Re: Holiday Exercise

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/08/2016 1:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But in step 3, I ma very careful to not use the notion of 
"consciousness", and instead a simple 3p notion of first person. 
usually many relates it two consciousness and assumes that when the 
guy say "I see Moscow", they are conscious, but that is not needed to 
get the reversal.


Maybe that is the basis of the problem. In step 3 you seem to be 
claiming nothing that could not be achieved by a non-conscious machine: 
take a machine that can take photographs and compare the resulting 
images with a data base of images of certain cities. When a match is 
found, the machine outputs the corresponding name of the city from the 
data base. Send one such machine to Washington and an identical machine 
to Moscow. They will fulfill your requirements, the W-machine will 
output W and the M-machine will output M.


This is what you are now seeming to describe. But that is not FPI. The 
"P" in the acronym stands for "person", and if the "person" is not 
conscious, it is a zombie and any output you get has no bearing on what 
will happen to conscious persons.


The zombie machines will probably not be aware of each other, but from 
that you cannot conclude that the conscious persons will not be aware of 
each other, or that consciousness necessarily differentiates on 
different inputs.


Bruce

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Re: Holiday Exercise

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/7/2016 11:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Not necessarily. A digital computer also requires that time be 
digitized so that its registers run synchronously.  Otherwise "the 
state" is ill defined.  The finite speed of light means that 
spacially separated regions cannot be synchronous.  Even if neurons 
were only ON or OFF, which they aren't, they have frequency 
modulation, they are not synchronous.


Synchronous digital machine can emulate asynchronous digital machine, 
and that is all what is needed for the reasoning.


If the time variable is continuous, i.e. can't be digitized, I don't 
think you are correct.


Brent

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Re: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real"

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

The same, though I believe the old religions would be taking on cosmological 
attributes. 
It might pep up religions rather then dissolve them.
I am guessing that UFO watching would take on a more serious bent, because who 
knows, the neighbors might be watching. Scifi would be revived. I am guessing 
that there would be a gradual re-emphasis in space travel. The tech to do the 
level of dyson engineering would involve extra monies placed on reverse 
engineering what the neighbors are doing. 



-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, Aug 7, 2016 5:05 pm
Subject: Re: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t 
real"

On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 8:45 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List
 wrote:
> What I read yesterday was that the "action" around that star experienced
> inexplicable rapid acceleration. Its probably too good to be true that we
> have another intelligent species within our galaxy. Something will get
> re-evaluated, or star materials will get an explanation that is natural.
>
> What do you feel would be the reaction of our species if magically, it gets
> determined that it is indeed Dyson builders?

That's something I like to think about too.

My optimistic bet is that it would reduce in-fighting. Suddenly our
small differences might appear irrelevant when confronted with the
existence of alien intelligence. Worrying about skin colors might seem
a bit silly given the threat of hyper-intelligent 7 meter tall
spider-like beings :)

Another consequence would be knowing for sure that it is possible to
get to the Dyson sphere civilization level. Maybe that would be
another incentive for more cooperation.

I also suspect organized religion would take a big hit. Of course many
would deny any scientific evidence of the existence of our galactic
neighbors, as they do already with the fossil record, for example.

And you?

Cheers,
Telmo.

>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Telmo Menezes 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Sun, Aug 7, 2016 1:14 pm
> Subject: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t
> real"
>
> What do you guys think of this?
>
> http://gizmodo.com/the-so-called-alien-megastructure-just-got-even-more-my-1784883811?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook_source=io9_facebook_medium=socialflow
>
> Cheers
> Telmo.
>
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Re: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real"

[Telmo Menezes]

On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 8:45 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List
 wrote:
> What I read yesterday was that the "action" around that star experienced
> inexplicable rapid acceleration. Its probably too good to be true that we
> have another intelligent species within our galaxy. Something will get
> re-evaluated, or star materials will get an explanation that is natural.
>
> What do you feel would be the reaction of our species if magically, it gets
> determined that it is indeed Dyson builders?

That's something I like to think about too.

My optimistic bet is that it would reduce in-fighting. Suddenly our
small differences might appear irrelevant when confronted with the
existence of alien intelligence. Worrying about skin colors might seem
a bit silly given the threat of hyper-intelligent 7 meter tall
spider-like beings :)

Another consequence would be knowing for sure that it is possible to
get to the Dyson sphere civilization level. Maybe that would be
another incentive for more cooperation.

I also suspect organized religion would take a big hit. Of course many
would deny any scientific evidence of the existence of our galactic
neighbors, as they do already with the fossil record, for example.

And you?

Cheers,
Telmo.

>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Telmo Menezes 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Sun, Aug 7, 2016 1:14 pm
> Subject: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t
> real"
>
> What do you guys think of this?
>
> http://gizmodo.com/the-so-called-alien-megastructure-just-got-even-more-my-1784883811?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook_source=io9_facebook_medium=socialflow
>
> Cheers
> Telmo.
>
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Re: Holiday Exercise

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/7/2016 7:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


So I suggest that instead of starting with the hypothesis that 
consciousness is a computation,


Please, I insist that consciousness is NOT a computation. 
Consciousness is an 1p notion, and you cannot identify it with *any* 3p.


But then you must say "No." to the doctor, because what he proposes to 
is a 3p equivalent substitute for your brain.


Brent

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Re: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real"

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

What I read yesterday was that the "action" around that star experienced 
inexplicable rapid acceleration. Its probably too good to be true that we have 
another intelligent species within our galaxy. Something will get re-evaluated, 
or star materials will get an explanation that is natural.

What do you feel would be the reaction of our species if magically, it gets 
determined that it is indeed Dyson builders?



-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, Aug 7, 2016 1:14 pm
Subject: "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real"

What do you guys think of this?

http://gizmodo.com/the-so-called-alien-megastructure-just-got-even-more-my-1784883811?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook_source=io9_facebook_medium=socialflow

Cheers
Telmo.

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Re: Holiday Exercise

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Aug 2016, at 15:06, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:




On Friday, 5 August 2016, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 05 Aug 2016, at 06:27, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 8/4/2016 7:40 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



On 5 August 2016 at 04:01, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 8/4/2016 2:57 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
The problem with (3) is a general problem with multiverses.  A  
single, infinite universe is an example of a multiverse theory,  
since there will be infinite copies of everything and every  
possible variation of everything, including your brain and your  
mind.


That implicitly assumes a digital universe, yet the theory that  
suggests it, quantum mechanics, is based on continua; which is why  
I don't take "the multiverse" too seriously.


It appears that our brains are finite state machines. Each neuron  
can either be "on" or "off", there are a finite number of neurons,  
so a finite number of possible brain states, and a finite number  
of possible mental states. This is analogous to a digital computer:


Not necessarily. A digital computer also requires that time be  
digitized so that its registers run synchronously.  Otherwise "the  
state" is ill defined.  The finite speed of light means that  
spacially separated regions cannot be synchronous.  Even if neurons  
were only ON or OFF, which they aren't, they have frequency  
modulation, they are not synchronous.


Synchronous digital machine can emulate asynchronous digital  
machine, and that is all what is needed for the reasoning.


Bruno





even if you postulate that electric circuit variables are  
continuous, transistors can only be on or off. If the number of  
possible mental states is finite, then in an infinite universe,  
whether continuous or discrete, mental states will repeat.
We live in an orderly world with consistent physical laws. It  
seems to me that you are suggesting that if everything possible  
existed then we would not live in such an orderly world,


Unless the worlds were separated in some way, which current  
physical theories provide - but which is not explicable if you  
divorce conscious thoughts from physics.


The worlds are physically separated - there can be no  
communication between separate worlds in the multiverse and none  
between sufficiently widely separated copies of subsets of the  
world in an infinite single universe. But the separate copies are  
connected insofar as they share memories and sense of identity,  
even if there is no causal connection between them.


Of course "copy" implies a shared past in which there was an  
"original", they have a cause in common.


Brent


A copy can be prepared using the original as template but it can  
also be prepared by exhaustively enumerating every possible variant  
of an entity,


Like in the sigma_1 arithmetic, or the UD. OK.




in which case there is no causal link.



Absolutely.

 That shows that machine can share a past, or better: a memory of the  
past, without any causal link. That happens an infinity of time in the  
(sigma_1) arithmetic. of course at step 3, we have reason to related  
the memories to the physical history. But that leads to the difficulty  
in step seven;


That is part of the measure problem, and eventually physical causality  
has to be an emergent pattern. It works at the limit of the FPI. This  
is not directly 3p descriptible, as the FPI abstracts all number-of- 
steps delays on all computations, and technically, we get only first  
person singular and first person plural notion.


We cannot use the physical causality as the selector of computation,  
for precisely what you say: we can share memories of past and of goals  
for the future without any causal link. That is the case for all  
"Maury-effect" programs, which are large program starting from a big  
input describing your current computational states, and leading to  
white rabbits dreams or white noise. We have to show how, whatever has  
emerged below our substitution level manage to keep the white rabbits  
away.
Self-reference indicates a quantization which promises the needed  
"anti-white rabbits", and the minimization of aberrance by phase  
randomization.


Bruno




--
Stathis Papaioannou

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



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"We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real"

[Telmo Menezes]

What do you guys think of this?

http://gizmodo.com/the-so-called-alien-megastructure-just-got-even-more-my-1784883811?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook_source=io9_facebook_medium=socialflow

Cheers
Telmo.

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Re: Holiday Exercise

[PGC]

On Sunday, August 7, 2016 at 4:27:56 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 06 Aug 2016, at 20:00, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
> C. An UD will realize all possible computation, and hence the totality of 
> reality.
>
>
>
> Brent, please reread the UDA. 
>

Perhaps but perhaps you should reread it. 

Or rewrite it to be more communicable or... dare I say the word "fun". As 
in how Smullyan presented Gödel to a wider audience. There's a voice in 
your head right now that says "Smullyan has no real contribution"; but 
understand that Smullyan was able to relate to people without pushing his 
buddies into "doing their homework" on public list. He was able to relate 
to children and make his classrooms laugh. 

Ok, the fact that you have to refer people to "go do their homework" so 
often (with Telmo a few weeks ago, with Russell few weeks ago, with John 
every day, with Brent today) can reflect that the teacher is so far beyond 
his students that they should be less lazy and catch up... but 
pedagogically this is medieval stuff with catholic overtones. We are 
further than that in pedagogical terms today: this state of affairs could 
just as well reflect that the homework problem or the resources it 
presupposes are not clear or accessible to anybody interested, and that the 
teacher may be doing a bad job sorting his teaching material or organizing 
his presentation, perhaps because he uses every free second to convert John 
Clark and Bruce.

Brent shows good faith in exposing his particular summary understanding and 
your medieval pedagogical approach tells him to "do the work" and possibly 
soon to confess why he isn't doing said work. We may agree on possibility 
of comp but as teacher I prefer softer approaches, which is why you and I 
have our differences regarding communicability problem and its approaches 
and why I stay mute on most matters here: my school practices its own 
interpretation and doesn't need public advertising. Plato is not only alive 
in academic sense: he allows me to make comfortable living, as people are 
not used to that distance, perspective, respect, and decency. Also, it 
mixes well with musical pedagogy.

Are we so addicted to the format of posting fast informal messages, that we 
loose sight of the major communicability problem that education faces, 
particularly in insecure political and anxiety ridden times where every 
message gets oversimplified in the insecure fetish to render everything 
secure and clear? I thought you and this list are immune to this media 
trend, but instead you post more, expecting it to clarify more. This is 
naive in a way I know you to be familiar with, so I remain astonished with 
your answers and pedagogical moves of late. If we don't have faith in 
ourselves we will always project negativity onto others instead of 
focussing on and enlarging the potential of new beginning. PGC

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Re: Holiday Exercise

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Aug 2016, at 01:24, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 7/08/2016 9:00 am, Russell Standish wrote:

On Thu, Aug 04, 2016 at 07:51:22PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 4/08/2016 6:00 pm, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 4/08/2016 5:52 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

Methinks you are unnecessarily assuming transitivity again.

No, I was just referring to the continuation of a single
consciousness through time. We get different input data all the
time but we do not differentiate according to that data.

I could perhaps expand on that response. On duplication, two
identical consciousnesses are created, and by the identity of
indiscernibles, they form just a single consciousness. Then data is
input. It seems to me that there is no reason why this should lead
the initial consciousness to differentiate, or split into two. In
normal life we get inputs from many sources simultaneously -- we see
complex scenes, smell the air, feel impacts on our body, and hear
many sounds from the environment. None of this leads our
consciousness to disintegrate. Indeed, our evolutionary experience
has made us adept at coping with these multifarious inputs and
sorting through them very efficiently to concentrate on what is most
important, while keeping other inputs at an appropriate level in our
minds.


You appear to be conflating differentiation with disintegration. Yes
my consciousness now differs from what it was one second ago, but by
the YD I'm supposed to have survived from one second to the next.


Poetic use of language.


Hmm, not sure about that.






We're not supposed to ask what does "survive" mean. Actually it is a
very interesting question, but nobody, least of all Bruno, has
anything remotely resembling an answer.


With Parfit, it seems plausible that "survival" is what matters:  
"persons" are secondary. This certainly needs more analysis.


But in the W/M experiment, both W and M can say they survived from  
the

ancester H, but W did not survive from M, nor vice-versa. All three
are different from each other - they have differentiated.


'Survivor of' is not a transitive relationship, identity is.


Same conflation again. Personal identity is NOT the same as identity.




But survival is akin to continuation as in Nozick's theory. If the  
end result of this is that two new "persons" are created as  
"survivors/continuers" of the original, then maybe we can resolve  
some of the difficulties.


However, still no justification has been given for the assumption  
that the duplicated consciousness differentiates on different  
inputs. And consciousness is what computationalism is supposed to be  
giving an account of.



Yes, but consciousness will be eas. But the point is that we have also  
to give an account of matter, without assuming matter. I show that the  
mind-body problem is a priori two times more difficult for a  
computationalist, because he must explain not just consciousness and  
mind, but also matter and its apparent persistance.


But in step 3, I ma very careful to not use the notion of  
"consciousness", and instead a simple 3p notion of first person.  
usually many relates it two consciousness and assumes that when the  
guy say "I see Moscow", they are conscious, but that is not needed to  
get the reversal.


Bruno






Bruce

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



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Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Aug 2016, at 22:13, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 8/6/2016 10:12 AM, smitra wrote:

On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra :


On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote:
On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote:

On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a
mistake,
which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one
of
the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those
copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery.

I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with
memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition
everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But
making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me,
otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or
consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who
then went on to win it.

Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal
identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same
person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine
being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking
up as a copy in another branch who did not win it.


 That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real
"you"
who may be in different branches at different times.  I'd say that  
if

"you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win,
it's
because "you" didn't win.  It's the same as saying the man who sees
Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington.

 Brent

We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory  
is

temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge.

You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of
yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're  
supposing
there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of  
yesterday?).

Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before
yesterday
AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other,  
but

NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday.


The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory
of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as  
the

you in another branch were you did not win where you also have
forgotten about not winning.

The question is then if it is advisable to go through this
procedure if you have won.


You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of
yesterday?  How could there be, there's no physics?  So there are
some
Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but  
the

forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical
world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in
the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting".  The forgetting
would
just have to be a result of the computation.

I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an  
AI

that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary.
It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new  
measurement of

our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just
reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of  
experiments

should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any
one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from  
the

set of all observer moments.

This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has



I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were  
oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an  
observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state,  
because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring counterfactual  
inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified  
with operators specifying the time evolution over one computational  
step.


?? An algorithm doesn't have have any input or output.



An algorithm is just an informal descriptionj of a procedure. With  
Church thesis, each algorithm has infintely many implementation.





The algorithms executed by the UD don't have either.



Well, all versions of the UD that I made precise actually dovetail on  
the program with one input. The one in lisp do dovetail on all one- 
input programs, and all inputs for each of them.b


You are right, computerland is 0-dimensional, by the SMN theorem, and  
the dovetaling of programs without inputs generates the dovetailing on  
all inputs, including infinite non computable streams of inputs. That  
play some role at some points. The FPI might works thanks to some  
Oracle, the random oracle plays some role, like in the iterated self- 
duplication.



Bruno






Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you  
should end up with a complete set of 

Re: ​Computationalism​

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Aug 2016, at 21:39, John Clark wrote:

​Don't be ridiculous, I'm not in a insane asylum so I understand  
what a first person view is, although I don't understand what THE  
first person view is in a world with person duplicating machines,  
and you understand it even less well than I do.



Not at all. I have no problem, as I did explained to you a number of  
time.


I asked the helsinki guy what do you expect. He told me: " I am pretty  
sure that THE experience that I will live will be "seeing W", or "or  
seeing M", and never both. I have no clue which one I will actually  
live though".


Then we do the duplication, we reread the definition, and to know "the  
" experience lived, well, given that guy has been duplicated, we must  
interview all copies, or some sample in case of n-plication with n  
great.


So I go Washington, and the guy told me "excellent prediction", it was  
indeed one of the two cities, and not both, and I got my promised bit  
of information, I wrote W in the diary, confirming my "W v M" vague  
but correct.


And then I go to Moscow, to see what was the experience of the version  
of the helsinki guy there (as we agreed they are all rightfully  
considered as the Helsinki guy, but that follows from computationalism  
of course).

And of course, there to, the guy is happy of its prediction.

You only perpetuate your confusion between 3-1 and 1-1. You forget  
that by the fact that the 1p have been 3-1 p duplicated explains  
entirely why the 1p cannot notice the duplication. For them, they only  
got a 3p doppelganger in a far city.


Bruno





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Re: That stupid diary

[Telmo Menezes]

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 8:49 PM, John Clark  wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>
>> >
>> I am asking if you think that, for computationalism to be true, the
>> diaries of the duplicates must be equal even after the duplication
>> event.
>
>
> Only if the environments the 2 are in are also identical after the
> duplication event.

Exactly.

>> >
>> If computationalism is true, then the ability to have a first person
>> experience of the world is duplicated,
>
>
> Yes, otherwise it wouldn't be a people duplicating machine.
>
>>
>> >
>> but the contents of this
>> experience (after the time of the duplication) is not.
>
>
> Is this really that difficult to comprehend? If computationalism is true
> then the machine will be able to make 2 copies that are identical to each
> other in every way and will remain identical until the outside environment
> or perhaps random quantum variations changes one but not the other.

I agree and never argued the opposite.

>
>>
>> >
>> It is so
>> thorough that you will not even notice that anything happened, since
>> both you and your copy will always have the same diary and be
>> perfectly synchronous.
>
>
> Yes, until something changes one but not the other; until then while they
> are still synchronised there may be 2 bodies but there is only one person
> and only one consciousness.

Yes.

>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>>  you don't even feel like that fellow over there who looks just like you;
>>> he's the original Telmo Menezes but you don't feel like him
>>> because right now you're having a different experience from him.
>>
>>
>> Agreed, so why the stuff about duplicating the entire diary, including
>> the future?
>
>
> You tell me, I don't know what you're talking about.

Weird.

>
>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> You are
>>> having the experience of being inside the house looking out, but the
>>> original is having the experience of being outside the house looking in.
>>> So
>>> you don't feel like him because you're not him, although both you and the
>>> original are
>>> T
>>> elmo Menezes
>>> .
>>
>>
>> Yes! So you agree and there is no reason to not proceed with Bruno's
>> argument.
>
>
> Yes there is because Bruno asks "before the duplication what is the
> probability that "YOU" will be inside the house looking out?". That is not a
> question that is gibberish because Bruno isn't asking about what will happen
> to Telmo Menezes, in a world with personal pronoun duplicating machines
> Bruno wants to know about the one and only one thing that will happen to
> YOU. And that's just silly.

We discussed this before. The MWI introduces the same problem. If
there are infinite version of me sharing my diary up to some time t,
then all estimations of probabilities that I can make of something
happening to me suffer from your pronoun ambiguity. If I am about to
open Schrödinger's cat box, then one branch of me will see a live cat
and another one a dead one. By your reasoning, the probability of
Telmo Menezes seeing a dead cat is 1, but from the first person
perspective of any of the branches it is 1/2.

Bruno's argument only move this to a scenario where both copies can
coexist in the same branch, which can lead to some social awkwardness
but  does not fundamentally change the first person / third person
distinction and respective implications to the observed probabilities.

>
>>> > Of course the diary belongs to both! As I made clear it would belong to
>>> > one
>>> of us but not the other ONLY if Bruno is right, only if no physical
>>> machine can duplicate "a first person view from its first person point of
>>> view". But Bruno isn't right.
>>
>>
>> >
>> This is not what Bruno is saying at all. There is even no need to
>> argue this point, he wrote a paper about it. You can check it and you
>> will see that no such thing is said.
>
>
> Just a few days ago on July 29 Bruno said:
>
> "Nothing can duplicate a first person view from its first person point of
> view, with or without computationalism. It just does not make any sense. It
> duplicates only the 1-view in the 3-1 view picture."
>
> We all say silly things from time to time so if Bruno retracts that remark
> I'll say no more about it, but until then I'm holding him to it,

Duplicating a first person view is the same as doing nothing. 1=1. It
does not make sense, as Bruno says. The duplication only becomes
meaningful once the content of the experience changes. If you are
facing your clone, the content of your respective experiences is
already different. Do you disagree?

>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> So Bruno is talking nonsense.
>>
>>
>> >
>> What's the point of saying things like that? Be specific,
>
>
> See the quote above.
>
>
>
>> >
>> I'm not sure what "duplicating subjective experience" would even mean.
>
>
> There is
> an
> experiment that can resolve this issue: You are a copy of Telmo Menezes
> (or maybe the original, nobody knows)
> made as precisely as Heisenberg's 

Re: ​Computationalism​

[Bruno Marchal]

Dear John,


On 06 Aug 2016, at 22:03, John Mikes wrote:


Dear Bruno,

in my agnosticism computationalism (as so many other 'concepts' and  
'processes') is (are?) figments of the human thinking (logic?  
imagination?
or 'views' how we try to explain the mostly unknowable infinite  
Entirety)  - so I cannot argue about it's (their's?) truth???, or  
fantasy-base (convolutedness).

Math etc. is in this ballpark.


But we can't say either if someone "really survived" with an artficial  
heart, skin, kidney, ...


Nobody can know the truth, but everybody, including machines  
(acceptiong of course some definition) can understand that IF  
computationalism is true THEN Plato is correct and Aristotle is false.


All what I say is that computationalism is testable, and so the  
Aristotle/Plato divide in theology is testable.


We never can know the truth, in science, but we can count the  
evidences, and the evidence ar no so good for the god "Matter".







I have a linguistic version of the Latin origin "to compute":
to put (things) together as by " C O M "  and think about them in  
such way hard " P U T A R E "   which may include quantitative as  
well as qualitative thinking.




Well, here computationalism is the doctrine that the brain is emulable  
(in the technical sense of Turing, Church, Post) by a computer. The  
main evidence is that, except for the wave collapse, we don't know of  
any phenomenon not Turing emulable.


You need to imagine that the neuron accuracies depend on actual  
infinities to make computationalism false. Of course that proves  
nothing, and indeed, that is why I like to explain that we have  
already some tests, and that thanks to Gödel, and QM, computationalism  
is not (yet) refuted.


Nobody will know for sure if comp is true, even the practitionners,,  
who will only believe. But that is the price of science. We just do  
not know, and try theories/assumptions/axioms. A scientist claiming  
truth is a con, or is joking.


Bruno






John Mikes


On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 8:53 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 05 Aug 2016, at 22:02, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 12:36 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​> ​Keep well in mind that I am not arguing for or against  
computationalism. I assume it, and study the consequences.


​No, you're assuming at the very start that Computationalism is  
false and then going on from there.


That contradicts directly what I did.



Computationalism means that every subjective experience about you  
can be duplicated by computations made with a physical system.


This is fuzzy, but OK. I see what you intend to mean, and I am OK.









Not almost everything, EVERYTHING. But then you say:

"Nothing can duplicate a first person view from its first person  
point of view, with or without computationalism."


​Computationalism​ says ​intelligent behavior


But behavior is 3p.


can be duplicated by computations performed by a physical system,  
and Darwin's Theory demands that consciousness is a byproduct of  
intelligence, so your statement contradicts both the meaning of  
Computationalism​ and Evolution.


You forget that we distinguish 3p and 1p.

I think you have not yet understood what is a "first person", and  
still less what is the first person as seen by the first person view.


If it was possible to duplicate a first person view in a way such  
that the first person view would notice the duplication, then the  
guy in M would be able to know, in M, if the doppelganger in W (and  
vice versa) has been reconstituted, but again that suppose some  
telepathy.


The quantum corresponding statement is Everett's famous: the  
observer does not feel the split.


Do you really think that you can distinguish, from an 1p view, the  
step 3 WM duplication experience with the experience where you are  
told that you will undergo the step 3 protocol, except that now we  
lie and we reconstitute you only in M? You need something like that  
to affirm that the first person experience can be duplicated *from  
its own point of view".


BTW, you have given contradictory answer to the question 1 in the  
same week. You are currently inconsistent, so please do the  
correction needed, if you intend to continue to claim that there is  
no first person indeterminacy. If not, you will bring the exact same  
invalid argument again and again. So let us settle this completely,  
or let us move to step 4.


Bruno











 John K Clark

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Re: Step 4? (Re: QUESTION 2 (Re: Holiday Exercise

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Aug 2016, at 20:35, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​> ​It was the question 2 which does not involve duplication.
Question 2:  if I am sure at time t that at time q, q > t, I will be  
uncertain of the outcome of some experience x, then I am uncertain  
about the outcome of that experience at time t.


​As I explained in my previous post that is not universally true,  
it depends on if you have forgotten something or not. ​When i was  
in the fourth grade I had to learn the state capitals and knew with  
certainty what the capital of Wyoming was, and I was not only  
certain I was undoubtedly correct too. Today I could look it up but  
right now, although much time has passed, I am uncertain what the  
capital of Wyoming is.


​> ​You have answered both questions positively in your posts of  
the 02 August and 03 August respectively.


​Yes that's true I did, and both questions involved either no  
duplication or identical environments after duplication so, as I  
also explained in my previous post, personal pronouns and the  
identity of the mysterious Mr. You is not important. And I might add  
if the environments are identical then although there are 2 brains  
there is only one individual because thinking is what brains do and  
the structure of the 2 brains are identical and the 2 environmental  
inputs to the 2 brains are identical so what the 2 brains are doing  
is also identical. ​



​> ​Then I have shown that the step 3 FPI is a direct consequence  
of answering "yes" to the questions 1 and 2.


​Not if YOU walk into a YOU duplicating machine and one YOU goes to  
Moscow and the other YOU goes to Washington! Then talking about THE  
FPI and the probabilities of what YOU will see after duplication is  
just ridiculous.




On the contrary. Once you have a bit of empathy with yourself you  
listen to whatever the copies can say, and a nine years old child get  
the point when doing that.


The rest is playing with words and ad hominem boring distractions.


Bruno







And don't start the bit about the duplicating machine being  
equivalent to one of Everett's branching worlds because it's not.  
With Everett the identity of the personal pronoun "YOU" is crystal  
clear and can always be uniquely and unambiguously defined:


YOU is the one and only chunk of matter in the observable universe  
that behaves in a Brunomarchalian way.


But if duplicating machines are around then "YOU" has no definition  
and talking about THE FPI as if there were only one is just silly.


​> ​do you see why it entails the FPI?

​What I don't see is how THE FPI can exist at all in a world with  
person duplicating machines because the "P" in FPI stands for  
"person" and the person has been duplicated, YOU have been  
duplicated, all of YOU has been duplicated. All. I think your  
confusion stems entirely from something you said a few posts ago,  
something you've used as a unnamed hidden axiom from day one at the  
very start of your "proof":


 "Nothing can duplicate a first person view from its first person  
point of view​"


If that's true then computationalism​ is false, but you can't use  
an assumption that ​computationalism​ is false to prove that  
computationalism​ is false.











 John K Clark


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Re: Holiday Exercise

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Aug 2016, at 20:00, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 8/6/2016 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 If we think about engineering an autonomous being it becomes  
obvious that this is a good architecture.   Decision making should  
be hierarchical with only a few requiring system-wide  
consideration.  With RF communication this autonomous being could  
easily "be"in both Moscow and Washington.


I agree. Of course this does not change the step 3 conclusion if  
that is needed to say. There is just no RF communication available,


But that's where you're taking for granted physics which, later,  
you're going to conclude is to be inferred from statistics on  
computations and is otiose.


But in this thread, we are not "later". I guess you allude to step  
seven. You cannot use step seven to confuse people on step 3.








It's like saying A, B, C, D, ...entail Z,  but Z  shows there's no  
reason believe A.



This we will discuss when we arrive at step 7.

(And francly, where is the problem:? it happens that a conclusion  
leads to discharge some hypotheses, but here, you seem also to confuse  
the assumption that there is a physical reality at the metalevel, and  
the assumption that there is a primary physical, at the actual level  
of a metaphysical theory).


Again, we are at the step 3 only, which is just the first person  
indeterminacy (imagine in a physical implementation of the protocols).


To solve the mind body problem, we must suppose there is a mind, and  
there is a body, before reducing one to the second, or vice versa, or  
both from something else.


I understand that the conclusion can seem startling, so that we can  
come back often on older step in the reasoning, but still, if you do  
find something invalid in the step_0 to step_3 reasoning, you cannot  
invoke step seven to claim that something is invalid.


I guess you do accept step 3, and just worried that it will be misused  
later. But that must be discussed later.







I think you've agreed that physics is necessary to our world,  
whether primary or not.



I would say it is the main result: physics is necessary of the  
universal machine, from its 1p view, because physics for it is a  
consequence of being a machine.


But if physics is shown necessary in arithmetic, physics is no more  
primary. It is explained by what the numbers observe, and what is  
observable.





So I suggest that instead of starting with the hypothesis that  
consciousness is a computation,


Please, I insist that consciousness is NOT a computation.  
Consciousness is an 1p notion, and you cannot identify it with *any*  
3p.  I prefer to use knowledge, for which incompleteness makes the  
classical definition working (and saving the 1p from *any* 3p- 
reductionisme.







let's leave questions of consciousness to the end and start with  
Tegmark 2.0, "Physics is computation".  Then I take Bruno's version  
to be:


A. The totality of reality consists of all possible computable  
universes and histories



It is just ultra-elementary arithmetic (Robinson Arithmetic).


Nothing else is assumed, except, here at the meta-level,  
computationalism (the belief I can survive with a physical digital  
transplant + Church-Thesis)


The existence of all computation is a metatheorem of RA, and a theorem  
of PA.


The TOE does not assume anything more.




B. Mathematics is real.



Nope. I just assume that 0 + x = x, ...

I do not philosophy of that type.




C. An UD will realize all possible computation, and hence the  
totality of reality.



Brent, please reread the UDA. The UD, and thus elementary (sigma_1)  
arithmetical truth realizes all possible computations, but the  
realities must be recovered by the measure self-referential problem.  
We get an intuitionist logic for the first person, and a quantum logic  
for the 1p-plural, has needed. And incompleteness provides the  
separation between what the machine can justify and what is true, and  
this for each different points of view notion.


I translate the mind-body problem into a an arithmetical body problem  
for the universal machine, and let you know what the universal machine  
already told us.


UD does not realize the totality of reality, it realizes only the base  
3p domain of the 1p indeterminacy, which gives consciousness and  
physics, but refer to a highly non-computable reality.


It is like the Skolem-paradox: Elementary arithmetic, or elementary  
combinator algebra, seen from inside is big, bigger than arithmetic,  
even bigger than analysis, and with comp, plausibly bigger than  
mathematics.






D. The world of our experience is a thread, or threads, of the UD  
computation that, according to some measure, have statistical  
coherence and hence realize a world with the regularity that we  
interpret as "the laws of physics".



On the contrary, the physical reality is defined by what is observable  
(from the sigma_ true sentences (the leaves of the UD)  in all the  

Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Aug 2016, at 19:12, smitra wrote:


On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra :

On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote:
On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote:
On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a
mistake,
which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one
of
the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those
copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery.
I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with
memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition
everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But
making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me,
otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or
consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who
then went on to win it.
Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal
identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same
person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine
being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking
up as a copy in another branch who did not win it.

 That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real
"you"
who may be in different branches at different times.  I'd say that if
"you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win,
it's
because "you" didn't win.  It's the same as saying the man who sees
Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington.
 Brent
We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is
temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge.
You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of
yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing
there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?).
Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before
yesterday
AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but
NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday.

The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory
of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the
you in another branch were you did not win where you also have
forgotten about not winning.
The question is then if it is advisable to go through this
procedure if you have won.

You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of
yesterday?  How could there be, there's no physics?  So there are
some
Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the
forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical
world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in
the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting".  The forgetting
would
just have to be a result of the computation.
I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI
that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary.
It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement  
of

our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just
reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments
should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any
one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from  
the

set of all observer moments.
This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has


I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were  
oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an  
observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state,  
because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring  counterfactual  
inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified with  
operators specifying the time evolution over one computational step.


That would only define another universal number.

We must just agree on one sigma_1 complete theory (Turing universal)  
to have the counterfactuals.
Here your use of "operators" is ambiguous, as we don't know if it is  
referred to math or physics.


Computation is not just a mathematical notion, it is an arithmetical  
notion. Physical time should emerge from the FPI (hopefully plural) on  
an infinities of "digital time", which are just the computation  
themselves (determined either by two numbers (the program and the  
inputs) at the base level (arithmetic) or by three numbers (a  
universal number and its program, and its data), + streams, and oracle  
(like non computable set of numbers).





Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you should  
end up with a complete set of commuting observables not for some  
system in the lab, but for whatever the observer is aware of, which  
is in principle also a quantum mechanical measurement.


So, specifying an OM involves a lot more 

Re: Holiday Exercise

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Friday, 5 August 2016, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 05 Aug 2016, at 06:27, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>
> On 8/4/2016 7:40 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5 August 2016 at 04:01, Brent Meeker  > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 8/4/2016 2:57 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>> The problem with (3) is a general problem with multiverses.  A single,
>> infinite universe is an example of a multiverse theory, since there will be
>> infinite copies of everything and every possible variation of everything,
>> including your brain and your mind.
>>
>>
>> That implicitly assumes a digital universe, yet the theory that suggests
>> it, quantum mechanics, is based on continua; which is why I don't take "the
>> multiverse" too seriously.
>>
>
> It appears that our brains are finite state machines. Each neuron can
> either be "on" or "off", there are a finite number of neurons, so a finite
> number of possible brain states, and a finite number of possible mental
> states. This is analogous to a digital computer:
>
>
> Not necessarily. A digital computer also requires that time be digitized
> so that its registers run synchronously.  Otherwise "the state" is ill
> defined.  The finite speed of light means that spacially separated regions
> cannot be synchronous.  Even if neurons were only ON or OFF, which they
> aren't, they have frequency modulation, they are not synchronous.
>
>
> Synchronous digital machine can emulate asynchronous digital machine, and
> that is all what is needed for the reasoning.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> even if you postulate that electric circuit variables are continuous,
> transistors can only be on or off. If the number of possible mental states
> is finite, then in an infinite universe, whether continuous or discrete,
> mental states will repeat.
>
>> We live in an orderly world with consistent physical laws. It seems to me
>> that you are suggesting that if everything possible existed then we would
>> not live in such an orderly world,
>>
>>
>> Unless the worlds were separated in some way, which current physical
>> theories provide - but which is not explicable if you divorce conscious
>> thoughts from physics.
>>
>
> The worlds are physically separated - there can be no communication
> between separate worlds in the multiverse and none between sufficiently
> widely separated copies of subsets of the world in an infinite single
> universe. But the separate copies are connected insofar as they share
> memories and sense of identity, even if there is no causal connection
> between them.
>
>
> Of course "copy" implies a shared past in which there was an "original",
> they have a cause in common.
>
> Brent
>
> A copy can be prepared using the original as template but it can also be
prepared by exhaustively enumerating every possible variant of an entity,
in which case there is no causal link.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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