Re: Self-explaining Game of Life?

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


>> ​>> ​
>> "Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before
>> you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your
>> computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446
>> it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will
>> only do so when it finishes the calculation.
>
>
> ​> ​
> That is correct.
>

​Then "free will" is a pretty trivial attribute, ​even my $9 hand
calculator has it
​ ​

> ​
>> ​>>T​
>> hen if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide useless
>> information about things outside ourselves which has nothing to do with how
>> we behave.
>
>
> ​> ​
> Of course not, as our self is determined by itself together with previous
> sense experience recorded.
>

​Then a windup toy car has free will , where it will go is determined by
its internal state (how much the spring is wound up) and by the number and
nature of obstructions in the external environment. ​An electron has free
will too, where it will go is determent by its internal charge and by
external electric and magnetic fields. By that definition I can't think of
anything that doesn't have this thing you call "free will", and that makes
the concept completely useless.


​> ​
> Non-causal-ness is not a notion clear to me, because
> ​ [...]
>

Did you just say "because"? Not clear to you? ​

​You're using the notion of ​
causal-ness
​ right now!​

John K Clark


​



>

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Re: An invisible fuzzy amoral mindless blob, aka God

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

​>> ​
>> The
>> ​ ​
>> primary cause
>> ​ may be attached to the word  "God", but we both know that is not the
>> only attachment, ​so is "a being who can think".
>>
>
> ​> ​
> That is exactly what the greeks put in question.
>

​I don't give a damn about the idiot ancient Greeks! You believe something
called "God" exists so I'm asking you​

​one simple question that has a simple yes or no answer, do you think I'm
smarter than God? If the answer is yes then I don't see why anybody should
care if God exists or not. If the answer is no then we can stop playing
silly word games. ​


> ​> ​
> the question of knowing if the set of true arithmetical sentence thinks is
> also not an obvious one.
>

​Well I can think, if the set of ​
true arithmetical sentence
​s​
​can​
​ not then I can bring something to the table it can not, and that can only
be matter that obeys the laws of physics.
Also, ​it's not valid to talk about a set if you have no way of
constructing that set, and you have no way of constructing a set that
contains all true mathematical statements and no false ones; much less do
so without the help of matter that obeys the laws of physics.


> ​>> ​
>> To hell with the ancient Greeks!​
>
>
> ​> ​
> Which greeks.
>

​Just the ones that are ancient. ​


​>>​
>>
>> *To hell with the ancient Greeks!​ *
>
>
> ​> ​
> I understand. You want keep Aristotle so much
>

​I said it before I'll say it again, Aristotle was the worse physicists who
ever lived. Full stop. ​



> ​> ​
> that you prefer not to learn anything about Plato.
>

​Bruno, I hate to break it to you but​

​Plato didn't even know where the sun to went at night. This is the 21st
century and we're on a list that is supposed to discussing cutting edge
​developments in science and mathematics, so why are we still talking about
a bozo like Plato?

​> ​
> I think you confuse fundamentalist christian and educated christian,
>

​Do you think they are any less silly? I can find little evidence of that. ​


​> ​
> The notion of computation does not refer to any laws in physics.
>

​I know, and that's why the
notion of computation
​ can not by itself perform any computations. In fact even a notion can not
be a notion without something to have the notion, something like a brain.
And brains need matter that obeys the laws of physics.​

​> ​
> It is done in all textbooks on computability theory,
>

​Show me one textbook on ​
computability theory
​ that can compute 2+2 and I'll concede the argument.​

​But ​
​I have found that all books are pretty dumb unless there is something with
a brain to read them. And I have yet to run across a brain that is not made
of matter that obeys the laws of physics.​

​> ​
> You will not find one mathematician who disagree with this,
>

​If all mathematicians believe books can compute then all mathematicians
are insane.


> ​> ​
> and most physicists agree too, to my knowledge.
>

​If most physicists believe books can compute then most physicists are
insane.​


​>>​
>>  I'd be much more interested in a theory of intelligence. ​
>
>
> ​> ​
> But as you said consciousness is easy, so let us first solve the easy
> problem.
>

​OK, consciousness is the way data feels when it's being processed. Problem
solved. Now it's your turn, tell me how to make an AI in your next post.​

​That's going to be a very long post!​

​John K Clark​






>
>
>
>
>
>

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Re: An invisible fuzzy amoral mindless blob, aka God

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Dec 2016, at 21:36, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​> ​My God, as you call it, is a testable theory, since physics  
is derived from a internal modal variant of self-reference. I  
derived formally a quantum logic, and explained informally how we  
get the statistical interference.


​A derivation using dozens of pronouns that either have no clear  
referent or are logically contradictory. But I believe we may have  
been through this before.​


​> ​the Aristotelian theology fails.

​To hell with the ancient Greeks!​



Come on. You are the one sticking with the theology of an ancient  
greek. You accept only his (defeoremd by other) conception of God, and  
you invoke often his seocnd God, primary matter to qualify things as  
real.






​> ​God is used in the philosophers sense: the primary cause,

The​ ​primary cause​ may be attached to the word  "God", but we  
both know that is not the only attachment, ​so is "a being who can  
think".


That is exactly what the greeks put in question. Plotinus examine that  
question and just admit that he cannot solve it, and illustrate the  
difficulty of both alternatives. And Aristotle does not attribute  
thinking to neither its first god and the second. Similarly, the  
question of knowing if the set of true arithmetical sentence thinks is  
also not an obvious one. There is a simple sense in which that set  
knows a lot of things, like the solution of Riemann hypothesis,  
Goldbach conjecture, etc.








​> ​which is the god of the platonist.

​To hell with the ancient Greeks!​


​>​You talk like if scientists have solved the problem, but it  
has not.


​You talk as if theologians have solved the problem, but they have  
not.​


​> ​(either Plato's God, or even Pythagoras" God

​To hell with the ancient Greeks!​

​> ​In theology, the greeks were

​To hell with the ancient Greeks!​

​> ​Don't confuse the first god of Aristotle (usually called  
God), the second God of Aristotle​. ​(Primary Matter), the god of  
Plato (first principle) and the god of Pythagoras (the natural  
numbers).


​OK I won't confuse it, and I'll avoid confusion by ignoring  
both. ​ ​To hell with the ancient Greeks!​



Which greeks. the departure started with Plato and Aristotle. I am ok  
with the hell to Aristotle, but then what remains is Plato.


I recall you, in a short and simple way to avoid jargon.

Aristotle: god or reality = the physical universe = what we see,  
measure, test, etc. Aristote = materialism/naturalism/physicalism


Plato: god or reality = the mind universe : the ideas, the dreams,  
perhaps the numbers. It lean from abstract theologicalism to  
mathematicalism and to arithmeticalism, or finite-combinatorialisme.


I don't know who is right, but I show that when we assume digital  
mechanism, Plato's theory get a testable theory of matter, at a place  
where the aristotelians must add metaphysical and non Turing emulable  
assumptions.












​> ​two beers in the fridge is not rsponsible for the numbers 2  
to exist physically, and here


​If there were nobody around to think about the number 2 and if  
there were not 2 of anything in the entire physical universe, then  
would the number 2 exist? And if it did, how would things be  
different if it didn't?​


​> ​you beg the question by assuming the second god of Aristotle.

 To hell with the ancient Greeks!​




I understand. You want keep Aristotle so much that you prefer not to  
learn anything about Plato. You do not want the alternative ways to  
conceive the mind-body relations. But then you act like a  
fundamentalist.







​> ​It is the favorite gods of the catholics.

​I'll say this for the catholics, their view of God is clear,  
clearly wrong but clear nevertheless. Your view of God isn't even  
wrong.​


I think you confuse fundamentalist christian and educated christian,  
which is about the difference between those having not read the greeks  
and those having read the greeks. The best one, with respect to  
computationalism, read and grasp Plato, ... to be quickly burnt on the  
stake.







​> ​The correct arithmetical relations implements all computations

​And all correct computations ​​need matter that obeys the laws  
of physics.



That is simply wrong. The notion of computation does not refer to any  
laws in physics. In metaphysics/theology,  the "Turing machine" notion  
is a bit misleading, so read the account by Church and by Post, or  
read any serious textbook on the subject.


It is that very fact which makes me choose to be a mathematician,  
instead of biologist.chemist/physicist, given my interest in the mind- 
body problem.


The fact that the physical reality is Turing universal, and in many  
ways, is an interesting idea in physics, but it borrows the notion of  
computation to the logician's one, which is known to be arithmetical,  
indeed, even equational with diophantine polynomial.


Here 

Re: Self-explaining Game of Life?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 Oct 2016, at 23:20, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 12:57 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​> ​Well, if we assume computationalism, Carroll's equation does  
not solve the mind-body problem.


​Nobody has the answer to the mind body problem because nobody ​ 
knows exactly what the question is.




Well, in the computationalist theory, the problem consists to  
associate the first person experiences and the feeling of a sensible  
reality with the true and the provable arithmetical sentence.









​
​>> ​The one problem I have with Carroll's book is that he talks  
a lot about "free will" without giving us even a hint at what that  
term is supposed to mean; tell me what it means and I'll tell you if  
human beings have that property or not, and I'll tell you i​f​ a  
roulette wheel or a Cuckoo clock​ has that property too.​


​> ​You have yourself propose a definition,

​I said I have only seen 2 definitions of free will that were not  
gibberish:


1) "Free Will" is a ASCII sequence that represents a noise some  
homicides like to make with their mouth.


That seems gibberish to me.







2) "Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do  
before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this  
definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to  
multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you  
until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the  
calculation.



That is correct.







​> ​Free-will is when someone is self-determined.

​Then if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide  
useless information about things outside ourselves which has nothing  
to do with how we behave.


Of course not, as our self is determined by itself together with  
previous sense experience recorded. Only when people have a strong  
feeling of self-determination will they say "no matter what", despite  
possible sense impression, like a guy determined to do skying, despite  
some pain in its leg.





And if  we are self determined and our senses don't effect our  
behavior then why did we evolve senses?


Indeed.



I don't know about you but I am not self-determined, if I see a  
brick wall directly in front of me I don't keep walking and crash  
into it. ​


You gave me that impression.






​> ​A kid told me that it is the ability to eat chocolate even  
before dinner,


​If the kid couldn't see where the ​chocolate was he couldn't eat  
it, and if the kid couldn't taste it he wouldn't even want to eat it.


​> ​Adding randomness or non-causal-ness, can only lower free- 
will.


​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is  
true or not.



It is more or less the definition you gave above. technically it is  
when a program emulates itself on alternate consistent extensions. It  
use Kleene second recursion theorem or variant of it (if you remember  
my DX = XX posts).





And non-causal-ness​ and randomness are the same thing,



I have many different interpretation of the term "randomness", like  
the different algorithmic randomness notion (Martin-Löf, Solovay,  
Chaitin), which all, technically are defined up to some constant, on  
one part, and then the randomness which comes from arbitrariness (with  
the coin sequence FFF... as favorite random sequence, which  
can be rare, in measure theoretical sense.


Non-causal-ness is not a notion clear to me, because "causal" has to  
be a derived higher-order notion when we assume (Digital) Mechanism  
(alias computationalism).





so if it wan't random then it happened due to cause and effect.  
You're either a ​cuckoo clock or a roulette wheel because there are  
only 2 possibilities, event X happened due to cause and effect OR it  
did not happen due to cause and effect.



There are degrees of complexity, in the feasible, and degrees of  
unsolvability, in the non computable.


As the machine cannot determine herself, from her self-referentially  
correct, resp. probable, points of view, she will have to consider  
quite complex intermediate between the cuckoo clock and the roulette  
wheel, like people and their psychology. To know if Maria is OK for  
going to the movie tonight, neither the cuckoo clock, nor the roulette  
wheel can help.









​> ​The animals  plants, which might react only instinctively  
from immediate measurement might have much less free-will than dogs,  
gorilla and humans.


​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is  
true or not.



Always the same John.





​> ​In moral, free-will is needed to get a notion of personal  
responsibility


​No it is not. A serial murderer leaves death and grief in his wake  
so if civilization is to continue he must be punished to prevent him  
from murdering again and as a deterrent to prevent others from doing  
similar things;


and that would be true regardless of what that odd term "free will"  
means.


​> ​All