Re: Brain teaser
Hi Stephen, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. That's an excellent question. I suspect a scheme might not be necessary to infer the presence of meaning, but what I'm going to say is very empirical. Suppose a message m_n, of length n, which is a string of bits (e.g m_8=10101010, with m_1=1, m_2=10, and so on) Suppose a function f that takes a message m_n and predicts m_n+1 Suppose a learning algorithm L, such that L(m_n) = f. Let's assume this algorithm does the best possible job (I know it's a stretch). Now, for any length n of message m, we can obtain an f and then measure the accuracy of f at predicting m_n at any n. We can then measure the accuracy of this function, let's call that a. So a is in [0.5, 1] If a=0.5 the message is pure noise. If a=1 the message is completely predictable, because every bit will always be a function of the previous bits. My empirical suspicion is that there is some range of a, between these extremes, where meaning lives. Something akin to what people in complex systems refer to as the edge of chaos. Cheers, Telmo. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
On 3/8/2013 6:17 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi Stephen, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. That's an excellent question. I suspect a scheme might not be necessary to infer the presence of meaning, but what I'm going to say is very empirical. Suppose a message m_n, of length n, which is a string of bits (e.g m_8=10101010, with m_1=1, m_2=10, and so on) Suppose a function f that takes a message m_n and predicts m_n+1 Suppose a learning algorithm L, such that L(m_n) = f. Let's assume this algorithm does the best possible job (I know it's a stretch). Now, for any length n of message m, we can obtain an f and then measure the accuracy of f at predicting m_n at any n. We can then measure the accuracy of this function, let's call that a. So a is in [0.5, 1] If a=0.5 the message is pure noise. If a=1 the message is completely predictable, because every bit will always be a function of the previous bits. My empirical suspicion is that there is some range of a, between these extremes, where meaning lives. Something akin to what people in complex systems refer to as the edge of chaos. Cheers, Telmo. Nice! ;-) -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
On 3/8/2013 7:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That may be not enough. suppose that you are starving, and you receive in your phone a message describing where is the next source of water but somehow the description is interspersed in the description of the complete equation of the M Theory that someone has found. You of course take the last as noise, despite that you know what is it. and you know that this message will be lost (le´ts suppose that). What is the information and how can it be measured?. Hi Alberto, If the message is a program that tells a class of autonomously mobile Turing Machines how to move from a given position to the energy supply... There could be any set of secondary messages 'in the code' at some level if the string is complex enough... who knows that AMTM they might control... Usually the study of information and the measure of it make many assumptions that made it incomplete. My idea is that it is not only the decoding, but the decrease in entropy that the receiver experiment. Such as the above example? That include the decoding + the course of actions that the receiver takes with this information. I the case of the starving person, first it experiment a reduction in stress that reduces the muscular activity and the heat produces, instead it follow a ordered set of actions until he find the food, the food will repair the structuresof the body etc. Given n number of possible strings and m possible TMs... the mind boggles! We are machines, very sophisticated, but machines nonetheless and doubly so! 2013/3/8 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net Hi, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. -- -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Thin Client
On Thursday, March 7, 2013 11:34:49 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/7/2013 6:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:58:29 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/7/2013 4:57 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 7:33:46 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/7/2013 3:01 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 5:45:14 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/7/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: If you have ever worked with Terminal Servers, RDP, Citrix Metaframe, or the like (and that's what I have been doing professionally every day for the last 14 years), you will understand the idea of a Thin Client architecture. Thin clients are as old as computing, and some of you remember as I do, devices like acoustic couplers where you can attach a telephone handset to a telephone cradle, so that the mouth ends of the handset and the earpiece ends could squeal to each other. In this way, you could, with nothing but a keyboard and a printer, use your telephone to allow you access to a mainframe computer at some university. The relevance here is that the client end is thin computationally. It passes nothing but keystrokes and printer instructions back and forth as acoustic codes. This is what an mp3 file does as well. It passes nothing but binary instructions that can be used by an audio device to vibrate. Without a person's ear there to be vibrated, this entire event is described by linear processes where one physical record is converted into another physical record. Nothing is encoded or decoded, experienced or appreciated. There is no sound. Think about those old plastic headphones in elementary school that just had hollow plastic tubes as connectors - a system like that generates sound from the start, and the headphones are simply funnels for our ears. That's a different thing from an electronic device which produces sound only in the earbuds. All of these discussions about semiotics, free will, consciousness, AI...all come down to understanding the Thin Client. The Thin Client is Searle's Chinese Room in actual fact. You can log into a massive server from some mobile device and use it like a glove, but that doesn't mean that the glove is intelligent. We know that we can transmit only mouseclicks and keystrokes across the pipe and that it works without having to have some sophisticated computing environment (i.e. qualia) get communicated. The Thin Client exposes Comp as misguided because it shows that instructions can indeed exist as purely instrumental forms and require none of the semantic experiences which we enjoy. No matter how much you use the thin client, it never needs to get any thicker. It's just a glove and a window. -- Hi Craig, Excellent post! You have nailed computational immaterialism where it really hurts. Computations cannot see, per the Turing neo-Platonists, any hardward at all. This is their view of computational universality. But here in the thing, it is the reason why they have a 'body problem'. For a Platonistic Machine, there is no hardware or physical world at all. So, why do I have the persistent illusion that I am in a body and interacting with another computation via its body? The physical delusion is the thin client, to use your words and discussion. I'm fairly sure Bruno will point out that a delusion is a thought and so is immaterial. You have an immaterial experience fo being in a body. But the analogy of the thin client is thin indeed. In the example of the Mars rover it corresponds to looking a computer bus and saying, See there are just bits being transmitted over this wire, therefore this Mars rover can't have qualia. It's nothing-buttery spread thin. Why? What's your argument other than you don't like it? Of course the Mars rover has no qualia. That's your careful reasoning? My reasoning is that in constructing thin client architectures we find that we save processing overhead by treating the i/o as a simple bitstream applied to extend just the keyboard, mouse, and video data. We understand that there is a great deal less processing than if we actually tried to network a computer at the application level, or use the resources of the server as a mapped remote drive. What accounts for this lower overhead is that the simulation of a GUI is only a thin shadow of what is required to actually share resources. If qualia were inherent, then the thin client would save us nothing, since the keystrokes and screenshots would have to contain all of the same processing 'qualia'. I can't even make sense of that assertion. If qualia were inherent in what? In digital data processing. If they were inherent in the keystrokes and screenshots then they would take no more processing than screenshots and keystrokes.
Re: Brain teaser
On Friday, March 8, 2013 7:41:23 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: That may be not enough. suppose that you are starving, and you receive in your phone a message describing where is the next source of water but somehow the description is interspersed in the description of the complete equation of the M Theory that someone has found. You of course take the last as noise, despite that you know what is it. and you know that this message will be lost (le´ts suppose that). What is the information and how can it be measured?. Usually the study of information and the measure of it make many assumptions that made it incomplete. My idea is that it is not only the decoding, but the decrease in entropy that the receiver experiment. That include the decoding + the course of actions that the receiver takes with this information. I the case of the starving person, first it experiment a reduction in stress that reduces the muscular activity and the heat produces, instead it follow a ordered set of actions until he find the food, the food will repair the structuresof the body etc. What if the message was the opposite? No food, bub, your next meal is all on you. Then the stress increases, increases muscular activity as they flail around looking for food and dissipating heat...finding no food, the structures of the body are not repaired, etc. Craig 2013/3/8 Stephen P. King step...@charter.net javascript: Hi, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@**googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out . -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
2013/3/8 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Friday, March 8, 2013 7:41:23 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: That may be not enough. suppose that you are starving, and you receive in your phone a message describing where is the next source of water but somehow the description is interspersed in the description of the complete equation of the M Theory that someone has found. You of course take the last as noise, despite that you know what is it. and you know that this message will be lost (le´ts suppose that). What is the information and how can it be measured?. Usually the study of information and the measure of it make many assumptions that made it incomplete. My idea is that it is not only the decoding, but the decrease in entropy that the receiver experiment. That include the decoding + the course of actions that the receiver takes with this information. I the case of the starving person, first it experiment a reduction in stress that reduces the muscular activity and the heat produces, instead it follow a ordered set of actions until he find the food, the food will repair the structuresof the body etc. What if the message was the opposite? No food, bub, your next meal is all on you. Then the stress increases, increases muscular activity as they flail around looking for food and dissipating heat...finding no food, the structures of the body are not repaired, etc. Or , even worst, the message can be a lie. Then after the discovery of that, the entropy will be higher than at the beginning , at least, because the energy spent. And the disbelief in the trustworthiness of further messages Craig 2013/3/8 Stephen P. King step...@charter.net Hi, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@**go**oglegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**c**om. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group** /everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**grou**ps/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out . -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 07 Mar 2013, at 15:20, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 10:28 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Isn't it more likely that the drug simply makes your narrative thoughts less able than usual to trace their sources? So it is like the Poincare' effect writ large? I am not sure. Perhaps. If you make that idea more precise, I might concur. Is it consistent with what I just say here? I think it is. Just as Poincare' had a proof spring into his mind we commonly have value judgement spring into mind. In some cases we can trace them back to an experience or what out parents told us; but generally we can't. I can see that drugs might inhibit that tracing back and make it seem that we are who we are independent of any history. Well, yes and no. Some drugs under the right circumstances can produce large, highly specific memory recall. They're seem to be different consistent shapes of altered states that emerge for large sets of people. Some are taken back to specific episodes of their childhood. The research funded by MAPS on MDMA for PTSD seems to be consistent, above a certain threshold, at eliciting general empathic euphoria towards oneself and world (why there are bumper stickers in California Do NOT make marital decisions for at least 3 months after MDMA) that is strong enough for rape victims, traumatized soldiers etc., and their therapists to believe this kind of treatment to give them strength to look at their trauma, so that the extreme empathic euphoria helps them let go. For sample sizes in phase 2 trials, this seems to work. So for dissociative like Salvia, this might be partially true, but doesn't address the consistency of entities that people meet (not part of anybody's memories), or the Calabi-Yau manifold jewel objects that can be seen on DMT done properly, I am not sure this makes sense. and a veritable plethora of consistent objects and processes encountered by people who explore certain things. Alcohol works in that blunt way. Dissociative plants and molecules might derive their action partially from this, but why and how could say a multi-dimensional breathing dragon lattice that oozes gigantic amounts of self-evident wisdom, containing instructions on how to read its language, history, and its being, just churn up in somebody's head through memory tracing inhibition? Sorry, but nobody met that kind of thing yesterday or saw it in a Harry Potter movie or book; much less communicate with it. People have never seen or experienced such objects or properties in the physical world (learning an alien language in a couple of minutes), much less communication with them in said languages = waking life inhibits memories of much larger sets of memory; that is, if you don't think these hallucinations are just toxic delusional junk of material nervous system reactions. For that, the hallucinations should be called visions more neutrally, as their precision in otherness towards personal experience or in selective memory recall imply more than merely amnesia or lack of traceability. Nobody can prove this yet. But the studies are piling up on consistency of the content instead of lack of traceability at Maps, John Hopkins psilocybin studies etc. There are so many varieties of experiences in this area, that one can only point towards Pendell's trilogy and works of this kind that try to chart or get some handle on their content. The mechanism you describe: lack of traceability, reducing to limiting = eternal qualia of independence of histories is insufficient in addressing too many consistent features in terms of precision of architectural content in the action of the experiences themselves, that are indeed, in case of quite a few molecules, testable and consistent. That Bruno buys this, surprises me frankly as it essentially equates the subtleties of Salvia to alcohol delirium. Buy what? It might help if you could quote the passage I wrote making you think so, as you might misinterpret or generalize what I said. Bruno PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 07 Mar 2013, at 16:11, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, March 8, 2013, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 8:44 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 12:59:50 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: By the definition I gave above a stone does not choose to roll down the hill because it does not consider each option in order to decide which one to do. Why doesn't it choose when and which direction to roll? A deterministic universe means that there is no such thing as 'considering each option' - there are no options, only things happening because they must happen. They have no choice, there is no choice, the lack of choice is the defining feature of a deterministic world. You are saying that this is the world that we live in and that we are the stone, except that for some reason we have this delusional interactive narrative in which we could not stand being still any longer and decided to push ourselves down the hill. Hi, From my studies of the math of classical determinism, the subsequent 'behavior' of the stone follows strictly in a one-to-one and onto fashion from the prior state of the stone. There are no 'multiple choices' of the stone, thus no room at all for choice. Thankfully we know that classical determinism is a delusion that some, for their own reasons, cling to. Yes, we know that classical determinism is wrong, Locally, in the first person view of the observers. But quantum mechanics without wave collapse is classically deterministic. It is even a sort of linear rotation in some space. Also, no machine can distinguish a random phenomenon from some output of a machine more complex than herself, making the idea that randomness can be observed non refutable. Then comp alone entails a myriad forms of local indeterminacies. I think we agree that this cannot be used to explain free will. but it is not logically inconsistent with consciousness. It is also not logically inconsistent with choice and free will, unless you define these terms as inconsistent with determinism, in which case in a deterministic world we would have to create new words meaning pseudo-choice and pseudo-free will to avoid misunderstanding, and then go about our business as usual with this minor change to the language. OK. Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 07 Mar 2013, at 16:43, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 10:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, March 8, 2013, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 8:44 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 12:59:50 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: By the definition I gave above a stone does not choose to roll down the hill because it does not consider each option in order to decide which one to do. Why doesn't it choose when and which direction to roll? A deterministic universe means that there is no such thing as 'considering each option' - there are no options, only things happening because they must happen. They have no choice, there is no choice, the lack of choice is the defining feature of a deterministic world. You are saying that this is the world that we live in and that we are the stone, except that for some reason we have this delusional interactive narrative in which we could not stand being still any longer and decided to push ourselves down the hill. Hi, From my studies of the math of classical determinism, the subsequent 'behavior' of the stone follows strictly in a one-to-one and onto fashion from the prior state of the stone. There are no 'multiple choices' of the stone, thus no room at all for choice. Thankfully we know that classical determinism is a delusion that some, for their own reasons, cling to. Yes, we know that classical determinism is wrong, but it is not logically inconsistent with consciousness. I must disagree. It is baked into the topology of classical mechanics that a system cannot semantically act upon itself. ? (that seems to contradict comp, and be rather 1004) There is no way to define intentionality in classical physics. This is what Bruno proves with his argument. ? Bruno It is also not logically inconsistent with choice and free will, unless you define these terms as inconsistent with determinism, in which case in a deterministic world we wouldhave to create new words meaning pseudo-choice and pseudo-free will to avoid misunderstanding, and then go about our business as usual with this minor change to the language. So you say... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Thin Client
On 3/8/2013 5:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: That's my test - shifting a person to a totally synthetic brain and back. If we don't have the technology to do that, then we can't do the test and we can't know if synthetic brains are the same as natural. Then why do you pretend to know it? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 07 Mar 2013, at 17:07, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 10:58 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 10:43:06 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/7/2013 10:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, March 8, 2013, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 8:44 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 12:59:50 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: By the definition I gave above a stone does not choose to roll down the hill because it does not consider each option in order to decide which one to do. Why doesn't it choose when and which direction to roll? A deterministic universe means that there is no such thing as 'considering each option' - there are no options, only things happening because they must happen. They have no choice, there is no choice, the lack of choice is the defining feature of a deterministic world. You are saying that this is the world that we live in and that we are the stone, except that for some reason we have this delusional interactive narrative in which we could not stand being still any longer and decided to push ourselves down the hill. Hi, From my studies of the math of classical determinism, the subsequent 'behavior' of the stone follows strictly in a one-to- one and onto fashion from the prior state of the stone. There are no 'multiple choices' of the stone, thus no room at all for choice. Thankfully we know that classical determinism is a delusion that some, for their own reasons, cling to. Yes, we know that classical determinism is wrong, but it is not logically inconsistent with consciousness. I must disagree. It is baked into the topology of classical mechanics that a system cannot semantically act upon itself. There is no way to define intentionality in classical physics. This is what Bruno proves with his argument. Exactly Stephen. What are we talking about here? How is a deterministic system that has preferences and makes choices and considers options different from free will. If something can have a private preference which cannot be determined from the outside, then it is determined privately, i.e. the will of the private determiner. Good Morning, Craig. The word 'deterministic' becomes degenerate (in meaning/semiotic content) when we try to stuff free will (or free won't) into it. It is also not logically inconsistent with choice and free will, unless you define these terms as inconsistent with determinism, in which case in a deterministic world we would have to create new words meaning pseudo-choice and pseudo-free will to avoid misunderstanding, and then go about our business as usual with this minor change to the language. So you say... Yeah, right. Why would a deterministic world need words having anything to do with choice or free will? At what part of a computer program is something like a choice made? Every position on the logic tree is connected to every other by unambiguous prior cause or intentionally generated (pseudo) randomness. It makes no choices, has no preferences, just follows a sequence of instructions. Craig Exactly. This is why computations are exactly describable as strings... It is less wrong to say that description of computation can be denoted with string. Computation themselves are not strings. They are sequence of states related by some universal machine/number. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cats fall for illusions too
On 07 Mar 2013, at 17:36, Terren Suydam wrote: I have no doubt that Craig will somehow see this as a vindication of his theory and a refutation of mechanism. All videos with cats are lovely. I agree with you that they can hardly be used to refute mechanism ... ... even when cats do drug, like you can contemplate by youtubing on cat and catnip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Xrcp6k8VE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mUCYZ-8vHo Terren On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=CcXXQ6GCUb8 -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: MGA is back (on the FOAR list)
On 07 Mar 2013, at 17:37, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:19:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2013, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand where you are coming from in MGA now, Bruno, and again there is nothing wrong with your reasoning, but in that your initial assumptions are not the universe that we live in. ? (the assumption of the whole reasoning is just comp. Then in MGA i make some local assumption to make a point, but they are discharged before getting the conclusion). Right. It's the comp where the assumptions are which don't match our universe. our universe? That's more an object of enquiry than a something I would take for granted. I don't have any particular problem with what you add to it - you make perfect sense if comp were true... but comp can't be true, so it doesn't matter. You say often that comp can't be true, but when will you say no to a doctor proposing very little protheses in the brain, and then bigger one. Also, nothing in the brain seems to be not Turing emulable. Comp is without doubt a strong hypothesis, with counter-intuitive consequences, but non-comp is a vague label for theories which are never presented. As I try to explain, many things you say make sense from a computationalist perspective, so it is weird you believe so much that comp can't be true. Let me give you a thought experiment that might give you a sense of where I see the assumptions jump to the wrong conclusion. Suppose Alice didn't have an energetic particle to save her logic misfire and she ended up confusing her own name with Alison. Nobody tried to correct her use of her own name, so people assumed that she has begun using a new name, or that one of the two names was just a nickname. As she went about her business over the next several years, opening new accounts and receiving mail as Alison, she had essentially lost her old name, except for the very closest family members and government records which retained unambiguous reference to Alice. Now suppose a more catastrophic event happens with many of her logic gates. Every name that she has ever heard is now switched in her memory. Instead of Romeo and Juliet, her star-crossed lovers are Pizza-Foot and Sycorax. Instead of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, she remembers those characters as Baron Von Slouchcousin and Pimento. The stories are otherwise in-tact of course. The function of the characters is identical. As the brain parts keep failing and then coming back online, all of the content of history and fiction have become hopelessly scrambled, but the stories and information are undamaged. Star Wars takes place in Egypt. Queen Elizabeth was named Treewort and lives in the trunk of a 2003 Mazda but otherwise the succession of the British throne is clearly understood. As luck would have it, the problem with her name interpreter was mirrored by a problem in her output modules, which translates all of her twisted names into the expected ones, effectively undoing her malfunction as far as anyone else is concerned. There is no problem for her socially, and no problem for her psychologically, as she does not suspect any malfunction, and neither does anyone else. Who is the British monarch? Elizabeth or Treewort? Is there a difference between the two? It comes down to exploring the reality of proprietary vs generic, or qualitative vs quantitative identity. In math - all identities are generic and interchangeable. A name is not a name of what is being named (which is a real and unique natural presence), but a label which refers to another label or variable (which is not a presence but a figure persisting by axiom-fiat). Using this quantitative framework, all entities are assumed to be built up from these starchy mechanical axioms, so that a name is simply a character string used for naming - it has no proprietary content. When a computer does do proprietary content, it doesn't look like Harry or Jane, it looks like ct168612 - now that means something to a computer. If it can be assumed that the label matches some serial number or address, then it is a good name. In no case is the computer able to value a name in any other way. It has no way of knowing if Buckingham Palace is a better place to live than in the trunk of an old car, as long as the digits fulfill the same functional role, they are the same. In reality however, maybe nothing is 'the same'? Maybe there aren't any shortcuts or simulations which can make something which is not us into us? Comp does not exclude such a possibility. There are (in the arithmetical truth) infinitely many processes which can be simulated only by themselves, having no shortcut, and that might indeed play some role in cosmology, and even consciousness or in the stability of conscious experience. Open problems. Cool. Why
Re: Thin Client
On 07 Mar 2013, at 23:21, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: If you have ever worked with Terminal Servers, RDP, Citrix Metaframe, or the like (and that's what I have been doing professionally every day for the last 14 years), you will understand the idea of a Thin Client architecture. Thin clients are as old as computing, and some of you remember as I do, devices like acoustic couplers where you can attach a telephone handset to a telephone cradle, so that the mouth ends of the handset and the earpiece ends could squeal to each other. In this way, you could, with nothing but a keyboard and a printer, use your telephone to allow you access to a mainframe computer at some university. The relevance here is that the client end is thin computationally. It passes nothing but keystrokes and printer instructions back and forth as acoustic codes. This is what an mp3 file does as well. It passes nothing but binary instructions that can be used by an audio device to vibrate. Without a person's ear there to be vibrated, this entire event is described by linear processes where one physical record is converted into another physical record. Nothing is encoded or decoded, experienced or appreciated. There is no sound. Think about those old plastic headphones in elementary school that just had hollow plastic tubes as connectors - a system like that generates sound from the start, and the headphones are simply funnels for our ears. That's a different thing from an electronic device which produces sound only in the earbuds. All of these discussions about semiotics, free will, consciousness, AI...all come down to understanding the Thin Client. The Thin Client is Searle's Chinese Room in actual fact. You can log into a massive server from some mobile device and use it like a glove, but that doesn't mean that the glove is intelligent. We know that we can transmit only mouseclicks and keystrokes across the pipe and that it works without having to have some sophisticated computing environment (i.e. qualia) get communicated. The Thin Client exposes Comp as misguided because it shows that instructions can indeed exist as purely instrumental forms and require none of the semantic experiences which we enjoy. No matter how much you use the thin client, it never needs to get any thicker. It's just a glove and a window. -- Hi Craig, Excellent post! You have nailed computational immaterialism where it really hurts. Computations cannot see, per the Turing neo- Platonists, any hardward at all. This is their view of computational universality. Computational universality is a standard notion. No need of Plato. Only arithmetical realism, of the kind you need to pay taxes. But here in the thing, it is the reason why they have a 'body problem'. Not really. But in fine, yes. That is the result of a proof. No need to present this as obvious, as nothing is obvious in the mind-body problem domain. For a Platonistic Machine, there is no hardware or physical world at all. That is wrong. There is one. We can compare to the world we observe, already. And test comp. So, why do I have the persistent illusion that I am in a body and interacting with another computation via its body? See the papers and post. That's what I explain. To refute comp you must derive a physical facts from comp refuted empirically. Bruno The physical delusion is the thin client, to use your words and discussion. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Thin Client
On 07 Mar 2013, at 23:45, meekerdb wrote: On 3/7/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/7/2013 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: If you have ever worked with Terminal Servers, RDP, Citrix Metaframe, or the like (and that's what I have been doing professionally every day for the last 14 years), you will understand the idea of a Thin Client architecture. Thin clients are as old as computing, and some of you remember as I do, devices like acoustic couplers where you can attach a telephone handset to a telephone cradle, so that the mouth ends of the handset and the earpiece ends could squeal to each other. In this way, you could, with nothing but a keyboard and a printer, use your telephone to allow you access to a mainframe computer at some university. The relevance here is that the client end is thin computationally. It passes nothing but keystrokes and printer instructions back and forth as acoustic codes. This is what an mp3 file does as well. It passes nothing but binary instructions that can be used by an audio device to vibrate. Without a person's ear there to be vibrated, this entire event is described by linear processes where one physical record is converted into another physical record. Nothing is encoded or decoded, experienced or appreciated. There is no sound. Think about those old plastic headphones in elementary school that just had hollow plastic tubes as connectors - a system like that generates sound from the start, and the headphones are simply funnels for our ears. That's a different thing from an electronic device which produces sound only in the earbuds. All of these discussions about semiotics, free will, consciousness, AI...all come down to understanding the Thin Client. The Thin Client is Searle's Chinese Room in actual fact. You can log into a massive server from some mobile device and use it like a glove, but that doesn't mean that the glove is intelligent. We know that we can transmit only mouseclicks and keystrokes across the pipe and that it works without having to have some sophisticated computing environment (i.e. qualia) get communicated. The Thin Client exposes Comp as misguided because it shows that instructions can indeed exist as purely instrumental forms and require none of the semantic experiences which we enjoy. No matter how much you use the thin client, it never needs to get any thicker. It's just a glove and a window. -- Hi Craig, Excellent post! You have nailed computational immaterialism where it really hurts. Computations cannot see, per the Turing neo- Platonists, any hardward at all. This is their view of computational universality. But here in the thing, it is the reason why they have a 'body problem'. For a Platonistic Machine, there is no hardware or physical world at all. So, why do I have the persistent illusion that I am in a body and interacting with another computation via its body? The physical delusion is the thin client, to use your words and discussion. I'm fairly sure Bruno will point out that a delusion is a thought and so is immaterial. You have an immaterial experience fo being in a body. But the analogy of the thin client is thin indeed. In the example of the Mars rover it corresponds to looking a computer bus and saying, See there are just bits being transmitted over this wire, therefore this Mars rover can't have qualia. It's nothing-buttery spread thin. Meantime the Mars rover and Watson continue to exhibit intelligence of the same kind you would associate with qualia if exhibted by a human being, or even by a dog. You have no argument, just wetware racism. Well said. Leibniz is famous for doing that with the brain. Look in there, and you see only elementary mechanism and no qualia. But Leibniz did not use that to refute mechanism. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Thin Client
On 08 Mar 2013, at 01:57, Craig Weinberg wrote: What is your empirical evidence that will convince you that my view is right? No empirical evidence can convince anyone that a view is right. Empirical evidence can convince someone that a view is wrong. Only. Bruno Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 07 Mar 2013, at 22:50, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 03:53:13PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 04 Mar 2013, at 20:16, meekerdb wrote: On 3/4/2013 4:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Mar 2013, at 20:35, meekerdb wrote: Some randomness can be useful, if only to solve the problem of Buridan's ass. I see what you mean, but some could argue that when you use a random device (like a coin) to make a decision, you abandon free will. Indeed you let a coin decide for you, when free will meant more that you are the one making the free decision. That hinges on the self-other distinction. A random coin toss is not considered free will, as you are subsuming your will to an external agent (the coin). But when you make a decision due to a random firing of a neuron (random because the synaptic junctions are thermodynamically noisy), then that is _you_ making the decision, it is _your_ free will. I don't see what difference would this make. especially that for such kind of choice a pseudo-random number can be used. But effective randomness is easy to come in the complex environment of life. On the contrary, deterministic free will make sense, because free will comes from a lack of self-determinacy, implying hesitation in front of different path, and self-indeterminacy follows logically from determinism and self-reference. First person indeterminacy can be used easily to convince oneself that indeterminacy cannot help for free will. Iterating a self-duplication can't provide free-will. Why? That particular thought experiment proves that indeterminancy is a fundamental feature of subjective life. Why shouldn't that be the source of the indeterminism for solving Buridan ass type problems? In the case of the Buridan problem, both choice will be done. How could anyone account for freeness in that case? It can be helpful to accelerate the decision, but not in making someone free. Usually free will is vindicated when we are really self-determined. As Dennett says deterministic free will is the only free will worth having. I agree with him on that. My pint above illustrate that. Random choice are not really free choice. Whereas, I don't really know what deterministic free will even means. Probably a definitional thing. It is the awareness of eventualities, often with partial informations, and the conscious choice of deciding, in such case, according to the will. Why would anyone want to make decisions that were not determined by their learning and memories and values. Of course, but that has nothing to do with free will :) Free will is the ability to do something stupid, the ability to make decisions that are not determined learning, memories and values I have no problem with that. Stupid is not random. Bruno -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/8/2013 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Yes, we know that classical determinism is wrong, but it is not logically inconsistent with consciousness. I must disagree. It is baked into the topology of classical mechanics that a system cannot semantically act upon itself. ? (that seems to contradict comp, and be rather 1004) Dear Bruno, You do not seem consider the need to error correct and adapt to changing local conditions for a conscious machine nor the need to maintain access to low entropy resources. Your machines are never hungry. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
On 3/8/2013 12:37 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Hi Stephen, According with my definition the information depends both on the message and the state of the autonomous entity. Hi Alberto, Thank you for your comments! An autonomous Turing machine (call it robot) can and maybe sould have anticipatory reactions, for example stress or depression. I agree, these are internal anticipatory conditions/reactions. This implies an internal model of the ATM that predicts the possible future state of the ATM. The former to find a solution for a problem as early as possible, the latter to conserve energy resources. These are, ultimately, the same problem. The use of the information received depends on his previous information, including his decoding software. Yes, there is a target rich field in this area for exploitable concepts and application. But that only applies to the semantic of the message. Why? What more is there? But the trust on the content of the message depends on how true is the source for the receiver, and also depend on the consistency of this information with previous informations it may have. Good point. All of these are variables in some way.. degree and level of trust, consistency, meaningfulness. Defining metrics on the manifolds of these features is important. In each case the information of the message can be different. How different. Are there spectra? Modality? etc. ? What happens if the receptor receive a message with a program to decode further valuable information? We can iterate this to various depths, no? The message could be like a multifractal with differing patterns at differing scales. If the receptor has anticipatory reactions, It depends on if the receiver knows in advance the utility of the program or not. But at the end these important messages will be decoded anyway isn't? so both paths reach identical entropy but the information received by the message is different, according with my definition. That may sound paradoxical, but to apply the decoder to the critic messages, the robot need to receive the message the last decoder is for these next messages or any other message that includes this as a consequence, either before or after receiving the decoder. That reduces the second case to the first. So the amount of information received may be the same after all. and both processes are identical with different ordering of the same or similar messages. GOOD! Elaborate on this please. There is another possibility: that the robot alone may discover this information by trial and error, variation and selection , conjectures and refutations or any other darwinian processes. There are some other interesting cases: lies, wrong information etc. To summarize, the information depends on the message content and the state of the receiver. And the state of the environment in which the ATM finds itself. I remark also that any turing machine (or a computer) either it dissapear or it is by definition part of an autonomous system or an extension of it. For example my laptop is an extension of myself. I maintain its entropy by recharging its batteries and cleaning it. he gives information to me. We agree 100%. 2013/3/8 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net On 3/8/2013 7:41 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That may be not enough. suppose that you are starving, and you receive in your phone a message describing where is the next source of water but somehow the description is interspersed in the description of the complete equation of the M Theory that someone has found. You of course take the last as noise, despite that you know what is it. and you know that this message will be lost (le´ts suppose that). What is the information and how can it be measured?. Hi Alberto, If the message is a program that tells a class of autonomously mobile Turing Machines how to move from a given position to the energy supply... There could be any set of secondary messages 'in the code' at some level if the string is complex enough... who knows that AMTM they might control... Usually the study of information and the measure of it make many assumptions that made it incomplete. My idea is that it is not only the decoding, but the decrease in entropy that the receiver experiment. Such as the above example? That include the decoding + the course of actions that the receiver takes with this information. I the case of the starving person, first it experiment a reduction in stress that reduces the muscular activity and the heat produces, instead it follow a ordered set of actions until he find the food, the food will repair the structuresof the body etc. Given n number of possible strings and m possible TMs... the mind boggles!
Re: Thin Client
On Friday, March 8, 2013 1:04:23 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/8/2013 5:43 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: That's my test - shifting a person to a totally synthetic brain and back. If we don't have the technology to do that, then we can't do the test and we can't know if synthetic brains are the same as natural. Then why do you pretend to know it? I don't pretend to know it, I understand why it shouldn't work is all. I think the experiment will fail, but for others who don't believe me, this is the test they can use. Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cats fall for illusions too
On 08 Mar 2013, at 05:37, Terren Suydam wrote: Ah. That's above my pay grade unfortunately. But I don't think our immediate failure to solve that problem dooms the idea that a cat's experience of the world is explainable in terms of mechanism. Conversely, even if we did solve it, there would still be doubts. For the time being, comp remains for me the most fruitful assumption about reality, such as it is. It assumes so little and opens up such incredible vistas. Yes. And that comp leads to problems is what makes it interesting. I use comp like the drunk man who looks for his key under the lamp, as elsewhere he knows he will not find it. Comp is only a lamp. It shows that the somber unknown is bigger than what some might think at first sight. Bruno Terren On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:17 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 10:40 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I'm game. Which puzzle are we figuring out? A solution to Bruno's 'arithmetic body problem'. On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 9:14 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Right, we basically agree. At the low level where optics are being processed, it seems to me to be more accurate to say the brain is creating the constructions. Another way to say it is that kittens and babies are probably born with the neural circuits that implement those shortcuts - optimizations implemented through genetics. Whereas with the kind of construction that is created by the mind, it seems to me that those constructions live at a higher level - the psychological - and arise as a result of experience and learning. I don't really think that is what's going on with optical illusions since they are so universal. But that is quibbling - whichever of us is more correct, it's beside the point regarding whether optical illusions have a mechanistic explanation. Hi, OK then, I would rather work with you on figuring this puzzle out than spar with you over who has the best explanation. ;-) Terren On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 6:09 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: The same way it explains it for humans. The cat is not sensing the world directly, but the constructions created by its brain. Hi Terren, I almost agree, I only add that it is not just the brain of the cat (or human or whatever) that is being sensed, the mind is involved in the construction as well. Those constructions involve shortcuts of various kinds (e.g. edge detection) optimized for the kinds of environments that cats have thrived in, from an evolutionary standpoint. Those shortcuts are what lead to optical illusions. Optical illusions are stimuli that expose the shortcuts for what they are. There is nothing about the fact that it's a cat that makes this any harder to explain in mechanistic terms. Sure, and the mind as well. It is interesting because it suggests that cats employ at least one of the same shortcuts as we do, which further suggests that the visual optimizations that lead to optical illusions are much older than humans. And while that is not a very controversial claim, it is cool to have some evidence for it. Yes, I have to show this to my friends that are studying pattern recognition. Terren On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:14 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 11:36 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: I have no doubt that Craig will somehow see this as a vindication of his theory and a refutation of mechanism. Terren On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch? feature=player_embeddedv=CcXXQ6GCUb8 -- Hi Terren, How does Mechanism explain this? Will The Amazing Randy be pushed forward to loudly claim that the cat was really chasing a laser dot that the video camera could not capture? -- -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/8/2013 1:08 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Exactly. This is why computations are exactly describable as strings... It is less wrong to say that description of computation can be denoted with string. Computation themselves are not strings. They are sequence of states related by some universal machine/number. Hi Bruno, OK, thank you for that correction. ;-) I learn! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Cats fall for illusions too
On 08 Mar 2013, at 05:53, Terren Suydam wrote: That's interesting to me too. Actually I'm surprised you are not more embracing of Bruno's ideas because they give life to the idea of conscious software. You seem to me to be reluctant to give up materialism, but philosophically speaking I think materialism dooms AI. On the more theoretical side of things, I will say this. It occurred to me the other day that the trace of the UD (aka UD*) is a fractal, in that many of the programs executed by the UD are themselves universal dovetailers. It is reminiscent of the Mandelbrot set, in that there are many such paths (an infinite number) that replicate the UD but alter it in some small way. Every program generated by the UD in fact is replicated an infinite number of times, and also altered slightly an infinite number of times. I wonder if there are clues to the measure problem hidden in the fractal characteristics of the UD*. But that's wild-ass speculation. I don't have the mathematical chops to take that idea any further. Very good remarks. The resemblance is so big that I do conjecture that the rational M set is actually a compact universal dovetailing. There has been some thread on this. I love very much the M-set, and the zoom in and out. Bruno On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 11:37 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Ah. That's above my pay grade unfortunately. But I don't think our immediate failure to solve that problem dooms the idea that a cat's experience of the world is explainable in terms of mechanism. Conversely, even if we did solve it, there would still be doubts. For the time being, comp remains for me the most fruitful assumption about reality, such as it is. It assumes so little and opens up such incredible vistas. Terren Hi, I agree. I think that it becomes more open to applications once it is aligned with, say, David Chalmers and Ben Goertzel's ideas. I am interested in applications. ;-) On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:17 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/7/2013 10:40 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I'm game. Which puzzle are we figuring out? A solution to Bruno's 'arithmetic body problem'. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Thin Client
On Friday, March 8, 2013 1:50:45 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Mar 2013, at 01:57, Craig Weinberg wrote: What is your empirical evidence that will convince you that my view is right? No empirical evidence can convince anyone that a view is right. Empirical evidence can convince someone that a view is wrong. Only. Bruno I can see the validity of that, although it's not always two different things. If I have a theory that the batteries in the flashlight are dead and I put new batteries in and the flashlight works, I think it is safe to say that my theory has been validated by empirical evidence. Craig Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
Stephen, you know my aversion against random: it is a disorderly sequence the origination of which is not (yet?) disclosed to us - usually excluded from our ordinate view of nature since it deprives the prediction according to the so far derived (physical?) laws. My second part to your question: Meaningful is derived as based on our so far accumulated knowledge about the world. It grows steadily over the millennia. So which 'meaningful' do you mean? yesterday's, or of 1000BC? Your correct decryption scheme is by the 2nd par. above. Regards John M On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Hi, What is the difference between a random sequence of bits and a meaningful message? The correct decryption scheme. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscribe@**googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Brain teaser
On 3/8/2013 3:05 PM, John Mikes wrote: Stephen, you know my aversion against random: it is a disorderly sequence the origination of which is not (yet?) disclosed to us - usually excluded from our ordinate view of nature since it deprives the prediction according to the so far derived (physical?) laws. My second part to your question: Meaningful is derived as based on our so far accumulated knowledge about the world. It grows steadily over the millennia. So which 'meaningful' do you mean? yesterday's, or of 1000BC? Hi John, Knowledge is really just the result of a successful decryption scheme acting on what appears to all* observers to be a random string (modulo representations). The accumulate wisdom that one machine might know is not necessarily equal to that of another and thus should almost never be used as an objective or global measure. Meanigfulness might be defined as the measure of the ability to use some lattice of knowledge to generate some standard of work, BTU, horsepower, flops, etc. Your correct decryption scheme is by the 2nd par. above. Regards John M My use of the word 'all' is hereby redefined to mean all of the members of some set or equivalence that might be non-regular http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_regularity. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: MGA is back (on the FOAR list)
On Friday, March 8, 2013 1:35:12 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Mar 2013, at 17:37, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:19:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2013, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand where you are coming from in MGA now, Bruno, and again there is nothing wrong with your reasoning, but in that your initial assumptions are not the universe that we live in. ? (the assumption of the whole reasoning is just comp. Then in MGA i make some local assumption to make a point, but they are discharged before getting the conclusion). Right. It's the comp where the assumptions are which don't match our universe. our universe? That's more an object of enquiry than a something I would take for granted. I don't find the notion of a shared universe especially controversial. What leads you to draw away from it? I don't have any particular problem with what you add to it - you make perfect sense if comp were true... but comp can't be true, so it doesn't matter. You say often that comp can't be true, but when will you say no to a doctor proposing very little protheses in the brain, and then bigger one. I would feel the same about replacing body parts. The more that's being replaced, the more I want to say no. Also, nothing in the brain seems to be not Turing emulable. Nothing that is examined with Turing emulable instruments can seem other than Turing emulable. Once we engage in the world as a body, and uses instruments which extend our body's sense organs, then we have amplified our instrumental view of the world as public-objects-divided-by-space. What is gained is gained at the expense of our natural orientation as private-experiences-united-through-time, which atrophies under our own reflected gaze as outsiders. Indeed, once you map the self as a brain, then the map fits into any other map, but you can't get that map back into a self without losing the Turing emulable knowledge and control. They are mutually exclusive, just as private and public are mutually exclusive. Comp is without doubt a strong hypothesis, with counter-intuitive consequences, The consequences don't bother me, Comp just happens to be incorrect because it mistakes forms and functions for that which experiences and participates through forms and functions. but non-comp is a vague label for theories which are never presented. As I try to explain, many things you say make sense from a computationalist perspective, so it is weird you believe so much that comp can't be true. Non-comp is a weird label...sounds like it must have been coined by Comp fanciers. Something like 'Natural' sounds better to me. Before we imagined that we could stitch a living mind on a very large pillowcase, we imagined that we were natural persons, irreducible to smaller parts. Let me give you a thought experiment that might give you a sense of where I see the assumptions jump to the wrong conclusion. Suppose Alice didn't have an energetic particle to save her logic misfire and she ended up confusing her own name with Alison. Nobody tried to correct her use of her own name, so people assumed that she has begun using a new name, or that one of the two names was just a nickname. As she went about her business over the next several years, opening new accounts and receiving mail as Alison, she had essentially lost her old name, except for the very closest family members and government records which retained unambiguous reference to Alice. Now suppose a more catastrophic event happens with many of her logic gates. Every name that she has ever heard is now switched in her memory. Instead of Romeo and Juliet, her star-crossed lovers are Pizza-Foot and Sycorax. Instead of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, she remembers those characters as Baron Von Slouchcousin and Pimento. The stories are otherwise in-tact of course. The function of the characters is identical. As the brain parts keep failing and then coming back online, all of the content of history and fiction have become hopelessly scrambled, but the stories and information are undamaged. Star Wars takes place in Egypt. Queen Elizabeth was named Treewort and lives in the trunk of a 2003 Mazda but otherwise the succession of the British throne is clearly understood. As luck would have it, the problem with her name interpreter was mirrored by a problem in her output modules, which translates all of her twisted names into the expected ones, effectively undoing her malfunction as far as anyone else is concerned. There is no problem for her socially, and no problem for her psychologically, as she does not suspect any malfunction, and neither does anyone else. Who is the British monarch? Elizabeth or Treewort? Is there a difference between the two? It comes down to exploring the reality of proprietary vs generic, or
Re: MGA is back (on the FOAR list)
On 3/8/2013 4:33 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, March 8, 2013 1:35:12 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Mar 2013, at 17:37, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:19:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2013, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand where you are coming from in MGA now, Bruno, and again there is nothing wrong with your reasoning, but in that your initial assumptions are not the universe that we live in. ? (the assumption of the whole reasoning is just comp. Then in MGA i make some local assumption to make a point, but they are discharged before getting the conclusion). Right. It's the comp where the assumptions are which don't match our universe. our universe? That's more an object of enquiry than a something I would take for granted. I don't find the notion of a shared universe especially controversial. What leads you to draw away from it? I don't have any particular problem with what you add to it - you make perfect sense if comp were true... but comp can't be true, so it doesn't matter. You say often that comp can't be true, but when will you say no to a doctor proposing very little protheses in the brain, and then bigger one. I would feel the same about replacing body parts. The more that's being replaced, the more I want to say no. Hi Craig, You might enjoy the anime series and manga Ghost in a Shell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell. It explores this question. Also, nothing in the brain seems to be not Turing emulable. Nothing that is examined with Turing emulable instruments can seem other than Turing emulable. Once we engage in the world as a body, and uses instruments which extend our body's sense organs, then we have amplified our instrumental view of the world as public-objects-divided-by-space. What is gained is gained at the expense of our natural orientation as private-experiences-united-through-time, which atrophies under our own reflected gaze as outsiders. Indeed, once you map the self as a brain, then the map fits into any other map, but you can't get that map back into a self without losing the Turing emulable knowledge and control. They are mutually exclusive, just as private and public are mutually exclusive. Comp is without doubt a strong hypothesis, with counter-intuitive consequences, The consequences don't bother me, Comp just happens to be incorrect because it mistakes forms and functions for that which experiences and participates through forms and functions. but non-comp is a vague label for theories which are never presented. As I try to explain, many things you say make sense from a computationalist perspective, so it is weird you believe so much that comp can't be true. Non-comp is a weird label...sounds like it must have been coined by Comp fanciers. Something like 'Natural' sounds better to me. Before we imagined that we could stitch a living mind on a very large pillowcase, we imagined that we were natural persons, irreducible to smaller parts. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
True?
Hi, Is the following a sound claim? ...scientifically meaningful propositions are questions about the past, the present, the future, or the eternal laws that: * might in principle be both false and true * admit a method, at least in principle, to evaluate their truth values. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 3/8/2013 11:08 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi, Is the following a sound claim? ...scientifically meaningful propositions are questions about the past, the present, the future, or the eternal laws that: * might in principle be both false and true * admit a method, at least in principle, to evaluate their truth values. -- Is the following a sound claim? ...examples of propositions that don't belong to science because one of the disqualifying conditions below holds: * they're purely mathematical in character so they require no empirical input at all * they're statements about fictional objects such as Hamlet that can't be decided from the only available data, in this case the text of Hamlet (there's no real Hamlet offering additional data) * they depend on subjective opinions and preferences -- Onward! Stephen PS, I am quotingSean Carroll http://preposterousuniverse.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: who would vow never to change their views? The religious faithful. By simple logic the answer has to be yes if the following conditions are met. If whenever a traffic jam happens the sun goes down and whenever the sun goes down a traffic jam happens and there has never been a single recorded instance of this not happening then the sun going down and traffic jams are inextricably linked together. But you can see that's a fallacy just by understanding that obviously we cannot cause the Sun to go down by making a traffic jam. Obviously be damned! If we lived in a universe where without exception every single time there was a traffic jam then obviously the laws of physics and the orbital mechanics of the solar system would have to be radically different from what they are in this universe. And if we don't have a good theory to explain how it could be that traffic jams could effect the rotation of the Earth that's just too bad but the universe doesn't care if we understand how it works or not and our lack of understanding would not change the fact that the every single time a traffic jam happens the sun goes down. we know that whenever there is a change in brain chemistry there is ALWAYS a change in consciousness and whenever there is a change in consciousness there is ALWAYS a change in brain chemistry, so consciousness and chemistry are also inextricably linked together. No. NO? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN NO?!! they are opposite in every way - because they are literally the opposite side of each other. If whenever X happens Y happens and whenever X does not happen Y never happens then X causes Y, it's what the word causes means for goodness sake. Computers are made of atoms and molecules just like humans are, No, they are made of different molecules entirely. Which is why we plug them into electric current rather than feeding them cheeseburgers. So you think carbon is inherently more conscious than silicon and hydrocarbons are more conscious than silicon-dioxide. That's just dumb. If my brain changed my mind, In other words if your brain started to do things differently. then it would be an involuntary change. I have no idea what that means, I do know that the mind is what the brain does and if it started to do things differently it did so for a reason, a new chemical introduced into your bloodstream that made it past the blood brain barrier for example, or the brain started doing things differently for no reason at all, in other words random. If you change your mind, that is to say if your brain changes what it is doing, then your brain chemistry changes. And if your brain chemistry changes then you change your mind. Get it? Ahhh, so your brain changes its own chemistry Obviously. The mind knows nothing about the brain and the brain knows nothing about the mind. That depends on the mind, but it is true that fast knows nothing about racing car. We have sub-personal, or sub-conscious, instinctual, physiological drives The subconscious?? Why are you talking about the aspect of our mind not involved in consciousness? I thought you said the only important thing is consciousness! Please give me experimental evidence of one chemical reaction in the brain that is not controlled by a impersonal law of physics. Any chemical reaction which is involved in my deciding to hold in a sneeze. There would be no deciding to do if foreign particles didn't trigger release of histamines which irritate nerve cells in the nose and send a signal to the brain. That signal is excitatory pushing in the direction of a sneeze, and for every excitatory signal there is almost always a inhibitory signal saying not to do it, one signal will be stronger than the other so you will either sneeze or not. Should we inform CERN that pollen does not obey the laws of physics, or histamines? Receiver theories of consciousness are not my invention, and have been around longer than Newtonian physics. Yes, and that is an excellent reason for thinking they're bullshit, just like many ideas from the pre-scientific era. A computer can be programmed to detect what it is programmed to detect. It has no idea if your microphone is providing it with audio input - input is input. It knows which jack and what voltage fluctuations are present there - that's all it knows. Then why does the computer display a unrecognized format error message when they are plugged in wrong but not when they are connected correctly? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 3/9/2013 1:01 AM, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: who would vow never to change their views? The religious faithful. Dear John, Could you consider the possibility that the religiously faithful are actually bots carrying out the will of some UTM? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Stephen Hawking can look at someone doing it and eventually figure it out, and then instruct me to do exactly what he says and unclog the toilet. The sad, very sad, fact is that without computers Stephen Hawking couldn't instruct you about anything, he can't talk and today the only thing he can move is one muscle on his cheek, but that's enough for the computer to turn that into text. John k Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 3/9/2013 1:12 AM, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Stephen Hawking can look at someone doing it and eventually figure it out, and then instruct me to do exactly what he says and unclog the toilet. The sad, very sad, fact is that without computers Stephen Hawking couldn't instruct you about anything, he can't talk and today the only thing he can move is one muscle on his cheek, but that's enough for the computer to turn that into text. John k Clark Stephen is the first Borg. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
