Re: why can't we erase information?
Any conclusion about information erasure, or entropy, in a given system seems to depend on the particular meaning assigned to the information. Note that assigned is a verb. What I mean when I say this is that I'm pointed to the fact that it takes someone to do it. There's a recurring thought in this thread about information's dependency on an observer (Russell Standish), a language (Hal Finney). Bruno suggests entropy is a 1st person phenomenon. In other words, the assigning of meaning to the information (or variables, constraints, states) requires a person. From a certain point of view it may look locally like an increase in information, but do a change of variables (albeit maybe a horrific one) and viola, information is decreasing. On the other hand, when we talk about information erasure, it seems that we are talking about something different from entropy. Saiba Mitra says that it could be that internal observers can't see information erasure. Ben Udell appealed to the need for a meta viewpoint. Total information erasure has to be in the global context of the whole universe, or Everything. Otherwise you can't be sure you're dealing with information erasure, or if it's simply negative entropy. So you have to be omniscient about the whole universe. Hence my previous reference to the assumption of reductionism and a closed system, i.e. assume you are God. Wei Dai's Turing machine, which acts on instructions to erase information, has to interpret the instructions using a certain language. The command to erase could be interpreted as having a different meaning in another language. Tom Toffoli's paper, Nothing makes sense in computing except in the light of evolution, gives support to the idea that there needs to be some meta element to give meaning or design to this whole swirl of information we see around us. I think this is also why we keep feeling the need to appeal to anthropic thoughts. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: why can't we erase information?
My first sentence looks like I was equating information erasure with entropy, but further down I hope it's clear that I'm treating them as two different concepts. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 07-avr.-06, à 17:46, 1Z a écrit : To be precise, there is no problem with a very basic, simple notion of bare substance being the substrate, the bearer, of phenomenal properties as well as physical properties. Are you aware of the mind body problem. Are you aware the problem is still open. Yes and yes. I am claiming that the MBP arises from taking mathematical maps literally and is therefore greatly exacerbated by adopting a number-only ontology. Hence my resitance to a number-only ontology is aprtly motivated by awareness of the MBP. if you assume comutationalism (as a I undertand it, not as you understand it) you are already assuming the existence of matter, since computers are material. ... You just tell me that you are the one assuming that computers are material, so your are begging the question. Just about everyone assumes computers are material -- it is such a standard assumption that most people are not even aware they are making it. The slide from idealism to solipsis is inevitable. Pythagoras and Plato already showed counterexamples. If numbers generate a video-game sort of reality, the game could still a priori be sharable, unless you prove the contrary. yes, it is *possible* for an ideal reality to be shared. But the idealstic argument against matter is not that matter is impossible, it is that it is an unnecessary complication. But if the posit of external material bodies is unnecessary to explain my experience, so is the posit of external minds, minds other than my own. I have no direct access to other minds, I just see their faces and hear their words, and those can be reduced to mere sensations as readily as anything else. (not that I think the reduction is worthwhile in the first place) If the existence of matter is not needed to explain my experiences, the existence of other experiencers with their own experiences is not neeed to explain my experience either. Possible, but not necessary. Other minds appears in comp through the notion of first person plural, (arising from the duplication of entire population of individuals) and this leads to a notion of arithmetical entanglement. Actually theory like Shmidhuber or Hal Finney UDIST, could probably justify the existence of genuine other minds, and this despite they are lacking the 1/3 distinction povs. They suppress nevertheless successfully the 3 person white rabbits, and this explains, I guess for them, the negligible probability that someone behaving like a human is a zombie. The 1/3 distinction needs a more detailed treatment and the question is obviously still open. Please follow your intuition if you believe you could find a contradiction in comp, as I understand it. Your version of comp seems to be that an abstract algorithm In Plato's heaven can implement a mind, even though it isn't a process occurring over a span of time. Admitedly you seem to get there via the idea that minds can be transferred into processes running on material computers (which is what I regard as the standard version of computationalism), but you then decide that the matter and the process is redundant -- becaus the pereceived world of a computational mind would appear to be physical and temporal. But an computational mind can only have those -- or any -- perceptions if it can have consciousness in the first place. If matter and process are needed to make an algorithm conscious, as the standard version of computationalims tacitly assumes, they are NOT redundant ! I mean you could be right, but until now, you don't really argue in your posts. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Riemann Zeta Pythagorean TOE
I think there is a need for one more person. This is how I would define
first person pov and third person pov:
Third person is a single history pov that requires the
observation of
an event whose existence does not correlate with the existence of the
observer. This is the classical, objective, scientific pov.
First person is a single history pov that requires the
observation of an event whose existence correlates with the existence
of the observer. Thus in a Quantum suicide experiement the bomb never
goes off from the first person pov but almost always goes off from the
third person pov.
The additional required person(s) is/are the plural, in which one would
be aware of all the histories. There may even be a need for a first
person plural and a third person plural: in other words, even in the
plural our observation of multiple histories may be affected if the
event we are observing bears on our own existence. This is the pov in
experiments involving quantum superposition.
Tom, your definition of 3rd person is more like my definition of 3rd
person plural.
First person is a single history and corresponds to: "I" AND "the bomb
does not go off.".
Third person is a single history and corresponds to "I" AND the bomb
goes off/probability{bomb goes off}.
Plural person is multiple histories regarding the bomb, and corresponds
to "I" AND ("the bomb goes off" inclusive OR "the bomb does not go
off".) = "I"
George Levy
Tom Caylor wrote:
Bruno,
I have a couple of random thoughts, but I hope they are not too
incoherent (decoherent?) for someone to understand and see if it leads
anywhere.
First, it seems that the comp distinction between 1st and 3rd person
point-of-view can be expressed roughly as OR vs. AND respectively. In
other words, from the 1st person pov, I am either in one history OR the
other (say Moscow or Washington). From the 3rd person pov, someone is
both in one history AND the other history at the same time (perhaps
like quantum superposition?). Now roughly when we OR independent
probabilities we use ADDITION, and when we AND them we use
MULTIPLICATION. This rings a bell with Godel's sufficiently rich set
of axioms. It similarly rings a bell with the prime numbers. Could
there be a connection here through this means?
Secondly, conversely to your thoughts, perhaps given the above
connection to help out, could the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis
supply the elimination of white rabbits from comp?
Tom
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