Re: Dualism and the DA
On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 10:30:11PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? Jonathan Colvin I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpPja83xbdPO.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. All theories that reify the observer are essentially dualistic, IMHO. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 01:02:11AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. The question Why am I not a lion? is syntactically similar to Why I am not an ant, or Why I am not Jonathon Colvin?. The treeness (or otherwise) of the questioner is rather irrelevant. In any case, the answers to both the latter questions do not assume minds can be swapped. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. I _didn't_ ask the question Assuming I am Russell Standish, why am I not an ant? I asked the question of Why wasn't I an ant?. Its a different question completely. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin This one is also easy to answer also. I'm just as likely to have been born you as born me. But I have to have been born someone. I just so happened to have been born me. This is called symmetry breaking. In the ant case it is different. It is around a million times more likely that I would have been born an ant rather than a human being. Consequently the answer is different. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic
Re: Conscious descriptions
Le 15-juin-05, 01:39, Russell Standish a crit : On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 04:39:57PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK but it can be misleading (especially in advanced stuff!). neither a program, nor a machine nor a body nor a brain can think. A person can think, and manifest eself (I follow Patrick for the pronouns) through a program, or a machine or a brain, Actually, I think I was the one introducing these 3rd person neutral pronouns (e, er em). I picked up the habit from Michael Spivak (well known mathematician). Doesn't this beg the question a bit as to what a person really is? In loose everyday conversation, a person is a member of the species homo sapiens. However, surely we don't want to rule out the possibility of other conscious things before we even start. And also as you mention below, there are odd corner cases - the sleeping human being etc. I just identify the first person with the knower. Think about someone being cutted in Brussels and being pasted in thwo cities: A and B, and nowhere else. Each copy makes an experience, one in A, the other in B. Each of them know where they have been reconsituted and so each of them get one bit of information. But this bit is uncommunicable from a third person point of view. An outsider would get 0 bit from a phone call by each copy (by default I assume the cut/past device is 100% reliable. I identify the third person with the body or with any third person description of the body, it could be program (with comp). Despite Jonathan (I know you agrees with me) I consider as fundamental to distinguish the 1-person knower from the 3-person body/brain/program. So when I say that only a person can think, I am really meaning a 1-person. What is cute with comp, is that the theatetus definition of knowledge (and most of its variants) leads to a well defined distinction between 1 and 3 person. What is nice also, is that the knower is not, in any way, 3-describable (we get freely a Brouwerian-Heraclitean-Bergsonian-Poincarean ... theory of conscious-time-duration... at the place where we would the least expect it ). For the modalist I recall this consists in defining knowing p by proving p and p is true: Cp = Bp p. The non equivalence follows from incompleteness. snip: I snip when I agree, or when I believe the disagreement would push us outside the main topic Church-Turing thesis and arithmetical platonism (my all description strings condition fulfills a similar role to arithmetical platonism) are enough. I am not so sure. You are not always clear if the strings describe the equivalent of a program (be it an universal program or not), or describes a computations (be it finite or infinite). Both actually. One can feed a description into the input tape of a UTM, hence it becomes a program. They may also be generated by a program running on a machine. I was not making that distinction. I was distinguishing between a program (being a product of another program or not) and the computation, that is the running of the program. The computation can be described by the description of the trace of the program (like when we debug a program). For example the basic program 10 goto 10 has an infinite trace, like 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 ... That distinction is primordial for the understanding of the work of the Universal Dovetailer which dovetails on all programs. The UD generates all programs and dovetail on all their executions. The possibility or consistency of this is a consequence of Church's thesis. Consciousness eventually is related to bunch of (sheaves of) infinite computations. they can be coded by infinite strings, but they are not programs. Is this because they are ultimately not computable (due to the inherent indeterminism)? I don't think so. It is just because for any computational states there are an infinity of computations going through that states, and this is a logical cause of the 1-person indeterminacy (given that the 1-person are not aware of the huge delays (number of steps of the execution of the UD). This is one line summary of the UDA (see my URL for links to longer explanation). There are various strengthenings of the CT thesis which are far from obvious, and even false in some cases. One of my criticisms of your work is that I'm not sure you aren't using one of the strong CT theses, but we can come back to that. I am using the original thesis by Church, Post, Markov, Turing, ... They are equivalent and can be summarizes anachronically by all universal digital machine computes the same functions from N to N. This obviates having to fix the UTM. Perhaps this is the route into the anthropic principle. ? Church's thesis just say things does not depend on which UTM you choose initially All programs need to be interpreted with respect to a particular machine. The machine can be changed by appeal to universal computation, but then the program
another puzzzle
You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Having absorbed this information, you reason as follows. Suppose that right now you are one of the copies sampled randomly from all the copies that you could possibly be. If you guess that you are one of the 10^100 group, you will be right with probability (10^100)/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals one). If you guess that you are the sole copy, you will be right with probability 1/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals zero). Therefore, you would be foolish indeed if you don't guess that you in the 10^100 group. And since the light right now is red, red must correspond with the 10^100 copy state and green with the single copy state. But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. RM: You've just described me at work in my office. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. RM. . .at my annual New Years' party. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Having absorbed this information, you reason as follows. Suppose that right now you are one of the copies sampled randomly from all the copies that you could possibly be. If you guess that you are one of the 10^100 group, you will be right with probability (10^100)/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals one). If you guess that you are the sole copy, you will be right with probability 1/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals zero). Therefore, you would be foolish indeed if you don't guess that you in the 10^100 group. And since the light right now is red, red must correspond with the 10^100 copy state and green with the single copy state. But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? RM: Nothing wrong with the premise or the reasoning IMHO. Happens to me every day---while sitting at a traffic light alone in my car(s) all 10^100 of me come up with a great idea---I try to write it down and the light changes to green. --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. \ (snip) The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. RM's two cents worth: If all the 10^100 copies have exactly the same sensory input, exactly the same past, exactly the same environment and have exactly the same behavior systems, then there would be no overall increase in complexity (no additional links between nodes), but there would overall be a multiplication of intensity (10^100). Would this result in a more clarified perception during the time period when one is represented (magnified?) by 10^100? It's an open switch (i.e. who knows???) However, the increase in intensity would *not* result in greater perception; that would involve linking additional nodes---i.e. getting more neurons or elements of the behavior system involved---and the number of links over the 10^100 copies would remain static. If Stathis includes the possibility of chaos into the system at the node level (corresponding to random fluctuations among interactions at the node level) then these differences among the 10^100 copies would amount to 10^100 specific layers of the individual all linked by the equivalence of the similarly-configured behavior systems. If one could see this from the perspective of (say) Hilbert space, it may look like a deck of perfectly similar individuals with minor variations or fuzziness. These links as well as the fuzziness over many worlds may be what corresponds to consciousness.
Re: Dualism
Dear Joanthan, - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Stephen Paul King' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:14 AM Subject: RE: Dualism and the DA Stephen Paul King wrote: Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. I don't really uderstand the question the way you've phrased it (I'm not sure what you mean by mutually constrained); I *think* you are asking whether I believe that it is necessary that any duality must have mutually exclusive properties (if not, please elaborate). [SPK] The same kind of mutual constraint that exist between a given physical object, say a IBM z990 or a 1972 Jaguar XKE or the human Stephen Paul King, and the possible complete descriptions of such. It is upon this distiction betwen physical object and its representations, or equivalently, between a complete description and its possible implementations, that the duality that I argue for is based. This is very different from the Cartesian duality of substances (res extensa and res cognitas) that are seperate and independent and yet mysteriously linked. I think this is implied by the very concept of dualism; if the properties of the dual entities (say mind and body, or particle and wave) are NOT mutually exclusive, then there is no dualism to talk about. If the mind and the body are identical, there is no dualism. [SPK] Mutual exclusivity does not make a dualism, and it should be obvious that identity is not the negation of mutual exclusivity! Stephen
Re: possible solution to modal realism's problem of induction
Le 14-juin-05, 18:26, Brian Holtz a crit : Hi everyone (in this world and all relevantly similar ones :-), Welcome to the list Brian. Thanks for the link to Alexander R Pruss' web page, which seems quite interesting (and which I will comment a little bit too, here or in a next post). I like the solution to the Induction / Dragon / Exploding Cow problem that I see in work by Malcolm, Standish, Tegmark, and Schmidhuber. It is equivalent to the white rabbit problem we talk indeed about, all along this list, and which is *almost* solved in my phd thesis (to be short). May I attract your attention to it by referring you to my web page? http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ It is a good occasion to sum up the main differences and the main similarities between Standish, Schmidhuber, Lewis, Tegmark, Levy, Ruhl, Mitra, Mazer, Finney, ... and my own. All approach are indeed form of modal realism, and this is indeed what the everything-list is all about. Now I want to be short and I apology in advance for some oversimplification, and please, any of you, don't hesitate to correct me. To simplify the comparison I think it could be useful to compare them from their ontology and their epistemology, and the way they tackle the Dragon problem. Finney, for example, (a pillar of the list) borrows Bostrom's notion of observer-moment (OM). He argues they are fundamental, and its modal realism consists to accept or postulate *all observer-moments* Then he borrows a computationalist hypothesis from Schmidhuber, and associates to each OM a finite binary strings. Then he tackles the dragon problem by attaching to those binary string/OM their Kolmogorov complexity from which he infers a absolute measure. Little strings will have higher measure, and this should make the dragon disappearing through Bostrom Self-sampling assumption SSA, taken in some absolute version of it: ASSA. My critics: OM are described by Bostrom as first person subjective construct, and it is not clear how they can or should be related to the strings, in such a way that we can make personal prediction. The dragon disappear, but then in one second I will be a bacteria! Schmidhuber postulates a big programmer which runs all programs. He postulates some universe and he postulates the possible universes are computational objects. Then he try to find some prior explaining the importance of short programs at the origin of one universe capable of sustaining self-aware structure like us. My critics: there are simply no notion of first person available. Worst, Schmidhuber is obliged to postulate some totally unknown physical reality. So the epistemology is empty and the ontology is unknowable, though, according guessable (this is quite close to traditional physicalism). Tegmark, in his first paper, suggest the existence of ALL Mathematical Structures. This is ontologically much interesting than Schmidhuber frame, imo. Unfortunately it is too big, and Tegmark seems not to know the failure of all mathematician to capture all of mathematics mathematically. I have discussed elsewhere in the list, at lenght, some cardinality problem related to Tegmarkian approaches. In Tegmark there is an embryo of distinction between first and third person point of view, but it is either vague, or locally clear only under the assumption of QM, but then it is exactly the (very interesting) difference between the subjective and objective knowledge already introduced in Everett basic papers. The mind body problem is still under the rug. Both Tegmark ande Schmidhuber assumes unclear relaltion between observer and universe, which in general presuppose Aristotle theory of substance. In that regard, epistemologically, Malcolm has the same physicalist attitude. He describes quite clearly three sort of *physical* theories, having in their intended model (in logician's sense) either one universe toward having all logically possible universe, and he defends, quite convincingly (imo) that last sort of theories. But he discusses to quicky the relation between universe and information so that I cannot really say more. Main critics: the approach relies to much on some aristotelian notion of universe, and the 1-3 distinction is not really tackled. Standish is not yet enough clear about its assumptions, but seems to get a pretty derivation of schroedinger equation, which is an improvement. He does assume time, with the topology of the reals, which is my main critics. The 1-3 distinction is present and used in an anthropic way, but I have not yet understood it precisely. George Levy is completely aware of the 1-3 distinction, and makes the 1-person at the origin of a purely first person plenitude. Well, so much that it is not clear for me if the plenitude is really suited for being described in a 3-person theory, and this explains some its silence in the list. Note that some people, like Wei Dai, the list's
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there What's wrong with the reasoning here? This is also in response to your explanation to me of copying etc. in your last post to "Many pasts?..." I think there is too much we don't know about quantum behavior vs. macro-matter (e.g. human bodies) behavior to say that copying, and subsequent diverging histories,is not like dividing by zero.I think that even if it were possible to copy a body (i.e. exactly)and have more than one copy at the same time, for the purposes of your thought-experiment why wouldn't it be the equivalent of quantum entanglement where you really have the equivalent of just the original? This is where I think the reasoning in your puzzle is flawed. Having 10^100+1 identicalbodies is equivalent to having one body, so it makes it a 50/50 chance. Until the information is actually revealed, it would be just like the copying didn't happen, therefore there is no way to tell which state (copied or not copied) is currently in effect. Even though this may not be an appealing option, I believe that copying, if possible,wou! ldn't change anything having to do with identity(it doesn't "add to the measure"). Like Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In addition, even if copying a body with two subsequent diverging histories were possible, why wouldn't this become just like two different people? Who cares if there are disputes? That's nothing new. What does that have to do with consiousness? I don't believe that identity is dependent on consciousness. Tom Caylor
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis Papaioannou writes: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Let me make a few comments about this experiment. I would find it quite alarming to be experiencing these conditions. When the light changes and I go from the high to the low measure state, I would expect to die. When it goes from the low to the high measure state, I would expect that my next moment is in a brand new consciousness (that shares memories with the old). Although the near-certainty of death is balanced by the near-certainty of birth, it is to such an extreme degree that it seems utterly bizarre. Conscious observers should not be created and destroyed so cavalierly, not if they know about it. Suppose you stepped out of a duplicating booth, and a guy walked up with a gun, aimed it at you, pulled the trigger and killed you. Would you say, oh, well, I'm only losing two seconds of memories, my counterpart will go on anyway? I don't think so, I think you would be extremely alarmed and upset at the prospect of your death. The existence of your counterpart would be small comfort. I am speaking specifically of your views, Stathis, because I think you have already expressed your disinterest in your copies. God is basically putting you in this situation, but to an enormously, unimaginably vaster degree. He is literally playing God with your consciousness. I would say it's a very bad thing to do. And what happens at the end? Suppose I guess right, all 10^100 of me? How do we all go home? Does God create 10^100 copies of entire universes for all my copies to go home to as a reward? I doubt it! Somehow I think the old guy is going to kill me off again, all but one infinitesimal fraction of me, and let this tiny little piece go home. Well, so what? What good is that? Why do I care, given that I am going to die, what happens to the one in 10^100 part of me? That's an inconceivably small fraction. In fact, I might actually prefer to have that tiny fraction stay in the room so I can be reborn. Having 10^100 copies 50% of the time gives me a lot higher measure than just being one person. I know I just finished complaining about the ethical problems of putting a conscious entity in this situation, but maybe there are reasons to think it's good. So I don't necessarily see that I am motivated to follow God's instructions and try to guess. I might just want to sit there. And in any case, the reward from guessing right seems pretty slim and unmotivating. Congratulations, you get to die. Whoopie. Hal Finney
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Define fist. You don't seem to be talking about a thing, but some sort of Platonic form. That's an expressly dualist position. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? As above. Is it your position that you are the same sort of thing as a smile? That's a dualist position. I'd say I'm the same sort of thing as a mouth. Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. It depends on us communicating per se. Thus, we could not be a pre-literate caveman. In fact, the reference class of all people before the 19th century is likely excluded, since the intellectual foundations for formulating the DA were not yet present. Presumably in a thousand years the DA will no longer be controversial, so it is likely that our reference class should exclude such people as well. All these considerations (and I can think of many others as well) nullify the nave DA (that assumes our appropriate reference class is simply all humans.) But your response above is ambiguous. I'm not sure if you are agreeing that our appropriate reference class is *not* all humans, but disagreeing as to whether email is important, or disagreeing with the entire statement above (in which case presumably you think our appropriate refererence class for the purposes of the DA is all humans). Can you be more specific about what you disagree with? The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. Ok, at least we agree on that. Let's go from there. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Read the above again (to which I assume you agree, since you replied yes.) Note particularly the phrase If the body I'm occupying is contingent. How can I occupy a body without a dualistic account of identity? How could I have been in a different body, unless I am somehow separate from my body (ie. Dualism)? Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? For the purposes of this discussion, yes to all. After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? Let's not get into that one right now. That's a whole other debate. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin
Re: another puzzzle
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 16:12, Stathis Papaioannou a crit: One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. SNIP But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? Hi Stathis, If I was in this position, I would not even try to guess, because you (or god :) are explaining me that it is possible to copy me (not only me, but really all the behavior/feelings/mental state/indoor/outdoor state copying, a copy as good as an original or a copy cannot say which is which and even a 3rd person observer could not distinguish). If it is the case, this means that : 1- I'm clonable 2- I is not real 3- A single I does not means anything So I ask you, if it's the case (real complete copy...), why should I guess anything ? Who is the I that must guess ? Quentin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Quentin wrote: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) My argument is that this is a meaningless question. In what way could you (as RS) have been me (as JC)? Suppose you were. How would the universe be any different than it is right now? This question is analogous to asking Why is 2 not 3?. Why is this tree not that telescope?. Why is my aunt not a wagon?. The only way I can make sense of a question like this is to adopt a dualistic position. In this case, the question makes good sense: me (my soul, consciousness, whatever), might not have been in my body; it might have been in someone else's. It is easy to forget, I think, that the SSA is a *reasoning principle*, not an ontological statement. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should reason *as if* we are a random sample from the set of all observers in our reference class. This is NOT the same as an ontological statement to the effect that we *are* random observers, which seems hard to justify unless we assume a species of dualism. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism
Dear Jonathan, - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Stephen Paul King' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 9:15 PM Subject: RE: Dualism snip [SPK] The same kind of mutual constraint that exist between a given physical object, say a IBM z990 or a 1972 Jaguar XKE or the human Stephen Paul King, and the possible complete descriptions of such. It is upon this distiction betwen physical object and its representations, or equivalently, between a complete description and its possible implementations, that the duality that I argue for is based. This is very different from the Cartesian duality of substances (res extensa and res cognitas) that are seperate and independent and yet mysteriously linked. I'm not sure what a complete description is. Are we talking about a dualism between, say, a perfect blueprint of a skyscraper and a skyscraper? I'm not sure I'd call that equation a dualism at all. I'd call it a category error. A description of a falling skyscraper can not hurt you (unless you are also a description ... I agree with Bruno here), whereas a falling skyscraper can. But please elaborate. Jonathan Colvin [SPK] Let me turn the question around a little. Are Information and the material substrate one and the same? If not, this is a dualism. Stephen
Re: another puzzzle
Tom Caylor wrote: Stathis wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there What's wrong with the reasoning here? This is also in response to your explanation to me of copying etc. in your last post to Many pasts?... I think there is too much we don't know about quantum behavior vs. macro-matter (e.g. human bodies) behavior to say that copying, and subsequent diverging histories, is not like dividing by zero. I think that even if it were possible to copy a body (i.e. exactly) and have more than one copy at the same time, for the purposes of your thought-experiment why wouldn't it be the equivalent of quantum entanglement where you really have the equivalent of just the original? This is where I think the reasoning in your puzzle is flawed. Having 10^100+1 identical bodies is equivalent to having one body, so it makes it a 50/50 chance. Until the information is actually revealed, it would be just like the copying didn't happen, therefore there is no way to tell which state (copied or not copied) is currently in effect. Even though this may not be an appealing option, I believe that copying, if possible, wouldn't change anything having to do with identity (it doesn't add to the measure). Like Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In addition, even if copying a body with two subsequent diverging histories were possible, why wouldn't this become just like two different people? Who cares if there are disputes? That's nothing new. What does that have to do with consiousness? I don't believe that identity is dependent on consciousness. The idea of exact copying not being consistent with QM is raised quite often on this list. The problem with this is that you don't need literally exact copying to get the same mental state. If you did, our minds would diverge wildly after only nanoseconds, given the constant changes that occur even at the level of macromolecules, let alone the quantum state of every subatomic particle. It is like saying you could never copy a CD, because you could never get the quantum states exactly the same as in the original. Brains are far more complex than CD's, but like CD's they must be tolerant of a fair amount of noise at *way* above the quantum level, or you would at the very least turn into a different person every time you scratched your head. If this does not convince you, then you can imagine that the thought experiments involving exact copying are being implemented on a (classical) computer, and the people are actually AI programs. Once the difficulty of creating an AI was overcome, it would be a trivial matter to copy the program to another machine (or as a separate process on the same machine) and give it the same inputs. As for your other questions: yes, of course once the copies diverge they are completely different people. For the purposes of this exercise, however, I am assuming they *don't* diverge. In that case, I agree you have given the correct answer to my puzzle: from a first person perspective, identical mental states are the same mental state, and at any point there is a 50-50 chance that you are either one of the 10^100 group or on your own. But not everyone on this list would agree, which is why I made up this puzzle. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dating? Try Lavalife ? get 7 days FREE! Sign up NOW. http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19180
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I agree you have given the correct answer to my puzzle: from a first person perspective, identical mental states are the same mental state, and at any point there is a 50-50 chance that you are either one of the 10^100 group or on your own. But not everyone on this list would agree, which is why I made up this puzzle. Would you say that because you think running multiple identical copies of a given mind in parallel doesn't necessarily increase the absolute measure of those observer-moments (that would be my opinion), or because you don't believe the concept of absolute measure on observer-moments is meaningful at all, or for some other reason? Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
On 6/17/05, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. (...) a light (...) alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. (...) Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. (...) But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? To make the story more visualisable, imagine that God throws a coin (since he doesn't play dice) to decide whether he will initialise the system in state A (one person) or B (many). We can imagine that at this point the universe is split in two, and in universe 1 there are many people in the room, while in universe 2 there is only one. After ten minutes, God switches the state of *both* universes. In universe 1 there is now one person in the room, while in universe 2 there are many, most of which with a false memory of being there for more than 10 minutes. This happens for a while before the people in the rooms start to learn about the experiment and God's game. But you can convince yourself that it doesn't matter much what was the initial state and how many times the light has switched; if you believe God's story, the most likely is that you have just been created after the last switch, and you have a false memory of being there for a while. Eric.
Copies Count
Jesse Mazer writes: Would you say that because you think running multiple identical copies of a given mind in parallel doesn't necessarily increase the absolute measure of those observer-moments (that would be my opinion)... Here is an argument I wrote a couple of years ago on another list that first made me think that copies count, that is, that having more identical copies should be considered to increase measure. Previously I was skeptical about it, I thought what mattered was whether something or someone got instantiated at all, not how many there were. And of course since then I not only believe that copies count, I have followed my logic to the absurd sounding conclusion that size and slowness increase measure as well. Consider an experiment where we are simulating someone and can give them either a good or bad experience. These are not replays, they are new experiences which we can accurately anticipate will be pleasant or unpleasant. Suppose we are going to flip a biased quantum coin, one which has a 90% chance of coming up heads. We will generate the good or bad experience depending on the outcome of the coin flip. I claim that it is obvious that it is better to give the good experience when we get the 90% outcome and the bad experience when we get the 10% outcome. That's the assumption I will start with. Now consider Tegmark's level 1 of parallelism, the fact that in a sufficiently large volume of space I can find a large number of copies of me, in fact copies of the entire earth and our entire visible universe (the Hubble bubble?). When I do my quantum coin flip, 90% of the copies will see it come up heads and cause the good experience for the subject, and 10% will see tails and cause the bad experience. I will also assume that my knowledge of this fact about the physical universe will not change my mind about the ethical value of my decision to give the good experience for the 90% outcome. Now the problem is this. There are really only two different programs being run for our experimental subject, the guy in the simulation. One is a good experience and one is bad. All my decision does is to change how many copies of each of these two programs are run. In making my decision about which experiences to assign to the two coin flip outcomes, I have chosen that the copies of the good experience will outnumber copies of the bad experience by 9 to 1. But if I don't believe that the number of copies being run makes a difference, then I haven't accomplished what I desired. The fact that I am running more copies of the good program than the bad wouldn't make any difference. Therefore there is no actual ethical value in what I have done, I might have just as validly reversed the outcome of my coin flips and it wouldn't have made any difference. In this way I reach a contradiction between the belief that the number of copies doesn't matter, the belief that the existence of distant parallel copies of myself doesn't make much difference in what I should do, and the idea that there is value in making people happy. Of these, the most questionable seems to be the assumption that copies don't matter, so this line of reasoning turns me away from that belief. I can come up with similar contradictions from simpler cases like our own observations of subjective probability. The fact that I do experience a subjective 90% chance of seeing the quantum coin come up heads corresponds very well with the fact that 90% of the copies of me will see heads - but only if I assume that the multiplicity of the copies matters. After the coin flip, in a certain voume of space there are 90 copies of me that see heads and 10 copies that see tails. But within the two groups all copies are identical (neglecting other quantum events which would further split me). If the multiplicity doesn't count, then there are really just two outcomes and I might expect to subjectively experience equal probability for them. This is a variant on an old argument against the MWI, but in that case I always felt the answer was measure, that some of the outcomes occured in a quantum branch which had this intangible quality which made it count more. In this case I can't invoke any such magic; all the copies of me are running in the same universe and with equal quantum amplitude. I have to resort to counting the instances separately and assuming that each one makes its own independent contribution to my subjective experiences, in order to gain correspondence with subjective probability. Therefore it is most consistent to say that separate runs of identical programs do count, they do add to the measure of the subjective experience. Hal Finney
