Re: UDA, Am I missing something?
Tom: I guess I'll have to ponder this more. In general I am uncomfortable with having terms like physics and psychology/consciousness defined (redefined?) later on in an argument rather than at the beginning. Bruno: That is a little bit curious because in SANE I *exceptionally* do give the new definitions at the beginning. And this asks me a specially hard effort. My initial goal was just to help people to understand by themselves that the mind-body problem is NOT YET solved. I did say universal dovetailer paradox instead of universal dovetailer argument. Same for the movie graph. I just ask questions in succession and if you say yes at each steps you get the conclusion. Like always in logic, making a paradox precise makes you get a theorem. Tom: See my last comment below. Tom: In such a setting, I find it very difficult (impossible?) to get a grasp of what your hypotheses are. Bruno: It is the hypothesis that we are machines... Now I am not sure what exactly you don't grasp in the hypotheses. To make comp precise, and to avoid unecessary objections I make it clear that I bet also on the elementary arithmetical truth (1+1 = 2, no-biggest -primes, Fermat theorem, etc.), and Church thesis (which is not trivial!). Tom: My exception to your hypotheses was supposedly independent of Church's thesis or arithmetic realism, but the objection was regarding your definition of physics, which seems too narrow to me. But now I am pondering your rebuttal of this exception, and I'm realising that there is some background that I need to become more familiar with. It's just that at first reading, I got a gut feeling that you unknowingly limited physics a priori, thus leading to the conclusion that physics is limited in that way. Tom: In parallel, I guess I have another question: It seems that in the UDA you artificially limit all of physics to be the solution to one particular thought experiment. This seems narrow to me. Bruno: But all *theorems* are particular thought experiments. And *this* thought experiment explains how all physics is related to the only clear notion of everything I ever met, which is the collection of partial computable function, which is closed for the most transcendental operation ever discovered by mathematician: Cantor-KLeene-Godel diagonalization. Tom: Have you considered translating the UDA into mathematics? Tom
Rép : UDA, Am I missing something?
Le 11-juil.-05, à 19:37, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Actually this particular quote seems to present consciousness as the ontological counterpart to the epistemological fundamental psychology, just as matter is considered the ontological counterpart to epistemological fundamental physics. So psychology is our way of thinking about consciousness, just as physics is our way of thinking about matter. OK So the statement ...physics is...reducible to psychology is basically saying our way of thinking about matter is reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness, or physics is reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness. No No. I mean by (correct) physics the (correct) laws predicting or even explaining our most probable history, and this by remaining invariant through that history. Today it is believed that it is Quantum Mechanic (under the form of Standard Model, String Theory or Loop gravity) A priori it could be completely independent of our way of thinking about anything. And I believe it is so. And with comp it is so because the laws of physics are given by a type of statistics on (turing machine, i.e. mathematical) computations, which are as independent of ourselves as the elementary arithmetical truth can be. This influences our way of thinking as much as our ways of thinking will filters possible first person realities. I f you want I am a Platonist even about Physics. It is just that I don't believe (playing the game of believing or assuming comp) that Physics describes a primitive reality. With comp the laws of physics and the physical world's emerges from a purely mathematical statistics bearing on a notion of first person computation. And this notion can be made purely mathematical. And so the comp hyp is made entirely testable. And then I have tested it and comp succeeds the first main test in the sense it predicts a non boolean statistics having some quantum features (including the most important one giving rise to some arithmetical interpretation of quantum logic). Bell's inequality Violation? many evidence for, but still open problem Laws of physics are completely reversible? idem Quantum cloning? idem Quantum computing? idem. Most of those questions can easily been asked to a self-observing Lobian machine, and it can be proved that for those question the machine knows and can communicate the answer, but currently they are non-tractable. Normally one of those logic must be intractable and ``quantum speedable (the one which *is* physics, in a sense). I reduce physics not so much on consciousness, but on theoretical computer science. What can machine proves and guess about their (first-person-UD-accessible) consistent extensions. I could argue that consciousness is a sort of bet there is a model of oneself, a world. (Note that logicians use the word Model in an opposite sense of the physicist's usage. Logicians use the term model in the same sense as the painters: model is for (intended) realities we always describe or capture partially by our theories (painting). it is better to use the word world probably, or even just observer-moment?) Tom Is not your use of the word discourse, even though it is a correct-by-definition discourse, and also your use of the words observable and verifiable, meant to portray something that can be observed by, imagined by, and encoded into our consciousness? So is not your assumption that we can fit this fundamental/perfect physics into our consciousness? Bruno Yes if by our you refer to the lobian machines. But if you mean by it human then it is a big anthropomorphism. Also I avoid the term consciousness. Eventually consciousness will be linked to automatic (unconscious!) inference of self-consistency from some 1 person point of view. Tom: I guess I'll have to ponder this more. In general I am uncomfortable with having terms like physics and psychology/consciousness defined (redefined?) later on in an argument rather than at the beginning. That is a little bit curious because in SANE I *exceptionally* do give the new definitions at the beginning. And this asks me a specially hard effort. My initial goal was just to help people to understand by themselves that the mind-body problem is NOT YET solved. I did say universal dovetailer paradox instead of universal dovetailer argument. Same for the movie graph. I just ask questions in succession and if you say yes at each steps you get the conclusion. Like always in logic, making a paradox precise makes you get a theorem. In such a setting, I find it very difficult (impossible?) to get a grasp of what your hypotheses are. It is the hypothesis that we are machines. It is as old as machines. It is discussed in the question of Milinda which relates some shock waves between India and Greece on fundamental question after Plato. It is discussed in Plato, ..., Descartes (at least for animals!), Hobbes
Re: UDA, Am I missing something?
Le 12-juil.-05, à 20:09, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Tom: My exception to your hypotheses was supposedly independent of Church's thesis or arithmetic realism, but the objection was regarding your definition of physics, which seems too narrow to me. But now I am pondering your rebuttal of this exception, and I'm realising that there is some background that I need to become more familiar with. It's just that at first reading, I got a gut feeling that you unknowingly limited physics a priori, thus leading to the conclusion that physics is limited in that way. That is a good constructive remark. I should be (still more) cautious. To bad I have just finished a paper, but then I don't really defined physics in it I hope :). Sometimes it is simpler to just say physics, hoping people will see the point by the reasoning. I guess that *is* the danger of trying to define physics at the beginning. I mention the notion of *correct by definition*-physics, so that there is no a priori limitation of what physics can be, at all ( other that I am turing emulable). Tom: Have you considered translating the UDA into mathematics? Yes. (Without having done this I could hardly pretend having test it, no?). And I make regularly some tiny attempts to convey the math in this list, but the branches of math relevant are not very well known (mathematical logic, modal logic, and theoretical computer science). What I call the interview of the Lobian Machine (on UDA) *is* the translation of the UDA in mathematics. The result is that comp-physics is given by the composition of three mathematical transformations operating on the well-known modal logic of self-reference (called G by Solovay, Smullyan, Boolos 79, etc.). To test comp: compare physics and comp-physics. If you like formula, here is the most fundamental perhaps: COMP-PHYSICS =SOL(THEAE(COMP(G))), where SOL corresponds to a trip from provability to truth, made possible by the theorems of Godel, Lob, Solovay (SOL is for SOLOVAY 1976) THEAE is put for the use of Theaetetus's definition of a knower, which looks vacuous until you realize their are non trivial again as consequence of Godel incompleteness. (Here there is really a family of theaetetical variants, giving some nuances). And finally COMP is the translation of comp in the language of the Lobian Machine.(COMP is also non trivial by Godel's theorem!). But now I hope I am not discouraging you because you can imagine there is a need of some amount of work, including grasping Godel's theorem and its generalizations. But Smullyan's book FOREVER UNDECIDED is a quite nice recreative introduction to the modal logic G. The modal logic G, as it appeared in the formula above, is the basic pillar of the whole enterprise. I intend to explain (or argue) that Stathis Papaioannou has (re)discovered, in his death thread, my old initial theory of life and death or consciousness, C, which is a simpler subtheory of G (meaning the theorems of C are included in the theorem of G). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: UDA, Am I missing something?
Le 09-juil.-05, à 08:56, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : As such, I appreciate your willingness to have a discourse on the assumptions in the UDA. Thanks. And to derive conclusions is a way to discuss hypotheses. I have always been willing to discover that comp is contradictory. Until now I have only find out that comp is weird, but not so much more than QM. Instead of conscious brain I should have said consciousness. The yes-doctor hypothesis in comp tells me that you are assuming the existence of consciousness. Yes. Under the form of a minimal amount of what is called (in philosophy of mind/cognitive science) grandmother or folk psychology. Now (to cut the air a little bit) assuming does not seem right to me. I just hope people can understand in a mundane way question like will I survive the operation in the hospital etc. Also I don't like expression like a conscious brain or a conscious program. It is Searles' error. Only a person can be conscious. No doubt the brain plays some role but a brain is not conscious, nor a program, nor a string. Also, is not the psychology that you are reducing physics to consciousness (or an equivalent approximation)? I don't understand the sentence. Is not your use of the word discourse, even though it is a correct-by-definition discourse, and also your use of the words observable and verifiable, meant to portray something that can be observed by, imagined by, and encoded into our consciousness? So is not your assumption that we can fit this fundamental/perfect physics into our consciousness? Yes if by our you refer to the lobian machines. But if you mean by it human then it is a big anthropomorphism. Also I avoid the term consciousness. Eventually consciousness will be linked to automatic (unconscious!) inference of self-consistency from some 1 person point of view. >> So if A=“physical reality” and B=“consciousness”, then the assumption is A=B. > This is much too vague. You identify physics and discourse. But I said correct discourse and this includes the semantics (meaning) of the discourse. (Actually I should have said that the assumption seems to be that A is a subset of B.) That's better. Are you saying that correct-by-definition discourse refers to a discourse that does not necessarily fit into our consciousness? A priori, at the first steps of the UDA. We just cannot know. If so, then why call it discourse? Because it can be presented by strings of symbols. Like any papers written by a physicist. It can refer to things which a priori could well not fit in our consciousness. we cannot know before proceeding from assumptions. I am not assuming that our consciousness is necessarily physical, but again I still don't see why you use the term discourse if it does not refer to something that can be grasped by our consciousness. Why not just say correct physics or the way things really are, independent of our consciousness? But then, if you did that, wouldn't you lose any chance of coming to the conclusion of the UDA? No problem at all. Also consciousness is vaster than all possible discourse (provably so for loebian machine). I've read the UDA but not the second part of the SANE paper where you interview the machine. Is not the result from the UDA needed to start the second half? I am wary of being persuaded by an argument further down the line where the UDA is assumed. It would seem that I should be able to understand the assumptions/axioms of the UDA first. I think so. I would even encourage you to be sure of a step before going to the next step. Only (some) mathematicians understand more easily the interview than the UD Argument. But it is formal understanding without motivation then. And the real proof is the UDA. The interview just shows that by interviewing the machine on the UD we can get non trivial information on the measure problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: UDA, Am I missing something?
Tom Instead of conscious brain I should have said consciousness. The yes-doctor hypothesis in comp tells me that you are assuming the existence of consciousness. Bruno Yes. Under the form of a minimal amount of what is called (in philosophy of mind/cognitive science) grandmother or folk psychology. Now (to cut the air a little bit) assuming does not seem right to me. I just hope people can understand in a mundane way question like will I survive the operation in the hospital etc. Also I don't like expression like a conscious brain or a conscious program. It is Searles' error. Only a person can be conscious. No doubt the brain plays some role but a brain is not conscious, nor a program, nor a string. Tom: OK Tom Also, is not the psychology that you are reducing physics to consciousness (or an equivalent approximation)? Bruno I don't understand the sentence. Tom: My sentence was poorly worded. I'll try again: The UDA argues that fundamental physics is necessarily reducible to fundamental psychology. I've read a statement by you somewhere (I think on this list) that this fundamental psychology basically talking about consciousness. Here it is one such quote: The reversal will be epistemological: the branch physics will be a branch of machine's psychology, and ontological: matter will emerge from consciousness, in some sense, hopefully clearer after reading the proof. http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m1726.html Actually this particular quote seems to present consciousness as the ontological counterpart to the epistemological fundamental psychology, just as matter is considered the ontological counterpart to epistemological fundamental physics. So psychology is our way of thinking about consciousness, just as physics is our way of thinking about matter. So the statement ...physics is...reducible to psychology is basically saying our way of thinking about matter is reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness, or physics is reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness. Tom Is not your use of the word discourse, even though it is a correct-by-definition discourse, and also your use of the words observable and verifiable, meant to portray something that can be observed by, imagined by, and encoded into our consciousness? So is not your assumption that we can fit this fundamental/perfect physics into our consciousness? Bruno Yes if by our you refer to the lobian machines. But if you mean by it human then it is a big anthropomorphism. Also I avoid the term consciousness. Eventually consciousness will be linked to automatic (unconscious!) inference of self-consistency from some 1 person point of view. Tom: I guess I'll have to ponder this more. In general I am uncomfortable with having terms like physics and psychology/consciousness defined (redefined?) later on in an argument rather than at the beginning. In such a setting, I find it very difficult (impossible?) to get a grasp of what your hypotheses are. In parallel, I guess I have another question: It seems that in the UDA you artificially limit all of physics to be the solution to one particular thought experiment. This seems narrow to me. Tom
Re: UDA, Am I missing something?
Bruno, After reading your Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) I'd like to giveyou my reaction. Thanks, It seems to me that the trick is hidden in your assumptions. Certainly. In a mathematical theory the theorems are always "hidden" in the axioms.As such, I appreciate your willingness to have a discourse on the assumptions in the UDA. I think you've even stated that before (using “embedded” rather than “hidden”), referring especially to comp. But I'd say that the trick is hidden in your assumptions about the universe or “physical reality”. It is the assumption that “physical reality” is limited to what we can imagine (“communicable physical laws”, with emphasis on communicable) and sense (“incommunicable physical knowledge”) it to be, i.e. in our conscious brains. Be careful. At that stage I don't have conscious brain. Actually I don't have brain, which are physical object and physics is not yet derived from the relation between numbers.Instead of "conscious brain" I should have said "consciousness". The yes-doctor hypothesis in comp tells methat you are assuming the existence of consciousness. Also, is not the "psychology" that you are reducing physics to "consciousness" (or an equivalent approximation)? This is stated in your definition of “Fundamental Physics” as being “the correct-by-definition discourse about observable and verifiable anticipation of possible relatively evolving quantities and/or qualities.” This is a very neutral definition of a "perfect physics". At that stage the "correct physics" could still be even a Newtonian physics, like "there is universe and objects in it obey such and such laws." At that stage, that could be the correct physics. In the word "discourse" I include its intended meaning. It can still be a physicalist discourse! But then, through comp, physicalism will be jeopardized in a completely testable way.Is not your use of the word "discourse", even though it is a "correct-by-definition discourse", and also your use of the words "observable" and "verifiable", meant to portray something that can be observed by, imagined by, and encoded into our consciousness? So is not your assumption that we can fit this "fundamental/perfect physics" into our consciousness? So if A=“physical reality” and B=“consciousness”, then the assumption is A=B. This is much too vague. You identify physics and discourse. But I said "correct discourse" and this includes the semantics (meaning) of the discourse.(Actually I should have said that the assumption seems to be thatA is a subset of B.)Are you saying that "correct-by-definition discourse" refers to a discourse that does not necessarily fit into our consciousness? If so, then why call it "discourse"? It seems that the rest is extraneous because with A=B you've already practically reached your conclusion, even without comp. You would be right if I was defining literally physics by the physical discourse, but I define it by the correct discourse. It could be "string theory" or "QM", etc. Then comp shows we have no choice, and eventually thecomp-physics is given by a precise things all lobian machine can find by introspection. To test comp we can then compare that "comp-physics" with the verified part of empirical physics. If the comp-physics predicts Bell's inequality cannot be violated then comp would be refutated, etc. This shows the rest is not extraneous.I am not assuming that our consciousness is necessarily physical, but again I still don't see why you use the term "discourse" if it does not refer to something that can be grasped by our consciousness. Why not just say "correct physics" or "the way things really are, independent of our consciousness"? But then, if you did that, wouldn't you lose any chance of coming to the conclusion of the UDA? Am I missing something? You have make a confusion between "discourse" and "correct (by definition) discourse." I know it is subtle (and many thanks to point to the fact that a misunderstanding can occur already there). I would say that by progressing in the UDA could help you to see this subtle point. When I translate the UDA in the language of a Lobian machine, a similar difficulty appears making at first sight believe that physics will just be the "classical tautologies" (and that would make physics, with comp, a purely geographico-historical matter, but then incompleteness entails it is not so, we get sort of quantum tautologies. BrunoI've read the UDA but not the second part of the SANE paper where you interview the machine. Is not the result from the UDA needed to start the second half? I am wary of being persuaded by an argument further down the line where the UDA is assumed. It would seem that I should be able to understandthe assumptions/axioms of the UDA first.Tom Caylor
UDA, Am I missing something?
Bruno, After reading your Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) and I?d like to give you my reaction. It seems to me that the trick is hidden in your assumptions. I think you?ve even stated that before (using ?embedded? rather than ?hidden?), referring especially to comp. But I?d say that the trick is hidden in your assumptions about the universe or ?physical reality?. It is the assumption that ?physical reality? is limited to what we can imagine (?communicable physical laws?, with emphasis on communicable) and sense (?incommunicable physical knowledge?) it to be, i.e. in our conscious brains. This is stated in your definition of ?Fundamental Physics? as being ?the correct-by-definition discourse about observable and verifiable anticipation of possible relatively evolving quantities and/or qualities.? So if A=?physical reality? and B=?consciousness?, then the assumption is A=B. It seems that the rest is extraneous because with A=B you?ve already practically reached your conclusion, even without comp. Am I missing something? Tom Caylor
