Re: Believing ...
Le 01-mars-07, à 00:35, Brent Meeker a écrit : Brent Meeker quoted: Atheism is a belief system the way Off is a TV channel. --- George Carlin Carlin makes the typical confusion between atheism and agnosticism. An atheist has indeed a rich belief system: 1) he believes that God does not exist (unlike an agnostic who does not believe that God exists: that makes a huge difference) 2) he generally believes in a material or Aristotelian Universe (despite its contradiction with comp, or with QM, or with some physically reproducible facts, and despite any proof or argument beyond the Aristotelian Matter reification.) Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument
Le 06-mars-07, à 07:44, Mohsen Ravanbakhsh a écrit : Thank you for welcoming me Mark, I agree with you about the problem with the concept of entropy, but not all your points. Actually I like this hypothesis, and as Bruno put it we might be able to describe the Why question about physical laws, which is very interesting. 4) There exist a universal dovetailer (consequence of Church thesis, but we could drop Church thesis and define comp in term of turing machine instead). 5) Never underestimate the dumbness of the universal dovetailer: not only it generates all computational histories, but it generates them all infinitely often, + all variations, + all real oracles (and those oracles are uncountable). Let me know where's my mistake: 1.We are referring to one (actually an infinitely long sub-sequence of that) history of such universal dovetailer, as some state of our world. I don't think so. Worlds or world-views emerge globally from UD* (UD's execution). 2.Because that machine is a TM, a history has to be countable, regardless of compression or expansion of time to allow infinite power. Not really. An history can be revised infinitely often so that our first person historical point of view could be infinite and even uncountable. 3.So we're referring to some state of our universe as a countable one. Like many, especially in the recent posts, forget the points of view distinctions. 4.A universal state is not countable. Probably false from a 3 person view. Probably true from 1 person view. Every time a bit is sampled, the Multiverse branches with the observed bit being 0 or 1 depending on your branch. If you were to continue for an infinite amount of time, each observer will have observed a real number. However after any finite amount of time, all the observers have are rational approximations to real numbers. But we're talking about uncountability of information necessary to represent instantaneous state of a universe, not about the uncountability of possible universes. (Maybe I didn't get your point) What you are saying just proves that we have uncountable number of universes. With comp, this arguably follows indeed. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Believing ...
On 3/20/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 01-mars-07, à 00:35, Brent Meeker a écrit : Brent Meeker quoted: Atheism is a belief system the way Off is a TV channel. --- George Carlin Carlin makes the typical confusion between atheism and agnosticism. An atheist has indeed a rich belief system: 1) he believes that God does not exist (unlike an agnostic who does not believe that God exists: that makes a huge difference) 2) he generally believes in a material or Aristotelian Universe (despite its contradiction with comp, or with QM, or with some physically reproducible facts, and despite any proof or argument beyond the Aristotelian Matter reification.) 1) Do you believe we should also be agnostic about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? If so, should the balance of belief in these entities (i.e. belief for/against) be similar to that in the case of God? I ask in all seriousness as you are a logician and there *is* a huge difference, logically if not practically, between atheism and agnosticism. 2) I don't know that atheists are much more likely to believe in a material universe than other people. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Believing ...
Bruno, a different reflection from Stathis's, but similarly not a counter-argument First off: George Carlin is a comedian and his humorous remarks are not subject to be discussed in a serious argumentation. I like him - at least the old Carlin. * to your #1: :your atheist has got to believe in the existence (maybe only as a valid topic) something to deny it. To speak about it in a yes/no fashion. He had to accept that it is a topic. This is why I formulated an atheist needs a god to deny. * to your #2: Not to believe in something is IMO not implying to believe in something else. Anything else. Not even 'generally'. Example: a solipsist. Or a 'comp' pantheist. (Caution: this word just appeared without consideration, I do not argue for its reasonable application). Agnostic IMO is just pointing to the lack of well defined knowledge about ANYTHING, not restricted to god or religion, as it earlier was used. I consider myself a 'Science-Agnostic because the ideas I take for most acceptable have no firm(?) foundations. * to the reply of Stathis - reading:: - 1) Do you believe we should also be agnostic about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? If so, should the balance of belief in these entities (i.e. belief for/against) be similar to that in the case of God? I ask in all seriousness as you are a logician and there *is* a huge difference, logically if not practically, between atheism and agnosticism. 2) I don't know that atheists are much more likely to believe in a material universe than other people. Stathis Papaioannou - I consider his #1 - AS: asantaclausist or atoothfairyist - not 'agnostic' - like: atheist. (Unless you believe in 'something like that' to exist). An agnostic is not sure but does not deny the existence FOR SURE. The difference, as I feel, between I don't know and I no that no - as I take Bruno's emphasis. (And I try to use only my own common sense logic). With StP's #2 I agreed above. John M - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 7:27 AM Subject: Re: Believing ... Le 01-mars-07, à 00:35, Brent Meeker a écrit : Brent Meeker quoted: Atheism is a belief system the way Off is a TV channel. --- George Carlin Carlin makes the typical confusion between atheism and agnosticism. An atheist has indeed a rich belief system: 1) he believes that God does not exist (unlike an agnostic who does not believe that God exists: that makes a huge difference) 2) he generally believes in a material or Aristotelian Universe (despite its contradiction with comp, or with QM, or with some physically reproducible facts, and despite any proof or argument beyond the Aristotelian Matter reification.) Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?
Glad to have misread your consiousness as being not unconscious. I agree with you even in the 'life' part, except that I consider that darn elusive 'consciousness' still on, when you sleep or are anesthesized. You (whatever it is) are still responding to the information you get: you wake up to the alarm clock, or from unconsciousness. There are different 'levels' to be included into that noumenon. John M - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 7:13 PM Subject: Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter? On 3/20/07, John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stathis: it seems you apply some hard 'Occami\sation' to consckiousness: as I see you consider it as 'being conscious - vs. unconscious'. The physiological (mediacal?) way. In my experience from reading and intenrnet-discussing Ccness for over 15 years - most researchers consider it more than that: the noun (Ccness) is only partially related to the adjective (conscious - maybe of).. This is why I included into my identification of it not only acknowledgement referring to the awareness-part, but also 'and response to' which implies activity in some process. Considering our world as a process it has not too much merit to identify an importqan noumenon (still not agreed upon its content) as a snapshot-static image of a state. Some equate Ccness with life itself (good idea, life is another questionmark). Your anesthesiologistic version has its audience, but so has the wider sense as well. John M I thought my sense was wider. You can be conscious even though you are not actually analysing sensory input, remembering things from your past, and so on. And I'm not sure that life can be equated with consciousness because you are still alive, and even your neurons are still for the most part going about their business, when you are asleep or anaesthetised. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument
Le 06-mars-07, à 09:44, Mark Peaty a écrit : Thank you Bruno! You and Russell between you have managed to strike some sparks of illumination from the rocky inside of my skull. There is no beacon fire to report but I start to get a glimmering of why you want to *assume* comp and see where it leads. It seems that self-reference and recursion are fundamental properties of anything that is interesting in all this, which rather seems to be the flavour of the new millennium. Just in thinking superficially about the Many Worlds though, it seems to pose a 'binding problem'. Now, I know that might sound like a leakage of concept from objections to identity theory in brain and mind theory. But what I am thinking about is this bit: 6) this means that if I take the comp hyp seriously, then, to predict the results of any experiment/experience, I have to localize all the infinitely many instantiations of my current state in the UD, look at the uncountable comp histories going through that states, and compute the statistics bearing on all consistent first person self-continuation. A human life must be a compilation of all these including the creation of internal [synaptic change, etc] structure/record which endow the ability to *be* the story. But when looking at this as a/n [infinity^infinity] Many Worlds affair, none of the worlds could 'know' that they are like or identical to others, surely? So I am puzzled. What holds 'my lot' together? We seem always to be confronted by yet another infinite regression. With comp, what holds 'your lot together are the relation between numbers. The apparent third person infinite regression stops at the level of those relations. The first person is most probably confronted with many infinities, but this should not be considered as problematical. ** A quick aside, hopefully not totally unrelated: Am I right that a valid explanation of the zero point energy is that it is impossible *in principle* to measure the state of something Why can't we measure the state of something? Even with just QM, the many-world idea has been invented for abandoning the idea that a measurement pertubates what is observed. and therefore *we* must acknowledge the indeterminacy We must acknowledge indeterminacy once we postulate comp, given that it makes us self-duplicable, and indeed self-duplicated all the time. Bruno and so must everything else which exists because we are nothing special, except we think we know we are here, and if we are bound by quantum indeterminacy, so is everything else [unless it can come up with a good excuse!]? [Perhaps this is more on Stathis's question to Russell: Is a real number an infinite process?] ** Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 05-mars-07, à 15:03, Mark Peaty a écrit : Nobody here has yet explained in plain-English why we have entropy. Oh well, surely, in the Many Worlds, that's just one of the universes that can happen! Not really. That would make the comp hyp or the everything idea trivial, and both the everything hyp and the comp hyp would loose any explicative power. (It *is* the problem with Schmidhuber's comp, *and* with Tegmark's form of mathematicalism: see older posts for that). Except that, for plain-English reasons stated above, there are *and always have been* infinity x infinity x infinity of entropic universes. It doesn't make sense. Call me a heretic if you like, but I will 'stick to my guns' here: If it can't be put into plain-English then it probably isn't true! I will try. I will, by the same token, answer Mohsen question here: Mohsen: I don't know if in the hypothesis of simulation, the conflict of Countable and Uncountable has been considered. 1) I assume the comp hyp, if only for the sake of the reasoning. The comp hyp is NOT the hypothesis of simulation, but it is the hypothesis that we are in principle self-simulable by a digital machine. 2) Then we have to distinguish the first person points of view (1-pov) from third person points of view (3-pov), and eventually we will have to distinguish all Plotinus' hypostases. With comp, we are duplicable. I can be read and cut (copy) in Brussels, and be pasted in Washington and Moscow simultaneously. This gives a simple example where: a) from the third point of view, there is no indeterminacy. An external (3-pov) observer can predict Bruno will be in Washington AND in Moscow. b) from a first person point of view, there is an indeterminacy, I will feel myself in washington OR in Moscow, not in the two places at once. 3) Whatever means I use to quantify the first person indeterminacy, the result will not depend on possible large delays between the reconstitutions, nor of the virtual/material/purely-mathematical character of the reconstitution.
Re: String theory and Cellular Automata
You could be interested by a paper introducing String theory as a syntactical logical structure by the other Schmidhuber (Juergen's brother Christof): Here: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0011065 What are strings made of? The possibility is discussed that strings are purely mathematical objects, made of logical axioms. More precisely, proofs in simple logical calculi are represented by graphs that can be interpreted as the Feynman diagrams of certain large-N field theories. Each vertex represents an axiom. Strings arise, because these large-N theories are dual to string theories. These ``logical quantum field theories'' map theorems into the space of functions of two parameters: N and the coupling constant. Undecidable theorems might be related to nonperturbative field theory effects. This is infinitely better than Wolfram pure classical CA approach which has no rules for distinguishing 1 and 3 person notion, and so miss the idea of internal emerging physical laws. Le 14-mars-07, à 10:23, Mohsen Ravanbakhsh a écrit : I'm thinking there's some kind of similarity between string theory and depicting the world as a big CA. In String theory we have some vibrating strings which have some kind of influence on each other and can for different matters and fields. CA can play such role of changing patterns and of course the influence is evident. Different rules in CA might correspond to various basic shapes of vibration in strings... I don't know much about S.T. but the idea of such mapping seems very interesting. -- Mohsen Ravanbakhsh. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of Life
Le 15-mars-07, à 01:38, David Nyman a écrit : On Mar 14, 10:18 pm, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps using the term existence for mathematical objects is misleading. It doesn't mean they exist as separate objects in the real world, just that they exist as concepts. This is mathematical Platonism. Yes, I understand. I guess I'm saying that nevertheless I can conceive of a radical negation in which even Platonic objects have no existence, conceptual or otherwise. Consequently AFAICS arguments for Platonic 'necessity' are in fact derived wholly from contingent states of affairs. True. But the fact that the human conception of platonic necessity is derived from contingent facts does not necessarily change the necessity character of platonic truth. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of Life
Le 15-mars-07, à 17:15, David Nyman a écrit : Yes, in that it makes sense to argue (from a 'contingentist' perspective) that the justification for 'primeness' (or indeed any other concept) derives ultimately from persistent aspects of contingent states of affairs (in this case a degree of persistence we abstract as 'necessity'). So from this perspective 17 is 'necessarily' prime, but this very 'necessity' is limited to the contingent framework that supports the conceptual one. In this view, positing 'platonic primeness' does no further work. This is not to take issue with Bruno's alternative numerical basis for contingency, but rather to see it as just that - an alternative, not a knock-down argument. Please, don't take what I will say here as an authoritative argument. Giving the extreme newness, you have to understand this by yourself, and the UDA is really a construction which aimed at that. But my point is that once we assume the comp hyp in the cognitive science, then, the reversal between matter and mind is not an alternative, it is a necessity. You can still believe in primary matter if you want to, but you just cannot use it to individuate neither mind/person, nor matter. Of course, arithmetical truth as seen from inside is full of relative contingies, generally treated by a modal diamond (having an arithmetical interpretation). For the UDA you need only a passive knowledge of Church thesis. For the lob interview you need more background in mathematical logic and in theoretical computer science. And to believe it, I guess you have to know about the quantum, which is currently still more weird than anything I extract from comp (but that converges as it should). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of Life
Le 15-mars-07, à 19:38, Brent Meeker a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 13-mars-07, à 05:03, Brent Meeker a écrit : But there is no reason to believe there is any root cause that is deeper than variation with natural selection. You have not presented any argument for the existence of this ultimate or root. You merely refer to closed science as though that proved something - but it begs the question. You have to show there is something outside science in order to know that it is closed; not just that there is something science has not explained, there's lots of that, but something that science cannot, in-principle explain. Assuming comp, we can know that science will never been able to explain where natural numbers come from. That's an insoluble mystery. It makes science open. Forever. I think that depends on what you count as explanation. There are certainly possible evolutionary explanations for why humans invented counting of say sheep instead of looking at each sheep as a unique thing. OK, but we have to distinguish A) the existence of numbers, and B) the discovery of numbers by humans. I can understand how human discovered numbers by mixture of introspection and observation of a physical reality (and struggle of life ...). But to understand the physical reality I need the numbers at the start. But then comp *can* explain (but does not yet provide more than an embryo of explanation, yet already confirmed) where waves and particles come from, and also, unlike physics, why waves and particles can hurt (cf G/G*). But can comp explain why there is einselection of large objects and the world is approximately classical. Normally classical comp implies quantum observation, and quantum theory can explain the emergence of the classical mind (in the Everett, Hartle, Deutsch way). Comp makes qubit emerging from glueing dreams by bits. But our local bits emerge most probably from our local qubits. Bit---Qubit is a two way road, if comp is correct (and if my reasoning is valid, 'course). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: String theory and Cellular Automata
Bruno: thanks for the info. Very educational (although I skip reading Christof's entire text). From your excerpt: I have a 2nd question: how about waves? they must be made of the same 'stuff' as the 'strings', maybe in a lesser number of dimensions. And let me skip my retrograde series of going through (the) other concepts... They are all deductions from the (as you put it) primitive material world view, and its closed model, called physics. At the end of my 'skipped' series you may find 'numbers', I may wish to go further (but cannot?) Regards John M - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 10:25 AM Subject: Re: String theory and Cellular Automata You could be interested by a paper introducing String theory as a syntactical logical structure by the other Schmidhuber (Juergen's brother Christof): Here: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0011065 What are strings made of? The possibility is discussed that strings are purely mathematical objects, made of logical axioms. More precisely, proofs in simple logical calculi are represented by graphs that can be interpreted as the Feynman diagrams of certain large-N field theories. Each vertex represents an axiom. Strings arise, because these large-N theories are dual to string theories. These ``logical quantum field theories'' map theorems into the space of functions of two parameters: N and the coupling constant. Undecidable theorems might be related to nonperturbative field theory effects. This is infinitely better than Wolfram pure classical CA approach which has no rules for distinguishing 1 and 3 person notion, and so miss the idea of internal emerging physical laws. Le 14-mars-07, à 10:23, Mohsen Ravanbakhsh a écrit : I'm thinking there's some kind of similarity between string theory and depicting the world as a big CA. In String theory we have some vibrating strings which have some kind of influence on each other and can for different matters and fields. CA can play such role of changing patterns and of course the influence is evident. Different rules in CA might correspond to various basic shapes of vibration in strings... I don't know much about S.T. but the idea of such mapping seems very interesting. -- Mohsen Ravanbakhsh. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.15/728 - Release Date: 3/20/2007 8:07 AM --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Believing ...
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 01-mars-07, à 00:35, Brent Meeker a écrit : Brent Meeker quoted: Atheism is a belief system the way Off is a TV channel. --- George Carlin Carlin makes the typical confusion between atheism and agnosticism. An atheist has indeed a rich belief system: 1) he believes that God does not exist (unlike an agnostic who does not believe that God exists: that makes a huge difference) I disagree. Those are definitions consistent is usage, but so are atheist: one who doesn't believe that God (meaning the god of theism) exists. agnostic: one who believes it is impossible have any knowledge as to whether God exists. Those are also common usages and align more closely with the etymology of the words. 2) he generally believes in a material or Aristotelian Universe (despite its contradiction with comp, What contradiction is that? or with QM, or with some physically reproducible facts, and despite any proof or argument beyond the Aristotelian Matter reification.) To say one shouldn't reifying matter seems like saying one shouldn't anthropomorphize people. Things made of matter, tables and chairs, exist paradigmatically. That there may be some deeper, more fundamental explanation of tables and chairs hardly makes them go away. Brent Meeker Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?
John M wrote: Glad to have misread your consiousness as being not unconscious. I agree with you even in the 'life' part, except that I consider that darn elusive 'consciousness' still on, when you sleep or are anesthesized. You (whatever it is) are still responding to the information you get: you wake up to the alarm clock, or from unconsciousness. There are different 'levels' to be included into that noumenon. John M Yes it's a problem that there a different levels of consciousness; although I'd say that an anesthetized person is not conscious at all. A sleeping person is still processing sensory stimuli; he can usually be awakened by whispering his name. Part of the time when asleep he is dreaming, which is more conscious than dreamless sleep as evidenced by the fact that he may remember the dream. And then there is self-consciousness, when one actually introspects. I'm not sure that's any different than just being conscious of perceptions, but it may be. This thread started from a discussion of observer moments, which are purportedly building blocks which constitute consciousness even without being assembled, i.e. just the existence of the blocks, each isolated from all the others is enough to constitute a stream of consciousness. The blocks are like Julian Barbour's time capsules; except Barbour supposes that each time capsule contains a complete state of the universe. In that case, it is much more plausible that there is an implicit order connecting the capsules. I find the OM hypothesis dubious because a time-slice of consciousness, i.e. a thought, seems to me to have very little content. Not nearly enough to supply an implicit chain. If I think, There's a yellow butterfly. it may equally connect to I should buy butter. and I shouldn't use insecticide here. Now to some this may be a feature, not a bug ;-) These are both consistent continuations and therefore they are both me and there as are many me's as there there are paths of consistent continuations through all the possible OMs. But that just leads back to my general complaint about everything theories. They have no predictive power. Notice that in comparison a material theory would say there are neural connections in your brain such that if we mapped them we would know that There's a yellow butterfly. would be followed by I should buy butter. and not I shouldn't use insecticide here. Brent Meeker - Original Message - *From:* Stathis Papaioannou mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Monday, March 19, 2007 7:13 PM *Subject:* Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter? On 3/20/07, *John M* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stathis: it seems you apply some hard 'Occami\sation' to consckiousness: as I see you consider it as 'being conscious - vs. unconscious'. The physiological (mediacal?) way. In my experience from reading and intenrnet-discussing Ccness for over 15 years - most researchers consider it more than that: the noun (Ccness) is only partially related to the adjective (conscious - maybe of).. This is why I included into my identification of it not only acknowledgement referring to the awareness-part, but also 'and response to' which implies activity in some process. Considering our world as a process it has not too much merit to identify an importqan noumenon (still not agreed upon its content) as a snapshot-static image of a state. Some equate Ccness with life itself (good idea, life is another questionmark). Your anesthesiologistic version has its audience, but so has the wider sense as well. John M I thought my sense was wider. You can be conscious even though you are not actually analysing sensory input, remembering things from your past, and so on. And I'm not sure that life can be equated with consciousness because you are still alive, and even your neurons are still for the most part going about their business, when you are asleep or anaesthetised. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 06-mars-07, à 09:44, Mark Peaty a écrit : Thank you Bruno! You and Russell between you have managed to strike some sparks of illumination from the rocky inside of my skull. There is no beacon fire to report but I start to get a glimmering of why you want to *assume* comp and see where it leads. It seems that self-reference and recursion are fundamental properties of anything that is interesting in all this, which rather seems to be the flavour of the new millennium. Just in thinking superficially about the Many Worlds though, it seems to pose a 'binding problem'. Now, I know that might sound like a leakage of concept from objections to identity theory in brain and mind theory. But what I am thinking about is this bit: 6) this means that if I take the comp hyp seriously, then, to predict the results of any experiment/experience, I have to localize all the infinitely many instantiations of my current state in the UD, look at the uncountable comp histories going through that states, and compute the statistics bearing on all consistent first person self-continuation. A human life must be a compilation of all these including the creation of internal [synaptic change, etc] structure/record which endow the ability to *be* the story. But when looking at this as a/n [infinity^infinity] Many Worlds affair, none of the worlds could 'know' that they are like or identical to others, surely? So I am puzzled. What holds 'my lot' together? We seem always to be confronted by yet another infinite regression. With comp, what holds 'your lot together are the relation between numbers. The apparent third person infinite regression stops at the level of those relations. What are those relations? Is it a matter of the provenance of the numbers, e.g. being computed by some subprocess of the UD? Or is an inherent relation like being relatively prime? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 3/19/07, *Brent Meeker* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 3/19/07, *Brent Meeker* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If there are OMs which don't remember being you then they are not going to be part of your stream of consciousness. There's the rub. Almost all my OMs *do not* include consciously remembering being me (or anyone). And if you suppose there is an *unconscious* memory component of an OM then there's a problem with what it means to have an unconscious part of consciousness. Well, how do you maintain a sense of being you in normal life? Certainly not consciously. If you are absent-mindedly staring at a tree you at least have a sense that you have been staring at the tree, rather than drowning in the ocean a moment ago. I have that sense transiently - and its isolated and unconnected to the OM in which I was staring at the tree, except through the content it shares, i.e. my staring at a tree - the one as perception and the other as memory of a perception. You are also aware that you haven't grown 10cm taller or suddenly changed sex - that is, you would immediately be aware of these things had they happened, even though you are not actively thinking about them or their absence. So a bland sameness from moment to moment constitutes a sense of memory and continuity of identity, What's a sense of memory? Is it conscious? I'm not conscious of one. I'd say it's the default model we use when we think, Am I the same person I was a few minutes ago? Don't feel and different. Must be. It seems you are using consciousness in a more specific sense than I am. I am just referring to the process of having any experience - of not being unconscious. since an OM that deviated substantially from this would either not be considered as a successor OM or immediately alert you that something strange had happened. But as you argued earlier OMs don't communicate. They are not related except by their conscious content. So an OM never has knowledge of another OM against which to measure its deviation. One might experience an OM whose content was, I'm a different person than I was ten minutes ago because I now notice a discontinuity in my memory. but I'm not sure even that would break my feeling of being me. No, there are obviously multiple factors involved, from memory to continuity of perception and perhaps even a primary sense of identity separate from these other cues. But if at any moment these factors have zero conscious activity, they could in theory be eliminated, although they might need to be brought into play again in an instant. My point is that, at least as I experience it, consciousness, the inner narrative we tell ourselves, is far too weak, to lacking in content, to create a chain of experience. Memory cannot do it because one is rarely, consciously remembering anything. What creates the chain is something unconscious - something not observed and so not part of an OM. Unconscious factors affecting our sense of continuity of identity must do it through affecting conscious factors. That would follow if we were always conscious of our sense of continuity of identity, but I don't think we are. I may think of it from time-to-time, but generally I don't have any sense of identity to be affected. That's the problem I see with OMs. They are usually conceived as what people not on this list call thoughts, the sort of thing expressible in simple sentence. They don't come with a subordinate clause, and this thought is by Brent Meeker. Suppose some unconscious factor X were partly responsible for placing my last second of consciousness in sequence. That means that if X had been different, my conscious experience would have been different. I can't claim that X plays a role while maintaining that I would not have noticed anything different without X. Depends on what you mean by notice. The brain implements a physical processes, of which you are not conscious. It causes your next thought to pop into consciousness. If the brain's process had been a little different, say it was perturbed by a cosmic ray particle, your next conscious thought would have been different. You would have a different thought - but you wouldn't *notice* it was different. Could something, a shower of cosmic ray particles, cause you to suddenly have the thought, I am Brent Meeker. and if it did, would your
Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?
On 3/21/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unconscious factors affecting our sense of continuity of identity must do it through affecting conscious factors. That would follow if we were always conscious of our sense of continuity of identity, but I don't think we are. I may think of it from time-to-time, but generally I don't have any sense of identity to be affected. That's the problem I see with OMs. They are usually conceived as what people not on this list call thoughts, the sort of thing expressible in simple sentence. They don't come with a subordinate clause, and this thought is by Brent Meeker. It's true that we are not always conscious of a sense of identity, but that just means we don't have to worry about this when considering most OMs. An analogy would be representing visual information in a simulation. There is no need to simulate what is going on behind a person's back as long as any shadows or reflections affecting his visual field are taken care of. Of course, the simulation must instantly create the new visual information when the person turns his head, and similarly it must provide information pertaining to memory and personal identity if he should decide to focus on this. Suppose some unconscious factor X were partly responsible for placing my last second of consciousness in sequence. That means that if X had been different, my conscious experience would have been different. I can't claim that X plays a role while maintaining that I would not have noticed anything different without X. Depends on what you mean by notice. The brain implements a physical processes, of which you are not conscious. It causes your next thought to pop into consciousness. If the brain's process had been a little different, say it was perturbed by a cosmic ray particle, your next conscious thought would have been different. You would have a different thought - but you wouldn't *notice* it was different. Could something, a shower of cosmic ray particles, cause you to suddenly have the thought, I am Brent Meeker. and if it did, would your sense of continuity of identity have been affected? If the I referred to Sthathis Papaioannou that would be a discontinuity of identity. But if I referred to me, it would just be an instance of your brain having one of my thoughts and would not affect your identity. If I started experiencing your thoughts, then I would be you. It would be like a duplication experiment in which you can expect an equal probability of finding yourself in your original position or in my position. While this was happening, I (Stathis) would be unconscious. After it was over, if I were left with no memory of the event, I might notice a discontinuity in the external world, things apparently having moved substantial distances instantaneously etc., but it wouldn't affect my sense of identity. You could use that as a definition of unconscious: if it were removed, you would not notice any change. Of course you can deny that there is any chain and think of it more like network of paths with marked stepping stones. Once in awhile there's a stone that's marked, Remember you're Brent Meeker. and every path that includes one of these is me, even if the path also includes some marked Remember you're Stathis Papaioannou. How could you tell the difference, from the inside, between such a path and a chain? You couldn't, but neither is there any reason for them to form a sequence of any kind. In the metaphor the stones are arranged on the ground and have adjacency relations. But in the OM picture each one exists in isolation and there are no adjacency relations. Computationalism implies that a stream of consciousness survives fragmentation of the process generating the stream. If it did not, then there would be some change in experience as a result of fragmentation. For example, if an experience supervenes on past computational states as well as on the present instantaneous state, then arbitrarily slicing up the computation will change and perhaps completely disrupt the stream of consciousness. Consider a time interval t1t2t3 in which a simulated subject perceives a light stimulus (t1, t2, t3 are according to the clock within the simulation). The light is shone into his eyes at t1, and he presses a button at t3 to indicate that he has seen it. Now, suppose that the computation is cut at t2, so that the interval t1t2 is run several real time days before t2t3, or several days after, or not at all. Then since the experience during t2t3 is dependent not only on the computational activity going on in that interval, but also on what has gone on before, perhaps by excising t1t2 from its normal position in relation to t2t3 the subject will not perceive the stimulus, or not perceive it in time to press the button at t3. But that would mean the same computation (and same physical activity in a computer) in t2t3
