Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 May 2017, at 07:28, David Nyman wrote:




On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
 wrote:

On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and  
arguments that do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will  
try and answer some of your more direct questions. Why do I take  
the view that "the experience of a unique agent such as the one  
analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be dominated by random events  
rather than the order imposed by the predominance of a robust  
physical-computational mechanism." The reason is that I am  
starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am looking at  
the UD as a system in its own right. The questions seem to concern  
statistics extracted from the behaviour of this system. When  
approaching such a question, I tend to look on the thermodynamic,  
or statistical mechanical properties of such a random system. If  
you take the UD, with its completely random operation over all  
possible (computer) programs, the analogy that comes to mind is  
that of thermal equilibrium -- every possible state has equal  
probability of occurring. Ergodic theory is possible also  
relevant, but I have less familiarity with that, so tend to stick  
to ideas deriving from Boltzmann. Given this state of thermal  
equilibrium, states of some order -- such as conscious moments --  
are going to be unlikely, and fluctuations that give single  
conscious moments are overwhelmingly more likely than more  
extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related conscious  
moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the  
net result in the infinite UD is random. Think of Boltzmann's case,  
a gas of a very large number of molecules. The molecules move and  
interact according to entirely deterministic laws, but ergodic  
theory indicates that after a suitable time, the motions of the  
molecules will be effectively random. I think the same must happen  
with the dovetailer: although each program is deterministic, the  
dovetailing of infinitely many such programs means that sequences of  
individual steps are random (or indistinguishable from random).



What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable  
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the  
first thing to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first  
person (which I take to Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes  
it work again, again Socrates opinion).



Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment --  
time capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment  
needs at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an  
infinity of them. Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer  
moment. the semantic of all first person view (the modalities with  
"& p" attached to them) are topological. Consciousness is always on  
an interval, not on a discrete point in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a  
"conscious moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the  
duration is indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in  
the UD, so it is hard to say what a conscious moment might actually  
be -- some sequence of computational steps, perhaps -- but how many?  
A time capsule is certainly self-contained. Whether these overlap or  
not to give a sense of continuity is another question, and would  
seem merely to extend the notion of a conscious moment in time  
somewhat -- but what is time?




and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience,  
the computations that pass through our conscious moments are  
overwhelmingly likely to be random, with just small fluctuations  
from equilibrium. I.e., single conscious moments with no  
consistent continuation-- going from white noise to white noise.  
This is, of course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in a different  
guise. The experience of the agent is not random -- they  
experience conscious moments with a seemingly coherent chain of  
memories giving a comprehensible history -- but there is no reason  
to suppose that these memories are veridical.


They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal  
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if  
computationalism is correct.


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also  
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial -- but that  
involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful lot of  
computations have to come together to make consciousness that means  
anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise smaller  
and smaller all the time.


Sure, but probability of what and from whose point of view? Aren't  
you continuing to think of 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 May 2017, at 04:04, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and  
arguments that do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will  
try and answer some of your more direct questions. Why do I take  
the view that "the experience of a unique agent such as the one  
analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be dominated by random events  
rather than the order imposed by the predominance of a robust  
physical-computational mechanism." The reason is that I am  
starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am looking at  
the UD as a system in its own right. The questions seem to concern  
statistics extracted from the behaviour of this system. When  
approaching such a question, I tend to look on the thermodynamic,  
or statistical mechanical properties of such a random system. If  
you take the UD, with its completely random operation over all  
possible (computer) programs, the analogy that comes to mind is  
that of thermal equilibrium -- every possible state has equal  
probability of occurring. Ergodic theory is possible also  
relevant, but I have less familiarity with that, so tend to stick  
to ideas deriving from Boltzmann. Given this state of thermal  
equilibrium, states of some order -- such as conscious moments --  
are going to be unlikely, and fluctuations that give single  
conscious moments are overwhelmingly more likely than more  
extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related conscious  
moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the  
net result in the infinite UD is random.


Why? How could you know that? How could you assert this, without first  
explaining which theory of the first person you take. The simple diary  
method works fine in the finite multiplication scenario, and with  
clear distinguishable outcome (like Moscow and Washington), but for  
the infinite case nothing is obvious, and I use a different definition  
of first person, which put a non trivial structure on the space of  
sigma_1 sentences/computations.





Think of Boltzmann's case, a gas of a very large number of  
molecules. The molecules move and interact according to entirely  
deterministic laws, but ergodic theory indicates that after a  
suitable time, the motions of the molecules will be effectively  
random. I think the same must happen with the dovetailer: although  
each program is deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely many  
such programs means that sequences of individual steps are random  
(or indistinguishable from random).


You are very quick, and seems to not really take into account the  
first person views, and the third person views.







What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable  
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the  
first thing to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first  
person (which I take to Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes  
it work again, again Socrates opinion).



Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment --  
time capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment  
needs at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an  
infinity of them. Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer  
moment. the semantic of all first person view (the modalities with  
"& p" attached to them) are topological. Consciousness is always on  
an interval, not on a discrete point in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a  
"conscious moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the  
duration is indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in  
the UD, so it is hard to say what a conscious moment might actually  
be -- some sequence of computational steps, perhaps -- but how many?


An infinity. What remains open is if it enumerable or bigger. This  
comes from the Y = II rules. It is weird, because our consciousness  
results from finite computations, but the stability is dependent of  
their multiplication in the "future" (defined in the UD by the UD- 
steps).






A time capsule is certainly self-contained.


If that is true, then such concept does not make sense if Mechanism is  
correct. Computations and their internal possible views are more  
intrinsically relational.


A time capsule needs a choice of a universal system.


Whether these overlap or not to give a sense of continuity is  
another question, and would seem merely to extend the notion of a  
conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?



and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience,  
the computations that pass through our conscious moments are  
overwhelmingly likely to be random, with just small fluctuations  
from equilibrium. I.e., single conscious moments 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

Much thanks Brent!

I will read it asap :)

Best,

Bruno


On 10 May 2017, at 01:18, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/9/2017 7:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 09 May 2017, at 10:20, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 9/05/2017 5:44 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 01:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:

I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent".  
You refer to "internally consistent computations" and  
"consistent and hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But  
what is the measure of such consistency? You cannot use the  
idea of 'consistent according to some physical laws', because  
it is those laws that you are supposedly deriving -- they  
cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion  
of logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is logically  
consistent that my present conscious moment, with its rich  
record of memories of a physical world, stretching back to  
childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary point in a  
computational history: the continuation of this computation  
back into the past, and forward into the future, could be just  
white noise! That is not logically inconsistent, or  
comutationally inconsistent. It is inconsistent only with the  
physical laws of conservation and persistence. But at this  
point, you do not have such laws!


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain  
problem,


Can you give the reference please?


There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but  
an accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself  
in his book "From Eternity to Here".


Thank you. But I am still looking for the precise place where  
Boltzmann talk on its brain. Not only I don't find it, but nobody  
seem able to provide that reference.


It seems that the name was not given by Boltzmann himself, but  
seems to have originated from consideration of a short 1895  
article by Boltzmann: "On certain questions of the theory of  
gases". (Nature 51:413-15) in which he considered the possibility  
that our Second Law might have arisen from an extremely unlikely  
random fluctuation. I got this reference from Penrose's recent  
book, "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the  
Universe".


Thank you very much, Bruce.

If anyone has an exemplar of Boltzmann's "On certain questions of  
the theory of gases", (Nature 51:413-15), I am interested.


Best,

Bruno


Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 22:40, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
 wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:
Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that  
there is a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless  
laws. Until you have something like that, you cannot define  
consistent continuations.


But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the  
view that the evolution of physical states is fundamentally  
incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes  
physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any  
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the  
computational Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible  
search function for this. That extraction then is necessarily a  
complex consequence of observer selection. Post such extraction,  
the evolution of physical states is then by assumption finitely  
computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism must fail as a  
theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective  
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to  
Everett's relative state assumptions.


The other point on which I must take you to task is again the  
question of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's  
toy model to explicate every detail of the extraction of physics,  
although it's already the case that it *predicts* the multiple  
continuations implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than can  
be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them (again modulo  
the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of  
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment  
described by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that  
it is not incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say,  
the evolution of the wavefunction itself were shown to be  
uncomputable). It should further explicate some reasonably  
convincing justification for why just such a physics might be  
expected to underpin the effective environment we observe. But the  
*facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.  
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.


As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your  
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be  
understood under computationalism only from a first person  
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to justify,  
in terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed expect the  
physics we observe to emerge as the predominating computational  
mechanism underlying our normally intelligible perceptions. To do  
this we only need to show that "last Tuesday" computational  
snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible ones  
cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly  
connected continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in  
terms of something like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality"  
heuristic which, though as you say it was originally based on the  
assumption of physics, IMO illustrates the relevant considerations  
equally intuitively on computational assumptions. In any case, the  
analogy of a multitasking OS that I also mentioned suffices  
equally well in this regard.


From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations  
of "Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective  
difference. The reason being that the consequence is  
overwhelmingly​ likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility  
which will plausibly tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle  
of forgetting and remembering, by "normally intelligible"  
continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant consideration  
in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an absence  
of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not  
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out  
ofphase components of experience be swamped in the  
battle for what one might term personal subjective emergence. They  
just typically get forgotten far more frequently than they get  
remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we  
may think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be  
very poor and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for  
apparently persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence.  
What would emerge with these characteristics would then be  
consistently remembered histories underpinned by a robust and  
reiterative physical mechanism whose highly selective observation  
by us would then be the final evidence of its predomination in  
this epic personal struggle.


I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't  
comment) of what one might term the 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 10 May 2017 8:09 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 10/05/2017 3:28 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial -- but that
involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful lot of
computations have to come together to make consciousness that means
anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise smaller and
smaller all the time.


Sure, but probability of what and from whose point of view? Aren't you
continuing to think of this principally from a third person perspective
(actually merely an abstract "view from nowhere")? Yes, from that
impossible point of view there is no conceivable search function that could
locate the critical computational structures of this sort; under this
interpretation their measure is effectively zero.


Yes,  am trying to understand the operation of the dovetailer as a
mechanism, and hence, from an external objective PoV. That is where I find
the measure to be effectively zero.


Sure, but if you get stuck there you'll never reconcile yourself to Bruno's
argument. The structure of UD* is an eternalist conception. Its "activity"
consists only in the intrinsic combinatorial characteristics of + and *.



Nevertheless we know their presence is in fact assured by assumption.


It should be clear by now that I do not like this argument -- "The theory
must work because it has been assumed to be correct." But that assumes that
the pieces of the theory fit together without problems. If I find problems
in the "fitting together", then your conclusions are no longer assured. A
contradictory theory predicts everything.


That's not it at all. The term "assumption" simply means that the CTM
(effectively CT + YD) is accepted as axiomatic at the outset. If that's not
acceptable, fine, go in peace. But the point of the acceptance of the
assumption is to try to refute the inferences drawn from it and it alone.



In point of fact these computations have the recursive characteristic of
exploding into an infinite fractal​-like structure of extremely high
frequency (as Brent has recently put it) which would give them in a certain
and possibly critical sense a highly robust and non-trivial structure.


I don't know what that means.


It's fractal like because it is the infinite extension of a tiny
computational widget. It is infinitely recursive and hence highly self
similar, robust and dense in structure. Complex combinatorial
inter-connectivity of its intrinsically computational relations make it
highly non trivial.



But the key point is that, on the basis of Bruno's theory of computational
subjectivity (again, implied by assumption of the CTM), they must be
*self-locating* from the first person perspective. This is the key
difference that would unleash the creative subjective potential of the
torrential output of the UD, as distinct from Borges's merely alphabetical
Babel which can only ever be a zero-informational wasteland.


This just makes consciousness independent of the computations --
consciousness must exist first in order to self-locate on the appropriate
computations. IoW,  consciousness gives rise to the computations, not
arithmetic -- or arithmetic is just a construct of conscious beings.


Ah, I just wish we could stop using such a freighted term. Bruno's major
contribution to philosophy of mind, IMO, had been his theory of
self-referential subjectivity, even though it is at present a toy model. He
suggests how various aspects such as communicability and
non-communicability, qualia and quanta, truth and belief etc. can be
modelled and emulated computationally. Much has been written here already
about this. But consciousness in this sense doesn't precede any other
feature of the schema. In a sense though it's the ultimate guarantor that
the rest of the logical elements make sense. It has to be the culmination
point. This is, after all, philosophy of mind.




But how can we assess "probability" in such a context? Very controversial
point as you know. Nonetheless, Hoyle gives us an intuitive heuristic that
allows us to think of this in what is effectively a quasi-frequentist
manner (i.e. the relative subjective frequency of "encountering" any
particular momentary perspective over any finite segment of their abstract
serialisation). This heuristic has both absolute (in the first instance)
and relativising (in the second) self-sampling characteristics. If we think
of it in something like this intuitive way (which IMO is the absolute key
to the argument) then the justification of a measure assessed in the above
manner has to lie in the direction of understanding how and why the
"organised" threads of narrative subjectivity shouldn't be effectively
swamped in a sea of subjective chaos because of competition from
"pathological" 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 10/05/2017 3:28 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:




The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to
also compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial --
but that involves memories stretching back tens of years. An
awful lot of computations have to come together to make
consciousness that means anything. Making the probability in the
sea of random noise smaller and smaller all the time.



Sure, but probability of what and from whose point of view? Aren't you 
continuing to think of this principally from a third person 
perspective (actually merely an abstract "view from nowhere")? Yes, 
from that impossible point of view there is no conceivable search 
function that could locate the critical computational structures of 
this sort; under this interpretation their measure is effectively zero.


Yes,  am trying to understand the operation of the dovetailer as a 
mechanism, and hence, from an external objective PoV. That is where I 
find the measure to be effectively zero.



Nevertheless we know their presence is in fact assured by assumption.


It should be clear by now that I do not like this argument -- "The 
theory must work because it has been assumed to be correct." But that 
assumes that the pieces of the theory fit together without problems. If 
I find problems in the "fitting together", then your conclusions are no 
longer assured. A contradictory theory predicts everything.


In point of fact these computations have the recursive characteristic 
of exploding into an infinite fractal​-like structure of extremely 
high frequency (as Brent has recently put it) which would give them in 
a certain and possibly critical sense a highly robust and non-trivial 
structure.


I don't know what that means.

But the key point is that, on the basis of Bruno's theory of 
computational subjectivity (again, implied by assumption of the CTM), 
they must be *self-locating* from the first person perspective. This 
is the key difference that would unleash the creative subjective 
potential of the torrential output of the UD, as distinct from 
Borges's merely alphabetical Babel which can only ever be a 
zero-informational wasteland.


This just makes consciousness independent of the computations -- 
consciousness must exist first in order to self-locate on the 
appropriate computations. IoW,  consciousness gives rise to the 
computations, not arithmetic -- or arithmetic is just a construct of 
conscious beings.



But how can we assess "probability" in such a context? Very 
controversial point as you know. Nonetheless, Hoyle gives us an 
intuitive heuristic that allows us to think of this in what is 
effectively a quasi-frequentist manner (i.e. the relative subjective 
frequency of "encountering" any particular momentary perspective over 
any finite segment of their abstract serialisation). This heuristic 
has both absolute (in the first instance) and relativising (in the 
second) self-sampling characteristics. If we think of it in something 
like this intuitive way (which IMO is the absolute key to the 
argument) then the justification of a measure assessed in the above 
manner has to lie in the direction of understanding how and why the 
"organised" threads of narrative subjectivity shouldn't be effectively 
swamped in a sea of subjective chaos because of competition from 
"pathological" quasi-narrative fragments. I've tried to pump our 
collective intuition with various analogies to suggest why this 
wouldn't necessarily be the case, to supplement Bruno's more rigorous 
logico-mathematical argument. Hardly conclusive of course but the 
intention is principally to encourage a harder look in this direction.


I don't really understand where you are coming from with Hoyle's heuristic.

The sea of pathological dross that must form the overwhelming but 
fragmented majority of the "conscious potential" of UD* must somehow 
be effectively​ suppressed from the perspective of the relatively 
tiny, but mightily persistent and powerful narrative threads of 
veridical consciousness (i.e. those that refer truthfully to an 
externality that in turn explicates their perceptions of it, or what 
we call physics).


If the UD has anything at all to do with consciousness, then it is clear 
that physics must be entailed by exactly those calculations that entail 
consciousness. That does not seem to be the picture that comes to me 
from the UD -- the sea of chaos overwhelms everything. If consciousness 
is to self-select from this sea of randomness, consciousness must 
pre-exist the dovetailer, so the dovetailer itself becomes otiose.


Bruce


A pathway of least effort through the phase space of possible 
subjectivity? Russell's solution to the possibility of an Occam 
catastrophe that would sink this fragile vessel is simply to assume 
that this physics is the unique requirement 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 10 May 2017 6:45 a.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:


   I'm not so concerned about the measure being non-zero.  I'm sure
   fans of "everything" will just appeal to self-selection: the
   anthropic principle applied to the UD.


It seems to me that that is just an appeal to some sort of magic. If the 
threads supporting consciousness are of zero measure, how does there 
come to be a consciousness in the first place? To self-select anything? 
It makes consciousness the primary self-existing thing, and the supposed 
underlying computations merely derivative.


   My point is that the computations in the threads supporting some
   consistent consciousness will necessarily be computing also a
   consistent physics...that there cannot be JUST conscious thoughts. 
   They must be embedded in a physical world, whether that world is

   made of arithmetic or something else.


I agree completely.

   It is this physics environment that makes it possible to define
   "consistent continutation" as Bruce notes.  So then Bruno's theory
   doesn't seem so different from what Tegmark and other physicists
   seek in a TOE.  From the physics-first perspective, he has just
   hyposthesized which computations that are instantiating a physics
   also instantiate consciousness.


It seems difficult to avoid that conclusion. Or, to put it the other way 
around, the computations that support consciousness necessarily also 
instantiate the underlying physics. Does that render physics otiose? It 
seems to put physics on the same level as consciousness, so which one is 
seen as more important is a matter of arbitrary choice.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 10 May 2017 7:05 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 10/05/2017 3:38 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 10 May 2017 5:51 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 6:40:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote:

On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>
> I find Barbour's idea of time capsules quite helpful here. Each time
> capsule is a self-contained conscious moment. There is no progression
> necessarily involved, so the computation that gives one conscious moment is
> complete in itself, and independent of other such conscious moments. (In
> Barbour's picture, these moments are points in configuration space that are
> related physically, but we do not use that aspect here.) In the moment, you
> are self-aware, and aware of memories that give you a concept of self. But
> in that moment there is no way that you can know whether these memories are
> veridicial or not -- they could well all be completely false, in which case
> there is no "you" that continues through time as a related series of
> experiences. Each experienced moment is complete in itself, and there is no
> continuation. If all you have is the moment of consciousness, you can go no
> further than this. It is all an illusion, and there is no physics to
> extract.
>
> Of course, this is a solipsistic conclusion, but there is nothing in our
> experience of consciousness that shows solipsism to be false. The "I" is
> the "I" of the moment, nothing more.
>
> Now consider the UD in arithmetic. It dovetails all possible programs --
> does all possible computations -- but most computations have nothing to do
> with consciousness. If we use Boltzmann's thermodynamics as an illustration
> of the situation, the computations of the dovetailer represent a state of
> thermal equilibrium, a state of maximum entropy. The characteristic of
> thermal equilibrium is that every microstate is equally likely -- a state
> of complete chaos. Similarly, in the dovetailer, every computation is
> equally likely and there is no order whatsoever. Occasionally, in
> Boltzmann's thermal equilibrium there are fluctuations to states of lower
> entropy in which some order emerges, but according to the second law of
> thermodynamics, these always return to equilibrium. Similarly, in the
> computations of the dovetailer, there are occasionally computations that
> make some sort of internal sense. Some of these correspond to conscious
> moments. But, as in the thermal case, these rapidly return to meaningless
> noise. Small fluctuations to momentary order are overwhelmingly more likely
> than larger fluctuations to order that persists over time -- or
> computations that correspond to an extended sequence of (consistent)
> conscious states. In fact, within the dovetailer there are undoubtedly
> sequences of computations that correspond to the entire history of the
> observable universe, from the big bang through to the final heat death. But
> such calculations are of measure zero in the overall picture.
>
> So, if one is to take the statistics of computations that pass through
> one's instantaneous conscious state in order to extract meaningful physics,
> one will find that the overwhelming majority of these computations are of
> short-lived conscious moments that rapidly return to meaningless chaos,
> nothing more. The dovetailer would then say that no consistent physics can
> ever be extracted from the statistics over conscious moments, because these
> statistics are dominated by chaotic continuations.
>
>
> I  agree with that except I think you are not recognizing a drastic
> difference of scale.  A human conscious thought is something with duration,
> something on the order of tens of milliseconds.  The substitution that you
> say "yes, doctor" to, must operate at a much higher frequency.  So I
> conceive of the UD producing threads of computation consisting of many
> successive states within one "thought" and there will be threads in other
> programs being executed by the UD which are sufficiently similar over this
> sequence of states as to constitute the "same thought" because thoughts are
> classical level emergent things.  In Barbours metaphor this a kind of
> stream of fog.  If you take this view of thoughts having duration then they
> can overlap and form a kind of continuum.  Bertrand Russell gives this
> analysis of time as a perception in one of his more technical papers.  But
> a consequence of this is that what picks out a "thought" from just noise is
> this persistent coherence over the duration of many (countably infinitely
> many) thread of UD computations.  This persistence is what constitutes
> physics in that consciousness because it must account for all interactions
> that are perceived as external and it must make them more coherent than
> just noise.  So a happy solution to the measurement problem would be to
> show, purely as a matter of arithmetic, that such coherent 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 10/05/2017 3:38 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 10 May 2017 5:51 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 6:40:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote:


On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:


I find Barbour's idea of time capsules quite helpful here.
Each time capsule is a self-contained conscious moment.
There is no progression necessarily involved, so the
computation that gives one conscious moment is complete in
itself, and independent of other such conscious moments. (In
Barbour's picture, these moments are points in configuration
space that are related physically, but we do not use that
aspect here.) In the moment, you are self-aware, and aware
of memories that give you a concept of self. But in that
moment there is no way that you can know whether these
memories are veridicial or not -- they could well all be
completely false, in which case there is no "you" that
continues through time as a related series of experiences.
Each experienced moment is complete in itself, and there is
no continuation. If all you have is the moment of
consciousness, you can go no further than this. It is all an
illusion, and there is no physics to extract.

Of course, this is a solipsistic conclusion, but there is
nothing in our experience of consciousness that shows
solipsism to be false. The "I" is the "I" of the moment,
nothing more.

Now consider the UD in arithmetic. It dovetails all possible
programs -- does all possible computations -- but most
computations have nothing to do with consciousness. If we
use Boltzmann's thermodynamics as an illustration of the
situation, the computations of the dovetailer represent a
state of thermal equilibrium, a state of maximum entropy.
The characteristic of thermal equilibrium is that every
microstate is equally likely -- a state of complete chaos.
Similarly, in the dovetailer, every computation is equally
likely and there is no order whatsoever. Occasionally, in
Boltzmann's thermal equilibrium there are fluctuations to
states of lower entropy in which some order emerges, but
according to the second law of thermodynamics, these always
return to equilibrium. Similarly, in the computations of the
dovetailer, there are occasionally computations that make
some sort of internal sense. Some of these correspond to
conscious moments. But, as in the thermal case, these
rapidly return to meaningless noise. Small fluctuations to
momentary order are overwhelmingly more likely than larger
fluctuations to order that persists over time -- or
computations that correspond to an extended sequence of
(consistent) conscious states. In fact, within the
dovetailer there are undoubtedly sequences of computations
that correspond to the entire history of the observable
universe, from the big bang through to the final heat death.
But such calculations are of measure zero in the overall
picture.

So, if one is to take the statistics of computations that
pass through one's instantaneous conscious state in order to
extract meaningful physics, one will find that the
overwhelming majority of these computations are of
short-lived conscious moments that rapidly return to
meaningless chaos, nothing more. The dovetailer would then
say that no consistent physics can ever be extracted from
the statistics over conscious moments, because these
statistics are dominated by chaotic continuations.


I  agree with that except I think you are not recognizing a
drastic difference of scale.  A human conscious thought is
something with duration, something on the order of tens of
milliseconds.  The substitution that you say "yes, doctor"
to, must operate at a much higher frequency.  So I conceive
of the UD producing threads of computation consisting of many
successive states within one "thought" and there will be
threads in other programs being executed by the UD which are
sufficiently similar over this sequence of states as to
constitute the "same thought" because thoughts are classical
level emergent things.  In Barbours metaphor this a kind of
stream of fog.  If you take this view of thoughts having
duration then they can overlap and form a kind of continuum.
Bertrand Russell gives this analysis of time as a perception
in one of his more technical papers.  But a consequence of
this is that what picks out a "thought" from just noise is
this persistent 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 10 May 2017 6:45 a.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/9/2017 10:28 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and arguments that
do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will try and answer some of
your more direct questions. Why do I take the view that "the experience of
a unique agent such as the one analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be
dominated by random events rather than the order imposed by the
predominance of a robust physical-computational mechanism." The reason is
that I am starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am looking at
the UD as a system in its own right. The questions seem to concern
statistics extracted from the behaviour of this system. When approaching
such a question, I tend to look on the thermodynamic, or statistical
mechanical properties of such a random system. If you take the UD, with its
completely random operation over all possible (computer) programs, the
analogy that comes to mind is that of thermal equilibrium -- every possible
state has equal probability of occurring. Ergodic theory is possible also
relevant, but I have less familiarity with that, so tend to stick to ideas
deriving from Boltzmann. Given this state of thermal equilibrium, states of
some order -- such as conscious moments -- are going to be unlikely, and
fluctuations that give single conscious moments are overwhelmingly more
likely than more extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related
conscious moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the net
result in the infinite UD is random. Think of Boltzmann's case, a gas of a
very large number of molecules. The molecules move and interact according
to entirely deterministic laws, but ergodic theory indicates that after a
suitable time, the motions of the molecules will be effectively random. I
think the same must happen with the dovetailer: although each program is
deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely many such programs means that
sequences of individual steps are random (or indistinguishable from
random).


What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the first thing
to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first person (which I take to
Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes it work again, again Socrates
opinion).


Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment -- time
capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment needs
at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an infinity of them.
Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer moment. the semantic of all
first person view (the modalities with "& p" attached to them) are
topological. Consciousness is always on an interval, not on a discrete
point in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a "conscious
moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the duration is
indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in the UD, so it is hard
to say what a conscious moment might actually be -- some sequence of
computational steps, perhaps -- but how many? A time capsule is certainly
self-contained. Whether these overlap or not to give a sense of continuity
is another question, and would seem merely to extend the notion of a
conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?



and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience, the
computations that pass through our conscious moments are overwhelmingly
likely to be random, with just small fluctuations from equilibrium. I.e.,
single conscious moments with no consistent continuation-- going from white
noise to white noise. This is, of course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in a
different guise. The experience of the agent is not random -- they
experience conscious moments with a seemingly coherent chain of memories
giving a comprehensible history -- but there is no reason to suppose that
these memories are veridical.


They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if
computationalism is correct.


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial -- but that
involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful lot of
computations have to come together to make consciousness that means
anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise smaller and
smaller all the time.


Sure, but probability of what and from whose point of view? Aren't you
continuing to think of this principally from a third person perspective
(actually merely an 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/9/2017 10:28 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:


Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and
arguments that do not necessarily intersect at many points. I
will try and answer some of your more direct questions. Why do I
take the view that "the experience of a unique agent such as the
one analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be dominated by random
events rather than the order imposed by the predominance of a
robust physical-computational mechanism." The reason is that I
am starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am
looking at the UD as a system in its own right. The questions
seem to concern statistics extracted from the behaviour of this
system. When approaching such a question, I tend to look on the
thermodynamic, or statistical mechanical properties of such a
random system. If you take the UD, with its completely random
operation over all possible (computer) programs, the analogy
that comes to mind is that of thermal equilibrium -- every
possible state has equal probability of occurring. Ergodic
theory is possible also relevant, but I have less familiarity
with that, so tend to stick to ideas deriving from Boltzmann.
Given this state of thermal equilibrium, states of some order --
such as conscious moments -- are going to be unlikely, and
fluctuations that give single conscious moments are
overwhelmingly more likely than more extended fluctuations that
give a sequence of related conscious moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the
net result in the infinite UD is random. Think of Boltzmann's
case, a gas of a very large number of molecules. The molecules
move and interact according to entirely deterministic laws, but
ergodic theory indicates that after a suitable time, the motions
of the molecules will be effectively random. I think the same must
happen with the dovetailer: although each program is
deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely many such programs
means that sequences of individual steps are random (or
indistinguishable from random).



What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the
stable continuations of my states, as seen by the first person,
so the first thing to do is to get a mathematical theory of the
first person (which I take to Theaetetus, as Gödel's
incompleteness makes it work again, again Socrates opinion).



Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment
-- time capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious
moment needs at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies
on an infinity of them. Nor do I conceive such a thing as an
observer moment. the semantic of all first person view (the
modalities with "& p" attached to them) are topological.
Consciousness is always on an interval, not on a discrete point
in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a
"conscious moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the
duration is indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in
the UD, so it is hard to say what a conscious moment might
actually be -- some sequence of computational steps, perhaps --
but how many? A time capsule is certainly self-contained. Whether
these overlap or not to give a sense of continuity is another
question, and would seem merely to extend the notion of a
conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?




and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious
experience, the computations that pass through our conscious
moments are overwhelmingly likely to be random, with just small
fluctuations from equilibrium. I.e., single conscious moments
with no consistent continuation-- going from white noise to
white noise. This is, of course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in
a different guise. The experience of the agent is not random --
they experience conscious moments with a seemingly coherent
chain of memories giving a comprehensible history -- but there
is no reason to suppose that these memories are veridical.


They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if
computationalism is correct.


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to
also compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial --
but that involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful
lot of computations have to come together to make 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 10 May 2017 5:51 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 6:40:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote:

On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>
> I find Barbour's idea of time capsules quite helpful here. Each time
> capsule is a self-contained conscious moment. There is no progression
> necessarily involved, so the computation that gives one conscious moment is
> complete in itself, and independent of other such conscious moments. (In
> Barbour's picture, these moments are points in configuration space that are
> related physically, but we do not use that aspect here.) In the moment, you
> are self-aware, and aware of memories that give you a concept of self. But
> in that moment there is no way that you can know whether these memories are
> veridicial or not -- they could well all be completely false, in which case
> there is no "you" that continues through time as a related series of
> experiences. Each experienced moment is complete in itself, and there is no
> continuation. If all you have is the moment of consciousness, you can go no
> further than this. It is all an illusion, and there is no physics to
> extract.
>
> Of course, this is a solipsistic conclusion, but there is nothing in our
> experience of consciousness that shows solipsism to be false. The "I" is
> the "I" of the moment, nothing more.
>
> Now consider the UD in arithmetic. It dovetails all possible programs --
> does all possible computations -- but most computations have nothing to do
> with consciousness. If we use Boltzmann's thermodynamics as an illustration
> of the situation, the computations of the dovetailer represent a state of
> thermal equilibrium, a state of maximum entropy. The characteristic of
> thermal equilibrium is that every microstate is equally likely -- a state
> of complete chaos. Similarly, in the dovetailer, every computation is
> equally likely and there is no order whatsoever. Occasionally, in
> Boltzmann's thermal equilibrium there are fluctuations to states of lower
> entropy in which some order emerges, but according to the second law of
> thermodynamics, these always return to equilibrium. Similarly, in the
> computations of the dovetailer, there are occasionally computations that
> make some sort of internal sense. Some of these correspond to conscious
> moments. But, as in the thermal case, these rapidly return to meaningless
> noise. Small fluctuations to momentary order are overwhelmingly more likely
> than larger fluctuations to order that persists over time -- or
> computations that correspond to an extended sequence of (consistent)
> conscious states. In fact, within the dovetailer there are undoubtedly
> sequences of computations that correspond to the entire history of the
> observable universe, from the big bang through to the final heat death. But
> such calculations are of measure zero in the overall picture.
>
> So, if one is to take the statistics of computations that pass through
> one's instantaneous conscious state in order to extract meaningful physics,
> one will find that the overwhelming majority of these computations are of
> short-lived conscious moments that rapidly return to meaningless chaos,
> nothing more. The dovetailer would then say that no consistent physics can
> ever be extracted from the statistics over conscious moments, because these
> statistics are dominated by chaotic continuations.
>
>
> I  agree with that except I think you are not recognizing a drastic
> difference of scale.  A human conscious thought is something with duration,
> something on the order of tens of milliseconds.  The substitution that you
> say "yes, doctor" to, must operate at a much higher frequency.  So I
> conceive of the UD producing threads of computation consisting of many
> successive states within one "thought" and there will be threads in other
> programs being executed by the UD which are sufficiently similar over this
> sequence of states as to constitute the "same thought" because thoughts are
> classical level emergent things.  In Barbours metaphor this a kind of
> stream of fog.  If you take this view of thoughts having duration then they
> can overlap and form a kind of continuum.  Bertrand Russell gives this
> analysis of time as a perception in one of his more technical papers.  But
> a consequence of this is that what picks out a "thought" from just noise is
> this persistent coherence over the duration of many (countably infinitely
> many) thread of UD computations.  This persistence is what constitutes
> physics in that consciousness because it must account for all interactions
> that are perceived as external and it must make them more coherent than
> just noise.  So a happy solution to the measurement problem would be to
> show, purely as a matter of arithmetic, that such coherent threads of
> significant length have high measure.
>
> Brent
>

I agree that I did not pay much attention to the duration of a "conscious
moment". I 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 10 May 2017 3:04 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and arguments that
do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will try and answer some of
your more direct questions. Why do I take the view that "the experience of
a unique agent such as the one analogised by Hoyle or Barbour would be
dominated by random events rather than the order imposed by the
predominance of a robust physical-computational mechanism." The reason is
that I am starting from a slightly different perspective -- I am looking at
the UD as a system in its own right. The questions seem to concern
statistics extracted from the behaviour of this system. When approaching
such a question, I tend to look on the thermodynamic, or statistical
mechanical properties of such a random system. If you take the UD, with its
completely random operation over all possible (computer) programs, the
analogy that comes to mind is that of thermal equilibrium -- every possible
state has equal probability of occurring. Ergodic theory is possible also
relevant, but I have less familiarity with that, so tend to stick to ideas
deriving from Boltzmann. Given this state of thermal equilibrium, states of
some order -- such as conscious moments -- are going to be unlikely, and
fluctuations that give single conscious moments are overwhelmingly more
likely than more extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related
conscious moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the net
result in the infinite UD is random. Think of Boltzmann's case, a gas of a
very large number of molecules. The molecules move and interact according
to entirely deterministic laws, but ergodic theory indicates that after a
suitable time, the motions of the molecules will be effectively random. I
think the same must happen with the dovetailer: although each program is
deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely many such programs means that
sequences of individual steps are random (or indistinguishable from random).


What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the first thing
to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first person (which I take to
Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes it work again, again Socrates
opinion).


Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment -- time
capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment needs
at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an infinity of them.
Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer moment. the semantic of all
first person view (the modalities with "& p" attached to them) are
topological. Consciousness is always on an interval, not on a discrete
point in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a "conscious
moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the duration is
indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in the UD, so it is hard
to say what a conscious moment might actually be -- some sequence of
computational steps, perhaps -- but how many? A time capsule is certainly
self-contained. Whether these overlap or not to give a sense of continuity
is another question, and would seem merely to extend the notion of a
conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?



and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience, the
computations that pass through our conscious moments are overwhelmingly
likely to be random, with just small fluctuations from equilibrium. I.e.,
single conscious moments with no consistent continuation-- going from white
noise to white noise. This is, of course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in a
different guise. The experience of the agent is not random -- they
experience conscious moments with a seemingly coherent chain of memories
giving a comprehensible history -- but there is no reason to suppose that
these memories are veridical.


They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if
computationalism is correct.


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial -- but that
involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful lot of
computations have to come together to make consciousness that means
anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise smaller and
smaller all the time.


Sure, but probability of what and from whose point of view? Aren't you
continuing to think of this principally from a third person perspective
(actually merely an abstract "view from nowhere")? Yes, from that
impossible point of view there is no conceivable search function that 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 6:40:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote:


On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:


I find Barbour's idea of time capsules quite helpful here. Each
time capsule is a self-contained conscious moment. There is no
progression necessarily involved, so the computation that gives
one conscious moment is complete in itself, and independent of
other such conscious moments. (In Barbour's picture, these
moments are points in configuration space that are related
physically, but we do not use that aspect here.) In the moment,
you are self-aware, and aware of memories that give you a concept
of self. But in that moment there is no way that you can know
whether these memories are veridicial or not -- they could well
all be completely false, in which case there is no "you" that
continues through time as a related series of experiences. Each
experienced moment is complete in itself, and there is no
continuation. If all you have is the moment of consciousness, you
can go no further than this. It is all an illusion, and there is
no physics to extract.

Of course, this is a solipsistic conclusion, but there is nothing
in our experience of consciousness that shows solipsism to be
false. The "I" is the "I" of the moment, nothing more.

Now consider the UD in arithmetic. It dovetails all possible
programs -- does all possible computations -- but most
computations have nothing to do with consciousness. If we use
Boltzmann's thermodynamics as an illustration of the situation,
the computations of the dovetailer represent a state of thermal
equilibrium, a state of maximum entropy. The characteristic of
thermal equilibrium is that every microstate is equally likely --
a state of complete chaos. Similarly, in the dovetailer, every
computation is equally likely and there is no order whatsoever.
Occasionally, in Boltzmann's thermal equilibrium there are
fluctuations to states of lower entropy in which some order
emerges, but according to the second law of thermodynamics, these
always return to equilibrium. Similarly, in the computations of
the dovetailer, there are occasionally computations that make
some sort of internal sense. Some of these correspond to
conscious moments. But, as in the thermal case, these rapidly
return to meaningless noise. Small fluctuations to momentary
order are overwhelmingly more likely than larger fluctuations to
order that persists over time -- or computations that correspond
to an extended sequence of (consistent) conscious states. In
fact, within the dovetailer there are undoubtedly sequences of
computations that correspond to the entire history of the
observable universe, from the big bang through to the final heat
death. But such calculations are of measure zero in the overall
picture.

So, if one is to take the statistics of computations that pass
through one's instantaneous conscious state in order to extract
meaningful physics, one will find that the overwhelming majority
of these computations are of short-lived conscious moments that
rapidly return to meaningless chaos, nothing more. The dovetailer
would then say that no consistent physics can ever be extracted
from the statistics over conscious moments, because these
statistics are dominated by chaotic continuations.


I  agree with that except I think you are not recognizing a
drastic difference of scale.  A human conscious thought is
something with duration, something on the order of tens of
milliseconds.  The substitution that you say "yes, doctor" to,
must operate at a much higher frequency.  So I conceive of the UD
producing threads of computation consisting of many successive
states within one "thought" and there will be threads in other
programs being executed by the UD which are sufficiently similar
over this sequence of states as to constitute the "same thought"
because thoughts are classical level emergent things.  In Barbours
metaphor this a kind of stream of fog.  If you take this view of
thoughts having duration then they can overlap and form a kind of
continuum.  Bertrand Russell gives this analysis of time as a
perception in one of his more technical papers.  But a consequence
of this is that what picks out a "thought" from just noise is this
persistent coherence over the duration of many (countably
infinitely many) thread of UD computations. This persistence is
what constitutes physics in that consciousness because it must
account for all interactions that are perceived as external and it
must make them more coherent than just noise.  So a happy solution
to the measurement problem would be to show, purely as a matter of
arithmetic, that such coherent threads of significant length have
high measure.

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 10/05/2017 12:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:

Yes, it does seem that we are each outlining positions and arguments 
that do not necessarily intersect at many points. I will try and 
answer some of your more direct questions. Why do I take the view 
that "the experience of a unique agent such as the one analogised by 
Hoyle or Barbour would be dominated by random events rather than the 
order imposed by the predominance of a robust physical-computational 
mechanism." The reason is that I am starting from a slightly 
different perspective -- I am looking at the UD as a system in its 
own right. The questions seem to concern statistics extracted from 
the behaviour of this system. When approaching such a question, I 
tend to look on the thermodynamic, or statistical mechanical 
properties of such a random system. If you take the UD, with its 
completely random operation over all possible (computer) programs, 
the analogy that comes to mind is that of thermal equilibrium -- 
every possible state has equal probability of occurring. Ergodic 
theory is possible also relevant, but I have less familiarity with 
that, so tend to stick to ideas deriving from Boltzmann. Given this 
state of thermal equilibrium, states of some order -- such as 
conscious moments -- are going to be unlikely, and fluctuations that 
give single conscious moments are overwhelmingly more likely than 
more extended fluctuations that give a sequence of related conscious 
moments.


Not sure I understand. The UD is not random at all.


The sequence of computational steps may be deterministic, but the net 
result in the infinite UD is random. Think of Boltzmann's case, a gas of 
a very large number of molecules. The molecules move and interact 
according to entirely deterministic laws, but ergodic theory indicates 
that after a suitable time, the motions of the molecules will be 
effectively random. I think the same must happen with the dovetailer: 
although each program is deterministic, the dovetailing of infinitely 
many such programs means that sequences of individual steps are random 
(or indistinguishable from random).


What is random is the First Person Indeterminacy on all the stable 
continuations of my states, as seen by the first person, so the first 
thing to do is to get a mathematical theory of the first person (which 
I take to Theaetetus, as Gödel's incompleteness makes it work again, 
again Socrates opinion).



Given also the insight from Barbour that each conscious moment -- 
time capsule -- is self contained,


I am not sure that such an intuition is correct. A conscious moment 
needs at least two universal numbers, but in fine relies on an 
infinity of them. Nor do I conceive such a thing as an observer 
moment. the semantic of all first person view (the modalities with "& 
p" attached to them) are topological. Consciousness is always on an 
interval, not on a discrete point in some time frame.


I was deliberately vague in specifying what was meant by a "conscious 
moment". I doubt that it is of zero duration, but the duration is 
indeterminate. Beside, there is no concept of time in the UD, so it is 
hard to say what a conscious moment might actually be -- some sequence 
of computational steps, perhaps -- but how many? A time capsule is 
certainly self-contained. Whether these overlap or not to give a sense 
of continuity is another question, and would seem merely to extend the 
notion of a conscious moment in time somewhat -- but what is time?



and in itself, a complete explanation of our conscious experience, 
the computations that pass through our conscious moments are 
overwhelmingly likely to be random, with just small fluctuations from 
equilibrium. I.e., single conscious moments with no consistent 
continuation-- going from white noise to white noise. This is, of 
course, Russell's Occam catastrophe in a different guise. The 
experience of the agent is not random -- they experience conscious 
moments with a seemingly coherent chain of memories giving a 
comprehensible history -- but there is no reason to suppose that 
these memories are veridical.


They will be more or less plausible, with respect to the normal 
computations, if they exist of course, but they have to exist if 
computationalism is correct.


The computations underlying the conscious moment have, then, to also 
compute the physics that renders the memories veridicial -- but that 
involves memories stretching back tens of years. An awful lot of 
computations have to come together to make consciousness that means 
anything. Making the probability in the sea of random noise smaller and 
smaller all the time.



So there is no order imposed by the computational mechanism.


All computation are ordered structure, ordered by the universal 
numbers which implement them. But indeed, the first person duration is 
not directly ordered by this or that universal numbers, but by all 
those who operate the 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 9 May 2017 9:40 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

> Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that there is
> a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless laws. Until you
> have something like that, you cannot define consistent continuations.
>
> But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the view that
> the evolution of physical states is fundamentally incomputable,
>

But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes physics in
one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the computational
Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible search function for
this. That extraction then is necessarily a complex consequence of observer
selection. Post such extraction, the evolution of physical states is then
by assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism
must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's
relative state assumptions.

The other point on which I must take you to task is again the question of
circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy model to explicate
every detail of the extraction of physics, although it's already the case
that it *predicts* the multiple continuations implicit in the wavefunction,
which is more than can be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them
(again modulo the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment described
by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that it is not
incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say, the evolution of the
wavefunction itself were shown to be uncomputable). It should further
explicate some reasonably convincing justification for why just such a
physics might be expected to underpin the effective environment we observe.
But the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.

As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your Boltzmann
brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be understood under
computationalism only from a first person perspective, as I previously
suggested to you. We need to justify, in terms of a subjective measure, why
we should indeed expect the physics we observe to emerge as the
predominating computational mechanism underlying our normally intelligible
perceptions. To do this we only need to show that "last Tuesday"
computational snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible
ones cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly connected
continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in terms of something
like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you
say it was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO illustrates
the relevant considerations equally intuitively on computational
assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a multitasking OS that I also
mentioned suffices equally well in this regard.

>From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective difference.
The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ likely to be a
total subjective unintelligibility which will plausibly tend to be utterly
swamped, in the struggle of forgetting and remembering, by "normally
intelligible" continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant
consideration in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an
absence of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase components of
experience be swamped in the battle for what one might term personal
subjective emergence. They just typically get forgotten far more frequently
than they get remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what
we may think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently persistent,
pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would emerge with these
characteristics would then be consistently remembered histories underpinned
by a robust and reiterative physical mechanism whose highly selective
observation by us would then be the final evidence of its predomination in
this epic personal struggle.

I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't comment) of
what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of computationalism. I
said that consciousness or first person subjectivity was really a 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/8/2017 10:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
wrote:


On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume
that there is a coherent underlying physics with regular
exceptionless laws. Until you have something like that, you
cannot define consistent continuations.

But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes
the view that the evolution of physical states is
fundamentally incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes
physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any 
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the 
computational Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible 
search function for this. That extraction then is necessarily a 
complex consequence of observer selection. Post such extraction, the 
evolution of physical states is then by assumption finitely 
computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism must fail as a 
theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective situation, 
mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's relative 
state assumptions.


The other point on which I must take you to task is again the 
question of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy 
model to explicate every detail of the extraction of physics, 
although it's already the case that it *predicts* the multiple 
continuations implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than can be 
said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them (again modulo the 
FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of computationalism and 
our observation of the physical environment described by QM, all the 
theory has to show at this stage is that it is not incompatible with 
these data (as it would be if, say, the evolution of the wavefunction 
itself were shown to be uncomputable). It should further explicate 
some reasonably convincing justification for why just such a physics 
might be expected to underpin the effective environment we observe. 
But the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at 
issue. There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.


As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your 
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be 
understood under computationalism only from a first person 
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to justify, in 
terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed expect the 
physics we observe to emerge as the predominating computational 
mechanism underlying our normally intelligible perceptions. To do 
this we only need to show that "last Tuesday" computational snippets 
can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible ones cannot 
interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly connected 
continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in terms of 
something like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic 
which, though as you say it was originally based on the assumption of 
physics, IMO illustrates the relevant considerations equally 
intuitively on computational assumptions. In any case, the analogy of 
a multitasking OS that I also mentioned suffices equally well in this 
regard.


From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of 
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective 
difference. The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ 
likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility which will 
plausibly tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle of forgetting 
and remembering, by "normally intelligible" continuations. The FPI 
is, obviously, the relevant consideration in this regard. This is 
what I meant​ when I said that an absence of evidence for this sort 
of pathology or unintelligibility is not evidence of its absence​. It 
suffices that these out of phase components of experience be swamped 
in the battle for what one might term personal subjective emergence. 
They just typically get forgotten far more frequently than they get 
remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we may 
think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor 
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently 
persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would 
emerge with these characteristics would then be consistently 
remembered histories underpinned by a robust and reiterative physical 
mechanism whose highly selective observation by us would then be the 
final evidence of its predomination in this epic personal struggle.


I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't 
comment) of what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of 
computationalism. I said that 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 9 May 2017 8:36 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 9/05/2017 4:36 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 9 May 2017 6:16 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

> Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that there is
> a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless laws. Until you
> have something like that, you cannot define consistent continuations.
>
> But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the view that
> the evolution of physical states is fundamentally incomputable,
>

But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes physics in
one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the computational
Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible search function for
this. That extraction then is necessarily a complex consequence of observer
selection. Post such extraction, the evolution of physical states is then
by assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism
must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's
relative state assumptions.

The other point on which I must take you to task is again the question of
circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy model to explicate
every detail of the extraction of physics, although it's already the case
that it *predicts* the multiple continuations implicit in the wavefunction,
which is more than can be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them
(again modulo the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment described
by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that it is not
incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say, the evolution of the
wavefunction itself were shown to be uncomputable). It should further
explicate some reasonably convincing justification for why just such a
physics might be expected to underpin the effective environment we observe.
But the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.

As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your Boltzmann
brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be understood under
computationalism only from a first person perspective, as I previously
suggested to you. We need to justify, in terms of a subjective measure, why
we should indeed expect the physics we observe to emerge as the
predominating computational mechanism underlying our normally intelligible
perceptions. To do this we only need to show that "last Tuesday"
computational snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible
ones cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly connected
continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in terms of something
like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you
say it was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO illustrates
the relevant considerations equally intuitively on computational
assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a multitasking OS that I also
mentioned suffices equally well in this regard.

>From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective difference.
The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ likely to be a
total subjective unintelligibility which will plausibly tend to be utterly
swamped, in the struggle of forgetting and remembering, by "normally
intelligible" continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant
consideration in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an
absence of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase components of
experience be swamped in the battle for what one might term personal
subjective emergence. They just typically get forgotten far more frequently
than they get remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what
we may think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently persistent,
pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would emerge with these
characteristics would then be consistently remembered histories underpinned
by a robust and reiterative physical mechanism whose highly selective
observation by us would then be the final evidence of its predomination in
this epic personal struggle.

I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't comment) of
what one might term the 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 10:20, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 9/05/2017 5:44 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 01:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:

I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent".  
You refer to "internally consistent computations" and  
"consistent and hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But  
what is the measure of such consistency? You cannot use the idea  
of 'consistent according to some physical laws', because it is  
those laws that you are supposedly deriving -- they cannot form  
part of the derivation. I don't think any notion of logical  
consistency can fill the bill here. It is logically consistent  
that my present conscious moment, with its rich record of  
memories of a physical world, stretching back to childhood, is  
all an illusion of the momentary point in a computational  
history: the continuation of this computation back into the  
past, and forward into the future, could be just white noise!  
That is not logically inconsistent, or comutationally  
inconsistent. It is inconsistent only with the physical laws of  
conservation and persistence. But at this point, you do not have  
such laws!


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain  
problem,


Can you give the reference please?


There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but an  
accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself in  
his book "From Eternity to Here".


Thank you. But I am still looking for the precise place where  
Boltzmann talk on its brain. Not only I don't find it, but nobody  
seem able to provide that reference.


It seems that the name was not given by Boltzmann himself, but seems  
to have originated from consideration of a short 1895 article by  
Boltzmann: "On certain questions of the theory of gases". (Nature  
51:413-15) in which he considered the possibility that our Second  
Law might have arisen from an extremely unlikely random fluctuation.  
I got this reference from Penrose's recent book, "Fashion, Faith,  
and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe".


Thank you very much, Bruce.

If anyone has an exemplar of Boltzmann's "On certain questions of the  
theory of gases", (Nature 51:413-15), I am interested.


Best,

Bruno







states of complete randomness both before and after our current  
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our  
present moment is immersed in a physics that involves  
exceptionless conservation laws, so that the past and future can  
both be evolved from our present state by the application of  
persistent and pervasive physical laws.


Did Boltzman took into account QM? QM without collapse.


Why would he? Thermodynamics applies to both classical and quantum  
physics and taking QM, with or without collapse, makes absolutely  
no difference to the arguments here.


That seems weird.


Why?

Obviously he did not take into account mechanism and its measure  
problem, and still believe in some brain mind identity link.


So what?


You answered it yourself yesterday. Carroll solution of the BB  
problem, assuming it works in physics, cannot be lifted in the  
computationalist framework, and still invoke the primary matter. It  
might be the closest solution in physics, but it avoids the  
infinitely many "BB" of all size in arithmetic. he does not take  
into account that our mind, "here and now" is supported by  
infinitely many computations.


Carrol was doing physics, not working in the computationalist  
paradigm. I doubt that he would be very much concerned that his  
result cannot be transferred there. The infinitely many BB of all  
size in arithmetic is very much more your problem. I have commented  
on this in other posts.


Bruce


Unless you can give some meaning to the concept of "consistent"  
that does not just beg the question, then I think Boltzmann's  
problem will destroy your search for some 'measure' that makes  
our experience of physical laws (any physical laws, not just  
those we actually observe) overwhelmingly likely.


No problem, but you will need a non computationalist theory of  
mind to assure the identity link. But most such theories are  
highly speculative, and of the negative kind, as they need to add  
non Turing emulable magic, nor non-FPI-recoverable magic, to just  
keep a belief intact, when that belief is not sustained by any  
evidence, just an habit since long.


That is just a lot of meaningless blather, with no relevance to  
the questions at issue here. You still rely on the notion of  
"consistent relative states", and all I am asking for is that you  
define what you mean by "consistent", and what determines the  
presence or absence of such consistency.


I explained it yesterday. Consistent is given by the dual of the  
boxes for each hypostases. The logic of consistent extensions is  
different for each points of view. For G, there 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 09:36, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 9/05/2017 4:36 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 9 May 2017 6:16 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
 wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
 wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:
Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that  
there is a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless  
laws. Until you have something like that, you cannot define  
consistent continuations.


But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the  
view that the evolution of physical states is fundamentally  
incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes  
physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any  
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the  
computational Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible  
search function for this. That extraction then is necessarily a  
complex consequence of observer selection. Post  
such  extraction, the evolution of  
physical states is then by assumption finitely computable, modulo  
the FPI, else computationalism must fail as a theory of mind or of  
physics. At this point the objective situation, mutatis mutandis,  
is essentially equivalent to Everett's relative state assumptions.


The other point on which I must take you to task is again the  
question of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's  
toy model to explicate every detail of the extraction of physics,  
although it's already the case that it *predicts* the multiple  
continuations implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than can  
be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them (again modulo  
the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of  
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment  
described by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that  
it is not incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say,  
the evolution of the wavefunction itself were shown to be  
uncomputable). It should further explicate some reasonably  
convincing justification for why just such a physics might be  
expected to underpin the effective environment we observe. But the  
*facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.  
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.


As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your  
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be  
understood under computationalism only from a first person  
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to justify,  
in terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed expect the  
physics we observe to emerge as the predominating computational  
mechanism underlying our normally intelligible perceptions. To do  
this we only need to show that "last Tuesday" computational  
snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible ones  
cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly  
connected continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in  
terms of something like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality"  
heuristic which, though as you say it was originally based on the  
assumption of physics, IMO illustrates the relevant considerations  
equally intuitively on computational assumptions. In any case, the  
analogy of a multitasking OS that I also mentioned suffices  
equally well in this regard.


From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations  
of "Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective  
difference. The reason being that the consequence is  
overwhelmingly​ likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility  
which will plausibly tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle  
of forgetting and remembering, by "normally intelligible"  
continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant consideration  
in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an absence  
of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not  
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase  
components of experience be swamped in the battle for what one  
might term personal subjective emergence. They just typically get  
forgotten far more frequently than they get remembered by Hoyle's  
multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we may think of as  
pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor and  
haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently  
persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would  
emerge with these characteristics would then be consistently  
remembered histories underpinned by a robust and reiterative  
physical mechanism whose highly selective observation by us would  
then be the final evidence of its predomination in this epic  
personal struggle.


I gave you 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 9/05/2017 5:44 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 May 2017, at 01:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:

I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You 
refer to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and 
hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure 
of such consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent 
according to some physical laws', because it is those laws that you 
are supposedly deriving -- they cannot form part of the derivation. 
I don't think any notion of logical consistency can fill the bill 
here. It is logically consistent that my present conscious moment, 
with its rich record of memories of a physical world, stretching 
back to childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary point in a 
computational history: the continuation of this computation back 
into the past, and forward into the future, could be just white 
noise! That is not logically inconsistent, or comutationally 
inconsistent. It is inconsistent only with the physical laws of 
conservation and persistence. But at this point, you do not have 
such laws!


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,


Can you give the reference please?


There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but an 
accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself in his 
book "From Eternity to Here".


Thank you. But I am still looking for the precise place where 
Boltzmann talk on its brain. Not only I don't find it, but nobody seem 
able to provide that reference.


It seems that the name was not given by Boltzmann himself, but seems to 
have originated from consideration of a short 1895 article by Boltzmann: 
"On certain questions of the theory of gases". (Nature 51:413-15) in 
which he considered the possibility that our Second Law might have 
arisen from an extremely unlikely random fluctuation. I got this 
reference from Penrose's recent book, "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in 
the New Physics of the Universe".




states of complete randomness both before and after our current 
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our 
present moment is immersed in a physics that involves exceptionless 
conservation laws, so that the past and future can both be evolved 
from our present state by the application of persistent and 
pervasive physical laws.


Did Boltzman took into account QM? QM without collapse.


Why would he? Thermodynamics applies to both classical and quantum 
physics and taking QM, with or without collapse, makes absolutely no 
difference to the arguments here.


That seems weird.


Why?

Obviously he did not take into account mechanism and its measure 
problem, and still believe in some brain mind identity link.


So what?


You answered it yourself yesterday. Carroll solution of the BB 
problem, assuming it works in physics, cannot be lifted in the 
computationalist framework, and still invoke the primary matter. It 
might be the closest solution in physics, but it avoids the infinitely 
many "BB" of all size in arithmetic. he does not take into account 
that our mind, "here and now" is supported by infinitely many 
computations.


Carrol was doing physics, not working in the computationalist paradigm. 
I doubt that he would be very much concerned that his result cannot be 
transferred there. The infinitely many BB of all size in arithmetic is 
very much more your problem. I have commented on this in other posts.


Bruce


Unless you can give some meaning to the concept of "consistent" 
that does not just beg the question, then I think Boltzmann's 
problem will destroy your search for some 'measure' that makes our 
experience of physical laws (any physical laws, not just those we 
actually observe) overwhelmingly likely.


No problem, but you will need a non computationalist theory of mind 
to assure the identity link. But most such theories are highly 
speculative, and of the negative kind, as they need to add non 
Turing emulable magic, nor non-FPI-recoverable magic, to just keep a 
belief intact, when that belief is not sustained by any evidence, 
just an habit since long.


That is just a lot of meaningless blather, with no relevance to the 
questions at issue here. You still rely on the notion of "consistent 
relative states", and all I am asking for is that you define what you 
mean by "consistent", and what determines the presence or absence of 
such consistency.


I explained it yesterday. Consistent is given by the dual of the boxes 
for each hypostases. The logic of consistent extensions is different 
for each points of view. For G, there are cul-de-sac "world" 
everywhere, for Z, there are no cul-de-sac world at all, for example.


Have you grasp that p is consistent with PA means that PA + p does not 
prove f? So ~p is not provable by PA. ~[]~p.  So "consistent" is the 
modal dual of provable, that is <>p. G is a normal 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 08:27, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

I have no good answer, only that your Platonic stuff somehow  
generates material.


But "my" platonic stuff (and Plato's one: the ideas) are typically not  
material, and well, ... thanks for admitting that you have no good  
answer, because we don't see how, even in Plato heaven, some primary  
(not just the appearance) of matter could be produced by immaterial  
things, having only immaterial relations with each other.
But there is no problem in explaining, once we assume mechanism, how  
appearance of matter is generated in arithmetic, in "virtual/ 
arithmetical dreams". The problem then is to justify the stability,  
lawfulness, or lasting character of those appearances.


Bruno






-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 6:51 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?


On 08 May 2017, at 06:50, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

What about an Ensemble (Deutsch and Tegmark), that is also, by  
necessity, computationalist in nature.


Why? Most ensemble are typically not computable object.  
Computability is an enormous restriction on the notion of set.




One way of doing this would be that algorithms, somehow produce  
oodles of matter and energy, hence universes?


How could something non material produces something material?

Bruno





-Original Message-
From: Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 12:44 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
> On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  
<li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

> Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
> reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience  
in

> his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
> which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
> mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a  
fixed

> point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
> environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
> the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
> effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
>
> I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
> calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of  
physical

> supervenience in his theories.
>
>
> Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
>

In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.

My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.

The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.

This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.

Cheers
--


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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 07:16, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  
 wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:
Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that  
there is a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless  
laws. Until you have something like that, you cannot define  
consistent continuations.


But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the  
view that the evolution of physical states is fundamentally  
incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes  
physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any  
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the  
computational Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible  
search function for this. That extraction then is necessarily a  
complex consequence of observer selection. Post such extraction,  
the evolution of physical states is then by assumption finitely  
computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism must fail as a  
theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective  
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's  
relative state assumptions.


The other point on which I must take you to task is again the  
question of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy  
model to explicate every detail of the extraction of physics,  
although it's already the case that it *predicts* the multiple  
continuations implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than can  
be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them (again modulo  
the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of  
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment  
described by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that  
it is not incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say, the  
evolution of the wavefunction itself were shown to be  
uncomputable). It should further explicate some reasonably  
convincing justification for why just such a physics might be  
expected to underpin the effective environment we observe. But the  
*facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.  
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.


As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your  
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be  
understood under computationalism only from a first person  
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to justify,  
in terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed expect the  
physics we observe to emerge as the predominating computational  
mechanism underlying our normally intelligible perceptions. To do  
this we only need to show that "last Tuesday" computational  
snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible ones  
cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly  
connected continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in  
terms of something like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality"  
heuristic which, though as you say it was originally based on the  
assumption of physics, IMO illustrates the relevant considerations  
equally intuitively on computational assumptions. In any case, the  
analogy of a multitasking OS that I also mentioned suffices equally  
well in this regard.


From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of  
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective  
difference. The reason being that the consequence is  
overwhelmingly​ likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility  
which will plausibly tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle of  
forgetting and remembering, by "normally intelligible"  
continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant consideration in  
this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an absence of  
evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not  
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase  
components of experience be swamped in the battle for what one  
might term personal subjective emergence. They just typically get  
forgotten far more frequently than they get remembered by Hoyle's  
multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we may think of as  
pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor and  
haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently  
persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would  
emerge with these characteristics would then be consistently  
remembered histories underpinned by a robust and reiterative  
physical mechanism whose highly selective observation by us would  
then be the final evidence of its predomination in this epic  
personal struggle.


I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't  
comment) of what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of  
computationalism. I 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 01:16, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 9/05/2017 12:22 am, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 15:18 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them, but  
the measure function (which we don't have) must render the  
consistency, thing like complexity and size could be a way to  
explain why consciousness->white noise have low measure.


Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you some  
handle on what you want. For consistency, the definition of  
'consistent continuations' for the measure must come from logic  
and/or arithmetic alone.


A measure function would come from arithmetic alone, complexity/ 
size/... are arithmetical notion... so I don't see your point,


If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states,  
it does not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?) can  
really do the job.


it's not because there are everything that everything is equally  
probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have  
to have a measure function, I understand you reject even the idea,  
so it seems pointless to discuss


What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in  
the MWI interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave  
function is precisely the measure function one needs, for any  
interpretation of QM to accord with experience.


If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a  
measure over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not  
clear that these conscious states need consistent continuations --  
your next conscious moment might be a computation is some entirely  
different program of the UD. However, that notion runs into the  
Occam catastrophe that Russell mentions -- the overwhelming  
majority of programs that instantiate our conscious moments run  
from white noise in the past, to white noise in the future --  
Boltzmann brains, in effect.


... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your  
ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else)  
but to discuss the everything ideas and theories.


Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the  
possibility that there may be conceptual problems with their  
implementation? I am not making any ontological claims here. I am  
simply asking how one can get physics out of computationalist  
notions.



To have that we have to extract a measure function... which we  
don't have. But things like complexity,size, minimum change between  
computation steps, ... may give a clue to it. The fact that we  
don't have one does not mean there isn't any and that measure  
function must exists for computationalism to have any meaning.  
Assuming it is true, there is such a function...


That is just the usual non-argument -- "If our theory is correct,  
then it must work"


No, that is the usual theoretical reasoning. We assume the theory, and  
will change it in case it is refuted. especially so given that in  
biology, psychology, and even physics, mechanism is the theory by  
default.






All that remains is for you to prove that your theory is correct,


Nobody can prove a theory correct when it is supposed to be applicable  
to the subject who brought that theory.





and without making contact with some facts and making some  
verifiable predictions, you can't do that.



But in this case, mechanism makes the contact. Compare the logic of  
physical propositions with the material machine's povs.


Bruno






Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 01:10, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 8:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 07:01, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 2:45 pm, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Rather than use the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the  
conservation of energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not  
take Boltzmann a bit more seriously, and search for these suckers  
in the galaxy, in other words, treat, as a working hypothesis  
BB's as real phenomena? There's nobody out there that is sending  
easy to listen to, signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's  
butts as a prank, by pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!


I think that, given a physical universe, Boltzmann brains are  
highly unlikely. The reasons are essentially those elucidated by  
Sean Carroll, http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298v1 . Namely de Sitter  
space is a quiescent vacuum in which there are no quantum  
fluctuations of the sort hypothesized to give rise to Boltzmann  
brains. The problem is that David (and Bruno) cannot appeal to  
such an argument, because Carroll presupposes a physical universe,  
and they can't do that on pain of circularity.


Well said.

They need something


Who are "they"?


Carroll, Boltzman, the physicists using mechanism.




like von Neuman-Wigner-Penrose action of consciousness on matter/ 
quantum-wave. Even Hameroff's view could'nt help. Only some  
explicit non-mechanism could save Carroll argument.


What feature of Carroll's argument needs saving?


To be able to choose a type of physics (like de sitter space) in which  
the quantum vaccuum is not rich enough to generate the UD or the BBs.  
This can be saves if the "de Sitter space" could be justified from the  
material hypostases. So Carroll works could be helpful in the future,  
if we could derive the de Sitter space itself from the material povs  
of the universal machine.


Bruno





Bruce

QM-with-collapse-made-by consciousness is a good candidate, but of  
course, if successful, it would made the mechanist out of job. But  
today, this seems premature to me. We don'thave any evidence, but  
if the Z1* and X1* (and S4Grz1) logics depart too much from nature,  
we would have some evidence for it.


Bruno



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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 01:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:

I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You  
refer to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and  
hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure  
of such consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent  
according to some physical laws', because it is those laws that  
you are supposedly deriving -- they cannot form part of the  
derivation. I don't think any notion of logical consistency can  
fill the bill here. It is logically consistent that my present  
conscious moment, with its rich record of memories of a physical  
world, stretching back to childhood, is all an illusion of the  
momentary point in a computational history: the continuation of  
this computation back into the past, and forward into the future,  
could be just white noise! That is not logically inconsistent, or  
comutationally inconsistent. It is inconsistent only with the  
physical laws of conservation and persistence. But at this point,  
you do not have such laws!


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,


Can you give the reference please?


There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but an  
accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself in his  
book "From Eternity to Here".


Thank you. But I am still looking for the precise place where  
Boltzmann talk on its brain. Not only I don't find it, but nobody seem  
able to provide that reference.





states of complete randomness both before and after our current  
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our  
present moment is immersed in a physics that involves  
exceptionless conservation laws, so that the past and future can  
both be evolved from our present state by the application of  
persistent and pervasive physical laws.


Did Boltzman took into account QM? QM without collapse.


Why would he? Thermodynamics applies to both classical and quantum  
physics and taking QM, with or without collapse, makes absolutely no  
difference to the arguments here.


That seems weird.





Obviously he did not take into account mechanism and its measure  
problem, and still believe in some brain mind identity link.


So what?


You answered it yourself yesterday. Carroll solution of the BB  
problem, assuming it works in physics, cannot be lifted in the  
computationalist framework, and still invoke the primary matter. It  
might be the closest solution in physics, but it avoids the infinitely  
many "BB" of all size in arithmetic. he does not take into account  
that our mind, "here and now" is supported by infinitely many  
computations.






Unless you can give some meaning to the concept of "consistent"  
that does not just beg the question, then I think Boltzmann's  
problem will destroy your search for some 'measure' that makes our  
experience of physical laws (any physical laws, not just those we  
actually observe) overwhelmingly likely.


No problem, but you will need a non computationalist theory of mind  
to assure the identity link. But most such theories are highly  
speculative, and of the negative kind, as they need to add non  
Turing emulable magic, nor non-FPI-recoverable magic, to just keep  
a belief intact, when that belief is not sustained by any evidence,  
just an habit since long.


That is just a lot of meaningless blather, with no relevance to the  
questions at issue here. You still rely on the notion of "consistent  
relative states", and all I am asking for is that you define what  
you mean by "consistent", and what determines the presence or  
absence of such consistency.


I explained it yesterday. Consistent is given by the dual of the boxes  
for each hypostases. The logic of consistent extensions is different  
for each points of view. For G, there are cul-de-sac "world"  
everywhere, for Z, there are no cul-de-sac world at all, for example.


Have you grasp that p is consistent with PA means that PA + p does not  
prove f? So ~p is not provable by PA. ~[]~p.  So "consistent" is the  
modal dual of provable, that is <>p. G is a normal modal logic, and so  
we avoid the cul-de-sac in the material povs by attaching  
conjunctively <>t to the box: []p & <>t, and that gives a new box,  
having its own dual <>p v []f, which is the relative consistency  
needed for the probabilistic measure.


Bruno






Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 9/05/2017 4:36 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 9 May 2017 6:16 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"
> wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules
assume that there is a coherent underlying physics with
regular exceptionless laws. Until you have something like
that, you cannot define consistent continuations.

But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one
takes the view that the evolution of physical states is
fundamentally incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one
assumes physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is
vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the
computational Babel consequent on the theory. There is no
possible search function for this. That extraction then is
necessarily a complex consequence of observer selection. Post
such extraction, the evolution of physical states is then by
assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else
computationalism must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At
this point the objective situation, mutatis mutandis, is
essentially equivalent to Everett's relative state assumptions.

The other point on which I must take you to task is again the
question of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's
toy model to explicate every detail of the extraction of physics,
although it's already the case that it *predicts* the multiple
continuations implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than
can be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them (again
modulo the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment
described by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that
it is not incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say,
the evolution of the wavefunction itself were shown to be
uncomputable). It should further explicate some reasonably
convincing justification for why just such a physics might be
expected to underpin the effective environment we observe. But
the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at
issue. There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with
here.

As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be
understood under computationalism only from a first person
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to
justify, in terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed
expect the physics we observe to emerge as the predominating
computational mechanism underlying our normally intelligible
perceptions. To do this we only need to show that "last Tuesday"
computational snippets can only reinforce, and magical or
unintelligible ones cannot interfere, with "normally
intelligible" and complexly connected continuations. A way to
grasp this intuitively is in terms of something like Hoyle's
 "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you
say it was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO
illustrates the relevant considerations equally intuitively on
computational assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a
multitasking OS that I also mentioned suffices equally well in
this regard.

From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations
of "Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective
difference. The reason being that the consequence is
overwhelmingly​ likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility
which will plausibly tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle
of forgetting and remembering, by "normally intelligible"
continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant consideration
in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an absence
of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is
not evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase
components of experience be swamped in the battle for what one
might term personal subjective emergence. They just typically get
forgotten far more frequently than they get remembered by Hoyle's
multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we may think of as
pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor and
haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently
persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would
emerge with these characteristics would then 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2017, at 00:58, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, May 08, 2017 at 12:42:01PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:



I don't think they need to halt. They need only to go through our
local state. A priori, the halting computations might have a null
measure among all computations, so that the global "physical"
measure might be determined only by the Non Halting computations.
Just a technical detail out of the scope of your argument, to be
sure, but it might have technical consequences when we do the math
though.



But the halting computations does not have zero measure in the space
of all computations. (I'm assuming you mean zero measure when you say
"null measure"). The probability of a machine halting is the Chaitin
Omega number, provably between 0 and 1.


That might be interesting, but I am not sure it works for the first  
person points of view, which actually pertains also on the oracles  
(simulated by the infinities of big natural numbers, in the first  
person perspectives). If we take them into account, the modal logics  
remains invariant for this addition, but the experiences explode in a  
continuum (due to the (random) oracles, notably), and in that case  
halting computations, which are only enumerable, get a measure zero  
(with most reasonable 3p measure known here). This is complicated, and  
it needs the quantified G* to be translated in arithmetic and to keep  
intact our means to distinguish quanta and qualia, so, let us keep  
this in the open problems. I certainly would have liked using Chaitin  
theorem, but it is not the most urgent (so to speak). This is related,  
in recursion theory, to the two dualities creative/productive, versus  
simple/immune. Maybe (I speculate here) the simple/immune "duality" is  
needed for finding the hamiltonian (like the creative/^productive is  
used, through G, for the physical statistical measure).


Bruno



I don't think this changes your first two sentences, though :).

Cheers

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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 20:13, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/8/2017 3:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

How could something non material produces something material?


That's what we keep wondering about computationalism.


On the contrary, with computationalism, that never happen. Something  
non material (the "mind" of the universal numbers) has to produce only  
the appearance of matter.


Contrarily: the materialist has to justified how matter can produce  
the mind, (not to difficult with mechanism) and explains its stability  
(which appears to be impossible without magical reification of  
metaphysical notions).


Bruno





Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 15:18, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them, but  
the measure function (which we don't have) must render the  
consistency, thing like complexity and size could be a way to  
explain why consciousness->white noise have low measure.


Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you some  
handle on what you want. For consistency, the definition of  
'consistent continuations' for the measure must come from logic and/ 
or arithmetic alone.


A measure function would come from arithmetic alone, complexity/ 
size/... are arithmetical notion... so I don't see your point,


If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states, it  
does not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?) can  
really do the job.


That is right. But that is why there is a measure problem, which is on  
the material appearances.


Now the UDA explains that the material appearance are just the leaves  
of UD*, that is all states (hating or not) obtained by the execution  
of the UD (in arithmetic, or in combinatory algebra, or in the game of  
life, etc.), and the measure 1 is given by []p & <>t, []p says that p  
is true in all consistent continuations (by a form of completeness  
theorem), and <>t guarantied that it is a probability (as opposed to  
belief or knowledge): it is the usual default assumption that is  
imperative for any measure of probability, credibility, etc. And we  
get a quantum logic exactly there, so Mechanism is not (yet) refuted.
To get the full measure, and the physical laws: it is only a matter of  
solving the open problems (finding good axiomatization of the material  
hypostases, and semantics, up to get the Hilbert spaces or the von  
Neuman algebra. Von Neumann original goal of his quantum logic was  
that QM should be derived from the logic, and quantum logicians are  
working on that. By getting the quantum logic exactly where Mechanism  
imposed the logic of the observable shows that mechanism might not be  
so far from explaining the proigin of the physical appearance. Then  
the inherited split between provable and true (G/G*) in the material  
hypostases makes possible to distinguish the qualia from the quanta,  
which was the goal: unifying all "forces" without eliminating  
consciousness and qualia, but justifying them integrally.
Invoking a primary material reality to oppose this, like some people  
do, is like invoking invisible horse to oppose the physics of  
automobile, or invoking a God to oppose to the theory of evolution.  
Indeed, mechanism can be seen a kind of "evolution theory", except  
that the evolution of the physical laws operates in a logical space of  
computations "seen from inside" (that is with some point of view  
defined by intentional variant of self-reference). That rejoins the  
neoplatonist conception of Reality: just one reality (arithmetical  
truth) seen from different angles (the 8 hypostases instantiated by  
all particular creatures in arithmetic).


Bruno





it's not because there are everything that everything is equally  
probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have to  
have a measure function, I understand you reject even the idea, so  
it seems pointless to discuss


What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in  
the MWI interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave function  
is precisely the measure function one needs, for any interpretation  
of QM to accord with experience.


If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a  
measure over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not clear  
that these conscious states need consistent continuations -- your  
next conscious moment might be a computation is some entirely  
different program of the UD. However, that notion runs into the  
Occam catastrophe that Russell mentions -- the overwhelming majority  
of programs that instantiate our conscious moments run from white  
noise in the past, to white noise in the future -- Boltzmann brains,  
in effect.


... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your  
ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else)  
but to discuss the everything ideas and theories.


Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the  
possibility that there may be conceptual problems with their  
implementation? I am not making any ontological claims here. I am  
simply asking how one can get physics out of computationalist notions.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 9 May 2017 6:16 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

> Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that there is
> a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless laws. Until you
> have something like that, you cannot define consistent continuations.
>
> But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the view that
> the evolution of physical states is fundamentally incomputable,
>

But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes physics in
one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the computational
Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible search function for
this. That extraction then is necessarily a complex consequence of observer
selection. Post such extraction, the evolution of physical states is then
by assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism
must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's
relative state assumptions.

The other point on which I must take you to task is again the question of
circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy model to explicate
every detail of the extraction of physics, although it's already the case
that it *predicts* the multiple continuations implicit in the wavefunction,
which is more than can be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them
(again modulo the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment described
by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that it is not
incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say, the evolution of the
wavefunction itself were shown to be uncomputable). It should further
explicate some reasonably convincing justification for why just such a
physics might be expected to underpin the effective environment we observe.
But the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.

As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your Boltzmann
brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be understood under
computationalism only from a first person perspective, as I previously
suggested to you. We need to justify, in terms of a subjective measure, why
we should indeed expect the physics we observe to emerge as the
predominating computational mechanism underlying our normally intelligible
perceptions. To do this we only need to show that "last Tuesday"
computational snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible
ones cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly connected
continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in terms of something
like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you
say it was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO illustrates
the relevant considerations equally intuitively on computational
assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a multitasking OS that I also
mentioned suffices equally well in this regard.

>From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective difference.
The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ likely to be a
total subjective unintelligibility which will plausibly tend to be utterly
swamped, in the struggle of forgetting and remembering, by "normally
intelligible" continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant
consideration in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an
absence of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase components of
experience be swamped in the battle for what one might term personal
subjective emergence. They just typically get forgotten far more frequently
than they get remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what
we may think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently persistent,
pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would emerge with these
characteristics would then be consistently remembered histories underpinned
by a robust and reiterative physical mechanism whose highly selective
observation by us would then be the final evidence of its predomination in
this epic personal struggle.

I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't comment) of
what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of computationalism. I
said that consciousness or first person subjectivity was really a pointless

Re: What are atheists for?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

I have no good answer, only that your Platonic stuff somehow generates 
material. 



-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 6:51 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?




On 08 May 2017, at 06:50, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:


What about an Ensemble (Deutsch and Tegmark), that is also, by necessity, 
computationalist in nature. 


Why? Most ensemble are typically not computable object. Computability is an 
enormous restriction on the notion of set.






One way of doing this would be that algorithms, somehow produce oodles of 
matter and energy, hence universes?  



How could something non material produces something material?


Bruno






 
 
 
-Original Message-
 From: Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
 To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
 Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 12:44 am
 Subject: Re: What are atheists for?
 
 On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
 > On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish" <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
 > Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
 > reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
 > his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
 > which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
 > mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
 > point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
 > environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
 > the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
 > effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
 > 
 > I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
 > calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
 > supervenience in his theories.
 > 
 > 
 > Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
 > 
 
 In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
 hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
 possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
 meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
 theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
 and meaningful universe.
 
 My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
 principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
 as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
 simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
 exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
 universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
 consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
 which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
 consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.
 
 The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
 argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
 physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
 phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
 hell can be be aware of ourselves.
 
 This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
 only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
 elucidated yet.
 
 Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
 self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
 bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
 ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.
 
 Cheers
 -- 
 
 
 Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
 Principal, High Performance Coders
 Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
 Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
 
 
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Re: What are atheists for?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Pity then Bruce,


We humans could use the company and maybe the advice. 



-Original Message-
From: Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 1:01 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?


On 8/05/2017 2:45 pm, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

Rather thanuse the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the 
conservationof energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not take 
Boltzmanna bit more seriously, and search for these suckers in the  
  galaxy, in other words, treat, as a working hypothesis BB's asreal 
phenomena? There's nobody out there that is sending easy tolisten to, 
signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's butts asa prank, by 
pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!
  

I think that, given a physical universe, Boltzmann brains are highly
unlikely. The reasons are essentially those elucidated by SeanCarroll, 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298v1 . Namely de Sitter spaceis a quiescent 
vacuum in which there are no quantum fluctuations ofthe sort hypothesized 
to give rise to Boltzmann brains. The problemis that David (and Bruno) 
cannot appeal to such an argument, becauseCarroll presupposes a physical 
universe, and they can't do that onpain of circularity.

Bruce




  
In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmannbrain problem, 
states of complete randomness both before andafter our current 
conscious moment are overwhelmingly morelikley than that our 
present moment is immersed in a physicsthat involves exceptionless 
conservation laws, so that thepast and future can both be evolved 
from our present stateby the application of persistent and 
pervasive physicallaws.





-Original  Message-
  From: Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
  To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
  Sent: Sun, May 7, 2017 11:53 pm
      Subject: Re: What are atheists for?
  
  

 On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman  wrote:
  

  
On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> 
   wrote:

  

  

 
  On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:
  

  
On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "BrentMeeker" 
<meeke...@verizon.net>wrote:

  

  

  
  

But that's what I mean when 
   I say Bruno's theory has no  
  predictive success.  QM (and  
  Everett) would correctly  
  predict that alcoholmolecules 
in the blood willinterfere with 
neuronalfunction and THEN invoking  
  the physicalist theory of 
   mind, i.e. that mind 
   supervenes on material   
 events, it predicts thatyour 
ability to doarithmetic will be 
impairedby drinking tequila.  It
will NOT predict the
contrary with more than 
   infinitesimal probability.   
  So it's misdirection to saythat 
it's just a measureproblem.  
Without having theright measure a   
 probabilistic theory is just   
 fantasy...or magic as Bru

Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

Le 9 mai 2017 01:17, "Bruce Kellett"  a écrit :

On 9/05/2017 12:22 am, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 15:18 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett < 
> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>:
>
>> On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>>
>> Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them, but the
>> measure function (which we don't have) must render the consistency, thing
>> like complexity and size could be a way to explain why consciousness->white
>> noise have low measure.
>>
>>
>> Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you some handle on
>> what you want. For consistency, the definition of 'consistent
>> continuations' for the measure must come from logic and/or arithmetic alone.
>>
>
> A measure function would come from arithmetic alone, complexity/size/...
> are arithmetical notion... so I don't see your point,
>
>
> If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states, it does
> not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?) can really do the
> job.
>
> it's not because there are everything that everything is equally
> probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have to have a
> measure function, I understand you reject even the idea, so it seems
> pointless to discuss
>
>
> What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in the MWI
> interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave function is precisely
> the measure function one needs, for any interpretation of QM to accord with
> experience.
>
> If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a measure
> over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not clear that these
> conscious states need consistent continuations -- your next conscious
> moment might be a computation is some entirely different program of the UD.
> However, that notion runs into the Occam catastrophe that Russell mentions
> -- the overwhelming majority of programs that instantiate our conscious
> moments run from white noise in the past, to white noise in the future --
> Boltzmann brains, in effect.
>
> ... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your
> ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else) but to
> discuss the everything ideas and theories.
>
>
> Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the possibility
> that there may be conceptual problems with their implementation? I am not
> making any ontological claims here. I am simply asking how one can get
> physics out of computationalist notions.
>
>
To have that we have to extract a measure function... which we don't have.
But things like complexity,size, minimum change between computation steps,
... may give a clue to it. The fact that we don't have one does not mean
there isn't any and that measure function must exists for computationalism
to have any meaning. Assuming it is true, there is such a function...


That is just the usual non-argument -- "If our theory is correct, then it
must work"



It's not a non argument, and it's not my theory. Assuming it, that measure
function must exist and be in accordance with observation. Finding it or
proving there is no such function would be a result, again you're no more
discussing the idea but trying to convince other that you know there is no
such function and that idea is a waste... But you don't. No need to repeat
your bias, we know it.

Quentin


All that remains is for you to prove that your theory is correct, and
without making contact with some facts and making some verifiable
predictions, you can't do that.

Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 9/05/2017 1:57 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume
that there is a coherent underlying physics with regular
exceptionless laws. Until you have something like that, you
cannot define consistent continuations.

But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes
the view that the evolution of physical states is
fundamentally incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes
physics in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any 
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the computational 
Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible search function 
for this. That extraction then is necessarily a complex consequence of 
observer selection. Post such extraction, the evolution of physical 
states is then by assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else 
computationalism must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At this 
point the objective situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially 
equivalent to Everett's relative state assumptions.


The other point on which I must take you to task is again the question 
of circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy model to 
explicate every detail of the extraction of physics, although it's 
already the case that it *predicts* the multiple continuations 
implicit in the wavefunction, which is more than can be said for QM 
itself which merely retrodicts them (again modulo the FPI). Given the 
conjunction of the assumption of computationalism and our observation 
of the physical environment described by QM, all the theory has to 
show at this stage is that it is not incompatible with these data (as 
it would be if, say, the evolution of the wavefunction itself were 
shown to be uncomputable). It should further explicate some reasonably 
convincing justification for why just such a physics might be expected 
to underpin the effective environment we observe. But the *facts* of 
our observation of such a physics are not at issue. There is no 
relevant question of circularity to deal with here.


As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your 
Boltzmann brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be 
understood under computationalism only from a first person 
perspective, as I previously suggested to you. We need to justify, in 
terms of a subjective measure, why we should indeed expect the physics 
we observe to emerge as the predominating computational mechanism 
underlying our normally intelligible perceptions. To do this we only 
need to show that "last Tuesday" computational snippets can only 
reinforce, and magical or unintelligible ones cannot interfere, with 
"normally intelligible" and complexly connected continuations. A way 
to grasp this intuitively is in terms of something like Hoyle's 
 "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you say it 
was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO illustrates the 
relevant considerations equally intuitively on computational 
assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a multitasking OS that I also 
mentioned suffices equally well in this regard.


From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of 
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective 
difference. The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ 
likely to be a total subjective unintelligibility which will plausibly 
tend to be utterly swamped, in the struggle of forgetting and 
remembering, by "normally intelligible" continuations. The FPI is, 
obviously, the relevant consideration in this regard. This is what I 
meant​ when I said that an absence of evidence for this sort of 
pathology or unintelligibility is not evidence of its absence​. It 
suffices that these out of phase components of experience be swamped 
in the battle for what one might term personal subjective emergence. 
They just typically get forgotten far more frequently than they get 
remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what we may 
think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor 
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently 
persistent, pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would 
emerge with these characteristics would then be consistently 
remembered histories underpinned by a robust and reiterative physical 
mechanism whose highly selective observation by us would then be the 
final evidence of its predomination in this epic personal struggle.


I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't 
comment) of what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of 
computationalism. I said that consciousness or 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 9/05/2017 12:22 am, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2017-05-08 15:18 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett >:


On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett
>:

On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them,
but the measure function (which we don't have) must render
the consistency, thing like complexity and size could be a
way to explain why consciousness->white noise have low measure.


Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you
some handle on what you want. For consistency, the definition
of 'consistent continuations' for the measure must come from
logic and/or arithmetic alone.


A measure function would come from arithmetic alone,
complexity/size/... are arithmetical notion... so I don't see
your point,


If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states,
it does not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?)
can really do the job.


it's not because there are everything that everything is equally
probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have
to have a measure function, I understand you reject even the
idea, so it seems pointless to discuss


What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in
the MWI interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave
function is precisely the measure function one needs, for any
interpretation of QM to accord with experience.

If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a
measure over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not
clear that these conscious states need consistent continuations --
your next conscious moment might be a computation is some entirely
different program of the UD. However, that notion runs into the
Occam catastrophe that Russell mentions -- the overwhelming
majority of programs that instantiate our conscious moments run
from white noise in the past, to white noise in the future --
Boltzmann brains, in effect.


... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your
ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else)
but to discuss the everything ideas and theories.


Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the
possibility that there may be conceptual problems with their
implementation? I am not making any ontological claims here. I am
simply asking how one can get physics out of computationalist notions.


To have that we have to extract a measure function... which we don't 
have. But things like complexity,size, minimum change between 
computation steps, ... may give a clue to it. The fact that we don't 
have one does not mean there isn't any and that measure function must 
exists for computationalism to have any meaning. Assuming it is true, 
there is such a function...


That is just the usual non-argument -- "If our theory is correct, then 
it must work"


All that remains is for you to prove that your theory is correct, and 
without making contact with some facts and making some verifiable 
predictions, you can't do that.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 8:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 07:01, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 2:45 pm, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Rather than use the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the 
conservation of energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not take 
Boltzmann a bit more seriously, and search for these suckers in the 
galaxy, in other words, treat, as a working hypothesis BB's as real 
phenomena? There's nobody out there that is sending easy to listen 
to, signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's butts as a prank, 
by pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!


I think that, given a physical universe, Boltzmann brains are highly 
unlikely. The reasons are essentially those elucidated by Sean 
Carroll, http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298v1 . Namely de Sitter space is 
a quiescent vacuum in which there are no quantum fluctuations of the 
sort hypothesized to give rise to Boltzmann brains. The problem is 
that David (and Bruno) cannot appeal to such an argument, because 
Carroll presupposes a physical universe, and they can't do that on 
pain of circularity.


Well said.

They need something


Who are "they"?

like von Neuman-Wigner-Penrose action of consciousness on 
matter/quantum-wave. Even Hameroff's view could'nt help. Only some 
explicit non-mechanism could save Carroll argument.


What feature of Carroll's argument needs saving?

Bruce

QM-with-collapse-made-by consciousness is a good candidate, but of 
course, if successful, it would made the mechanist out of job. But 
today, this seems premature to me. We don'thave any evidence, but if 
the Z1* and X1* (and S4Grz1) logics depart too much from nature, we 
would have some evidence for it.


Bruno


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:

I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You 
refer to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and 
hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure of 
such consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent according to 
some physical laws', because it is those laws that you are supposedly 
deriving -- they cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think 
any notion of logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is 
logically consistent that my present conscious moment, with its rich 
record of memories of a physical world, stretching back to childhood, 
is all an illusion of the momentary point in a computational history: 
the continuation of this computation back into the past, and forward 
into the future, could be just white noise! That is not logically 
inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is inconsistent only 
with the physical laws of conservation and persistence. But at this 
point, you do not have such laws!


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,


Can you give the reference please?


There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but an 
accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself in his book 
"From Eternity to Here".


states of complete randomness both before and after our current 
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our present 
moment is immersed in a physics that involves exceptionless 
conservation laws, so that the past and future can both be evolved 
from our present state by the application of persistent and pervasive 
physical laws.


Did Boltzman took into account QM? QM without collapse.


Why would he? Thermodynamics applies to both classical and quantum 
physics and taking QM, with or without collapse, makes absolutely no 
difference to the arguments here.


Obviously he did not take into account mechanism and its measure 
problem, and still believe in some brain mind identity link.


So what?

Unless you can give some meaning to the concept of "consistent" that 
does not just beg the question, then I think Boltzmann's problem will 
destroy your search for some 'measure' that makes our experience of 
physical laws (any physical laws, not just those we actually observe) 
overwhelmingly likely.


No problem, but you will need a non computationalist theory of mind to 
assure the identity link. But most such theories are highly 
speculative, and of the negative kind, as they need to add non Turing 
emulable magic, nor non-FPI-recoverable magic, to just keep a belief 
intact, when that belief is not sustained by any evidence, just an 
habit since long.


That is just a lot of meaningless blather, with no relevance to the 
questions at issue here. You still rely on the notion of "consistent 
relative states", and all I am asking for is that you define what you 
mean by "consistent", and what determines the presence or absence of 
such consistency.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, May 08, 2017 at 12:42:01PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> 
> I don't think they need to halt. They need only to go through our
> local state. A priori, the halting computations might have a null
> measure among all computations, so that the global "physical"
> measure might be determined only by the Non Halting computations.
> Just a technical detail out of the scope of your argument, to be
> sure, but it might have technical consequences when we do the math
> though.
> 

But the halting computations does not have zero measure in the space
of all computations. (I'm assuming you mean zero measure when you say
"null measure"). The probability of a machine halting is the Chaitin
Omega number, provably between 0 and 1.

I don't think this changes your first two sentences, though :).

Cheers

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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/8/2017 3:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

How could something non material produces something material?


That's what we keep wondering about computationalism.

Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 8 May 2017 8:21 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:

> Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that there is
> a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless laws. Until you
> have something like that, you cannot define consistent continuations.
>
> But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the view that
> the evolution of physical states is fundamentally incomputable,
>

But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes physics in
one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Oh dear no, that's not right at all. What is uncomputable is any
extrinsically conceived *extraction* of physics from the computational
Babel consequent on the theory. There is no possible search function for
this. That extraction then is necessarily a complex consequence of observer
selection. Post such extraction, the evolution of physical states is then
by assumption finitely computable, modulo the FPI, else computationalism
must fail as a theory of mind or of physics. At this point the objective
situation, mutatis mutandis, is essentially equivalent to Everett's
relative state assumptions.

The other point on which I must take you to task is again the question of
circularity. It's not the job of computationalism's toy model to explicate
every detail of the extraction of physics, although it's already the case
that it *predicts* the multiple continuations implicit in the wavefunction,
which is more than can be said for QM itself which merely retrodicts them
(again modulo the FPI). Given the conjunction of the assumption of
computationalism and our observation of the physical environment described
by QM, all the theory has to show at this stage is that it is not
incompatible with these data (as it would be if, say, the evolution of the
wavefunction itself were shown to be uncomputable). It should further
explicate some reasonably convincing justification for why just such a
physics might be expected to underpin the effective environment we observe.
But the *facts* of our observation of such a physics are not at issue.
There is no relevant question of circularity to deal with here.

As to the so called Occam catastrophe, as exemplified in your Boltzmann
brain scenario, potential resolution necessarily can be understood under
computationalism only from a first person perspective, as I previously
suggested to you. We need to justify, in terms of a subjective measure, why
we should indeed expect the physics we observe to emerge as the
predominating computational mechanism underlying our normally intelligible
perceptions. To do this we only need to show that "last Tuesday"
computational snippets can only reinforce, and magical or unintelligible
ones cannot interfere, with "normally intelligible" and complexly connected
continuations. A way to grasp this intuitively is in terms of something
like Hoyle's  "amnesic multiple personality" heuristic which, though as you
say it was originally based on the assumption of physics, IMO illustrates
the relevant considerations equally intuitively on computational
assumptions. In any case, the analogy of a multitasking OS that I also
mentioned suffices equally well in this regard.

>From this perspective, no amount of white noise in continuations of
"Boltzmann" computations could make a substantive subjective difference.
The reason being that the consequence is overwhelmingly​ likely to be a
total subjective unintelligibility which will plausibly tend to be utterly
swamped, in the struggle of forgetting and remembering, by "normally
intelligible" continuations. The FPI is, obviously, the relevant
consideration in this regard. This is what I meant​ when I said that an
absence of evidence for this sort of pathology or unintelligibility is not
evidence of its absence​. It suffices that these out of phase components of
experience be swamped in the battle for what one might term personal
subjective emergence. They just typically get forgotten far more frequently
than they get remembered by Hoyle's multiply solipsistic agent. Hence what
we may think of as pathological scenarios would be expected to be very poor
and haphazard candidates in the ongoing struggle for apparently persistent,
pervasive and lawful subjective emergence. What would emerge with these
characteristics would then be consistently remembered histories underpinned
by a robust and reiterative physical mechanism whose highly selective
observation by us would then be the final evidence of its predomination in
this epic personal struggle.

I gave you an illustration a few days ago (on which you didn't comment) of
what one might term the "psycho-theological" aspect of computationalism. I
said that consciousness or first person subjectivity was really a pointless
cherry on the cake of physics whose mechanism must be assumed to proceed
without any a priori need of such a baroque supernumerary assumption.
Indeed 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2017-05-08 15:18 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
>
>> On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>>
>> Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them, but the
>> measure function (which we don't have) must render the consistency, thing
>> like complexity and size could be a way to explain why consciousness->white
>> noise have low measure.
>>
>>
>> Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you some handle on
>> what you want. For consistency, the definition of 'consistent
>> continuations' for the measure must come from logic and/or arithmetic alone.
>>
>
> A measure function would come from arithmetic alone, complexity/size/...
> are arithmetical notion... so I don't see your point,
>
>
> If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states, it does
> not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?) can really do the
> job.
>
> it's not because there are everything that everything is equally
> probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have to have a
> measure function, I understand you reject even the idea, so it seems
> pointless to discuss
>
>
> What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in the MWI
> interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave function is precisely
> the measure function one needs, for any interpretation of QM to accord with
> experience.
>
> If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a measure
> over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not clear that these
> conscious states need consistent continuations -- your next conscious
> moment might be a computation is some entirely different program of the UD.
> However, that notion runs into the Occam catastrophe that Russell mentions
> -- the overwhelming majority of programs that instantiate our conscious
> moments run from white noise in the past, to white noise in the future --
> Boltzmann brains, in effect.
>
> ... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your
> ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else) but to
> discuss the everything ideas and theories.
>
>
> Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the possibility
> that there may be conceptual problems with their implementation? I am not
> making any ontological claims here. I am simply asking how one can get
> physics out of computationalist notions.
>
>
To have that we have to extract a measure function... which we don't have.
But things like complexity,size, minimum change between computation steps,
... may give a clue to it. The fact that we don't have one does not mean
there isn't any and that measure function must exists for computationalism
to have any meaning. Assuming it is true, there is such a function...

Quentin



> Bruce
>
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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 5:25 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett >:


On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


Something lie the speed prior... yes the UD has all of them, but
the measure function (which we don't have) must render the
consistency, thing like complexity and size could be a way to
explain why consciousness->white noise have low measure.


Those are just arbitrary assumptions, designed to give you some
handle on what you want. For consistency, the definition of
'consistent continuations' for the measure must come from logic
and/or arithmetic alone.


A measure function would come from arithmetic alone, 
complexity/size/... are arithmetical notion... so I don't see your point,


If one insists on 'consistent continuations' of conscious states, it 
does not seem that 'size (of what, program length, or what?) can really 
do the job.


it's not because there are everything that everything is equally 
probable... the problem is exactly the same with MWI... you have to 
have a measure function, I understand you reject even the idea, so it 
seems pointless to discuss


What gives you the idea that I reject a measure function for QM in the 
MWI interpretation -- the Born rule applied to the wave function is 
precisely the measure function one needs, for any interpretation of QM 
to accord with experience.


If physics is to come from the UD (computationalism) you need a measure 
over conscious states. From what Bruno says, it is not clear that these 
conscious states need consistent continuations -- your next conscious 
moment might be a computation is some entirely different program of the 
UD. However, that notion runs into the Occam catastrophe that Russell 
mentions -- the overwhelming majority of programs that instantiate our 
conscious moments run from white noise in the past, to white noise in 
the future -- Boltzmann brains, in effect.


... remember, I'm not here to be convinced in any way that your 
ontological stance is true  or not (or the ones of someone else) but 
to discuss the everything ideas and theories.


Presumably you are interested in tests of these ideas? And the 
possibility that there may be conceptual problems with their 
implementation? I am not making any ontological claims here. I am simply 
asking how one can get physics out of computationalist notions.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[PGC]

 Everybody knows that drinking tequila and orange juice are the same in 
terms of qualia. Same as drinking rocks.

Most people say things like: "this tequila or this orange juice is very 
possibly consistent and particularly full of Plotinus' unnameable truth 
upon looking inside the box today." Only inconsistent, incorrect machines 
will assert stuff like "this orange juice tastes sweet or sour". In so 
doing they implicitly - quoting Bruno, Guru of the origin of physical laws, 
therefore owner of your body and mind - "invoke Matter or Physical Laws to 
justify the stability of the laws of physics below them, which they exploit 
to drink, thereby preventing the testing of computationalism, as it makes 
the Appearance of Matter/Physical-Laws deducible in (any "rich enough", 
Löbian, theory)." That's why everybody who has starved to death believes in 
mechanism by default, as they reject such invocation and get sainthood. 

Anybody that does that is an enemy of mechanism, logic, and therefore 
science. Don't make me repeat this because I will not. I am far too busy 
advancing science with dozens of highly detailed posts a day and don't have 
time. 

It doesn't matter whether you're eating vegetarian, other humans, or some 
rocks from outside, which is why people have some difficulty, like when 
spud voted for orange hair thinking that consciousness would supervene on 
it, and that everybody's qualia going rotten for at least 4 years was a 
decent price to pay to gather some opinions of supposed intelligent folks 
to parade them around somewhere else in the trollverse that is the 
internet.  

There is also the intractable problem of the machine that states: "This 
orange juice has gone bad" as Plotinus' divine p becomes truly rotten, 
which is where some Neo-Platonists and Taoists have signaled difficulties, 
not understanding how the divine truth could turn into rotten mush, and 
that the price to pay for computationalism "to predict qualia" is too high, 
as they want to at least confer to truth some guru status above rotten 
mush, if not more. All cooks shall be shot. PGC

 

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 07:43, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 7/05/2017 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:


On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are  
entailed by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all  
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be  
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk.


But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived  
theory: quantum mechanics.


QM  also predicts  ""everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk".


But QM has a well-defined measure over these possibilities, given by  
the Born Rule acting on the appropriate wave function. That theory  
predicts that the probability that people can drink substantial  
quantities of alcohol and not get drunk is vanishingly small.  
Computationalism has no comparable measure that would give the  
observed relative probabilities.


But physics does not even address the measure problem on the first  
person experience made possible when we assume computationalism. It  
works, but only by speculating on a non-computationalist theory.






And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test,  
and encourage people to pursue the study of the "material  
hypostases".


First derive your measure (without assuming physical laws), then we  
can do the empirical testing.


The measure one has been derived, and has succeeded the first test: it  
is a quantum logic, both for qualia and quanta. With physicalism,  
there are no qualia, so it fails. It works on quanta only.
That we get the quantum logic for the measure one is already extra- 
ordinary, and it is "just" a question of more work to get the physics.







We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the  
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.


I think we first have to establish that there are entities  
recognizable as "people" in arithmetic. Viz., that conscious moments  
are not just isolated events in a sea of white noise.


With computationalism, an observer moment is never isolated. "Observer- 
moment" can only mean: brought by a universal number through a  
computation. We need only to extract a notion of "normality", and we  
have it already by finding a logic of probability, even one with a  
canonical quantization, and we got it. Keep in mind we try to solve  
the mind-body problem in the context of a precise hypothesis. We are  
not competing for the best science to do prediction, but for the best  
science which does not eliminate consciousness.


bruno







Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 07:13, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 2:44 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  
 wrote:

Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience  
in

his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a  
fixed

point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of  
physical

supervenience in his theories.


Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?


In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.


That idea appears similar to my argument that there is no useful  
meaning to the word "consistent" when applied to continuations of  
computations, other than that supplied by physical laws.


Consistent p =, usually, ~[]~p.

This has been shown to NOT work at all.

You need to take the dual of the modal boxes corresponding to the  
material hypostases, which are intensional variant of Gödel's []..


For [1]p = []p & p, the dual is <1>p = <>p v p
For [2]p = []p & <>p, the dual is <>p v []f
For [3]p = []p & <>t & p, the dual is <>p v []f v p.

Those works, and leads to the same continuations, but measure  
differently, although all are quantum-like on the sigma_1 sentences p.


Bruno










My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer,


But computationalism, at that stage, does not entail that any  
anthropically viable universe exists! Computationally aware moments  
need not be continued in the majority of cases -- we might be  
Boltzmann brains, sprung into existence in a sea of white noise, to  
vanish into the same sea in the next instant. A completely random  
universe is thus completely consistent with our existence as an  
observer -- maybe not our continuing existence, which requires  
physics, not anthropics. Think Last Tuesdayism!


You need too structure the space of computations (sigma_1 sentences or  
infinite sequences of them) with the self-referential points of view,  
captured by their modal logics.


Bruno





 ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility  
to

exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.


I think that insight can be extended to say that we have to be aware  
of something in addition to ourselves -- namely our thoughts and  
memories of a coherent physical universe. We have to be aware of  
*something*, and awareness of merely our awareness does not really  
work.




The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience  
on

physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.


Exactly.


This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.


Yes.

Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 07:01, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 2:45 pm, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Rather than use the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the  
conservation of energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not take  
Boltzmann a bit more seriously, and search for these suckers in the  
galaxy, in other words, treat, as a working hypothesis BB's as real  
phenomena? There's nobody out there that is sending easy to listen  
to, signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's butts as a prank,  
by pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!


I think that, given a physical universe, Boltzmann brains are highly  
unlikely. The reasons are essentially those elucidated by Sean  
Carroll, http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298v1 . Namely de Sitter space  
is a quiescent vacuum in which there are no quantum fluctuations of  
the sort hypothesized to give rise to Boltzmann brains. The problem  
is that David (and Bruno) cannot appeal to such an argument, because  
Carroll presupposes a physical universe, and they can't do that on  
pain of circularity.


Well said.

They need something like von Neuman-Wigner-Penrose action of  
consciousness on matter/quantum-wave. Even Hameroff's view could'nt  
help. Only some explicit non-mechanism could save Carroll argument. QM- 
with-collapse-made-by consciousness is a good candidate, but of  
course, if successful, it would made the mechanist out of job. But  
today, this seems premature to me. We don'thave any evidence, but if  
the Z1* and X1* (and S4Grz1) logics depart too much from nature, we  
would have some evidence for it.


Bruno




Bruce


In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,  
states of complete randomness both before and after our current  
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our  
present moment is immersed in a physics that involves exceptionless  
conservation laws, so that the past and future can both be evolved  
from our present state by the application of persistent and  
pervasive physical laws.




-Original Message-
From: Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, May 7, 2017 11:53 pm
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net>  
wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net>  
wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive  
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol  
molecules in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and  
THEN invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind  
supervenes on material events, it predicts that your ability to do  
arithmetic will be impaired by drinking tequila.  It will NOT  
predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal probability.  So  
it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure problem.  Without  
having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just  
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if  
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its  
predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively  
self-selected by complex subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is  
the physics those selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post  
Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).   
But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to show that some  
world exists in which mind and physics are consistent (that the  
physics that mind infers is also the real physics that predicts  
effects on the mind).  You need also to show this has large measure  
relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic chopping  
argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be  
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the  
whole computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out  
some further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional  
expertise in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine  
and consequently any comments you might make would be very helpful.  
By the way, it would also be helpful if you would read beyond the  
next paragraph before commenting because I hope I will come by  
myself to the fly in the ointment.


Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD,  
we are led to the view that UD* must include all possible  
"physical" computational continuations (actually infinitely  
reiterated). This of course is also to assume that all such  
continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting). Now, again on  
the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our observing  
such a physics 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 06:50, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

What about an Ensemble (Deutsch and Tegmark), that is also, by  
necessity, computationalist in nature.


Why? Most ensemble are typically not computable object. Computability  
is an enormous restriction on the notion of set.




One way of doing this would be that algorithms, somehow produce  
oodles of matter and energy, hence universes?


How could something non material produces something material?

Bruno






-Original Message-
From: Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 12:44 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
> On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  
<li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

> Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
> reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience  
in

> his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
> which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
> mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a  
fixed

> point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
> environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
> the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
> effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
>
> I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
> calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of  
physical

> supervenience in his theories.
>
>
> Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
>

In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.

My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.

The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.

This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.

Cheers
--


Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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



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To post to this 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker"   
wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"   
wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive  
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol  
molecules in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and  
THEN invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind  
supervenes on material events, it predicts that your ability to do  
arithmetic will be impaired by drinking tequila.  It will NOT  
predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal probability.  So  
it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure problem.   
Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just  
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if  
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its  
predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively  
self-selected by complex subjects, in this case, like ourselves)  
is the physics those selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post  
Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).   
But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to show that some  
world exists in which mind and physics are consistent (that the  
physics that mind infers is also the real physics that predicts  
effects on the mind).  You need also to show this has large measure  
relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic chopping  
argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be  
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the  
whole computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out  
some further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional  
expertise in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine  
and consequently any comments you might make would be very helpful.  
By the way, it would also be helpful if you would read beyond the  
next paragraph before commenting because I hope I will come by  
myself to the fly in the ointment.


Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD,  
we are led to the view that UD* must include all possible  
"physical" computational continuations (actually infinitely  
reiterated). This of course is also to assume that all such  
continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting). Now, again on  
the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our observing  
such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its  
emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational  
mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem  
equally reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these  
latter correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical  
manifestations in their effective environment.


Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why  
would it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should  
predominate in the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would  
seem that the generator of the set of possible physical  
computations is infinitely reiterative​ and hence very robust  
(both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la step 7, and  
that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that the  
generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't  
equally or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with a  
Library of Babel here and the Vast majority of any such library is  
bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy with  
Feynman's path integral idea (comments particularly appreciated  
here). Might a kind of least action principle be applicable here,  
such that internally consistent computations self-reinforce,  
whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?


Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking  
here about the evaluation of what we typically remember having  
experienced. I can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry).  
Subjectively speaking, there's a kind of struggle always in process  
between remembering and forgetting. So on the basis suggested  
above, and from the abstract point of view of Hoyle's singular  
agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine), inconsistent paths might  
plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net (unintelligible)  
forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might equally  
plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking  
of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But  
perhaps you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your  
comments as ever particularly appreciated.


I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You  
refer to 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2017, at 19:14, David Nyman wrote:




On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"   
wrote:



On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"   
wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed  
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?

It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all  
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be  
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts  
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to  
a probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we  
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on  
about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor  
that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain  
and uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I think it's  
far too tricksy to say that comp predicts everything (or Everett,  
or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is the measure and  
how that measure discriminates between the typical, the unusual,  
and the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty  
or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive  
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol  
molecules in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and  
THEN invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind  
supervenes on material events, it predicts that your ability to do  
arithmetic will be impaired by drinking tequila.  It will NOT  
predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal probability.  So  
it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure problem.  Without  
having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just  
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if  
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its  
predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively  
self-selected by complex subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is  
the physics those selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post  
Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).   
But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to show that some  
world exists in which mind and physics are consistent (that the  
physics that mind infers is also the real physics that predicts  
effects on the mind).  You need also to show this has large measure  
relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic chopping argument  
that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be making  
sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole  
computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out  
some further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional  
expertise in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine  
and consequently any comments you might make would be very helpful.  
By the way, it would also be helpful if you would read beyond the  
next paragraph before commenting because I hope I will come by  
myself to the fly in the ointment.


Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we  
are led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical"  
computational continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This  
of course is also to assume that all such continuations are finitely  
computable (i.e. halting).


I don't think they need to halt. They need only to go through our  
local state. A priori, the halting computations might have a null  
measure among all computations, so that the global "physical" measure  
might be determined only by the Non Halting computations. Just a  
technical detail out of the scope of your argument, to be sure, but it  
might have technical consequences when we do the math though.



Bruno


Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that  
our observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is  
evidence of its emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the  
predominant computational mechanism underlying those very  
perceptions. Hence it might seem equally reasonable 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2017, at 22:39, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/7/2017 7:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 May 2017, at 23:16, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"   
wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed  
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?

It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all  
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be  
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts  
it because it predicts "everything", including people drink  
tequila and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts  
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to  
a probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but  
we don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging  
on about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so   
far the only metaphor that has ever conveyed to me how something  
could be both certain and uncertain depending on one's point of  
view. So I think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts  
everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter).  
The key is the measure and how that measure discriminates between  
the typical, the unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem,  
sure, but hardly an empty or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive  
success.


No. Physicalism is refuted (in the Mechanist frame). It makes  
physics not even able to predict that I will see a needle when  
looking at my physical device.


And mechanism has strong predictive power, as shown by the meta- 
reasoning, and its formalization in arithmetic. It asks for a lot  
of work, but the contrary would have been astonishing, especially  
when we see the irrational response to all this, which last since  
more than 1500 years in Occident.





QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules in  
the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking  
the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on  
material events,


That could work, but not in a computationalist theory of mind.


That is a computationalist theory of mind - i.e. thought supervenes  
on the computations of the brain.


I guess you mean the physical brain. But how? How could the physical  
brain select the computations in the UD*?








And, then, we wait for that theory.


No need to wait.  It is already as complete a theory as saying mind  
supervenes on the computational states of a UD.


With the UD we acknowledge that the theory need to solve the measure  
problem. With the physicalist theory, people just say "matter does the  
selection" without explaning how.


No problem if you postulate a consciousness based wave packet  
reduction à-la Penrose (or just the Bohrean falsity of QM when applied  
to observer), although there are no evidence at all for it, and it  
solves nothing in philosophy of mind: it just helps to keep intact a  
religious belief in some primary "Matter", which is the unscientific  
way to do theology).



Bruno




Brent

the one given by Penrose might be an embryo, but he got Gödel  
wrong, and a reasoning by Abner Shimony trows doubt on the role  
consciousness could have in the wave packet reduction.





it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by  
drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than  
infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's  
just a measure problem.  Without having the right measure a  
probabilistic theory is just fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


Not at all. The point is that if we believe in CT+YD we get that  
measure problem. And its formalization in Arithmetic gives the  
complete propositional solutions, which is promising for that  
measure existence and isolation.


No magic here, unlike invoking the Primary Matter to select  
computation in arithmetic, which is akin to "God made it".


It's magic when you say it's a trivial problem already solved in RA  
to show that drinking tequila inhibits thinking about mathematics.




Also, I insist, it is not "my theory". It is arguably one of the  
oldest theory of humanity.


Plato didn't think of digital computers, Church-Turing computation,  
a UD, or quantum indeterminancy.


Brent

It is the favorite theory of the strong atheists and of the  
materialist, but they are shown to be inconsistent, because 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2017, at 22:32, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/7/2017 6:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are  
entailed by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all  
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be  
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk.


But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived  
theory: quantum mechanics.


QM  also predicts  ""everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk".


QM doesn't predict "everything".  For example it predicts that only  
the eigenvalues of a measured variable will be observed -


QM does not predict that without an identity thesis which contradict  
computationalism.






does your theory predict that?


We don't know yet. We have to verify this, no problem.



And it assigns an infinitesimal probability to drinking tequila and  
not getting drunk.



Not really. Only by using the identity thesis in philosophy of mind,  
but that is inconsistent with Mechanism. Sean Carroll forget the  
"Boltzmann brain" which exists in arithmetic.






 Does your theory do that? You said it was trivial to prove in RA.



What was trivial is the existence of the experience of being drunk,  
but I made clear that the stability of that experience needs the full  
extraction of the measure from the X1* and Z1* logics. That there are  
quantum like logic is a good sign. Without it, mechanism would already  
be refuted (modulo the dream/simulation point). But obviously, a *lot*  
of work is needed, if only to motivate the physicists to dig more on  
mathematical logic (the only science today which tackle the syntax- 
semantics issue, which is close, with computationalism, to the brain/ 
consciousness issue).


Bruno






Brent



And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test,  
and encourage people to pursue the study of the "material  
hypostases".


We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the  
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2017-05-08 8:58 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
>
>> On 8/05/2017 4:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>> 2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett < 
>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>:
>>
>>> On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
>>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
>>> further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
>>> these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
>>> comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
>>> helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
>>> because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.
>>>
>>> Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
>>> led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
>>> continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
>>> assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
>>> Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
>>> observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
>>> emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
>>> mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
>>> reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
>>> correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
>>> their effective environment.
>>>
>>> Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would
>>> it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate
>>> in the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the
>>> generator of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely
>>> reiterative​ and hence very robust (both in the sense of computational
>>> inclusiveness a la step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who
>>> is to say that the generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent
>>> continuations aren't equally or even more prevalent? After all we're
>>> dealing with a Library of Babel here and the Vast majority of any such
>>> library is bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy
>>> with Feynman's path integral idea (comments particularly appreciated here).
>>> Might a kind of least action principle be applicable here, such that
>>> internally consistent computations self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent
>>> ones in effect self-cancel?
>>>
>>> Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
>>> about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
>>> can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
>>> there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
>>> forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
>>> view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
>>> inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
>>> (unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
>>> equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
>>> of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps
>>> you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever
>>> particularly appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You refer
>>> to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and hence
>>> intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure of such
>>> consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent according to some
>>> physical laws', because it is those laws that you are supposedly deriving
>>> -- they cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion of
>>> logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is logically consistent that
>>> my present conscious moment, with its rich record of memories of a physical
>>> world, stretching back to childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary
>>> point in a computational history: the continuation of this computation back
>>> into the past, and forward into the future, could be just white noise! That
>>> is not logically inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is
>>> inconsistent only with the physical laws of conservation and persistence.
>>> But at this point, you do not have such laws!
>>>
>>> In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,
>>> states of complete randomness both before and after our current conscious
>>> moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our present moment is
>>> immersed 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 4:53 pm, David Nyman wrote:
Both Hoyle's pigeon holes and Barbour's time capsules assume that 
there is a coherent underlying physics with regular exceptionless 
laws. Until you have something like that, you cannot define consistent 
continuations.


But I'm afraid that's implied by assumption unless one takes the view 
that the evolution of physical states is fundamentally incomputable,


But I thought that that was what Bruno claimed. If one assumes physics 
in one's derivation, then the circularity is vicious.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2017-05-08 9:14 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2017-05-08 8:58 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
>
>> On 8/05/2017 4:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>> 2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett < 
>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>:
>>
>>> On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
>>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
>>> further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
>>> these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
>>> comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
>>> helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
>>> because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.
>>>
>>> Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
>>> led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
>>> continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
>>> assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
>>> Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
>>> observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
>>> emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
>>> mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
>>> reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
>>> correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
>>> their effective environment.
>>>
>>> Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would
>>> it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate
>>> in the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the
>>> generator of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely
>>> reiterative​ and hence very robust (both in the sense of computational
>>> inclusiveness a la step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who
>>> is to say that the generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent
>>> continuations aren't equally or even more prevalent? After all we're
>>> dealing with a Library of Babel here and the Vast majority of any such
>>> library is bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy
>>> with Feynman's path integral idea (comments particularly appreciated here).
>>> Might a kind of least action principle be applicable here, such that
>>> internally consistent computations self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent
>>> ones in effect self-cancel?
>>>
>>> Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
>>> about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
>>> can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
>>> there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
>>> forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
>>> view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
>>> inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
>>> (unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
>>> equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
>>> of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps
>>> you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever
>>> particularly appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You refer
>>> to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and hence
>>> intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure of such
>>> consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent according to some
>>> physical laws', because it is those laws that you are supposedly deriving
>>> -- they cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion of
>>> logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is logically consistent that
>>> my present conscious moment, with its rich record of memories of a physical
>>> world, stretching back to childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary
>>> point in a computational history: the continuation of this computation back
>>> into the past, and forward into the future, could be just white noise! That
>>> is not logically inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is
>>> inconsistent only with the physical laws of conservation and persistence.
>>> But at this point, you do not have such laws!
>>>
>>> In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,
>>> states of complete randomness both before and after our current conscious
>>> moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our present moment is
>>> immersed 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 5:01 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2017-05-08 8:58 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett >:


On 8/05/2017 4:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett
>:

On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"
> wrote:

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like
to set out some further tentative remarks about the
above. Your professional expertise in these matters is
orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently
any comments you might make would be very helpful. By
the way, it would also be helpful if you would read
beyond the next paragraph before commenting because I
hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis
of CT + YD, we are led to the view that UD* must
include all possible "physical" computational
continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of
course is also to assume that all such continuations
are finitely computable (i.e. halting). Now, again on
the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form
is evidence of its emergence (i.e. epistemologically)
as the predominant computational mechanism underlying
those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that
these latter correspondingly appear to supervene on
concrete physical manifestations in their effective
environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of
measure. Why would it be reasonable to assume that a
physics of this sort should predominate in the manner
outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the
generator of the set of possible physical computations
is infinitely reiterative​ and hence very robust (both
in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la step
7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who is
to say that the generators of "magical" or simply
inconsistent continuations aren't equally or even more
prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of
Babel here and the Vast majority of any such library is
bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about an
analogy with Feynman's path integral idea (comments
particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least
action principle be applicable here, such that
internally consistent computations self-reinforce,
whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?

Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
I'm thinking here about the evaluation of what we
typically remember having experienced. I can't help
invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively
speaking, there's a kind of struggle always in process
between remembering and forgetting. So on the basis
suggested above, and from the abstract point of view of
Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin
machine), inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to
result, in effect, in a net (unintelligible) forgetting
and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might equally
plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering.
I'm speaking of consistent and hence intelligible
"personal histories" here. But perhaps you would
substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments
as ever particularly appreciated.


I think the problem here is the use of the word
"consistent". You refer to "internally consistent
computations" and "consistent and hence intelligible
'personal histories'." But what is the measure of such
consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent
according to some physical laws', because it is those
laws that you are supposedly deriving -- they cannot
form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion of
logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is
logically consistent that my present conscious moment,
with its rich record of memories of a physical world,
stretching back to childhood, is all an illusion of the

Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2017-05-08 8:58 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 4:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :
>
>> On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>>
>> I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
>> further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
>> these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
>> comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
>> helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
>> because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.
>>
>> Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
>> led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
>> continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
>> assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
>> Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
>> observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
>> emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
>> mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
>> reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
>> correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
>> their effective environment.
>>
>> Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would it
>> be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate in
>> the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the generator
>> of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​ and
>> hence very robust (both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la
>> step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that the
>> generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't equally
>> or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of Babel
>> here and the Vast majority of any such library is bound to be gibberish.
>> Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea
>> (comments particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action
>> principle be applicable here, such that internally consistent computations
>> self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?
>>
>> Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
>> about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
>> can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
>> there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
>> forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
>> view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
>> inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
>> (unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
>> equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
>> of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps
>> you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever
>> particularly appreciated.
>>
>>
>> I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You refer
>> to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and hence
>> intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure of such
>> consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent according to some
>> physical laws', because it is those laws that you are supposedly deriving
>> -- they cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion of
>> logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is logically consistent that
>> my present conscious moment, with its rich record of memories of a physical
>> world, stretching back to childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary
>> point in a computational history: the continuation of this computation back
>> into the past, and forward into the future, could be just white noise! That
>> is not logically inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is
>> inconsistent only with the physical laws of conservation and persistence.
>> But at this point, you do not have such laws!
>>
>> In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,
>> states of complete randomness both before and after our current conscious
>> moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our present moment is
>> immersed in a physics that involves exceptionless conservation laws, so
>> that the past and future can both be evolved from our present state by the
>> application of persistent and pervasive physical laws.
>>
>> Unless you can give some 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 4:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett >:


On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"
> wrote:

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set
out some further tentative remarks about the above. Your
professional expertise in these matters is orders of
magnitude greater than mine and consequently any comments
you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would
also be helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph
before commenting because I hope I will come by myself to
the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT
+ YD, we are led to the view that UD* must include all
possible "physical" computational continuations (actually
infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to assume
that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e.
halting). Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem
reasonable that our observing such a physics in concrete
substantial form is evidence of its emergence (i.e.
epistemologically) as the predominant computational
mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might
seem equally reasonable to conclude that this is the reason
that these latter correspondingly appear to supervene on
concrete physical manifestations in their effective environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure.
Why would it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this
sort should predominate in the manner outlined above? Well,
firstly, it would seem that the generator of the set of
possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​
and hence very robust (both in the sense of computational
inclusiveness a la step 7, and that of internal
self-consistency). But who is to say that the generators of
"magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't
equally or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with
a Library of Babel here and the Vast majority of any such
library is bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about
an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea (comments
particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action
principle be applicable here, such that internally
consistent computations self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent
ones in effect self-cancel?

Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm
thinking here about the evaluation of what we typically
remember having experienced. I can't help invoking Hoyle
here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking, there's a kind of
struggle always in process between remembering and
forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the
abstract point of view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally
Bruno's virgin machine), inconsistent paths might plausibly
tend to result, in effect, in a net (unintelligible)
forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible)
remembering. I'm speaking of consistent and hence
intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps you
would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments
as ever particularly appreciated.


I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent".
You refer to "internally consistent computations" and
"consistent and hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But
what is the measure of such consistency? You cannot use the
idea of 'consistent according to some physical laws', because
it is those laws that you are supposedly deriving -- they
cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think any notion
of logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is
logically consistent that my present conscious moment, with
its rich record of memories of a physical world, stretching
back to childhood, is all an illusion of the momentary point
in a computational history: the continuation of this
computation back into the past, and forward into the future,
could be just white noise! That is not logically
inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is
inconsistent only with the physical laws of conservation and
persistence. But at this point, you do not have such laws!

In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain
problem, states of complete randomness both 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 8 May 2017 7:26 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:

On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" < 
meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" < 
meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno
says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed
in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in which mind
and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to show
this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic
chopping argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
their effective environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would it
be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate in
the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the generator
of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​ and
hence very robust (both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la
step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that the
generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't equally
or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of Babel
here and the Vast majority of any such library is bound to be gibberish.
Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea
(comments particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action
principle be applicable here, such that internally consistent computations
self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?

Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
(unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps
you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever
particularly appreciated.

Re: What are atheists for?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2017-05-08 8:26 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" < 
> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" < 
> meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
> On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" < 
> meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
> success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
> in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
> physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
> it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
> tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
> probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
> problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
> fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.
>
>
> I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
> computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
> computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
> subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
> subjects observe,
>
>
> That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno
> says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed
> in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in which mind
> and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
> real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to show
> this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic
> chopping argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
> making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
> computational argument otiose.
>
>
> I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
> further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
> these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
> comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
> helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
> because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.
>
> Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
> led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
> continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
> assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
> Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
> observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
> emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
> mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
> reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
> correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
> their effective environment.
>
> Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would it
> be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate in
> the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the generator
> of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​ and
> hence very robust (both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la
> step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that the
> generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't equally
> or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of Babel
> here and the Vast majority of any such library is bound to be gibberish.
> Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea
> (comments particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action
> principle be applicable here, such that internally consistent computations
> self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?
>
> Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
> about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
> can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
> there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
> forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
> view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
> inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
> (unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
> equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
> of consistent and 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 3:59 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"
> wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no
predictive success. QM (and Everett) would correctly
predict that alcohol molecules in the blood will
interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on
material events, it predicts that your ability to do
arithmetic will be impaired by drinking tequila.  It
will NOT predict the contrary with more than
infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to say
that it's just a measure problem. Without having the
right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that
if computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its
predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one
effectively self-selected by complex subjects, in this case,
like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another
post Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't
see it).  But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to
show that some world exists in which mind and physics are
consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need
also to show this has large measure relative to contrary
worlds.  One can make a logic chopping argument that it must
be that way for otherwise minds would not be making sense of
the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out
some further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional
expertise in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than
mine and consequently any comments you might make would be very
helpful. By the way, it would also be helpful if you would read
beyond the next paragraph before commenting because I hope I will
come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD,
we are led to the view that UD* must include all possible
"physical" computational continuations (actually infinitely
reiterated). This of course is also to assume that all such
continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting). Now, again
on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence
of its emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant
computational mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence
it might seem equally reasonable to conclude that this is the
reason that these latter correspondingly appear to supervene on
concrete physical manifestations in their effective environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why
would it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort
should predominate in the manner outlined above? Well, firstly,
it would seem that the generator of the set of possible physical
computations is infinitely reiterative​ and hence very robust
(both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la step 7,
and that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that
the generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations
aren't equally or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing
with a Library of Babel here and the Vast majority of any such
library is bound to be gibberish. Well, I'm wondering​ about an
analogy with Feynman's path integral idea (comments particularly
appreciated here). Might a kind of least action principle be
applicable here, such that internally consistent computations
self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?

Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking
here about the evaluation of what we typically remember having
experienced. I can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry).
Subjectively speaking, there's a kind of struggle always in
process between remembering and forgetting. So on the basis
suggested above, and from the abstract point of view of Hoyle's
singular agent (or equally 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 8 May 2017 4:53 a.m., "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" < 
meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno
says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed
in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in which mind
and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to show
this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic
chopping argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
their effective environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would it
be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate in
the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the generator
of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​ and
hence very robust (both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la
step 7, and that of internal self-consistency). But who is to say that the
generators of "magical" or simply inconsistent continuations aren't equally
or even more prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of Babel
here and the Vast majority of any such library is bound to be gibberish.
Well, I'm wondering​ about an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea
(comments particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action
principle be applicable here, such that internally consistent computations
self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect self-cancel?

Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here
about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. I
can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking,
there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and
forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract point of
view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin machine),
inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in effect, in a net
(unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, self-consistent paths might
equally plausibly result in a net (intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking
of consistent and hence intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps
you would substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever
particularly appreciated.


I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You refer to
"internally consistent computations" and "consistent and hence intelligible
'personal 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 8 May 2017 5:44 a.m., "Russell Standish"  wrote:

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
> On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  wrote:
> Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
> reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
> his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
> which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
> mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
> point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
> environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
> the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
> effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
>
> I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
> calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
> supervenience in his theories.
>
>
> Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
>

In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.

My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.

The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.

This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.


Thanks Russell. Is what you say above broadly consistent with my recent
response to Bruce?

David


Cheers
--


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 7/05/2017 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:


On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, 
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of 
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed 
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a 
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational 
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the 
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it 
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and 
don't get drunk.


But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived 
theory: quantum mechanics.


QM  also predicts  ""everything", including people drink tequila and 
don't get drunk".


But QM has a well-defined measure over these possibilities, given by the 
Born Rule acting on the appropriate wave function. That theory predicts 
that the probability that people can drink substantial quantities of 
alcohol and not get drunk is vanishingly small. Computationalism has no 
comparable measure that would give the observed relative probabilities.


And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test, and 
encourage people to pursue the study of the "material hypostases".


First derive your measure (without assuming physical laws), then we can 
do the empirical testing.


We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the 
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.


I think we first have to establish that there are entities recognizable 
as "people" in arithmetic. Viz., that conscious moments are not just 
isolated events in a sea of white noise.


Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2017 10:13 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 8/05/2017 2:44 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  
wrote:

Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
supervenience in his theories.


Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?


In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.


That idea appears similar to my argument that there is no useful 
meaning to the word "consistent" when applied to continuations of 
computations, other than that supplied by physical laws.




My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer,


But computationalism, at that stage, does not entail that any 
anthropically viable universe exists! Computationally aware moments 
need not be continued in the majority of cases -- we might be 
Boltzmann brains, sprung into existence in a sea of white noise, to 
vanish into the same sea in the next instant. A completely random 
universe is thus completely consistent with our existence as an 
observer -- maybe not our continuing existence, which requires 
physics, not anthropics. Think Last Tuesdayism!




  ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.


I think that insight can be extended to say that we have to be aware 
of something in addition to ourselves -- namely our thoughts and 
memories of a coherent physical universe. We have to be aware of 
*something*, and awareness of merely our awareness does not really work.




The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.


Exactly.


And notice that this tells us something about the consciousness of an AI 
Mars Rover.  Being aware of oneself is not an all-or-nothing attribute 
like lobianity or induction.  An AI Mars Rover would need to be aware of 
its position, its battery charge, the time of day on Mars, when it was 
to broadcast, how much energy it had taken to move over the surface, 
which sensors were working, what tasks were next, whether it had 
encountered a similar problem before and what happened that time.  It 
might have redundant computers and it would be aware of whether they 
agreed or one might be in a loop.  But there would also be a lot of 
things that it would not need to be aware of and some that it could not 
be aware of without significant redesign.


Brent




This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.


Yes.

Bruce



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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 2:44 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:

On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  wrote:
Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
supervenience in his theories.


Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?


In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.


That idea appears similar to my argument that there is no useful meaning 
to the word "consistent" when applied to continuations of computations, 
other than that supplied by physical laws.




My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer,


But computationalism, at that stage, does not entail that any 
anthropically viable universe exists! Computationally aware moments need 
not be continued in the majority of cases -- we might be Boltzmann 
brains, sprung into existence in a sea of white noise, to vanish into 
the same sea in the next instant. A completely random universe is thus 
completely consistent with our existence as an observer -- maybe not our 
continuing existence, which requires physics, not anthropics. Think Last 
Tuesdayism!




  ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.


I think that insight can be extended to say that we have to be aware of 
something in addition to ourselves -- namely our thoughts and memories 
of a coherent physical universe. We have to be aware of *something*, and 
awareness of merely our awareness does not really work.




The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.


Exactly.


This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.


Yes.

Bruce

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 2:45 pm, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Rather than use the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the 
conservation of energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not take 
Boltzmann a bit more seriously, and search for these suckers in the 
galaxy, in other words, treat, as a working hypothesis BB's as real 
phenomena? There's nobody out there that is sending easy to listen to, 
signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's butts as a prank, by 
pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!


I think that, given a physical universe, Boltzmann brains are highly 
unlikely. The reasons are essentially those elucidated by Sean Carroll, 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298v1 . Namely de Sitter space is a quiescent 
vacuum in which there are no quantum fluctuations of the sort 
hypothesized to give rise to Boltzmann brains. The problem is that David 
(and Bruno) cannot appeal to such an argument, because Carroll 
presupposes a physical universe, and they can't do that on pain of 
circularity.


Bruce



In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain
problem, states of complete randomness both before and after our
current conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that
our present moment is immersed in a physics that involves
exceptionless conservation laws, so that the past and future can
both be evolved from our present state by the application of
persistent and pervasive physical laws.




-Original Message-
From: Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, May 7, 2017 11:53 pm
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"
<meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has
no predictive success.  QM (and Everett) would
correctly predict that alcohol molecules in the blood
will interfere with neuronal function and THEN
invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that
mind supervenes on material events, it predicts that
your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by
drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary
with more than infinitesimal probability. So it's
misdirection to say that it's just a measure problem. 
Without having the right measure a probabilistic

theory is just fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear
that if computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that
its predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one
effectively self-selected by complex subjects, in this
case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another
post Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't
see it).  But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to
show that some world exists in which mind and physics are
consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the real
physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to
show this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One
can make a logic chopping argument that it must be that way
for otherwise minds would not be making sense of the physics
they perceived - but that makes the whole computational
argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out
some further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional
expertise in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than
mine and consequently any comments you might make would be very
helpful. By the way, it would also be helpful if you would read
beyond the next paragraph before commenting because I hope I will
come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD,
we are led to the view that UD* must include all possible
"physical" computational continuations (actually infinitely
reiterated). This of course is also to assume that all such
continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting). Now, again
on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence
of its emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant
computational mechanism underlying th

Re: What are atheists for?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

What about an Ensemble (Deutsch and Tegmark), that is also, by necessity, 
computationalist in nature. One way of doing this would be that algorithms, 
somehow produce oodles of matter and energy, hence universes?  



-Original Message-
From: Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 8, 2017 12:44 am
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
> On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish" <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
> Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
> reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
> his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
> which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
> mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
> point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
> environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
> the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
> effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
> 
> I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
> calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
> supervenience in his theories.
> 
> 
> Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
> 

In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.

My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.

The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.

This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.

Cheers
-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Rather than use the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis to elucidate the conservation of 
energy in thermodynamics and entropy, why not take Boltzmann a bit more 
seriously, and search for these suckers in the galaxy, in other words, treat, 
as a working hypothesis BB's as real phenomena? There's nobody out there that 
is sending easy to listen to, signals. Maybe the BB's are probing people's 
butts as a prank, by pretending they are UFO's? Hardee Har Har!

In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,states 
of complete randomness both before and after our currentconscious moment 
are overwhelmingly more likley than that ourpresent moment is immersed in a 
physics that involves exceptionlessconservation laws, so that the past and 
future can both be evolvedfrom our present state by the application of 
persistent andpervasive physical laws.




-Original Message-
From: Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, May 7, 2017 11:53 pm
Subject: Re: What are atheists for?


On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

  

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net>  wrote:
  

  

  
 
On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

  

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  
<meeke...@verizon.net>  wrote:
  

  

  


  
  But that's what I mean when I say 
 Bruno's theory has no predictive   
   success.  QM (and Everett) would  
correctly predict that alcohol  molecules in 
the blood will interfere  with neuronal 
function and THEN  invoking the physicalist 
theory of  mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on   
   material events, it predicts that your   
   ability to do arithmetic will be 
 impaired by drinking tequila.  It will 
 NOT predict the contrary with more  than 
infinitesimal probability.  So  it's 
misdirection to say that it's  just a measure 
problem.  Without  having the right measure a   
   probabilistic theory is just 
 fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.
  

  





I have no idea why you say that.  I thought it was 
clear that if  computationalism doesn't (ultimately) 
predict  that its predominating computational mechanism 
 (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by 
 complex subjects, in this case, like  
ourselves) is the physics those selfsame  subjects 
observe, 
  


  
  That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in  
another post Bruno says is trivially accomplished even  
in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed in prediction  it is 
not enough to show that some world exists in  which mind and 
physics are consistent (that the  physics that mind infers is 
also the real physics that  predicts effects on the mind).  You 
need also to show  this has large measure relative to contrary 
worlds.   One can make a logic chopping argument that it must 
be  that way for otherwise minds would not be making sense  
of the physics they perceived - but that makes the  
whole computational argument otiose.

  

  





I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd  like to set out some 
further tentative remarks about the  above. Your professional expertise 
in these matters is orders  of magnitude grea

Re: What are atheists for?

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 07:26:02AM +0100, David Nyman wrote:
> On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  wrote:
> Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
> reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
> his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
> which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
> mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
> point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
> environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
> the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
> effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.
> 
> I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
> calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
> supervenience in his theories.
> 
> 
> Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?
> 

In ToN, I argue on the basis of the Occams razor and the Everything
hypothesis that we're most likely to find ourselves in the simplest
possible universe, namely one that is pretty noisy and devoid of
meaning. This I called the Occam catastrophe - a catstrophe for the
theory as it contradicts empirical evidence of us living in a complex
and meaningful universe.

My solution to the Occam catastrophe was to note that the anthropic
principle required that the universe be compatible with our existence
as an observer, ie to paraphrase Einstein, the universe must be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In order for this compatibility to
exist, our conscious selves must be reflected into the observed
universe some how. In order for this reflected self to influence our
consciousness, we need to be self-aware. Hence my prediction, from
which I've never wavered, is that any substantive theory of
consciousness must require consciousness to be self-aware.

The epilogue to this, not appearing in ToN  (and the flipside of the
argument, as it were) is that self-awareness requires supervenience on
physics (physics being defined as "what is observed", or
phenomena). If we didn't supervene on our observed world, then how in
hell can be be aware of ourselves.

This might seem like a virtuous circle of logic, but I think that is
only because the real reason why self-awareness is needed hasn't been
elucidated yet.

Conversely, if it can be shown that consciousness is possible without
self-awareness, then the whole Occam catastrophe argument comes to
bite again, implying that we don't, in fact, live in an everything
ensemble, moreover that computationalism is false.

Cheers
-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 8/05/2017 3:14 am, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:



But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no
predictive success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict
that alcohol molecules in the blood will interfere with
neuronal function and THEN invoking the physicalist theory of
mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events, it
predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired
by drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with
more than infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to
say that it's just a measure problem.  Without having the
right measure a probabilistic theory is just fantasy...or
magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its
predominating computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively
self-selected by complex subjects, in this case, like ourselves)
is the physics those selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post
Bruno says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it). 
But to succeed in prediction it is not enough to show that some

world exists in which mind and physics are consistent (that the
physics that mind infers is also the real physics that predicts
effects on the mind).  You need also to show this has large
measure relative to contrary worlds. One can make a logic chopping
argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the
whole computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some 
further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise 
in these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and 
consequently any comments you might make would be very helpful. By the 
way, it would also be helpful if you would read beyond the next 
paragraph before commenting because I hope I will come by myself to 
the fly in the ointment.


Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we 
are led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" 
computational continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of 
course is also to assume that all such continuations are finitely 
computable (i.e. halting). Now, again on the same assumptions, it 
might seem reasonable that our observing such a physics in concrete 
substantial form is evidence of its emergence (i.e. epistemologically) 
as the predominant computational mechanism underlying those very 
perceptions. Hence it might seem equally reasonable to conclude that 
this is the reason that these latter correspondingly appear to 
supervene on concrete physical manifestations in their effective 
environment.


Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would 
it be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should 
predominate in the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem 
that the generator of the set of possible physical computations is 
infinitely reiterative​ and hence very robust (both in the sense of 
computational inclusiveness a la step 7, and that of internal 
self-consistency). But who is to say that the generators of "magical" 
or simply inconsistent continuations aren't equally or even more 
prevalent? After all we're dealing with a Library of Babel here and 
the Vast majority of any such library is bound to be gibberish. Well, 
I'm wondering​ about an analogy with Feynman's path integral idea 
(comments particularly appreciated here). Might a kind of least action 
principle be applicable here, such that internally consistent 
computations self-reinforce, whereas inconsistent ones in effect 
self-cancel?


Also, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I'm thinking here 
about the evaluation of what we typically remember having experienced. 
I can't help invoking Hoyle here again (sorry). Subjectively speaking, 
there's a kind of struggle always in process between remembering and 
forgetting. So on the basis suggested above, and from the abstract 
point of view of Hoyle's singular agent (or equally Bruno's virgin 
machine), inconsistent paths might plausibly tend to result, in 
effect, in a net (unintelligible) forgetting and contrariwise, 
self-consistent paths might equally plausibly result in a net 
(intelligible) remembering. I'm speaking of consistent and hence 
intelligible "personal histories" here. But perhaps you would 
substitute "implausibly" above. Anyway, your comments as ever 
particularly appreciated.


I think the problem here is the 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2017 7:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 May 2017, at 23:16, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.
Arithmetic, according to your theory of
consciousness, is independent of perception and
physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are
entailed by arithmetic and so should be
independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can
prove that a machine drinking some amount of tequila
will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts
it because it predicts "everything", including people drink
tequila and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts 
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a 
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we 
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on 
about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor 
that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain and 
uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far too 
tricksy to say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or eternal 
inflation for that matter). The key is the measure and how that 
measure discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and the 
downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or 
pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive 
success.


No. Physicalism is refuted (in the Mechanist frame). It makes physics 
not even able to predict that I will see a needle when looking at my 
physical device.


And mechanism has strong predictive power, as shown by the 
meta-reasoning, and its formalization in arithmetic. It asks for a lot 
of work, but the contrary would have been astonishing, especially when 
we see the irrational response to all this, which last since more than 
1500 years in Occident.





QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules in 
the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the 
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material 
events,


That could work, but not in a computationalist theory of mind.


That is a computationalist theory of mind - i.e. thought supervenes on 
the computations of the brain.



And, then, we wait for that theory.


No need to wait.  It is already as complete a theory as saying mind 
supervenes on the computational states of a UD.


Brent

the one given by Penrose might be an embryo, but he got Gödel wrong, 
and a reasoning by Abner Shimony trows doubt on the role consciousness 
could have in the wave packet reduction.





it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by 
drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than 
infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's 
just a measure problem.  Without having the right measure a 
probabilistic theory is just fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


Not at all. The point is that if we believe in CT+YD we get that 
measure problem. And its formalization in Arithmetic gives the 
complete propositional solutions, which is promising for that measure 
existence and isolation.


No magic here, unlike invoking the Primary Matter to select 
computation in arithmetic, which is akin to "God made it".


It's magic when you say it's a trivial problem already solved in RA to 
show that drinking tequila inhibits thinking about mathematics.




Also, I insist, it is not "my theory". It is arguably one of the 
oldest theory of humanity.


Plato didn't think of digital computers, Church-Turing computation, a 
UD, or quantum indeterminancy.


Brent

It is the favorite theory of the strong atheists and of the 
materialist, but they are shown to be inconsistent, because the whole 
point is that Weak-Mechanism is inconsistent with Weak-Materialism.


I am not coming with anything new. I just show that two widespread 
beliefs are inconsistent with each other, then I use Gödel and the 
quantum to show that the evidences add up for mechanism, against 
materialism.


Bruno








Brent



David



Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2017 7:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 May 2017, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote:




On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.
Arithmetic, according to your theory of
consciousness, is independent of perception and
physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are
entailed by arithmetic and so should be
independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can
prove that a machine drinking some amount of tequila
will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts
it because it predicts "everything", including people drink
tequila and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that 
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a 
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we 
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about 
Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has 
ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain and uncertain 
depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to 
say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation 
for that matter). The key is the measure and how that measure 
discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and the downright 
weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or pointless one.


Also, mechanism is the only reasonable theory, as far as I know, which 
predicts the qualia of being drunk under tequila.


So where is this prediction published?  How does it show the qualia is 
different when drinking orange juice?


Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2017 6:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, 
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of 
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed 
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a 
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational 
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the 
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it 
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and 
don't get drunk.


But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived 
theory: quantum mechanics.


QM  also predicts  ""everything", including people drink tequila and 
don't get drunk".


QM doesn't predict "everything".  For example it predicts that only the 
eigenvalues of a measured variable will be observed - does your theory 
predict that? And it assigns an infinitesimal probability to drinking 
tequila and not getting drunk.  Does your theory do that? You said it 
was trivial to prove in RA.


Brent



And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test, and 
encourage people to pursue the study of the "material hypostases".


We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the 
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according to
 your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and physics.
 Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so should be
 independent of tequila.

>>>
>>> That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a machine
>>> drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.
>>>
>>
>> That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?
>>
>
> It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational
> histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the simulation of
> tequila + brain, people get drunk.
>

That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it because
it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and don't get
drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we don't know
the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about Hoyle, but I
must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has ever conveyed to me
how something could be both certain and uncertain depending on one's point
of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts
everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is
the measure and how that measure discriminates between the typical, the
unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty
or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno
says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed
in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in which mind
and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to show
this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic
chopping argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
computational argument otiose.


I've been thinking a bit more about this and I'd like to set out some
further tentative remarks about the above. Your professional expertise in
these matters is orders of magnitude greater than mine and consequently any
comments you might make would be very helpful. By the way, it would also be
helpful if you would read beyond the next paragraph before commenting
because I hope I will come by myself to the fly in the ointment.

Firstly, and "assuming computationalism" on the basis of CT + YD, we are
led to the view that UD* must include all possible "physical" computational
continuations (actually infinitely reiterated). This of course is also to
assume that all such continuations are finitely computable (i.e. halting).
Now, again on the same assumptions, it might seem reasonable that our
observing such a physics in concrete substantial form is evidence of its
emergence (i.e. epistemologically) as the predominant computational
mechanism underlying those very perceptions. Hence it might seem equally
reasonable to conclude that this is the reason that these latter
correspondingly appear to supervene on concrete physical manifestations in
their effective environment.

Now wait a minute. We cannot escape the question of measure. Why would it
be reasonable to assume that a physics of this sort should predominate in
the manner outlined above? Well, firstly, it would seem that the generator
of the set of possible physical computations is infinitely reiterative​ and
hence very robust (both in the sense of computational inclusiveness a la
step 7, 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2017, at 06:02, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, May 06, 2017 at 12:08:10PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and
don't get drunk.



This thread reminds me of a time when I when I was in year 10 in
boarding school, and a group of us 15 year olds had spent the evening
sinking a slab of beer on the school oval. Probably enough for a
school suspension if we were caught, which we weren't.

Anyway, I have this distinct memory of one of the students (not me)
wandering up and down the dorm, deriving the formula for relativistic
temporal dilation from first principles out loud. When asked about
this aberrant behaviour, he said he was testing whether he was still
any good at physics. Effectively doing the experiment mentioned
above. From what I remember, being the only other physics nerd in my
dorm, he did it correctly. I didn't even realise he knew any
relativity until then!

Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
his work.


?





It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
supervenience in his theories.


The material hypostases gives the quantum appearances, and the  
physical supervenience is just false. It is the physical which  
supervenes on the computational, as seen by the machine (which "see"  
being any material hypostases, that is the one given by S4Grz1,Z1*,  
X1*).


Bruno






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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 23:16, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed  
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?

It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational  
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the  
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila  
and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts  
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a  
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we  
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on  
about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor  
that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain  
and uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far  
too tricksy to say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or  
eternal inflation for that matter). The key is the measure and how  
that measure discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and  
the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or  
pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive  
success.


No. Physicalism is refuted (in the Mechanist frame). It makes physics  
not even able to predict that I will see a needle when looking at my  
physical device.


And mechanism has strong predictive power, as shown by the meta- 
reasoning, and its formalization in arithmetic. It asks for a lot of  
work, but the contrary would have been astonishing, especially when we  
see the irrational response to all this, which last since more than  
1500 years in Occident.





QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules in  
the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking  
the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on  
material events,


That could work, but not in a computationalist theory of mind. And,  
then, we wait for that theory. the one given by Penrose might be an  
embryo, but he got Gödel wrong, and a reasoning by Abner Shimony trows  
doubt on the role consciousness could have in the wave packet reduction.





it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by  
drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than  
infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's  
just a measure problem.  Without having the right measure a  
probabilistic theory is just fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


Not at all. The point is that if we believe in CT+YD we get that  
measure problem. And its formalization in Arithmetic gives the  
complete propositional solutions, which is promising for that measure  
existence and isolation.


No magic here, unlike invoking the Primary Matter to select  
computation in arithmetic, which is akin to "God made it".


Also, I insist, it is not "my theory". It is arguably one of the  
oldest theory of humanity. It is the favorite theory of the strong  
atheists and of the materialist, but they are shown to be  
inconsistent, because the whole point is that Weak-Mechanism is  
inconsistent with Weak-Materialism.


I am not coming with anything new. I just show that two widespread  
beliefs are inconsistent with each other, then I use Gödel and the  
quantum to show that the evidences add up for mechanism, against  
materialism.


Bruno








Brent



David


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote:




On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according  
to your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and  
physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and  
so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?

It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational  
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the  
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and  
don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts  
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a  
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we  
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on  
about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor  
that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain and  
uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far too  
tricksy to say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or eternal  
inflation for that matter). The key is the measure and how that  
measure discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and the  
downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or  
pointless one.


Also, mechanism is the only reasonable theory, as far as I know, which  
predicts the qualia of being drunk under tequila.


Physicalism just eliminate the person, that is, its qualia,  
consciousness, etc. Physics does not address the question, except when  
forced through the desanthropomorphization (Galilee, Einstein,  
Everett, which seem to converge toward Mechanism).


The materialist use Matter, like the (fake) believer use God, to stop  
research, instead of pursuing it.


Institutionalized religions are made to forbid the spiritual personal  
research, and, alas, some old academies can fall in the same  
irrationalist trap with respect to fundamental research.



Bruno






David


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote:




On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according  
to your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and  
physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and  
so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?

It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational  
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the  
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and  
don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts  
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a  
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we  
don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on  
about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor  
that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both certain and  
uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far too  
tricksy to say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or eternal  
inflation for that matter). The key is the measure and how that  
measure discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and the  
downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or  
pointless one.


Exactly.

Bruno





David


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic,  
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of  
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are  
entailed by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a  
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational  
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the  
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it  
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and  
don't get drunk.


But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived  
theory: quantum mechanics.


QM  also predicts  ""everything", including people drink tequila and  
don't get drunk".


And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test, and  
encourage people to pursue the study of the "material hypostases".


We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the  
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.


Bruno






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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 21:06, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Everett miss that his move forces him to derive the wave itself  
from the superposition in arithmetic, and that is the weakness, OK.


Not OK.  How does that "forces him to derive the wave itself from  
the superposition in arithmetic".


What step in UDA don't you agree with?


I don't recall a step in the UDA referring to deriving the  
Schroedinger wave function.


Because UDA shows that *the* correct physics must be derived. Indeed,  
it shows that if the measure exists, physics becomes a theorem in  
arithmetic. And if we can show that the measure does not exist, we  
shows that mechanism cannot be correct.


Now, Schroedinger equation, or quantum physics, is very fundamental,  
and is the first theory of physics lasting more than 15 years (it  
lasts since more than a century, and we assume it when taking about  
the current physics).  So by "the correct, relatively to mechanism,  
physics" is often replaced by "Schroedinger equation" in some context,  
as a short-term.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 18:06, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I don't think so. Everett uses only Mechanism.


What exactly is "mechanism"?  Is it not that mind supervenes on  
the brain.


It is a bit ambiguus, but it is OK here, unless you mean supervene  
on the material consistution of the brain (in which case it is  
better to say no the doctor).


Don't say it is "OK here" when I've asked you what you mean.  It's  
your term.


Computationalism, or Digital Mechanism is, precisely, "it exists a  
level of description of my physical generalized brain such that my  
consciousness is invariant for a digital, physical and functional  
substitution made at that level".
The generalized brain is the portion of the physical universe which  
should be used to for that invariance.


So non-comp, for example, is entailed by the following theories:

a) The physical universe is infinite (or non Turing emulable) and my  
consciousness supervene on the entire physical universe.
b) My consciousness supervene on my physical brain, and on a non  
Turing emulable, *nor FPI recoverable* part of it.
c) My consciousness supervenes or not on something through the will of  
some supernatural and non Turing emulable entity.


There is no bound on the granularity corresponding to the substitution  
level chosen. If someone claim that his generalized brain needs a  
gigantic (bit still finiteley describable in principle) part of the  
physical universe, the conclusions are still getting through.


What I said was that I can accept the shorter "mind supervenes on  
brain" as a pointer to that longer and more precise, and very eak  
version of Mechanism.


Note that my version of Mechanism is weaker than all version in the  
literature, and this means that the conclusion I get are valid for all  
those other versions. The proof/result is very general.


Bruno








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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 18:06, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 That's scientific modesty.  Hubris is assuming the world must  
satisfy our theories instead of the other way around.


Yes, but here you add a metaphysical idea to prevent the testing of  
a widely believed theories. That is what creationist do with the  
theory of evolution. Adding fairy tales to avoid scientific  
conclusions.


What test am I preventing??



By invoking Matter or Physical Laws to justify the stability of the  
laws of physics, you prevent testing computationalism, as it makes the  
Appearance of Matter/Physical-Laws deducible in (any "rich enough",  
Löbian, theory).  (modulo the dream/second-order emulation always  
possible, I will not repeat this).


Bruno



 I didn't realize I had such power.

Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2017, at 11:21, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 03 May 2017, at 15:21, Telmo Menezes wrote:


I think that mechanism gives the most of what we can hope for an
explanation
of what consciousness is.

A number e can refer to itself and develop true belief about  
itself,

including some guess in its relative consistency.




I can understand self-referentiality, and at the same time that  
there
is "something" to it that is profound but not fully graspable --  
as

Hofstadter talks about with his "strange loops".


Then the theory explains
why any Gödel-Löbian machine can access to the truth that such  
belief

can
be
correctly (but that is not seen by the machine, only by god/ 
truth)

related
to the truth, but only in a non communicable way. So the  
machine knows
truth, that she is unable to justify, and can only seem  
mysterious.




I am ok with this.




Then, it is weirder for me why you are not convinced by the  
machine's

explanation of consciousness.



But you conclude yourself, that the machine knows truth, that is
unable to justify, and can only seem mysterious. The fact that I  
find

consciousness mysterious isn't exactly what you would expect?



Yes. But now we are in the Gödelian trap. Interpret (momentarily)
"consciousness" by "consistency" (<>t), and justify x by "prove  
x" ([]x).


We seem to agree with ~[]<>t  (we cannot
justify/explain/rationally-believe-in consciousness, so there is a  
mystery)


Then the machine explanation comes: <>t -> ~[]<>t (the machine  
proves that

if she is consistent then she cannot prove it), and similarly, my
explanation of the "mystery" is that if we are conscious we can  
understand

that we cannot justify it.


Ok, I have no problem with any of this.

So there is a mystery (a non justifiable truth), but in the cadre  
of the
mechanist hypothesis, we can explain why there is necessarily a  
mystery. The

mystery remains "lived" from the first person perspective, but we can
understand, even in the 3p view, that if mechanism is true then it is
expected that we feel it as mysterious. Eventually, it is no more  
mysterious

than our belief in numbers.


But our belief in numbers is pretty mysterious, no?



Yes. Total mystery akin to the problem of consciousness. But unlile  
consciousness, this one is completely solved: we can derive the  
natural numbers from anything simpler (failure of logicism).  
Consciousness, on the contrary, is derivable from that "number  
mystery", except for a tiny part of it, which, like the number, needs  
to exist for us not falling into insanity/inconsistency.


















That does not explains the whole of consciousness, but that  
reduce its
mystery to the mystery of our belief in anything Turing  
universal, like

the
numbers.

But then again, the numbers explains, by themselves, why if you  
belief

in
anything less than them, you cannot get them, and so justify  
their
mysterious character. We don't know, and it is the fate of any  
machine

to
not know that.

Don't mind to much. I am not sure if what you miss is a part of
mathematical
logic, or something about consciousness.




Again, I am convinced by your explanation of why the mystery  
exists.




The mystery is our understanding or belief (in apparently a  
finite time)

of
elementary arithmetic.





For me, the hard problem remains: you talk about mathematical
constructs.




Only half of the time, unless you put mathematical truth in the
mathematical
construct, something typically impossible to do, except for some
approximation, for theories much simpler than ourself. I guess  
you know

the
difference between the true fact that 2+2=4, and the much weaker  
fact

that
some machine or theory believes or prove that 2+2=4. In fact the  
word
"mathematical construct" is a bit ambiguous. The semantic in  
general is

not
a construct, when we do mathematics, but partial semantic can be
associated
to mathematical construct, when we do metamathematics (mathematical
logic),
but this is due to the fact that we approximate meaning by  
"mathematical
construct" (which are most often infinite and non computable  
mathematical

object).





Physicalists talk about emergence from complex
interactions of matter. I remain baffled and ask you the same  
question

that I ask physicalists: what is the first principle from where
consciousness arises?




Truth. That cannot be a mathematical construct (provably so if
computationalism is true). It is not 3p definable.



Aren't you just renaming the mystery?



Truth is much more general than consciousness. All logicians and
mathematicians believe in (arithmetical) truth, but few would even  
dare to
use a term like consciousness. Truth has been very well treated by  
Tarski,
and I use that (sometimes implicitly, sometimes more explicitly).  
It is a

key notion, which is on the side of semantic, or model theory, unlike
provable and 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 7 May 2017 5:02 a.m., "Russell Standish"  wrote:

On Sat, May 06, 2017 at 12:08:10PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it
> because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and
> don't get drunk.
>

This thread reminds me of a time when I when I was in year 10 in
boarding school, and a group of us 15 year olds had spent the evening
sinking a slab of beer on the school oval. Probably enough for a
school suspension if we were caught, which we weren't.

Anyway, I have this distinct memory of one of the students (not me)
wandering up and down the dorm, deriving the formula for relativistic
temporal dilation from first principles out loud. When asked about
this aberrant behaviour, he said he was testing whether he was still
any good at physics. Effectively doing the experiment mentioned
above. From what I remember, being the only other physics nerd in my
dorm, he did it correctly. I didn't even realise he knew any
relativity until then!

Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
supervenience in his theories.


Could you remind me how you deal with this issue in TON?

David


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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 11:04 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according to
 your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and physics.
 Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so should be
 independent of tequila.

>>>
>>> That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a machine
>>> drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.
>>>
>>
>> That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?
>>
>
> It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational
> histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the simulation of
> tequila + brain, people get drunk.
>

That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it because
it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and don't get
drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we don't know
the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about Hoyle, but I
must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has ever conveyed to me
how something could be both certain and uncertain depending on one's point
of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts
everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is
the measure and how that measure discriminates between the typical, the
unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty
or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno
says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it).  But to succeed
in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in which mind
and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers is also the
real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need also to show
this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One can make a logic
chopping argument that it must be that way for otherwise minds would not be
making sense of the physics they perceived - but that makes the whole
computational argument otiose.


Well, not otiose perhaps, but I agree that the theory is nowhere near that
point. But why ask for such predictions at this stage? Their lack doesn't
invalidate the theory, which at this point is a species of psycho-theology,
in my estimation. It's certainly not a substitute for QM as a physical
theory, for example, although it would seem to be at least consistent with
it (just as well). I think much of the problem in the discussions here has
been that some commentators, such as yourself, want to take comp as a
competitor to much more fully developed physical theories whereas in fact
it's a much broader philosophical position with, as Bruno points out,
ancient antecedents. What is remarkable therefore is that this time
honoured tradition actually seems to be implied by the default theory of
mind, or at least that this position is defensible (which is to say Bruno's
life's work).

David


That's how it is similar to the Boltzmann brain problem.  I think Sean
Carroll has solved the Boltzmann brain problem, but there is still some
controversy.


Thanks, I'll look it up.

David



then it must fail. In effect, at that point we would have arrived at a
notion of computation that did indeed appear to supervene on objects in the
effective physical environment, albeit qua computatio, as Bruno was wont to
say. Hence if the physical brain got plastered, so would the mind
apparently supervening on it.


That's true in this world...one among infinitely many.

Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 10:50 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 2:29 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 9:48 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 10:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker"  a écrit :



On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the fundamental ontology
then only X exists.  But that leads to nonsense: "If the standard model is
fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist."


But it's true, football does not exist in any ontological sense, and we are
talking about ontology.


So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist.  That's certainly a
relief.



What about ontology don't you understand?


I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms don't exist.


Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is saying that
things made of atoms don't exist and your saying this is just setting up an
easy straw man for you to pointlessly knock down. So what do you suppose
that Quentin and I are saying here? I'll repeat it. "Extreme reductionism"
as you call it (and what other kind is there unless you believe in some
form of causally effective top-down emergence?) is the search for the
ontological building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological composition will be
understood. That at least is the ambition. So if we say that atoms are the
building blocks then the claim is that everything else is to be understood
as the interactions of atoms (this is meant to be illustrative only).

So what then is the status in the theory of "everything else" if such
entities are merely ontologically composite and consequently at that
fundamental level indistinguishable from the interactions​ of their
components? The answer (obviously) is that their "concrete" or substantial
emergence is perceptual, or epistemological as we like to say here. I
suspect the fact that some people find this so hard to accept is not some
intellectual barrier to understanding, since the distinction is in fact
rather obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology as a
fundamental determinant of reality.


Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology precedes
ontology."


Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely its final
neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but the entire process of
epistemological emergence of perceiving subjects and their environments​
from the posited ontological basis. For this of course we need an adequate
theory that takes both aspects and in particular their peculiar
entanglement into account.  And indeed​ it is only the ultimate explanatory
success of such a theory that can justify the ascription of "existence" to
anything above the level of the ontological base because, as you will
recall, the whole point of the reductionist thrust is that this base is
capable of explaining the evolution of its states entirely in its own
terms, without any necessary reference to composition or emergence.


I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at "anything".
It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success that justifies the
existence of the ontological base as well as the theory built on it.
That's what I mean by epistemology precedes ontology.



I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above argument
directly, as distinct from changing the subject in line with your preferred
way of thinking, as I would truly like to know what you think is wrong with
it. As Bruno says, a different argument is not the same thing as a
counter-argument.


My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's argument is
two-fold.  First, I don't see any predictive success and only a little
explanatory success.  And I see some predictive failure - although it's
like string theory in that it seems difficult to say exactly what it
predicts about human consciousness.  Second, as an argument it is not a
logical inference, it is a reductio.  It starts from a physical classical
computer can be substituted for you brain with no profound effect on your
consciousness.  Then it purports to conclude that the physical aspect of
the computer is irrelevant and simply the mathematical existence of
computation in Platonia is enough to realize your consciousness.  Which is
OK, but I think the consequence is overstated.  It is the mathematical
existence of your thoughts AND the world they are about that is necessary
to maintaining your consciousness.  So it becomes a (better, more explicit,
more comprehensive) version of Tegmark's computational universe
hypothesis.  Looked at another way it is 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, May 06, 2017 at 12:08:10PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
> 
> That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it
> because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and
> don't get drunk.
> 

This thread reminds me of a time when I when I was in year 10 in
boarding school, and a group of us 15 year olds had spent the evening
sinking a slab of beer on the school oval. Probably enough for a
school suspension if we were caught, which we weren't.

Anyway, I have this distinct memory of one of the students (not me)
wandering up and down the dorm, deriving the formula for relativistic
temporal dilation from first principles out loud. When asked about
this aberrant behaviour, he said he was testing whether he was still
any good at physics. Effectively doing the experiment mentioned
above. From what I remember, being the only other physics nerd in my
dorm, he did it correctly. I didn't even realise he knew any
relativity until then!

Anyway, back to our sheep (as they say in French). Bruno has been
reluctant to really address the question of physical supervenience in
his work. It has to be such consciousness must be about something,
which we may call the environment, or physics, and further that the
mental state must be reflected into that environment to set up a fixed
point that anchors the consciousness into a meaningful
environment. This will manifest as physica supervenience. Otherwise,
the observed environment will collapse into meaningless noise, an
effect I dubbed the Occam catastrophe.

I know Bruno has sometimes talked about fixed points, and what he
calls the "Dxx" trick, but I don't see any real derivation of physical
supervenience in his theories.

-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 2:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Exactly why I used arithmetic as the
example.  Arithmetic, according to your
theory of consciousness, is independent of
perception and physics. Conscious thoughts,
beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so
should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can
prove that a machine drinking some amount of
tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to
be short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people
get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully
predicts it because it predicts "everything", including
people drink tequila and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts
that everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to
a probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but
we don't know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging
on about Hoyle, but I must say that his is so far the only
metaphor that has ever conveyed to me how something could be both
certain and uncertain depending on one's point of view. So I
think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts everything
(or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is
the measure and how that measure discriminates between the
typical, the unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem,
sure, but hardly an empty or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol
molecules in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and
THEN invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind
supervenes on material events, it predicts that your ability to do
arithmetic will be impaired by drinking tequila.  It will NOT
predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal probability.  So
it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure problem. Without
having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if 
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating 
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by 
complex subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those 
selfsame subjects observe,


That would certainly be an accomplishment - which in another post Bruno 
says is trivially accomplished even in RA (I don't see it). But to 
succeed in prediction it is not enough to show that some world exists in 
which mind and physics are consistent (that the physics that mind infers 
is also the real physics that predicts effects on the mind).  You need 
also to show this has large measure relative to contrary worlds.  One 
can make a logic chopping argument that it must be that way for 
otherwise minds would not be making sense of the physics they perceived 
- but that makes the whole computational argument otiose.


That's how it is similar to the Boltzmann brain problem.  I think Sean 
Carroll has solved the Boltzmann brain problem, but there is still some 
controversy.


then it must fail. In effect, at that point we would have arrived at a 
notion of computation that did indeed appear to supervene on objects 
in the effective physical environment, albeit qua computatio, as Bruno 
was wont to say. Hence if the physical brain got plastered, so would 
the mind apparently supervening on it.


That's true in this world...one among infinitely many.

Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 2:29 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 9:48 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/6/2017 10:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:



On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker"
> wrote:



On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker"
> a
écrit :



On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X
is the fundamental ontology then only X
exists.  But that leads to nonsense: "If the
standard model is fundamental ontology then
football doesn't exist."




But it's true, football does not exist in any
ontological sense, and we are talking about ontology.


So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist. 
That's certainly a relief.




What about ontology don't you understand?


I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of
atoms don't exist.


Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is
saying that things made of atoms don't exist and your saying
this is just setting up an easy straw man for you to
pointlessly knock down. So what do you suppose that Quentin
and I are saying here? I'll repeat it. "Extreme
reductionism" as you call it (and what other kind is there
unless you believe in some form of causally effective
top-down emergence?) is the search for the ontological
building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological
composition will be understood. That at least is the
ambition. So if we say that atoms are the building blocks
then the claim is that everything else is to be understood
as the interactions of atoms (this is meant to be
illustrative only).

So what then is the status in the theory of "everything
else" if such entities are merely ontologically composite
and consequently at that fundamental level indistinguishable
from the interactions​ of their components? The answer
(obviously) is that their "concrete" or substantial
emergence is perceptual, or epistemological as we like to
say here. I suspect the fact that some people find this so
hard to accept is not some intellectual barrier to
understanding, since the distinction is in fact rather
obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology
as a fundamental determinant of reality.


Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology
precedes ontology."



Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely
its final neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but
the entire process of epistemological emergence of
perceiving subjects and their environments​ from the posited
ontological basis. For this of course we need an adequate
theory that takes both aspects and in particular their
peculiar entanglement into account.  And indeed​ it is only
the ultimate explanatory success of such a theory that can
justify the ascription of "existence" to anything above the
level of the ontological base because, as you will recall,
the whole point of the reductionist thrust is that this base
is capable of explaining the evolution of its states
entirely in its own terms, without any necessary reference
to composition or emergence.


I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at
"anything".  It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success
that justifies the existence of the ontological base as well
as the theory built on it.  That's what I mean by
epistemology precedes ontology.




I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above
argument directly, as distinct from changing the subject in
line with your preferred way of thinking, as I would truly
like to know what you think is wrong with it. As Bruno says,
a different argument is not the same thing as a
counter-argument.


My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's
argument is two-fold.  First, I don't see any predictive
success and only a little explanatory success.  And I see
some predictive failure - although it's like string theory 

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 10:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according to
 your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and physics.
 Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so should be
 independent of tequila.

>>>
>>> That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a machine
>>> drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.
>>>
>>
>> That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?
>>
>
> It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational
> histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the simulation of
> tequila + brain, people get drunk.
>

That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it because
it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and don't get
drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we don't know
the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about Hoyle, but I
must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has ever conveyed to me
how something could be both certain and uncertain depending on one's point
of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts
everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is
the measure and how that measure discriminates between the typical, the
unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty
or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol molecules
in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN invoking the
physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on material events,
it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be impaired by drinking
tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with more than infinitesimal
probability.  So it's misdirection to say that it's just a measure
problem.  Without having the right measure a probabilistic theory is just
fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


I have no idea why you say that. I thought it was clear that if
computationalism doesn't (ultimately) predict that its predominating
computational mechanism (i.e. the one effectively self-selected by complex
subjects, in this case, like ourselves) is the physics those selfsame
subjects observe, then it must fail. In effect, at that point we would have
arrived at a notion of computation that did indeed appear to supervene on
objects in the effective physical environment, albeit qua computatio, as
Bruno was wont to say. Hence if the physical brain got plastered, so would
the mind apparently supervening on it.

David



Brent



David



Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 9:48 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 10:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker"  a écrit :



On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the fundamental ontology
then only X exists.  But that leads to nonsense: "If the standard model is
fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist."


But it's true, football does not exist in any ontological sense, and we are
talking about ontology.


So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist.  That's certainly a
relief.



What about ontology don't you understand?


I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms don't exist.


Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is saying that
things made of atoms don't exist and your saying this is just setting up an
easy straw man for you to pointlessly knock down. So what do you suppose
that Quentin and I are saying here? I'll repeat it. "Extreme reductionism"
as you call it (and what other kind is there unless you believe in some
form of causally effective top-down emergence?) is the search for the
ontological building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological composition will be
understood. That at least is the ambition. So if we say that atoms are the
building blocks then the claim is that everything else is to be understood
as the interactions of atoms (this is meant to be illustrative only).

So what then is the status in the theory of "everything else" if such
entities are merely ontologically composite and consequently at that
fundamental level indistinguishable from the interactions​ of their
components? The answer (obviously) is that their "concrete" or substantial
emergence is perceptual, or epistemological as we like to say here. I
suspect the fact that some people find this so hard to accept is not some
intellectual barrier to understanding, since the distinction is in fact
rather obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology as a
fundamental determinant of reality.


Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology precedes
ontology."


Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely its final
neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but the entire process of
epistemological emergence of perceiving subjects and their environments​
from the posited ontological basis. For this of course we need an adequate
theory that takes both aspects and in particular their peculiar
entanglement into account.  And indeed​ it is only the ultimate explanatory
success of such a theory that can justify the ascription of "existence" to
anything above the level of the ontological base because, as you will
recall, the whole point of the reductionist thrust is that this base is
capable of explaining the evolution of its states entirely in its own
terms, without any necessary reference to composition or emergence.


I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at "anything".
It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success that justifies the
existence of the ontological base as well as the theory built on it.
That's what I mean by epistemology precedes ontology.



I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above argument
directly, as distinct from changing the subject in line with your preferred
way of thinking, as I would truly like to know what you think is wrong with
it. As Bruno says, a different argument is not the same thing as a
counter-argument.


My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's argument is
two-fold.  First, I don't see any predictive success and only a little
explanatory success.  And I see some predictive failure - although it's
like string theory in that it seems difficult to say exactly what it
predicts about human consciousness.  Second, as an argument it is not a
logical inference, it is a reductio.  It starts from a physical classical
computer can be substituted for you brain with no profound effect on your
consciousness.  Then it purports to conclude that the physical aspect of
the computer is irrelevant and simply the mathematical existence of
computation in Platonia is enough to realize your consciousness.  Which is
OK, but I think the consequence is overstated.  It is the mathematical
existence of your thoughts AND the world they are about that is necessary
to maintaining your consciousness.  So it becomes a (better, more explicit,
more comprehensive) version of Tegmark's computational universe
hypothesis.  Looked at another way it is saying the world is everything
that is true in a model of some axioms (either Peano or Turing or...) and
if you think 

Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 12:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.
Arithmetic, according to your theory of
consciousness, is independent of perception and
physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can
prove that a machine drinking some amount of tequila
will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all
computational histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be
short. In the simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila
and don't get drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that 
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a 
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we don't 
know the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about Hoyle, 
but I must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has ever 
conveyed to me how something could be both certain and uncertain 
depending on one's point of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to 
say that comp predicts everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation 
for that matter). The key is the measure and how that measure 
discriminates between the typical, the unusual, and the downright 
weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty or pointless one.


But that's what I mean when I say Bruno's theory has no predictive 
success.  QM (and Everett) would correctly predict that alcohol 
molecules in the blood will interfere with neuronal function and THEN 
invoking the physicalist theory of mind, i.e. that mind supervenes on 
material events, it predicts that your ability to do arithmetic will be 
impaired by drinking tequila.  It will NOT predict the contrary with 
more than infinitesimal probability.  So it's misdirection to say that 
it's just a measure problem.  Without having the right measure a 
probabilistic theory is just fantasy...or magic as Bruno would say.


Brent



David



Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 10:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker" > wrote:



On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker" > a écrit :



On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:


This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the
fundamental ontology then only X exists.  But that
leads to nonsense: "If the standard model is
fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist."




But it's true, football does not exist in any
ontological sense, and we are talking about ontology.


So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist. 
That's certainly a relief.




What about ontology don't you understand?


I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms
don't exist.


Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is saying
that things made of atoms don't exist and your saying this is
just setting up an easy straw man for you to pointlessly knock
down. So what do you suppose that Quentin and I are saying here?
I'll repeat it. "Extreme reductionism" as you call it (and what
other kind is there unless you believe in some form of causally
effective top-down emergence?) is the search for the ontological
building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological
composition will be understood. That at least is the ambition. So
if we say that atoms are the building blocks then the claim is
that everything else is to be understood as the interactions of
atoms (this is meant to be illustrative only).

So what then is the status in the theory of "everything else" if
such entities are merely ontologically composite and consequently
at that fundamental level indistinguishable from the
interactions​ of their components? The answer (obviously) is that
their "concrete" or substantial emergence is perceptual, or
epistemological as we like to say here. I suspect the fact that
some people find this so hard to accept is not some intellectual
barrier to understanding, since the distinction is in fact rather
obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology as a
fundamental determinant of reality.


Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology precedes
ontology."



Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely its
final neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but the
entire process of epistemological emergence of perceiving
subjects and their environments​ from the posited ontological
basis. For this of course we need an adequate theory that takes
both aspects and in particular their peculiar entanglement into
account.  And indeed​ it is only the ultimate explanatory success
of such a theory that can justify the ascription of "existence"
to anything above the level of the ontological base because, as
you will recall, the whole point of the reductionist thrust is
that this base is capable of explaining the evolution of its
states entirely in its own terms, without any necessary reference
to composition or emergence.


I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at
"anything".  It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success that
justifies the existence of the ontological base as well as the
theory built on it.  That's what I mean by epistemology precedes
ontology.




I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above
argument directly, as distinct from changing the subject in line
with your preferred way of thinking, as I would truly like to
know what you think is wrong with it. As Bruno says, a different
argument is not the same thing as a counter-argument.


My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's
argument is two-fold.  First, I don't see any predictive success
and only a little explanatory success.  And I see some predictive
failure - although it's like string theory in that it seems
difficult to say exactly what it predicts about human
consciousness.  Second, as an argument it is not a logical
inference, it is a reductio.  It starts from a physical classical
computer can be substituted for you brain with no profound effect
on your consciousness. Then it purports to conclude that the
physical aspect of the computer is irrelevant and simply the
mathematical existence of computation in Platonia is enough to
realize your consciousness.  

Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 6 May 2017 8:08 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, according to
 your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and physics.
 Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so should be
 independent of tequila.

>>>
>>> That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a machine
>>> drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.
>>>
>>
>> That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?
>>
>
> It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational
> histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the simulation of
> tequila + brain, people get drunk.
>

That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it because
it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and don't get
drunk.


Yes, but the key is the measure, isn't it. Everett also predicts that
everything consistent with QM happens. Somehow this leads to a
probabilistic account of what to expect. We know the math but we don't know
the reason. You're no doubt bored with my banging on about Hoyle, but I
must say that his is so far the only metaphor that has ever conveyed to me
how something could be both certain and uncertain depending on one's point
of view. So I think it's far too tricksy to say that comp predicts
everything (or Everett, or eternal inflation for that matter). The key is
the measure and how that measure discriminates between the typical, the
unusual, and the downright weird. Open problem, sure, but hardly an empty
or pointless one.

David



Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example.  Arithmetic, 
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of 
perception and physics.  Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed 
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.


That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a 
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.


That would be impressive.  Is this proof published?


It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational 
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the 
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.


That's what I was afraid of.  Your theory successfully predicts it 
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and 
don't get drunk.


Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Everett miss that his move forces him to derive the wave itself from 
the superposition in arithmetic, and that is the weakness, OK.


Not OK.  How does that "forces him to derive the wave itself from the 
superposition in arithmetic".


What step in UDA don't you agree with?


I don't recall a step in the UDA referring to deriving the Schroedinger 
wave function.


Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[David Nyman]

On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker"  a écrit :



On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the fundamental ontology
then only X exists.  But that leads to nonsense: "If the standard model is
fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist."


But it's true, football does not exist in any ontological sense, and we are
talking about ontology.


So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist.  That's certainly a
relief.



What about ontology don't you understand?


I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms don't exist.


Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is saying that
things made of atoms don't exist and your saying this is just setting up an
easy straw man for you to pointlessly knock down. So what do you suppose
that Quentin and I are saying here? I'll repeat it. "Extreme reductionism"
as you call it (and what other kind is there unless you believe in some
form of causally effective top-down emergence?) is the search for the
ontological building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological composition will be
understood. That at least is the ambition. So if we say that atoms are the
building blocks then the claim is that everything else is to be understood
as the interactions of atoms (this is meant to be illustrative only).

So what then is the status in the theory of "everything else" if such
entities are merely ontologically composite and consequently at that
fundamental level indistinguishable from the interactions​ of their
components? The answer (obviously) is that their "concrete" or substantial
emergence is perceptual, or epistemological as we like to say here. I
suspect the fact that some people find this so hard to accept is not some
intellectual barrier to understanding, since the distinction is in fact
rather obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology as a
fundamental determinant of reality.


Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology precedes
ontology."


Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely its final
neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but the entire process of
epistemological emergence of perceiving subjects and their environments​
from the posited ontological basis. For this of course we need an adequate
theory that takes both aspects and in particular their peculiar
entanglement into account.  And indeed​ it is only the ultimate explanatory
success of such a theory that can justify the ascription of "existence" to
anything above the level of the ontological base because, as you will
recall, the whole point of the reductionist thrust is that this base is
capable of explaining the evolution of its states entirely in its own
terms, without any necessary reference to composition or emergence.


I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at "anything".
It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success that justifies the
existence of the ontological base as well as the theory built on it.
That's what I mean by epistemology precedes ontology.



I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above argument
directly, as distinct from changing the subject in line with your preferred
way of thinking, as I would truly like to know what you think is wrong with
it. As Bruno says, a different argument is not the same thing as a
counter-argument.


My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's argument is
two-fold.  First, I don't see any predictive success and only a little
explanatory success.  And I see some predictive failure - although it's
like string theory in that it seems difficult to say exactly what it
predicts about human consciousness.  Second, as an argument it is not a
logical inference, it is a reductio.  It starts from a physical classical
computer can be substituted for you brain with no profound effect on your
consciousness.  Then it purports to conclude that the physical aspect of
the computer is irrelevant and simply the mathematical existence of
computation in Platonia is enough to realize your consciousness.  Which is
OK, but I think the consequence is overstated.  It is the mathematical
existence of your thoughts AND the world they are about that is necessary
to maintaining your consciousness.  So it becomes a (better, more explicit,
more comprehensive) version of Tegmark's computational universe
hypothesis.  Looked at another way it is saying the world is everything
that is true in a model of some axioms (either Peano or Turing or...) and
if you think this doesn't explain something about the world you're wrong
because it explains everything explainable and then some.  

Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I don't think so. Everett uses only Mechanism.


What exactly is "mechanism"?  Is it not that mind supervenes on the 
brain.


It is a bit ambiguus, but it is OK here, unless you mean supervene on 
the material consistution of the brain (in which case it is better to 
say no the doctor).


Don't say it is "OK here" when I've asked you what you mean.  It's your 
term.


Brent

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Re: What are atheists for?

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2017 1:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
  That's scientific modesty.  Hubris is assuming the world must 
satisfy our theories instead of the other way around.


Yes, but here you add a metaphysical idea to prevent the testing of a 
widely believed theories. That is what creationist do with the theory 
of evolution. Adding fairy tales to avoid scientific conclusions.


What test am I preventing??  I didn't realize I had such power.

Brent

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