Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Brian, Telmo and others,

On 21 Sep 2015, at 02:49, Telmo Menezes wrote:


Hi Brian,

That's an interesting question. My take is this: I think trying to  
understand that experience is like trying to understand what it  
feels like to be an amoeba. It's just too alien.


I am not sure. I can imagine an amoeba having "proto-feeling"  
comparable to ours. An amoeba or a paramecium might feel something  
like some urge to find food when hungry, some urge to find a mate,  
some urge to build a kist due to pollution, ... A monocellular  
eukaryotic organism is a cell playing the roles of liver cells,  
digestive cells, skin cells, neuronal cells, muscular cells, etc. In  
the case of paramecium, this is more or less confirmed by the  
molecular structure of the cells, in which key molecules playing the  
corresponding role of each organ can be found. In particular we can  
anesthetize a paramecium, we can block its locomotion with inhibiters  
similar to what can inhibit our muscles, etc.
(Note that muscular and neuronal key molecules of that type have been  
found at the base of the roots of plants too, and we can indeed  
anesthetize plants).
The only difficulty for us to imagine what is like to be an amoeba  
might comes when it divides itself, but then in this list this should  
no more be a problem (except for Clark and Peck I guess).


But this does not solve Brian's difficult question. A human totally  
deprived of an environment would be more like an encysted amoeba,  
never going out of its "egg" (cyst), I think its consciousness might  
be similar to the consciousness of the virgin machine (the non  
programmed computer), which I think is similar to the consciousness we  
can have during some phase of sleep or with some drug (notably  
salvia). That is a consciousness state that we can hardly conceive,  
because it is not time-related, nor space-related. To imagine it, some  
thought experience can be given, but they will have to contain "total  
amnesia", and even this will just be a sort of approximation. In fact  
such a state of consciousness, even when lived, are not strictly  
speaking memorable. If some theories are correct, the feeling can be  
like an "home feeling". It looks like some people getting at that  
state describe it as the usual, normal consciousness when in absence  
of any hallucination: it is being like "you" before you begin any  
differentiation. Even among those who describe it as "home", some are  
quite positive about it (like bliss) and some are negative about it..  
Note that people doing deprivation of input experience in talk  
deprivation, are actually trying to get closer to such state (and some  
claims to have found it in that way).


Now, it is only recently (well since 2008) that I think that all  
universal machine are maximally conscious, and why that sort of "blank  
state", when given information/input, is somehow distracted, and will  
confuse that "out-of-time" consciousness with its growing content. If  
such state was too much easily accessible, we would get in there when  
we have problem, instead of solving the problem, and probably accept  
equally to eat and to be eaten, which is a good state at the end of  
life, but handicapping when young where we are supposed to take life,  
and its information flux, very seriously. We forget quickly our  
nocturnal dreams for probable similar reason.







We have some clues. For example, it is known that if children don't  
learn a language until a certain age, they become incapable of  
learning a language forever. There are some instances of this, with  
children being raised by animals in the wild.


I believe we depend on a lot of information that is encoded in the  
environment to become human. What you describe would be a life form,  
but not human as we understand it. A developing brain is capable of  
growing into what we understand to be a human brain, but not by  
itself.



"Humanness" is encoded in the environment, it transcends single  
bodies or what DNA can encode by itself.


I agree with this and what the others said. If you are never feed any  
input, you are in the state that "you" had before birth, and with some  
luck, after clinical death (when you don't backtrack on different  
continuations, if that is possible, as plant and experience reports  
suggest to be possible). It is not a human state of mind.


To be honest, I have done a simplification here, as a fetus *might*  
have preprogrammed human experiences and skills. Babies seem to be  
able to swim and walk immediately after birth (like horse), but  
quickly forget those skills (and perhaps associated experience) to  
learn them again through the try and error typical way for baby to  
learn (unlike horse who will just walk instinctively). So, a real  
human born in a deprivation tank might have some experience, due to  
the fact that it has some brain, will get food, etc. he will have the  
sleep phases, and might dream that 

Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Sep 2015, at 03:16, Brent Meeker wrote:

If you raise kittens in complete darkness for a few weeks they never  
develop vision.  I don't think people who are born blind hallucinate  
visions.  Those are couple of data points.  I suspect that if a  
person were to grow up without any sensory input, or extremely  
impoverished ones, they would not develop human-like thoughts or  
consciousness at all.   They would fail to be a person.


I would say that they would fail to be a human person. But they might  
be like the kind of non human person we can feel to be in state of  
extreme "complete" amnesia. It would be like to be *any* universal  
machine before having any input. Of course, here, I do speculate, but  
that hypothesis marry well the computationalist theory of  
consciousness (brain processing) and the reports of experience of some  
dissociative altered consciousness state.


Bruno





Brent

On 9/20/2015 5:21 PM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
I wonder what would happen to someone's mind if they were born in a  
white (or any color) isolation tank. What would happen as years  
wore on? Would the person ever hallucinate anything? It has only  
seen the tank for his whole life. So what would inspire him to  
hallucinate something? Can he hallucinate, say, a friend staring at  
him from across the void without ever seeing a friend or anything  
for that matter except the white isolation tank. Would he dream and  
what would he dream of? Would dreaming become one with waking?  
Would he even know what a dream is? He has never heard the word  
"dream" spoken out loud. But he knows which worlds decay faster or  
are more "curvy" in the world-line sense: dreams decay faster or  
are more "curvy" than waking events. So, locally, we usually know  
when it's a dream. When the event world-line is straight, that  
means we pretty much never know what is a dream and what is "real"?

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



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Re: Could we live forever?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Is it possible that there is a memory capture 'mechanism' naturally, using the 
Planck space level of the universe? The fun part would be that the bit streams 
(or stings)  would be magically restored back to life.Hence, immortality.  
 

-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, Sep 20, 2015 6:59 pm
Subject: Re: Could we live forever?


 
  
   
  
  
   
On Sun, Sep 20, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:


 
  
   ​ ​>> ​ You need to know how generic atoms should be 
placed in relation to other ​generic atoms.  
 


 

 
  
   ​> ​   That is a low level,   
 


 


 
​  Yes a very low level, probably much lower than necessary; the molecular 
level would be more than enough, maybe even the cellular level with a little 
chemistry at the synapses would probably get the job done.   


 

 
  
   
​> ​but in principle we cannot be sure,   
  
 


 


 ​  Being sure is not necessary, you only need to be correct. ​ 
 

  


 
  
   
 ​> ​may be we need the string level.
  
 


 


 
​  If the string level is needed (assuming that strings actually exist) 
then you become a different person 10^43 times a second. Do you think you do? 
Sorry, that was a dumb question, unless a question can be asked in the Planck 
Time (10^-43 seconds) "you" can not be asked anything. ​ 


  


 
  
   
 ​> ​if you chose the atomic level, that is very plausibly a 
good low (and thus expensive) level.   
  
 


 


   ​Expensive? The very first tiny Nanotechnological Assembler ​will be 
astronomically expensive, but it will be able to make a second Assebbler in 
about half an ​hour at virtually no cost, and a half hour after 
that there would be 4   and a half hour after that there would be   ​ 
8.And so it goes.

 
 

 
  
   

 
​>  ​>>​   ​  ​   Assuming 
computationalism 

   
  
 

   
 


​>> ​  ​ And only a fool would not make that assumption.

 

 
  
   ​> ​   Why?  
 


 


 ​  Because in the history of the world every experiment (in fact every 
observation) is consistent with computationalism and inconsistent with its 
negation.   ​   

 


 
  
   ​>> ​​If long term memory, ​or short term memory, or 
anything else is not working well then generic atoms have not been placed in 
the correct orientation relative to other generic atoms. And the exact same 
thing happens when your computer is not working well, or your can opener for 
that matter.   
 

   
  
   ​> ​   You can wish that, but you cannot pretend to know that.  
 


 


 ​  Every change in the physical brain leads to a change in 
consciousness, and every change of consciousness corresponds to a physical 
change in the brain. So what more do you need to be convinced?  ​   

  


 
  
   
 ​> ​Maybe the brain needs dark matter.
  
 


 


 
  ​Maybe computers also need dark matter, maybe they both need Tinker Bell 
too.​ 


 


 
  
   
​> ​you can do such assumption and say "yes" to the doctor, but 
you can't impose this to another,
  
 


 


 
  ​Hey I'm a libertarian, I wouldn't dream of imposing my beliefs on 
anyone.You say what you want and I'll say what I want.  ​ 
 


  ​> ​ and treating him as fool does not ring right to me.

 


 
  ​If somebody behaves like a fool it would illogical of me to treat that 
person as if he were not a fool.​ 
 
  
 
 
   John K Clark 
 


 


 

   
  
 
  
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Undecidability of the Spectral Gap

[Brent Meeker]

A fascinating application of computability theory to physics:

Undecidability of the Spectral Gap
Toby Cubitt,  David Perez-Garcia,  and Michael M. Wolf

The spectral gap—the difference in energy between the ground state and 
the first excited state—is one of the most important prop-
erties of a quantum many-body system. Quantum phase transitions occur 
when the spectral gap vanishes and the system becomes
critical. Much of physicsis concerned with understanding the phase 
diagrams of quantum systems, and some of the most challenging
and long-standing open problems in theoretical physics concern the 
spectral gap, 1–3 such as the Haldane conjecture 4 that the Heisen-
berg chain is gapped for integer spin, proving existence of a gapped 
topological spin liquid phase, 2,3 or the Yang-Mills gap conjecture 5
(one of the Millennium Prize problems). These problems are all 
particular cases of the general spectral gap problem: Given a quan-
tum many-body Hamiltonian, is the system it describes gapped or gapless? 
Here we show that this problem is undecidable, in the
same sense as the Halting Problem was proven to be undecidable by 
Turing. 6 A consequence of this is that the spectral gap of certain
quantum many-body Hamiltonians is not determined by the axioms of 
mathematics, much as Gödels incompleteness theorem implies
that certain theorems are mathematically unprovable. We extend these 
results to prove undecidability of other low temperature prop-
erties, such as correlation functions. The proof hinges on simple 
quantum many-body models that exhibit highly unusual physics in

the thermodynamic limit.


arXiv:1502.04135v1 [quant-ph] 13 Feb 2015

Brent

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Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Sep 2015, at 02:49, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

​> ​Yes, arithmetic can simulates a Turing machine,

​Arithmetic can't simulate anything unless it has access to  
something physical like a biological brain or a electronic  
microprocessor.  ​



You confuse the notion a universal machine a implement a universal b,  
with the notion of a physical universal machine c implements a  
universal machine b.


I don't assume a physical universe to start with, if only because it  
is one of the thing I want to have an explanation for (the appearance  
or the reality, as I am agnostic at the start).


the machine a implements the machine b is an arithmetical notion. It  
can be defined *in* arithmetic, and the existence of particular  
computations and emulations of computations by other computations can  
be proved already in Robinson Arithmetic.








​> ​But a primary physical reality, well I have already not much  
clue what that can be,


​It means physics is the most fundamental science and mathematics  
is just a tool humans have invented to help them figure out how  
nature in general and physics in particular works; I'm not saying  
that it true, I don't know if it is or not, I'm just saying that's  
what it means.  ​


I am OK with that epistemological version, no problem. And then what I  
say is that digital mechanism, or computationalism is incompatible  
with physics being the most fundamental science, even if physics is  
quite important. the fundamental science is theoretical computer  
science, alias mathematics, alias machine's (and other entities)  
"theologies" (the science by machines of what is bigger than  
themselves, like a "reality".








​> ​if quantum field theory is correct, it is an analog imitation  
of the digital.


​The first word of the name should have tipped you off, ​if ​ 
QUANTUM ​field theory is correct​ then nothing is analog.


There is a continuous and a diecrete quantum teleportation technic,  
and the existence or not of a physical continuum is an open problem,  
both empirically (gravitation is not yet unified with the other  
forces) and computer-science theoretically, even if they are  
compelling argument for some continuum, if only the presence of some  
random oracle due to the global FPI.







​> ​You need to make precise your theory of primary matter to  
proof that it can emulates all computations,


​I'm just playing ​devil's advocate​,​​ ​​​unlike you  
I don't claim to have proven anything​.​


Proving is my job. That is what I do. That is what mathematician does,  
in math or in applied theoretical field. When I say that RA proves the  
existence of the terminating computations, I am saying a standrd result.
You oppose this by introducing a notion of physical computation, which  
you have not yet define.


You are using vague undefined notions to criticize standard result in  
the field.





I don't know if math or physics is more fundamental; you don't know  
either but you think you do. ​



I know nothing. I give a deduction that IF computationalism is  
correct, then physics cannot be the fundamental science, and the proof  
is constructive and shows how to derive physics, and I have used this  
to derive the propositional logic of the observable, and it fits until  
now with the empirical facts.


Advantage: it explains both the quanta and the qualia. Which was the  
goal: to have a testable explanation of the appearance of a universe  
without eliminating conscious and person.






​>​>> ​ ​Physical water, like any physical stuff does not  
rely on one computations, but on an infinity of them,


​​>> ​Nobody knows if that is true or not, maybe only an  
astronomical number of calculations would be required to perfectly  
simulate water, but if you're right and a infinite amount of  
mathematics would be required to do what just a small amount of  
matter can do so effortlessly then it's game over and physics is ​ 
more fundamental than mathematics, and mathematical models can  
never be more than just approximations of the real deal.


​> ​Not at all, as this is *derived* without any phsyical  
assumption


​You just assumed that any finite amount of mathematics can only  
approximate what matter does. So how can mathematics be more  
fundamental?



I prove this. I don't assume it. Matter is given by the FPI on all  
computations in arithmetic. That is a priori not Turing emulable, but  
for computationalism to remain coherent with the empirical facts, we  
have to derive that the digital brains and the finite pieces of  
mathematics can explain the local facts and allow for digital  
universal machine to be enough stable, or we would not even exist in a  
physical  mode at all.


Bruno




  John K Clark   ​


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Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

I believe a person subjected to that kind of experiment would rather quickly 
become insane! And that if they were born into such an "experiment" the outcome 
result would be the same.
-Chris
  From: Bruno Marchal 
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
 Sent: Monday, September 21, 2015 6:09 AM
 Subject: Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams
   

On 21 Sep 2015, at 03:16, Brent Meeker wrote:

 
 If you raise kittens in complete darkness for a few weeks they never develop 
vision.  I don't think people who are born blind hallucinate visions.  Those 
are couple of data points.  I suspect that if a person were to grow up without 
any sensory input, or extremely impoverished ones, they would not develop 
human-like thoughts or consciousness at all.   They would fail to be a person.

I would say that they would fail to be a human person. But they might be like 
the kind of non human person we can feel to be in state of extreme "complete" 
amnesia. It would be like to be *any* universal machine before having any 
input. Of course, here, I do speculate, but that hypothesis marry well the 
computationalist theory of consciousness (brain processing) and the reports of 
experience of some dissociative altered consciousness state.
Bruno



 
 Brent
 
 On 9/20/2015 5:21 PM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
  
 I wonder what would happen to someone's mind if they were born in a white (or 
any color) isolation tank. What would happen as years wore on? Would the person 
ever hallucinate anything? It has only seen the tank for his whole life. So 
what would inspire him to hallucinate something? Can he hallucinate, say,  a 
friend staring at him from across the void without ever seeing a friend or 
anything for that matter except the white isolation tank. Would he dream and 
what would he dream of? Would dreaming become one with waking? Would he even 
know what a dream is? He has never heard the word "dream" spoken out loud. But 
he knows which worlds decay faster or are more "curvy" in the world-line sense: 
dreams decay faster or are more "curvy" than waking events. So, locally, we 
usually  know when it's a dream. When the event world-line is straight, that 
means we pretty much never know what is a dream and what is "real"?
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 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



 
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Fwd: Loebner prize

[Brent Meeker]

I liked her answer to this:

*User:*Do you think the US should engage in the Syrian civil war?
*Rose:*Only when it involves robots. The Terminator movies were good. 
Even Transformers are better than the usual war movie.


Brent

On 9/21/2015 8:51 AM,:

For the best "chatbot" in a "Turing test" is now to be run at
Bletchley Park annually.
The winner this year was "Rose" by Bruce & Sue Wilcox:

http://ec2-54-215-197-164.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/speech.php

I tried it and it produced decent answers about 25% of the time, which I found
quite impressive.


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Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams

[John Mikes]

Interesting set-up. Goes around the notion that our 'environment' is a
subjective composition upon whatever we (humans etc.) can compose as a
result of OUR
(partial) views collected from Nature (whatever we call so). Without such
composite there is no 'human' identified.
The details my learned listers mentioned, are partial consequences, as
looked
from diverse points of view.
(And please, do not even think that in my views either 'ontology', or
'dreams' are
objective items in such 'Nature'. Our* virtual subjectivity* (worldview, or
call it as
you wish - some like to call it* objective reality*) constructs an
environment in which the rest of such imagination can exist. So: we are
*humans* - etc.)
I accept if someone calls my views "un-scientific", I have a pretty lowly
opinion
about 'science' as we know (construed) it. I am an old (natural) scientist.
JM

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 1:57 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I believe a person subjected to that kind of experiment would rather
> quickly become insane! And that if they were born into such an "experiment"
> the outcome result would be the same.
>
> -Chris
>
> --
> *From:* Bruno Marchal 
> *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
> *Sent:* Monday, September 21, 2015 6:09 AM
> *Subject:* Re: Some questions on ontology of dreams
>
>
> On 21 Sep 2015, at 03:16, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> If you raise kittens in complete darkness for a few weeks they never
> develop vision.  I don't think people who are born blind hallucinate
> visions.  Those are couple of data points.  I suspect that if a person were
> to grow up without any sensory input, or extremely impoverished ones, they
> would not develop human-like thoughts or consciousness at all.   They would
> fail to be a person.
>
> I would say that they would fail to be a human person. But they might be
> like the kind of non human person we can feel to be in state of extreme
> "complete" amnesia. It would be like to be *any* universal machine before
> having any input. Of course, here, I do speculate, but that hypothesis
> marry well the computationalist theory of consciousness (brain processing)
> and the reports of experience of some dissociative altered consciousness
> state.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> Brent
>
> On 9/20/2015 5:21 PM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
>
> I wonder what would happen to someone's mind if they were born in a white
> (or any color) isolation tank. What would happen as years wore on? Would
> the person ever hallucinate anything? It has only seen the tank for his
> whole life. So what would inspire him to hallucinate something? Can he
> hallucinate, say, a friend staring at him from across the void without ever
> seeing a friend or anything for that matter except the white isolation
> tank. Would he dream and what would he dream of? Would dreaming become
> one with waking? Would he even know what a dream is? He has never heard the
> word "dream" spoken out loud. But he knows which worlds decay faster or are
> more "curvy" in the world-line sense: dreams decay faster or are more
> "curvy" than waking events. So, locally, we usually know when it's a dream.
> When the event world-line is straight, that means we pretty much never know
> what is a dream and what is "real"?
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>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: A scary theory about IS

[John Mikes]

Bruno wrote.
*That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the Marxist
sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal = right, in
europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power as much as
possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become itself competitive by
allowing any human to choose the state, real or virtual, to live in (= to
pay tax for)*.

Capitalism (in Adam Smith's sense?) means FOr Profit, Growth, competition,
etc.
Liberalism comes from your langiage (Liberte' - freedom).
JM

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 19 Sep 2015, at 21:16, John Mikes wrote:
>
> Bruno,
> even before (your?) prohibition-S there was some capitalistic system in
> the US,
> leading to inequality and injustice in the economical status of the
> population.
> I am not talking Marxism.
> The diverse prohibition-S (and other installments)  just made it worse.
> The basic question is *"FREEDOM" *- in my terms: *no restrictions of
> one's acting **decisions AS LONG as it doesnot hurt the 'freedom' of
> others.*
>
>
>
> That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the Marxist
> sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal = right, in
> europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power as much as
> possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become itself competitive by
> allowing any human to choose the state, real or virtual, to live in (= to
> pay tax for).
>
>
>
> Within such all subchapters are viable.
>
>
> We might agree, and have only vocabulary problem. If you defend freedom,
> we are on the same political side.
>
>
>
>
> (About 'offer/demand': how local would you go with it? the neighbor's
> demand may be high and drives up prices, while a local overproduction is
> not even paying for
> susistence of the workers. Global is not practical.)
>
>
> Global is new, and we have to adapt and revise many things. But that
> cannot be enforced: it needs good education and less lies.
>
> Prohibition must be stopped, like any violent crimes, but as you say, it
> is not the deeper culprit, which is 1500 years of authoritative argument in
> the most fundamental human science, itself supprted in part by billions
> years of nature's brainwashing. We are too much mammals, we can learn from
> the invertebrates.
>
> Let each of us do what is possible. The necessary will care of itself.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> JM
>
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 18 Sep 2015, at 21:37, John Mikes wrote:
>>
>> Bruno:
>>  could you please define* "free market"* (system?) into YOUR terms?
>> Free, but not free indeed, as you wrote:
>>
>> "*only with a regulating system making it not breaking some laws,... "*
>>
>>
>>
>> Basically that was the state in the US before prohibition.
>>
>> Free market means free contract between adults, and laws must ensure the
>> respect of the contracts, not the content of the contract.
>>
>>
>>
>> where could you STOP the list of those 'laws'?
>>
>>
>> Laws must evolve, jurisprudence, etc. I am OK with punishing people doing
>> false advertisement in the matter of health.
>>
>> I would like we avoid making something illegal because it cures some
>> important disease, and of course is a threat for those doing money on that
>> disease, like today with cannabis and cancer to take a notorious example. I
>> think that the illegality of cannabis is a crime against humanity, given
>> that the danger have been debunked, and the benefits have been proved (in
>> the sense of having been able to be repeated in all laboratories which are
>> not dependent of a big lucrative organization.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Is a 'regulating system a power?
>>
>>
>> Like the immune system in biological organism. It is a sort of power, OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> (I had a similar problem with identifying "free speech"- not only by the
>> Supremes'
>> "MONEY"definition). If market is free, it has a goal: P RO F I T Imaking.
>> It would
>> undergo the rules of offer and demand, leading to inequality.
>>
>>
>> That is why a regulating system is very important: it verifies if the law
>> of offer and demand is respected. It prevents as much as possible genuine
>> competition.
>>
>>
>>
>> The word "free"is ambigious and hard to control. Free travel? we see it
>> in EU.
>> And so on.
>>
>>
>> I agree with you. "free" designates often plausible "protagorean virtue",
>> which in machine theology can be shown to be destroyed when asserted on
>> people. That is the case with free-thinking, which leads to more hidden
>> dogma, or free-exam, etc.
>> But I am not sure for free-market, which just means that the state does
>> not intervene in the content of what is sold, with few exceptions (perhaps)
>> like radioactive material, or anything which is known to be problematic
>> (meaning the proof of the problem exist and are not political propaganda).
>> If you study the case of cannabis, all statements on its danger comes