subject:"RE\: What are numbers\? What is math\?"



On 20 Feb 2014, at 05:06, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:

On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?

You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.


Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).


No, it's part of our best theory of the world.




But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?


Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.



Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard  
to even say what constitutes a fact without invoking a theory.  So  
sure there are, on the same theory that allows us to infer facts,  
facts that are not observed.


I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about  
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the  
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.


That's how I define primitive. It is the intended meaning of the  
primitive object assumed in the theory.


That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we  
might say, with PA, that the primitive object is just 0. And consider  
that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are already emergent. Of we can assume all  
numbers, and then say that the notion of prime number is emergent, or  
we can accept as primitive all notions definable by a first order  
arithmetical formula, in which case '[]p itself is primitive, and  
yet []p  p is still emergent. By default I prefer to see 0, s(0),  
etc. as primitive, and the rest as emergent.


But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR  
matter as primitive in this sense.

In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.

I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed to  
be a fact. 111...1 (very long but definite) is either prime or not,  
despite I will, plausibly, never been able to know or observe which it  
is.
Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any  
self-aware or conscious observers in them, and despite the fact that  
matter arise from machine self-reference in arithmetic. Those of  
course will be non accessible to us, but might play some indirect  
role in the FPI statistics. Our own computations can be very mong and  
eep with martge period of non presence of observers. It is hard to  
say a priori.  I might also miss what Russell intends to mean.


Bruno







Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 20 Feb 2014, at 06:59, Russell Standish wrote:


On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:53:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/19/2014 8:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:06:31PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.

Brent


Yes, to me an ontology is a statement about what's really real. The
ur-stuff, as you say.

I've never heard of ontology as something that any theory has.


That's how Quine uses it.





OK. But Quine is very naive on this. He does not doubt about  
physicalism.


Physicalism makes UR stuff into primitive (have to be assumed) stuff.

I am close to Quine philosophy, but of course a long way from his  
physicalism.






OK - yet another thing to clarify when I get around to the MGA
revisited paper, as the step 8 argument definitely refers to the
former meaning of ontology, and not the latter (Quine version).


This should be put in context, as MGA assumes things for a reductio ad  
absurdum.


In the physicalist context I identify primitive matter with matter  
that we have to assume, or matter which we assume to be non  
derivable from simpler non material things, like number relations and  
self-reference.


Bruno






Sigh.

--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-20 Thread David Nyman

On 20 February 2014 09:58, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Feb 2014, at 05:06, meekerdb wrote:

  On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:

 On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?

 You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
 millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
 understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.

  Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
 the Multiverse).


 No, it's part of our best theory of the world.


  But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
 observation at some point?

  Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
 we'd better let him elaborate what he means.


 Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard to
 even say what constitutes a fact without invoking a theory.  So sure there
 are, on the same theory that allows us to infer facts, facts that are not
 observed.

 I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about ontology as
 the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the stuff that is
 assumed as fundamental in a theory.


 That's how I define primitive. It is the intended meaning of the
 primitive object assumed in the theory.


I suspect that this is one of the things that leads to the constant
confusion in the discussions with Craig. He seems to feel that the
ontological postulate can only be the really real thing as distinct to a
primitive theoretical object. And the consequence is, in effect, that he
thinks he can dismiss both the theoretical object and anything derivable
from it as not really real from the outset. I don't (really) know how to
resolve this confusion in our discussions.


 That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we might
 say, with PA, that the primitive object is just 0. And consider that s(0),
 s(s(0)), ... are already emergent. Of we can assume all numbers, and then
 say that the notion of prime number is emergent, or we can accept as
 primitive all notions definable by a first order arithmetical formula, in
 which case '[]p itself is primitive, and yet []p  p is still emergent.
 By default I prefer to see 0, s(0), etc. as primitive, and the rest as
 emergent.

 But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR matter
 as primitive in this sense.
 In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.

 I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed to be a
 fact. 111...1 (very long but definite) is either prime or not, despite I
 will, plausibly, never been able to know or observe which it is.
 Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any
 self-aware or conscious observers in them, and despite the fact that matter
 arise from machine self-reference in arithmetic.


I would like to ask something here that is stimulated by my recent
discussions with Craig and Stathis. It is clear that any viable theory must
be able to resolve what would otherwise lead to paradoxes of reference and
and indeed of causal relations. If matter, or its appearance, manifests
to us as a consequence of self-reference wherein lies the *specific*
justification, in the comp theory, for our ability to refer to and
apparently interact with those appearances? It occurs to me here that the
usual understanding of CTM is that thought is computed by the brain, which
I note you avoid by stipulating rather that consciousness will be invariant
for a digital substitution. One who studies the UDA might be tempted to
suppose that the reversal of physics-machine psychology necessitated to
retain CTM also salvages the notion that thought is computed by the brain,
but this move doesn't seem capable of avoiding the paradoxes.

Rather, when you say that if we are a machine we cannot know which machine
we are this seems to imply that a brain, or any computations it might be
supposed to instantiate, cannot directly represent the machine that we are.
Rather we find expression through the FPI filtration of the statistics of
computations that are capable of reconciling both the appearance of matter,
including brains and bodies, and our causal and ostensive relations with
it. IOW the brain and the body, as you sometimes say, are the means by
which the person is able to manifest with respect to a particular reality.
So I guess my question, assuming I haven't got hold of the wrong end of the
stick entirely, is which aspects of the hypostases address these
extraordinarily complex and subtle referential issues?


 snip



 Our own computations can be very mong and eep with martge period of non
 presence of observers.


I have to say that these are some of your most delightful unintentional
malapropisms - they read almost like Edward Lear :) I think I can intuit
what mong and eep may be (actually they sound

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 20 Feb 2014, at 11:55, David Nyman wrote:


On 20 February 2014 09:58, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 20 Feb 2014, at 05:06, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:
On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.

Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).

No, it's part of our best theory of the world.


But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?

Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.


Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard  
to even say what constitutes a fact without invoking a theory.  So  
sure there are, on the same theory that allows us to infer facts,  
facts that are not observed.


I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about  
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the  
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.


That's how I define primitive. It is the intended meaning of the  
primitive object assumed in the theory.


I suspect that this is one of the things that leads to the constant  
confusion in the discussions with Craig. He seems to feel that the  
ontological postulate can only be the really real thing as distinct  
to a primitive theoretical object. And the consequence is, in  
effect, that he thinks he can dismiss both the theoretical object  
and anything derivable from it as not really real from the outset. I  
don't (really) know how to resolve this confusion in our discussions.



Yes. Craig confuses regularly a theory of qualia with a qualia. He  
would dismiss E = mc^2 by arguing that you cannot boil water with  
m, c and 2 and multiplication, and exponentiation.
Of course, in comp, the artificial brain is not a metaphor, and so  
Craig's confusion here does not simplify the matter in the extreme.


here S4Grz and the X logics, should help him, if he did the work, as  
the confusion is not possible. S4grz literally talk about something  
which cannot be captured in any 3p way, except by God. Unfortunately  
he uses his prejudicial theory to avoid that kind of work at the start.









That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we  
might say, with PA, that the primitive object is just 0. And  
consider that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are already emergent. Of we can  
assume all numbers, and then say that the notion of prime number is  
emergent, or we can accept as primitive all notions definable by a  
first order arithmetical formula, in which case '[]p itself is  
primitive, and yet []p  p is still emergent. By default I prefer to  
see 0, s(0), etc. as primitive, and the rest as emergent.


But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR  
matter as primitive in this sense.

In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.

I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed to  
be a fact. 111...1 (very long but definite) is either prime or  
not, despite I will, plausibly, never been able to know or observe  
which it is.
Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any  
self-aware or conscious observers in them, and despite the fact that  
matter arise from machine self-reference in arithmetic.


I would like to ask something here that is stimulated by my recent  
discussions with Craig and Stathis. It is clear that any viable  
theory must be able to resolve what would otherwise lead to  
paradoxes of reference and and indeed of causal relations.


OK.



If matter, or its appearance, manifests to us as a consequence of  
self-reference wherein lies the *specific* justification, in the  
comp theory, for our ability to refer to and apparently interact  
with those appearances? It occurs to me here that the usual  
understanding of CTM is that thought is computed by the brain, which  
I note you avoid by stipulating rather that consciousness will be  
invariant for a digital substitution. One who studies the UDA might  
be tempted to suppose that the reversal of physics-machine  
psychology necessitated to retain CTM also salvages the notion that  
thought is computed by the brain, but this move doesn't seem capable  
of avoiding the paradoxes.


Rather, when you say that if we are a machine we cannot know which  
machine we are this seems to imply that a brain, or any  
computations it might be supposed to instantiate, cannot directly  
represent the machine that we are.


Actually, it can, at the relevant local level. But we cannot justify  
this. That's why we need some irredcatibla act of faith in front of  
the

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-20 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Liz,

More notes from the asylum?

What is your mouth for LIz? If you claim it's not for communicating with 
external reality perhaps it needn't be wagged so much?

Edgar



On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 10:21:16 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:

 On 20 February 2014 08:31, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net javascript:wrote:

 Ghibbsa and Russell,

 There can be absolutely no doubt of an external reality independent of 
 humans. As I said, all of common sense, and all of science makes this 
 fundamental assumption.

 We have eyes, and other sense organs, so we can sense that external 
 reality. Do you deny we have eyes? If not, then what are they for?

 According to this argument, the white rabbit with a pocket watch I dreamt 
 about last night is part of an external reality.

 And eyes aren't for anything, at least not according to evolutionary 
 theory.



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-20 Thread meekerdb

On 2/20/2014 1:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Feb 2014, at 05:06, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:

On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?

You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.

Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).

No, it's part of our best theory of the world.

But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?

Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.

Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard to even say what
constitutes a fact without invoking a theory. So sure there are, on the same theory
that allows us to infer facts, facts that are not observed.

I think we're talking past one another. You're talking about ontology as the ur-stuff
that's really real. I'm talking about the stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a
theory.

That's how I define primitive. It is the intended meaning of the primitive object
assumed in the theory.

That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we might say, with PA,
that the primitive object is just 0. And consider that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are already
emergent. Of we can assume all numbers, and then say that the notion of prime number
is emergent, or we can accept as primitive all notions definable by a first order
arithmetical formula, in which case '[]p itself is primitive, and yet []p p is still
emergent. By default I prefer to see 0, s(0), etc. as primitive, and the rest as emergent.

I would say that the relations and operators, like s() and [], are also part of
the ontology.

But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR matter as primitive in
this sense.

But this is an example of what you accuse of atheists of doing with respect to God: you
defend a view of physics in order to criticize it. Materialist physics doesn't assume any
particular ur-stuff and in fact, as Russell points out, doesn't much care what it is.
It's just concerned with the relations and dynamics and predictions that come from it.
Physicists have hypothetically considered particles, fields, strings, spacetime loops,
information, etc as the ur-stuff.

Brent

In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.

I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed to be a fact.
111...1 (very long but definite) is either prime or not, despite I will, plausibly,
never been able to know or observe which it is.
Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any self-aware or
conscious observers in them, and despite the fact that matter arise from machine
self-reference in arithmetic. Those of course will be non accessible to us, but might
play some indirect role in the FPI statistics. Our own computations can be very mong and
eep with martge period of non presence of observers. It is hard to say a priori. I
might also miss what Russell intends to mean.

Bruno

Brent

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

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

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 20 Feb 2014, at 14:36, David Nyman wrote:


On 20 February 2014 11:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 20 Feb 2014, at 11:55, David Nyman wrote:


snip

I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about  
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the  
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.


That's how I define primitive. It is the intended meaning of the  
primitive object assumed in the theory.


I suspect that this is one of the things that leads to the constant  
confusion in the discussions with Craig. He seems to feel that the  
ontological postulate can only be the really real thing as distinct  
to a primitive theoretical object. And the consequence is, in  
effect, that he thinks he can dismiss both the theoretical object  
and anything derivable from it as not really real from the outset.  
I don't (really) know how to resolve this confusion in our  
discussions.


Yes. Craig confuses regularly a theory of qualia with a qualia. He  
would dismiss E = mc^2 by arguing that you cannot boil water with  
m, c and 2 and multiplication, and exponentiation.
Of course, in comp, the artificial brain is not a metaphor, and so  
Craig's confusion here does not simplify the matter in the extreme.


here S4Grz and the X logics, should help him, if he did the work, as  
the confusion is not possible. S4grz literally talk about something  
which cannot be captured in any 3p way, except by God. Unfortunately  
he uses his prejudicial theory to avoid that kind of work at the  
start.


Yup.



That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we  
might say, with PA, that the primitive object is just 0. And  
consider that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are already emergent. Of we can  
assume all numbers, and then say that the notion of prime number is  
emergent, or we can accept as primitive all notions definable by a  
first order arithmetical formula, in which case '[]p itself is  
primitive, and yet []p  p is still emergent. By default I prefer  
to see 0, s(0), etc. as primitive, and the rest as emergent.


But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR  
matter as primitive in this sense.

In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.

I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed  
to be a fact. 111...1 (very long but definite) is either prime or  
not, despite I will, plausibly, never been able to know or observe  
which it is.
Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any  
self-aware or conscious observers in them, and despite the fact  
that matter arise from machine self-reference in arithmetic.


I would like to ask something here that is stimulated by my recent  
discussions with Craig and Stathis. It is clear that any viable  
theory must be able to resolve what would otherwise lead to  
paradoxes of reference and and indeed of causal relations.


OK.

If matter, or its appearance, manifests to us as a consequence of  
self-reference wherein lies the *specific* justification, in the  
comp theory, for our ability to refer to and apparently interact  
with those appearances? It occurs to me here that the usual  
understanding of CTM is that thought is computed by the brain,  
which I note you avoid by stipulating rather that consciousness  
will be invariant for a digital substitution. One who studies the  
UDA might be tempted to suppose that the reversal of physics- 
machine psychology necessitated to retain CTM also salvages the  
notion that thought is computed by the brain, but this move doesn't  
seem capable of avoiding the paradoxes.


Rather, when you say that if we are a machine we cannot know which  
machine we are this seems to imply that a brain, or any  
computations it might be supposed to instantiate, cannot directly  
represent the machine that we are.


Actually, it can, at the relevant local level. But we cannot justify  
this. That's why we need some irredcatibla act of faith in front of  
the doctor. I think.


So, very succinctly, are you saying that:

1) Whatever computations are ultimately responsible for emulating  
the apparent physics of the brain are the same computations that are  
responsible for emulating the thoughts, feelings etc. that are  
correlated with that brain.


If this works, the primitively material brain appearance is a 1p  
plural sum on all finite pieces of all computations.
This should allow stable geographies. Phase randomization does this in  
the Everett quantum theory, but it is an open problem with comp. that  
might seem impossible, but the arithmetical quantization shows at the  
least that such an idea is consistent (and unavoidable in its []p   
t sense).






2) These computations are in some sense hidden from us because the  
brain can only appear to us as a physical object and we can never be  
certain of the level at which that object instantiates the relevant  
computations.


Is that

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-20 Thread LizR

On 21 February 2014 02:13, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:

 Liz,

 More notes from the asylum?

 What is your mouth for LIz? If you claim it's not for communicating with
 external reality perhaps it needn't be wagged so much?

 I see you're still being rude, unpleasant and stupid. OK, I will confine
my communication to people with courtesy and brains from now on.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread LizR

On 19 February 2014 17:34, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:42:48AM +, chris peck wrote:
  how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?
 
  Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at
 the ground and says:
 
  there's a gold coin buried right there.
 
  Russell says:
 
  no there isn't
 
  They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of
 history no - one ever looks.
 
  Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are
 an MWIer.

 Nice example. I would say it is not a fact (in this universe). Of
 course, in the Multiverse, there will be observers of both facts, as
 well as worlds, like ours, in which it is not a fact (a superposition
 in other words).

 But I can see that someone like Deutsch would say that the Multiverse
 is decohered, and that there is a matter of fact about whether the
 coin is there, even if we don't know it. I just happen to disagree
 with Deutsch, and can think of no experiment to distinguish whether
 he's right or I'm right.

 A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread ghibbsa


On Tuesday, February 11, 2014 4:07:07 PM UTC, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 All,

 In a computational reality everything consists of information in the 
 computational space of reality/existence, whose presence within it gives it 
 its reality. By taking place within reality these computations produce real 
 universe results.

 All this information is ultimately quantized into a basic unit I call an 
 R-bit. Thus all of reality is constructed of different arrangements of 
 R-bits.

 Now the basic insight is that R-bits are actually just numbers, let's call 
 them R-numbers to distinguish from the H-numbers of human mathematics which 
 are quite different.

 This means that the actual numbers of reality are actually the real 
 elemental constituents OF reality. Numbers make up reality, and everything 
 in reality is constructed only of these R-numbers. R-numbers = R-bits.

 This neatly addresses the problem of how there can be abstract concepts 
 such as number that describe but aren't an actual part of reality. In this 
 view there can't be, since the actual numbers of reality are the actual 
 constituents of everything in reality.

 As Pythagoros claimed, all is number, in the realest sense possible.


 Now what do these R-numbers look like?

 1. Every R-number is exactly the same as every other R-number. They are 
 fungible or interchangeable. They do not exist in any sequences such as 1, 
 2, 3 ... They don't have ordinal or cardinal 'tags' attached to distinguish 
 them. There are not different numbers, or different kinds of number. All 
 numbers are exactly the same. 

 What human H-math calls ordinal or cardinal characteristics of number are 
 not intrinsic to R-numbers themselves, but are relationships between 
 R-number groups and sets. These concepts are part of R-math, not 
 characteristics of R-numbers.

 2. R-numbers are finite. The universe contains only some finite number of 
 basic R-bits, and since R-bits are themselves numbers, the number of 
 numbers in the computational universe is finite. There are no R-number 
 infinities.

 3. The only R-numbers that exist correspond to what human H-math would try 
 to think of as the non-zero positive integers up to the finite limit of 
 R-bits in existence. There is no R-number 0, no negative R-numbers, no 
 fractional or irrational R-numbers. These are examples of how human H-math 
 generalizes and tries to extend the basic relational concepts of R-math to 
 H-numbers. It is by making these kind of extensions and generalizations 
 that H-math diverges from R-math and thus has real problems in accurately 
 describing reality.


 What does R-math look like?

 1. R-math is the actual computations that compute actual reality that 
 compute the real empirical objective state of the information universe. 
 H-math, while originally modeled on R-math has greatly expanded beyond that 
 to enormous complexities which though they sometimes can accurately 
 describe aspects of reality, do NOT actually COMPUTE it. R-math is what 
 actually actively COMPUTES reality, and only what is necessary to do that.

 2. R-math is probably a rather small set of logico-mathematical rules, 
 just what is necessary to actually compute reality at the elemental level. 
 It will include active routines such as those that compute the conservation 
 of the small set of particle properties that make up all elemental 
 particles, and the rules that govern the binding of particle properties in 
 atomic and molecular matter.

 3. Thus R-math consists of the logical operators of the active routines 
 that actively compute reality, rather than the static equations and 
 principles of H-math.


 So the take away is that :

 1. The universe, and everything in it, consists of information only. And 
 that information consists only of different arrangements of elemental 
 R-bits. And these elemental R-bits are the actual numbers on the basis of 
 which R-math continually computes the current state of the universe.

 2. Thus everything in the universe is made up of numbers and only numbers.

 3. All the things in the universe are just various arrangements and 
 relationships between these numbers.

 4. These are continually being recomputed by all the interactive programs 
 (all just aspects of a single universal program) that make up all the 
 processes in the universe.

 5. These processes follow fundamental logico-mathematical rules which are 
 part of what I call the extended fine tuning (the set of  every 
 non-reducible aspect of reality including the rules of logic it follows). 
 These are analogous to the basic machine operations of silicon computers. 

 6. The programs of reality are complex sequences of these elemental 
 operations acting on R-numbers which are just R-bits. In general these 
 sequences incorporate standard routines such as the particle property 
 conservation routine.


 The aggregate result is the universe we exist within which consists 
 entirely of different types of

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 10:42:48 PM UTC-5, chris peck wrote:

 how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?

 Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the 
 ground and says:

 there's a gold coin buried right there.

 Russell says:

 no there isn't

 They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history 
 no - one ever looks.

 Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are 
 an MWIer.


I dig and find a chocolate coin wrapped in gold foil. 

There are no facts until they have been realized directly or indirectly as 
a sensory experience.

Craig
 


  Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 14:10:34 +1100
  From: li...@hpcoders.com.au javascript:
  To: everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:
  Subject: Re: What are numbers? What is math?
  
  On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:
   On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au javascript: 
 wrote:
   
Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
   
   You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
   millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
   understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.
   
  
  Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
  the Multiverse).
  
   But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
   observation at some point?
   
  
  Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
  we'd better let him elaborate what he means.
  
  -- 
  
  
 
  Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
  Principal, High Performance Coders
  Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au javascript:
  University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
  
 
  
  -- 
  You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
 Groups Everything List group.
  To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
 an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:.
  To post to this group, send email to 
  everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:
 .
  Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
  For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Russell,

No, I have not painted myself into any corner.

Second, I reject all the labels you use, and most of the terminology which 
is loaded with other labels. Labels are usually excuses not to consider the 
actual theory, and not to have to actually think

You are trying to view my theory in terms of Bruno's which won't work 
because Bruno's theory is not relevant to mine.

It's really amazing how so many loyal devotees here think if anything 
conflicts with Bruno's comp it has to be wrong, when Bruno's comp is just a 
theory which has little or nothing to do with reality in any demonstrable 
sense.

It's amazing how people here think what might be a sound theory about some 
abstruse nether regions of H-math must necessarily be applicable to actual 
reality.

The way to understand what is going on with actual reality is to OBSERVE 
it, not to slap some mathematical proof on top of it and claim reality must 
conform to it. It's reality itself that decides what theory it does or 
doesn't conform to, not some ivory tower H-mathematician

But I realize it's very difficult to alter faith based belief systems

Edgar



On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:19:20 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:57:04PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  
  Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a 
  computational reality, because it leads directly to it. 
  
  Edgar 
  

 So you have just painted yourself into a Platonic idealist corner. The 
 only ontological properties of relevance is that of universal 
 computation. We could just as easily be running on the stuff of Peano 
 arithmetic (as Bruno suggests) as on Babbage's analytic engine in some 
 fantastic Steampunk scenario. Furthermore, since universal dovetailers 
 will dominate the measure of conscious programs, we will observe an 
 FPI-like screen over the activities of those programs - we must be 
 staring at the Nothing I talk about in my book. This is just a 
 consequence of the UDA. 

 But the Nothing is not an ontology - it is a really a statement that 
 ontology is unknowable, and not even really meaningful in any sense. 

 Cheers 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 19 Feb 2014, at 15:05, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


Russell,

No, I have not painted myself into any corner.

Second, I reject all the labels you use, and most of the terminology  
which is loaded with other labels. Labels are usually excuses not to  
consider the actual theory, and not to have to actually think


You are trying to view my theory in terms of Bruno's which won't  
work because Bruno's theory is not relevant to mine.


It seems to me that you agreed that we might survive with a digital  
brain. This makes your theory in the spectrum of the consequences of  
computationalism.


Then you mention a computational space, and you have not yet  
explained what you mean that that.


I am not someone proposing a new theory. Comp is just a modern digital  
version of one of the oldest principle, that you can find in very old  
greek, indian and chinese texts. Then it came back nearby with  
Descartes, and takes a new dimension with the mathematical (even  
arithmetical) discovery of the universal machines (Post, Church,  
Turing, Markov).






It's really amazing how so many loyal devotees here think if  
anything conflicts with Bruno's comp it has to be wrong, when  
Bruno's comp is just a theory which has little or nothing to do with  
reality in any demonstrable sense.


It's amazing how people here think what might be a sound theory  
about some abstruse nether regions of H-math must necessarily be  
applicable to actual reality.


The way to understand what is going on with actual reality is to  
OBSERVE it, not to slap some mathematical proof on top of it and  
claim reality must conform to it. It's reality itself that decides  
what theory it does or doesn't conform to, not some ivory tower H- 
mathematician


But I realize it's very difficult to alter faith based belief  
systems


You are the one invoking real, reality obvious etc.

I put the hypothesis on the table which is basically that I can  
survive with an artificial digital brain or body.


All the rest is derived from that. It is very general, and it reminds  
that science has not yet decided between Plato and Aristotle on the  
matter of matter.


The only faith I invoke is when and if, you say yes to the doctor  
who proposes to you a digital brain copying you at some level  
description. The consequences will be independent on the level per se,  
only on its existence.


Please avoid the locution computational space, or make at least the  
link with the standard sense.

Have you heard about Church's thesis (also called Church-Turing thesis)?

Church's thesis makes *all* computational spaces; not just those of  
Church and Turing and others, belonging to the sigma_1 part of  
arithmetic (a tiny part of the whole arithmetic).


Bruno






Edgar



On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:19:20 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish  
wrote:

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:57:04PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a
 computational reality, because it leads directly to it.

 Edgar


So you have just painted yourself into a Platonic idealist corner. The
only ontological properties of relevance is that of universal
computation. We could just as easily be running on the stuff of Peano
arithmetic (as Bruno suggests) as on Babbage's analytic engine in some
fantastic Steampunk scenario. Furthermore, since universal dovetailers
will dominate the measure of conscious programs, we will observe an
FPI-like screen over the activities of those programs - we must be
staring at the Nothing I talk about in my book. This is just a
consequence of the UDA.

But the Nothing is not an ontology - it is a really a statement that
ontology is unknowable, and not even really meaningful in any sense.

Cheers

--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread ghibbsa


On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 6:15:38 AM UTC, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  On 2/17/2014 8:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  But there is a weaker form.  However unlikely one thinks strings or 
  singularities or multiple-worlds are, one may still hypothesize that 
  there is *some* reality as the explanation for the intersubjective 
  agreement that is consistently observed. 
  Sure - one may hypothesise so. But does it assist in any scientific 
  experiment to do so? And is there any evidence to support the 
  hypothesis, or is it simply like pre-classical physics - good enough 
  to get the next meal. 
  
  The same kind of evidence as for any scientific theory.  It not only 
  assists, the repeatability of experiments by persons with different 
  minds tests it. 

 I don't see why. It merely tests _inter_subjectivity, not 
 objectivity. I cannot think of a single test of objectivity, off the 
 top of my head. 

There is probably a range of legitimate characterizations of tge principle 
of repeatability in science and how repeatability contributes value to the 
scientific process. And a few legitimate arguments against, perhaps too. 
 
As such there is an easy to vary quality to many of these components of 
method, as they have come to be known. Which undermines many components in 
the eyes of scientists, and makes of them easy pickings for that ever 
denser cloud of the vulture-Philosopher who then gets the boot in. 
 
I hear a lot these days how this or that method doesn't deliver much and 
isn't important. I actually remember the last time I heard or read anyone 
do this, that didn't completely give them away for not having any knowledge 
about the component to be making judgement calls in the first place,. 
 
It's not policed the way standards are elsewhere. So people are free to 
know little or nothing, and know that the know little or nothing, and issue 
missives or quote philosopher misconceptions. And that's a behaviour bereft 
of personal scientific integrity, because what it is, is basically 
bullshitting. 
 
What I would recommend you do, is understand that with few exceptions, no 
part of the scientific method can be understood as the hard to vary 
entities that they are, absent their root conception, which all or most of 
them have, and that root is the way that the component came to be in 
science. 
 
You'll be surprised, because almost no component was consciously conceived 
by a human being. Not at the start. No one ever wrote a paper in which 
methods were conjectured up and everyone then bought in. The methods 
emerged very much out of the background day to day realities, and as such 
in a way people created and used methods, and those methods spread 
everywhere, and yet no one had recognized this was going on. Even though 
they were doing it. Many methods were already invented and common to all, 
the very first time a human being said something like that's a method.
 
So you've speaking of repeatability. At the dawn of science, the individual 
that was fascinated by a particular vague question that no one else 
understood or gave a damn about, might have been the only man in the 
country who cared about that and realized it was important. Kindred souls 
were precious to all the pioneers then and now. But the chances were the 
nearest one was halfway across the continent and neither of you spoke a 
common language though they probably usually did. 
 
But we're talking the late 17th early 18th century here. Horses and 
carriages if you were lucky. After that letters. But before letters people 
needed to discover eachother. Initially it was just fluke, but networks 
quickly formed. But the new thing that had never existed was this 
fascination with observing things and finding ways to describe the parts of 
interest. As these early geniuses began to isolate the puzzles, in most 
cases it was actually easier - say in the twilight between the day of 
alchemy and the birth of chemistry, it was actually easier to explain the 
issue not directly in words alone because nothing was even defined to 
support that sort of thing. 
 
So people began to turn to observables and given a shared obsession, start 
using the observables as communication enablers. Objects to symbolize. To 
make the other person experience the same insight. It was the only clean 
way it could be done. No one ever stood up on the platform and spoke across 
all of pioneering science, and said a word like 'it's about observation' or 
'it's about objectivity' or 'discovering nature'. Not in the early days. P#
 
All of it was discovered by other means. The proto-chemists were putting 
years into identifying sequences that always happened when something 
exploded or smelled bad. There was no way to communicate about that, so 
they had embroil everything in the objective stuff, the common observables. 
And this

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Ghibbsa and Russell,

There can be absolutely no doubt of an external reality independent of 
humans. As I said, all of common sense, and all of science makes this 
fundamental assumption.

We have eyes, and other sense organs, so we can sense that external 
reality. Do you deny we have eyes? If not, then what are they for?

We have hands so we can manipulate that external reality. Do you deny we 
have hands? If not then what are they for?

We have legs so we can move around within that external reality. Do you 
deny we have legs? If not then what are they for?

Evolution assumes an external environment that we survive within by 
adapting to. Do you deny evolution?

Houses are constructed so we can live within these places in an external 
reality. Do you deny the existence of houses? If not then what are they for?

We wear clothes so as not to freeze when the external environment becomes 
too cold. Do you deny clothes, environmental temperature?

All of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, sociology and every science 
assumes an external reality in which humans exist. Do you deny all of 
science?

We were all born from our mothers who are thereafter part of our external 
realities. Do you deny human reproduction? Do you deny you had a mother?

This is like arguing with the inhabitants of an asylum!

OF COURSE when we become unconscious our INTERNAL MODEL of external reality 
disappears, but to assume that means that external reality itself then 
disappears is insane. 


So the question is not whether there is an external reality, but what is 
its nature. It is easy to show that the true nature of external reality is 
not the world our minds tell us we live within, but pure abstract 
computational information.

Edgar



On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 12:48:37 PM UTC-5, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 6:15:38 AM UTC, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  On 2/17/2014 8:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  But there is a weaker form.  However unlikely one thinks strings or 
  singularities or multiple-worlds are, one may still hypothesize that 
  there is *some* reality as the explanation for the intersubjective 
  agreement that is consistently observed. 
  Sure - one may hypothesise so. But does it assist in any scientific 
  experiment to do so? And is there any evidence to support the 
  hypothesis, or is it simply like pre-classical physics - good enough 
  to get the next meal. 
  
  The same kind of evidence as for any scientific theory.  It not only 
  assists, the repeatability of experiments by persons with different 
  minds tests it. 

 I don't see why. It merely tests _inter_subjectivity, not 
 objectivity. I cannot think of a single test of objectivity, off the 
 top of my head. 

 There is probably a range of legitimate characterizations of tge principle 
 of repeatability in science and how repeatability contributes value to the 
 scientific process. And a few legitimate arguments against, perhaps too. 
  
 As such there is an easy to vary quality to many of these components of 
 method, as they have come to be known. Which undermines many components in 
 the eyes of scientists, and makes of them easy pickings for that ever 
 denser cloud of the vulture-Philosopher who then gets the boot in. 
  
 I hear a lot these days how this or that method doesn't deliver much and 
 isn't important. I actually remember the last time I heard or read anyone 
 do this, that didn't completely give them away for not having any knowledge 
 about the component to be making judgement calls in the first place,. 
  
 It's not policed the way standards are elsewhere. So people are free to 
 know little or nothing, and know that the know little or nothing, and issue 
 missives or quote philosopher misconceptions. And that's a behaviour bereft 
 of personal scientific integrity, because what it is, is basically 
 bullshitting. 
  
 What I would recommend you do, is understand that with few exceptions, no 
 part of the scientific method can be understood as the hard to vary 
 entities that they are, absent their root conception, which all or most of 
 them have, and that root is the way that the component came to be in 
 science. 
  
 You'll be surprised, because almost no component was consciously conceived 
 by a human being. Not at the start. No one ever wrote a paper in which 
 methods were conjectured up and everyone then bought in. The methods 
 emerged very much out of the background day to day realities, and as such 
 in a way people created and used methods, and those methods spread 
 everywhere, and yet no one had recognized this was going on. Even though 
 they were doing it. Many methods were already invented and common to all, 
 the very first time a human being said something like that's a method.
  
 So you've speaking of repeatability. At the dawn of science, the

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread ghibbsa


On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 7:31:16 PM UTC, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Ghibbsa and Russell,

 There can be absolutely no doubt of an external reality independent of 
 humans. As I said, all of common sense, and all of science makes this 
 fundamental assumption.

 We have eyes, and other sense organs, so we can sense that external 
 reality. Do you deny we have eyes? If not, then what are they for?

 We have hands so we can manipulate that external reality. Do you deny we 
 have hands? If not then what are they for?

 We have legs so we can move around within that external reality. Do you 
 deny we have legs? If not then what are they for?

 Evolution assumes an external environment that we survive within by 
 adapting to. Do you deny evolution?

 Houses are constructed so we can live within these places in an external 
 reality. Do you deny the existence of houses? If not then what are they for?

 We wear clothes so as not to freeze when the external environment becomes 
 too cold. Do you deny clothes, environmental temperature?

 All of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, sociology and every science 
 assumes an external reality in which humans exist. Do you deny all of 
 science?

 We were all born from our mothers who are thereafter part of our external 
 realities. Do you deny human reproduction? Do you deny you had a mother?

 This is like arguing with the inhabitants of an asylum!

 OF COURSE when we become unconscious our INTERNAL MODEL of external 
 reality disappears, but to assume that means that external reality itself 
 then disappears is insane. 


 So the question is not whether there is an external reality, but what is 
 its nature. It is easy to show that the true nature of external reality is 
 not the world our minds tell us we live within, but pure abstract 
 computational information.

 Edgar

 
I can't speak for anyone else, but with me it's really nothing to do with 
questions about the realness. I mean, I genuinely think mused on that for 
years. Maybe never. I can't remember. I'm also unhinged so I guess 
there's room for that and a lot more. 
 
But look, what you say in your last sentence above. You spot about two 
fundamentals, but totally overlook other fundamentals sitting in plain 
sight. And ruinous. 2 out of 3 ain't bad. It's ruinous. It's about you as 
you, and as human being too, and what your nature and human nature. You 
are a fundamental force of nature in the context of Discovery.
 
So then it becomes it's about how to correct for everything cluding your 
own weakness and limitation. How are you going to take yourself out of the 
process. How do you performance manage the product of you as you, as human 
nature, as a fundamental component in the force of Discovery of Nature.
 
See I think, that in the end, one has to recognize that's a problem with a 
methodological solution. Or no solution at all. In which case in the end 
the theory is about the fundamental force of nature, that was you.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 11:31:16AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Ghibbsa and Russell,
 
 There can be absolutely no doubt of an external reality independent of 
 humans. As I said, all of common sense, and all of science makes this 
 fundamental assumption.
 

It might be common sense, but I don't see all of science making this
assumption. Science usually does not need to make this assumption.

 We have eyes, and other sense organs, so we can sense that external 
 reality. Do you deny we have eyes? If not, then what are they for?
 
 We have hands so we can manipulate that external reality. Do you deny we 
 have hands? If not then what are they for?
 
 We have legs so we can move around within that external reality. Do you 
 deny we have legs? If not then what are they for?
 

These are all phenomena, which need to be consistent with our qualia
by the Anthropic Principle

 Evolution assumes an external environment that we survive within by 
 adapting to. Do you deny evolution?

Not at all. It is the only way to generate complex worlds from the high
measure simple ones.

 
 Houses are constructed so we can live within these places in an external 
 reality. Do you deny the existence of houses? If not then what are they for?
 
 We wear clothes so as not to freeze when the external environment becomes 
 too cold. Do you deny clothes, environmental temperature?
 
 All of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, sociology and every science 
 assumes an external reality in which humans exist. Do you deny all of 
 science?

Of course not. I just deny that assuming an external reality is a
useful thing to do in science. Of course scientists (the practitioners)
probably do this often, just as everyday people do - evolution would
have programmed us that way. But for just about all of science, it
doesn't matter whether you think there is a reality out there you're
describing, or whether it is just some shared hallucination. All that
matters is the phenomena. How it is described, and how productive the
theories are for generating new descriptions and predictions of it.

 
 We were all born from our mothers who are thereafter part of our external 
 realities. Do you deny human reproduction? Do you deny you had a mother?
 
 This is like arguing with the inhabitants of an asylum!
 

None of what you mentioned above _requires_ an external reality. It
may seem exasperating to you, but it just aint so.

All that is required is for phenomena to be be self-consistent, and
for our own conscious entities to be embedded within that
self-consistent phenomena. Why that should be, I just don't know. But
I would expect that cognitive science reason will surface sooner or later.

 OF COURSE when we become unconscious our INTERNAL MODEL of external reality 
 disappears, but to assume that means that external reality itself then 
 disappears is insane. 
 
 
 So the question is not whether there is an external reality, but what is 
 its nature. It is easy to show that the true nature of external reality is 
 not the world our minds tell us we live within, but pure abstract 
 computational information.
 

No, the question is what is phenomena, and what is its nature. That's
what counts, ultimately. All  else is theories, speculations,
stories. Some  more usful than others.


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread LizR

On 20 February 2014 08:31, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:

 Ghibbsa and Russell,

 There can be absolutely no doubt of an external reality independent of
 humans. As I said, all of common sense, and all of science makes this
 fundamental assumption.

 We have eyes, and other sense organs, so we can sense that external
 reality. Do you deny we have eyes? If not, then what are they for?

 According to this argument, the white rabbit with a pocket watch I dreamt
about last night is part of an external reality.

And eyes aren't for anything, at least not according to evolutionary
theory.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?


On 2/18/2014 5:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:57:04PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a
computational reality, because it leads directly to it.

Edgar


So you have just painted yourself into a Platonic idealist corner. The
only ontological properties of relevance is that of universal
computation. We could just as easily be running on the stuff of Peano
arithmetic (as Bruno suggests) as on Babbage's analytic engine in some
fantastic Steampunk scenario. Furthermore, since universal dovetailers
will dominate the measure of conscious programs, we will observe an
FPI-like screen over the activities of those programs - we must be
staring at the Nothing I talk about in my book. This is just a
consequence of the UDA.

But the Nothing is not an ontology - it is a really a statement that
ontology is unknowable, and not even really meaningful in any sense.


Does not every theory of the world  have an ontology?  Bruno's is computation.  Just 
because computation can take different but equivalent representations doesn't make it 
nothing.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:

On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?

You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.

Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).

No, it's part of our best theory of the world.

But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?

Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.

Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard to even say what
constitutes a fact without invoking a theory. So sure there are, on the same theory that
allows us to infer facts, facts that are not observed.

I think we're talking past one another. You're talking about ontology as the ur-stuff
that's really real. I'm talking about the stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.

Brent

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On 2/18/2014 8:34 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:42:48AM +, chris peck wrote:

how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?

Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the
ground and says:

there's a gold coin buried right there.

Russell says:

no there isn't

They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no -
one ever looks.

Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an
MWIer.

Nice example. I would say it is not a fact (in this universe). Of
course, in the Multiverse, there will be observers of both facts, as
well as worlds, like ours, in which it is not a fact (a superposition
in other words).

There's an implicit assumption that in the Multiverse *everything* happens. I don't think
that's entailed by QM and so does not have empirical support.

Brent

But I can see that someone like Deutsch would say that the Multiverse
is decohered, and that there is a matter of fact about whether the
coin is there, even if we don't know it. I just happen to disagree
with Deutsch, and can think of no experiment to distinguish whether
he's right or I'm right.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:06:31PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 
 I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about
 ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the
 stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.
 
 Brent
 

Yes, to me an ontology is a statement about what's really real. The
ur-stuff, as you say.

I've never heard of ontology as something that any theory has. What
does information theory have as an ontology, for example? It certainly
makes no claims about existence.

Possibly you are using ontology in the sense defined by Tom Gruber?
http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html 

If so, then that is a completely different word, that just happens to
sound the same and have the same spelling. Certainly, any theory will
have a collection of undefined referrents - in formal theories these
would b called the axioms. It looks like in some circumstances,
ontology refers to these collections.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?


On 2/19/2014 8:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:06:31PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.

Brent


Yes, to me an ontology is a statement about what's really real. The
ur-stuff, as you say.

I've never heard of ontology as something that any theory has.


That's how Quine uses it.


What
does information theory have as an ontology, for example? It certainly
makes no claims about existence.


Information.  Theories don't usually make explicit claims for the existence of their 
ontology.  Physicists seldom say, Assuming electrons exist..., they just proceed to use 
a theory about electrons, how they can be created and annihilated, how they move,...




Possibly you are using ontology in the sense defined by Tom Gruber?
http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html

If so, then that is a completely different word, that just happens to
sound the same and have the same spelling. Certainly, any theory will
have a collection of undefined referrents - in formal theories these
would b called the axioms.


Axioms are propositions.  Electrons aren't propositions, they are referents in 
propositions.

Brent


It looks like in some circumstances,
ontology refers to these collections.



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread LizR

As usual the important thing is to decide what the words mean before the
argument I mean discussion starts!

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-19 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:53:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/19/2014 8:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:06:31PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 I think we're talking past one another.  You're talking about
 ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real.  I'm talking about the
 stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.
 
 Brent
 
 Yes, to me an ontology is a statement about what's really real. The
 ur-stuff, as you say.
 
 I've never heard of ontology as something that any theory has.
 
 That's how Quine uses it.
 

OK - yet another thing to clarify when I get around to the MGA
revisited paper, as the step 8 argument definitely refers to the
former meaning of ontology, and not the latter (Quine version).

Sigh.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 17 Feb 2014, at 17:34, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


Hi Richard,

Yes, that is a good example. R-computations, the R-math computations  
that actual compute the current information state of the universe,  
never have a halting problem because they are a program that always  
simply computes the next state from the current state which is  
ALWAYS possible.


The Godel incompleteness and Halting problems only apply to H-math  
cases where a human mathematician comes up with a mathematical  
statement in advance, and then tries to get an automated system to  
computationally reach that state and thus prove it.


That does not make sense.



Reality doesn't work this way. It never 'imagines' any state to then  
try and reach it computationally. That would amount to teleology. R- 
math just always computes the next state from the present state.  
Just as ordinary software programs never have any problem at all in  
continually producing programmed output, so R-computations never do  
either.


R-computations ALWAYS happily compute the current state of reality  
no matter what Bruno, Godel, or Turing or anybody else postulates  
about H-math.


This is non sense. The notion of computation defined by Post, Church,  
etc. does not refer to humans, and with Church thesis is the most  
human independent epistemological notion ever.


And you have not yet explained what *you* mean by computation, be them  
H or R.






The proof of this is clearly that the universe DOES happily keep on  
existing, in spite of any H-mathematician telling us it doesn't or  
might not, or couldn't.


The arithmetical universe might keep on existing, in some sense,  
perhaps. But you seem to conflate reality with physical reality.  That  
cannot work if you assume computationalism.


Bruno



On Monday, February 17, 2014 9:07:35 AM UTC-5, yanniru wrote:
Edgar,

We recently learned on this list that a Turing machine does not halt  
based on real numbers and apparently can only halt for the natural  
numbers. I wonder if that may correspond to your claim of the  
computations of nature being different from the computations of  
humans. If I remember correctly you referred to the former as R  
computations and the latter as H computations.

Richard


On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net  
wrote:

Russell,

And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive  
science, and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many  
specific different ways that humans DO model an external reality in  
their internal mental models of reality.


Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

Edgar

On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,

 Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact  
that you
 and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless  
you think

 I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a
common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one
theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an  
intersubjective

reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all
observers.


 And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just  
fine before

 I ever met you

 The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive,  
unless you

 believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.


That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger
evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be
consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic  
Principle

does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a
reverse syllogism fallacy.

 So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of  
reality
 that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world  
he lives
 in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in  
their

 own way.


Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real
external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that
there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed,
not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the
most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato.

Cheers

--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Monday, February 17, 2014 10:30:23 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

 On 2/17/2014 7:09 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  All of science assumes an external reality independent of human 
  observation. 
  Who says?


  
  The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave 
  functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not 
  evidence that there is no mind independent ontology.  The fact that 
  there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence 
  for a mutual reality. 
  Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one. 

 Certainly independent of any single mind. 


Certainly, but that only suggests that realism has to do with sharing 
common perceptions. A mutual reality requires that minds be mutually 
attuned to the same mutual range of sensitivity. We also have perceptions 
which we don't seem to share, and we can modulate between the two classes 
of perceptions intentionally as well as involuntarily.
 

  And the science formulated so far is 
 independent of mind - 


It wants to be independent of mind, but really it is dependent on the 
mind's perception of the world perceived by the body (and technological 
bodies which extend the perception of our natural body).
 

 which is why Liz supposed that the past existed before it was 
 observed (and constitutes a block universe past). 

  
  that most everyday scientists usually 
  just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at 
 that. 
  But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful? 
  Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it 
  at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all 
 mathematics. 

 Mathematics is just a different substrate, a different but still mind 
 indpendent reality.   


Mathematics is even more dependent on the mind than science. It is the 
mind's view of the mind's measurement of itself as if it were the body.
 

 Notice that the main argument given for the reality of mathematics is the 
 intersubjective 
 agreement on the truths of mathematics; which gives the feeling it is 
 discovered rather 
 than invented. 


Ironically, mathematics is what the most mechanical range of our awareness 
has discovered about itself. The mistake is in attributing that narrow 
aesthetic to the totality. The problem is that mechanism is the product of 
insensitivity, so that it cannot prove that it is insensitive. When asked 
to simulate sense, it doesn't know how to show that it has failed.


  
  Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there? 
  That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's 
  never seen a chair before wouldn't agree. 

 They might not agree on the name, but they would agree there was an object 
 there.  The 
 possibility of having a useable convention would seem to be a miracle if 
 there is nothing 
 mind-indpendent that correlates the perceptions of different persons. 


A dust mite would not necessarily agree that there was an object there. An 
entity which experienced the entire history of human civilization as a 
single afternoon might not agree that there was an object there. Neutrinos 
might not agree that there are objects at all.
 


  
  The existence of 
  some mind independent reality is always the working assumption. 
  
  Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue 
  much at all. 

 Because it's an assumption so common they only question it unusual 
 experiments - like 
 tests of psychics. 

  Whether they assume there is some kind of 
  mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not 
  affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory. 

   One could still assume a mind-independent reality while assuming that 
 one was the only 
 mind.  But they could not do either experiments or theory if they assumed 
 the result 
 depended on what they hoped or wished or expected. 


I agree, wishing is not science, but that need not be construed as evidence 
that physics is not ultimately metaphenomenal, and it doesn't mean that the 
equivalent of placebo effect and confirmation bias are not factors in all 
of science and nature in general.

Craig


 Brent 

  
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread LizR

Surely you need something to synchronise the perceptions of different
observers? And I assume external physical reality is the simplest
hypothesis for what that something is?

Not that that ia an argument in its favour, I suppose (doesn't make
testable predictions different from other ontologies). I can't offhand
think of an experiment that would definitively show there is an
external material reality. (Kicking  a stone ... which causes some
virtual photons to be exchanged between particles that may be
mathematical objects, some sort of Poincare group thing perhaps... and
is in any case only a series of sense impression... etc)

On 19/02/2014, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Monday, February 17, 2014 10:30:23 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

 On 2/17/2014 7:09 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
  On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
  On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
  Russell,
 
  All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
  observation.
  Who says?


 
  The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave
  functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not
  evidence that there is no mind independent ontology.  The fact that
  there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence
  for a mutual reality.
  Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one.

 Certainly independent of any single mind.


 Certainly, but that only suggests that realism has to do with sharing
 common perceptions. A mutual reality requires that minds be mutually
 attuned to the same mutual range of sensitivity. We also have perceptions
 which we don't seem to share, and we can modulate between the two classes
 of perceptions intentionally as well as involuntarily.


  And the science formulated so far is
 independent of mind -


 It wants to be independent of mind, but really it is dependent on the
 mind's perception of the world perceived by the body (and technological
 bodies which extend the perception of our natural body).


 which is why Liz supposed that the past existed before it was
 observed (and constitutes a block universe past).

 
  that most everyday scientists usually
  just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at
 
 that.
  But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful?
  Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it
  at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all
 mathematics.

 Mathematics is just a different substrate, a different but still mind
 indpendent reality.


 Mathematics is even more dependent on the mind than science. It is the
 mind's view of the mind's measurement of itself as if it were the body.


 Notice that the main argument given for the reality of mathematics is the

 intersubjective
 agreement on the truths of mathematics; which gives the feeling it is
 discovered rather
 than invented.


 Ironically, mathematics is what the most mechanical range of our awareness
 has discovered about itself. The mistake is in attributing that narrow
 aesthetic to the totality. The problem is that mechanism is the product of
 insensitivity, so that it cannot prove that it is insensitive. When asked
 to simulate sense, it doesn't know how to show that it has failed.


 
  Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there?
  That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's
  never seen a chair before wouldn't agree.

 They might not agree on the name, but they would agree there was an object

 there.  The
 possibility of having a useable convention would seem to be a miracle if
 there is nothing
 mind-indpendent that correlates the perceptions of different persons.


 A dust mite would not necessarily agree that there was an object there. An
 entity which experienced the entire history of human civilization as a
 single afternoon might not agree that there was an object there. Neutrinos
 might not agree that there are objects at all.



 
  The existence of
  some mind independent reality is always the working assumption.
 
  Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue
  much at all.

 Because it's an assumption so common they only question it unusual
 experiments - like
 tests of psychics.

  Whether they assume there is some kind of
  mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not
  affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory.

   One could still assume a mind-independent reality while assuming that
 one was the only
 mind.  But they could not do either experiments or theory if they assumed

 the result
 depended on what they hoped or wished or expected.


 I agree, wishing is not science, but that need not be construed as evidence

 that physics is not ultimately

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:06:30PM +1300, LizR wrote:
 Surely you need something to synchronise the perceptions of different
 observers? And I assume external physical reality is the simplest
 hypothesis for what that something is?
 
 Not that that ia an argument in its favour, I suppose (doesn't make
 testable predictions different from other ontologies). I can't offhand
 think of an experiment that would definitively show there is an
 external material reality. (Kicking  a stone ... which causes some
 virtual photons to be exchanged between particles that may be
 mathematical objects, some sort of Poincare group thing perhaps... and
 is in any case only a series of sense impression... etc)
 

I would agree that an objective external physical reality is the
simplest explanation of the anthropic principle, and that idealist
theories have some catching up to do. This problem is described in
Theory of Nothing (p82, p164, p183). However, such objectivist
ontologies have problems of their own, such as the incompatibility
with COMP that Bruno uncovered. On the whole, idealism tends to fair
better than physicalism over a range of topics, just not in the
particular case of the Anthropic Principle.

There seems to me to be a big confusion between intersubjectivity and
objectivity in general. Most of the evidence presented in favour of
objectivity is actually evidence in favour of intersubjectivity. The
confusion is probably because as far as evolution is concerned, they
are the one and same.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread LizR

Ah - interesting. Despite being on a short holiday in the Bay of
Islands I have TON with me (and Confederacy of Dunces) so I can
check that out.

As far as the evidence not being in favour of what people think, I
guess that is because they simply assume objective reality, much as
lots of people assume time flows (say) - and then it isn't surprising
they end up showing what they've assumed

excuse me while I go and persue TON.

On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:06:30PM +1300, LizR wrote:
 Surely you need something to synchronise the perceptions of different
 observers? And I assume external physical reality is the simplest
 hypothesis for what that something is?

 Not that that ia an argument in its favour, I suppose (doesn't make
 testable predictions different from other ontologies). I can't offhand
 think of an experiment that would definitively show there is an
 external material reality. (Kicking  a stone ... which causes some
 virtual photons to be exchanged between particles that may be
 mathematical objects, some sort of Poincare group thing perhaps... and
 is in any case only a series of sense impression... etc)


 I would agree that an objective external physical reality is the
 simplest explanation of the anthropic principle, and that idealist
 theories have some catching up to do. This problem is described in
 Theory of Nothing (p82, p164, p183). However, such objectivist
 ontologies have problems of their own, such as the incompatibility
 with COMP that Bruno uncovered. On the whole, idealism tends to fair
 better than physicalism over a range of topics, just not in the
 particular case of the Anthropic Principle.

 There seems to me to be a big confusion between intersubjectivity and
 objectivity in general. Most of the evidence presented in favour of
 objectivity is actually evidence in favour of intersubjectivity. The
 confusion is probably because as far as evolution is concerned, they
 are the one and same.

 --

 
 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
 Principal, High Performance Coders
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
 

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread meekerdb

On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 8:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

Sure - one may hypothesise so. But does it assist in any scientific
experiment to do so? And is there any evidence to support the
hypothesis, or is it simply like pre-classical physics - good enough
to get the next meal.

The same kind of evidence as for any scientific theory. It not only
assists, the repeatability of experiments by persons with different
minds tests it.

I don't see why. It merely tests _inter_subjectivity, not
objectivity. I cannot think of a single test of objectivity, off the
top of my head.

I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and inter-subujective agreement.
I tend to use them interchangably.

Certainly independent of any single mind. And the science
formulated so far is independent of mind - which is why Liz supposed
that the past existed before it was observed (and constitutes a
block universe past).

Supposed, maybe, but certainly not evidence of it. Whose to say that
our past is not simply hewn out of the primordial Multiverse by our
observations, which progressively fix which world (and history) we inhabit?

Why our then; why not my and why not a brain is a vat? Why not
nothing but a momentary dream? Some hypotheses are more fruitful
than others, lead to more predictions, provide a more succinct model
of the world.

Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this
conversation.

Not necessarily. Maybe you're just imagining it.

The existence of
some mind independent reality is always the working assumption.

Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue
much at all.

Because it's an assumption so common they only question it unusual
experiments - like tests of psychics.

Assuming the assumption is common for the sake of argument, can you
think of a situation where that assumption has any bearing on the
experiment being performed?

Sure. The experimenters don't try to think special thoughts about or
during the experiment to influence the result - contrast prayer.

What does that have to do with whether there is an objective reality
or not?

It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not. You're taking mind
dependent to mean observed somewhere, sometime by some mind. So do you agree that the
results of scientific observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement)
are independent of which particular minds do the observing.

It _is_ reasonable to assume that one's private thoughts will not
affect the experiment's outcome. But that is not the same as assuming
the phenomena is due to some objective reality.

Whether they assume there is some kind of
mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not
affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory.

One could still assume a mind-independent reality while assuming
that one was the only mind. But they could not do either
experiments or theory if they assumed the result depended on what
they hoped or wished or expected.

I certainly have never asserted that. The reality we observe must be
compatible with our existence. Any observed reality must be compatible
with the existence of an observer. But we suppose that there are many
different possible observed worlds.

Real ones?

Some features of those worlds are
accidental (mere geography), and only shared by some worlds. Other
features are shared by all observable worlds (what we call
physics). The question is whether any feature shared by all possible
observed worlds

Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might
possibly be observed?

possible worlds that are observed

But this is incoherent. When we formulate a theory about the big bang or how fossils were
formed or how our Mars Rover is functioning the theory is that those things really happen
whether anyone observes them or not. Now you may say that eventually someone will observe
them, but that is already theory laden. The big bang is observed via satellite telescopes
which send down digital images which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to
your retina which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation takes
place? But observation of what? nerve impluses? There is no observation without theory,
which includes some kind of ontology to define the observation. You don't have to assume
your theory includes what is really real, but it has to include a theory of observation if
you are to go beyond from pure solipistic dreams.

is due to some reason other than the fact

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

 
 I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and
 inter-subujective agreement.  I tend to use them interchangably.
 

Pity. Because its confusing. If this is an argument over whether
intersubjective realities exist, then we're both arguing on the same side.

However, Edgar was arguing that a truly objective, observer
independent reality must exist. That is different.

 Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this
 conversation.
 
 Not necessarily.  Maybe you're just imagining it.

Someone once coined the phrase real as I am real. In any Platonic
idealist theory (such as COMP), you are as real as me. If I'm
imagining you, I am also imagining myself.

 
 It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not.
 You're taking mind dependent to mean observed somewhere, sometime
 by some mind.  

No - a little stronger than that. I mean that what is observed is
necessarily consistent with being observed by some mind.

 So do you agree that the results of scientific
 observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement)
 are independent of which particular minds do the observing.
 

Only if the inter-subjective agreement extends to all possible
minds. In ToN, I argue that the laws of quantum mechanics have this
nature. But only because those laws can be derived from considerations
of what it means to observe something. That means that those are laws
of physics, not geography. But that means those laws depend on the act
of observation (or are grounded in the act of observation). 


 Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might
 possibly be observed?
 possible worlds that are observed
 
 But this is incoherent.  When we formulate a theory about the big
 bang or how fossils were formed or how our Mars Rover is functioning
 the theory is that those things really happen whether anyone
 observes them or not.  

It doesn't seem essential to the theory. All that matters is the
predicted observations.

 Now you may say that eventually someone will
 observe them, but that is already theory laden.  The big bang is
 observed via satellite telescopes which send down digital images
 which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to your retina
 which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation
 takes place?  But observation of what?  nerve impluses?  There is no
 observation without theory, which includes some kind of ontology to
 define the observation.  You don't have to assume your theory
 includes what is really real, but it has to include a theory of
 observation if you are to go beyond from pure solipistic dreams.
 

Sure. I'm not sure what your point is though. You're just admitting
the theory doesn't need to make ontological claims in order to be effective.

 
 is due to some reason other than the fact that
 observers necessarily exist in those worlds. For there to be a mind
 independent reality, there needs to be such a facts.
 So a world must have physics that *permits* observers in order that
 it be our world.  But worlds don't have to have *geography* that
 permits observers, e.g. this universe between inflation and the
 recombination.  So they can be mind independent.
 
 Just so long as some geography permits the observers, such as on a
 rocky planet on a middling start some 13 billion years after those events.
 
 But the theory derived to explain that observation also entails that
 no one need have observed it.
 

Really? How so?

 I could believe that mathematical facts (about say the integers) could
 fit that category, and thus be the basis of a fundamental
 ontology. But even in COMP, we cannot distinguish between an ontology
 of Peano arithmetic, or of Curry combinators, say. Once your ontology has
 the property of Turing completeness, you could choose any such
 ontology and be none the wiser. Doesn't this make the whole notion of
 an ontological reality rather meaningless?
 Then you would have structural realism.
 Yeah - fair enough. That position is largely a defeat of the idea that
 we can know an ontological basis of phenomena.
 
 But that's just the radical skepticism that we can't *know*
 anything.  All theories are provisional.

It's more than that. It's actually a theory making the claim that the
actual ontology (if such a thing has meaning) has no observable consequences.

 
 
 But a geographical fact that is unobservable is mind independent and
 our best theories entail that many such facts exists.
 

Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Russell, and Liz,

Depends on what we mean by an objective physical reality. Actually an 
external objective reality is one of the several most convincing arguments 
FOR a computational reality.

An external reality, as opposed to the internal realities of our individual 
simulations of that reality leads directly to the conclusion that that 
external reality IS a computational reality.

The way this works is that the best way to determine what external reality 
is is simply to progressively subtract everything that the human mind adds 
to it in its simulation of it. When we do this we find that all that is 
left IS a computational reality, just evolving logico-mathematical 
information.

In my book I present a couple dozen things that mind adds to external 
reality in its simulation of it, and what is left after we subtract them.

We imagine external reality as the familiar classical level physical 
dimensional world populated by things of our ordinary experience. But this 
is completely wrong. 

For example, external reality itself has no position or location, no 
orientation, no size, no innate proper time scale, no motion, because these 
are all necessarily relative to some observer. So without an observer 
reality itself has none of these attributes. Reality itself is nowhere, in 
no place, has no position, no orientation, no relative motion, no innate 
time scale.

Also external reality itself contains no images of any thing, because its 
light is unfocused without the lenses of the eyes of some observer. So 
reality itself contains no images of things. If we imagine it having them 
we are wrong.

Also reality itself doesn't even contain individual things. Reality itself 
is a continuous computational information nexus. The whole notion of a 
thing is something constructed by mind by piecing together different types 
of qualia that tend to occur in association. Robotic AI clearly 
demonstrates this complex process...

And the whole notion of physical objects is a mental phenomenon. Physical 
objects in the sense of individual things having colors, textures, 
feelings, etc. exist only in mind's simulation of reality, not in reality 
itself. These are all information about how observers INTERACT with various 
logical structures in the external world.

The list goes on and on. I can present more if anyone likes.

Anyway when we subtract all these things that mind adds to reality in its 
internal simulation of it, we find that all that is left of actual reality 
is a logico-mathematical structure consisting only of computationally 
evolving information.

So the reality we actually live in is not at all the reality we think we 
live in. The reality we think we live in, the classical material 
dimensional world, is entirely a construction of mind, EXCEPT for snippets 
of logical structure extracted from the true external reality, which is a 
logico-mathematical computational structure.

It is only these logical structures that exist in external reality. When we 
function in reality, we are just acting to some degree in logical 
consistency with these external logical structures.

So it is the very concept of an external reality, understood in this light, 
that directly LEADS us to the inevitable conclusion of a computational 
reality.

Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a 
computational reality, because it leads directly to it.

Edgar






On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 6:51:57 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:06:30PM +1300, LizR wrote: 
  Surely you need something to synchronise the perceptions of different 
  observers? And I assume external physical reality is the simplest 
  hypothesis for what that something is? 
  
  Not that that ia an argument in its favour, I suppose (doesn't make 
  testable predictions different from other ontologies). I can't offhand 
  think of an experiment that would definitively show there is an 
  external material reality. (Kicking  a stone ... which causes some 
  virtual photons to be exchanged between particles that may be 
  mathematical objects, some sort of Poincare group thing perhaps... and 
  is in any case only a series of sense impression... etc) 
  

 I would agree that an objective external physical reality is the 
 simplest explanation of the anthropic principle, and that idealist 
 theories have some catching up to do. This problem is described in 
 Theory of Nothing (p82, p164, p183). However, such objectivist 
 ontologies have problems of their own, such as the incompatibility 
 with COMP that Bruno uncovered. On the whole, idealism tends to fair 
 better than physicalism over a range of topics, just not in the 
 particular case of the Anthropic Principle. 

 There seems to me to be a big confusion between intersubjectivity and 
 objectivity in general. Most of the evidence presented in favour of 
 objectivity is actually evidence in favour of intersubjectivity. The 
 confusion is probably

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:57:04PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 
 Thus the notion of an external reality IS consistent with it being a 
 computational reality, because it leads directly to it.
 
 Edgar
 

So you have just painted yourself into a Platonic idealist corner. The
only ontological properties of relevance is that of universal
computation. We could just as easily be running on the stuff of Peano
arithmetic (as Bruno suggests) as on Babbage's analytic engine in some
fantastic Steampunk scenario. Furthermore, since universal dovetailers
will dominate the measure of conscious programs, we will observe an
FPI-like screen over the activities of those programs - we must be
staring at the Nothing I talk about in my book. This is just a
consequence of the UDA.

But the Nothing is not an ontology - it is a really a statement that
ontology is unknowable, and not even really meaningful in any sense.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Russell, and Brent,

Well, yes and no. At the first level I do claim an objective external 
reality. But that that objective external reality consists only of 
computationally evolving information continually computing the current 
state of the universe. It is not the familiar classical world in which we 
think we exist. That is entirely in our mind, a construct of mind.

I also claim that every biological being internally simulates that external 
information reality as the apparently physical reality (which can be an 
intersubjective or cultural reality shared by observers) in which it 
mistakenly believes it lives.

But on the second level, I also point out that that objective external 
information reality can be considered to consist only of generic observers, 
because what all experience basically is is what I call Xperience, namely 
the alteration of information forms in computational interaction with other 
information forms. Human EXperience is just the alteration of internal 
mental information forms encoding that human's model of reality. So human 
Experience is a subset of generic Xperience.

So I do claim an objective external reality to any ONE observer, but that 
that external reality itself consists entirely of the Xperiences of 
information forms of each other. In other words there is an external 
reality to any particular observer that CONSISTS of the realities of all 
other observers.

The utility of this model is that it leads directly to an explanation of 
consciousness, because human EXperience is now seen as essentially the same 
process as all computational interaction, and thus of the fundamental 
process of reality.

And since the information computations take place in the realm of reality 
or existence, they are real and actual and present. This means human 
Experience, as a subset of Xperience, is also real and actual and present 
and manifest, and this is what we call consciousness, when it occurs in the 
specialized information forms that humans use to represent reality.

It is the actual immanent self-manifestation of reality that is 
consciousness.

Edgar



On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 7:58:45 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 
  On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
  On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: 

  
  I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and 
  inter-subujective agreement.  I tend to use them interchangably. 
  

 Pity. Because its confusing. If this is an argument over whether 
 intersubjective realities exist, then we're both arguing on the same side. 

 However, Edgar was arguing that a truly objective, observer 
 independent reality must exist. That is different. 

  Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this 
  conversation. 
  
  Not necessarily.  Maybe you're just imagining it. 

 Someone once coined the phrase real as I am real. In any Platonic 
 idealist theory (such as COMP), you are as real as me. If I'm 
 imagining you, I am also imagining myself. 

  
  It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not. 
  You're taking mind dependent to mean observed somewhere, sometime 
  by some mind.   

 No - a little stronger than that. I mean that what is observed is 
 necessarily consistent with being observed by some mind. 

  So do you agree that the results of scientific 
  observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement) 
  are independent of which particular minds do the observing. 
  

 Only if the inter-subjective agreement extends to all possible 
 minds. In ToN, I argue that the laws of quantum mechanics have this 
 nature. But only because those laws can be derived from considerations 
 of what it means to observe something. That means that those are laws 
 of physics, not geography. But that means those laws depend on the act 
 of observation (or are grounded in the act of observation). 


  Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might 
  possibly be observed? 
  possible worlds that are observed 
  
  But this is incoherent.  When we formulate a theory about the big 
  bang or how fossils were formed or how our Mars Rover is functioning 
  the theory is that those things really happen whether anyone 
  observes them or not.   

 It doesn't seem essential to the theory. All that matters is the 
 predicted observations. 

  Now you may say that eventually someone will 
  observe them, but that is already theory laden.  The big bang is 
  observed via satellite telescopes which send down digital images 
  which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to your retina 
  which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation 
  takes place?  But observation of what?  nerve impluses?  There is no 
  observation without theory, which includes some kind of ontology to 
  define the observation.  You don't have to assume your theory 
  includes what is

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread LizR

On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?

You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.

But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:
 On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 
  Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
 
 You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
 millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
 understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.
 

Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).

 But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
 observation at some point?
 

Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

RE: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread chris peck

how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?

Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the 
ground and says:

there's a gold coin buried right there.

Russell says:

no there isn't

They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no - 
one ever looks.

Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an 
MWIer.

 Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 14:10:34 +1100
 From: li...@hpcoders.com.au
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Subject: Re: What are numbers? What is math?
 
 On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:
  On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
  
   Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
  
  You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
  millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
  understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.
  
 
 Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
 the Multiverse).
 
  But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
  observation at some point?
  
 
 Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
 we'd better let him elaborate what he means.
 
 -- 
 
 
 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
 Principal, High Performance Coders
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
 
 
 -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:42:48AM +, chris peck wrote:
 how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?
 
 Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the 
 ground and says:
 
 there's a gold coin buried right there.
 
 Russell says:
 
 no there isn't
 
 They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no 
 - one ever looks.
 
 Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an 
 MWIer.

Nice example. I would say it is not a fact (in this universe). Of
course, in the Multiverse, there will be observers of both facts, as
well as worlds, like ours, in which it is not a fact (a superposition
in other words).

But I can see that someone like Deutsch would say that the Multiverse
is decohered, and that there is a matter of fact about whether the
coin is there, even if we don't know it. I just happen to disagree
with Deutsch, and can think of no experiment to distinguish whether
he's right or I'm right.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-18 Thread meekerdb

On 2/18/2014 4:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and
inter-subujective agreement. I tend to use them interchangably.

Pity. Because its confusing. If this is an argument over whether
intersubjective realities exist, then we're both arguing on the same side.

Good, because that's the only operational meaning I can attach to objective.

However, Edgar was arguing that a truly objective, observer
independent reality must exist. That is different.

Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this
conversation.

Not necessarily. Maybe you're just imagining it.

Someone once coined the phrase real as I am real. In any Platonic
idealist theory (such as COMP), you are as real as me. If I'm
imagining you, I am also imagining myself.

It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not.
You're taking mind dependent to mean observed somewhere, sometime
by some mind.

No - a little stronger than that. I mean that what is observed is
necessarily consistent with being observed by some mind.

So not actually observed, just consistent with and some mind. But how is consistent
with to be evaluated. Does it mean merely logically possible? or nomologically
possible? If the latter, then it means using theories in which some things happen unobserved.

So do you agree that the results of scientific
observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement)
are independent of which particular minds do the observing.

Only if the inter-subjective agreement extends to all possible
minds. In ToN, I argue that the laws of quantum mechanics have this
nature. But only because those laws can be derived from considerations
of what it means to observe something. That means that those are laws
of physics, not geography. But that means those laws depend on the act
of observation (or are grounded in the act of observation).

Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might
possibly be observed?

possible worlds that are observed

It doesn't seem essential to the theory. All that matters is the
predicted observations.

Now you may say that eventually someone will
observe them, but that is already theory laden. The big bang is
observed via satellite telescopes which send down digital images
which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to your retina
which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation
takes place? But observation of what? nerve impluses? There is no
observation without theory, which includes some kind of ontology to
define the observation. You don't have to assume your theory
includes what is really real, but it has to include a theory of
observation if you are to go beyond from pure solipistic dreams.

Sure. I'm not sure what your point is though. You're just admitting
the theory doesn't need to make ontological claims in order to be effective.

But effective means predicting events not yet observed and even unobservable events -
unless you make observe so broad as to include any inference from any evidence.

is due to some reason other than the fact that
observers necessarily exist in those worlds. For there to be a mind
independent reality, there needs to be such a facts.

So a world must have physics that *permits* observers in order that
it be our world. But worlds don't have to have *geography* that
permits observers, e.g. this universe between inflation and the
recombination. So they can be mind independent.

Just so long as some geography permits the observers, such as on a
rocky planet on a middling start some 13 billion years after those events.

But the theory derived to explain that observation also entails that
no one need have observed it.

Really? How so?

The plasma was too chaotic to allow records or memory - hence the smoothness of
the CMB.

I could believe that mathematical facts (about say the integers) could
fit that category, and thus be the basis of a fundamental
ontology. But even in COMP, we cannot distinguish between an ontology
of Peano arithmetic, or of Curry combinators, say. Once your ontology has
the property of Turing completeness, you could choose any such
ontology and be none the wiser. Doesn't this make the whole notion of
an ontological reality rather meaningless?

Then you would have structural realism.

Yeah - fair enough. That position is largely a defeat of the idea that
we can know an ontological basis of phenomena.

But that's just the radical skepticism that we can't *know*
anything. All theories are provisional.

It's more than

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Russell,

All of science assumes an external reality independent of human 
observation. Science is what gives us by far our most accurate view of the 
universe. So what is your reasoning to reject this fundamental assumption 
of science?

Can you define your intersubjective reality? Does it include all humans? 
Does it exclude rats and other non-human life forms? Do you think this 
intersubjective reality actually somehow creates the non-human or 
non-living universe? Did it create the stars and galaxies, or are they only 
figments of our collective consciousness?

Please explain...

Edgar

On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that 
 you 
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you 
 think 
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! 

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a 
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one 
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an intersubjective 
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all 
 observers. 

  
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine 
 before 
  I ever met you 
  
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you 
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. 
  

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger 
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be 
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic Principle 
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a 
 reverse syllogism fallacy. 

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of 
 reality 
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he 
 lives 
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their 
  own way. 
  

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real 
 external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that 
 there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed, 
 not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the 
 most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato. 

 Cheers 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Craig,

My point is that human EXperience is just a subset of generalized 
Xperience. Human experience is, like xperience, basically just alterations 
of information forms. The difference is not in the basic phenomenon, but 
just that that alteration of forms occurs to the specialized information 
forms that humans use to model the reality in which they exist. 

All is information forms. Xperience is the fact that all information forms 
are altered in computational interaction with other information forms. When 
those information forms that are altered happen to be the one's minds use 
to encode information about their environments, that is what we call 
EXperience, which is just a subset of Xperience.

In this way we are able to understand experience as just a specialized 
subset of the fundamental computational aspect of reality.

Edgar


On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:49:22 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:13:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Craig,

 Well first I'm not so optimistic as you that some here don't harbor some 
 pretty ridiculous ideas including that there was no reality before humans. 

 Second, there is a view I present in my book that resolves both 
 perspectives. If we hold the view that everything is just computationally 
 interacting information at the fundamental level, then it is reasonable to 
 define any change in that information as a generic type of experience I 
 call Xperience.

 In this model then, everything that happens is an Xperience, and every 
 information form can be considered a generic observer, whose computational 
 change amounts to an observation.


 Except that information does not seem to be an observer. Signs don't read. 
 Rules don't play games. Languages don't speak. I think it makes more sense 
 the other way around. Forms and information must first be experiences. The 
 idea of things 'happening' of 'change' requires an a priori expectation of 
 linear time, of memory, persistence, comparison, etc...all kinds of 
 sensible conditions which must underpin the possibility of any information 
 at all.

 Craig
  


 So in this sense we get observers from the very beginning and don't have 
 to wait for human observers to appear. I don't see how this wouldn't be 
 consistent with the Block and Bruno universes 1p views of observable 
 reality though I have no desire to explore that avenue

 Note that this model is also consistent with the transition from the old 
 erroneous view that human observation 'caused' wavefunction 'collapse' to 
 the modern view of decoherence, in which we can say that it is the 
 interactions of two particles themselves which supply the generic 
 'observation' of each other to produce some exact dimensional 'measurement' 
 in each other's frames.

 Edgar



 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:04:24 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:51:18 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Russell,

 But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to 
 actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both 
 Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p 
 perspectives of conscious human observers.

 To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. And it implies there was 
 no reality before humans.


 I don't think anyone here (or anyone that I have ever spoken with, 
 really) thinks that there was no reality before humans. Idealism, or the 
 kind of Pansensitivity that I suggest need not have anything to do with 
 human beings at all. The issue is whether anything can simply 'exist' 
 independently of all possibility of experience. I think that if that were 
 possible, then any form of perception or experience would be redundant and 
 implausible. More importantly though, in what way would a phenomenon which 
 has no possibility of detection be different than nothingness? We can 
 create experiences that remind us of matter and energy just by imagining 
 them, and we can derive some pleasure and meaning from that independently 
 of any functional consideration, but what reason would the laws of physics 
 or arithmetic have to accidentally make sensation and participation?
  


 I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
 perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years 
 before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal 
 VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
 independent reality.

 Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality 
 for human independent reality itself. 

 That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of 
 reality...

 Edgar




 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:05:34 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:23:14AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Craig, 
  
  I also suspect Bruno's math skills are superior to mine, but his 
  understanding of the

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Russell,

And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive science, 
and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many specific 
different ways that humans DO model an external reality in their internal 
mental models of reality. 

Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

Edgar

On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that 
 you 
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you 
 think 
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! 

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a 
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one 
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an intersubjective 
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all 
 observers. 

  
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine 
 before 
  I ever met you 
  
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you 
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. 
  

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger 
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be 
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic Principle 
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a 
 reverse syllogism fallacy. 

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of 
 reality 
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he 
 lives 
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their 
  own way. 
  

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real 
 external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that 
 there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed, 
 not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the 
 most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato. 

 Cheers 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Richard Ruquist

Edgar,

We recently learned on this list that a Turing machine does not halt based
on real numbers and apparently can only halt for the natural numbers. I
wonder if that may correspond to your claim of the computations of nature
being different from the computations of humans. If I remember correctly
you referred to the former as R computations and the latter as H
computations.
Richard


On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:

 Russell,

 And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive science,
 and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many specific
 different ways that humans DO model an external reality in their internal
 mental models of reality.

 Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

 Edgar

 On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
  Russell,
 
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that
 you
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you
 think
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an
 intersubjective
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all
 observers.

 
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine
 before
  I ever met you
 
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.
 

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic
 Principle
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a
 reverse syllogism fallacy.

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of
 reality
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he
 lives
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in
 their
  own way.
 

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real
 external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that
 there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed,
 not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the
 most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato.

 Cheers

 --

 

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
 Principal, High Performance Coders
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
 


  --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 17 Feb 2014, at 15:07, Richard Ruquist wrote:


Edgar,

We recently learned on this list that a Turing machine does not halt  
based on real numbers and apparently can only halt for the natural  
numbers.


It is the contrary. On real numbers, the proof of first order logical  
statement always halt. the theory is decidable (that is a theorem due  
to Tarski).


But on the natural numbers, the simple first order theory is  
undecidable, and many proofs will never halt, without us being able to  
know why  (well this assumes comp, really).


From a logical point of view, the real numbers are much more simple  
than the natural numbers. Think about the difference of complexity to  
solve x^17 + y^17 = z^17 on the real numbers and on the natural numbers.


Now, with the real number, and the sinus function, you can define the  
natural numbers, and become Turing universal, on the natural numbers.


What about the notion of computation on the real number? Well, there  
are many such notions, and they are not equivalent. On the reals,  
there is no Church thesis, and I a remain unconvinced by most attempt  
to generalize computability on the reals. This does not deprive some  
notion of computation on the reals to be useful for some application.



I wonder if that may correspond to your claim of the computations of  
nature being different from the computations of humans. If I  
remember correctly you referred to the former as R computations and  
the latter as H computations.


Unfortunately Edgar has not yet explain what he meant by computation.  
It cannot be the standard sense, as he explicitly dismiss the  
existence of computation, or of all finite pieces of computations  
(which includes the pieces of the non stopping one) in arithmetic  
(which is a relatively standard theorem).


He refers also to reality like if we knew what it is at the start.  
Logic provides tools to avoid such commitment, in any subject matter,  
even theology.


Bruno






Richard


On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net  
wrote:

Russell,

And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive  
science, and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many  
specific different ways that humans DO model an external reality in  
their internal mental models of reality.


Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

Edgar

On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,

 Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact  
that you
 and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless  
you think

 I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a
common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one
theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an  
intersubjective

reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all
observers.


 And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just  
fine before

 I ever met you

 The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive,  
unless you

 believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.


That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger
evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be
consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic  
Principle

does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a
reverse syllogism fallacy.

 So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of  
reality
 that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world  
he lives
 in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in  
their

 own way.


Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real
external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that
there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed,
not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the
most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato.

Cheers

--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Hi Richard,

Yes, that is a good example. R-computations, the R-math computations that 
actual compute the current information state of the universe, never have a 
halting problem because they are a program that always simply computes the 
next state from the current state which is ALWAYS possible.

The Godel incompleteness and Halting problems only apply to H-math cases 
where a human mathematician comes up with a mathematical statement in 
advance, and then tries to get an automated system to computationally reach 
that state and thus prove it.

Reality doesn't work this way. It never 'imagines' any state to then try 
and reach it computationally. That would amount to teleology. R-math just 
always computes the next state from the present state. Just as ordinary 
software programs never have any problem at all in continually producing 
programmed output, so R-computations never do either.

R-computations ALWAYS happily compute the current state of reality no 
matter what Bruno, Godel, or Turing or anybody else postulates about H-math.

The proof of this is clearly that the universe DOES happily keep on 
existing, in spite of any H-mathematician telling us it doesn't or might 
not, or couldn't.

Best,
Edgar

On Monday, February 17, 2014 9:07:35 AM UTC-5, yanniru wrote:

 Edgar,

 We recently learned on this list that a Turing machine does not halt based 
 on real numbers and apparently can only halt for the natural numbers. I 
 wonder if that may correspond to your claim of the computations of nature 
 being different from the computations of humans. If I remember correctly 
 you referred to the former as R computations and the latter as H 
 computations.
 Richard


 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.netjavascript:
  wrote:

 Russell,

 And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive science, 
 and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many specific 
 different ways that humans DO model an external reality in their internal 
 mental models of reality. 

 Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

 Edgar

 On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that 
 you 
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you 
 think 
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! 

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a 
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one 
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an 
 intersubjective 
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all 
 observers. 

  
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine 
 before 
  I ever met you 
  
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless 
 you 
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. 
  

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger 
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be 
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic 
 Principle 
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a 
 reverse syllogism fallacy. 

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of 
 reality 
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he 
 lives 
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in 
 their 
  own way. 
  

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real 
 external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that 
 there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed, 
 not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the 
 most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato. 

 Cheers 

 -- 

 
  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
 
  


  -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:.
 To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:
 .
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.




-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Richard Ruquist

Edgar,

Well the way in which I posed my question betrayed my lack of
understanding, but the answers were illuminating.

So in this vein I will pose another. There is a fellow Peter Beamish, who
posts on the Mind/Brain and Theoretical lists (who is a biologist with a
PhD from MIT for work done at Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst), that believes
that in addition to clock time as in SR and GR, there is also a second time
he calls Rhythm Based Time RBT that is independent of clock time and that
aging of biological organisms depends only on RBT. As a result he thinks
that resolves the Twin Paradox.

I am not aware of any experiments with significant SR that validate or
falsify biological aging. So I wonder if anyone has info on either
possibility. Perhaps the answers will again be illuminating.

Here is the best link to Peter's thinking that Google came up with. Peter
calls RBT now time. Peter even wrote a book on RBT called Dancing with
the Whales.
So apparently Edgar, you are not alone.
http://www.oceancontact.com/research/ps/ps118.htm

I might add that my metaverse string cosmology also suggests the existence
of two times, actually two overlapping spacetimes within each universe. I
had supposed that the two times were synchronous, but maybe not. I think
the aging question is important.
Richard


On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:

 Hi Richard,

 Yes, that is a good example. R-computations, the R-math computations that
 actual compute the current information state of the universe, never have a
 halting problem because they are a program that always simply computes the
 next state from the current state which is ALWAYS possible.

 The Godel incompleteness and Halting problems only apply to H-math cases
 where a human mathematician comes up with a mathematical statement in
 advance, and then tries to get an automated system to computationally reach
 that state and thus prove it.

 Reality doesn't work this way. It never 'imagines' any state to then try
 and reach it computationally. That would amount to teleology. R-math just
 always computes the next state from the present state. Just as ordinary
 software programs never have any problem at all in continually producing
 programmed output, so R-computations never do either.

 R-computations ALWAYS happily compute the current state of reality no
 matter what Bruno, Godel, or Turing or anybody else postulates about H-math.

 The proof of this is clearly that the universe DOES happily keep on
 existing, in spite of any H-mathematician telling us it doesn't or might
 not, or couldn't.

 Best,
 Edgar


 On Monday, February 17, 2014 9:07:35 AM UTC-5, yanniru wrote:

 Edgar,

 We recently learned on this list that a Turing machine does not halt
 based on real numbers and apparently can only halt for the natural numbers.
 I wonder if that may correspond to your claim of the computations of nature
 being different from the computations of humans. If I remember correctly
 you referred to the former as R computations and the latter as H
 computations.
 Richard


 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net wrote:

 Russell,

 And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive
 science, and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many
 specific different ways that humans DO model an external reality in their
 internal mental models of reality.

 Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?

 Edgar

 On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
  Russell,
 
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact
 that you
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you
 think
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an
 intersubjective
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all
 observers.

 
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine
 before
  I ever met you
 
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless
 you
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.
 

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic
 Principle
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a
 reverse syllogism fallacy.

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of
 reality
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he
 lives
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in
 their
  own way.
 

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Monday, February 17, 2014 8:33:48 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Russell,

 All of science assumes an external reality independent of human 
 observation. 


Only for the last few centuries. Before that, natural philosophy was firmly 
grounded in the assumption of parallel-symmetric relation between interior 
experience and exterior events. Relativity and Quantum theory show that 
there is no scientific reason to insist that there could be any reality 
which is external to (some form of) observation (not necessarily human).
 

 Science is what gives us by far our most accurate view of the universe. So 
 what is your reasoning to reject this fundamental assumption of science?

 Can you define your intersubjective reality? Does it include all humans? 
 Does it exclude rats and other non-human life forms? 


http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/6-panpsychism/eigenmorphism/
 

 Do you think this intersubjective reality actually somehow creates the 
 non-human or non-living universe? Did it create the stars and galaxies, or 
 are they only figments of our collective consciousness?


Consciousness is the only reality, so they are not figments. They are 
concretely real, but they are real experiences that appear to us in a 
collapsed view as objects, rather than complete 3D objects in 4D space. 
Experience is trans-dimensional.

Craig
 


 Please explain...

 Edgar

 On Sunday, February 16, 2014 6:54:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that 
 you 
  and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you 
 think 
  I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination! 

 It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a 
 common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one 
 theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an 
 intersubjective 
 reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all 
 observers. 

  
  And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine 
 before 
  I ever met you 
  
  The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you 
  believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us. 
  

 That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger 
 evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be 
 consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic 
 Principle 
 does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a 
 reverse syllogism fallacy. 

  So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of 
 reality 
  that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he 
 lives 
  in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in 
 their 
  own way. 
  

 Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real 
 external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that 
 there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed, 
 not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the 
 most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato. 

 Cheers 

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.au 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  




-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 All of science assumes an external reality independent of human 
 observation. 

Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.

 Science is what gives us by far our most accurate view of the 
 universe. So what is your reasoning to reject this fundamental assumption 
 of science?

Science doesn't need it, and as far as I can tell, science is not
interested in ontological questions like that.

What it does assume is that phenomena is describable in a compressed
form, and that predictions are possible using these compressed
descriptions. And that's about it - no need to ask what the phenomena
being described really is - that sort of talk is relegated to the pub,
or to internet discussion fora like this.

 
 Can you define your intersubjective reality? 
 Does it include all humans? 
 Does it exclude rats and other non-human life forms? Do you think this 
 intersubjective reality actually somehow creates the non-human or 
 non-living universe? Did it create the stars and galaxies, or are they only 
 figments of our collective consciousness?

You and I share an intersubjective reality. Liz  I share another one,
that is almost, but not quite, the same. The rat and I share another
one, but it is rather different, and more basic. A being in a
completely different universe of the multiverse shares just the
Schroedinger equation. And so on..

I don't understand your questions about creation here.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread LizR

On 18/02/2014, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:
 Edgar,

 Well the way in which I posed my question betrayed my lack of
 understanding, but the answers were illuminating.

 So in this vein I will pose another. There is a fellow Peter Beamish, who
 posts on the Mind/Brain and Theoretical lists (who is a biologist with a
 PhD from MIT for work done at Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst), that believes
 that in addition to clock time as in SR and GR, there is also a second time
 he calls Rhythm Based Time RBT that is independent of clock time and that
 aging of biological organisms depends only on RBT. As a result he thinks
 that resolves the Twin Paradox.

 I am not aware of any experiments with significant SR that validate or
 falsify biological aging. So I wonder if anyone has info on either
 possibility. Perhaps the answers will again be illuminating.

Surely this implies that there is something special about living
creatures - otherwise aging is merely (very complex) physical
processes, and there is no reason to assume it has its own time
dimension. So what is this special feature?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?


On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Russell,

All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
observation.

Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.


I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The success of this hypothesis 
is generally taken as evidence for a reality independent of human observation.


Brent




Science is what gives us by far our most accurate view of the
universe. So what is your reasoning to reject this fundamental assumption
of science?

Science doesn't need it, and as far as I can tell, science is not
interested in ontological questions like that.

What it does assume is that phenomena is describable in a compressed
form, and that predictions are possible using these compressed
descriptions. And that's about it - no need to ask what the phenomena
being described really is - that sort of talk is relegated to the pub,
or to internet discussion fora like this.


Can you define your intersubjective reality?
Does it include all humans?
Does it exclude rats and other non-human life forms? Do you think this
intersubjective reality actually somehow creates the non-human or
non-living universe? Did it create the stars and galaxies, or are they only
figments of our collective consciousness?

You and I share an intersubjective reality. Liz  I share another one,
that is almost, but not quite, the same. The rat and I share another
one, but it is rather different, and more basic. A being in a
completely different universe of the multiverse shares just the
Schroedinger equation. And so on..

I don't understand your questions about creation here.



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:49:11AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 And, as I mentioned, there is exhaustive evidence from cognitive science, 
 and the sciences of physiology and perception, of the many specific 
 different ways that humans DO model an external reality in their internal 
 mental models of reality. 
 
 Why do you just reject all this well documented science out of hand?
 
 Edgar

To be fair, you haven't been particular specific about what this
exhaustive evidence is. I know of no neuroscience paper making
ontological claims about reality. The closest I can think of is a
paper written a few years ago by our very own Colin Hales, which I found
rather waffly and unconvincing. Even he, I'm pretty sure, just assumed
that there must be some sort of independent reality, though.


What I am aware of, of course, is substantial evidence linking
neurological brain states with conscious experience. This, as I
mentioned, is evidence of what philosophers call physical
supervenience, which is a manifestation of the Anthropic Principle:
the phenomena we observed must be compatible with our existence within
that phenomena. But it is not direct evidence of an independent reality.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Monday, February 17, 2014 4:55:29 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:



 You and I share an intersubjective reality. Liz  I share another one, 
 that is almost, but not quite, the same. The rat and I share another 
 one, but it is rather different, and more basic. A being in a 
 completely different universe of the multiverse shares just the 
 Schroedinger equation. And so on.. 


That's what I mean by multisense realism, except that I would add that the 
Shrodinger equation shares a common sense with every other equation and 
every other being. With sense itself as the absolute unity, then you don't 
need a multiverse. 

Craig

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-17 Thread Richard Ruquist

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 4:50 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 18/02/2014, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:
  Edgar,
 
  Well the way in which I posed my question betrayed my lack of
  understanding, but the answers were illuminating.
 
  So in this vein I will pose another. There is a fellow Peter Beamish, who
  posts on the Mind/Brain and Theoretical lists (who is a biologist with a
  PhD from MIT for work done at Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst), that
 believes
  that in addition to clock time as in SR and GR, there is also a second
 time
  he calls Rhythm Based Time RBT that is independent of clock time and that
  aging of biological organisms depends only on RBT. As a result he thinks
  that resolves the Twin Paradox.
 
  I am not aware of any experiments with significant SR that validate or
  falsify biological aging. So I wonder if anyone has info on either
  possibility. Perhaps the answers will again be illuminating.

 Surely this implies that there is something special about living
 creatures - otherwise aging is merely (very complex) physical
 processes, and there is no reason to assume it has its own time
 dimension. So what is this special feature?


Life



 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Russell,

All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
observation.

Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.

I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The
success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a
reality independent of human observation.

By whom?

Vic Stenger for one. Me for two.

That is a serious question. Of course, some scientists might
speculate about this down at the pub, and certainly there has been
some discussion along these lines on this list, but in everyday
science, everyone is trained as a positivist, and tends to act as
such, which is probably a worse syndrome than naive Aristotelianism.

The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like
tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since
the beginning of the 20th century,

I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than realism.

The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave functions is just changing
our best guess about ontology - it's not evidence that there is no mind independent
ontology. The fact that there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still
evidence for a mutual reality.

that most everyday scientists usually
just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that.

But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful? Or why do we all
agree that's a chair over there? The existence of some mind independent reality is always
the working assumption.

Brent

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
 observation.
 Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
 101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.
 I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The
 success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a
 reality independent of human observation.
 
 By whom?
 
 Vic Stenger for one.  Me for two.

and David Deutsch, for three, IIUHC. To which we can add Bruno Marchal and
myself against the obviousness of that idea.

But these are all rather unusual individuals, in a way.

 
 That is a serious question. Of course, some scientists might
 speculate about this down at the pub, and certainly there has been
 some discussion along these lines on this list, but in everyday
 science, everyone is trained as a positivist, and tends to act as
 such, which is probably a worse syndrome than naive Aristotelianism.
 
 The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like
 tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since
 the beginning of the 20th century,
 
 I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than realism.
 

Hmm - I'm not so sure. It was certainly the prevailing opinion back
when I was closer to fundamental physics research. The sort of stuff I
deal with now is much less abstract, though, so things like tables and
stones (or people and dollars) are fundamental objects of
analysis. Are people doing string theory utterly realist about the
stuff they do? Seems hard to imagine it.

 The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave
 functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not
 evidence that there is no mind independent ontology.  The fact that
 there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence
 for a mutual reality.

Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one.

 
 that most everyday scientists usually
 just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that.
 
 But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful?

Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it
at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all mathematics.

 Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there?  

That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's
never seen a chair before wouldn't agree.

 The existence of
 some mind independent reality is always the working assumption.
 

Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue
much at all. Whether they assume there is some kind of
mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not
affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory.


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On 2/17/2014 7:09 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Russell,

All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
observation.

Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.

I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The
success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a
reality independent of human observation.

By whom?

Vic Stenger for one. Me for two.

and David Deutsch, for three, IIUHC. To which we can add Bruno Marchal and
myself against the obviousness of that idea.

But these are all rather unusual individuals, in a way.

The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like
tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since
the beginning of the 20th century,

I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than realism.

Hmm - I'm not so sure. It was certainly the prevailing opinion back
when I was closer to fundamental physics research. The sort of stuff I
deal with now is much less abstract, though, so things like tables and
stones (or people and dollars) are fundamental objects of
analysis. Are people doing string theory utterly realist about the
stuff they do? Seems hard to imagine it.

There's a strong form of realism which says the real is whatever is in the ontology of our
best theory. I think that is a mistake and I doubt anyone really holds that view. Of
course it is our working assumption at any given time, but that is true even when we're
pretty sure the theory is false. GR is our best theory of spacetime and so we think
gravity waves exist, but we don't think singularities exist and consider GR almost
certainly wrong. I think scientific realists are all falibilists.

But there is a weaker form. However unlikely one thinks strings or singularities or
multiple-worlds are, one may still hypothesize that there is *some* reality as the
explanation for the intersubjective agreement that is consistently observed. Just
consider the contrast with religions in which there is NOT intersubjective agreement about
visions and revelations.

The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave
functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not
evidence that there is no mind independent ontology. The fact that
there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence
for a mutual reality.

Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one.

Certainly independent of any single mind. And the science formulated so far is
independent of mind - which is why Liz supposed that the past existed before it was
observed (and constitutes a block universe past).

that most everyday scientists usually
just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that.

But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful?

Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it
at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all mathematics.

Mathematics is just a different substrate, a different but still mind indpendent reality.
Notice that the main argument given for the reality of mathematics is the intersubjective
agreement on the truths of mathematics; which gives the feeling it is discovered rather
than invented.

Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there?

That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's
never seen a chair before wouldn't agree.

They might not agree on the name, but they would agree there was an object there. The
possibility of having a useable convention would seem to be a miracle if there is nothing
mind-indpendent that correlates the perceptions of different persons.

The existence of
some mind independent reality is always the working assumption.

Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue
much at all.

Because it's an assumption so common they only question it unusual experiments - like
tests of psychics.

Whether they assume there is some kind of
mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not
affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory.

One could still assume a mind-independent reality while assuming that one was the only
mind. But they could not do either experiments or theory if they assumed the

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 7:09 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
 observation.
 Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
 101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.
 I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The
 success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a
 reality independent of human observation.
 
 By whom?
 Vic Stenger for one.  Me for two.
 and David Deutsch, for three, IIUHC. To which we can add Bruno Marchal and
 myself against the obviousness of that idea.
 
 But these are all rather unusual individuals, in a way.
 
 That is a serious question. Of course, some scientists might
 speculate about this down at the pub, and certainly there has been
 some discussion along these lines on this list, but in everyday
 science, everyone is trained as a positivist, and tends to act as
 such, which is probably a worse syndrome than naive Aristotelianism.
 
 The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like
 tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since
 the beginning of the 20th century,
 I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than 
 realism.
 
 Hmm - I'm not so sure. It was certainly the prevailing opinion back
 when I was closer to fundamental physics research. The sort of stuff I
 deal with now is much less abstract, though, so things like tables and
 stones (or people and dollars) are fundamental objects of
 analysis. Are people doing string theory utterly realist about the
 stuff they do? Seems hard to imagine it.
 
 There's a strong form of realism which says the real is whatever is
 in the ontology of our best theory.  I think that is a mistake and I
 doubt anyone really holds that view.  Of course it is our working
 assumption at any given time, but that is true even when we're
 pretty sure the theory is false.  GR is our best theory of spacetime
 and so we think gravity waves exist, but we don't think
 singularities exist and consider GR almost certainly wrong.  I think
 scientific realists are all falibilists.
 
 But there is a weaker form.  However unlikely one thinks strings or
 singularities or multiple-worlds are, one may still hypothesize that
 there is *some* reality as the explanation for the intersubjective
 agreement that is consistently observed. 

Sure - one may hypothesise so. But does it assist in any scientific
experiment to do so? And is there any evidence to support the
hypothesis, or is it simply like pre-classical physics - good enough
to get the next meal.

  Just consider the contrast
 with religions in which there is NOT intersubjective agreement about
 visions and revelations.
 
 
 The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave
 functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not
 evidence that there is no mind independent ontology.  The fact that
 there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence
 for a mutual reality.
 Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one.
 
 Certainly independent of any single mind.  And the science
 formulated so far is independent of mind - which is why Liz supposed
 that the past existed before it was observed (and constitutes a
 block universe past).

Supposed, maybe, but certainly not evidence of it. Whose to say that
our past is not simply hewn out of the primordial Multiverse by our
observations, which progressively fix which world (and history) we inhabit?

 
 
 that most everyday scientists usually
 just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that.
 But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful?
 Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it
 at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all mathematics.
 
 Mathematics is just a different substrate, a different but still
 mind indpendent reality.  Notice that the main argument given for
 the reality of mathematics is the intersubjective agreement on the
 truths of mathematics; which gives the feeling it is discovered
 rather than invented.
 

Yes - but I really don't think this is Vic's, or David's view of a
mind-independent reality. But also see my comment below re COMP.

 
 Or why do we all agree that's a chair over there?
 That one is obviously convention. Someone from remote Amazonia who's
 never seen a chair before wouldn't agree.
 
 They might not agree on the name, but they would agree there was an
 object there.  The possibility of having a useable convention would
 seem to be a miracle if there is nothing

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On 2/17/2014 8:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 7:09 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 06:32:35PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 5:21 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:03:49PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/17/2014 1:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 05:33:48AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Russell,

All of science assumes an external reality independent of human
observation.

Who says? I must have been asleep when they announced this in Physics
101! Actually, I'm pretty sure they never did.

I'd say science assumes that we can agree on observations. The
success of this hypothesis is generally taken as evidence for a
reality independent of human observation.

By whom?

Vic Stenger for one. Me for two.

and David Deutsch, for three, IIUHC. To which we can add Bruno Marchal and
myself against the obviousness of that idea.

But these are all rather unusual individuals, in a way.

The notion that there is a real reality there, with solid things like
tables and stones to stub your toes on has taken such a drubbing since
the beginning of the 20th century,

I'd say positivism has taken a lot more of a drubbing since Mach than realism.

There's a strong form of realism which says the real is whatever is
in the ontology of our best theory. I think that is a mistake and I
doubt anyone really holds that view. Of course it is our working
assumption at any given time, but that is true even when we're
pretty sure the theory is false. GR is our best theory of spacetime
and so we think gravity waves exist, but we don't think
singularities exist and consider GR almost certainly wrong. I think
scientific realists are all falibilists.

The same kind of evidence as for any scientific theory. It not only assists, the
repeatability of experiments by persons with different minds tests it.

Just consider the contrast
with religions in which there is NOT intersubjective agreement about
visions and revelations.

The replacement of tables and chairs by atoms and then by wave
functions is just changing our best guess about ontology - it's not
evidence that there is no mind independent ontology. The fact that
there is intersubjective agreement on observations is still evidence
for a mutual reality.

Yes a mutual reality, but not a mind independent one.

Why our then; why not my and why not a brain is a vat? Why not nothing but a
momentary dream? Some hypotheses are more fruitful than others, lead to more predictions,
provide a more succinct model of the world.

that most everyday scientists usually
just focus on mathematical descriptions of phenomena, and leave it at that.

But if you ask them why mathematical descriptions are so successful?

Wouldn't they just point at Occam's razor, if they've thought about it
at all, that is? Or even go with Max Tegmark and say its all mathematics.

Mathematics is just a different substrate, a different but still
mind indpendent reality. Notice that the main argument given for
the reality of mathematics is the intersubjective agreement on the
truths of mathematics; which gives the feeling it is discovered
rather than invented.

Yes - but I really don't think this is Vic's, or David's view of a
mind-independent reality. But also see my comment below re COMP.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 On 2/17/2014 8:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 07:30:23PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
 But there is a weaker form.  However unlikely one thinks strings or
 singularities or multiple-worlds are, one may still hypothesize that
 there is *some* reality as the explanation for the intersubjective
 agreement that is consistently observed.
 Sure - one may hypothesise so. But does it assist in any scientific
 experiment to do so? And is there any evidence to support the
 hypothesis, or is it simply like pre-classical physics - good enough
 to get the next meal.
 
 The same kind of evidence as for any scientific theory.  It not only
 assists, the repeatability of experiments by persons with different
 minds tests it.

I don't see why. It merely tests _inter_subjectivity, not
objectivity. I cannot think of a single test of objectivity, off the
top of my head.

 Certainly independent of any single mind.  And the science
 formulated so far is independent of mind - which is why Liz supposed
 that the past existed before it was observed (and constitutes a
 block universe past).
 Supposed, maybe, but certainly not evidence of it. Whose to say that
 our past is not simply hewn out of the primordial Multiverse by our
 observations, which progressively fix which world (and history) we inhabit?
 
 Why our then; why not my and why not a brain is a vat?  Why not
 nothing but a momentary dream?  Some hypotheses are more fruitful
 than others, lead to more predictions, provide a more succinct model
 of the world.
 

Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this
conversation. 

 The existence of
 some mind independent reality is always the working assumption.
 
 Really? I don't think working scientists need to think about the issue
 much at all.
 Because it's an assumption so common they only question it unusual
 experiments - like tests of psychics.
 
 Assuming the assumption is common for the sake of argument, can you
 think of a situation where that assumption has any bearing on the
 experiment being performed?
 
 Sure. The experimenters don't try to think special thoughts about or
 during the experiment to influence the result - contrast prayer.

What does that have to do with whether there is an objective reality
or not?

It _is_ reasonable to assume that one's private thoughts will not
affect the experiment's outcome. But that is not the same as assuming
the phenomena is due to some objective reality.

 
 
 Whether they assume there is some kind of
 mind-independent reality, or are outrageous solipsists would not
 affect their ability to conduct experiments or do theory.
   One could still assume a mind-independent reality while assuming
 that one was the only mind.  But they could not do either
 experiments or theory if they assumed the result depended on what
 they hoped or wished or expected.
 
 I certainly have never asserted that. The reality we observe must be
 compatible with our existence. Any observed reality must be compatible
 with the existence of an observer. But we suppose that there are many
 different possible observed worlds.
 
 Real ones?
 
 Some features of those worlds are
 accidental (mere geography), and only shared by some worlds. Other
 features are shared by all observable worlds (what we call
 physics). The question is whether any feature shared by all possible
 observed worlds
 
 Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might
 possibly be observed?

possible worlds that are observed

 
 is due to some reason other than the fact that
 observers necessarily exist in those worlds. For there to be a mind
 independent reality, there needs to be such a facts.
 
 So a world must have physics that *permits* observers in order that
 it be our world.  But worlds don't have to have *geography* that
 permits observers, e.g. this universe between inflation and the
 recombination.  So they can be mind independent.
 

Just so long as some geography permits the observers, such as on a
rocky planet on a middling start some 13 billion years after those events.

 It is my position
 that no such fact exists - but I'd love to be proved wrong, it would
 make things interesting.
 
 I could believe that mathematical facts (about say the integers) could
 fit that category, and thus be the basis of a fundamental
 ontology. But even in COMP, we cannot distinguish between an ontology
 of Peano arithmetic, or of Curry combinators, say. Once your ontology has
 the property of Turing completeness, you could choose any such
 ontology and be none the wiser. Doesn't this make the whole notion of
 an ontological reality rather meaningless?
 
 Then you would have structural realism.

Yeah - fair enough. That position is largely a defeat of the idea that
we can know an ontological basis of phenomena.

 
 
 Anyway, given some fact of our reality about which it is not known
 whether it is necessary for the existence of

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 15 Feb 2014, at 18:48, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/15/2014 5:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate  
on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any  
smart person retains the ability to change his mind.


I have another theory of intelligence, which is that kids are  
intelligent (= can change their mind and learn), and adults are  
stupid (= can no more change their minds).


The best defense against becoming stuck with a wrong opinion is  
don't make up your mind in the first place.


Unfortunately, this might depend on your early education. We are  
culturally and biological programmed to look (at least) self- 
confident, and that leads sometimes to fake certainty, and some people  
are so gifted that they can foll themselves ...





However, this means accepting the burden of acting under uncertainty.


Which is necessary if you search truth, and might be a burden, when  
you have to take actual quick decision, like in real life. In real  
life, we don't really need certainty, but only some high plausibility  
degree. I think.


Bruno




Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 16 Feb 2014, at 06:35, Kim Jones wrote:



On 16 Feb 2014, at 2:06 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com  
wrote:





On Friday, February 14, 2014 10:23:35 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:


On 15 Feb 2014, at 1:09 pm, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote:


On 2/14/2014 4:24 PM, Kim Jones wrote:


On 14 Feb 2014, at 3:42 pm, Russell Standish  
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:


What about the CMBR? When it was created there were  
(presumably) no
observers in existence in the universe. Are you saying it  
wouldn't exist if
we hadn't evolved to detect it (e.g. if humans hadn't evolved,  
or if we had

never invented radio telescopes) ?


Yes - exactly.




A direct consequence of The Reversal. First comes Mind. Physics  
and matter and the 3D holographic farmyard are a long way down  
the road.
I hope no one is assuming that it requires something as weird as  
a human to implement consciousness.
Something as basic as a Boltzmann brain would be in principle,  
instantly possible in any universe, surely.



Of course Boltzmann brains are notoriously transient, so we're to  
think of the universe (or at least pieces of past light cones)  
blinking in and out of existence.  Or does that take a Boltzmann  
brain plus optic nerves and eyes and a Boltzmann telescope?


Brent


A mind without a hosting apparatus is the entity I am struggling  
to describe. I have no trouble with the notion that consciousness  
can simply exist with no extra qualifiers whatsoever. We are  
talking about that which simply exists - when it exists, where it  
exists, its characteristics etc. are another story. I don't know  
whether such questions are even relevant.


Kim

Existence, when, where, and characteristics would all be conditions  
within the primordial capacity for experience.


Craig


OK - so Hameroff and Penrose's conjecture that consciousness was
a property of the primordial universe has legs then? These two are  
physicalists though; if I read Russell correctly he is saying this.



Penrose if consistent with comp (even if it is for wrong reason  
(misuse of Gödel 1931)).


Comp implies not-physicalism or not-computationalism, and Penrose opts  
for physicalism, and abandon computationalism.


(Not Hameroff: he still believes in comp, as he is OK with brain is a  
(quantum) computer).


Bruno





Kim









--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:35:59 AM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:


 On 16 Feb 2014, at 2:06 pm, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote:



 On Friday, February 14, 2014 10:23:35 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:



 On 15 Feb 2014, at 1:09 pm, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 2/14/2014 4:24 PM, Kim Jones wrote:
  

  On 14 Feb 2014, at 3:42 pm, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au 
 wrote:

  What about the CMBR? When it was created there were (presumably) no

 observers in existence in the universe. Are you saying it wouldn't exist 
 if
 we hadn't evolved to detect it (e.g. if humans hadn't evolved, or if we 
 had
 never invented radio telescopes) ?


 Yes - exactly.


  
  
  A direct consequence of The Reversal. First comes Mind. Physics and 
 matter and the 3D holographic farmyard are a long way down the road. 
 I hope no one is assuming that it requires something as weird as a 
 “human” to implement consciousness.
 Something as basic as a Boltzmann brain would be in principle, instantly 
 possible in any universe, surely.
  


 Of course Boltzmann brains are notoriously transient, so we're to think 
 of the universe (or at least pieces of past light cones) blinking in and 
 out of existence.  Or does that take a Boltzmann brain plus optic nerves 
 and eyes and a Boltzmann telescope?

 Brent


 A mind without a hosting apparatus is the entity I am struggling to 
 describe. I have no trouble with the notion that consciousness can simply 
 exist with no extra qualifiers whatsoever. We are talking about that which 
 simply exists - when it exists, where it exists, its characteristics etc. 
 are another story. I don't know whether such questions are even relevant.

 Kim


 Existence, when, where, and characteristics would all be conditions within 
 the primordial capacity for experience.

 Craig


 OK - so Hameroff and Penrose's conjecture that consciousness was 
 a property of the primordial universe has legs then? These two are 
 physicalists though; if I read Russell correctly he is saying this.


I would go further and say that the possibility of the primordial universe, 
as well as the possibility of properties is part of primordial sense.

Craig
 


 Kim

  





  -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Craig,

Well first I'm not so optimistic as you that some here don't harbor some 
pretty ridiculous ideas including that there was no reality before humans. 

Second, there is a view I present in my book that resolves both 
perspectives. If we hold the view that everything is just computationally 
interacting information at the fundamental level, then it is reasonable to 
define any change in that information as a generic type of experience I 
call Xperience.

In this model then, everything that happens is an Xperience, and every 
information form can be considered a generic observer, whose computational 
change amounts to an observation.

So in this sense we get observers from the very beginning and don't have to 
wait for human observers to appear. I don't see how this wouldn't be 
consistent with the Block and Bruno universes 1p views of observable 
reality though I have no desire to explore that avenue

Note that this model is also consistent with the transition from the old 
erroneous view that human observation 'caused' wavefunction 'collapse' to 
the modern view of decoherence, in which we can say that it is the 
interactions of two particles themselves which supply the generic 
'observation' of each other to produce some exact dimensional 'measurement' 
in each other's frames.

Edgar



On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:04:24 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:51:18 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Russell,

 But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to 
 actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both 
 Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p 
 perspectives of conscious human observers.

 To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. And it implies there was no 
 reality before humans.


 I don't think anyone here (or anyone that I have ever spoken with, really) 
 thinks that there was no reality before humans. Idealism, or the kind of 
 Pansensitivity that I suggest need not have anything to do with human 
 beings at all. The issue is whether anything can simply 'exist' 
 independently of all possibility of experience. I think that if that were 
 possible, then any form of perception or experience would be redundant and 
 implausible. More importantly though, in what way would a phenomenon which 
 has no possibility of detection be different than nothingness? We can 
 create experiences that remind us of matter and energy just by imagining 
 them, and we can derive some pleasure and meaning from that independently 
 of any functional consideration, but what reason would the laws of physics 
 or arithmetic have to accidentally make sensation and participation?
  


 I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
 perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years 
 before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal 
 VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
 independent reality.

 Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality 
 for human independent reality itself. 

 That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of 
 reality...

 Edgar




 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:05:34 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:23:14AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Craig, 
  
  I also suspect Bruno's math skills are superior to mine, but his 
  understanding of the place of math in reality seems pretty deficient, 
 or 
  perhaps just rigid. 
  
  As I've pointed out his 8 steps may well be mathematically consistent 
 but 
  that doesn't mean they have anything to do with the fundamental 
 structure 
  of reality at all. To meaningfully apply a purely mathematical or 
 logical 
  proof to reality, one must establish an actual correspondence of the 
  variables in the proof to actual variables of reality. I don't see 
 Bruno 
  doing that at all. 

 The strength of Bruno's approach is that that is implicit in the 
 assumption of COMP. Once you assume that one's consciousness can be 
 implemented by a computation, then necessarily ontological reality 
 (whatever that is) can also be implemented by a computation. This is a 
 simple consequence of the Church thesis. 

  
  There is no way that anything happens in his static Platonia. And 
 there is 
  no method of selecting the structure of our actual universe from what 
 is 
  apparently his all possible universes. 
  
  He told us his theory doesn't predict the fine tuning, as this type of 
  theory must, because the fine tuning is not important in hi view. 
  

 It is not important for the UDA. But it is, nevertheless, not 
 inconsistent with the Anthropic Principle either. Bruno would say it 
 is necessary for the manifestation of other conciousnesses to us. I 
 reserve my judgement on this... 

 -- 

 
  

 Prof

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Russell,

Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each 
simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of 
evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you 
assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with

Cognitive science (and AI as well), is just as important as physical 
science for understanding reality, because it enables us to understand the 
many ways our views of reality do not correspond to the actual reality 
which they model.

Edgar

On Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:40:48 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 05:51:18PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to 
  actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both 
  Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p 
  perspectives of conscious human observers. 
  

 That is most certainly not the case with COMP, which posits an 
 ontological reality that is computationally universal (in which case 
 it may as well be Peano arithmetic). It might be levelled at my world 
 view, described in Thoery of Nothingm although to be fair, I do not 
 make any sort of ontological commitment, but just argue that 
 ontological reality doesn't really have any empirical meaning. 

  To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. 

 No - because in both COMP, and in my theory of nothing, the presence 
 of other observers is a predicted consequence. Hardly 
 solipsism. Perhaps you mean something else - idealism perhaps? 

  And it implies there was no reality before humans. 
  

 If by human you mean observers in general, then yes - it does imply 
 that. There is no reality without observers. 

  I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
  perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years 
  before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal 
  VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
  independent reality. 

 What evidence do you offer for this assumption? 

  
  Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality 
 for 
  human independent reality itself. 

 It is intersubjective reality. But strictly speaking, not independent. 

  
  That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of 
  reality... 
  

 Actually, it has rather a lot of advantages for understanding as 
 compared with the alternatives. 


 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Liz,

Thanks for your interest in my balls Liz!
:-)

Edgar



On Saturday, February 15, 2014 12:14:49 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:

 On 15 February 2014 10:07, Edgar L. Owen edga...@att.net javascript:wrote:

 Liz,

 If Liz had actually been following my and Jesse's lengthly discussion she 
 would know her comment below isn't true. But of course truth isn't one of 
 Liz's strong points, it generally comes in second to spite


 You spend all your time being rude and unpleasant to all and sundry, yet 
 as soon as someone say something that slightly bruises your poor little 
 ego, you start whingeing. In other words you like to dish it out, but you 
 can't take it. For god's sake grow up, or at least grow some balls.
  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Kim Jones

WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY?


Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL

Email:   kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
 kmjco...@icloud.com
Mobile: 0450 963 719
Phone:  02 93894239
Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com


Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain

 

 On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:
 
 Kim,
 
 I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially 
 such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health 
 problems.
 
 For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and 
 healthy aspects of life!
 
 Best,
 Edgar
 
 
 
 On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:
 
 
 On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 
 On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this 
 are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they 
 keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and 
 when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes 
 I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one 
 would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in 
 truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at 
 least.
  
 Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis 
 mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive 
 .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself 
 within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the 
 manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise 
 that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. 
 Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego 
 involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to 
 protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of 
 criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a 
 particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the 
 Physical).
 
 And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free 
 will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains 
 the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how 
 applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave 
 alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!).
 
 David
 In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued 
 appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be 
 appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's 
 actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has 
 revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no 
 need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus 
 anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging 
 this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant 
 personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has 
 landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. 
 All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae 
 and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I 
 repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads 
 is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation 
 to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The 
 continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions 
 would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of 
 course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet.
 
 -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Kim Jones

WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY?


Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL

Email:   kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
 kmjco...@icloud.com
Mobile: 0450 963 719
Phone:  02 93894239
Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com


Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain

 

 On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:
 
 Kim,
 
 I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially 
 such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health 
 problems.
 
 For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and 
 healthy aspects of life!
 
 Best,
 Edgar
 
 
 
 On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:
 
 
 On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 
 On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this 
 are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they 
 keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and 
 when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes 
 I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one 
 would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in 
 truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at 
 least.
  
 Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis 
 mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive 
 .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself 
 within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the 
 manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise 
 that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. 
 Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego 
 involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to 
 protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of 
 criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a 
 particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the 
 Physical).
 
 And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free 
 will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains 
 the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how 
 applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave 
 alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!).
 
 David
 In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued 
 appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be 
 appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's 
 actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has 
 revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no 
 need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus 
 anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging 
 this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant 
 personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has 
 landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. 
 All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae 
 and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I 
 repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads 
 is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation 
 to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The 
 continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions 
 would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of 
 course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet.
 
 -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Kim Jones

WHAT ARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, SCHOOLBOY?


Kim Jones B. Mus. GDTL

Email:   kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
 kmjco...@icloud.com
Mobile: 0450 963 719
Phone:  02 93894239
Web: http://www.eportfolio.kmjcommp.com


Never let your schooling get in the way of your education - Mark Twain

 

 On 17 Feb 2014, at 2:00 am, Edgar L. Owen edgaro...@att.net wrote:
 
 Kim,
 
 I hope you are aware that constantly harboring so much hatred, especially 
 such delusional unfounded hatred, is quite likely to result in serious health 
 problems.
 
 For your own sake, I'd suggest you try to lighten up and see the bright and 
 healthy aspects of life!
 
 Best,
 Edgar
 
 
 
 On Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:20:09 PM UTC-5, Kim Jones wrote:
 
 
 On 15 Feb 2014, at 10:58 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 
 On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR liz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this 
 are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they 
 keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and 
 when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes 
 I think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one 
 would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in 
 truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at 
 least.
  
 Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis 
 mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive 
 .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself 
 within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the 
 manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise 
 that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. 
 Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego 
 involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to 
 protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of 
 criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a 
 particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the 
 Physical).
 
 And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free 
 will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains 
 the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how 
 applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave 
 alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!).
 
 David
 In the case of Edgar it is so screamingly obvious that his continued 
 appearance on this list is an expression of deep personal need to be 
 appreciated as the genius he indubitably considers himself to be. It's 
 actually quite instructive to see how this plays out in his posts. He has 
 revealed a few personal tidbits about his past that lend weight to this - no 
 need to repeat them here, but his agenda is indeed ego-driven and thus 
 anti-rational, although he has not the slightest intention of acknowledging 
 this since people have clearly been taking exception to his arrogant 
 personal style for most of his life. Which is almost certainly why he has 
 landed here, where he can simply bleat-away without fear of real reprisal. 
 All of his thinking is messy and derivative and shot-through with lacunae 
 and selective reasoning. This boy has never truly learnt how to think. I 
 repeat again that the only effective way to deal with bullies and thickheads 
 is to ignore their posts. Every post by Edgar is essentially an invitation 
 to cross swords with his out-of-control ego, desperate for attention. The 
 continued refusal to answer questions concerning his fundamental assumptions 
 would have him thrown out of any science academy worth the name. You can of 
 course, get away with any shit you want over the Internet.
 
 -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:31:21AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each 
 simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of 
 evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you 
 assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with

You have misread my question. I asked what evidence was there for an
external reality independent of humans, that you so confidently
asserted, rather than an intersubjective reality.



  Edgar Owen wrote:
   I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
   perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years 
   before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal 
   VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
   independent reality. 
 
 Russell STandish asked:
 
  What evidence do you offer for this assumption? 
 

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

Russell,

Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that you 
and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you think 
I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine before 
I ever met you

The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you 
believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.

So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of reality 
that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he lives 
in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their 
own way.

Edgar



On Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:17:21 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:31:21AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Russell, 
  
  Just to answer your question below of what evidence for humans each 
  simulating external reality in their minds, there are vast amounts of 
  evidence for that in cognitive science. It's not an assumption as you 
  assert, but something any cognitive scientist would agree with 

 You have misread my question. I asked what evidence was there for an 
 external reality independent of humans, that you so confidently 
 asserted, rather than an intersubjective reality. 



   Edgar Owen wrote: 
I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion 
 years 
before humans came along. But that humans each have their own 
 internal 
VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
independent reality. 
   
  Russell STandish asked: 
   
   What evidence do you offer for this assumption? 
   

 -- 

  

 Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
 Principal, High Performance Coders 
 Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpc...@hpcoders.com.aujavascript: 
 University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
  



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 01:40:15PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
 Russell,
 
 Well, there is overwhelming evidence of many sorts. The very fact that you 
 and I can even communicate about this issue is one proof, unless you think 
 I'm just a pesky figment of your imagination!

It is evidence only of an intersubjective reality. That there is a
common reality (to us) that we can agree on. Indeed, COMP, to take one
theory of consciousness, predicts the existence of such an intersubjective
reality. But, it is not evidence of a reality independent of all
observers.

 
 And of course that can't possibly be true since I was here just fine before 
 I ever met you
 
 The obvious fact that we have to eat and breathe to survive, unless you 
 believe that just imagining food and oxygen is enough to sustain us.
 

That is evidence of the Anthropic Principle (there is much stronger
evidence of that too), ie what we observe as reality must be
consistent with our existence within that reality. The Anthropic Principle
does not imply an observer independent reality - that would be a
reverse syllogism fallacy.

 So again I would say you are confusing the internal simulation of reality 
 that all minds produce, and that everyone thinks is the real world he lives 
 in, with the real external reality that all minds simulate each in their 
 own way.
 

Keep going. You still haven't provided any evidence that this real
external reality actually exists! Until you do so, I will state that
there is nothing here to confuse. Of course, if you actually succeed,
not only will many people be surprised, you will undoubtedly be the
most famous philosopher since Aristotle and Plato.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-16 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:13:29 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Craig,

 Well first I'm not so optimistic as you that some here don't harbor some 
 pretty ridiculous ideas including that there was no reality before humans. 

 Second, there is a view I present in my book that resolves both 
 perspectives. If we hold the view that everything is just computationally 
 interacting information at the fundamental level, then it is reasonable to 
 define any change in that information as a generic type of experience I 
 call Xperience.

 In this model then, everything that happens is an Xperience, and every 
 information form can be considered a generic observer, whose computational 
 change amounts to an observation.


Except that information does not seem to be an observer. Signs don't read. 
Rules don't play games. Languages don't speak. I think it makes more sense 
the other way around. Forms and information must first be experiences. The 
idea of things 'happening' of 'change' requires an a priori expectation of 
linear time, of memory, persistence, comparison, etc...all kinds of 
sensible conditions which must underpin the possibility of any information 
at all.

Craig
 


 So in this sense we get observers from the very beginning and don't have 
 to wait for human observers to appear. I don't see how this wouldn't be 
 consistent with the Block and Bruno universes 1p views of observable 
 reality though I have no desire to explore that avenue

 Note that this model is also consistent with the transition from the old 
 erroneous view that human observation 'caused' wavefunction 'collapse' to 
 the modern view of decoherence, in which we can say that it is the 
 interactions of two particles themselves which supply the generic 
 'observation' of each other to produce some exact dimensional 'measurement' 
 in each other's frames.

 Edgar



 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:04:24 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:51:18 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Russell,

 But that assumes that consciousness is prior to ontological reality, to 
 actual being. That's one of the things I find most ridiculous about both 
 Bruno's comp and block universes, that they assume everything is 1p 
 perspectives of conscious human observers.

 To me, that's just solipsism in new clothes. And it implies there was no 
 reality before humans.


 I don't think anyone here (or anyone that I have ever spoken with, 
 really) thinks that there was no reality before humans. Idealism, or the 
 kind of Pansensitivity that I suggest need not have anything to do with 
 human beings at all. The issue is whether anything can simply 'exist' 
 independently of all possibility of experience. I think that if that were 
 possible, then any form of perception or experience would be redundant and 
 implausible. More importantly though, in what way would a phenomenon which 
 has no possibility of detection be different than nothingness? We can 
 create experiences that remind us of matter and energy just by imagining 
 them, and we can derive some pleasure and meaning from that independently 
 of any functional consideration, but what reason would the laws of physics 
 or arithmetic have to accidentally make sensation and participation?
  


 I think the correct view is that reality is independent of human 
 perception, that it being functioning quite fine for 13.7 billion years 
 before humans came along. But that humans each have their own internal 
 VIEWS or SIMULATIONS of reality, which they mistake for actual human 
 independent reality.

 Bruno, and a few others seem to MISTAKE those internal views of reality 
 for human independent reality itself. 

 That's a fundamental and deadly mistake in trying to make sense of 
 reality...

 Edgar




 On Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:05:34 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:23:14AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
  Craig, 
  
  I also suspect Bruno's math skills are superior to mine, but his 
  understanding of the place of math in reality seems pretty deficient, 
 or 
  perhaps just rigid. 
  
  As I've pointed out his 8 steps may well be mathematically consistent 
 but 
  that doesn't mean they have anything to do with the fundamental 
 structure 
  of reality at all. To meaningfully apply a purely mathematical or 
 logical 
  proof to reality, one must establish an actual correspondence of the 
  variables in the proof to actual variables of reality. I don't see 
 Bruno 
  doing that at all. 

 The strength of Bruno's approach is that that is implicit in the 
 assumption of COMP. Once you assume that one's consciousness can be 
 implemented by a computation, then necessarily ontological reality 
 (whatever that is) can also be implemented by a computation. This is a 
 simple consequence of the Church thesis. 

  
  There is no way that anything happens in his static Platonia. And 
 there is 
  no method of selecting the structure

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 14 Feb 2014, at 21:41, LizR wrote:


On 15 February 2014 07:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
On 14 Feb 2014, at 01:38, LizR wrote:
On 14 February 2014 13:33, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au  
wrote:

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:14:18PM +1300, LizR wrote:
 It seems to me that the situation summarises as follows.

 Craig disagrees with the axioms of comp, in particular with Yes  
Doctor

 and hence parts company with Bruno at step 0.

 Edgar agrees with Yes Doctor (because in his view consciousness  
is the
 product of a computation) and hence, if he is going to disagree  
with comp,
 needs to find a flaw in Bruno's other axioms or his logical chain  
of

 inferences. I suspect the weak link to attack here *might* be Peano
 arithmetic...

I don't see why - with the Church thesis, Peano arithmetic is just as
good as any other system capable of universal computation.

That comment isn't my opinion, it was intended for Edgar. Since he  
thinks human maths is different to reality maths, it seems like  
the obvious starting point (for him) if he's going to disagree with  
comp.


That explains why he seems unable to define what he meant by  
computational space.


Yes. I was speaking purely within my attempts to understand Edgar's  
ontology although I don't have anything like the patience and  
fortitude of Jesse, who has politely and meticulously deconstructed  
everything Edgar has claimed. I believe he may even be eligible for  
a Bruno - the everything list's award for anyone who can continue to  
be cool and rational against extraordinary odds.


Jesse is very patient indeed. Stathis is not so bad too.
But Quentin might be right, like with Clark, sometimes you feel the  
people will not change their mind, as they make typical opportunist  
remarks, which distracts from the main point, and avoid the  
discussion. Do they act like that purposefully, or unconsciously? That  
is what I try to figure out.


Bruno





--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-15 Thread LizR

On 15 February 2014 23:15, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 But Quentin might be right, like with Clark, sometimes you feel the people
 will not change their mind, as they make typical opportunist remarks, which
 distracts from the main point, and avoid the discussion. Do they act like
 that purposefully, or unconsciously? That is what I try to figure out.

 Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this
are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they
keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and
when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I
think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one
would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in
truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at
least.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 15 Feb 2014, at 03:09, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/14/2014 4:24 PM, Kim Jones wrote:


On 14 Feb 2014, at 3:42 pm, Russell Standish  
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:


What about the CMBR? When it was created there were (presumably)  
no
observers in existence in the universe. Are you saying it  
wouldn't exist if
we hadn't evolved to detect it (e.g. if humans hadn't evolved, or  
if we had

never invented radio telescopes) ?


Yes - exactly.




A direct consequence of The Reversal. First comes Mind. Physics and  
matter and the 3D holographic farmyard are a long way down the road.
I hope no one is assuming that it requires something as weird as a  
human to implement consciousness.
Something as basic as a Boltzmann brain would be in principle,  
instantly possible in any universe, surely.



Of course Boltzmann brains are notoriously transient, so we're to  
think of the universe (or at least pieces of past light cones)  
blinking in and out of existence.  Or does that take a Boltzmann  
brain plus optic nerves and eyes and a Boltzmann telescope?


Yes, not sure why a Boltzmann brain can be said to be basic. Just a  
brain, or any computer, or any relative universal will do. A Boltzmann  
brain do with a probability near to 0 what  UD, or arithmetic do with  
a probability one.


BTW, can someone refer to a paper given a reasonably serious  
definition of a Boltzmann brain?


Bruno




Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-15 Thread David Nyman

On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this
 are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they
 keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and
 when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I
 think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one
 would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in
 truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at
 least.


Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis
mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are hypersensitive
.. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself
within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the
manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise
that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second.
Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego
involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to
protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of
criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a
particular case, and I claim no exception for myself. (The Mental and the
Physical).

And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free
will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains
the ability to change his mind. Of course one might well wonder how
applicable the term smart would be if this were indeed the case (leave
alone the question of how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!).

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?



On 15 Feb 2014, at 12:58, David Nyman wrote:


On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum  
like this are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they  
say and when they keep avoiding questions it's because they don't  
want to answer them, and when they're rude and arrogant it's  
intentional, and so on. But sometimes I think they can't be  
conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one would want to be  
like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in truth and  
science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at least.


Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that,  
mutatis mutandis, might well apply more generally: Philosophers are  
hypersensitive .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which  
does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame  
is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved  
intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that  
psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second.  
Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes  
so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses,  
merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower  
corrosive effects) of criticism. No one can be sure that he is not  
doing this sort of thing in a particular case, and I claim no  
exception for myself. (The Mental and the Physical).


Once I accepted to be present at an introduction to logic made by a  
psychoanalyst, which was a sort of guru, to an audience of  
psychoanalysts.


The first half was rather good, but then  he made a simple mistake in  
a truth table, and someone mention it.
A normal mathematician would have just say sorry, and fix it in the  
second and proceed. But the guy was a guru, and apparently cannot be  
false, so that the second half was a delirious justification of why he  
changed the truth table, and this did not make an atom of sense. The  
more people laugh at that move, the more he became insulting and the  
more he insists on his delirium. It was just impossible to change his  
mind, and all this for what I took to be just a typo without any  
importance.


On another occasion, the same guy seemed to be able to change his  
mind. The only difference was the lack of women in the (small)  
audience. May be all this is related to mating. Man hates to lost face  
in front of women, perhaps. We might be programmed for this.


You know the universal laws:

1) The boss is right,
2) even when the boss is false, 1) still applies,
3) especially when the boss is false, 1) still applies.





And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate  
on free will, remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart  
person retains the ability to change his mind.


I have another theory of intelligence, which is that kids are  
intelligent (= can change their mind and learn), and adults are stupid  
(= can no more change their minds).




Of course one might well wonder how applicable the term smart  
would be if this were indeed the case (leave alone the question of  
how free or otherwise we are to change our minds!).


... something which could restart all threads of the list :)

Bruno




David




--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-15 Thread David Nyman

On 15 February 2014 13:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I have another theory of intelligence, which is that kids are intelligent
 (= can change their mind and learn), and adults are stupid (= can no more
 change their minds).


Yes, and indeed I have noticed that there is a great deal of social and
professional pressure on adults *not* to change their minds. I had a boss
many years ago (for whom unfortunately I didn't have a great deal of
respect, at least professionally). During a work appraisal she said to me
David, I wonder whether perhaps you lack confidence because I notice that
when we meet you often succeed in convincing me that you are absolutely
right about some course of action but then the next time we meet you tell
me you have reconsidered it.. I was struck by her comment and reflected on
it. The next time we met I told her I've been thinking about your remark
and I realise that it's because the fact that you happen to be convinced
that I am right matters less to me than my worry that I might actually be
wrong.. Unfortunately it wasn't until some time later that I realised that
in being quite so frank I had very probably offended her!

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?

2014-02-15 Thread meekerdb


On 2/15/2014 5:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, 
remarks that he's .. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to 
change his mind.


I have another theory of intelligence, which is that kids are intelligent (= can change 
their mind and learn), and adults are stupid (= can no more change their minds).


The best defense against becoming stuck with a wrong opinion is don't make up your mind in 
the first place.  However, this means accepting the burden of acting under uncertainty.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: What are numbers? What is math?