date:20140131

Liz,

Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving!

The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality. The 
problem is that you are denying the flow of time.

For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be active 
processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that...

Edgar



On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from 
> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation describing 
> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at 
> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, you 
> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all the 
> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a "God's 
> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the perspective 
> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it isn't 
> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations and 
> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be 
> isomorphic to reality).
>
> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem, 
> and has been since Newton published his Principia.
>
> There *are* problems with comp, of course, like the "white rabbit" 
> problem. Does anyone have any new views on the real problems, rather than 
> worrying about straw men?
>
>

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Re: Unput and Onput



On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:15:55 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 31 January 2014 17:13, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:32:02 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> It isn't *essential. *Technically, I believe I/O can be added to a 
>>> computer programme as some sort of initial settings (for any given run of 
>>> the programme). 
>>>
>>
>> Added how though? By inputting code, yes?
>>
>
> All code has to be input. That isn't input TO the programme, however, it's 
> setting up the programme before it is run. 
>

Right, but that's my point. Computationalism overolooks its own 
instantiation through input. It begins assuming that code is running. It 
begins with the assumption that coding methods exist. I am saying that 
those methods can only be sensory-motive, and that sensory-motive phenomena 
must precede the first possible instance of computation.
 

>  
>>
>>> Obviously this isn't much use in practice, of course! But from a 
>>> philosophical perspective it's possible, so it isn't ontologically 
>>> essential to the function of computation.
>>>
>>> A trivial example would be my son's Python programme to generate 2000 
>>> digits of pi. It just uses some existing equation which generates each 
>>> digit in sequence. It happens to write the output to the screen, but if he 
>>> took out the relevant PRINT statement, it wouldn't - but it would still 
>>> compute the result.
>>>
>>
>> The existing equation was input at some point though, and without the 
>> output, whether or not there was a computation is academic (and 
>> unfalsifiable). 
>>
>
> That wasn't the point. The question was whether I/O is ontologically 
> essential to the function of computation. Quite clearly, the answer is no. 
> The function of computation *can* exist without any I/O, so that answers 
> the question.
>

I disagree. I don't think that we know that. There is no possible case 
where computation without output is observed, so we cannot assume that 
computation is ontologically possible without output. We cannot assume that 
theoretical computation is free from the ontological constraints that real 
computation is subject to in our experience.


> I was just answering your question honestly and as accurately as I could. 
> If you're going to change the question to something else when I attempt to 
> answer it, I won't bother in future.
>

You're answering it honestly, but you are assuming a universe in which 
sensory experience is theoretical and computation is actual. I am pointing 
out that this is a theoretical perspective. 

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:22:12 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 31 January 2014 17:19, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from 
>>> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation describing 
>>> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at 
>>> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, you 
>>> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all the 
>>> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a "God's 
>>> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the perspective 
>>> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it isn't 
>>> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations and 
>>> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be 
>>> isomorphic to reality).
>>>
>>> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem, 
>>> and has been since Newton published his Principia.
>>>
>>
>> Is a description the same as emergence though? We can read a film strip 
>> as a moving picture because of the nature of our sensory capacities, not 
>> because the moving picture emerges from the God's Eye view of the frames. 
>> F=ma begins with acceleration already assumed, so it is an equation that we 
>> interpret as referring to motion, nut the equation itself doesn't refer to 
>> anything. It's neither static nor dynamic, its just conceptual.
>>
>> I am illustrating where the idea of a block universe comes from, and the 
> context in which it makes sense. If you mean ontological emergence, the 
> origin of physics, that can't be answered within the framework of 
> explaining how a block universe works. It's a separate question. If you 
> mean emergence within a block universe, clearly that can occur, as it 
> happened in the past, and the past is a block universe according to the 
> normal definition.
>

I thought that the whole point of a block universe is that nothing can or 
needs to "emerge". It is all there in the block.
 

>
> Or maybe you're just talking nonsense. F=ma refers to a mass accelerating 
> under a force. It is a static equation describing a dynamic process, 
> something that could be useful in visualising how a block universe works, 
> which is why I mentioned it. It's quite straightforward. It isn't rocket 
> science.
>

But F=ma can only be epiphenomenal in a block universe. There can't be an 
true acceleration because acceleration requires time, and a block universe 
would have only coordinates within a static temporal axis, wouldn't it? 
Acceleration would be a statistical derivative only, it seems to me.
 

>
> (Oh, wait...)
>
>

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Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

Brent,

PS on quoted post:

If, as you say, A's proper time (comoving clock) is running much slower all 
during (most of) the trip to the center of the galaxy, then doesn't that 
mean A would observe all the intergalactic stuff passing by him at MUCH 
greater than the speed of light? How would that work?

Stay at home observer B sees him traveling at just under the speed of 
light, but if A's proper time is actually slowing by a factor of 
~31000/20=1550 he must see himself traveling at much GREATER than the speed 
of light relative to the intergalactic stuff he is passing. Is that right?

Second, I seem to recall you saying that in the case of an observer falling 
through the event horizon of a black hole his own comoving clock (proper 
time) does NOT slow and he just observes himself falling right through it 
and reaching the singularity only 20 minutes later on his clock. 

So why is the comoving clock traveling to the center of the galaxy slowed 
but the comoving clock falling into a black hole isn't? In both cases we 
agree that a stationary observer watching back on earth sees these clocks 
both slowing don't we?

Thanks,
Edgar

On Thursday, January 30, 2014 5:11:28 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>
> Brent,
>
> So what you are saying is that because everything travels through 
> spacetime at the speed of light in all frames (my STc Principle) and A's 
> path through SPACE is much longer than B's (which is zero) that A's path 
> through time must be correspondingly shorter?
>
> At least that's my understanding and the way I'd express it.
>
> However according to what you said yesterday that the time slowing effect 
> is due to the longer travel time of photons due to relative motion away 
> from each other, wouldn't A see B's clock slow by the SAME amount that B 
> see's A's clock slow DURING the trip due to the equal and opposite relative 
> motion and the equally longer and longer time photons from each take to 
> reach the other? 
>
> But that seems to contradict the first result which implies A and B should 
> observe each other's clocks NOT slowing by the same rate DURING the trip 
> because A is actually moving in space and B isn't.
>
> So what's your explanation for the apparent contradiction?
>
> Thanks,
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:25:09 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>>
>>  On 1/29/2014 5:39 PM, LizR wrote:
>>  
>>  On 30 January 2014 14:17, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/29/2014 5:19 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>>  
 Brent,

  Here's another relativity question I'd like to get your explanation 
 for if I may...

 In Thorne's 'Black Holes and Time Warps' he gives the following example.

 Two observers A and B.

 A leaves earth orbit to travel to the center of the galaxy, 30,100 
 light year away, using a constant 1g acceleration to the midpoint and a 
 constant 1g decelleration on the second half of the journey to arrive 
 stationary at the galactic center,

 Thorne tells us that the 30,100 light year trip takes 30,102 years on 
 B's clock back on earth but only 20 years on A's clock aboard the 
 spaceship.

 Now my question is what causes the extreme slowing of A's clock?

 It can't be the acceleration as both A and B experience the exact same 
 1g acceleration for the duration of the trip.

 I can understand that during the trip B will observe A's clock to be 
 greatly slowed due to the extreme relative motion, but since the motion IS 
 relative wouldn't A also observe B's clock to be slowed by the same amount 
 during the trip?

 And since the time dilation of relative motion is relative then how 
 does it actually produce a real objective slowing of A's clock that both 
 observers can agree upon?

 You had said yesterday that "geometry doesn't cause clocks to slow" but 
 other than the trivial 1g acceleration isn't all the rest just geometry in 
 this case?

 What's the proper way to analyze this to get Thorne's result?

>>>
>>> A rough way to see it is right is to note that c/g = 3e7sec ~ 1year << 
>>> 30,000yr.  So the spaceship spends essentially the whole flight at very 
>>> near c.  So the trip takes 30,100+ years in the frame of the galaxy. But 
>>> the proper time for the spaceship is very small; if it were actually at 
>>> speed c, like a photon, its proper time lapse would be zero. Only, because 
>>> it can't quite reach c, the time turns out to be 20 years. To get the exact 
>>> values you have to integrate the differential equations:
>>>
>>> dt/dtau = 1/gamma
>>> dv/dtau = accel/gamma^2
>>> dx/dtau = v/gamma
>>>
>>> where gamma=sqrt(1-v^2)
>>>
>>  
>>  The equivalence principle indicates that both A and B are in a 1g 
>> gravitational field throughout the exercise, hence the time dilation 
>> experienced by A can't be gravitational. All that leaves is the different 
>> distances they travel through s

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Thursday, January 30, 2014 7:14:18 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
>
> On 31 January 2014 02:51, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> > Had we not already discovered the impossibility of resurrecting a 
> dead 
> >> > person with raw electricity, would your position offer any insight 
> into 
> >> > why 
> >> > that strategy would fail 100% of the time? 
> >> 
> >> Actually, we can sometimes resurrect a dead person with raw 
> >> electricity in cases of cardiac arrest, which would previously have 
> >> been defined as death. It's a case of the definition of death changing 
> >> with technology. In future, there will probably be patients who would 
> >> currently considered brain dead who will be able to be revived. 
> > 
> > 
> > That does not resurrect a dead person, it just helps restart a 
> still-living 
> > person's heart. True, cardiac arrest will eventually kill a person, but 
> > sending electricity through the body of someone who has died of cholera 
> or a 
> > stroke is not going to revive them. My point though is that there is 
> nothing 
> > within functionalism which predicts the finality or complexity of death. 
> If 
> > we are just a machine halting, why wouldn't fixing the machine restart 
> it in 
> > theory? We can smuggle in our understanding of the irreversibility of 
> death, 
> > and rationalize it after the fact, but can you honestly say that 
> > functionalism predicts the pervasiveness of it? 
>
> Death used to be defined as the cessation of heartbeat and breathing, 
>

Only by doctors. That is the 3p physiological definition though. People did 
not define their own death that way. If that was ever truly the definition 
of death, then the invention of heart-lung machines would have marked the 
beginning of immortality. Forcing the heart to beat and the lungs to breath 
does not, in fact, resurrect someone who is actually dead.

> so according to this definition you *could* resurrect a dead person 
> with fairly simple techniques which "fix the machine".

Because the definition is fictional. According to fictional definitions, 
you could also resurrect a dead person by casting a spell.

> In the future, 
> this may be possible with what is currently defined as brain death. 
>

It still does not figure into any prediction of Comp. From a comp 
perspective it should be possible to resurrect specific modules of the mind 
and personality long after death. It should really be possible to piece 
together a person from their effects on the world really. By triangulating 
everything that an artist or writer produced, it should be computationally 
possible to reverse engineer them. As long as our browser history is 
intact, we are potentially immortal.

Craig

>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread Telmo Menezes

Hi Edgar,

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
> Liz,
>
> Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving!
>
> The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality. The
> problem is that you are denying the flow of time.

Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow
of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear
to flow for each observer. This doesn't prove that block universe
hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily
either.

Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind
you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of
heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival
scenarios.

> For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be active
> processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that...

I wonder.

Telmo.

> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>
>> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from
>> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation describing
>> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at
>> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, you
>> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all the
>> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a "God's
>> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the perspective
>> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it isn't
>> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations and
>> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be
>> isomorphic to reality).
>>
>> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem,
>> and has been since Newton published his Principia.
>>
>> There are problems with comp, of course, like the "white rabbit" problem.
>> Does anyone have any new views on the real problems, rather than worrying
>> about straw men?
>>
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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
> Hi Edgar, 
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen > 
> wrote: 
> > Liz, 
> > 
> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving! 
> > 
> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality. 
> The 
> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time. 
>
> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow 
> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear 
> to flow for each observer. 


Does it though, or does it just use emergence as a crutch? Wouldn't it make 
more sense for there to be no 'observation' at all? Block universes need 
not have any consciousness. What would be the point?
 

> This doesn't prove that block universe 
> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily 
> either. 
>
> Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind 
> you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of 
> heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival 
> scenarios. 
>
> > For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be 
> active 
> > processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that... 
>
> I wonder. 
>
> Telmo. 
>
> > Edgar 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: 
> >> 
> >> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from 
> >> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation 
> describing 
> >> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at 
> >> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, 
> you 
> >> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all 
> the 
> >> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a 
> "God's 
> >> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the 
> perspective 
> >> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it 
> isn't 
> >> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations 
> and 
> >> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be 
> >> isomorphic to reality). 
> >> 
> >> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem, 
> >> and has been since Newton published his Principia. 
> >> 
> >> There are problems with comp, of course, like the "white rabbit" 
> problem. 
> >> Does anyone have any new views on the real problems, rather than 
> worrying 
> >> about straw men? 
> >> 
> > -- 
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Questions on red shift and accelerating Hubble expansion

All,

It seems to me there are some somewhat questionable assumptions here based 
on a very restricted data set.

First, the presumed acceleration of the Hubble expansion is based on the 
varying redshifts of standard candles such as type 1a supernovas with 
distance and time.

The basic problem with this is that we observe past times only at 
particular distances, and equivalently distances only at particular past 
times. So we have to assume that 

1. At all past times, the universe at all distances was expanding at the 
same rate that we can observe it expanding only at a SINGLE distance.
2. That the apparent sizes of things (1a's) recedes LINEARLY with both time 
and distance over the entire history, and entire expanse of the universe. 
In other words that there is no type of large scale spacetime curvature 
that would result in a slightly NONlinear decreases or increases in 
apparent size over the expanse and history of the universe.
3. That there is no alternative cause of red shift other than relative 
velocity (specifically when it comes to evaluating 1a's for which we can 
eliminate or account for gravitational redshifts). In particular that 
enormous time and distance per se have no effect on EM frequencies.

Thus the initial but unverifiable assumption is that the universe expanded 
at the same rate everywhere at any given time. However we actually have 
absolutely NO IDEA of how fast it is actually expanding right NOW because 
we cannot measure what it is doing right now because we have to wait for 
the light to reach us. We can only measure what what it was doing at 
various past times and then only at particular distances. So right now the 
distant universe could well be collapsing or exploding and we would have 
absolutely no knowledge of that. So we simply cannot say with any certainty 
at all that 'the Hubble expansion is accelerating' right NOW.

Also we know (or assume) that the early universe was significantly SMALLER 
than the current universe since it has been expanding continuously. In 
other words galaxies must have been significantly CLOSER together back then 
even though we see them distributed all around the galactic sphere as if 
they are not.

This produces a type of illusion of scale when we look back into the 
universe. The problem is that into the distant universe and back into 
distant time the sides of our light cones are not straight but CURVED, 
because they must eventually all converge at the big bang towards a single 
point (if we could see back that far) rather than continuing to expand in 
straight lines back into time as they are usually depicted.

Now it seems to me this might cause some non-linear effect of red shifts or 
apparent sizes of distant 1a quasars which would affect the calculations of 
Hubble expansion rates over time.

Is anyone familiar with this argument and able to comment on the 
implications?

Thanks,
Edgar

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>> Hi Edgar,
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>> > Liz,
>> >
>> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving!
>> >
>> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality.
>> > The
>> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time.
>>
>> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow
>> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear
>> to flow for each observer.
>
>
> Does it though, or does it just use emergence as a crutch?

The way I see it I wouldn't even call it emergence. I imagine that all
the moments where I can be conscious are eternal. They belong to a
structure (block universe), and what we perceive as time is an aspect
of this structure. Imagine we are experiencing all the possible
moments, "eternally", right "now". Would things appear any difference
from the perspective of any of these moments? My point is just that
this hypothesis is consistent with observed reality.

Do you find this idea incompatible with multi-sense realism?

> Wouldn't it make
> more sense for there to be no 'observation' at all?

Yes, even with no block universe, in my opinion.

> Block universes need not
> have any consciousness. What would be the point?

I wish I knew, but I feel the question also applies to non-block universes.

Telmo.

>>
>> This doesn't prove that block universe
>> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily
>> either.
>>
>> Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind
>> you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of
>> heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival
>> scenarios.
>>
>> > For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be
>> > active
>> > processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that...
>>
>> I wonder.
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>> > Edgar
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from
>> >> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation
>> >> describing
>> >> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at
>> >> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension,
>> >> you
>> >> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all
>> >> the
>> >> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a
>> >> "God's
>> >> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the
>> >> perspective
>> >> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it
>> >> isn't
>> >> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations
>> >> and
>> >> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be
>> >> isomorphic to reality).
>> >>
>> >> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem,
>> >> and has been since Newton published his Principia.
>> >>
>> >> There are problems with comp, of course, like the "white rabbit"
>> >> problem.
>> >> Does anyone have any new views on the real problems, rather than
>> >> worrying
>> >> about straw men?
>> >>
>> > --
>> > 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
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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

Telmo,

Block time and Bruno's comp can only tell us how a set fixed static 
sequence of events could be perceived by some observer as a fixed static 
sequence of events. It simply CANNOT tell us how time moves ALONG that 
sequence.

The fact that time flows, that things change, is a fundamental EMPIRICAL 
OBSERVATION. It is not some intuitive illusion. It is the basic measurable 
observation of our existence and it never ceases from birth to death. It 
simply cannot be disregarded as some sort of survival mechanism. In fact if 
block time were actually real survival mechanisms would not be needed 
because the future is already written deterministically contrary to QM and 
in violation of all sorts of physical laws.

If you think block time exists then where does that entire block come from? 
Did it create itself? Sequentially or all at once? Did something outside of 
it create it? What? How? Was it created causally in time? Or did it just 
magically appear like some kind of miracle? The believers in block time 
have an unfortunate habit of not thinking through the implications of their 
crazy theory.

Again, the best way I can say it is that your mouth has to move plenty to 
tell me it isn't moving!

Best,
Edgar

On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
> Hi Edgar, 
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen > 
> wrote: 
> > Liz, 
> > 
> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving! 
> > 
> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality. 
> The 
> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time. 
>
> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow 
> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear 
> to flow for each observer. This doesn't prove that block universe 
> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily 
> either. 
>
> Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind 
> you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of 
> heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival 
> scenarios. 
>
> > For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be 
> active 
> > processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that... 
>
> I wonder. 
>
> Telmo. 
>
> > Edgar 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: 
> >> 
> >> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from 
> >> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation 
> describing 
> >> something changing. Change is by definition things being different at 
> >> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, 
> you 
> >> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all 
> the 
> >> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a 
> "God's 
> >> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the 
> perspective 
> >> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it 
> isn't 
> >> the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations 
> and 
> >> so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be 
> >> isomorphic to reality). 
> >> 
> >> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem, 
> >> and has been since Newton published his Principia. 
> >> 
> >> There are problems with comp, of course, like the "white rabbit" 
> problem. 
> >> Does anyone have any new views on the real problems, rather than 
> worrying 
> >> about straw men? 
> >> 
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Re: Questions on red shift and accelerating Hubble expansion

PS:

A couple more thoughts on redshift and Hubble acceleration:

1. Since deep past light cones are curved inward it seems to me that 
standard candle objects in the deep past would appear slightly smaller than 
they should be if the universe had not expanded because their light rays 
pinch inward as they get to us.

That means that (unless this is corrected for) that deep past objects are 
actually less distant than they appear (since they are actually slightly 
larger than they appear) and thus that the red shifts we associate with 
deep past objects are actually those for slightly less distant objects.

That would mean that the acceleration of the Hubble expansion might be LESS 
than we think, because the redshifts of nearer objects are greater than we 
thought and thus nearer to those even closer, meaning that the redshift 
(and thus the Hubble expansion) doesn't vary as much with time and distance 
as was thought. Whether that is enough to eliminate the putative 
acceleration I don't know, that would have to be worked out, but it would 
diminish the acceleration some.


2. Again however the basic problem is that we can measure standard candle 
redshifts for only 1 point of time at each point of distance. So the best 
we could possibly claim is that CLOSER distances of the universe seem to 
have been accelerating faster millions of years ago than FAR distances of 
the universe were billions of years ago. All the rest is assumptions

Edgar



On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:19:41 AM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>
> All,
>
> It seems to me there are some somewhat questionable assumptions here based 
> on a very restricted data set.
>
> First, the presumed acceleration of the Hubble expansion is based on the 
> varying redshifts of standard candles such as type 1a supernovas with 
> distance and time.
>
> The basic problem with this is that we observe past times only at 
> particular distances, and equivalently distances only at particular past 
> times. So we have to assume that 
>
> 1. At all past times, the universe at all distances was expanding at the 
> same rate that we can observe it expanding only at a SINGLE distance.
> 2. That the apparent sizes of things (1a's) recedes LINEARLY with both 
> time and distance over the entire history, and entire expanse of the 
> universe. In other words that there is no type of large scale spacetime 
> curvature that would result in a slightly NONlinear decreases or increases 
> in apparent size over the expanse and history of the universe.
> 3. That there is no alternative cause of red shift other than relative 
> velocity (specifically when it comes to evaluating 1a's for which we can 
> eliminate or account for gravitational redshifts). In particular that 
> enormous time and distance per se have no effect on EM frequencies.
>
> Thus the initial but unverifiable assumption is that the universe expanded 
> at the same rate everywhere at any given time. However we actually have 
> absolutely NO IDEA of how fast it is actually expanding right NOW because 
> we cannot measure what it is doing right now because we have to wait for 
> the light to reach us. We can only measure what what it was doing at 
> various past times and then only at particular distances. So right now the 
> distant universe could well be collapsing or exploding and we would have 
> absolutely no knowledge of that. So we simply cannot say with any certainty 
> at all that 'the Hubble expansion is accelerating' right NOW.
>
> Also we know (or assume) that the early universe was significantly SMALLER 
> than the current universe since it has been expanding continuously. In 
> other words galaxies must have been significantly CLOSER together back then 
> even though we see them distributed all around the galactic sphere as if 
> they are not.
>
> This produces a type of illusion of scale when we look back into the 
> universe. The problem is that into the distant universe and back into 
> distant time the sides of our light cones are not straight but CURVED, 
> because they must eventually all converge at the big bang towards a single 
> point (if we could see back that far) rather than continuing to expand in 
> straight lines back into time as they are usually depicted.
>
> Now it seems to me this might cause some non-linear effect of red shifts 
> or apparent sizes of distant 1a quasars which would affect the calculations 
> of Hubble expansion rates over time.
>
> Is anyone familiar with this argument and able to comment on the 
> implications?
>
> Thanks,
> Edgar
>

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread David Nyman

On 31 January 2014 13:28, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

Imagine we are experiencing all the possible
> moments, "eternally", right "now". Would things appear any difference
> from the perspective of any of these moments?
>

Interesting question. Depends what you mean by "we", I guess, and also what
you mean by "any of these moments". Are you satisfied with the idea that
"your" experience would be restricted to just any *one* of those moments?
Sure, that might be consistent with the particular "history to this point"
encapsulated by the memories associated with that moment. But a you that is
restricted to one particular moment might seem to lack the possibility of
any "future history" beyond that point, no? Remember that I'm talking about
intuition here, not about "reality", but I think it's matching intuition
with some proposed model of reality that is actually under discussion here.

If we don't allow our intuition to select - and then restrict - our
experience to that of some particular moment, should we accept the
"panoptic" alternative of all moments "simultaneously"? Well, this seems
grossly inconsistent with the experience of any particular one of "us", in
terms of which moments are definitively non-simultaneous. What sort of
intuition might then suggest itself? The panoptic symmetry needs to be
broken in some manner that doesn't leave each one of "us" stranded,
monad-like, in the context of a single moment. I would argue that Hoyle's
stochastic serialisation of the class of all possible moments comes
naturally to hand here.

This idea, let us be clear, simply provides a logical referent, in the
context of a block structure, for our incorrigible belief in the successive
change in our "personal" spatial-temporal location. It's by no means
intended to introduce a "second time dimension", or a primitive physical
"becoming". That said, It may well be that our difficulty with these
intuitions (for those, at least, who entertain such difficulties) is a sign
that there may be something amiss with the block-structure idea itself, at
least when considered as a physical primitive. In particular, as I
suggested at the outset, there may be something amiss with our notion of
"ourselves" - something which is (to say the least, and no doubt
intentionally) under-defined in such a model.

In the computational conception, however, the notion of "person" seems more
subtle. The "person" - at least the conscious person - is hypothesised to
be an emergent at the level of the truth-content of certain classes of
incorrigible indexical beliefs, instantiated by computational machines.
Amongst these, presumably - if, per comp, "we" are some level such machines
- is just such a deeply-rooted belief in successive change in spatial
temporal location. This belief, in common with other definitive
self-concepts, is stabilised by a matrix of highly-consistent physical
appearances. In this conception one might say that a justified (i.e.
"true") belief in the momentary and successive nature of spatial-temporal
location is implicit in the very definition of a person.

David

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 30 Jan 2014, at 16:13, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


David,

Bruno's 'comp' has 2 intractable fundamental problems that I see.

1. There is absolutely no way for a static arithmetical Plantonia to  
generate any happening whatsoever. Bruno's theory that all happening  
is a 1p perspective of human observers implies nothing happened in  
the entire history of the universe until some human observer became  
conscious. Total nonsense.


See Liz's answer.




2. Perhaps even worse there is absolutely no way for pure arithmetic  
to generate the ACTUAL computational state of the observable universe.


Actual is an indexical.


How does the actual particular Fine Tuning of our universe arise  
from pure arithmetic?


I am not convinced by "fine Tuning", it justifies a posteriori only  
geographical aspect of reality.
But then, even if "fine turning" could make sense, that would not  
prevent arithmetic to explain it in the UDA way. It might only make  
either the substitution level of comp low or the our computational  
histories very intrinsically long or deep (in Bennett's sense).




Especially if it just sits there in some pure static Platonic state?  
It just doesn't! It can't


It does not sit there. Even if we could see the entire arithmetic  
truth from outside, we would not see "our physical universe". We would  
see *many* approximations of it (very plausibly), but the "real"  
universe is an inside view due to a relative (indexical) statistics  
bearing on subjective, first person, experiences. That view has  
temporal, spatial, felt, observable unavoidable modalities.


Note that arithmetic contains also many Löbian entities which are not  
machines. The arithmetical is quite bigger than the computable.  
Usually the analytical, and the physical, are not computable (as not  
arithmetical), but assuming comp they are not needed in the ontology,  
despite they play key roles in the internal epistemology of the numbers.




In my view the whole UD can be as logically consistent


Ex(UD(x)) is a theorem of (very elementary) arithmetic. (With Church  
thesis).


I don't know if that is really consistent, but I know it is provable  
from what I am the most ready to bet the consistency, like 0=0, or the  
fact that 17 is prime.




as it wants to be but still has no connection with the actual  
observable reality of our universe...


It has relation with QM without collapse, detailed, or enunciated,  
here and in the references I gave you.
Some are informal, like indeterminacy, non locality, non cloning, and  
some are formal like the complete set of the quantum tautologies.


I can argue that this is the only approach which saves the quanta and  
the qualia without assuming them in the ontology, but the main point  
is that it is a consequence of the belief that your brain can be  
emulated by a (physical of not) Universal (in the sense of Post-Church- 
Turing) machine (system, language, number, etc.).


You have not answered what is your "computational space", nor explain  
the link between it and your p-time.


Bruno


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



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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:28:38 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: 
> >> 
> >> Hi Edgar, 
> >> 
> >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen  
> wrote: 
> >> > Liz, 
> >> > 
> >> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving! 
> >> > 
> >> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality. 
> >> > The 
> >> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time. 
> >> 
> >> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow 
> >> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear 
> >> to flow for each observer. 
> > 
> > 
> > Does it though, or does it just use emergence as a crutch? 
>
> The way I see it I wouldn't even call it emergence. I imagine that all 
> the moments where I can be conscious are eternal. They belong to a 
> structure (block universe), and what we perceive as time is an aspect 
> of this structure. 

Right, but if you have the block already, why would you want an "aspect", 
and how would that constraint be accomplished?

What I'm looking at is not a structure of eternal possibilities, but an 
ongoing accretion of self-partitioning experience. It's made of aesthetic 
novelty from which 'structure' (an aesthetic appreciation of experience 
from a distance...slowed to appear static from some perspective) diverges.

> Imagine we are experiencing all the possible 
> moments, "eternally", right "now". 

I don't believe in 'possible' necessarily. What is 'now' possible is 
constantly new, but imposes constantly new constraints as well. "We" are 
not only experiencing all of the moments that have been experienced, but 
"we" *are only* the ongoing experience of them. This is not to say, 
obviously, that we personally experience all that has been experienced, 
because I think that experiences are constrained into tunnels of 
insensitivity.

> Would things appear any difference 
> from the perspective of any of these moments? My point is just that 
> this hypothesis is consistent with observed reality. 
>
> Do you find this idea incompatible with multi-sense realism? 
>

Yes, it's very close. The key though is seeing that 'appear', 'perspective' 
and 'aspect' are actually the nature of sense, not of anything else. The 
block of possibilities does not need to be there once we relocate these 
functions within sense itself. It's kind of like Relativity's 4D mollusk 
but from the inside out. We are pushing the mollusk into dimensionalized 
alphabets, but its metaphorical; the mollusk has no exterior, it has no 
need for containment of fixed indexes of possibilities. It's all ad hoc, 
but weighted by the inertia of participation and perception.

>
> > Wouldn't it make 
> > more sense for there to be no 'observation' at all? 
>
> Yes, even with no block universe, in my opinion. 
>

I agree. Unless we define the universe as 'observation' (really 
participation) from the start.

> > Block universes need not 
> > have any consciousness. What would be the point? 
>
> I wish I knew, but I feel the question also applies to non-block 
> universes. 
>

Exactly. Which leaves us with the option of turning the whole thing inside 
out and seeing the universe as the telling of the story of storytelling - 
fundamentally, physically, ontologically, realistically. That is the fabric 
of eternity - not uni-verse but universal weaving, diverting and reverting 
sensory experience.

Craig

>
> Telmo. 
>
> >> 
> >> This doesn't prove that block universe 
> >> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily 
> >> either. 
> >> 
> >> Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind 
> >> you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of 
> >> heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival 
> >> scenarios. 
> >> 
> >> > For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be 
> >> > active 
> >> > processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that... 
> >> 
> >> I wonder. 
> >> 
> >> Telmo. 
> >> 
> >> > Edgar 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: 
> >> >> 
> >> >> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge 
> from 
> >> >> something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation 
> >> >> describing 
> >> >> something changing. Change is by definition things being different 
> at 
> >> >> different times. If you map out all the times involved as a 
> dimension, 
> >> >> you 
> >> >> will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all 
> >> >> the 
> >> >> moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a 
> >> >> "God's 
> >> >> eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the 
> >> >> perspective 
> >> >> given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; i

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 30 Jan 2014, at 20:14, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/30/2014 9:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Is it not that very idea which leads to the notion of zombie?
If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, eliminating it would change  
nothing in the 3p.


Depends on what you mean by epiphenomenon.  Is temperature an  
epiphenomenon of atomic matter?


Not at all. It is an emerging higher order physical phenomenon. It can  
be measured, shared, etc.


"Epiphenomenon" is used only in philosophy of mind, and is a sort of  
last step in the abandon on attempts to solve the mind-body problem.  
It is the last step before the elimination.


It accepts the "obvious" data of personal consciousness, but it  
deprives it on any role or relation with matter.


You can compare this with the utimate consequence of the UDA (step 8),  
which says that consciousness has no possible relation with matter.


Here the comp reversal solves that problem, because we abandon  
primitive matter, and the relation consciousness/matter becomes a  
problem of universal machine semantic. Primitive matter becomes an  
"epi-nomenon", which is what the weakest form of the Occam razor  
eliminates (like the invisible horses).





I think so, but you can't eliminate temperature; it's a consequence  
of the atomic structure and the potential for atomic motion.


Exactly. The problem of consciousness, for physicalists which believe  
that the physical is explanatively close, is that they can eliminate  
it (and some do). We cannot eliminate temperature in that sense.


With comp, we eliminate consciousness and matter. Of course. At the  
ontological level. But we recover them from internal indexical  
modalities, among many things.


You can use numbers or combinators, it is not important. The quasi- 
primitive notion, but fully fundamental notion,  is the notion of  
person, and even the universal person that you get from Theaetetus +  
"Dx = xx". (To be short).


Bruno


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



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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread David Nyman

On 31 January 2014 01:52, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

The "we" of individual human beings relies on physical consistency because
> that is a common sensory experience of the animal>organism>substance
> context. The substance context however relies on the "we" of the Absolute
> context. The biological context relies on those "we"s, and the animal
> context relies on the biological "we"s. It's all nested but the bottom of
> each extrinsic level is being supported by the top of the previous
> intrinsic level.

I'm not sure I fully grasp all of the above, but I would like to tackle you
again on the POPJ, because I still can't see how your model can succeed in
avoiding it. Let me start by telling you about a movie I streamed last
night - "Inception" (I'm a bit behindhand on popular movies!). It was quite
an enjoyable yarn, but it struck me as pretty flaky, even as science
fiction, not least because the plot is built on the idea that dreams could
be experienced (and even nested dream-within-dream) with near-waking
"physical" consistency. This got me reflecting on what does indeed
distinguish dreams from "waking reality" (acknowledging of course that both
are virtual presentations from the personal perspective). I don't know
about your dreams, but in mine things have the darnedest habit of
disappearing or turning into something else when I look away and this,
presumably, is because sleeping-dreams are different to waking-dreams in
that their appearances are not in general stabilised by anything
"extrinsic" to the brain and body.

By extrinsic here I am not committing to the ultimate nature of the brain
and its environment, merely that all our experiences - metaphorised as
dreams, or in a more up-to-date image, a multi-player video-game - must
depend on some generalised and consistent system of appearances for
consistency and stabilisation. It turns out, indeed, that the system of
appearances our internal video game depends on is detailed, consistent and
stable to the most extraordinary degree; let us call this stable,
exhaustive and reliably causally-complete set of appearances the
game-physics. And the "avatars" that appear to us within the game - bodies
and brains, our own and others' - turn out to follow the rules of the
game-physics precisely in conformity with the set of appearances as a
whole, to the furthermost extent we can explore.

The logical consequence of the above is just this: Even if you consider
that the sensory nature of that-which-exists extends, beyond our personal
virtual presentations, to the whole of "reality itself", one can still not
avoid the encounter in waking-dreams with avatars (including one's own)
that cheerfully lay claim to sensory phenomena that are supernumerary in
explaining their behaviour in terms of its own rules-of-appearance (i.e.
the game-physics), and which they could not logically have access to in
terms of those very rules. Hence these sensory phenomena cannot be the
cause of these claims. This, again is the POPJ. ISTM that it is unavoidable
in any schema, whether primitive-sensory or primitive-physical, in which no
further logical entailment is discoverable in the causally-complete
machinations of the game-physics.

I've tried to set out the problem as clearly as I can and I would be
grateful if you could respond directly with a reasoned consideration of how
your theory might circumvent this formidable logical obstacle.

David

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Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

On 30 Jan 2014, at 21:14, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 2:06 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
>> the external objective environment (the weather, a syringe full  
of drugs, a punch to the face) can cause a big subjective change.

> I have no doubt that this is true. The point is that IF you have a  
complete 3p theory of the brain-body, you can't prove that the  
subjective experience exist.

I don't need a proof because I have something better, I have direct  
experience of the subjective.

Nice for you. But that does not invalidate the point that you can't  
prove this to an other person, or in the 3p sense. You don't show that  
eliminativism is inconsistent.

I don't have direct experience of YOUR conscious experience because  
it is a logical contradiction, if I did have it you wouldn't be you,  
you'd be me.

> And a subjective experience like a itch can cause a external  
objective effect, like moving the matter in your hand to scratch the  
matter in your nose.

>Sure. But again, if someone does not believe in that subjective  
experience, then a  3p causal description at some level will explain  
the external objective effect without mentioning the subjective  
experience. I agree with you of course, but that is what makes a  
part of the problem.

Problem? What's the problem? If I do not believe in your subjective  
experience, as you say above, then I certainly don't need to explain  
it. And if I do believe in your subjective experience then I can say  
it was caused by the way matter interacts (which can be fully  
described by information) just as I already know from direct  
experience that my subjective experience is caused.

That mundane explanation might be locally valid, but your own idea  
that consciousness is not localized (which indeed follows from comp)  
introduces a major difficulty, or an interesting problem.

Indeed, you are presently delocalized into an infinity of  
computations, and matter make sense only if it obeys some statistics  
on the computations (the FPI on UD*, or the arithmetical FPI, as you  
should know by now).

And if I also believe that consciousness is fundamental, that is to  
say a sequence of "What caused that?" questions is not infinite and  
consciousness comes at the end, then there is nothing more that can  
be said on the subject.

Yes, but you have to invoke some non-comp to localize yourself in some  
unique reality, with selection principles, etc. Just a lot of  
supplementary ad hoc hypotheses to put the problem under the rug.

But, once you believe that your consciousness is invariant for some  
"digital transformation", then you can begin to understand that we  
have to justify the physical from modalities associated to that those  
digital transformations. And the logic of self-reference, together  
with the most classical definition of knowledge, paves the way, with  
testable statements.

Somehow, you just say that you are not interested in the mind-body  
problem.

  I think consciousness is probably just the way information  
feels when it is being processed;

>>>In which computations. You admit yourself that consciousness  
cannot be localized in one brain,

>> Yes, because computations can't be localized either.

> Excellent. Like the numbers. They don't belong to the type of  
object having any physical attributes like position, velocity or mass.

And position not being relevant to consciousness is the reason your  
increasingly convoluted thought experiment about where the "real  
you" is located is worthless.

But I have never talk about any "real you". *you* have tried to link  
the FPI with the identity question, but this has been thoroughly  
invalidated more than one time, by different people. This is a bit  
gross.

I stay in the 3p, because in UDA we use only the most superficial  
aspect of the first person, that you mention above, and which is the  
direct access to the personal memory (technically, the one which is  
annihilated and reconstituted in the WM experiences).

Your difficulty on step 3 looks like a childish bad faith. I don't  
believe it. Ask question if you have a "real" difficulty, but don't  
use your traditional irrelevant dismissive and confusing rhetoric  
please.

Like you said once, we can't predict, in Helsinki,  W or M, and that's  
all. It is an arithmetical truth, no number can predict its next  
*first person* states in case of multiplication of its computations.  
If you believe that a number or a machine can do that, you have to  
provide an algorithm, or a proof that such an algorithm exists. It is  
a child play to explain that it cannot exist, already with the simple  
3p definition of the 1p used in the UDA.

Bruno

  John K Clark

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Re: Tegmark's New Book



On 30 Jan 2014, at 21:44, LizR wrote:


On 30 January 2014 22:44, Kim Jones  wrote:
Meanwhile - back at the ranch:

Tegmark wants to think of consciousness as - wait for it - a state  
of matter. This is very confusing. He is just making this up as he  
goes along, I'm afraid...


I think to be fair he wants to work out the properties of conscious  
matter, e.g. (by assumption) brains, which is in line with the SF  
idea of "computronium" (assuming consciousness is in some sense a  
computation).


?
Assuming consciousness is related (and preserved) through computation,  
assumes computer, that is Church thesis.


What is a computronium?

I share with Kim that Tegmark is well erring from his previous work,  
contradictiing his own previous mathematicalism, and succumbing to the  
identity of of what we don't understand (like many use of the quantum  
in consciousness).


It contradicts his own analysis of the brain, as a hot non quantum  
machine.
And its still ignores the comp constraints on the mind-brain identity  
thesis.


There might be interesting insights, but all in all, it looks like a  
regression from the comp, or even just his mathematicalist picture. A  
priori.




Which isn't a completely flakey idea, because we already have  
"computronium" to some extent.


We do have universal computer, yes. With Church thesis.


He's stating that assumption up front, at least in the paper I read  
recently, and just seeing what follows.


(Also, Tegmark's previous definition of consciousness was "what  
information feels like when it's being processed" which is in line  
with this approach, so he isn't making it up 100%)


It is the materialist approach. It uses infinities not affordable by a  
comp theory. And in that paper, he use quantum information, which is  
something else? The term "information" should be banned, as people  
abuse of it a lot. I have that feeling sometime.  It is a term which  
equivocates the 1p and 3p meaning. It looks serious thanks to the  
Shannon 3p meaning, and it looks "mental" because of its 1p meaning,  
which is related to some understanding.






If he can show how physical supervenience works, he could even be  
onto something.


Surely! But I am not sure he even address the question. The very  
notion of "conscious matter" seems to elude the question, it seems to  
me.


Bruno


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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

Bruno,

I HAVE explained my computational space and how it relates to p-time. Here 
it is again copied from my post of Jan. 25 since you missed it.

Bruno,

Once again a summary of my computational universe:

The fundamental level of reality consists of pure abstract computationally 
evolving information in the LOGICAL (not physical, not dimensional) space 
or presence of reality. What exists here is NOT static arithmetic truth. 
What exists here is the ACTUAL computations (and nothing else) necessary 
and sufficient to compute the current state of the universe as science 
observes it and confirms it. This occurs as myriads of computations in 
interaction with each other.

This is a dynamic active process which occurs in a common present moment. 
This present moment is NOT the same as clock time. Clock time and all the 
other measurable observable information states of the universe are the 
RESULTS of these fundamental computations which occur in the present moment 
of p-time. If clock time is the RESULTS of computations those computations 
MUST occur in some other type of time. That is the present moment.

This process is entirely independent of human observation. It is not a 
matter of perspective, though obviously every extant observe will have its 
own perspective on and internal mental model of this process. And observers 
will interpret this perspective as the familiar physical dimensional world.

All observers are sub-programs in this single computational reality which 
themselves continually computationally interact with the computations of 
their environments.

The entire universe consists ONLY of these active computations, consists 
ONLY of information computationally evolving.

The apparently physical classical world is how observers INTERPRET or model 
or simulate this information reality internally in their minds. They have 
evolved to do this to make it easier to compute their functioning and 
survival

Thus the actual reality is not physical, dimensional or material, it 
consists only of actively computationally evolving pure abstract 
information in a logical space ONLY.

As for the present moment of p-time, that is the present moment of time 
that provides the computational processor cycles to take place within. 
Clock time and everything else that constitutes the actual state of the 
actual observable scientific world is computed in p-time by these 
computations.

Hope that makes it clearer

Edgar

On Friday, January 31, 2014 11:03:30 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 30 Jan 2014, at 16:13, Edgar L. Owen wrote: 
>
> > David, 
> > 
> > Bruno's 'comp' has 2 intractable fundamental problems that I see. 
> > 
> > 1. There is absolutely no way for a static arithmetical Plantonia to   
> > generate any happening whatsoever. Bruno's theory that all happening   
> > is a 1p perspective of human observers implies nothing happened in   
> > the entire history of the universe until some human observer became   
> > conscious. Total nonsense. 
>
> See Liz's answer. 
>
>
> > 
> > 2. Perhaps even worse there is absolutely no way for pure arithmetic   
> > to generate the ACTUAL computational state of the observable universe. 
>
> Actual is an indexical. 
>
>
> > How does the actual particular Fine Tuning of our universe arise   
> > from pure arithmetic? 
>
> I am not convinced by "fine Tuning", it justifies a posteriori only   
> geographical aspect of reality. 
> But then, even if "fine turning" could make sense, that would not   
> prevent arithmetic to explain it in the UDA way. It might only make   
> either the substitution level of comp low or the our computational   
> histories very intrinsically long or deep (in Bennett's sense). 
>
>
>
> > Especially if it just sits there in some pure static Platonic state?   
> > It just doesn't! It can't 
>
> It does not sit there. Even if we could see the entire arithmetic   
> truth from outside, we would not see "our physical universe". We would   
> see *many* approximations of it (very plausibly), but the "real"   
> universe is an inside view due to a relative (indexical) statistics   
> bearing on subjective, first person, experiences. That view has   
> temporal, spatial, felt, observable unavoidable modalities. 
>
> Note that arithmetic contains also many Löbian entities which are not   
> machines. The arithmetical is quite bigger than the computable.   
> Usually the analytical, and the physical, are not computable (as not   
> arithmetical), but assuming comp they are not needed in the ontology,   
> despite they play key roles in the internal epistemology of the numbers. 
>
> > 
> > In my view the whole UD can be as logically consistent 
>
> Ex(UD(x)) is a theorem of (very elementary) arithmetic. (With Church   
> thesis). 
>
> I don't know if that is really consistent, but I know it is provable   
> from what I am the most ready to bet the consistency, like 0=0, or the   
> fact that 17 is prime. 
>
>
>
> > as it wants to

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 30 Jan 2014, at 22:08, David Nyman wrote:


On 30 January 2014 16:33, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

Not really. Somehow, you conflate levels and points of view. It is a  
sin of reductionism :)

You do the "mistake" of those who deny compatibilistic free-will.

Of course we are at the crux of the mind-body problem.

Bruno, my dear and much-valued correspondent, you exasperate me  
sometimes by commenting a mere step in my argument as if it were the  
conclusion.


Sorry.


I was attempting here to articulate the Paradox of Phenomenal  
Judgement in its default form (i.e. assuming a primitively-physical  
basis) because this is how it typically arises in the first place.


OK.



Hence I meant this step of the argument to be a kind of reductio of  
this position.


OK.



Later in my post I went on to say how that I think comp may avoid  
the paradox, which you also commented. If you could perhaps restrain  
your enthusiasm and read the post to the end before commenting, you  
might occasionally save yourself some typing! Don't mean to scold,  
just help :)


OK. But you could also start by saying something like the POPJ assumes  
by default a primitively-physical basis).


Especially that it is certainly arguable that comp does not solve it  
to our *entire* satisfaction yet.








BTW, although you say that Craig can perhaps avoid the POPJ by  
appealing to a non-comp theory, ISTM that the problem of reference  
is still there so long as his "fundamental-sense" theory relies on  
causally-closed extrinsic *appearances".


I think Craig does not believe that his fundamental sense relies on  
causally-closed extrinsic *appearance*. he would say that sense makes  
those causally-closed extrinsic appearance, which makes sense in comp,  
actually (to bad he believes only non comp guaranties that).


Of course his theory does not explain mind, consciousness or sense, as  
it assumes it.
And I fail to see how it relates to the *appearances*, except by  
making a sort of naive identification of sense with some matter (up to  
some "convolution" which he does not describe in any precise way).




However, under questioning he's so far been rather unclear about  
this aspect of his theory.


That's clear. He assumes sense, and try to make it into a form of  
matter, sometimes. May be the last reference to tTegmark might help  
him. It seems to be a form of panpsychism.




Are such appearances causally closed? Do we not rely on such  
"physical" consistency? Maybe, sometimes, who knows, whatever. I  
might go so far as to say that he's been dodging the question.


By assuming sense, he dodges the mind. And by being unclear of matter,  
well he might dodge the issue of matter too.


It is still better than the person elimination of the materialists.




That said, if I'm even approximately right about this fundamental  
problem of reference, then of theories known to me, only comp  
confronts the POPJ directly.


Well, I agree. Even more for the math part. I hope I will be able to  
give the ideas behind the formulas.




The plausible resolution of the paradox, if I've understood you,  
lies in the capability of the machine to refer to non-shareable but  
incorrigible truths beyond formal proof and demonstration.



Yes.
In more than one sense, and those sense are related.

One sense can be attributed to Gunderson, and is very simple. Once you  
have build some numbers of  robots, having enough cognitive abilities  
to recognize themselves and name the other robots, it will recognize  
some basic difference between itself and the other, just by the virtue  
of being itself.

Like "not seeing his own neck".

UDA does not need more than that simple assymetry. It provides the  
comp solution of the problem why am I the W person and not the M  
person. A negative solution, as it says "nobody could have predicted  
that".
Here appears already a stock of 1-truth, or 1-1 truth, which are non  
logically justifiable and sometimes unexpressible (having non definite  
name or description).


But formally, we get more senses for this, all deriving directly or  
indirectly from incompleteness.


If you want the usual boolean logic of any extrinsic 3p, enough rich  
to describe itself (like we could ask for an explanatively close  
physics) extends into a modal logic, naturally, when that 3p self is  
taken into account. That's the modal logic G. G is the logic of the 3p  
self in a 3p reality.


But by incompleteness, some truth about that 3p self cannot be  
logically justifiable by that 3p self, and Solovay theorems gives the  
precious gift of a modal logic of the whole self-referential truth  
(whole at the  propositional modal logic level: it is not the whole  
truth!). That is the logic G*.


To give the simple but important example, the consistency, that it is  
the non provability of the false (<>t = ~[]f) is an example of true  
statement (trivially if we limit ourself to sound machines), which is  
not provable by th

Tegmark's new book

2014-01-31 Thread Ronald Held

Has there been any consensus as to the value or worth in buying this
book? If not so there is a numerical  GR book next in the queue.
 Ronald

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Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-01-31 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> A is traveling at near light speed most of the trip. That's why B sees
> A's clock slow
>

Yes. And from A's point of view he's standing still and B is traveling at
near light speed, so A sees B's clock running slow. Both would see the
others clock as running slow.  However if A decided to join B so they could
shake hands and directly compare the times their clocks show then A is
going to have to accelerate, and then things would no longer be
symmetrical, then A would see B's clock running FAST but B would still see
A's clock run SLOW. So when they joined up again and compared clocks they
would not match, B's clock would be ahead and B would have aged more than A.

> So my question is this: Why does A's clock slowing turn out to be ACTUAL
> (agreed by both A and B) when he stops at the center of the galaxy, and B's
> slow clock slowing doesn't?
>

Because A stopped, and that means A must have accelerated but B did not.

  John K Clark

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 31 Jan 2014, at 01:18, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 31 January 2014 04:19, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

I don't think there is a problem if consciousness is an  
epiphenomenon.



Is it not that very idea which leads to the notion of zombie?
If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, eliminating it would change  
nothing in

the 3p.


There can be no zombies if consciousness is epiphenomenal.


Why?





Equivalently, if consciousness is epiphenomenal we could say it does
not really exist and we are all zombies; but I think that's just
semantics, and misleading.


I think that is eliminativism.

I think epiphenomenalism is one step toward eliminativism.





If you start looking for consciousness being an extra thing with
(perhaps) its own separate causal efficacy, that's where problems
arise.



Dualism is a problem. Making consciousness epiphenomenal is not  
satisfying,
and basically contradicted in the everyday life. It is because pain  
is

unpleasant that we take anesthetic medicine.

The brain is obliged to "lie" at some (uncknown, crypted) level,  
not for
consciousness (that it filters), but for pain and joy. That's  
normal. If you

run toward the lion mouth, you lower the probability of surviving.

Epiphenomenalism does not eliminate consciousness, but it still  
eliminate

conscience and persons.


I don't think it diminishes the significance of consciousness, but
maybe I just look at it differently.


There are altered state of consciousness where "you-hereby" is only a  
window through which "you-there-above" contemplate and don't  
participate. That might add meaning to "epiphenomenal", but to believe  
that consciousness, conscience, free will have no role is just plainly  
wrong at the level where we see the jaws of the predators.


With comp it seems to me that we don't have a problem here.  
Consciousness is just phenomenal, a first person view from an  
arithmetical phenomenon. It cannot be "epi" (meaning "on") something  
which does not exist.


The "causally-explanatively close ontological reality" is the  
arithmetical/computer-science truth. It is the relative consciousness/ 
dream which could be  "epi" on arithmetic, except that here  
phenomenology is enough. No need for epithings which actualize a  
bizarre dualism at the bottom when an emergent dualism is not that  
hard to explain (from numbers and computer science).


Arithmetical truth gives the truth about machines and their dreams,  
and also the core physical appearance necessary to share deep dreams.  
We can look if there are quantum computers there.


Bruno




With comp I think we avoid it, even if the solution will appear to  
be very
Platonist, as truth, beauty, and universal values (mostly unknown)  
will be
more "real" than their local terrestrial approximations through  
primitively

physical brains and other interacting molecules like galaxies foam.

Bruno




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



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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread David Nyman

On 31 January 2014 18:30, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> 
>


> OK. But you could also start by saying something like the POPJ assumes by
> default a primitively-physical basis).
>
> Especially that it is certainly arguable that comp does not solve it to
> our *entire* satisfaction yet.
>

OK. Actually, I'm trying to persuade Craig that it still applies on a
primitively-sensory basis. But not in comp. Hopefully.

> BTW, although you say that Craig can perhaps avoid the POPJ by appealing
> to a non-comp theory, ISTM that the problem of reference is still there so
> long as his "fundamental-sense" theory relies on causally-closed extrinsic
> *appearances".
>
> I think Craig does not believe that his fundamental sense relies on
> causally-closed extrinsic *appearance*. he would say that sense makes those
> causally-closed extrinsic appearance, which makes sense in comp, actually
> (to bad he believes only non comp guaranties that).
>
> Of course his theory does not explain mind, consciousness or sense, as it
> assumes it.
> And I fail to see how it relates to the *appearances*, except by making a
> sort of naive identification of sense with some matter (up to some
> "convolution" which he does not describe in any precise way).
>

But if he makes that naive identification (modulo any convolution, which
I've offered him the opportunity to explain) the POPJ can still bite him.

>
> However, under questioning he's so far been rather unclear about this
> aspect of his theory.
>
>
> That's clear. He assumes sense, and try to make it into a form of matter,
> sometimes. May be the last reference to tTegmark might help him. It seems
> to be a form of panpsychism.
>

It would seem so. But POPJ can still bite panpsychism, I think, although
this doesn't seem to be widely recognised. My post to Craig elaborates on
this.

> Are such appearances causally closed? Do we not rely on such "physical"
> consistency? Maybe, sometimes, who knows, whatever. I might go so far as to
> say that he's been dodging the question.
>
>
> By assuming sense, he dodges the mind. And by being unclear of matter,
> well he might dodge the issue of matter too.
>
> It is still better than the person elimination of the materialists.
>

I agree.


> 
>
> The plausible resolution of the paradox, if I've understood you, lies in
> the capability of the machine to refer to non-shareable but incorrigible
> truths beyond formal proof and demonstration.
>
> Yes.
> In more than one sense, and those sense are related.
>
> One sense can be attributed to Gunderson, and is very simple. Once you
> have build some numbers of  robots, having enough cognitive abilities to
> recognize themselves and name the other robots, it will recognize some
> basic difference between itself and the other, just by the virtue of being
> itself.
> Like "not seeing his own neck".
>
> UDA does not need more than that simple assymetry. It provides the comp
> solution of the problem why am I the W person and not the M person. A
> negative solution, as it says "nobody could have predicted that".
> Here appears already a stock of 1-truth, or 1-1 truth, which are non
> logically justifiable and sometimes unexpressible (having non definite name
> or description).
>
> But formally, we get more senses for this, all deriving directly or
> indirectly from incompleteness.
>
> If you want the usual boolean logic of any extrinsic 3p, enough rich to
> describe itself (like we could ask for an explanatively close physics)
> extends into a modal logic, naturally, when that 3p self is taken into
> account. That's the modal logic G. G is the logic of the 3p self in a 3p
> reality.
>

OK.

>
> But by incompleteness, some truth about that 3p self cannot be logically
> justifiable by that 3p self, and Solovay theorems gives the precious gift
> of a modal logic of the whole self-referential truth (whole at the
>  propositional modal logic level: it is not the whole truth!). That is the
> logic G*.
>

OK.

>
> To give the simple but important example, the consistency, that it is the
> non provability of the false (<>t = ~[]f) is an example of true statement
> (trivially if we limit ourself to sound machines), which is not provable by
> the machine (by the 3p self about its 3p self, at the right level of
> descriotion: here by construction).
>
> G* is decidable, and so a correct machine can "produce" a lot of truth
> about itself that she cannot justify logically.
>
> G and G* still operate purely in the extrinsic (to use your term for the
> 3p, if you don't mind).
>

OK.

>
> If the machine can grasp G and in a different way G*, she might decide to
> pick up some truth in G*, and bring them back on earth, by adding them to
> G. (and later, comp will be something like that, somehow).
>
> This can be done in many ways. Adding the truth "<>t" at the bottom level
> makes the machine inconsistent. Adding it slightly higher, makes the
> machine more competent, more relatively speedy.
>

Is the acceleration achieved by

The Robot and the Wizard





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Re: Unput and Onput



On 31 Jan 2014, at 03:23, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Maybe it will help to make the sense-primitive view clearer if we  
think of sense and motive as input and output.


This is only a step away from Comp, so it should not be construed to  
mean that I am defining sense and motive as merely input and output.  
My purpose here is just to demonstrate that Comp takes so much for  
granted that it is not even viable as a primitive within its own  
definitions.


Can we all agree that the notion of input and output is  
ontologically essential to the function of computation?


Bad luck Craig!

Not only the notion of input-output is not essential for computation,  
but we can argue in many ways that input-output are inessential.


A deep one is the discovery of the combinators, which provides a way  
to do math and computers without variables. You still need some  
variable at the metalevel, but all formal objects, program and  
computations are object without variables. This is exploited in  
compilation theory, and in some proof theory.


Then there is the SMN theorem, which says basically that you can  
simulate a function with two variables (two inputs) by mechanically  
enumerable collection of functions of one variable.


Here too, the S90 particular case says that you can simulate functions  
of 9 variables with effective enumeration of functions of 0 variables,  
that is without input.


Recursion theory is fundamentally non dimensional.

Take the UD.

A UD dovetailing only on the programs without input is equivalent with  
a UD dovetailing on the programs having infinitely many inputs  
(streams).


And, to finish, the UD itself is a program without input and without  
output. It computes in an intensional very complex way, nothing from  
nothing.


The UD has this in common with the common aristotelian conception of  
the physical universe. A physical universe cannot have input nor  
output, without stopping being *the* physical universe.


This does not mean, than in the relative computation, some input can't  
help.






Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in which no  
program or data is input and from which no data is expected as output?


The UD.



This would suggest that computation can only be defined as a  
meaningful product in a non-comp environment, otherwise there would  
be no inputting and outputting, only instantaneous results within a  
Platonic ocean of arithmetic truth.



A computation of a program without input can simulate different  
programs having many inputs relative to other programs or divine (non- 
machines) things living in arithmetic






Where do we find input and output within arithmetic though?


It is not obvious, but the sigma_1 arithmetical relation emulates all  
computations, with all sort of relative inputs.





What makes it happen without invoking a physical or experiential  
context?


Truth. The necessary one, and the contingent one.





As an aside, its interesting to play with the idea of building a  
view of computation from a sensory-motive perspective. When we use a  
computer to automate mental tasks it could be said that we are  
'unputting' the effort that would have been required otherwise. When  
we use a machine to emulate our own presence in our absence, such as  
a Facebook profile, we are "onputting" ourselves in some digital  
context.


The brain does that a lot. Nature does that a lot. Ah! The natural  
numbers does that I lot.


Computers will evolve in two ways: users' self extensions, like a neo- 
neo-cortex (+GSM, GPS, glasses, etc), which is a semi-delegation, and  
the total delegation (the friendly, and not friendly, AIs).


Bruno



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



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Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-01-31 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> I don't need a proof because I have something better, I have direct
>> experience of the subjective.
>>
>
> > Nice for you.
>

Indeed.

> But that does not invalidate the point that you can't prove this to an
> other person,
>

I can't even prove that there is another person that I could present a
potential proof to.

>> Problem? What's the problem? If I do not believe in your subjective
>> experience, as you say above, then I certainly don't need to explain it.
>> And if I do believe in your subjective experience then I can say it was
>> caused by the way matter interacts (which can be fully described by
>> information) just as I already know from direct experience that my
>> subjective experience is caused.
>>
>
> > That mundane explanation might be locally valid, but your own idea that
> consciousness is not localized

Yes. Do you find a contradiction in that? I don't.

> Indeed, you are presently delocalized into an infinity of computations,
>

And if Everett is correct there are a infinite number of Bruno Marchals ,
that would certainly be odd but where is the contradiction?

>> And if I also believe that consciousness is fundamental, that is to say
>> a sequence of "What caused that?" questions is not infinite and
>> consciousness comes at the end, then there is nothing more that can be said
>> on the subject.
>>
>

> Yes, but you have to invoke some non-comp to localize yourself in some
> unique reality
>

Fine, then feel free to "invoke some non-comp" or invoke more "comp" if
that floats your boat, I no longer care. I've given up trying to find a
consistent definition of your silly little word "comp" that is used on this
list and nowhere else. Your endless homemade acronyms that you pretend
every educated person should know get tiresome too.

>  once you believe that your consciousness is invariant for some "digital
> transformation"
>

I do believe that.

> then you can begin to understand that we have to justify the physical
> from modalities associated to that those digital transformations.
>

Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital transformation of
consciousness is perfectly consistent with the matter in the desk I'm
pounding my hand on right now as simply being a subroutine in the johnkclak
program, and the same is true of the matter in my hand.

> Somehow, you just say that you are not interested in the mind-body
> problem.
>

Well, nobody around here has said anything very interesting about the
mind-body problem. And if the sequence of "what caused that?" questions are
not infinite than after a certain point there just isn't anything more of
interest to say about the mind-body problem.

> Like you said once, we can't predict, in Helsinki,  W or M, and that's
> all.
>

I can't predict the answer because you haven't precisely formulated what
the question is.

> I stay in the 3p, because in UDA we use only the most superficial aspect
> of the first person
>

I've looked yet again but I still don't see it:

http://uda.varsity.com/

 John K Clark

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Re: Questions on red shift and accelerating Hubble expansion

2014-01-31 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:19 AM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

 > At all past times, the universe at all distances was expanding at the
> same rate that we can observe it expanding only at a SINGLE distance.
>

But it hasn't always been expanding at the same rate. The universe  is 13.8
billion years old and at first the expansion of the universe was
decelerating just as you'd expect it to do because of gravity, but then for
reasons that are far from clear about 7 billion years ago the universe
stopped decelerating and started to accelerate. Why it has done so has been
called the biggest mystery in physics.

> we actually have absolutely NO IDEA of how fast it is actually expanding
> right NOW
>

According to Einstein observers don't always agree on what "now" means, and
the further apart in space they are the more they will disagree.

> The problem is that into the distant universe and back into distant time
> the sides of our light cones are not straight but CURVED,
>

At the largest scales we now know that space is flat, or nearly so.
Astronomers proved that the universe is flat by looking at the Cosmic
Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), it is the most distant thing ever
seen and was formed just 300,000 years after the Big Bang, so if we look at
a map of that background radiation the largest structure we could see on it
would be 300,000 light years across, spots larger than this wouldn't have
had enough time to form because nothing, not even gravity can move faster
than light, a larger lump wouldn't even have enough time to know it was a
lump. So how large would a object 13.8 billion light years away appear to
us if it's size was 300,000 light years across? The answer is one degree of
arc, but ONLY if the universe is flat. If it's not flat and parallel lines
converge or diverge then the image of the largest structures we can see in
the CMBR could appear to be larger or smaller than one degree depending on
how the image was distorted, and that would depend on if the universe is
positively or negatively curved.  But we see no distortion at all, in this
way the WMAP satellite proved that the universe is flat, or at least isn't
curved much, over a distance of almost 13.8 billion light years if the
universe curves at all it is less than one part in 100,000.

  John K Clark

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Re: Unput and Onput



On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:47:01 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 31 Jan 2014, at 03:23, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
> > Maybe it will help to make the sense-primitive view clearer if we   
> > think of sense and motive as input and output. 
> > 
> > This is only a step away from Comp, so it should not be construed to   
> > mean that I am defining sense and motive as merely input and output.   
> > My purpose here is just to demonstrate that Comp takes so much for   
> > granted that it is not even viable as a primitive within its own   
> > definitions. 
> > 
> > Can we all agree that the notion of input and output is   
> > ontologically essential to the function of computation? 
>
> Bad luck Craig! 
>
> Not only the notion of input-output is not essential for computation,   
> but we can argue in many ways that input-output are inessential. 
>
> A deep one is the discovery of the combinators, which provides a way   
> to do math and computers without variables. You still need some   
> variable at the metalevel, but all formal objects, program and   
> computations are object without variables. This is exploited in   
> compilation theory, and in some proof theory. 
>
> Then there is the SMN theorem, which says basically that you can   
> simulate a function with two variables (two inputs) by mechanically   
> enumerable collection of functions of one variable. 
>
> Here too, the S90 particular case says that you can simulate functions   
> of 9 variables with effective enumeration of functions of 0 variables,   
> that is without input. 
>
> Recursion theory is fundamentally non dimensional. 
>
> Take the UD. 
>
> A UD dovetailing only on the programs without input is equivalent with   
> a UD dovetailing on the programs having infinitely many inputs   
> (streams). 
>
> And, to finish, the UD itself is a program without input and without   
> output. It computes in an intensional very complex way, nothing from   
> nothing. 
>
> The UD has this in common with the common aristotelian conception of   
> the physical universe. A physical universe cannot have input nor   
> output, without stopping being *the* physical universe. 
>
> This does not mean, than in the relative computation, some input can't   
> help. 
>
>
>
>
>
> > Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in which no   
> > program or data is input and from which no data is expected as output? 
>
> The UD. 
>

Isn't everything output from the UD?
 

>
>
>
> > This would suggest that computation can only be defined as a   
> > meaningful product in a non-comp environment, otherwise there would   
> > be no inputting and outputting, only instantaneous results within a   
> > Platonic ocean of arithmetic truth. 
>
>
> A computation of a program without input can simulate different   
> programs having many inputs relative to other programs or divine (non- 
> machines) things living in arithmetic 
>

How does the program itself get to be a program without being input?
 

>
>
>
>
> > Where do we find input and output within arithmetic though? 
>
> It is not obvious, but the sigma_1 arithmetical relation emulates all   
> computations, with all sort of relative inputs. 
>

It seems to me though, and this is why I posted this thread, that i/o is 
taken for granted and has no real explanation of what it is in mathematical 
terms. 


>
>
> > What makes it happen without invoking a physical or experiential   
> > context? 
>
> Truth. The necessary one, and the contingent one. 
>

Does truth make things happen?
 

>
>
>
> > 
> > As an aside, its interesting to play with the idea of building a   
> > view of computation from a sensory-motive perspective. When we use a   
> > computer to automate mental tasks it could be said that we are   
> > 'unputting' the effort that would have been required otherwise. When   
> > we use a machine to emulate our own presence in our absence, such as   
> > a Facebook profile, we are "onputting" ourselves in some digital   
> > context. 
>
> The brain does that a lot. Nature does that a lot. Ah! The natural   
> numbers does that I lot. 
>

There doesn't seem to be a clear sense of what it means for numbers to 
exert effort. If, as you say, truth itself makes things happen, then it 
would seem that effort is an incoherent concept. Numbers have no reason to 
make other numbers do their work, as they don't seem to have any basis to 
distinguish work from play.
 

>
> Computers will evolve in two ways: users' self extensions, like a neo- 
> neo-cortex (+GSM, GPS, glasses, etc), which is a semi-delegation, and   
> the total delegation (the friendly, and not friendly, AIs). 
>

Those are ways that our use of computers will evolve. I don't see that 
computers have any desire to extend themselves or to delegate their work.

Craig
 

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

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Re: Tegmark's new book

A consensus?!? Here???

Excuse me while I ROFLMAO, at least metaphorically.

*I'm *gonna read the damn thing, ha ha, to quote a very old review by John
Clute of a James Blish novel.

Well, at least, I'm going to give it a go. I like Mad Max's mojo for some
reason. They laughed at Bozo the clown, after all...

On 1 February 2014 07:54, Ronald Held  wrote:

> Has there been any consensus as to the value or worth in buying this
> book? If not so there is a numerical  GR book next in the queue.
>

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Re: The Robot and the Wizard

Like, wow. Nice picture (I'm tempted to say it makes a lot more sense than
some posts around here!)


On 1 February 2014 08:40, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> 
>
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Re: The Robot and the Wizard



On Friday, January 31, 2014 3:54:54 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> Like, wow. Nice picture (I'm tempted to say it makes a lot more sense than 
> some posts around here!)
>

Hehe, thanks! I got accepted to do a poster presentation at the Tucson 
consciousness conference again this year so I'm playing with ideas (and 
cannibalizing clipart).
 

>
>
> On 1 February 2014 08:40, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> 
>>
>>  -- 
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>

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Re: Unput and Onput

On 1 February 2014 01:33, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:15:55 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 31 January 2014 17:13, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:32:02 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:

 It isn't *essential. *Technically, I believe I/O can be added to a
 computer programme as some sort of initial settings (for any given run of
 the programme).

>>>
>>> Added how though? By inputting code, yes?
>>>
>>
>> All code has to be input. That isn't input TO the programme, however,
>> it's setting up the programme before it is run.
>>
>
> Right, but that's my point. Computationalism overolooks its own
> instantiation through input. It begins assuming that code is running. It
> begins with the assumption that coding methods exist. I am saying that
> those methods can only be sensory-motive, and that sensory-motive phenomena
> must precede the first possible instance of computation.
>

I doubt J.A.W. would have accepted that as a valid crit of "It from Bit"
and I can't see that it's valid for comp either (or even Edgar's
whatever-the-hell-it-is). If brains compute, they presumably start by
boostrapping themselves, and only later get programmed by input from the
outside world. Likewise one can imagine a self-assembling computer. This is
simply *incidental* to how humans get computation done - like I/O, it isn't
ontologically fundamental.

>
>>>
 Obviously this isn't much use in practice, of course! But from a
 philosophical perspective it's possible, so it isn't ontologically
 essential to the function of computation.

 A trivial example would be my son's Python programme to generate 2000
 digits of pi. It just uses some existing equation which generates each
 digit in sequence. It happens to write the output to the screen, but if he
 took out the relevant PRINT statement, it wouldn't - but it would still
 compute the result.

>>>
>>> The existing equation was input at some point though, and without the
>>> output, whether or not there was a computation is academic (and
>>> unfalsifiable).
>>>
>>
>> That wasn't the point. The question was whether I/O is ontologically
>> essential to the function of computation. Quite clearly, the answer is no.
>> The function of computation *can* exist without any I/O, so that answers
>> the question.
>>
>
> I disagree. I don't think that we know that. There is no possible case
> where computation without output is observed, so we cannot assume that
> computation is ontologically possible without output. We cannot assume that
> theoretical computation is free from the ontological constraints that real
> computation is subject to in our experience.
>

Computation without any output can be observed by examining the machinery
involved, if necessary. But I bet you'll just redefine output to mean
whatever the hell you want it to, just as you got around an honest attempt
to show a flaw in your argument with a ridiculous comment about computation
being academic without any output, as though a programme that hangs in an
infinite loop without producing output is somehow not computing, as is a
programme that runs in the background - the "magic" is supposed to happen
at the moment of output? A programme that runs for 100 days factoring a
huge number "didn't do anything" even though it racked up a massive power
bill and used 99% of the CPU time and 95% of the memory if the plug gets
pulled just before it gives its output? Sorry, but this is just nonsense. I
gave the answer to your question. The answer was no. If that doesn't fit
with some theory, redesign the theory, don't go into an Edgar-spiral of
hand-waving and spouting nonsense.

>
>> I was just answering your question honestly and as accurately as I could.
>> If you're going to change the question to something else when I attempt to
>> answer it, I won't bother in future.
>>
>
> You're answering it honestly, but you are assuming a universe in which
> sensory experience is theoretical and computation is actual. I am pointing
> out that this is a theoretical perspective.
>
> I'm answering it within the bounds of the everyday experience we have with
computers. I don't say sensory experience is theoretical, I just assume the
standard model of how things work. If you are going to make some weird
ontological assumptions I would appreciate it if you stated them up front
and kept reminding me that this is the basis you're working on. Otherwise I
assume the default assumptions for the field in question, which in this
case is computation. I gave an honest answer on that basis, but since it
showed the answer was one you didn't like, you immediately moved the
goalposts.

To be honest, although I think you were asking a genuine question, that is
exactly what trolls do.

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Re: Unput and Onput

On 1 February 2014 09:39, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> > Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in which no
>> > program or data is input and from which no data is expected as output?
>>
>> The UD.
>>
>
> Isn't everything output from the UD?
>

No, as I understand it, only the appearance of everything. (Comp answers
the question "why is there something rather than nothing" by "it depends
what you mean by something...")

>
> How does the program itself get to be a program without being input?
>

See genetic algorithms for one example. See genetics for another. A "blind
watchmaker" can make a computer programme, although we can normally write
one a lot more efficiently.

>
> It seems to me though, and this is why I posted this thread, that i/o is
> taken for granted and has no real explanation of what it is in mathematical
> terms.
>

No mathematical explanation for what input and output are?! They both come
down to binary digits, how mathematical do you want it to be?

>
The rest of your post seems a lot more sensible and I will leave those
questions for Bruno to agree or disagree, I would also like to know how
numbers can make an effort (as would Xenocrates! If John will forgive the
reference...)

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Re: Unput and Onput



On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:09:38 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 1 February 2014 01:33, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:15:55 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 January 2014 17:13, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>
 On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:32:02 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> It isn't *essential. *Technically, I believe I/O can be added to a 
> computer programme as some sort of initial settings (for any given run of 
> the programme). 
>

 Added how though? By inputting code, yes?

>>>
>>> All code has to be input. That isn't input TO the programme, however, 
>>> it's setting up the programme before it is run. 
>>>
>>
>> Right, but that's my point. Computationalism overolooks its own 
>> instantiation through input. It begins assuming that code is running. It 
>> begins with the assumption that coding methods exist. I am saying that 
>> those methods can only be sensory-motive, and that sensory-motive phenomena 
>> must precede the first possible instance of computation.
>>
>
> I doubt J.A.W. would have accepted that as a valid crit of "It from Bit" 
> and I can't see that it's valid for comp either (or even Edgar's 
> whatever-the-hell-it-is). If brains compute, they presumably start by 
> boostrapping themselves, and only later get programmed by input from the 
> outside world.
>

When did the world become 'outside' though? If you bootstrap from 
immaterial Platonia that has no outside, how and why do numbers acquire 
non-numerical dimensionality?
 

> Likewise one can imagine a self-assembling computer. This is simply 
> *incidental* to how humans get computation done - like I/O, it isn't 
> ontologically fundamental.
>

I think that it is meta-ontologically fundamental. Comp just ignores the 
question of I/O because it is too superficial of a treatment of reality to 
examine it.
 

>   

> Obviously this isn't much use in practice, of course! But from a 
> philosophical perspective it's possible, so it isn't ontologically 
> essential to the function of computation.
>
> A trivial example would be my son's Python programme to generate 2000 
> digits of pi. It just uses some existing equation which generates each 
> digit in sequence. It happens to write the output to the screen, but if 
> he 
> took out the relevant PRINT statement, it wouldn't - but it would still 
> compute the result.
>

 The existing equation was input at some point though, and without the 
 output, whether or not there was a computation is academic (and 
 unfalsifiable). 

>>>
>>> That wasn't the point. The question was whether I/O is ontologically 
>>> essential to the function of computation. Quite clearly, the answer is no. 
>>> The function of computation *can* exist without any I/O, so that 
>>> answers the question.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree. I don't think that we know that. There is no possible case 
>> where computation without output is observed, so we cannot assume that 
>> computation is ontologically possible without output. We cannot assume that 
>> theoretical computation is free from the ontological constraints that real 
>> computation is subject to in our experience.
>>
>
> Computation without any output can be observed by examining the machinery 
> involved, if necessary. But I bet you'll just redefine output to mean 
> whatever the hell you want it to, just as you got around an honest attempt 
> to show a flaw in your argument with a ridiculous comment about computation 
> being academic without any output, as though a programme that hangs in an 
> infinite loop without producing output is somehow not computing,
>

It's not that it isn't computing, it is that it is impossible for it to 
matter whether it is computing or not. Computing is irrelevant to us 
without i/o, so why should we expect that it is any more relevant to 
itself? I missed the honest attempt to show a flaw in my argument though - 
which flaw is that?
 

> as is a programme that runs in the background - the "magic" is supposed to 
> happen at the moment of output? 
>

It's not magic, it's sensory experience. That which makes anything matter.
 

> A programme that runs for 100 days factoring a huge number "didn't do 
> anything" even though it racked up a massive power bill and used 99% of the 
> CPU time and 95% of the memory if the plug gets pulled just before it gives 
> its output? Sorry, but this is just nonsense.
>

It's doing something, but what it is doing is completely worthless. There 
is no functional difference between what it is doing and just spinning hard 
drives.
 

> I gave the answer to your question. The answer was no. If that doesn't fit 
> with some theory, redesign the theory, don't go into an Edgar-spiral of 
> hand-waving and spouting nonsense.
>

Your objections were already factored in before I asked the question. 
Obviously computer science does not consider i/o to be ontologically 
necessar

Re: Would math make God obsolete ?

2014-01-31 Thread John Mikes

Liz, that was enjoyable. In the back of it lurks the incompatibility of
'GOD" with logics.
John


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR  wrote:

> "Would math make God obsolete?"
>
> If so, that remainds me of something...
> "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and
> without faith I am nothing."
> "But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could
> not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your
> own arguments, you don't. QED."
> "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in
> a puff of logic.
> "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that
> black is white, and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
>
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Re: Unput and Onput



On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:16:12 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 1 February 2014 09:39, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>> > Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in which no   
>>> > program or data is input and from which no data is expected as output? 
>>>
>>> The UD. 
>>>
>>
>> Isn't everything output from the UD?
>>
>
> No, as I understand it, only the appearance of everything. (Comp answers 
> the question "why is there something rather than nothing" by "it depends 
> what you mean by something...")
>

Ok, so then everything is output from the UD plus output from whatever 
computater you are saying generates everything that is not an appearance.
 

>  
>> How does the program itself get to be a program without being input?
>>
>
> See genetic algorithms for one example. See genetics for another. A "blind 
> watchmaker" can make a computer programme, although we can normally write 
> one a lot more efficiently.
>

Genetics are absorbing all kinds of inputs and producing outputs. The blind 
watchmaker is a theory about evolution, not an example of a real 
computation which is known to be without input or output.
 

>
>> It seems to me though, and this is why I posted this thread, that i/o is 
>> taken for granted and has no real explanation of what it is in mathematical 
>> terms. 
>>
>
> No mathematical explanation for what input and output are?! They both come 
> down to binary digits, how mathematical do you want it to be?
>

What are the binary digits which define "input"?
 

>
> The rest of your post seems a lot more sensible and I will leave those 
> questions for Bruno to agree or disagree, I would also like to know how 
> numbers can make an effort (as would Xenocrates! If John will forgive the 
> reference...)
>
>
Cool. 

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 1 February 2014 01:40, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:22:12 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
>> On 31 January 2014 17:19, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:

 Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge from
 something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation describing
 something changing. Change is by definition things being different at
 different times. If you map out all the times involved as a dimension, you
 will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting together all the
 moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a "God's
 eye perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the perspective
 given by using equations and models and maps to describe reality; it isn't
 the world of everyday experience, which (at best) views those equations and
 so on from within (assuming for a moment they are so accurate as to be
 isomorphic to reality).

 Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a non-problem,
 and has been since Newton published his Principia.

>>>
>>> Is a description the same as emergence though? We can read a film strip
>>> as a moving picture because of the nature of our sensory capacities, not
>>> because the moving picture emerges from the God's Eye view of the frames.
>>> F=ma begins with acceleration already assumed, so it is an equation that we
>>> interpret as referring to motion, nut the equation itself doesn't refer to
>>> anything. It's neither static nor dynamic, its just conceptual.
>>>
>>> I am illustrating where the idea of a block universe comes from, and the
>> context in which it makes sense. If you mean ontological emergence, the
>> origin of physics, that can't be answered within the framework of
>> explaining how a block universe works. It's a separate question. If you
>> mean emergence within a block universe, clearly that can occur, as it
>> happened in the past, and the past is a block universe according to the
>> normal definition.
>>
>
> I thought that the whole point of a block universe is that nothing can or
> needs to "emerge". It is all there in the block.
>

It emerges along the time axis. Evolution, for example, can operate in a
block universe. All the phenomena we experience can occur in a block
universe, otherwise no one would entertain the possibility that we live in
one. The fact that it is "all there" from the god's (physicist's)
perspective doesn't stop things changing and emerging within the block.
Things changed and emerged in the past. They're there, embedded in the past
- no one expects them to change (modulo quantum theory and block
multiverses, of course). We don't expect to wake up and discover that the
Norman conquest didn't happen after all, even though at the time that
caused radical change, and was partly responsible for the emergence of the
modern English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon/Danish/French/Latin/etc/etc!) language.

>
>
>> Or maybe you're just talking nonsense. F=ma refers to a mass accelerating
>> under a force. It is a static equation describing a dynamic process,
>> something that could be useful in visualising how a block universe works,
>> which is why I mentioned it. It's quite straightforward. It isn't rocket
>> science.
>>
>
> But F=ma can only be epiphenomenal in a block universe. There can't be an
> true acceleration because acceleration requires time, and a block universe
> would have only coordinates within a static temporal axis, wouldn't it?
> Acceleration would be a statistical derivative only, it seems to me.
>

But there *is* time in a block universe. It's a 4D manifold, and time is a
particular axis within it. You seem to want an extra time above and beyond
the existing one.

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 1 February 2014 02:08, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow
> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear
> to flow for each observer. This doesn't prove that block universe
> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily
> either.
>
> My problem with block universes (or multiverses) is imagining an
alternative.

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 1 February 2014 02:32, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>
> Again, the best way I can say it is that your mouth has to move plenty to
> tell me it isn't moving!
>
> Patronising, boring, insulting and totally failing to understand
elementary physics.

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On Friday, January 31, 2014 5:32:49 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 1 February 2014 01:40, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 2:22:12 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 January 2014 17:19, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>
 On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge 
> from something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static equation 
> describing something changing. Change is by definition things being 
> different at different times. If you map out all the times involved as a 
> dimension, you will naturally get a "static" universe, just as putting 
> together all the moments making up a movie gives you a reel of film - but 
> only from a "God's eye perspective". This is the perspective science 
> gives 
> us, the perspective given by using equations and models and maps to 
> describe reality; it isn't the world of everyday experience, which (at 
> best) views those equations and so on from within (assuming for a moment 
> they are so accurate as to be isomorphic to reality).
>
> Obtaining change from the static view used by science is a 
> non-problem, and has been since Newton published his Principia.
>

 Is a description the same as emergence though? We can read a film strip 
 as a moving picture because of the nature of our sensory capacities, not 
 because the moving picture emerges from the God's Eye view of the frames. 
 F=ma begins with acceleration already assumed, so it is an equation that 
 we 
 interpret as referring to motion, nut the equation itself doesn't refer to 
 anything. It's neither static nor dynamic, its just conceptual.

 I am illustrating where the idea of a block universe comes from, and 
>>> the context in which it makes sense. If you mean ontological emergence, the 
>>> origin of physics, that can't be answered within the framework of 
>>> explaining how a block universe works. It's a separate question. If you 
>>> mean emergence within a block universe, clearly that can occur, as it 
>>> happened in the past, and the past is a block universe according to the 
>>> normal definition.
>>>
>>
>> I thought that the whole point of a block universe is that nothing can or 
>> needs to "emerge". It is all there in the block.
>>
>
> It emerges along the time axis. Evolution, for example, can operate in a 
> block universe. All the phenomena we experience can occur in a block 
> universe, otherwise no one would entertain the possibility that we live in 
> one. 
>

I don't think that very many people do seriously entertain the possibility 
that we live in a block universe. It's not that the effect of evolution 
couldn't exist in a block universe, its that it wouldn't make sense to say 
that it 'operates', since the beginning and ending of the operation would 
be, from an absolute perspective, simultaneous. What is not explained is 
why, if there was a block universe, would being inside of it be filled with 
both simultaneous and chronological sensations. What would restrict some 
part of the block to the point of blindness to most of the time axis, and 
then insert some kind of illusion of timing associated with that axis?
 

> The fact that it is "all there" from the god's (physicist's) perspective 
> doesn't stop things changing and emerging within the block.
>

It doesn't stop it, but it makes it implausible. What does a block want 
with "_ing" anything?
 

> Things changed and emerged in the past. They're there, embedded in the 
> past - no one expects them to change (modulo quantum theory and block 
> multiverses, of course). We don't expect to wake up and discover that the 
> Norman conquest didn't happen after all, even though at the time that 
> caused radical change, and was partly responsible for the emergence of the 
> modern English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon/Danish/French/Latin/etc/etc!) language.
>
>>  
>>
>>> Or maybe you're just talking nonsense. F=ma refers to a mass 
>>> accelerating under a force. It is a static equation describing a dynamic 
>>> process, something that could be useful in visualising how a block universe 
>>> works, which is why I mentioned it. It's quite straightforward. It isn't 
>>> rocket science.
>>>
>>
>> But F=ma can only be epiphenomenal in a block universe. There can't be an 
>> true acceleration because acceleration requires time, and a block universe 
>> would have only coordinates within a static temporal axis, wouldn't it? 
>> Acceleration would be a statistical derivative only, it seems to me.
>>
>
> But there *is* time in a block universe. It's a 4D manifold, and time is 
> a particular axis within it. You seem to want an extra time above and 
> beyond the existing one.
>

Just the opposite. I am fully embracing time a just one of the four D axes. 
What the block universe does not explain is why that axis is presented as a

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-01-31 Thread meekerdb

On 1/31/2014 10:59 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Edgar L. Owen > wrote:

> A is traveling at near light speed most of the trip. That's why B sees 
A's clock slow

Yes. And from A's point of view he's standing still and B is traveling at near light 
speed, so A sees B's clock running slow. Both would see the others clock as running 
slow.  However if A decided to join B so they could shake hands and directly compare the 
times their clocks show then A is going to have to accelerate, and then things would no 
longer be symmetrical, then A would see B's clock running FAST but B would still see A's 
clock run SLOW. So when they joined up again and compared clocks they would not match, 
B's clock would be ahead and B would have aged more than A.

> So my question is this: Why does A's clock slowing turn out to be ACTUAL 
(agreed
by both A and B) when he stops at the center of the galaxy, and B's slow
clock slowing doesn't?

Because A stopped, and that means A must have accelerated but B did not.

That's right, but don't be misled into thinking it's the "stress" or "force" of 
acceleration that "slows" the clock.  The acceleration just changes the distance through 
spacetime.  It's not some effect that's making the clock keep "the wrong time".

Brent

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Re: Unput and Onput

On 1 February 2014 10:52, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> Right, but that's my point. Computationalism overolooks its own
>>> instantiation through input. It begins assuming that code is running. It
>>> begins with the assumption that coding methods exist. I am saying that
>>> those methods can only be sensory-motive, and that sensory-motive phenomena
>>> must precede the first possible instance of computation.
>>>
>>
>> I doubt J.A.W. would have accepted that as a valid crit of "It from Bit"
>> and I can't see that it's valid for comp either (or even Edgar's
>> whatever-the-hell-it-is). If brains compute, they presumably start by
>> boostrapping themselves, and only later get programmed by input from the
>> outside world.
>>
>
> When did the world become 'outside' though? If you bootstrap from
> immaterial Platonia that has no outside, how and why do numbers acquire
> non-numerical dimensionality?
>

Standard usage. The world is outside the brain.

>
>
>> Likewise one can imagine a self-assembling computer. This is simply
>> *incidental* to how humans get computation done - like I/O, it isn't
>> ontologically fundamental.
>>
>
> I think that it is meta-ontologically fundamental. Comp just ignores the
> question of I/O because it is too superficial of a treatment of reality to
> examine it.
>

So now it's meta-ontologically fundamental. Please make your mind up what
question you're asking.

>
>
>> Computation without any output can be observed by examining the machinery
>> involved, if necessary. But I bet you'll just redefine output to mean
>> whatever the hell you want it to, just as you got around an honest attempt
>> to show a flaw in your argument with a ridiculous comment about computation
>> being academic without any output, as though a programme that hangs in an
>> infinite loop without producing output is somehow not computing,
>>
>
> It's not that it isn't computing, it is that it is impossible for it to
> matter whether it is computing or not. Computing is irrelevant to us
> without i/o, so why should we expect that it is any more relevant to
> itself? I missed the honest attempt to show a flaw in my argument though -
> which flaw is that?
>

The fact that I/O isn't ontologically fundamental to computation, that is
to say, computation can proceed without I/O. I mentioned that it proceeds
without I/O in various ways.

>
>
>> as is a programme that runs in the background - the "magic" is supposed
>> to happen at the moment of output?
>>
>
> It's not magic, it's sensory experience. That which makes anything matter.
>

This is the sort of ontological assumption you should have stated up front.

>
>
>> A programme that runs for 100 days factoring a huge number "didn't do
>> anything" even though it racked up a massive power bill and used 99% of the
>> CPU time and 95% of the memory if the plug gets pulled just before it gives
>> its output? Sorry, but this is just nonsense.
>>
>
> It's doing something, but what it is doing is completely worthless. There
> is no functional difference between what it is doing and just spinning hard
> drives.
>

OK, if that's going to be your view then fine. I will stop here because I
don't think you're being honest and sticking to the original question,
which I answered as well as I could. There is nothing fundamentally
important about I/O to computation (unless you are committed to a certain
set of assumptions which make it inevitable that there is, regardless of
what anyone else says).

Sorry but if you won't be honest or stick to the original point or accept
that people trying to discuss something will use a set of normal
assumptions about reality, I can't discuss it, because whatever I say, you
will just change the rules.

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Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

On 1 February 2014 07:59, John Clark  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>
> > A is traveling at near light speed most of the trip. That's why B sees
>> A's clock slow
>>
>
> Yes. And from A's point of view he's standing still and B is traveling at
> near light speed, so A sees B's clock running slow. Both would see the
> others clock as running slow.  However if A decided to join B so they could
> shake hands and directly compare the times their clocks show then A is
> going to have to accelerate, and then things would no longer be
> symmetrical, then A would see B's clock running FAST but B would still see
> A's clock run SLOW. So when they joined up again and compared clocks they
> would not match, B's clock would be ahead and B would have aged more than A.
>
> > So my question is this: Why does A's clock slowing turn out to be ACTUAL
>> (agreed by both A and B) when he stops at the center of the galaxy, and B's
>> slow clock slowing doesn't?
>>
>
> Because A stopped, and that means A must have accelerated but B did not.
>
> That's true, and can be rephrased as A's trajectory cannot be put into a
single inertial frame of reference, while B's can. Hence the symmetry
between them has to be broken at some point.

There's an even simpler way to view this. A's path through space-time forms
two sides of a triangle, while B's forms the base. Since the two sides of
any triangle must be longer than the base, A must have taken a longer path
through space-time, which according to SR means he experienced less
duration. The twin paradox comes down to 4D geometry!

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On 1 February 2014 06:16, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> On 30 Jan 2014, at 21:44, LizR wrote:
>
> On 30 January 2014 22:44, Kim Jones  wrote:
>
>> Meanwhile - back at the ranch:
>>
>> Tegmark wants to think of consciousness as - wait for it - a state of
>> matter. This is very confusing. He is just making this up as he goes along,
>> I'm afraid...
>>
>> I think to be fair he wants to work out the properties of conscious
> matter, e.g. (by assumption) brains, which is in line with the SF idea of
> "computronium" (assuming consciousness is in some sense a computation).
>
> ?
> Assuming consciousness is related (and preserved) through computation,
> assumes computer, that is Church thesis.
>
> What is a computronium?
>

SF-y stuff that operates as a general purpose computer at or near the
Landaur limit.

>
> I share with Kim that Tegmark is well erring from his previous work,
> contradictiing his own previous mathematicalism, and succumbing to the
> identity of of what we don't understand (like many use of the quantum in
> consciousness).
>

Ah. Maybe I am being misled by the fact that I rather like Max :)

But he allows himself one "mad" paper for every 10 "sane" ones, so maybe he
doesn't actually think this is a likely idea, maybe he just had an idea and
pursued it to see if it led anywhere. I can sympathise, that is how I
produce my cryptic crosswords - they drag me along kicking and screaming
until I publish them. Writing can do the same at times, but it's a longer
process, more time for reflection...

>
> It contradicts his own analysis of the brain, as a hot non quantum machine.
>

Ah. Did he say the brain does quantum stuff (above and beyond the usual) ?
OK that is a contradiction.


> And its still ignores the comp constraints on the mind-brain identity
> thesis.
>
> There might be interesting insights, but all in all, it looks like a
> regression from the comp, or even just his mathematicalist picture. A
> priori.
>
> Hmm.

> Which isn't a completely flakey idea, because we already have
> "computronium" to some extent.
>
> We do have universal computer, yes. With Church thesis.
>
> He's stating that assumption up front, at least in the paper I read
> recently, and just seeing what follows.
>
> (Also, Tegmark's previous definition of consciousness was "what
> information feels like when it's being processed" which is in line with
> this approach, so he isn't making it up 100%)
>
> It is the materialist approach. It uses infinities not affordable by a
> comp theory. And in that paper, he use quantum information, which is
> something else? The term "information" should be banned, as people abuse of
> it a lot. I have that feeling sometime.  It is a term which equivocates the
> 1p and 3p meaning. It looks serious thanks to the Shannon 3p meaning, and
> it looks "mental" because of its 1p meaning, which is related to some
> understanding.
>

It creeps in everywhere. Thermodynamics. Black hole information paradox.
Yet as Brent says the total amount in the universe never changes.

> If he can show how physical supervenience works, he could even be onto
> something.
>
> Surely! But I am not sure he even address the question. The very notion of
> "conscious matter" seems to elude the question, it seems to me.
>

Yes, he is obviously just assuming that it can be sorted out without
questioning it. But maybe he contradicts himself. I don't know.

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Re: Unput and Onput



On Friday, January 31, 2014 11:03:14 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 1 February 2014 10:52, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
>>  Right, but that's my point. Computationalism overolooks its own 
 instantiation through input. It begins assuming that code is running. It 
 begins with the assumption that coding methods exist. I am saying that 
 those methods can only be sensory-motive, and that sensory-motive 
 phenomena 
 must precede the first possible instance of computation.

>>>
>>> I doubt J.A.W. would have accepted that as a valid crit of "It from Bit" 
>>> and I can't see that it's valid for comp either (or even Edgar's 
>>> whatever-the-hell-it-is). If brains compute, they presumably start by 
>>> boostrapping themselves, and only later get programmed by input from the 
>>> outside world.
>>>
>>
>> When did the world become 'outside' though? If you bootstrap from 
>> immaterial Platonia that has no outside, how and why do numbers acquire 
>> non-numerical dimensionality?
>>
>
> Standard usage. The world is outside the brain. 
>

Comp isn't standard usage though. With Comp the brain is an appearance 
within a program (whatever an "appearance" is).
 

>  
>>
>>> Likewise one can imagine a self-assembling computer. This is simply 
>>> *incidental* to how humans get computation done - like I/O, it isn't 
>>> ontologically fundamental.
>>>
>>
>> I think that it is meta-ontologically fundamental. Comp just ignores the 
>> question of I/O because it is too superficial of a treatment of reality to 
>> examine it.
>>
>
> So now it's meta-ontologically fundamental. Please make your mind up what 
> question you're asking. 
>

My mind has always been made up. Fundamental to mean means absolutely 
fundamental. I use ontological or meta-ontological only to emphasize that I 
am not allowing any neat theoretical boxes that Comp can make for itself to 
hide in.
 

>  
>>
>>> Computation without any output can be observed by examining the 
>>> machinery involved, if necessary. But I bet you'll just redefine output to 
>>> mean whatever the hell you want it to, just as you got around an honest 
>>> attempt to show a flaw in your argument with a ridiculous comment about 
>>> computation being academic without any output, as though a programme that 
>>> hangs in an infinite loop without producing output is somehow not computing,
>>>
>>
>> It's not that it isn't computing, it is that it is impossible for it to 
>> matter whether it is computing or not. Computing is irrelevant to us 
>> without i/o, so why should we expect that it is any more relevant to 
>> itself? I missed the honest attempt to show a flaw in my argument though - 
>> which flaw is that?
>>
>
> The fact that I/O isn't ontologically fundamental to computation, that is 
> to say, computation can proceed without I/O. I mentioned that it proceeds 
> without I/O in various ways. 
>

It can only proceed if it begins. How can it begin without input? Not just 
how can the program begin to execute code, but how can "code" appear in the 
universe?
 

>  
>>
>>>  as is a programme that runs in the background - the "magic" is supposed 
>>> to happen at the moment of output? 
>>>
>>
>> It's not magic, it's sensory experience. That which makes anything matter.
>>
>
> This is the sort of ontological assumption you should have stated up 
> front. 
>

I think its an ontological assumption that nature makes, not me.
 

>  
>>
>>> A programme that runs for 100 days factoring a huge number "didn't do 
>>> anything" even though it racked up a massive power bill and used 99% of the 
>>> CPU time and 95% of the memory if the plug gets pulled just before it gives 
>>> its output? Sorry, but this is just nonsense.
>>>
>>
>> It's doing something, but what it is doing is completely worthless. There 
>> is no functional difference between what it is doing and just spinning hard 
>> drives.
>>
>
> OK, if that's going to be your view then fine. I will stop here because I 
> don't think you're being honest and sticking to the original question, 
> which I answered as well as I could. There is nothing fundamentally 
> important about I/O to computation (unless you are committed to a certain 
> set of assumptions which make it inevitable that there is, regardless of 
> what anyone else says).
>

It's not an assumption, it is a question. I am asking, what good is 
computation without input/output and isn't the fact of i/o completely 
overlooked in the ontology of computationalism. Given that, isn't it more 
likely that computationalism is false?
 

>
> Sorry but if you won't be honest or stick to the original point or accept 
> that people trying to discuss something will use a set of normal 
> assumptions about reality, I can't discuss it, because whatever I say, you 
> will just change the rules.
>

I haven't changed anything. "Normal assumptions" are for squares. What is 
the point of talking about something normal unless someone is paying you 
for it? 

-- 
You rece

Re: Tegmark's New Book

2014-01-31 Thread Kim Jones


On 1 Feb 2014, at 3:24 pm, LizR  wrote:

> Ah. Maybe I am being misled by the fact that I rather like Max :)


Well look, Liz - so do I. He's almost as cute as Brian Cox - almost, but not 
quite. Both of these Brains the Size of a Planet are married though. We must 
try to find a cute unmarried cosmologist that believes in Arithmetical realism 
to gang bang.

Kim



Kim Jones B.Mus.GDTL

Email: kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
Mobile:   0450 963 719
Landline: 02 9389 4239
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"Never let your schooling get in the way of your education" - Mark Twain




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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On 1 February 2014 17:37, Kim Jones  wrote:

> On 1 Feb 2014, at 3:24 pm, LizR  wrote:
>
> Ah. Maybe I am being misled by the fact that I rather like Max :)
>
> Well look, Liz - so do I. He's almost as cute as Brian Cox - almost, but
> not quite. Both of these Brains the Size of a Planet are married though. We
> must try to find a cute unmarried cosmologist that believes in Arithmetical
> realism to gang bang.
>
> Actually I already have one  :-)

...well, apart from the "unmarried" part...  :D

(OK, technically his degree is in astrophysics...  but sometimes you have
to make do)

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 1 February 2014 13:22, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
> On Friday, January 31, 2014 5:32:49 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>
>> It emerges along the time axis. Evolution, for example, can operate in a
>> block universe. All the phenomena we experience can occur in a block
>> universe, otherwise no one would entertain the possibility that we live in
>> one.
>>
>
> I don't think that very many people do seriously entertain the possibility
> that we live in a block universe.
>

Except physicists, who have accepted it since Minkowski, if not Newton.
(And science fiction writers, like Robert Heinlein.)

It's not that the effect of evolution couldn't exist in a block universe,
> its that it wouldn't make sense to say that it 'operates', since the
> beginning and ending of the operation would be, from an absolute
> perspective, simultaneous.
>

No they wouldn't, they'd be separated by hundreds of millions of years
along the time axis.


> What is not explained is why, if there was a block universe, would being
> inside of it be filled with both simultaneous and chronological sensations.
> What would restrict some part of the block to the point of blindness to
> most of the time axis, and then insert some kind of illusion of timing
> associated with that axis?
>

Physics.

>
>
>> The fact that it is "all there" from the god's (physicist's) perspective
>> doesn't stop things changing and emerging within the block.
>>
>
> It doesn't stop it, but it makes it implausible. What does a block want
> with "_ing" anything?
>

It doesn't want anything. It's just the outcome of the laws of physics.


> But there *is* time in a block universe. It's a 4D manifold, and time is
>> a particular axis within it. You seem to want an extra time above and
>> beyond the existing one.
>>
>
> Just the opposite. I am fully embracing time a just one of the four D
> axes. What the block universe does not explain is why that axis is
> presented as a verb while the other three are not, and why that axis is
> irreversible seeming while the others are not.
>
>
We're embedded in time, and the thermodynamic arrow of time is a subject
that has already been discussed at length.

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 31 January 2014 23:53, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> Death used to be defined as the cessation of heartbeat and breathing,
>
>
> Only by doctors.

By everyone, because it was obvious that the person was unconscious
and that, unlike sleep, they would not regain consciousness failing
some miracle.

> That is the 3p physiological definition though. People did
> not define their own death that way. If that was ever truly the definition
> of death, then the invention of heart-lung machines would have marked the
> beginning of immortality.

You're making illogical statements. If breathing and circulation can
be restarted there will be other changes, such as decapitation, which
are irreversible.

> Forcing the heart to beat and the lungs to breath
> does not, in fact, resurrect someone who is actually dead.

It does resurrect them if their bodies are not otherwise seriously damaged.

>> so according to this definition you *could* resurrect a dead person
>> with fairly simple techniques which "fix the machine".
>
>
> Because the definition is fictional. According to fictional definitions, you
> could also resurrect a dead person by casting a spell.

Whatever definition of death is used includes the concept of
irreversibility. Do you disagree with that? What is your definition?

>> In the future,
>> this may be possible with what is currently defined as brain death.
>
>
> It still does not figure into any prediction of Comp. From a comp
> perspective it should be possible to resurrect specific modules of the mind
> and personality long after death. It should really be possible to piece
> together a person from their effects on the world really. By triangulating
> everything that an artist or writer produced, it should be computationally
> possible to reverse engineer them. As long as our browser history is intact,
> we are potentially immortal.

We are potentially immortal in the same way as a car can potentially
survive indefinitely provided parts can be repaired or replaced
indefinitely. At present, we can repair or replace some parts in the
human body, but not enough to prolong life for more than a few years.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Unput and Onput

On 1 February 2014 17:30, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>
> It's not an assumption, it is a question. I am asking, what good is
> computation without input/output and isn't the fact of i/o completely
> overlooked in the ontology of computationalism. Given that, isn't it more
> likely that computationalism is false?
>

Your original question was:

 Can we all agree that the notion of input and output is ontologically
> essential to the function of computation? Is there any instance in which a
> computation is employed in which no program or data is input and from which
> no data is expected as output?

I answered that. I gave an example. You didn't ask what good it was, you
asked if it's ontologically essential. And it isn't, computation can
proceed happily without I/O.

You asked if I/O is ontologically essential to computation and I answered,
no, and gave a load of examples that showed why it isn't.

If you want to ask what good computation is without I/O that's fine, go
ahead. But that wasn't the question you asked and I answered, or the
question you have gone to such extraordinary lengths to object to my
answers to.

Anyway I won't make the mistake of trying to give you an honest answer, or
any answer, if all you can do is bleat about how "square" it is to try to
hold a meaningful discussion. Since you've clearly already decided that
you're right, and are happy to twist everything round endlessly to prove
it, at least to yourself, you may as well shout in a bucket.

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Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

2014-01-31 Thread meekerdb

On 1/31/2014 9:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

We are potentially immortal in the same way as a car can potentially
survive indefinitely provided parts can be repaired or replaced
indefinitely. At present, we can repair or replace some parts in the
human body, but not enough to prolong life for more than a few years.

Actually I think we can make people live indefinitely now. I have seriously considered
starting a business to do this. I certainly think I can do it more legitimately than
those cryogenic preservation services. What I would do it is gather as much information
about the person as possible. If they were still alive this would include extensive video
recordings and interviews. Then they would be 3d-modeled in CGI, with adjustment of age
appearance as desired. This model would then be inserted as an avatar of the person in an
artificial CGI world, similar to many computer games. The avatar would be provided with
an AI based on all the writings, video, interviews etc so that it would respond like the
person modeled in most conversation. It could access current events etc from the internet
so it would be able to discuss things.

Would the avatar be conscious? According to Bruno it would be if it's AI were Lobian -
which isn't that hard. But really it's beside the point. AI, such as Watson, could
easily appear as conscious and intelligent as your 90yr old aunt and tell the stories she
tells and exhibit the quirks she has. Would the avatar be alive? conscious? Who would
care? Not the loved ones that paid to preserve Grandma for future generations.

Anybody want to invest? It'll take big bucks to do it right.

Brent

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Block Universes