Re: MGA revisited paper
Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a chain of turtles - i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, some shut up and calculate beyond which we supposedly can't go. A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut up is there? Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are in the well-lit part Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a feeling that it from bit goes in that sort of direction, as does A. Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea has some merit on the it from bit front (although I don't think it's particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of known physics.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
I've been thinking more on the lookup table business and my suggestion that
the lookup table becomes so large in mapping all input-outputs that it ends
up being the same as doing the computation. It's wrong, so long as we only
record some final behavioural output and not the actual machine states.
However if by a recording, we mean a recording of all the machine's
intermediate states, as in the MGA, then my argument holds. In that case,
the work required to find the machine's state in some static table is as
much as that required to do the calculation. I'm trying to work that out
formally.
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 2:28:32 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:09 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net
javascript: wrote:
On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au
javascript: wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as
*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation?
And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove
that consciousness did not require computation?
To be precise supervening on the playback of a recording. Playback
of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a rather simple one.
In other words:
#include stdio.h
int main()
{
printf(hello world!\n);
return 1;
}
is very much a computer program (and a playback of recording of the
words hello world when run). I could change hello world to the
contents of
Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more forcibly.
OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on such a simple
computation - one that's functionally identical with a recording? Or
does instantiating consciousness require some degree of complexity
such that CC comes into play?
My opinion on whether the recording is conscious or not aint worth a
penny.
Nevertheless, the definition of computational supervenience requires
countefactual correctness in the class of programs being supervened
on.
AFAICT, the main motivation for that is to prevent recordings being
conscious.
I think it is possible to have a different definition of when a
computation is instantiated in the physical world that prevents
recordings from being conscious, a solution which doesn't actually depend
on counterfactuals at all. I described it in the post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html
(or
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/GC6bwqCqsfQ/rFvg1dnKoWMJ
on google groups). Basically the idea is that in any system following
mathematical rules, including both abstract Turing machines and the
physical universe, everything about its mathematical structure can be
encoded as a (possibly infinite) set of logical propositions. So if you
have a Turing machine running whose computations over some finite period
are supposed to correspond to a particular observer moment, you can take
all the propositions dealing with the Turing machine's behavior during that
period (propositions like on time-increment 107234320 the read/write head
moved to square 2398311 and changed the digit there from 0 to 1, and
changed its internal state from M to Q), and look at the structure of
logical relations between them (like proposition A and B together imply
proposition C, proposition B and C together do not imply A, etc.). Then
for any other computation or even any physical process, you can see if it's
possible to find a set of propositions with a completely *isomorphic*
logical structure.
But physical processes don't have *logical* structure. Theories of
physical processes do, but I don't think that serves your purpose.
Propositions about physical processes have a logical structure, don't
they? And wouldn't such propositions--if properly defined using variables
that appear in whatever the correct fundamental theory turns out to
be--have objective truth-values?
Also, would you say physical processes don't have a mathematical
structure? If you would say that, what sort of structure would you say
they *do* have, given that we have no way of empirically measuring any
properties other than ones with mathematical values? Any talk of physical
properties beyond mathematical ones gets into the territory of some kind of
thing-in-itself beyond all human comprehension.
And even restricting the domain to Turing machines, I don't see what
proposition A and proposition B are?
They could be propositions about basic events in the course of the
computation--state changes of the Turing machine and string on each
time-step, like the example I gave on time-increment 107234320 the
read/write head moved to square 2398311 and changed the
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 6:35 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a chain of turtles - i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, some shut up and calculate beyond which we supposedly can't go. A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut up is there? Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are in the well-lit part Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a feeling that it from bit goes in that sort of direction, as does A. Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea has some merit on the it from bit front (although I don't think it's particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of known physics.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 16 August 2014 16:48, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: I assert this confidently on the basis of my intuitions as a programmer, without being able to rigorously prove it, but a short thought experiment should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a lookup table of all possible additions of two numbers up to some number n. First I calculate all the possible results and put them into a large n by n table. Now I'm asked what is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to row 10 and column 70 and read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had to count to 10 and to 70! So I've added the two numbers together finding the correct value to look up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven to apply in all analogous situations. But if your table gives the results of multiplying them, you get a slightly free lunch (actually I have a nasty feeling you have to perform a multiplication to get an answer from an NxN grid ... to get to row 70, column 10, don't you count N x 70 + 10?) So suppose your table gives the result of dividing them, I'm sure you're getting at least a cheap lunch now? Sorry this is probably complete nitpicking. I can see that the humungous L.T. needed to speak Chinese would require astronomical calculations to find the right answer, which does probably prove the point. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
Bruno IMO does not end the chain so-to-speak because he does not say where the natural numbers come from other than invoking Platonia. Super-string theory does. But it invokes even more turtles, like where do the ten dimensions come from. http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 6:35 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a chain of turtles - i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, some shut up and calculate beyond which we supposedly can't go. A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut up is there? Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are in the well-lit part Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a feeling that it from bit goes in that sort of direction, as does A. Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea has some merit on the it from bit front (although I don't think it's particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of known physics.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
Um, I hadn't read your subsequent posts when I wrote the above. It looks like this is quite complicated, and I'm not going to bother my pretty head trying to be clever about it when you're obviously far more so on this subject. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 16 August 2014 22:45, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno IMO does not end the chain so-to-speak because he does not say where the natural numbers come from other than invoking Platonia. Super-string theory does. But it invokes even more turtles, like where do the ten dimensions come from. http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf Are the natural numbers the integers? If so I don't think he needs to say where they come from. They may exist (abstractly) from logical necessity, that is they couldn't be any other way in any possible world. This is of course a bone of contention, because some people think there's nothing natural about 1+1=2, but it seems to me, at least, less contentious than any of the other contenders, although I'm willing to entertain any possibilities that anyone suggests, when that happens (except God, I've worked out that using something infinitely complicated to explain the world is a retrograde step). I'm pretty sure string theory is mathematical in form, and so can't be the end of the chain because it is relying on maths - hence it has (at least) one lower level in explanatory space, so to speak, -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 8:35:23 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote: Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a chain of turtles - i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, some shut up and calculate beyond which we supposedly can't go. A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut up is there? Not that I know of and in fact if you're looking for something necessarily so then as far as I can tell logic and maths is not just the lighted bit of the street, there's nothing outside of the lighted bit, because only in maths can you find what is necessarily so. I suppose the question then is, is the universe necessarily so, or just a brute fact? Or on the other hand, are we embedded in infinities which mean that nothing is a brute fact, everything having an explanation, but also that there is no ultimate explanation (turtles forever!). Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are in the well-lit part Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a feeling that it from bit goes in that sort of direction, as does A. Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? It from bit inverts the ontological priority of matter and information, but it's unclear what the information is floating around in. The information space still seems arbitrary, but then I don't know Wheeler's work well. I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea has some merit on the it from bit front (although I don't think it's particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of known physics.) oh please, Edgar is a crank pure and simple. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 8:45:47 PM UTC+10, yanniru wrote: Bruno IMO does not end the chain so-to-speak because he does not say where the natural numbers come from other than invoking Platonia. Super-string theory does. But it invokes even more turtles, like where do the ten dimensions come from. http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf Agree with Liz on this one. It seems much more reasonable to believe that string theory derives from maths than the other way around. String theory is a mathematical theory, therefore necessarily subsumed by mathematics in general, and specifically by computable mathematics including Peano arithmetic. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 6:35 AM, LizR liz...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: Pierz, you have said exactly the reason why I am willing to give Bruno's ideas so much time. It's the fact that IF he's right, then he has actually caught sight of the end of the explanatory chain, which otherwise has only ever been grounded in an unsatisfactory deity or a chain of turtles - i.e. it's thought to never end - or it ends at a brute fact of some sort, some shut up and calculate beyond which we supposedly can't go. A TOE should start from something that's necessarily so, and so far the only thing I've ever come across that's necessarily so is stuff like 1+1=2, with apologies to Stephen P King and anyone else who thinks we just made that up. But so far there isn't anything else except God, turtles and shut up is there? Admittedly we may just not have thought of the correct end-of-chain yet, so this may be like looking for your keys under a lamp-post because that's the well lit part of the street. But it's always *possible* the keys are in the well-lit part Hence I give a lot of mental houseroom to comp, and any other theory that starts from something that's grounded in (apparent) logical necessity. Are there any other such theories? I have a feeling that it from bit goes in that sort of direction, as does A. Garrett Lisi, Max T of course, Julian Barbour? I guess any TOE which claims that some set of equations is isomorphic to the universe is nodding in that direction, and as Max Tegmark says we just need to reduce the baggage allowance. Even Edgar Owen's computational idea has some merit on the it from bit front (although I don't think it's particularly original ... and of course it fails to address about 99% of known physics.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com javascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 8:45:30 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote: On 16 August 2014 16:48, Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I assert this confidently on the basis of my intuitions as a programmer, without being able to rigorously prove it, but a short thought experiment should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a lookup table of all possible additions of two numbers up to some number n. First I calculate all the possible results and put them into a large n by n table. Now I'm asked what is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to row 10 and column 70 and read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had to count to 10 and to 70! So I've added the two numbers together finding the correct value to look up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven to apply in all analogous situations. But if your table gives the results of multiplying them, you get a slightly free lunch (actually I have a nasty feeling you have to perform a multiplication to get an answer from an NxN grid ... to get to row 70, column 10, don't you count N x 70 + 10?) So suppose your table gives the result of dividing them, I'm sure you're getting at least a cheap lunch now? Sorry this is probably complete nitpicking. I can see that the humungous L.T. needed to speak Chinese would require astronomical calculations to find the right answer, which does probably prove the point. Actually it's not nit-picking. My first thoughts on this were wrong. It's clear some lookup tables aren't worth the computational cost of looking them up, e.g, a lookup table of addition, whatever the precise computational cost (you can jump rows without having to count through each cell, so I think the cost is still linear on the size of the table). However, we can imagine a table of cubes or powers of 796.0584304 and see that the lunch gets very cheap if you have the memory resources for it. It's a trade-off of time versus space. Actually I think you can show that the LT saves work so long as the program doesn't actually disregard any of the information passed to it and does some real work on it. Why is this even interesting? Because if you can use lookup tables more efficiently than doing the computations themselves, then maybe you can make a philosophical zombie through the careful selection of recordings. However, I think you can show this won't work. Firstly, the machine won't be a *complete* zombie because it will have to work hard and therefore somewhat intelligently in selecting the correct records, so then we have the situation of a partial zombie, which is absurd vie the fading qualia argument. But also, we have to recognise that to completely recreate the program/person, we can't only record overt behavioural outputs, but also internally reportable states to cater for the possibility of someone asking, what are you thinking now? etc. That means our lookup table needs to record each step of each calculation, not only the outputs, and that means no compression is achieved at all. To locate the machine's state, we can't just look up a result from an input, but we have to go down the rabbit hole of the computation itself, which will involve as many, and the same, computations as the original program. Maybe it's possible that some compression could be achieved because not all machine states can be interrogated. An output is after all merely an accessible machine state. Inaccessible machine states could be compressed into a lookup table or cache, but the interesting possibility here is that * maybe they already are* and that is why they are unconscious and inaccessible. Perhaps we turn often repeated computations into recordings and that is why they are unconscious, because no true computation is being carried out any more. Ah gad, that's enough on that. I'm thinking out loud more than anything else, sorry! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 2:28:32 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:09 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote:
On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au
wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as
*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation?
And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove
that consciousness did not require computation?
To be precise supervening on the playback of a recording. Playback
of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a rather simple one.
In other words:
#include stdio.h
int main()
{
printf(hello world!\n);
return 1;
}
is very much a computer program (and a playback of recording of the
words hello world when run). I could change hello world to the
contents of
Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more forcibly.
OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on such a simple
computation - one that's functionally identical with a recording? Or
does instantiating consciousness require some degree of complexity
such that CC comes into play?
My opinion on whether the recording is conscious or not aint worth a
penny.
Nevertheless, the definition of computational supervenience requires
countefactual correctness in the class of programs being supervened
on.
AFAICT, the main motivation for that is to prevent recordings being
conscious.
I think it is possible to have a different definition of when a
computation is instantiated in the physical world that prevents
recordings from being conscious, a solution which doesn't actually depend
on counterfactuals at all. I described it in the post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.
com/msg16244.html (or https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/
GC6bwqCqsfQ/rFvg1dnKoWMJ on google groups). Basically the idea is that
in any system following mathematical rules, including both abstract Turing
machines and the physical universe, everything about its mathematical
structure can be encoded as a (possibly infinite) set of logical
propositions. So if you have a Turing machine running whose computations
over some finite period are supposed to correspond to a particular
observer moment, you can take all the propositions dealing with the
Turing machine's behavior during that period (propositions like on
time-increment 107234320 the read/write head moved to square 2398311 and
changed the digit there from 0 to 1, and changed its internal state from M
to Q), and look at the structure of logical relations between them (like
proposition A and B together imply proposition C, proposition B and C
together do not imply A, etc.). Then for any other computation or even any
physical process, you can see if it's possible to find a set of
propositions with a completely *isomorphic* logical structure.
But physical processes don't have *logical* structure. Theories of
physical processes do, but I don't think that serves your purpose.
Propositions about physical processes have a logical structure, don't
they? And wouldn't such propositions--if properly defined using variables
that appear in whatever the correct fundamental theory turns out to
be--have objective truth-values?
Also, would you say physical processes don't have a mathematical
structure? If you would say that, what sort of structure would you say
they *do* have, given that we have no way of empirically measuring any
properties other than ones with mathematical values? Any talk of physical
properties beyond mathematical ones gets into the territory of some kind of
thing-in-itself beyond all human comprehension.
And even restricting the domain to Turing machines, I don't see what
proposition A and proposition B are?
They could be propositions about basic events in the course of the
computation--state changes of the Turing machine and string on each
time-step, like the example I gave on time-increment 107234320 the
read/write head moved to square 2398311 and changed the digit there from 0
to 1, and changed its internal state from M to Q. There would also have to
be propositions for the general rules followed by the Turing machine, like
if the read/write head arrives at a square with a 1 and the machine's
internal state is P, change the 1 to a 0, change the internal state to S,
and advance along the tape by 3 squares.
Aren't they just they transition diagram of the Turing machine? So if
the Turing machine goes thru the same set of states that set defines an
equivalence class of computations. But what about a different Turing
machine that computes the
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 11:26:08 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Pierz pie...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 2:28:32 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:09 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote:
On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer
wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM,
Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au
wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700,
meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700,
meekerdb wrote:
That does seem strange, but I don't know
that it strikes me as
*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a
recording is not a computation?
And so if consciousness supervened on a
recording it would prove
that consciousness did not require
computation?
To be precise supervening on the playback of a
recording. Playback
of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a
rather simple one.
In other words:
#include stdio.h
int main()
{
printf(hello world!\n);
return 1;
}
is very much a computer program (and a playback
of recording of the
words hello world when run). I could change
hello world to the contents of
Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more
forcibly.
OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on
such a simple
computation - one that's functionally identical
with a recording? Or
does instantiating consciousness require some
degree of complexity
such that CC comes into play?
My opinion on whether the recording is conscious or not
aint worth a
penny.
Nevertheless, the definition of computational
supervenience requires
countefactual correctness in the class of programs being
supervened
on.
AFAICT, the main motivation for that is to prevent
recordings being conscious.
I think it is possible to have a different definition
of when a computation is instantiated in the physical
world that prevents recordings from being conscious, a
solution which doesn't actually depend on counterfactuals
at all. I described it in the post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html
(or
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/GC6bwqCqsfQ/rFvg1dnKoWMJ
on google groups). Basically the idea is that in any
system following mathematical rules, including both
abstract Turing machines and the physical universe,
everything about its mathematical structure can be encoded
as a (possibly infinite) set of logical propositions. So
if you have a Turing machine running whose computations
over some finite period are supposed to correspond to a
particular observer moment, you can take all the
propositions dealing with the Turing machine's behavior
during that period (propositions like on time-increment
107234320 the read/write head moved to square 2398311 and
changed the digit there from 0 to 1, and changed its
internal state from M to Q), and look at the structure of
logical relations between them (like proposition A and B
together imply proposition C, proposition B and C together
do not imply A, etc.). Then for any other computation or
even any physical process, you can see if it's possible to
find a set of propositions with a completely *isomorphic*
logical structure.
But physical processes don't have *logical* structure. Theories of
physical processes do, but I don't think that serves your purpose.
Propositions
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote:
Plus I don't believe it can be said that Bruno's theory makes everything
clear with respect to consciousness, as I've argued elsewhere.
Who can satisfy this suspiciously high bar? It seems to assume a posture
where people should serve you their work on a silver platter only if they
can satisfy such ambitious dream, lol. Where is the address of your throne?
Merely, if comp with the constraints referenced in the papers, then it
becomes clear why universal machine cannot assert this. Much weaker and
more modest than what you seem to interpret here.
We might hope that a theory based purely on a mathematical ontology would
not have to resort to an apparently magical proposition like there *being*
an interior perspective to mathematics.
We have no reason to imagine that there should be one, other perhaps than
the fact that *we* are conscious.
Theatetus, specific definition of knowledge in conjunction with universal
machine properties, the use of modal logic to study their internal
provability capacities and the properties of their beliefs, self-reference
and universality constraints, realization of the modal box to use of
beweisbar in PA... this is already quite a considerable chunk of history of
maths and these related fields to chew on, and I leave out finer, more
exhaustive grained list of some of UDA's and AUDA's resources in this brute
sketch...
But to go much further, as you seem to, and claim the entirety of maths to
apply to your statement...This seems to trivialize how extensive study of
mathematics and history is. If this is so clear to you, it would not be a
problem to round up the usual suspects for internal machine views,
illustrate Bruno's use of them, and share with the list why they are
magical to you and clarify where you disagree... Indeed, if you have such
graceful command over all of math, as your broad statement presupposes,
then I'd guess you should find much more than the usual suspects. I'm all
eyes and ears.
So the description of what mathematics is has this dimension of
interiority added it to by the comp assumption
This could be misread to mean exclusively claims from Bruno's work, when
it seems more like plausible continuation of history of domains in- and
neighboring computer science, logic etc. see above.
- and the only answer as to why is that there is no answer.
Cue Sci-Fi drama music from 70s Star Trek and say that in Kirk's voice!
So some magic brute fact remains, albeit within a nicely unified
ontological framework. I would say only that I have little reason to go on
thinking of this mathematical Platonia as purely mathematical.
It isn't, and your assumption that this represents some entire, complete
solution/status in admirable college dorm room style is dubious at best.
If anything, we see that we have twice the explaining to do, with open
problems popping up where we thought we made advances.
Perhaps all is subsumed within consciousness itself, and mathematics is an
emergent phenomenon so long as our consciousness remains limited within
Form, which by its nature demands self-consistency. Sheesh, getting very
mystical here. Enough.
If anything, not mystical enough, perhaps... Especially in the joke that
mystical is no go. I joked two weeks ago the old thing that in some
informal sense, everybody's beliefs end in some unjustifiable space bunny
like propositions facing ultimate questions. Nobody seems to have caught
that... that there is no not-space bunny believer. The ones that do
practice not space bunny in militant certainty, they just seem even
nuttier. PGC
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 16, 2014 2:28:32 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:09 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote:
On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as
*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation?
And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove
that consciousness did not require computation?
To be precise supervening on the playback of a recording. Playback
of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a rather simple one.
In other words:
#include stdio.h
int main()
{
printf(hello world!\n);
return 1;
}
is very much a computer program (and a playback of recording of the
words hello world when run). I could change hello world to the
contents of
Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more forcibly.
OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on
Re: MGA revisited paper
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, August 16, 2014 11:26:08 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote: I think you're being misled by the particular example you chose involving addition, in general there is no principle that says finding the appropriate entry in a lookup table involves a computation just as complicated as the original computation without a lookup table. Suppose instead of addition, the lookup table is based on a Turing test type situation where an intelligent AI is asked to respond to textual input, and the lookup table is created by doing a vast number of runs, all starting from the same initial state but feeding the AI *all* possible strings of characters under a certain length (the vast majority will just be nonsense of course). Then all the possible input strings can be stored alphabetically, and if I interact with the lookup table by typing a series of comment to the AI, it just has to search through the recordings alphabetically to find one where the AI responded to that particular comment (after responding to my previous comments which constitute the earlier parts of the input string), it doesn't need to re-compute the AI's brain processes or anything like that. And ultimately regardless of the type of program, the input will be encoded as some string of 1's and 0's, so for *all* lookup tables the possible input strings can be stored in numerical order, analogous to alphabetical order for verbal statement No of course, a lookup table can help, as I went on to say a few minutes later in a different reply when I realized the mistake. But I've explained in my longer reply to Liz what I was trying to say here. It depends on what level we wish to simulate to. A mere lookup table of outer behaviours such as speech acts won't be sufficient for a complete simulation. The more fine grained and responsive I wish to make my simulation, the more computation will be required to select the correct recordings, and the shorter and shallower the recordings will be. But read my reply to Liz. Hopefully I explain myself better there. Well, in my example of the Turing test, if the AI was a mind upload, then the output could easily a detailed playback of all the activity in its simulated brain at the synaptic level as it was answering my questions, in addition to the AI's textual output. But it would still just be a *recording* of the brain activity it went through during the original creation of the lookup table, when the upload was simulated responding to every possible input sequence. By talking to the lookup table, I don't think I increase the measure of the experiences associated with the upload seeing my side of the dialogue and responding, though the original creation of the lookup table would have increased the measure associated with the all the experiences of seeing all the possible input strings. Note that even though an output showing detailed brain activity is very fine grained, it isn't true that more computation is required to select the correct recordings then if I just got textual output, nor are the recordings shorter and shallower. Perhaps you were talking about making the *input* more fine-grained? Suppose instead of just interacting with the upload via text, I want to have a virtual puppet body in the upload's simulated world (where the upload has his own simulated body), and I have a system that detects all the nerve signals leaving my brain and transfers them to the simulated motor neurons of the puppet body that the upload sees in front of him, and his physical responses (along with any changes in other physical objects in the virtual world) are translated into the appropriate signals to my sensory neurons, a la The Matrix. So here both the input and output are quite fine-grained. To create the lookup table, someone would have to run a host of simulations in which the puppet body interacting with the upload is fed *all* possible combinations of signals to its motor neurons, the vast majority of which would presumably lead it to flail around randomly, or perhaps be immobilized due to equal numbers of signals arriving at opposing muscle groups. This original work to create the lookup table is obviously computationally intensive, but if I want to later interact with the finished lookup table, finding the right recorded output to feed to my sensory neurons in response to my bodily output should be much less difficult then the original simulation needed to create that recording. The original simulation would require simulating all the physical changes in the virtual world, including the upload's brain activity, moment-by-moment to see how everything reacts to the motor neuron outputs fed to the puppet body. On the other hand, finding the appropriate response to my motor neuron outputs on the lookup table is just a matter of coding my motor neuron outputs as 1's and 0's, then looking up that sequence in a table of sequences
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 16 August 2014 10:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net javascript:; wrote: On 8/15/2014 4:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think these sorts of considerations show that the physical states cannot be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness. How do they show that? I thought they only showed that CC and environmental reference were necessary to consciousness. Are you assuming that the playback of a recording IS conscious? If it is true that a recording is conscious or the random states of a rock are conscious then I think that does imply that physical states are irrelevant to consciousness. But the argument goes that this irrelevance of physical states is absurd, so some restriction is imposed on what can be conscious in order to avoid the absurdity. One possible restriction is that consciousness only occurs if the computations are implemented relative to an environment, another is that the counterfactuals be present. But these are ad hoc restrictions, no better than saying that consciousness can only occur in a biological substrate. The immediate objection to this is that physical changes in the brain *do* affect consciousness. But if physical states cannot be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness, there can be no evidence for a separate, fundamental physical world. What we are left with is the platonic reality in which all computations are realised and physical reality is a simulation. It is meaningless to ask if consciousness supervenes on the computations implemented on the simulated rock or the simulated recording. It's not meaningless to ask if there must be simulated physics for the simulated consciousness to supervene on. Do you think you could be conscious of a world with no physics? Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/16/2014 5:48 AM, Pierz wrote: On Saturday, August 16, 2014 8:45:30 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote: On 16 August 2014 16:48, Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I assert this confidently on the basis of my intuitions as a programmer, without being able to rigorously prove it, but a short thought experiment should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a lookup table of all possible additions of two numbers up to some number n. First I calculate all the possible results and put them into a large n by n table. Now I'm asked what is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to row 10 and column 70 and read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had to count to 10 and to 70! So I've added the two numbers together finding the correct value to look up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven to apply in all analogous situations. But if your table gives the results of multiplying them, you get a slightly free lunch (actually I have a nasty feeling you have to perform a multiplication to get an answer from an NxN grid ... to get to row 70, column 10, don't you count N x 70 + 10?) So suppose your table gives the result of dividing them, I'm sure you're getting at least a cheap lunch now? Sorry this is probably complete nitpicking. I can see that the humungous L.T. needed to speak Chinese would require astronomical calculations to find the right answer, which does probably prove the point. Actually it's not nit-picking. My first thoughts on this were wrong. It's clear some lookup tables aren't worth the computational cost of looking them up, e.g, a lookup table of addition, whatever the precise computational cost (you can jump rows without having to count through each cell, so I think the cost is still linear on the size of the table). However, we can imagine a table of cubes or powers of 796.0584304 and see that the lunch gets very cheap if you have the memory resources for it. It's a trade-off of time versus space. Actually I think you can show that the LT saves work so long as the program doesn't actually disregard any of the information passed to it and does some real work on it. Why is this even interesting? Because if you can use lookup tables more efficiently than doing the computations themselves, then maybe you can make a philosophical zombie through the careful selection of recordings. However, I think you can show this won't work. Firstly, the machine won't be a *complete* zombie because it will have to work hard and therefore somewhat intelligently in selecting the correct records, so then we have the situation of a partial zombie, which is absurd vie the fading qualia argument. But isn't this really how our brain works. There are things you learn so that you no longer have to (consicously) think about them. In fact most sports are that way. If you have to think about how to hit that tennis ball it means you haven't learned to play tennis yet. The same with typing these sentences. It's not that qualia faded; it's that they got pushed into the subconscious where they don't count as qualia even though they are still input, and, within their domain, counterfactually correct. Brent But also, we have to recognise that to completely recreate the program/person, we can't only record overt behavioural outputs, but also internally reportable states to cater for the possibility of someone asking, what are you thinking now? etc. That means our lookup table needs to record each step of each calculation, not only the outputs, and that means no compression is achieved at all. To locate the machine's state, we can't just look up a result from an input, but we have to go down the rabbit hole of the computation itself, which will involve as many, and the same, computations as the original program. Maybe it's possible that some compression could be achieved because not all machine states can be interrogated. An output is after all merely an accessible machine state. Inaccessible machine states could be compressed into a lookup table or cache, but the interesting possibility here is that * maybe they already are* and that is why they are unconscious and inaccessible. Perhaps we turn often repeated computations into recordings and that is why they are unconscious, because no true computation is being carried out any more. Ah gad, that's enough on that. I'm thinking out loud more than anything else, sorry! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/16/2014 10:16 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 August 2014 10:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net javascript:; wrote: On 8/15/2014 4:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think these sorts of considerations show that the physical states cannot be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness. How do they show that? I thought they only showed that CC and environmental reference were necessary to consciousness. Are you assuming that the playback of a recording IS conscious? If it is true that a recording is conscious or the random states of a rock are conscious then I think that does imply that physical states are irrelevant to consciousness. But the argument goes that this irrelevance of physical states is absurd, so some restriction is imposed on what can be conscious in order to avoid the absurdity. One possible restriction is that consciousness only occurs if the computations are implemented relative to an environment, another is that the counterfactuals be present. But these are ad hoc restrictions, no better than saying that consciousness can only occur in a biological substrate. The immediate objection to this is that physical changes in the brain *do* affect consciousness. But if physical states cannot be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness, there can be no evidence for a separate, fundamental physical world. What we are left with is the platonic reality in which all computations are realised and physical reality is a simulation. It is meaningless to ask if consciousness supervenes on the computations implemented on the simulated rock or the simulated recording. It's not meaningless to ask if there must be simulated physics for the simulated consciousness to supervene on. Do you think you could be conscious of a world with no physics? Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. And then the other question is can physics supervene on computations that do not instantiate any consciousness? I'm not sure about that. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 14 Aug 2014, at 19:59, meekerdb wrote: On 8/14/2014 1:41 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 10:25:40AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: I agree with you in general, but I can agree a little bit with Liz too, as I find Brent slightly sneaky on this issue, but all in all Brent is rather polite and seems sincere. Yet his critics (of step 8) is not that clear. But then that is why we discuss. Anyone seeing Brent's point can help to make it clearer. His point is that he doesn't believe input free computations can be conscious - there must always be some referrent to the environment (which is noisy, counterfactual, etc). Right. If so, it prevents the MGA, and Maudlin's argument, from working. I guess for Brent that even dream states still have some referrent to the environment, even if it be some sort of random synaptic noise. I think it's pretty obvious that dreams have external referents. Don't your dreams have people and places and objects in them that you recognize as such? I think the sharper question is whether there are referents when you think of numbers, when you do number theory proofs - essentially it's the question of Platonism. Does arithmetic and Turing machine 'exist' apart from brains that think about them? Does putting ... really justify inferences about infinite processes? Or on a more philosophical level, if everything exists does exists have any meaning? But not everything exist. Only K, S, (K K), (K S) (S K) (S S) ((K K) K), etc. Or if you prefer, only 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc. Plus their respective laws. Equivalently, we take it that the sigma_1 truth is independent of us. Basically this means that we believe that a machine does stop, or not stop. Or that if a natural number has some verifiable property, then we can search, and find that number. That ability makes you Turing universal, and for comp, you need only to assume one universal language, or universal machine, or universal number, universal theory, etc. (with universal = universal for computability (not provability!). Not everything exist, nor are every propositions true. Hopefully. But if you are willing to believe that for all prime n there is a bigger prime m is a result of our brain functioning, then I will no more understand what you mean by brain functioning as functioning needs notion more complex than prime, and I will suspect you will make all proposition being able to be true, like let us accept the people who for religious reason pretend that there is a bigger prime. *This* , for once, leads to relativism. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 15 Aug 2014, at 02:24, meekerdb wrote: On 8/14/2014 4:58 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 August 2014 06:51, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/14/2014 6:45 AM, Pierz wrote: That is a weird assumption to me and completely contrary to my own intuition. Certainly a person born and kept alive in sensory deprivation will be extremely limited in the complexity of the mental states s/he can develop, but I would certainly expect that such a person would have consciousness, ie., that there is something it would be like to be such a person. Indeed I expect that such a person would suffer horribly. Such a conclusion requires no mystical view of consciousness. It is based purely on biology - we are programmed with biological expectations/ predispositions which when not met, cause us to suffer. As much as the brain can't be separated completely from other matter, it *does* seem to house consciousness in a semi-autonomous fashion. So how did you suffer in the womb? But there's a lot of environmental interaction in the womb. You're undercutting your own case! To do a 180 degree, it would make more sense to claim that consciousness requires an environment because even before we're born we're already getting plenty of stimuli. A fetus does get some environmental interaction, but I don't see how that proves it is necessary. It might be interesting to look at those few sad cases in which women have been in a coma during the latter part of their pregnancy. Presumably the fetus would have received less stimulus although there still would have been some and it would be hard to tell whether a recently born baby was more or less conscious. You need to imagine a person put into an artificial womb with no light or sound etc from the moment they start to develop a nervous system, and consider whether that person would be conscious. I think they would be severely deficient. Remember I think there can be degrees of consciousness, while Bruno thinks it's all-or- nothing. It is all or nothing, but there is a variety of consciousness state. It is like being positive, which is all-or-nothing, despite some very little positive real numbers can be close negative real numbers. You cannot be half conscious, you can be completely drunk, tough, and quite disconnected from you mundane consciousness, and plausibly with a notion of numbness for such case. Unconsciousness is not a first person experience. I think that even a wolf-child that grows up without learning speech has a qualitatively different and lesser consciousness. Qualitatively different, sure. But lesser? I would not be astonished that we would have grown a larger part for smells, and might also feel before other earthquake and things like that. I think we have some empirical evidence. If kittens are raised in complete darkness they don't develop vision. That might be true for mammals, but not for insects. Human babies can walk and swim at birth, but forget that instinctive ability, and we are wired to learn things. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/16/2014 12:27 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But not everything exist. Only K, S, (K K), (K S) (S K) (S S) ((K K) K), etc. etc. = And you also assume that a UD exists. Or if you prefer, only 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc. Plus their respective laws. That's your hypothesis. Why not start with ZFC, which most mathematicians consider the foundation of mathematics? I hope the answer is that one of them, or some other hypothesis, will provide testable predictions that are confirmed. But otherwise they are just hypotheses. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/16/2014 12:38 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Aug 2014, at 02:24, meekerdb wrote: On 8/14/2014 4:58 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 August 2014 06:51, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/14/2014 6:45 AM, Pierz wrote: That is a weird assumption to me and completely contrary to my own intuition. Certainly a person born and kept alive in sensory deprivation will be extremely limited in the complexity of the mental states s/he can develop, but I would certainly expect that such a person would have consciousness, ie., that there is something it would be like to be such a person. Indeed I expect that such a person would suffer horribly. Such a conclusion requires no mystical view of consciousness. It is based purely on biology - we are programmed with biological expectations/predispositions which when not met, cause us to suffer. As much as the brain can't be separated completely from other matter, it *does* seem to house consciousness in a semi-autonomous fashion. So how did you suffer in the womb? But there's a lot of environmental interaction in the womb. You're undercutting your own case! To do a 180 degree, it would make more sense to claim that consciousness requires an environment because even before we're born we're already getting plenty of stimuli. A fetus does get some environmental interaction, but I don't see how that proves it is necessary. It might be interesting to look at those few sad cases in which women have been in a coma during the latter part of their pregnancy. Presumably the fetus would have received less stimulus although there still would have been some and it would be hard to tell whether a recently born baby was more or less conscious. You need to imagine a person put into an artificial womb with no light or sound etc from the moment they start to develop a nervous system, and consider whether that person would be conscious. I think they would be severely deficient. Remember I think there can be degrees of consciousness, while Bruno thinks it's all-or-nothing. It is all or nothing, but there is a variety of consciousness state. It is like being positive, which is all-or-nothing, despite some very little positive real numbers can be close negative real numbers. You cannot be half conscious, you can be completely drunk, tough, and quite disconnected from you mundane consciousness, and plausibly with a notion of numbness for such case. Unconsciousness is not a first person experience. So do you think my dog is conscious? The koi in my pond? The snails? The algae? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 15 Aug 2014, at 04:15, meekerdb wrote: Which would also imply that whether sensory deprivation was bad or not would depend on how your brain was wired. I don't know whether a fetus or even a baby is conscious or not. I think human-like consciousness is partly dependent on language, but I also think, unlike Bruno, that there are degrees and kinds of consciousness and a fetus or a newborn may be conscious like my dog is conscious. I just say that either you are conscious, or you are not. you can't be half conscious, but you can have experience which makes you feel that you are less, or more, conscious. There are typical drugs (like kava kava, but also high dose of alcohol) which augment the intensity of consciousness (I don't like that), as opposed to other which expands the consciousness spectrum, but without changing the intensity. It is like a number is either bigger than zero, or not. But it can be close to zero, notably when short term memory is stooped, like in slow sleep. Without training in focusing when awakening from that state, you can easily believe having been unconscious. With training, you can remember the last events, and realized those are just conscious experience, of another type, which are just forgotten quite rapidly. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 15 Aug 2014, at 05:12, meekerdb wrote: On 8/14/2014 5:50 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:09:27PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 15 August 2014 09:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/14/2014 11:40 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: Then it'd be no problem for you guys to clearly spell out what that environment is. Yes, that's a problem. The MGA considers a computational sequence that produces some conscious thought. I think that in order for the computational sequence to have meaning it must refer to some context in which decision or action is possible. That's what makes it about something and not just a sequence of events. I initially thought of it in terms of the extra states that had to be available for counterfactual correctness in response to an external environment, e.g. seeing something, having a K_40 atom decay in your brain. But now I've think the necessity of reference is different than counterfactual correctness. For example if you had a recording of the computations of an autonomous Mars Rover they wouldn't really constitute a computation because the recording would not have the possibility of branching in response to inputs. And the inputs wouldn't necessarily be external, at a different state of the Rover's learning the same sequence might have triggered a different association from memory. So the referents are not necessarily just external, they include all of memory as well. Given that comp assumes consciousness supervenes on classical computation, it's still hard for me to imagine what the difference is that counterfactuals or meaning supply. That is, a classical computation (as opposed to a quantum one...perhaps???) is a well-defined set of steps, and if you re-run them in the MGA they're identical. There may be no possibility of reacting differently to different inputs, but I can't see what difference - i.e. what real, physical, engineering (etc) type difference that makes. If consciousness is digitally emulable, then it can be replayed, and whatever counterfactuals and meanings that the consciousness may attach to its internal states or (replayed) inputs will be repeated. So in a nutshell I can't see how, assuming consciousness supervenes on physical computation, that being about something or having meaning or needing counterfactual correctness -- or needing a real environment, for that matter, as opposed to identically repeated inputs -- can make any difference to whether the UTM in question is conscious. Because a system that interacts with an environment and one that replays that interaction exactly are, or can in theory be made, physically identical. What am I missing? The consequence of assuming that counterfactuals make no difference in your supervenience thesis is that it implies consciousness supervenes on a recording. I constantly stumbled over this point too, as it is not adequately spelled out in typical formulations of the computational supervenience thesis. That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as *absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation? And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove that consciousness did not require computation? Yes, I agree that a recording is not a computation, even when it physically mimic a a physical system emulating a particular computation. But it is a false problem, as consciousness will supervene on all computations going through the relevant state (existing by the comp assumption). They occurs in infinitely many computations phi_i(j)^n, n = 0, 1, 2, 3, ... For some, that is a bridge too far. Maybe you could try following Bruno's stroboscope argument to see if that persuades. (Not sure if there's an English language version about, though). I did explained it on this list (or was it on FOAR). It should be retrievable with the key word stroboscope in the archive, or I can explain it if asked. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Shalosh B. Ekhad: In Computers We Trust?
On 15 Aug 2014, at 20:04, meekerdb wrote: FYI -- Brent Original Message http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130222-in-computers-we-trust/ In Computers We Trust? As math grows ever more complex, will computers reign? By: Natalie Wolchover February 22, 2013 Shalosh B. Ekhad, the co-author of several papers in respected mathematics journals, has been known to prove with a single, succinct utterance theorems and identities that previously required pages of mathematical reasoning. Last year, when asked to evaluate a formula for the number of integer triangles with a given perimeter, Ekhad performed 37 calculations in less than a second and delivered the verdict: True. Shalosh B. Ekhad is a computer. Or, rather, it is any of a rotating cast of computers used by the mathematician Doron Zeilberger, from the Dell in his New Jersey office to a supercomputer whose services he occasionally enlists in Austria. The name -- Hebrew for three B one -- refers to the ATT 3B1, Ekhad's earliest incarnation. The soul is the software, said Zeilberger, who writes his own code using a popular math programming tool called Maple. A mustachioed, 62-year-old professor at Rutgers University, Zeilberger anchors one end of a spectrum of opinions about the role of computers in mathematics. He has been listing Ekhad as a co- author on papers since the late 1980s to make a statement that computers should get credit where credit is due. For decades, he has railed against human-centric bigotry by mathematicians: a preference for pencil-and-paper proofs that Zeilberger claims has stymied progress in the field. For good reason, he said. People feel they will be out of business. Anyone who relies on calculators or spreadsheets might be surprised to learn that mathematicians have not universally embraced computers. To many in the field, programming a machine to prove a triangle identity -- or to solve problems that have yet to be cracked by hand -- moves the goalposts of a beloved 3,000-year-old game. Deducing new truths about the mathematical universe has almost always required intuition, creativity and strokes of genius, not plugging-and-chugging. In fact, the need to avoid nasty calculations (for lack of a computer) has often driven discovery, leading mathematicians to find elegant symbolic techniques like calculus. To some, the process of unearthing the unexpected, winding paths of proofs, and discovering new mathematical objects along the way, is not a means to an end that a computer can replace, but the end itself. In other words, proofs, where computers are playing an increasingly prominent role, are not always the end goal of mathematics. Many mathematicians think they are building theories with the ultimate goal of understanding the mathematical universe, said Minhyong Kim, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. Mathematicians try to come up with conceptual frameworks that define new objects and state new conjectures as well as proving old ones. Even when a new theory yields an important proof, many mathematicians feel it's actually the theory that is more intriguing than the proof itself, Kim said. Computers are now used extensively to discover new conjectures by finding patterns in data or equations, but they cannot conceptualize them within a larger theory, the way humans do. Computers also tend to bypass the theory-building process when proving theorems, said Constantin Teleman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who does not use computers in his work. In his opinion, that's the problem. Pure mathematics is not just about knowing the answer; it's about understanding, Teleman said. If all you have come up with is 'the computer checked a million cases,' then that's a failure of understanding. Zeilberger disagrees. If humans can understand a proof, he says, it must be a trivial one. In the never-ending pursuit of mathematical progress, Zeilberger thinks humanity is losing its edge. Intuitive leaps and an ability to think abstractly gave us an early lead, he argues, but ultimately, the unswerving logic of 1s and 0s -- guided by human programmers -- will far outstrip our conceptual understanding, just as it did in chess. (Computers now consistently beat grandmasters.) Most of the things done by humans will be done easily by computers in 20 or 30 years, Zeilberger said. It's already true in some parts of mathematics; a lot of papers published today done by humans are already obsolete and can be done using algorithms. Some of the problems we do today are completely uninteresting but are done because it's something that humans can do. Zeilberger and other pioneers of computational mathematics sense that their views have gone from radical to relatively common in the past
Re: dot dot dot
On 8/16/2014 4:57 PM, James Lindsay wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for the note. I like the thought about mathematics as a refinement of language. I also think of it as a specialization of philosophy, or even a highly distilled variant upon it with limited scope. Indeed, I frequently conceive of mathematics as a branch of philosophy where we (mostly) agree upon the axioms and (mostly) know we're talking about abstract ideas, to be distinguished from what I feel like I get from many philosophers. I am not familiar with Bruno Marchal, Here's his paper that describes his TOE. It rests on two points for which he gives arguments: (1) If consciousness is instantiated by certain computational processes which could be realized in different media (so there's nothing magici about them being done in brains) then they can exist the way arithmetic exist (i.e. in platonia). And in platonia there is a universal dovetailer, UD, that computes everything computable (and more), so it instantiates all possible conscious thoughts including those that cause us to infer the existence of an external physical world. The problem with his theory, which he recognizes, is that this apparently instantiates too much. But as physicist like Max Tegmark, Vilenkin, and Krause talk about eternal inflation and infinitely many universes in which all possible physics is realized, maybe the UD doesn't produce too much. He thinks he can show that what it produces is like quantum mechanics except for a measure zero. But I'm not convinced his measure is more than wishful thinking. He's a nice fellow though and not a crank. So if you'd like to engage him on any of this you can join the discussion list everything-list@googlegroups.com. and I am not expert in theories of anything, much less everything, based upon computation or even computation theories. I remain a bit skeptical of them, and overall, I would suggest that such things are likely to be /theories/ of everything, which is to say still on the map side of the map/terrain divide. I agree. But some people assume that there must be some ultimate ontology of ur-stuff that exists necessarily - and mathematical objects are their favorite candidates (if they're not religious). I don't think this is a compelling argument since I regard numbers as inventions (not necessarily human - likely evolution invented them). I think of ontologies as the stuff that is in our theories. Since theories are invented to explain things they may ultimately be circular, sort of like: mathematics- physics- chemistry-biology- intelligence- mathematics. So you can start with whatever you think you understand. If this circle of explanation is big enough to include everything, then I claim it's virtuously circular. Brent What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing! --- Norm Levitt, after Quine Regarding your note about my Chapter 2, that's an interesting point that he raises, and interestingly, I don't wholly disagree with him that it is an integral feature of arithmetic that it is axiomatically incomplete (though maybe I thought differently when I wrote the book). Particularly, I don't think of it as a bug, but I don't necessarily think of it as a feature either. I'm pretty neutral to it, and I feel like I was trying to express the idea in my book that it reveals mostly how theoretical, as opposed to real, mathematics is. I'm not sure about this more than a map thing yet, as by map I just mean abstract way to work with reality instead of reality itself and hadn't read more into my own statement than that. I would disagree with him, however, that it is related to the hard problem of consciousness, I think, or perhaps it's better to say that I'm very skeptical of such a claim. Brains are, however immensely complex, finite things, and as such, I do not think that the lack of a complete axiomatization of arithmetic is likely to be integrally related to the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I just don't understand what he's getting at, though. Who knows? I also tend to agree with you--in some senses--about the ultrafinitists probably being right. My distinction is that I'm fine with infinity as a kind of fiction that we play with or use to make calculus/analysis more accessible. I certainly agree with you that infinity probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, particularly once they start getting weird and (relatively) huge. There's something interesting to think about, though, when it comes to the ideas of some infinities being larger than others. I was thinking a bit about it the other day, in fact. That seems to be a necessary consequence of little more than certain definitions on certain kinds of sets (with infinite perhaps not even necessary here, using the finitists' indefinite instead) and one-to-one correspondences. Anyway, thanks again for the note. Kindly, James On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 1:14 AM, meekerdb
Re: dot dot dot
OOPS! I didn't intend to post this to the everything-list; although it may serve as an introduction for James Lindsay if he decides to join the list. I wrote to him after reading his book dot dot do which is about infinity in mathematics and philosophy. Brent On 8/16/2014 9:28 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 8/16/2014 4:57 PM, James Lindsay wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for the note. I like the thought about mathematics as a refinement of language. I also think of it as a specialization of philosophy, or even a highly distilled variant upon it with limited scope. Indeed, I frequently conceive of mathematics as a branch of philosophy where we (mostly) agree upon the axioms and (mostly) know we're talking about abstract ideas, to be distinguished from what I feel like I get from many philosophers. I am not familiar with Bruno Marchal, Here's his paper that describes his TOE. It rests on two points for which he gives arguments: (1) If consciousness is instantiated by certain computational processes which could be realized in different media (so there's nothing magici about them being done in brains) then they can exist the way arithmetic exist (i.e. in platonia). And in platonia there is a universal dovetailer, UD, that computes everything computable (and more), so it instantiates all possible conscious thoughts including those that cause us to infer the existence of an external physical world. The problem with his theory, which he recognizes, is that this apparently instantiates too much. But as physicist like Max Tegmark, Vilenkin, and Krause talk about eternal inflation and infinitely many universes in which all possible physics is realized, maybe the UD doesn't produce too much. He thinks he can show that what it produces is like quantum mechanics except for a measure zero. But I'm not convinced his measure is more than wishful thinking. He's a nice fellow though and not a crank. So if you'd like to engage him on any of this you can join the discussion list everything-list@googlegroups.com. and I am not expert in theories of anything, much less everything, based upon computation or even computation theories. I remain a bit skeptical of them, and overall, I would suggest that such things are likely to be /theories/ of everything, which is to say still on the map side of the map/terrain divide. I agree. But some people assume that there must be some ultimate ontology of ur-stuff that exists necessarily - and mathematical objects are their favorite candidates (if they're not religious). I don't think this is a compelling argument since I regard numbers as inventions (not necessarily human - likely evolution invented them). I think of ontologies as the stuff that is in our theories. Since theories are invented to explain things they may ultimately be circular, sort of like: mathematics- physics- chemistry-biology- intelligence- mathematics. So you can start with whatever you think you understand. If this circle of explanation is big enough to include everything, then I claim it's virtuously circular. Brent What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing! --- Norm Levitt, after Quine Regarding your note about my Chapter 2, that's an interesting point that he raises, and interestingly, I don't wholly disagree with him that it is an integral feature of arithmetic that it is axiomatically incomplete (though maybe I thought differently when I wrote the book). Particularly, I don't think of it as a bug, but I don't necessarily think of it as a feature either. I'm pretty neutral to it, and I feel like I was trying to express the idea in my book that it reveals mostly how theoretical, as opposed to real, mathematics is. I'm not sure about this more than a map thing yet, as by map I just mean abstract way to work with reality instead of reality itself and hadn't read more into my own statement than that. I would disagree with him, however, that it is related to the hard problem of consciousness, I think, or perhaps it's better to say that I'm very skeptical of such a claim. Brains are, however immensely complex, finite things, and as such, I do not think that the lack of a complete axiomatization of arithmetic is likely to be integrally related to the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I just don't understand what he's getting at, though. Who knows? I also tend to agree with you--in some senses--about the ultrafinitists probably being right. My distinction is that I'm fine with infinity as a kind of fiction that we play with or use to make calculus/analysis more accessible. I certainly agree with you that infinity probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, particularly once they start getting weird and (relatively) huge. There's something interesting to think about, though, when it comes to the ideas of some infinities being larger than others. I was thinking a bit about it the other day, in fact. That seems to be a
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 17 August 2014 07:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. Would you mind clarifying this? I'm not what it means that consciousness can only supervene on computations that instantiate physics. For example - assuming my brain is doing computations, how is it instantiating physics? Or did you mean that the brain is a physical object, and hence instantiated within physics, so to speak? And then the other question is can physics supervene on computations that do not instantiate any consciousness? I'm not sure about that. If I read this arright, which I probably don't, this would be equivalent to comp generating universes with no observers, which I imagine is by definition impossible. But maybe the answer to the previous question will clarify this one. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: dot dot dot
Never mind, you stated your position nice and clearly, perhaps more clearly than you normally do on the EL. (...or is that why you're saying OOPS! ? :-) On 17 August 2014 16:54, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: OOPS! I didn't intend to post this to the everything-list; although it may serve as an introduction for James Lindsay if he decides to join the list. I wrote to him after reading his book dot dot do which is about infinity in mathematics and philosophy. Brent On 8/16/2014 9:28 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 8/16/2014 4:57 PM, James Lindsay wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for the note. I like the thought about mathematics as a refinement of language. I also think of it as a specialization of philosophy, or even a highly distilled variant upon it with limited scope. Indeed, I frequently conceive of mathematics as a branch of philosophy where we (mostly) agree upon the axioms and (mostly) know we're talking about abstract ideas, to be distinguished from what I feel like I get from many philosophers. I am not familiar with Bruno Marchal, Here's his paper that describes his TOE. It rests on two points for which he gives arguments: (1) If consciousness is instantiated by certain computational processes which could be realized in different media (so there's nothing magici about them being done in brains) then they can exist the way arithmetic exist (i.e. in platonia). And in platonia there is a universal dovetailer, UD, that computes everything computable (and more), so it instantiates all possible conscious thoughts including those that cause us to infer the existence of an external physical world. The problem with his theory, which he recognizes, is that this apparently instantiates too much. But as physicist like Max Tegmark, Vilenkin, and Krause talk about eternal inflation and infinitely many universes in which all possible physics is realized, maybe the UD doesn't produce too much. He thinks he can show that what it produces is like quantum mechanics except for a measure zero. But I'm not convinced his measure is more than wishful thinking. He's a nice fellow though and not a crank. So if you'd like to engage him on any of this you can join the discussion list everything-list@googlegroups.com. and I am not expert in theories of anything, much less everything, based upon computation or even computation theories. I remain a bit skeptical of them, and overall, I would suggest that such things are likely to be *theories* of everything, which is to say still on the map side of the map/terrain divide. I agree. But some people assume that there must be some ultimate ontology of ur-stuff that exists necessarily - and mathematical objects are their favorite candidates (if they're not religious). I don't think this is a compelling argument since I regard numbers as inventions (not necessarily human - likely evolution invented them). I think of ontologies as the stuff that is in our theories. Since theories are invented to explain things they may ultimately be circular, sort of like: mathematics- physics- chemistry-biology- intelligence- mathematics. So you can start with whatever you think you understand. If this circle of explanation is big enough to include everything, then I claim it's virtuously circular. Brent What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing! --- Norm Levitt, after Quine Regarding your note about my Chapter 2, that's an interesting point that he raises, and interestingly, I don't wholly disagree with him that it is an integral feature of arithmetic that it is axiomatically incomplete (though maybe I thought differently when I wrote the book). Particularly, I don't think of it as a bug, but I don't necessarily think of it as a feature either. I'm pretty neutral to it, and I feel like I was trying to express the idea in my book that it reveals mostly how theoretical, as opposed to real, mathematics is. I'm not sure about this more than a map thing yet, as by map I just mean abstract way to work with reality instead of reality itself and hadn't read more into my own statement than that. I would disagree with him, however, that it is related to the hard problem of consciousness, I think, or perhaps it's better to say that I'm very skeptical of such a claim. Brains are, however immensely complex, finite things, and as such, I do not think that the lack of a complete axiomatization of arithmetic is likely to be integrally related to the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I just don't understand what he's getting at, though. Who knows? I also tend to agree with you--in some senses--about the ultrafinitists probably being right. My distinction is that I'm fine with infinity as a kind of fiction that we play with or use to make calculus/analysis more accessible. I certainly agree with you that infinity probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, particularly once they
Re: dot dot dot
PS You do know you can delete posts from the EL, don't you? On 17 August 2014 17:23, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Never mind, you stated your position nice and clearly, perhaps more clearly than you normally do on the EL. (...or is that why you're saying OOPS! ? :-) On 17 August 2014 16:54, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: OOPS! I didn't intend to post this to the everything-list; although it may serve as an introduction for James Lindsay if he decides to join the list. I wrote to him after reading his book dot dot do which is about infinity in mathematics and philosophy. Brent On 8/16/2014 9:28 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 8/16/2014 4:57 PM, James Lindsay wrote: Hi Brent, Thanks for the note. I like the thought about mathematics as a refinement of language. I also think of it as a specialization of philosophy, or even a highly distilled variant upon it with limited scope. Indeed, I frequently conceive of mathematics as a branch of philosophy where we (mostly) agree upon the axioms and (mostly) know we're talking about abstract ideas, to be distinguished from what I feel like I get from many philosophers. I am not familiar with Bruno Marchal, Here's his paper that describes his TOE. It rests on two points for which he gives arguments: (1) If consciousness is instantiated by certain computational processes which could be realized in different media (so there's nothing magici about them being done in brains) then they can exist the way arithmetic exist (i.e. in platonia). And in platonia there is a universal dovetailer, UD, that computes everything computable (and more), so it instantiates all possible conscious thoughts including those that cause us to infer the existence of an external physical world. The problem with his theory, which he recognizes, is that this apparently instantiates too much. But as physicist like Max Tegmark, Vilenkin, and Krause talk about eternal inflation and infinitely many universes in which all possible physics is realized, maybe the UD doesn't produce too much. He thinks he can show that what it produces is like quantum mechanics except for a measure zero. But I'm not convinced his measure is more than wishful thinking. He's a nice fellow though and not a crank. So if you'd like to engage him on any of this you can join the discussion list everything-list@googlegroups.com. and I am not expert in theories of anything, much less everything, based upon computation or even computation theories. I remain a bit skeptical of them, and overall, I would suggest that such things are likely to be *theories* of everything, which is to say still on the map side of the map/terrain divide. I agree. But some people assume that there must be some ultimate ontology of ur-stuff that exists necessarily - and mathematical objects are their favorite candidates (if they're not religious). I don't think this is a compelling argument since I regard numbers as inventions (not necessarily human - likely evolution invented them). I think of ontologies as the stuff that is in our theories. Since theories are invented to explain things they may ultimately be circular, sort of like: mathematics- physics- chemistry-biology- intelligence- mathematics. So you can start with whatever you think you understand. If this circle of explanation is big enough to include everything, then I claim it's virtuously circular. Brent What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing! --- Norm Levitt, after Quine Regarding your note about my Chapter 2, that's an interesting point that he raises, and interestingly, I don't wholly disagree with him that it is an integral feature of arithmetic that it is axiomatically incomplete (though maybe I thought differently when I wrote the book). Particularly, I don't think of it as a bug, but I don't necessarily think of it as a feature either. I'm pretty neutral to it, and I feel like I was trying to express the idea in my book that it reveals mostly how theoretical, as opposed to real, mathematics is. I'm not sure about this more than a map thing yet, as by map I just mean abstract way to work with reality instead of reality itself and hadn't read more into my own statement than that. I would disagree with him, however, that it is related to the hard problem of consciousness, I think, or perhaps it's better to say that I'm very skeptical of such a claim. Brains are, however immensely complex, finite things, and as such, I do not think that the lack of a complete axiomatization of arithmetic is likely to be integrally related to the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I just don't understand what he's getting at, though. Who knows? I also tend to agree with you--in some senses--about the ultrafinitists probably being right. My distinction is that I'm fine with infinity as a kind of fiction that we play with or use to make calculus/analysis more
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/16/2014 10:19 PM, LizR wrote: On 17 August 2014 07:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. Would you mind clarifying this? I'm not what it means that consciousness can only supervene on computations that instantiate physics. For example - assuming my brain is doing computations, how is it instantiating physics? Or did you mean that the brain is a physical object, and hence instantiated within physics, so to speak? No I mean you need something to think about that has the consistency and stabiltiy of an external world. You need to be able to think in terms of objects, bodies, motions, numbers, perceptions,... Of course language gives you this, but you have some of it prior to language which I think is hardwired by evolution. And then the other question is can physics supervene on computations that do not instantiate any consciousness? I'm not sure about that. If I read this arright, which I probably don't, this would be equivalent to comp generating universes with no observers, which I imagine is by definition impossible. Yes, that's what it would mean. But if comp can't generate universes with no observers what does it mean that there were no people (or even jumping spiders) for most of the duration of the universe? And what about distant parts of the universe that we can't observe? And do we have to actually *be* observing for them to exist? Do we suppose that they don't exist or do we take or theories of cosmology that indicate they should exist as proof that there are observers of them? Brent But maybe the answer to the previous question will clarify this one. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
