Re: Aristotle the Nitwit

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

​>>​
>> ​Computationalism
>> ​ says ​
>> intelligent behavior is caused
>> ​ ​
>> by computations
>> ​, and I'm saying the same thing.​
>>
>
> ​> ​
> That is a fuzzy version of computationalism, and the word "cause" is
> better to avoid because it is a term admitting many senses.
>

​If there are no computations then there is no intelligent behavior, that's
what computationalism is and it's about as unfuzzy as things get. After
that we can use Darwin to form a corollary, if there is no consciousness
then there is no intelligent behavior.


> ​> ​
> Here I was alluding to the consequence of being Turing emulable physically.
>

So was I,
​
and so is
​
Computationalism
​.​

​> ​
> Of the UDA reasoning (notably), and its formalization/translation in
> elementary arithmetic.
>

​Ah but you forgot IHA.​

​> ​
> The question is well formed, and easy to answer. In Helsinki, you (whoever
> you are)
> ​ [...]
>

​If it's really a well formed question then the personal pronoun "you"
could be replaced with "John Clark" , but that can't be done without
destroying the value of the thought experiment has to the theory. In a
world with people duplicating machines the question is far too vague to
have an answer, just as in our world the question "how long is a piece of
string?" has no answer. And please, don't start going on and on about
diaries again, two people remember writing that diary; which particular
person and which particular piece of string are you talking about?   ​



> ​> ​
> know (with the hypothesis given and the protocol) with probability one
> that you will feel yourself in a box,
> ​ ​
> and that you (whoever you still are) will see one precise city after
> opening the box.
>

​Once more the wrong words are used, THEY (not you) ​
 will
​find themselves (not yourself) in BOXES (not a box) and ​
see one precise city after opening
​THEIR​ (not the)
 box
​,​
​ but that one precise city won't be the same one precise city the other
one saw. So after one precise person had been duplicated and become two
precise people tell me which one of those two precise people you're
interested in and I'll tell you which one precise city was seen by that one
precise person.


> ​> ​
> What is unknown, but still precise, is if the city will be Moscow or if it
> will be Washington.
>

​Precise?? The only thing precise I can say about the above is that both Moscow
and Washington will be. If that answer is unsatisfactory then give me a
more precise question.


> ​>> ​
>> unlike the case with the people duplicating machine stuff, with QM after
>> the experiment is over everybody in the observable universe agrees about
>> what the answer turned out to be. So although right now I don't know the
>> answer to the question "will* I* see that atom decay in the next 30
>> seconds?" it is a perfectly well formed question and 30 seconds from now
>> both I and everybody in the observable universe will agree on what the
>> answer turned out to be. But with the duplicating machine stuff NOBODY will
>> EVER agree on what the answer to the question "what city will *YOU* see
>> in 30 seconds?" turned out to be because in 30 seconds the pronoun will
>> have no unique agreed on referent, so it's not a question, it's
>> just gibberish.
>
>
> ​> ​
> That just show that in QM we have a first person *plural* notion.
>

​And if ​
Everett
​ is right then demanding a​ yes or no answer to the question "will
Schrodinger's cat breathe the cyanide poison gas?" would be silly because
it's a ill formed question that has no answer, the same as "how long is a
piece of string?" or "what city will *you* see?".

​> ​
> The superposition of the cat (say) is contagious to the observer and then
> to those the observer will meet.
>

​Some
 observer
​s​
in
​
Everett
​'s Multiverse ​will see a dead cat and some will see a live cat but none
will see a half alive half dead cat.

​>> ​
>> Personal pronouns are the lifeblood of Bruno Marchal
>> ​'s theory and would die a quick death without it.​
>>
>
> ​> ​
> That is correct.
>

​I know.​



> ​> ​
> But that is why I am able to eliminate them, as eliminating pronouns is
> technically easy for mathematical logicians.
>

​Well, I know of one ​
mathematical logician
​ who can't seem to do without personal pronouns even though this
particular mathematical logician has been asked many many many times to
frame his thought experiment without using them.


> Actually, Theaetetus got the main idea 2000 years ago, but Socrates
> refuted it, and incompleteness shows precisely where Socrates went wrong.
> Of course Socrates could
>  [blah blah]​
>

​To hell with the ancient Greeks! ​
​The ancient Greeks were nitwits.

​> ​
> There are many religions.
>

​And there are many different types of crap, but they're all crap.



> ​> ​
> Aristotle theology
> ​ [...]​
>

​What is the title of this thread? ​



> ​> ​
> the empirical evidences side on the absence of primary 

Re: The search of truth

[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 Jul 2016, at 17:32, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

To my ignorant brain, the very definition of matter needs, somehow,  
to be precisely, described, and the same with energy.



And the same with numbers, or anything we are willing to talk about.

But we can't do that.

What we can do is agreeing on some formula about them, and thus using  
what is known as axiomatic method.


This means, when we talk on fundamental question, that at some point  
we have to put the hypotheses in some language which avoids all the  
metaphysical baggage, even if the goal is a metaphysical theory (like  
a TOE has to be).


Computationalism is a priori neutral on the idea that we have to  
assume the existence of a physical reality. We have to locally assume  
it, because we bet on doctors and brains and computers, which are  
physical object, but we identofy ourselves to an immaterial entity,  
capable of surviving a digital encodings at some level.


Then it leads to a problem, for all Turing complete theory, similar to  
the "interpretation of QM problem".



Sometimes, I feel, even doing this is an impossible task. This  
exchange makes me posit two questions, related, but perhaps dull- 
making to the writers. Is it conceivable in the physics of what we  
know, that there is some physical, hyperspace, call it Platonic,  
where a computation can run?


If physicalism is right, and QM is correct, and Everett is correct, is  
not the universal wave equation such a "Platonic hyperspace"?


But if computationalism is right, you need no more than the sigma_1  
truth, for what will be said to exist, and the usual second-order  
arithmetic, analysis, for studying the statistics of the relative  
state of the sigma_1 observers, which usually will have much stronger  
beliefs than the sigma_1 beliefs. (Basically "sigma_1-complete" is the  
arithmetical version of Turing universal.


You need to understand what John Clark try to deny, which is that the  
theory of computability, alias Recursion Theory or Theoretical  
Computer Science, is a branch of mathematical logic, and it happens  
that the (partial) computable set/functions can be defined by the  
sigma_1 predicates. Gödel's beweisbar, []p, is itself sigma_1, and  
indeed, is Turing universal. That theory can be faithfully embedded in  
arithmetic. Once one universal system is fixed, machine became number  
identifiable, a bit like when one coordinate system is fixed, position  
becomes number identifiable.


In that frame, you can almost redefine physicalism itself, like by  
saying that the physical reality is that number, + some oracle may be.


But, computationalism shows that this cannot work, the physical  
computationalist bottom of the arithmetical reality seen from inside  
is necessarily given by a statistic on all the infinitely many  
computations going through your actual state. The only possible  
constraints are the logical and self-referential one, at that level.  
The physical becomes secondary: it is the border of the universal mind  
when it observes itself close enough. It is not new, Parmenides,  
Moderatus of Gades, Plotinus, Sri Aurobindo, and many others get close  
to something like this, and logically it comes from the (antic) dream  
argument.




Back to matter-energy, is a photon, or a neutrino, massless, is that  
matter or energy?


Since Einstein, this is basically the same thing. Mass is sort of  
condensed energy (E=mc^2). Nuclear energy is when the mass release  
that energy (in stars that happens all the times).




Secondly, do virtual particles, say a photon (are photons the only  
such virtual particle?), that emerge from (where?) and the re-absorb  
to (where?)??


Virtual is a relative notion in QM with Everett. To get the exact  
result we need to compute all path, but macroscopically, the random  
phasing of the aberrant histories focuses us on the shortest path. But  
that is exactly what we need to verify in arithmetic to test  
computationalism. Carzily enough, at the propositional level, it works.






I ask, philosophically, because, as we say in the States, I am not  
the sharpest tool in the shed. If calculation space for computations  
exist,



Computations exists and are "realized", "implemented" "manifested" ...  
in all the relative way in a tiny segment of arithmetic.


It seems that the physical is Turing complete, and this in many ways,  
so the physical can run universal systems, and DNA, brain and  
computers are examples. Is the ultimate reality physical or  
arithmetical? Given that we have all computations in the sigma_1  
reality, and given that a Turing machine first person view evolution  
is a statistic on all computations (in arithmetic) we can test this  
empirically.


The thing which should be obvious is that today we don't know, but  
also that thanks to QM (without collapse) the evidence are for the  
numbers dream.



where physically, might such a "phase space" exist, or is this  

Re: Aristotle the Nitwit

[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 Jul 2016, at 19:53, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​>> ​​An​ ​abstract ​universal Turing machine can  
compute​ ​exactly diddly squat​. A physical ​universal Turing  
machine ​on the other hand ​can compute ​anything capable of  
being computed.​


​> ​In your theory. No ​problem

​True.

​> but it is incompatible with computationalism.

​Bu​llshit.  Computationalism​ says ​intelligent behavior is  
caused​ ​by computations​, and I'm saying the same thing.​



That is a fuzzy version of computationalism, and the word "cause" is  
better to avoid because it is a term admitting many senses.


Here I was alluding to the consequence of being Turing emulable  
physically. We know where you stop in the argument, and nobody seemed  
to understand your point.







​>​>>​ ​Once you accept Yes-doctor,

​>> ​​But I don't accept it unless the Turing Machine  
simulating me is ​PHYSICAL.


​>​the whole point is that is enough for getting the non physical  
immaterialist consequences.


​The whole point​ of what?​


Of the UDA reasoning (notably), and its formalization/translation in  
elementary arithmetic.






​>> ​If the person is duplicated then the question "what will YOU  
see next?"is not well formed and it is equivalent to "what will  
flobkneequicks see next?"; neither question has an answer.


​> ​All your copies disagree.

​All copies will disagree about what the answer turned out to be,  
and none of them would be right and none of them would be wrong  
because the question was not well formed.



The question is well formed, and easy to answer. In Helsinki, you  
(whoever you are) know (with the hypothesis given and the protocol)  
with probability one that you will feel yourself in a box, and that  
you (whoever you still are) will see one precise city after opening  
the box. What is unknown, but still precise, is if the city will be  
Moscow or if it will be Washington. By the numerical identity of the  
copies in the reconstruction boxes, it is arguably equivalent to  
throwing a coin.






It takes more than a question mark to turn gibberish into a  
question. ​


​> ​If it was ill-formed, then the question what spin will you  
get would be ill-formed too in QM, and in physics in general.


​That is untrue because, unlike the case with the people  
duplicating machine stuff, with QM after the experiment is over  
everybody in the observable universe agrees about what the answer  
turned out to be. So although right now I don't know the answer to  
the question "will I see that atom decay in the next 30 seconds?" it  
is a perfectly well formed question and 30 seconds from now both I  
and everybody in the observable universe will agree on what the  
answer turned out to be. But with the duplicating machine stuff  
NOBODY will EVER agree on what the answer to the question "what city  
will YOU see in 30 seconds?" turned out to be because in 30 seconds  
the pronoun will have no unique agreed on referent, so it's not a  
question, it's just gibberish.



That just show that in QM we have a first person *plural* notion.

The superposition of the cat (say) is contagious to the observer and  
then to those the observer will meet.


To have that first person plural notion in the computationalist frame,  
you need to imagine a collection of persons going all together in the  
reading-annihilation box, In Helsinki. Then, after pushing the button,  
all persons "with you" will see the same city, and all observers will  
agree on which city is seen. The fact that they will also all find  
themselves in the other city change nothing for all first person view  
involved. You can make them interacting or not: it will not change  
that in Helsinki those betting on WvM won, those betting on W lose,  
and those betting on W (resp M) won and lose one halve the times in  
the average, when that experience is reiterated (say).










​>> ​The question "what will John Clark see next?" has an answer  
but Bruno absolutely insists on using the personal pronoun, hasn't  
anyone wondered why Bruno is so adamant about doing so? It's because  
personal pronouns are a convenient place to hide the gaping holes in  
Bruno's argument.


​> ​I gave you version without pronoun,

​BULLSHIT. ​Personal pronouns are the lifeblood of Bruno  
Marchal​'s theory and would die a quick death without it.​


That is correct. But that is why I am able to eliminate them, as  
eliminating pronouns is technically easy for mathematical logicians.  
The new thing is that I have shown how incompleteness makes impossible  
for a machine to avoid the distinstinction between the first person  
notions (including the selves and the related pronouns) from the third  
person selves. Actually, Theaetetus got the main idea 2000 years ago,  
but Socrates refuted it, and incompleteness shows precisely where  
Socrates went wrong. Of course Socrates could not have been aware of