RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: I think it is simpler to go back to your own clones-in-the-next-room example rather than introducing the complication of neurophysiology (or indeed physics). You are informed that your current stream of consciousness is either being generated by (a) a temporal sequence of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, and replaced by the next one in the series a microsecond later or (b) a spatial series of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, such that the whole experiment goes for a second but uses multiple adjacent rooms You have to guess whether you are in experiment (a) or (b). If appropriate care is taken to provide you with no external clues do you think you would be able to guess the right answer with greater than 1/2 probability? It's quite possible that neither scenario can support a subjective flow of time. Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou Sure, it was (a). (c) violates the laws of physics. (b) might or might not be theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. OK, you would probably be right if you were kidnapped and subjected to this experiment tomorrow. But it's a thought experiment, and my point is that from your conscious experience alone you would be unable to distinguish between the three cases. Peter Jones' posts seem to imply that you would notice a difference. You have to say that, given a particular theory of consciousness, would you notice a difference. If physical counterfactuals/causality is important, you could in cases a) and b), since they all involve an abnormal causal transition from one OM to then next. Given computationalism, it is less straightforward. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the organism. Does this make sense? David David, Consider these three examples: (a) You utter sentence S, the cat sat on the mat. The word on starts at time t1 and finishes at time t2. (b) At time t1 while uttering S you are intantaneously teleported to a distant location. (c) You have no actual past but materialise de novo at time t1 as if in (b), uttering ... on the mat. We are interested in your phenomenal consciousness between t1 and t2 in each case (ignoring the change of scenery due to the teleportation). It is no doubt quite complex, involving not only saying the word on but also a sense of self, a sense of the whole sentence and your place in it, an idea that this is part of an experiment, and so on. There may even be a lag between action and awareness, so that you are actually conscious of saying sat in the interval t1t2 rather than when you actually said it, and there will probably be at least some sense of continuity between sat and on during t1t2. The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. Stathis Papaioannou From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:14:03 -0700
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there is an external time parameter, it might be possible to return to the same state of mind (or the universe) at different points in time, just as it is possible to for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different points in space). But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed What does informationally closed mean? as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Errmm.. if by recover we are able to replay them as conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need only contain time-stamps indicating the order and timing of the contents of the experience. The total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously. The stored experience is not conscious in itself any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion. In both cases, that comes in with the recovery. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, That all depends on what you mean by individual occasion. In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional) doesn't contain enough information to recover standard dynamics, and instead a kind of specious present known as instantaneous velocity is used -- i.e. the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice. (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without some features of standard dynamics). and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with presentism, the idea that everything must be recovered from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe, but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense. (I think this is relevant to Maudlin. I don't think the physical activity of a system can be separated from its latent casual dispositions). Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there is an external time parameter, it might be possible to return to the same state of mind (or the universe) at different points in time, just as it is possible to for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different points in space). Yes, I think this could have been better put. I meant that each aspect of the experience could be treated as if self-contained, with an independent 'pov'. etc. What does informationally closed mean? 'Isolated' might be a better term. As DD puts it 'other times are special cases of other worlds'. Errmm.. if by recover we are able to replay them as conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need only contain time-stamps indicating the order and timing of the contents of the experience. The total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously. Precisely, my dear Watson. The stored experience is not conscious in itself any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion. In both cases, that comes in with the recovery. And I'm saying that the recovery *is* a structure that implements a specific set of relations between the 'time-stamped' data and the perceptual apparatus - what I've termed the perceiver-percept dyad. The dyad's function is to render the time-stamped data in the form of environmentally-embedded dynamic processes centred on a 1-person pov. If you press me for the detail of 'render' I'm afraid I can only respond 'in some way', as you do with respect to RITSIAR. My point is that the dyad is rendered as a simultaneously compresent structure. As to *why* the structure is experienced as an 'A'-series, I can but refer you to my previous suggestions, which you may or may not find persuasive. That all depends on what you mean by individual occasion. In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional) doesn't contain enough information to recover standard dynamics, and instead a kind of specious present known as instantaneous velocity is used -- i.e. the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice. (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without some features of standard dynamics). We don't have to define the occasion in this way. Rather, we look at what information is available for 'dyadic rendering'. My point to Stathis was that unless the information representing all stages of a specific dynamic experience is simultaneously compresent in a single occasion, however delimited, there could be no such experience present in that occasion. and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity. No, but the temptation is to try to assemble the information from different OMs or occasions by surreptitiously invoking 'continuity' - peeking, IOW. Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with presentism, the idea that everything must be recovered from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe, but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense. Am I? I'm saying that the information driving the experience of (seemingly) continuous processes must be recovered from simultaneously compresent sources. The reason is that if one assumes the opposite - that such information is just recovered from individual events 'smeared over time' - then you keep losing bits of the (psychological) 'specious present' because, as the information sequence moves forward, the earlier bits *just aren't available any longer*. So I'm saying that in the B-series events are indeed sequentially 'laid out', but that this of itself is insufficient to account for our own species of episodic dynamic experience. The A-series (i.e. time-as-experienced) seems to proceed via sequences not of single events, but simultaneously rendered 'dynamic capsules' generated by (god-knows-what) brain mechanisms that have specifically evolved towards this end. David David Nyman wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, But that's exactly the point I find dubious. Continuity in mathematics always involves taking infinite limits in sets that are already ordered (Dedekind cuts for example). And per all our best theories, the universe is instantiates continuous processes in a continuous spacetime. Though there have been many attempts, no one has shown with mathematical rigor how a continuous spacetime can emerge as an approximation of a discrete one. Physicists mostly think it is true, but mathematicians think they're hand waving. The difficulties of numerically solving partial differential equations in computers don't give much comfort. We use the instantaneous states as in the solution of differential equations, but those generally include the values of derivatives and hence implicitly a time variation. and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, Should not, assuming physicalism? Should not, assuming computationalism? and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Why? Maybe it supervenes on whatever propels one physical state to evolve into another. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything
Re: To observe is to......EC
=== STEP 7: Something from nothing. (the big bang) U(.) = (*) from previous STEP. = (()()()()()()()()()()...()()()()()) There is some need to deal with this issue because it leads to the mathematical drive of EC that we inside see as the second law of thermodynamics. NOTES: 1) The axiom set is one single huge fluctuation (*) which I have previously labelled U and depicted as U(.). 2) The overall 'fluctuation' is the same (a fluctuation!) but different in that it consists of the temporary coherence of a massive collection of individual (). The overall process could really be labeled U( as what is happening is one massive fluctuation followed by a return to 'nothing' where all the () disperse. In terms of physics you could call this a single massive 'symmetry breaking' event caused by a single massive coherence. 3) At the initial point (big bang) there is no structure in U(.) other than the initial coherence (which can vary throughout but overall still add up to one super-fluctuation). 4) The underlying processes that are the source of each () are, in essence, deep randomness. Depth unknown. Call the deeper randomness of which a () is constructed a []. There can be a variable number of [] in a (). For EC at this stage we don't have to worry about the number of [] in (). Although it will determine the initial rules of formation. 5) The underlying processes [] can be incoherent, but dispersal of [] from coherent () will tend to reinforce coherent emergent [] structures back up into it. Thus the situation can dynamically persist. 6) The reason it happens at all is that a perfect 'nothing', everywhere and always, requires an infinite amount of energy. Infinities are impossible, so the something comes from nothing as an 'average' nothing. 'Nothing' can therefore be be viewed as intrinsically unstable. Any appearance of anything can be regarded as a temporary failure to be 'Nothing'. This sounds nuts but it's consistent with the facts and logical. 7) The net result is that the dispersal of () partly or fully into [] and deeper is the natural drive of U(). () Each () can be thought of as a mathematician. The number of mathematicians in EC is equal to the number of () that collaborate according to the rules of formation. At this point and with further thoughtEC predicts what we see as energy, entropy, black holes, background radiation, gravity and the origins of some of our laws of nature. But that's way too much info and a side issue. We are really interested in the entire class of possible EC treated as structure made of change based on an arbitrarily large source of randomness pumped by the instability of 'Nothing'. === I think I've blown your brains out enough with this lot. NEXT Before rules of formation we have to look at dynamic hierarchies, lossy and lossless entities and 'symmetry breaking'. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
