Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. We may not call them opinions because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 2/10/2012 7:25 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? Craig Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 2/10/2012 7:49 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net On 2/10/2012 7:25 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? Craig Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Is it a question directed to craig or to me ? Hi, It is directed at both of you. :-) Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Boolean Algebra Conjecture (was: Ontological problems of COMP)
On 2/9/2012 3:40 PM, acw wrote: [SPK] We must consider the entire range of possible observers and technological abilities. We cannot limit ourselves to humans with their current technological abilities. Therefore we cannot put a pre-set limit on the upper bound. I agree that the machine must be finite, but my reasoning follows from mathematical considerations. My conjecture is that the content of experience - the sequence of OMs - of a generic observer is constrained to be representable by a sequence of Boolean Algebras of propositions or Free Boolean Algebras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Boolean_algebra. This restriction ties the contraints that exist on Boolean Algebras to being countable (and the compactness of the topological spaces that are their dual) to the finiteness of what can be observed by an observer. So we do not have to postulate finiteness separately iff we take the Stone duality as it has finiteness built in. To explain this reasoning further, I would like to point out that for a large number of entities to be able to communicate with each other, it is necessary that whatever the means of communication might be, it must be such that what is true for one will be true for all otherwise we get a situation where The Tree is tall is true for some observers pointing at a giant redwood while it is false for some other observers pointing at the same giant redwoods. Communication requires mutual consistency of propositions and this can only happen if the logic of their means of communication is bivalent with respect to truth values. Now we can quibble about this and discuss how in Special Relativistic situations we can indeed have situations there X caused Y is true for some frames of reference and Y caused X for some other frame of reference, but this dilemma can be resolved by considering the effect of a finite speed of light whose speed is an invariant for all observers, e.g. general covariance. Mostly agreed, although my category theory knowledge is limited, so I don't know what intuitions led you to that particular Boolean Algebgra conjecture about the OMs. One thing that might be worth considering is the machine which keeps expanding: consider an AI running on an actual Turing Machine (unbounded memory), the actual implementation shouldn't matter (be it running directly in some UD or actually living in a physical universe where it constantly harvests resources to increase its memory), how does your FBA conjecture deal with such self-modifying, self-improving, self-extending observers (humans are not yet there, obviously we're very good at working with limited resources and finite bounded memory at the cost of forgetting). Hi ACW, I have to break the Ontological Problems of COMP up into pieces to respond to your important questions. Please remember that this is just an embryo of a theory. It has not yet made it to the half-baked stage. ;-) My thought is that the FBAs are not restricted in the number of prepositions that they include thus can grow to include new data. It is the means by which they are modified that goes to the answer of your question. This is conversed by the process of residuation explained in http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf It is important to note the way that dynamics are treated by Pratt. What I am trying to do is to explicitly deal with the problem of time within the conjecture. I will try to explain more of this in subsequent mails. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 10 Feb 2012, at 13:47, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/10/2012 7:25 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? Craig Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Which is the very basic idea sustaining comp. But Craig seems to defend the opposite idea. He believes that life, sense, and consciousness must be present in the part to sum up in the whole. A mechanist will insist that it is the property of the whole which is responsible for the higher order aptitude, like being able to play chess, or having a private experience. Yet, the case of living and conscious are not entirely equivalent, and should be treated differently. The definition of life seems to me conventional, but being conscious is everything but conventional. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Time and Concurrency Platonia? (was: Ontological Problems of COMP)
On 2/9/2012 3:40 PM, acw wrote: [SPK] I do not see how this deals effectively with the concurrency problem! :-( Using the Platonia idea is a cheat as it is explicitly unphysical. But physics by itself does not explain consciousness either (as shown by MGA). Maybe I just don't see what the concurrency problem is. It has no constraints of thermodynamics, no limits on speeds of signals, no explanation as to how an Ideal Form is defined, e.g. what is the standard of its perfection, ect. It is no different from the Realm of God in religious mythos, so what is it doing here in our rational considerations? Forgive me but I was raised by parents that where Fundamentalists Believers, so please understand that I have an allergy to ideas that remind me of the mental prison that I had to work so hard to escape. I'm not asking you to share all of Plato's beliefs here. It's merely a minimal amount of magic, not unlike the magic you have to accept by positing a 3p world. The amount is basically this: arithmetical (or computational) sentences have truth values independent of anything physical and consciousness/qualia may be how some such arithmetical truth feels from the inside. Without at least some axioms, one cannot get anywhere, you can't reduce arithmetic to only logic and so on. Why would Platonia have to have the same constraints as our physical realms - it need only obey to constraints of logic and math, which usually means stuff that is contained within the Church Turing Thesis and its implications. Speed of signals? If some theory is inconsistent, it's only there as part of the reasoning of some other machine. Ideal Form? How do you define an integer or the axioms that talk about arithmetic? Popular religious mythos tend to be troublesome because they involve *logically impossible* properties being attributed to Gods and other beings - things which are inconsistent. It's not like one doesn't assume some axioms in any theory - they are there in almost any scientific theory. Yet, unlike popular religions, you're free to evaluate your hypotheses and use evidence and meta-reasoning to decide which one is more likely to be true and then try to use the results of such theories to predict how stuff will behave or bet on various things. Of course, it's not hard to get trapped in a bad epistemology, and I can see why you'd be extra skeptical of bad theories, however nobody is telling you to believe a theory is true or false, instead it asks you to work out the consequences of each theory's axioms (as well as using meta-reasoning skills to weed down overly complex theories, if you prefer using Occam's) and then either choose to use or not use that particular theory depending if the results match your observations/expectations/standards/... (if expectations are broken, one would either have to update beliefs or theories or both). Hi ACW, What ever the global structure that we use to relate our ideas and provide explanations, it makes sense that we do not ignore problems that are inconvenient. A big problem that I have with Platonia is that it does not address the appearance of change that we finite semi-autonomous beings observe. The problem of time is just a corollary to this. I would prefer to toss out any postulates that require *any* magic. Magic is like Arsenic poison, every little bit doubles the harmful effects. Why do we even need a notion of 3p except as a pedagogical tool? What we need, at least, is a stratification scheme that allows us to represent these differences, but we need to understand that in doing this we are sneaking in the notion of a 3p that is equivalent to some kind of agent whose only mission is to observe differences and that is a fallacy since we are trying to explain observers in the first place. Unless we have some way to handle a fundamental notion of change, there is no way to deal with questions of change and time. Please notice how many instances we are using verbs in our considerations of COMP ideas. Where and how does the change implicit in the verb, as like running the UD, obtain? We cannot ignore this. I am highlighting the concurrency problem b/c it shows how this problem cannot be ignored. The Platonic Realm, especially the Arithmetic Realist one, is by definition fixed and static, nothing changes in it at all! How do we get the appearance of time from it? It is possible to show how, but the proponents of COMP need to explain this, IMHO. It is incoherent at best to make statements like the UD is running on the walls of Platonia. How is that even a meaningful claim? Another problem is the problem of space as we see in the way that 1p indeterminacy is defined in UDA. We read of a notion of cutting and pasting. Cut 'from where and pasted to where? How is the difference in position of say, Washington and Moscow, obtain in a Realm that has nothing like space? Unless we have a substrate of some kind that
Re: Free Floating entities (was: Ontological Problems of COMP)
On 2/9/2012 3:40 PM, acw wrote: Another way to think of it would be in the terms of the Church Turing Thesis, where you expect that a computation (in the Turing sense) to have result and that result is independent of all your implementations, such a result not being changeable in any way or by anything - that's usually what I imagine by Platonia. It is a bit mystical, but I find it less mystical than requiring a magical physical substrate (even more after MGA) - to me the platonic implementation seems to be the simplest possible explanation. If you think it's a bad explanation that introduces some magic, I'll respond that the primitively physical version introduces even more magic. Making truth changeable or temporal seems to me to be a much stronger, much more magical than what I'm considering: that arithmetical sentences do have a truth value, regardless if we know it or not. [SPK] I am only asking that we put the abstract world of mathematics on an even footing with the physical world, I am _not_ asking for a primitive physical world. I will say again, just because a computation is independent for any particular implementation that I, you or any one else is capable of creating does not eliminate the necessity that somehow it must be implemented physically. Universality of computation is NOT the severing of computation from its physical implementability. This is not the same kind of claim as we see of the ultrafinitist and/or constructivist; it is just a realistic demand that ideas cannot be free floating entities. We cannot believe in free floating numbers any more than we can believe in disembodies spirits and ghosts. What is a non-primitive physical world, what is it based on? 'Existence'? What is that, sounds primitive to me. If we accept 'existence' as primitive, how does math and physical arise out of it? It seems so general to me that I can't imagine anything at all about it, to the point of being a God-like non-theory (although I can sympathize with it, just that it cannot be used as a theory because it's too general. We'll probably have to settle with something which we can discuss, such as a part of math.) Why is 'physical' implementation so important? Those free floating numbers could very well represent the structures that we and our universe happen to be and their truths may very well sometimes be this thing we call 'consciousness'. As for 'spirits' - how does this 'consciousness' thing know which body to follow and observe? How does it correlate that it must correlate to the physical states present in the brain? How does it know to appear in a robotic body or VR environment if someone decides to upload their mind (sometime in the far future)? What's this continuity of consciousness thing? Granted that some particular mathematical structure could represent the physical, I'm not sure it makes sense gran the physical any more meaning than that which we(our bodies) observe as being part of. Hi ACW, A non-primitive world would be a world that is defined by a set of communications between observers, however the observers are defined. The notion of a cyclical gossiping as used in graph theory gives a nice model of how this would work and it even shows a nice toy model of thermodynamic entropy. See #58 here http://books.google.com/books?id=SbZKSZ-1qrwCpg=PA32lpg=PA32dq=cyclical+gossiping+graph+theorysource=blots=NAvDjdj7u-sig=kk03XrGRBzdVWI09bh_-yrACM64hl=ensa=Xei=jCI1T8TpM4O4tweVgMG_Agsqi=2ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepageqf=false for a statement of this idea. Also see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Gossiping.html Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 2/10/2012 8:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Feb 2012, at 13:47, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/10/2012 7:25 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? Craig Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Which is the very basic idea sustaining comp. But Craig seems to defend the opposite idea. He believes that life, sense, and consciousness must be present in the part to sum up in the whole. A mechanist will insist that it is the property of the whole which is responsible for the higher order aptitude, like being able to play chess, or having a private experience. Hi Bruno, No. Craig can be considered to be exploring the implications of Chalmer's claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical, like mass, spin and charge, i.e. it is not emergent from matter. His concept of sense is not much different from your 1p or the content of a simulation. Yet, the case of living and conscious are not entirely equivalent, and should be treated differently. The definition of life seems to me conventional, but being conscious is everything but conventional. We agree on that! Living does seem to be 3p definable while conscious is only 1p definable. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 10 February 2012 14:08, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: No. Craig can be considered to be exploring the implications of Chalmer's claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical, like mass, spin and charge, i.e. it is not emergent from matter. His concept of sense is not much different from your 1p or the content of a simulation. I disagree with this assessment, I think. ISTM that equating consciousness with other physical properties inevitably puts one in the position of having to build up composite entities from the properties of their components - hence the notorious grain and binding problems. The theology of comp, on the other hand, seems to imply that at some ultimate level consciousness is a symmetric unity, but that this symmetry is broken, by the internal logic of comp, into an infinity of views. Of course, this latter idea can only make sense in terms of 1p; from the 3p perspective, all that exists is computation. David On 2/10/2012 8:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Feb 2012, at 13:47, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/10/2012 7:25 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 9, 9:49 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/9 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? Craig Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Which is the very basic idea sustaining comp. But Craig seems to defend the opposite idea. He believes that life, sense, and consciousness must be present in the part to sum up in the whole. A mechanist will insist that it is the property of the whole which is responsible for the higher order aptitude, like being able to play chess, or having a private experience. Hi Bruno, No. Craig can be considered to be exploring the implications of Chalmer's claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical, like mass, spin and charge, i.e. it is not emergent from matter. His concept of sense is not much different from your 1p or the content of a simulation. Yet, the case of living and conscious are not entirely equivalent, and should be treated differently. The definition of life seems to me conventional, but being conscious is everything but conventional. We agree on that! Living does seem to be 3p definable while conscious is only 1p definable. Onward! Stephen
Re: The free will function
On 2/10/2012 9:24 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 10 February 2012 14:08, Stephen P. Kingstephe...@charter.net wrote: No. Craig can be considered to be exploring the implications of Chalmer's claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical, like mass, spin and charge, i.e. it is not emergent from matter. His concept of sense is not much different from your 1p or the content of a simulation. I disagree with this assessment, I think. ISTM that equating consciousness with other physical properties inevitably puts one in the position of having to build up composite entities from the properties of their components - hence the notorious grain and binding problems. The theology of comp, on the other hand, seems to imply that at some ultimate level consciousness is a symmetric unity, but that this symmetry is broken, by the internal logic of comp, into an infinity of views. Of course, this latter idea can only make sense in terms of 1p; from the 3p perspective, all that exists is computation. David Hi David, I don't disagree with your remark but you are addressing a different but related issue from Craig's. The idea of Chalmer's claim is that consciousness is not an emergent property, like temperature for example, but this is not in principle incompatible with the idea that at some ultimate level consciousness is a symmetric unity, but that this symmetry is broken, by the internal logic of comp, into an infinity of views except that at the level of symmetric unity consciousness per se vanishes as the distinctions of and between the infinity of views (those are the 1p!) disappears. This is the idea of neutrality that I have been discussing, as in neutral monism. The idea of vacuum gauge symmetry as it is used in physics is analogous. There was a fellow that published a paper a similar idea to this and chatted with us for a bit early last year, if I recall correctly. Russell Standish had some interesting comments on this. My difficulty is that at the level of the unbroken symmetry we have to be careful that we do not consider implications that are only meaningful in the broken or fragmented perspective. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 7:25 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? You asked me a question, I answered it, and now you claim that 'it's not true', then you go on asking the same question again. On what do you base your accusation? We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. I'm not in any way switching the subject. I'm clarifying that the question relies on a straw man of consciousness which reduces a complex human subjective phenomenon like 'opinions' to a binary silhouette. Do cats have opinions? Do chimpanzees? At what point do hominids begin to have opinions? When do they begin to have personality? When do humans become human? All of these are red herrings because they project an objective function on a subjective understanding. The point of multisense realism is to show how our default epistemologies are rooted in our own frame of reference so that there is no objective point where a person becomes a non-person through injury or deficiency, or a neuron has a human feeling by itself. These questions make the wrong assumptions from the start. What we do know is that human opinions are associated with one thing only - living human brains. We know that living human brains are only made of living neurons. We have not yet found anything that we can do to inorganic molecules will turn them into living neurons. This means that we have no reason to presume that an inorganic non-cell can ever be expected to do what cells do, any more than we can expect ammonia to do what milk does. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. How do you know? What makes you think that things can be defined only by their behaviors? A person can behave like a brick wall, does that make it enough to make them a brick wall? When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? A copy which simulates the original in every way. there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. Please explain. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. Neither is an AGI application. That's what I'm saying. Simulation is a casual notion that doesn't stand up to further inspection. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? It's needed for human consciousness I think because consciousness is an event, and those molecules are like the BIOS of the whole human OS. Not the molecules themselves, but the band of experiences/qualia which those molecules can tune into. Think of those experiences as the ancestors of our contemporary whole-brain scale experiences. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: The free will function
2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Feb 10, 7:25 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com How does a gear or lever have an opinion? The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them less dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not gears. At which point does it start having an opinions ? At every point when it is alive. That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? You asked me a question, I answered it, and now you claim that 'it's not true', then you go on asking the same question again. On what do you base your accusation? On the fact that a single neuron has no opinions whatsoever... You asked how many gears was required... the straw man is there. We may not call them opinions Don't switch subject. I'm not in any way switching the subject. you are I'm clarifying that the question relies on a straw man of consciousness You did begin with the straw man... which reduces a complex human subjective phenomenon like 'opinions' to a binary silhouette. Do cats have opinions? Do chimpanzees? At what point do hominids begin to have opinions? When do they begin to have personality? When do humans become human? All of these are red herrings because they project an objective function on a subjective understanding. Do a complex program with deep self reference computation connected to the workd can be conscious like a human is ? You answer no, without giving any reason for that. So it's just bullshit... I'm awaiting your proof that it is not possible... not your usual way to slip out the subject. The point of multisense realism is to show how our default epistemologies are rooted in our own frame of reference so that there is no objective point where a person becomes a non-person through injury or deficiency, or a neuron has a human feeling by itself. These questions make the wrong assumptions from the start. What we do know is that human opinions are associated with one thing only - living human brains. We know that living human brains are only made of living neurons. We have not yet found anything that we can do to inorganic molecules will turn them into living neurons. This means that we have no reason to presume that an inorganic non-cell can ever be expected to do what cells do, any more than we can expect ammonia to do what milk does. because we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having different capacities than it does as a dead cell. Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's enough. How do you know? What makes you think that things can be defined only by their behaviors? A person can behave like a brick wall, does that make it enough to make them a brick wall? When it is dead, there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time reversible. Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, There is no need for an absolute simulation... what do you mean by absolute ? A copy which simulates the original in every way. there is only imitation. Simulation is an imitation no, simulation is not imitation. Please explain. designed to invite us to mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a CGI picture A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. Neither is an AGI application. That's what I'm saying. Simulation is a casual notion that doesn't stand up to further inspection. of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? It's needed for human consciousness I think because
Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 8:17 am, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi, How would your reasoning work for a virus? Is it alive? I think that the notion of being alive is not a property of the parts but of the whole. Is it a question directed to craig or to me ? Hi, It is directed at both of you. :-) Onward! Hi Stephen, Right, not the parts but the whole, but also who is looking at the whole. It's the same question as substitution level. Where does yellow green end and green yellow begin? It depends what color it's sitting next to and how sensitive someone's vision is to color. It's all indexical and relative. A virus is more associated with life than a glucose molecule alone, but less living than a living cell. Here's an extended metaphor: Medieval walled city with a castle in the middle. Peasants work the land for the lord in the castle and there are invasions of rogue peasants from other territories who steal, beg, etc. To pick out these virus peasants and ask 'are they feudal' is framing it objectively when it can only be subjective. There is no 'simply is', only many 'seems like' interpretations. The threat of invasion strengthens the benefit of the Lord's protection, which in turn encourages the loyalty and productivity of the peasants. In that way, the rogue bandits are indeed a part of Feudalism. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 9:08 am, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: No. Craig can be considered to be exploring the implications of Chalmer's claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical, like mass, spin and charge, i.e. it is not emergent from matter. His concept of sense is not much different from your 1p or the content of a simulation. Right. I pick up where Chalmers leaves off: 1. It is not a fundamental property of the physical exactly but rather, the physical and the experiential are the fundamental modalities of 'sense'. 2. The modalities are necessarily symmetric but anomalous, so that mind is not the opposite of brain directly, but that both mind and brain are opposite modalities of sense 3. Sense is anomalous symmetry itself: sameness on one level, difference on another, and a third invariance (self) that straddles the 'levels'. There are emergent properties in matter and emergent properties in awareness, but they develop out of their own momentum. When we tell a story, the plot of the story builds the experience, not the ambivalent activities of our neurotransmitters. Changes on the neurotransmitter level can inspire certain kinds of thoughts or stories too, and the literal and figurative influences can play off of each other too, but the neither physical nor experiential supervene fully and completely on the other. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Boolean Algebra Conjecture
On 2/10/2012 5:26 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: Now we can quibble about this and discuss how in Special Relativistic situations we can indeed have situations there X caused Y is true for some frames of reference and Y caused X for some other frame of reference, but this dilemma can be resolved by considering the effect of a finite speed of light whose speed is an invariant for all observers, e.g. general covariance. This wrong. SR shows that it can be the case X is before Y in one frame and Y is before X in a different frame moving relative to the first frame. This means X and Y are spacelike separated. But you can't have X caused Y in one frame and Y caused X in another. X caused Y implies that Y is in the timelike or null future of X; a relation that preserved in all Lorentz frames. Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Boolean Algebra Conjecture
On 2/10/2012 12:51 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 2/10/2012 5:26 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: Now we can quibble about this and discuss how in Special Relativistic situations we can indeed have situations there X caused Y is true for some frames of reference and Y caused X for some other frame of reference, but this dilemma can be resolved by considering the effect of a finite speed of light whose speed is an invariant for all observers, e.g. general covariance. This wrong. SR shows that it can be the case X is before Y in one frame and Y is before X in a different frame moving relative to the first frame. This means X and Y are spacelike separated. But you can't have X caused Y in one frame and Y caused X in another. X caused Y implies that Y is in the timelike or null future of X; a relation that preserved in all Lorentz frames. Brent Hi Brent, Yes, you are correct. I was thinking of the scenario that Penrose discussed in The Emperor's New Mind about the fleet of ships in Andromeda. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon
On 09.02.2012 00:44 1Z said the following: On Feb 7, 7:04 pm, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Let us take a closed vessel with oxygen and hydrogen at room temperature. Then we open a platinum catalyst in the vessel and the reaction starts. Will then the information in the vessel be conserved? Evgenii What's the difference between in-principle, and for-all-practical purposes.? What is the relationship between your question and mine? Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon
On 08.02.2012 22:44 Russell Standish said the following: On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 08:32:16PM +0100, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... What I observe personally is that there is information in informatics and information in physics (if we say that the thermodynamic entropy is the information). If you would agree, that these two informations are different, it would be fine with me, I am flexible with definitions. Yet, if I understand you correctly you mean that the information in informatics and the thermodynamic entropy are the same. This puzzles me as I believe that the same physical values should have the same numerical values. Hence my wish to understand what you mean. Unfortunately you do not want to disclose it, you do not want to apply your theory to examples that I present. Evgenii Given the above paragraph, I would say we're closer than you've previously intimated. Of course there is information in informatics, and there is information in physics, just as there's information in biology and so on. These are all the same concept (logarithm of a probability). Numerically, they differ, because the context differs in each situation. Entropy is related in a very simple way to information. S=S_max - I. So provided an S_max exists (which it will any finite system), so does entropy. In the example of a hard drive, the informatics S_max is the capacity of the drive eg 100GB for a 100GB drive. If you store 10GB of data on it, the entropy of the drive is 90GB. That's it. Just as information is context dependent, then so must entropy. Thermodynamics is just one use (one context) of entropy and information. Usually, the context is one of homogenous bulk materials. If you decide to account for surface effects, you change the context, and entropy should change accordingly. Let me ask you the same question that I have recently asked Brent. Could you please tell me, the thermodynamic entropy of what is discussed in Jason's example below? Evgenii On 03.02.2012 00:14 Jason Resch said the following: ... Evgenii, Sure, I could give a few examples as this somewhat intersects with my line of work. The NIST 800-90 recommendation ( http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf ) for random number generators is a document for engineers implementing secure pseudo-random number generators. An example of where it is important is when considering entropy sources for seeding a random number generator. If you use something completely random, like a fair coin toss, each toss provides 1 bit of entropy. The formula is -log2(predictability). With a coin flip, you have at best a .5 chance of correctly guessing it, and -log2(.5) = 1. If you used a die roll, then each die roll would provide -log2(1/6) = 2.58 bits of entropy. The ability to measure unpredictability is necessary to ensure, for example, that a cryptographic key is at least as difficult to predict the random inputs that went into generating it as it would be to brute force the key. In addition to security, entropy is also an important concept in the field of data compression. The amount of entropy in a given bit string represents the theoretical minimum number of bits it takes to represent the information. If 100 bits contain 100 bits of entropy, then there is no compression algorithm that can represent those 100 bits with fewer than 100 bits. However, if a 100 bit string contains only 50 bits of entropy, you could compress it to 50 bits. For example, let's say you had 100 coin flips from an unfair coin. This unfair coin comes up heads 90% of the time. Each flip represents -log2(.9) = 0.152 bits of entropy. Thus, a sequence of 100 coin flips with this biased coin could be represent with 16 bits. There is only 15.2 bits of information / entropy contained in that 100 bit long sequence. Jason -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and consciousness
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The rule book is the memory. Yes but the rule book not only contains a astronomically large database it also contains a super ingenious artificial intelligence program; without those things the little man is like a naked microprocessor sitting on a storage shelf, its not a brain and its not a computer and its not doing one damn thing. The contents of memory is dumb too - as dumb as player piano rolls. That's pretty dumb. but the synapses of the brain are just as dumb and the atoms they, and computers and everything else, are made of are even dumber. The two together only seem intelligent to Chinese speakers outside the door Only?! Einstein only seemed intelligent to scientifically literate speakers in the outside world. It seems that, as you use the term, seeming intelligent is as good as being intelligent. In fact it seems to me that believing intelligent actions are not a sign of intelligence is not very intelligent. A conversation that lasts a few hours could probably be generated from a standard Chinese phrase book, especially if equipped with some useful evasive answers (a la ELIZA). You bring up that stupid 40 year old program again? Yes ELIZA displayed little if any intelligence but that program is 40 years old! Do try to keep up. And if you are really confident in your ideas push the thought experiment to the limit and let the Chinese Room produce brilliant answers to complex questions, if it just churns out ELIZA style evasive crap that proves nothing because we both agree that's not very intelligent. The size isn't the point though. I rather think it is. A book larger than the observable universe and a program more brilliant than any written, yet you insist that if understand is anywhere in that room it must be in the by far least remarkable part of it, the silly little man. And remember the consciousness that room produces would not be like the consciousness you or I have, if would take that room many billions of years to generate as much consciousness as you do in one second. Speed is a red herring too. No it is not and I will tell you exactly why as soon as the sun burns out and collapses into a white dwarf. Speed isn't a issue so you have to concede that I won that point. if it makes sense for a room to be conscious, then it makes sense that anything and everything can be conscious Yes, providing the thing in question behaves intelligently. We only think our fellow humans are conscious when they behave intelligently and that's the only reason we DON'T think they're conscious when they're sleeping or dead; all I ask is that you play by the same rules when dealing with computers or Chinese Rooms. However Searle does not expect us to think it odd that 3 pounds of grey goo in a bone vat can be conscious Because unlike you, he [Searl] is not presuming the neuron doctrine. I think his position is that consciousness cannot solely because of the material functioning of the brain and it must be something else. And yet if you change the way the brain functions, through drugs or surgery or electrical stimulation or a bullet to the head, the conscious experience changes too. And if the brain can make use of this free floating glowing bullshit of yours what reason is there to believe that computers can't also do so? I've asked this question before and the best you could come up with is that computers aren't squishy and don't smell bad so they can't be conscious. I don't find that argument compelling. We know the brain relates directly to consciousness, but we don't know for sure how. If you don't know how the brain produces consciousness then how in the world can you be so certain a computer can't do it too, especially if the computer is as intelligent or even more intelligent than the brain? We can make a distinction between the temporary disposition of the brain and it's more permanent structureor organization. A 44 magnum bullet in the brain would cause a change in brain organization and would seem to be rather permanent. I believe such a thing would also cause a rather significant change in consciousness. Do you disagree? John K Clark -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon
On 09.02.2012 07:49 meekerdb said the following: ... There's an interesting paper by Bennett that I ran across, which discusses the relation of Shannon entropy, thermodynamic entropy, and algorithmic entropy in the context of DNA and RNA replication: http://qi.ethz.ch/edu/qisemFS10/papers/81_Bennett_Thermodynamics_of_computation.pdf Thank you for the link. I like the first sentence Computers may be thought of as engines for transforming free energy into waste heat and mathematical work. I am not sure though if this is more as a metaphor. I will read the paper, the abstract looks nice. I believe that there was a chapter on reversible computation in Nanoelectronics and Information Technology, ed Rainer Waser I guess, reversible computation is kind of a strange attractor for engineers. As for DNA, RNA, and proteins, I have recently read Barbieri, M. (2007). Is the cell a semiotic system? In: Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis. Eds.: M. Barbieri, Springer: 179-208. If the author is right, it well might be that the language was developed even before the consciousness. By the way, the paper is written very well and I have to think it over. A related discussion http://embryogenesisexplained.com/2012/02/is-the-cell-a-semiotic-system.html Evgenii Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? Yes, the only way Craig could be right is if vitalism is true, and its pretty sad that well into the 21'st century some still believe in that crap. What's next, bring back medieval alchemy? On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as absolute simulation, there is only imitation. So not only is a computer incapable of performing arithmetic you can't do it either, all you can do is a pale imitation of arithmetic, so neither we nor a computer can ever know how much 2 +2 is. And I've asked you before, when you reply to this please don't send a imitation Email to the list, nobody wants to see a mere simulation, send your REAL ORIGINAL EMAIL! Undoubtedly the only reason you haven't convinced everybody of your brilliance is that we've only seen copies of you messages, we want the originals. John K Clark -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On Feb 10, 4:16 pm, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? Yes, the only way Craig could be right is if vitalism is true, and its pretty sad that well into the 21'st century some still believe in that crap. What's next, bring back medieval alchemy? Apparently what's next is imagining that machines are people and people are machines. We'll be imprisoning software soon I suppose. On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as absolute simulation, there is only imitation. So not only is a computer incapable of performing arithmetic you can't do it either, all you can do is a pale imitation of arithmetic, so neither we nor a computer can ever know how much 2 +2 is. What a computer does is arithmetic to us, but to the computer it's billions of separate electronic or mechanical events that signify nothing to it. It's no different from saying that CD player 'performs music'. We hear music, but the CD player hears nothing at all. Obviously. And I've asked you before, when you reply to this please don't send a imitation Email to the list, nobody wants to see a mere simulation, send your REAL ORIGINAL EMAIL! The original email is my subjective experience of composing it, therefore it cannot be sent. What can be sent is neither a simulation nor an imitation but rather a completely separate semiotic text which can be used by human beings to communicate with other human beings who share a common language. The email server does not share that common language and cannot participate in the communication, even though it provides the communication channel. Undoubtedly the only reason you haven't convinced everybody of your brilliance is that we've only seen copies of you messages, we want the originals. I'm not trying to convince anyone that I'm brilliant, I'm explaining why the popular ideas and conventional wisdom of the moment are misguided. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The free will function
On 2/10/2012 8:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Feb 10, 4:16 pm, John Clarkjohnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 10, 4:06 am, Quentin Anciauxallco...@gmail.com wrote: Why simulated neurons couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? Yes, the only way Craig could be right is if vitalism is true, and its pretty sad that well into the 21'st century some still believe in that crap. What's next, bring back medieval alchemy? Apparently what's next is imagining that machines are people and people are machines. We'll be imprisoning software soon I suppose. On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 Craig Weinbergwhatsons...@gmail.com wrote: there is no such thing as absolute simulation, there is only imitation. So not only is a computer incapable of performing arithmetic you can't do it either, all you can do is a pale imitation of arithmetic, so neither we nor a computer can ever know how much 2 +2 is. What a computer does is arithmetic to us, but to the computer it's billions of separate electronic or mechanical events that signify nothing to it. It's no different from saying that CD player 'performs music'. We hear music, but the CD player hears nothing at all. Obviously. And I've asked you before, when you reply to this please don't send a imitation Email to the list, nobody wants to see a mere simulation, send your REAL ORIGINAL EMAIL! The original email is my subjective experience of composing it, therefore it cannot be sent. What can be sent is neither a simulation nor an imitation but rather a completely separate semiotic text which can be used by human beings to communicate with other human beings who share a common language. The email server does not share that common language and cannot participate in the communication, even though it provides the communication channel. Undoubtedly the only reason you haven't convinced everybody of your brilliance is that we've only seen copies of you messages, we want the originals. I'm not trying to convince anyone that I'm brilliant, I'm explaining why the popular ideas and conventional wisdom of the moment are misguided. Craig Free your mind! Just sayin'... Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
1p 3p comparison
Dennett's Comp: Human 1p = 3p(3p(3p)) - Subjectivity is an illusion Machine 1p = 3p(3p(3p)) - Subjectivity is not considered formally My view: Human 1p = (1p(1p(1p))) - Subjectivity a fundamental sense modality which is qualitatively enriched in humans through multiple organic nestings. Machine 1p = (3p(3p(1p))) - Machine subjectivity is limited to hardware level sense modalities, which can be used to imitate human 3p quantitatively but cannot be enriched qualitatively to human 1p. Bruno: Machine or human 1p = (1p(f(x)) - Subjectivity arises as a result of the 1p set of functional consequences of specific arithmetic truths, which (I think) are neither object, subject, or sense, but Platonic universal numbers. Is that close? -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Information: a basic physical quantity or rather emergence/supervenience phenomenon
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 09:39:50PM +0100, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Let me ask you the same question that I have recently asked Brent. Could you please tell me, the thermodynamic entropy of what is discussed in Jason's example below? Evgenii If you're asking what is the conversion constant between bits and J/K, the answer is k_B log(2) / log(10). I'm not sure what else to tell you... Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Intelligence and consciousness
On Feb 10, 3:52 pm, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The rule book is the memory. Yes but the rule book not only contains a astronomically large database it also contains a super ingenious artificial intelligence program; without those things the little man is like a naked microprocessor sitting on a storage shelf, its not a brain and its not a computer and its not doing one damn thing. I think you are radically overestimating the size of the book and the importance of the size to the experiment. ELIZA was about 20Kb. http://www.jesperjuul.net/eliza/ If it's a thousand times better than ELIZA, then you've got a 20 Mb rule book. The King James Bible can be downloaded here http://www.biblepath.com/bible_download.html at 14.33Mb. There is no time limit specified so we have no way of knowing how long it would take for a book this size to fail the Turing Test. It might be more useful to use more of a pharmaceutical model, like LD50 or LD100; how long of a conversation do you have to have before 50% of the native speakers fail the system. Is the Turing Test an LD00 test with unbounded duration? No native speaker can ever tell the difference no matter how long they converse? This is clearly impossible. It's context dependent and subjective. I only assume that everyone here is human because I have no reason to doubt that, but in a testing situation, I would not be confident that everyone here is human judging only from responses. The contents of memory is dumb too - as dumb as player piano rolls. That's pretty dumb. but the synapses of the brain are just as dumb and the atoms they, and computers and everything else, are made of are even dumber. Player piano rolls aren't living organisms that create and repair vast organic communication networks. Computers don't do anything by themselves, they have to be carefully programed and maintained by people and they have to have human users to make sense of any of their output. Neurons require no external physical agents to program or use them. The two together only seem intelligent to Chinese speakers outside the door Only?! Einstein only seemed intelligent to scientifically literate speakers in the outside world. No, he was aware of his own intelligence too. I think you're grasping at straws. It seems that, as you use the term, seeming intelligent is as good as being intelligent. So if I imitate Arnold Schwarzenegger on the phone, then that's as good as me being Schwarzenegger. In fact it seems to me that believing intelligent actions are not a sign of intelligence is not very intelligent. I understand that you think of it that way, and I think that is a moronic belief, but I don't think that makes you a moron. It all comes down to thinking in terms of an arbitrary formalism of language rather and working backward to reality rather than working from concrete realism and using language to understand it. If you start out defining intelligence as an abstract function and category of behaviors rather than quality of consciousness which entails the capacity for behaviors and functions, then you end up proving your own assumptions with circular reasoning. A conversation that lasts a few hours could probably be generated from a standard Chinese phrase book, especially if equipped with some useful evasive answers (a la ELIZA). You bring up that stupid 40 year old program again? Yes ELIZA displayed little if any intelligence but that program is 40 years old! Do try to keep up. You keep up. ELIZA is still being updated as of 2007: http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/Programming-Methods-and-Algorithms-Python/Artificial-Intelligence-Chatterbot-Eliza-15909.html I use ELIZA as an example because you can clearly see that it is not intelligent and you can clearly see that it could superficially seem intelligent. It becomes more difficult to be as sure what is going on when the program is more sophisticated because it is a more convincing fake. The ELIZA example is perfect because it exposes the fundamental mechanism by which trivial intelligence can be mistaken for the potential for understanding. And if you are really confident in your ideas push the thought experiment to the limit and let the Chinese Room produce brilliant answers to complex questions, if it just churns out ELIZA style evasive crap that proves nothing because we both agree that's not very intelligent. Ok, make it a million times the size of ELIZA. A set of 1,000 books. I think that would pass an LD50 Turing Test of a five hour conversation, don't you? The size isn't the point though. I rather think it is. A book larger than the observable universe and a program more brilliant than any written, where are you getting that from? yet you insist that if understand is anywhere in that room it must be in the by far least remarkable part of it, the silly little man. That's the
Re: Truth values as dynamics? (was: Ontological Problems of COMP)
On 2/9/2012 3:40 PM, acw wrote: I think the idea of Platonia is closer to the fact that if a sentence has a truth-value, it will have that truth value, regardless if you know it or not. Sure, but it is not just you to whom a given sentence may have the same exact truth value. This is like Einstein arguing with Bohr with the quip: The moon is still there when I do not see it. My reply to Einstein would be: Sir, you are not the only observer of the moon! We have to look at the situation from the point of view of many observers or, in this case, truth detectors, that can interact and communicate consistently with each other. We cannot think is just solipsistic terms. Sure, but what if nobody is looking at the moon? Or instead of moon, pick something even less likely to be observed. To put it differently, Riemann hypothesis or Goldbach's conjecture truth-value should not depend on the observers thinking of it - they may eventually discover it, and such a discovery would depend on many computational consequences, of which the observers may not be aware of yet, but doesn't mean that those consequences don't exist - when the computation is locally performed, it will always give the same result which could be said to exist timelessly. [SPK] My point is that any one or thing that could be affected by the truth value of the moon has X, Y, Z properties will, in effect, be an observer of the moon since it is has a definite set of properties as knowledge. The key here is causal efficacy, if a different state of affairs would result if some part of the world is changed then the conditions of that part of the world are observed. The same thing holds for the truth value Riemann hypothesis or Goldbach's conjecture, since there would be different worlds for each of their truth values. My point is that while the truth value or reality of the moon does not depend on the observation by any _one_ observer, it does depend for its definiteness on the possibility that it could be observed by some observer. It is the possibility that makes the difference. A object that cannot be observer by any means, including these arcane versions that I just laid out, cannot be said to have a definite set of properties or truth value, to say the opposite is equivalent to making a truth claim about a mathematical object for whom no set of equations or representation can be made. You're conjecturing here that there were worlds where Riemann hypothesis or Goldbach's conjecture have different truth values. I don't think arithmetical truths which happen to have proofs have indexical truth values, this is due to CTT. Although most physical truths are indexical (or depend on the axioms chosen). We could limit ourselves to decidable arithmetical truths only, but you'd bump into the problem of consistency of arithmetic or the halting problem. It makes no sense to me that a machine which is defined to either halt or not halt would not do either. We might not know if a machine halts or not, but that doesn't mean that if when ran in any possible world it would behave differently. Arithmetical truth should be the same in all possible worlds. An observer can find out a truth value, but it cannot alter it, unless it is an indexical (context-dependent truth, such as what time it is now or where do you live). Of course, we cannot talk about the truth value of undefined stuff, that would be non-sense. However, we can talk about the truth value of what cannot be observed - this machine never halts is only true if no observation of the machine halting can ever be made, in virtue of how the machine is defined, yet someone could use various meta-reasoning to reach the conclusion that the machine will never halt (consistency of arithmetic is very much similar to the halting problem - it's only consistent if a machine which enumerates proofs never finds a proof of 0=1; of course, this is not provable within arithmetic itself, thus it's a provably unprovable statement for any consistent machine, thus can only be a matter of theology as Bruno calls it). Hi ACW, I am considering that the truth value is a function of the theory with which a proposition is evaluated. In other words, meaningfulness, including truth value, is contextual while existence is absolute. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP theology (was: Ontological Problems of COMP)
Hi ACW, Thank you for the time and effort to write this up!!! On 2/9/2012 3:40 PM, acw wrote: Bruno has always said that COMP is a matter of theology (or religion), that is, the provably unprovable, and I agree with this. However, let's try and see why that is and why someone would take COMP as an assumption: - The main assumption of COMP is that you admit, at some level, a digital substitution, and the stronger assumption that if you were to implement/run such a Turing-emulable program, it would be conscious and you would have a continuation in it. Isn't that a strong theological assumption? [SPK] Yes, but it is the substitution of one configuration of stuff with another such that the functionality (that allows for the implementation/running of the Turing-emulable (Turing equivalence!)) program to remain invariant. One thing interesting to point out about this is that this substitution can be the replacement of completely different kinds of stuff, like carbon based stuff with silicon based stuff and does not require a continuous physical process of transformation in the sense of smoothly morphism the carbon stuff into silicon stuff at some primitive level. B/c of this it may seem to bypass the usual restrictions of physical laws, but does it really? What exactly is this physical stuff anyway? If we take a hint from the latest ideas in theoretical physics it seems that the stuff of the material world is more about properties that remain invariant under sets of symmetry transformations and less and less about anything like primitive substances. So in a sense, the physical world might be considered to be a wide assortment of bundles of invariants therefore it seems to me that to test COMP we need to see if those symmetry groups and invariants can be derived from some proposed underlying logical structure. This is what I am trying to do. I am really not arguing against COMP, I am arguing that COMP is incomplete as a theory as it does not yet show how the appearance of space, time and conservation laws emerges in a way that is invariant and not primitive. I guess I have the temerity to play Einstein against Bruno's Bohr. :-) OTOH, I am not arguing for any kind of return to naive realism or that the physical world is the totality of existence. I do know that I am just a curious amateur, so I welcome any critique that might help me learn. I think it is, but at the same time, it has solid consequences and a belief in it can be justified for a number of reasons: a) Fading qualia thought experiment, which shows that consciousness is utterly fickle if it doesn't follow a principle of functional / organizational invariance. Most of our sense data tends to point that such a principle makes sense. Avoiding it means consciousness does not correspond to brain states and p. zombies. Certainly! We need a precise explanation for psycho-physical parallelism. My tentative explanation is that at our level a form of dualism holds. A dualism quite unlike that of Descartes, since instead of separate substances, it is proposed that the logical and the physical are two distinct aspect of reality that follow on equal yet anti-parallel tracks. As Vaughan Pratt explains in his papers, the logical processes and the physical processes have dynamics that have arrows that point in opposite directions. Schematically and crudely we can show a quasi-category theory diagram of this duality: X - Y - | | - A --B - The vertical lines represent the Stone duality relation and the horizontal arrow represent logical entailment and physical causation. The chaining (or /residuation/) rule is X causes Y iff B necessitates A, where X and A and duals and Y and B and duals. This duality prohibits zombies and disembodied spirits. There is much more to this diagram as it does not include the endomorphisms, homeomorphisms and other mappings and objects that are involved in the full implementation of the /residuation/ rule. I just found a paper by Martin Wehr www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/wehr/newpage/Papers/qc.ps.gz that elaborates on Pratt's idea and explains /residuation/ better! Here is the abstract: Quantum Computing: A new Paradigm and it's Type Theory Martin Wehr Quantum Computing Seminar, Lehrstuhl Prof. Beth, Universitat Karlsruhe, July 1996 To use quantum mechanical behavior for computing has been proposed by Feynman. Shor gave an algorithm for the quantum computer which raised a big stream of research. This was because Shor's algorithm did reduce the yet assumed exponential complexity of the security relevant factorization problem, to a quadratic complexity if quantum computed. In the paper a short introduction to quantum mechanics can be found in the appendix. With this material the operation of the quantum computer, and the ideas of quantum logic will be explained. The focus will be
