with pronouns or personal identity, it is purely due to a focus on only the objective perspective when the experiment calls for use of the subjective perspective. Exactly. Now, to nitpick a little bit, I would not conflate bird/frog and 3p/ 1p, as bird/frog gives a feeling that it is a question of scaling, where in fact it is, arguably in both QM and computationalism, a question of entanglement or isolation. In comp, entanglement being simply defined by entering, or not, in the telebox. Both in UDA and in AUDA, the 1p/3p distinction is precisely defined. Bruno Jason On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 1:59 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: In the MWI John Clark doesn't have to worry about who you is because however many copies of you there may or may not be they will never meet What does it have to do with prediction and probability ? In the MWI if John Clark is asked for a prediction or a probability or anything for that matter about you further clarification is not needed, in a thought experiment involving people duplicating machines it is. you refuse to let work your brain while you doesn't do *as you should* You doesn't well speak. 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. -- 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
Personally the notion that all that exists is comp information - encoded
on what though? - Is not especially troubling for me. I understand how some
cling to a fundamental material realism; after all it does seem so very
real. However when you get right down to it all we have is measured values
of things and meters by which we measure other things; we live encapsulated
in the experience of our own being and the sensorial stream of life and in
the end all that we can say for sure about anything is the value it has when
we measure it.
I am getting into the interesting part of Tegmark's book - I read a bit each
day when I break for lunch - so this is partly influencing this train of
thought. By the way enjoyed his description of quantum computing and how in
a sense q-bits are leveraging the Level III multiverse to compute every
possible outcome while in quantum superposition; a way of thinking about it
that I had never read before.
Naturally I have been reading some of the discussions here, and the idea of
comp is something I also find intuitively possible. The soul is an emergent
phenomena given enough depth of complexity and breadth of parallelism and
vastness of scale of the information system in which it is self-emergent.
Several questions have been re-occurring for me. One of these is: Every
information system, at least that I have ever been aware of, requires a
substrate medium upon which to encode itself; information seems describable
in this sense as the meta-encoding existing on some substrate system. I
would like to avoid the infinite regression of stopping at the point of
describing systems as existing upon other and requiring other substrate
systems that themselves require substrates themselves described as
information again requiring some substrate... repeat eternally.
It is also true that exquisitely complex information can be encoded in a
very simple substrate system given enough replication of elements... a simple
binary state machine could suffice, given enough bits.
But what are the bits encoded on?
At some point reductionism can no longer reduce And then we are back to
where we first started How did that arise or come to be? If for example we
say that math is reducible to logic or set theory then what of sets and the
various set operations? What of enumerations? These simplest of simple
things. Can you reduce the {} null set?
What does it arise from?
Perhaps to try to find some fundamental something upon which everything else
is tapestried over is unanswerable; it is something that keeps coming back
to itch my ears.
Am interested in hearing what some of you may have to say about this
universe of the most simple things: numbers, sets; and the very simple base
operators -- {+-*/=!^()} etc. that operate on these enumerable entities and
the logical operators {and, or, xor}
What is a number? Doesn't it only have meaning in the sense that it is
greater than the number that is less than it less than the one greater
than it? Does the concept of a number actually even have any meaning outside
of being thought of as being a member of the enumerable set {1,2,3,4,... n}?
In other words '3' by itself means nothing and is nothing; it only means
something in terms of the set of numbers as in: 234... n-1n
And what of the simple operators. When we say a + b = c we are dealing
with two separate kinds of entities, with one {a,b,c} being quantities or
values and {+,=} being the two operators that relate the three values in
this simple equation.
The enumerable set is not enough by itself. So even if one could explain the
enumerable set in some manner the manner in which the simple operators come
to be is not clear to me. How do the addition, assignment and other basic
operators arise? This extends similarly to the basic logic operators: and,
or, xor, not - as well.
Thanks
Those kind of questions are more less clarified. You cannot prove the
existence of a universal system, or machine, or language, from anything less
powerful, but you can prove the existence of all of them, from the
assumption of only one. I use elementary arithmetic, because it is already
taught in school, and people are familiar with it.
Sure. keep it simple; I am all for the KISS principle - an American
programmer's vernacular which stands for keep it simple stupid or the
more abrasive version keep it simple stupid - either way KISS
I am all for distilling away intervening complexity and orthogonal aspects,
in order to drill down into a problem space and abstract out the essential
qualities of interest.
Even as simple as:
0, 1
00, 01, 10, 11
000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111
Incredible software is built from this simple base operating with an equally
spare simple set of basic logic gates.
The TOE extracted from comp assumes we agree on the laws of addition and
multiplication, and on classical logic. From this you can prove the
existence of the
RE: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Friday, February 28, 2014 10:34 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Why bother with all these other power sources when you have a fusion reactor in the astronomical backyard? Because the energy density decreases with the square of the distance and the fusion reactor is 93 million miles away, and because the energy drops to zero for at least half the time. It still delivers thousands of times more energy to earth than human civilisation uses. Yes but economically the total amount of energy, or of anything else for that matter, is not important, the important thing is the amount per unit volume. Only 174,000 tons of gold has been mined in all of human history and right now in seawater there is 69 thousand times as much, 12 billion tons. And yet nobody bothers to extract gold from seawater because the concentration is so dilute (about 5 parts in a trillion) that it would not be economical to do so. But plenty of people are bothering to extract electrons from the photons. diffuse as they may be. 40 to 50 gigawatts are being added just this year. At some point don't the facts on the ground begin to speak for themselves? Chris 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. -- 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: Geography
Hi Richard, Sorry for this late answer. On 09 Jan 2014, at 20:42, Richard Ruquist wrote: Bruno Marchal: You might confuse geography and physics. The (sigma_1) arithmetic is the same for all, and the laws of physics must be given by the same laws for any universal machine. Comp makes physics invariant for all machine-observers, and entirely determined by the unique measure on all computation, as seen from the 1p view. Richard Ruquist: The geography is important. OK. Do we drive on a unique geography? In the 1p plural, yes. But in the 3p wave, no geographies is unique, they are 2^aleph_0. Are there some things, some properties like charge, mass and energy of electrons and photons that are invariant and essentially do not affect their quantum states. If so, the geography we drive on may be a constant relative to the scale of drive time. Geography may never split due to quantum state superposition. I don't see why. If I decide my holidy location with a quantum superposition, I will split the geography relatively to me. Splitting within a constant geography is rather associated with life, but not photosynthesis. The photosynthesis process somehow estimates and selects the best photon quantum state for optimal processing into sugar, which is a significant constraint on extra worlds in a many world reality. ? Perhaps that is a metaphor for how the laws of physics may optimize particle interactions. But there is no experimental evidence for such optimization outside of biology. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: MODAL 5 (was Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 28 Feb 2014, at 01:27, LizR wrote: On 28 February 2014 05:29, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: And Liz-Washington said I don't know if I am the one from Washington I drunk to much whisky and I lost the diary! And Liz-Moscow said I don't know if I am the one from Moscow, I drunk too much vodka and I lost the diary. GASP! How did you know? I am a scientist. I know nothing, but I can make theories, and my theory here is that you lost easily diaries, and might appreciate good wine and things like that, which is nice as long as you can moderate yourself, and find a way to fix your diary problem, which is needed to get a stable first person view ... :) 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: MODAL 5 (was Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 28 Feb 2014, at 02:03, meekerdb wrote: On 2/27/2014 4:27 PM, LizR wrote: On 28 February 2014 05:29, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: And Liz-Washington said I don't know if I am the one from Washington I drunk to much whisky and I lost the diary! And Liz-Moscow said I don't know if I am the one from Moscow, I drunk too much vodka and I lost the diary. GASP! How did you know? But losing the diary is no problem, if you're drunk on whisky you're from Washington, if you're drunk on vodka you're the one from Moscow. You felt in my trap. There is good whisky in Moscow, and there is good vodka in Washington, today :) Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 1 March 2014 19:04, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/28/2014 9:22 PM, LizR wrote: Nevertheless, it does seem to be. That is, 17 is a prime number regardless of whether anyone knows it is, or even knows what numbers are, or indeed whether anyone is even alive (e.g. it was prime in the first instants of the big bang - maths has been used to work out what happened in the early universe, with observable consequences now). There's a lot of hand waving going on to deny this, but I haven't seen a knock down argument (or even a suggestion of one) to indicate otherwise. To deny what? That 17 is prime? That's a tautology. It's our theory that the world consists of countable things - whether it really is, is questionable. That's a different question. I'm not arguing for the world being based on maths, I'm trying to answer the question in the thread title - where does the maths come from? My answer is that it appears to just be a fact, or to put it another way it comes from the fact that it couldn't be any other way (17 couldn't be non-prime, for example, because there is no way to arrange 17 objects, abstract or real, that lets them fitt on the intersections of a grid and exactly fill a rectangle). If you think that 17 being prime is a tautology (I may have misunderstood what you said about, but *if* you do) then you appear to agree. -- 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: MODAL 5 (was Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 28 Feb 2014, at 02:10, LizR wrote: On 28 February 2014 14:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 2/27/2014 4:27 PM, LizR wrote: On 28 February 2014 05:29, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: And Liz-Washington said I don't know if I am the one from Washington I drunk to much whisky and I lost the diary! And Liz-Moscow said I don't know if I am the one from Moscow, I drunk too much vodka and I lost the diary. GASP! How did you know? But losing the diary is no problem, if you're drunk on whisky you're from Washington, if you're drunk on vodka you're the one from Moscow. Waking up the following morning in Washington or Moscow might be a clue, too. OK. Unless you've been kidnapped by philosophers while drunk and had your brain put in a vat, of course. (I suppose the next question is whether it's a vat of whisky or vodka...) But, we might put this in the default hypotheses. We might also ask for sober volunteers, as that is common in scientific experiences involving humans. I think. 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 Feb 2014, at 03:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. Maybe it isn't always obvious that it's my hand... I believe the brain has an internal model of the body. I guess without one it wouldn't find it so easy to control it? A body's quite complicated, after all... Why should the model include its own non-functional presence though? Because the model, the machine is not just confronted with its own self-representation, but also with truth, as far as we are. Put differently, because the machine can't conflate []p and []p p. Only God can do that. Bruno Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. 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: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that it's your hand? Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. -- 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: Digital Neurology
On 28 Feb 2014, at 22:11, meekerdb wrote: On 2/28/2014 6:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: If you start with the assumption that the physics relevant to brain function is not computable then computationalism is false: it would be impossible to make a machine that behaves like a human, either zombie or conscious. I agree with you, the physics *relevant* to brain function has to be computable, for comp to be true. But the point is that below the substitution level, the physical details are not relevant. Then by the FPI, they must be undetermined, and this on an infinite non computable domain, and so, our computable brain must rely on a non computable physics, or a non necessarily computable physics, with some non computable aspect. This is what comp predicts, and of course this is confirmed by QM. Again, eventually, QM might to much computable for comp to be true. That is what remain to be seen. If you're going to invoke uncomputable physics at low level isn't that the same as assuming inherent randomness at that low level? It is a randomness or an indeterminacy, yes, but keep in mind that we have to take into account the UD, or the arithmetical, very big and important redundancy of the computations (notabluy below our substitution level). Post number (the halting number, that is 0.0001101011010100 , with i = 0 or 1 according to P_i halting or not, with P_i the ith program without input), Post number is not computable, but not completely random (it is compressible, and his compression is the non compressible Chaitin number). So, OK, it is random, but still compressible. In fact it is deep and interesting in Bennet's technical sense. And then, that randomness is not assumed here, but a consequence of the comp FPI. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Edgar L. Owen
Chris,
For a computational universe to even exist it must be consistently
logico-mathematical. If it weren't the inconsistencies would cause it to tear
itself apart and thus it couldn't exist.
However it is a fact that our own human created computational systems, can and
do incorporate random inputs (in fact sometimes relying on them) and function
increasingly well in noisy environments. And this is in spite of our
fundamental computer chip architecture being highly fault intolerant – but the
fundamental logic is much easier because of this very high signal to noise
ratio.
To build a computer with current chip architecture approaching the complexity
of a human brain you would need a power flux measured in the GWs – the human
brain is trillions of times more efficient than our modern computers.
This argues for the brain itself as a guiding template for the understanding if
evolved computational systems. And if there is one thing that pops out when
studying the brain it is just how very noisy it is…. Continuously crackling
with neuro-electric activity. We are only beginning to seriously attempt to
emulate the brain and to understand its error correction routines, to
understand quorum based algorithms etc.
When I cast around for an example of computationalism in action I am drawn to
the human brain as an exemplar, template what have you. Human made computers
are not nearly as evolved; I predict that in time there is going to be a
radical shift in chip architecture to much lower energy levels to flip a gate
(inevitably also vastly lowering signal to noise) that will be based on massive
parallelism and quorum decisional algorithms to clean the signal up… to discern
the signal in the forest of noise.
It is what we excel at… the human brain. It is the by far the best exemplar of
computationalism that we have available to us.
This is where the math comes from. If a computational universe exists, and ours
does, it must be structured logico-mathematically.
You assume that math proceeds from a computational universe, but then how do
you accomplish computations without math?
But this does NOT men all human H-math exists, it just means that a fundamental
logico-mathematical structure I call R-math (reality math) exists. Just the
minimum that is necessary to compute the actual universe is all that is needed.
I prefer to use shared language as much as possible. What exactly do you mean
by reality math? Define it in a more rigorous manner. What are its fundamental
elements and operators? Is it simple binary arithmetic operated through relays
of the seven or so basic logic gates {AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR} ?
If you want to coin a term “R-math” show some rigor and define it in terms of
math. What subset of math is R-math?
Beyond the fuzzy “minimum that is necessary”, which I get.
All the rest is H-math, and we can't assume that H-math is part of R-math. In
fact it is provably different.
Show me your proof then. And please, if you could do so using the language of
math.
The big mistake Bruno makes is assuming that H-math is R-math. It isn't. H-math
is a generalized approximation of R-math, which is then vastly extended far
beyond R-math.
I do not see how you arrive at this conclusion that Bruno assumes that the
superset of all possible math (which is what I am assuming you are intending by
your personal jargon H-math) “is” the minimum necessary set of math (by which
I suspect you intend to mean when you use this term you have coined -- R-math)
Is, is such a generic word; it is hard to pin it down to any concrete meaning
in terms of the statement you just made hear. You say Bruno assumes H-math “is”
R-math (to use your jargon, which I personally find distracting and
unnecessary)… How so? What exactly, precisely, concretely, in detail do you
mean when you say “is”?
If your “is” includes “emerges from” in the embrace of its meaning then sure…
and I do as well in that case. Complex systems emerge from simpler underlying
systems; or looking at it the other way complex systems are reducible to being
fully explained in terms of simpler systems.
Look at nature – the untold numbers of molecules all made from just 92 elements
(leaving trans-uranic elements aside); all elements all baryonic matter is made
from just six kinds of quarks and two kinds of leptons. All the colors of the
rainbow all the waves on the radio dial – all photons. The incredible tapestry
of life – from an alphabet of four letters. All our digital culture based on
bits.
Complexity emerges.
If that is what you mean by “is” then include me as well.
If you mean something else then help me out and substantively define it in
specific terms. Pin it down to a clear and unambiguously stated proposition.
In the computational
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 28 Feb 2014, at 19:14, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Sorry, I was guessing something along the lines of FPI = first person interpretation. ??? !!! You are the one describing the FPI as a crazy discovery. No, I'm the one who keeps saying that first person indeterminacy (I dislike homemade acronyms) was discovered not by you but by Mr. Og the caveman. Then he should have published. But no, it did not discovered it, and today, scientists still ignore it, or doesn't take its consequences into account. But all this is not relevant, if you are agree so much with the FPI, then you can aboard the 4th step. AUDA shows that all lobian numbers can understand UDA Google has more information than any human being but even Google doesn't know what lobian numbers are. And Google doesn't know what AUDA is. And Google doesn't know what UDA is. That's 9 words with 4 of them made up and used by nobody in any language except by you. Well, at least 56% were real words. If that is your notion of argumenting ... Who is this Mr. them who has the 1-view? We don't need to know that to make the reasoning. We can stay in the usual 3p description, where the 1p are defined by the personal content of the individual diaries. There are no diaries there is only a diary and it was written by the Washington Man AND the Moscow Man. That is close to total nonsense. The *typical* subjective 1p life of a copy is a WWWMWMMMWMM...M Finding an infinite regress at the heart of a idea doesn't necessarily mean it's worthless, but it's never a good sign. Which infinite regress? and in his diary is a refutation of all previews attempt to predict the future of his diary. Two people wrote that diary Mr. Washington and Mr. Moscow, and I don't know who Mr. his is. Not two, 2^n. And in the 3p there are 2^n diaries, and the content of each one defined the first person views. Hope this helps. It does not. I am afraid you are severely limited on this subject. You seem to be unable to count 3p diaries, which means you need to oppose something like 1+1=2 to make your point. Bruno 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. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR Nevertheless, it does seem to be. That is, 17 is a prime number regardless of whether anyone knows it is, or even knows what numbers are, or indeed whether anyone is even alive (e.g. it was prime in the first instants of the big bang - maths has been used to work out what happened in the early universe, with observable consequences now). There's a lot of hand waving going on to deny this, but I haven't seen a knock down argument (or even a suggestion of one) to indicate otherwise. Couldn't one argue that 17 (and all primes) are artifacts of the ontology of math; that they necessarily arise from and within it. Does the seeming fact that we cannot have math without primes; therefore imply that math - for lack of better words - just is? That is quite a leap - IMO. Chris On 1 March 2014 18:16, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com wrote: If it's all math, then where does math come from? Strange to say, elementary maths just appears to be a fact. That is, it is a fact that 1+1=2. Somehow I do not find that satisfying; in what way and by what evidence does this occur? Especially - as I had posited if math is the fundamental thing - even more fundamental than the emergent material universe. I could see this logic in a pre-existing universe replete with 10 to a very large number of atoms, but if math is to be the superstructure underlying everything then I - speaking for myself - am not satisfied by saying it just is a fact. Chris -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Block Universes
On 28 Feb 2014, at 21:05, Edgar L. Owen wrote: Bruno, Nonsense. You continually ask the exact same questions which I answered several times but just ignore my answers and keep asking the same questions, and when you rarely do respond to my answers you do so incoherently and only in terms of your own very rigid worldview. Define what you mean by computation. you did not answer this, or give me the link. What you did is to repeat things like reality computes, which add more mystery to the notion. You never answered if you are OK with Church thesis. Bruno Well perhaps that's the way that 1p zombies 1p clones operate? Anyway I do answer all serious questions... Edgar On Friday, February 28, 2014 12:42:26 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 27 Feb 2014, at 04:45, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote: Can you agree to this at least? To repeat what I said in my second-to-last post: 'If you continue to ask me Do you agree? type questions while ignoring the similar questions I ask you, I guess I'll have to take that as a sign of contempt, in which case as I said I won't be responding to further posts of yours. Any response is better than just completely ignoring questions, even if it's something like I find your questions ambiguous or you've asked too many questions and I don't have time for them all right now, please narrow it down to one per post.' If you decide to treat me with the same basic level of respect I have treated you, rather than making a show of asking me questions while you contemptuously ignore my requests that you address mine, then I will keep going with this. If not, I have better things to do. I think some people does not argue, they fake it only. Edgar does not answer the question asked. Bruno Jesse -- 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+unsubscribe ... -- 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: Is information physical?
On 28 Feb 2014, at 21:54, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote: information does need a substrate in which to manifest. That seems to be the case but perhaps not at the very lowest level. The integers are abstract things that aren't made of anything except other numbers and once you describe how they interact with other mathematical objects you've said all there is to say about them. In the same way in string theory the strings aren't made of anything and they have reality only in how they interact with other strings; so perhaps at the fundamental level reality not only can be described mathematically but actually IS mathematical. And that is a necessary consequence of computationalism, but this leads to the explicit problem of justifying physics from arithmetic or Turing equivalent. The math confirms this. Bruno On a completely different subject, are you Edgar Owen the antiquities dealer? If so you have a pretty cool job. 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. 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: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 01 Mar 2014, at 00:16, Richard Ruquist wrote:
bruno: God created the Integers. All the rest came when God added
Add and Multiply.
richard: I trhink the multiply mat be redundant. Is that a useful
property?
Classical logic + addition is not Turing universal
Classical logic + multiplication is not Turing universal
Classical logic + multiplication + addition IS Turing universal.
Multiplication is not redundant, but exponentiation or any other
computable functions would be, once we have add and multiply.
This is not so easy to prove, but is well known (by theoretical
computer scientists)
Bruno
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:
On 28 Feb 2014, at 08:20, Chris de Morsella wrote:
Personally the notion that all that exists is comp information -
encoded on what though? - Is not especially troubling for me. I
understand how some cling to a fundamental material realism; after
all it does seem so very real. However when you get right down to
it all we have is measured values of things and meters by which we
measure other things; we live encapsulated in the experience of our
own being and the sensorial stream of life and in the end all that
we can say for sure about anything is the value it has when we
measure it.
I am getting into the interesting part of Tegmark's book - I read a
bit each day when I break for lunch - so this is partly influencing
this train of thought. By the way enjoyed his description of
quantum computing and how in a sense q-bits are leveraging the
Level III multiverse to compute every possible outcome while in
quantum superposition; a way of thinking about it that I had never
read before.
Naturally I have been reading some of the discussions here, and the
idea of comp is something I also find intuitively possible. The
soul is an emergent phenomena given enough depth of complexity and
breadth of parallelism and vastness of scale of the information
system in which it is self-emergent.
Several questions have been re-occurring for me. One of these is:
Every information system, at least that I have ever been aware of,
requires a substrate medium upon which to encode itself;
information seems describable in this sense as the meta-encoding
existing on some substrate system. I would like to avoid the
infinite regression of stopping at the point of describing systems
as existing upon other and requiring other substrate systems that
themselves require substrates themselves described as information
again requiring some substrate... repeat eternally.
It is also true that exquisitely complex information can be encoded
in a very simple substrate system given enough replication of
elements... a simple binary state machine could suffice, given enough
bits.
But what are the bits encoded on?
At some point reductionism can no longer reduce And then we are
back to where we first started How did that arise or come to be?
If for example we say that math is reducible to logic or set theory
then what of sets and the various set operations? What of
enumerations? These simplest of simple things. Can you reduce the
{} null set?
What does it arise from?
Perhaps to try to find some fundamental something upon which
everything else is tapestried over is unanswerable; it is something
that keeps coming back to itch my ears.
Am interested in hearing what some of you may have to say about
this universe of the most simple things: numbers, sets; and the
very simple base operators -- {+-*/=!^()} etc. that operate on
these enumerable entities and the logical operators {and, or, xor}
What is a number? Doesn't it only have meaning in the sense that it
is greater than the number that is less than it less than the
one greater than it? Does the concept of a number actually even
have any meaning outside of being thought of as being a member of
the enumerable set {1,2,3,4,... n}?In other words '3' by itself
means nothing and is nothing; it only means something in terms of
the set of numbers as in: 234... n-1n
And what of the simple operators. When we say a + b = c we are
dealing with two separate kinds of entities, with one {a,b,c} being
quantities or values and {+,=} being the two operators that relate
the three values in this simple equation.
The enumerable set is not enough by itself. So even if one could
explain the enumerable set in some manner the manner in which the
simple operators come to be is not clear to me. How do the
addition, assignment and other basic operators arise? This extends
similarly to the basic logic operators: and, or, xor, not - as well.
Thanks
Those kind of questions are more less clarified. You cannot prove
the existence of a universal system, or machine, or language, from
anything less powerful, but you can prove the existence of all of
them, from the assumption of only one. I use elementary
