Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?

[Brent Meeker]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/22/07, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
> 
> No.  I'm talking about a sort of program/data division - which I
> recognize is arbitrary in computer program - but I think may have an
> analogue in brains.  When I write a simulation of a system of ODEs
> the time evolution of the ODEs define the states.  But in the
> simulation, what actually evolves them is passing them to another
> program that takes them and the current state as data and
> integrates; thus producing a sequence of states.  When you talk
> about isolated OMs, what we are conscious of, I think of them as the
> states.  They are what we write into memory; they form the
> "narrative" of the simulation.  The integrator is like a simulation
> at a lower level, perhaps at the level of neurons.  We're not aware
> of it and in fact many different integration algorithms could be
> used with little difference in the outcome (as in the comp idea of
> replacing neurons with chips).  But the integrator, even conceived
> as an abstract 'machine' in Platonia, is performing a function,
> connecting
> one state to the next.  I'm not denying that you can simulate all
> this and that you can take a block universe view of the
> simulation.  I'm just saying that the block can't be made of just
> the conscious parts, the OMs, it needs to include the unconscious
> parts that connect the conscious parts. 
> 
> 
> The integrator is just a device to generate the next state. Perhaps 
> without it there would be no continuity because there would be no 
> simulation, but if you had the DE's all solved beforehand you could 
> simply plot the states and have continuous motion, or whatever it is you 
> are simulating. In any case, what could it possibly mean for the 
> unconscious part binding my OMs together to be disrupted? Suppose that 
> this happened every minute on the minute: would I feel any different? If 
> I did feel different, that would mean my consciousness was affected, so 
> it would be the OMs that differed, not just the unconscious part; while 
> if I didn't feel any different by definition my continuity of 
> consciousness has been maintained and the unconscious disruption is 
> irrelevant.
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou

No, my thought was that if you slice the physical or computational basis of 
consciousness to finely then no single slice is conscious, i.e. and OM must 
have some duration. And since it has duration it provides an inherent sense of 
time.  Note that I'm not denying that the physical process or computation can 
be more finely divided; maybe even arbitrarily finely divided, as for a 
continuum.  I'm just saying that below some granularity, there is no longer a 
"thought" or an "observation" that can be associated with that grain; that it 
takes some sequence of grains to constitute a thought.  

Further, I note that in replacing neural processes by a digital simulation this 
simulation must use much finer space and time divisions than those that 
correspond to "thoughts" or OMs.  So even assuming comp, consciousness is an 
emergent phenomena not a fundamental one.

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: The Meaning of Life

[Brent Meeker]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> This study recent published in Nature suggests not only a neural basis 
> for morality, but a specific neural basis for a specific kind of morality:

I'd say an irrational morality.  I almost always make the utilitarian choice in 
those hypothetical moral dilemmas (must be damage from one of my motorcycle 
crashes :-)).  

I wonder if they surveyed any Inuits, who traditionally killed female infants 
in a family until a son had been born.

Brent Meeker

> 
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature05631.html
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/science/22brain.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
>  
> 
> 
> 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: Statistical Measure, does it matter?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 3/25/07, Mark Peaty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> I hope you guys will forgive my irreverence, but in the last
> couple of hours for the first time I have managed to read this
> thread to here. Having done so, and in the spirit of this
> everything-list wherein it is assumed everything is not only
> possible but _will_ happen and indeed may already have happened
> in a universe near you [and of course is that possibility
> exists, then it definitely already always has happened], I get
> the feeling that comp could lead to madness. But then, of
> course, it already has hasn't it ... in another universe
> somewhere/when else ... of course ... :-)
>
> The thing is Brent and Stathis have been going around and around
> this critical point of duration and continuity for some time
> now, without wanting to admit that *our experience of being
> aware of being here and now [respectively] is intrinsically
> paradoxical*. Well I have felt compelled to that viewpoint for
> more than a decade or so now, and I find from reading this
> discussion that comp does not solve this. OK, it may well be
> that Loebian machines, whether modest or not in other universes,
> or just modest but smarter than me - the latter not hard :-) can
> get on with the computation of their ontology and somehow
> transcend the apparent paradox. The paradox I have thus far
> asserted to be primary is the comparatively simple thought that
> we are constantly mistaken in taking our experience to be more
> or less _all of what is happening_ when it is really only our
> brain's construction of its model of self in the world, which is
> nothing to sniff at of course but then the processes for doing
> this have been scores of millions of years in the making.
>
> Comp makes the whole thing much more Comp-licated! AFAICS under
> Comp, we are each and every one of us confined to an anthropic
> view which does not even have a consolation that we are
> participating in a genuine continuity. Pre-comp, one could
> assume that, no matter how deluded one might be, as long as 'I'
> am able to be coherent long enough to recognise that it doesn't
> make sense to say 'I don't exist' then the chances were very
> good that the world is going on independently of me and I have
> the chance of really contributing. In a pre-comp universe a wise
> person will recognise that, well, things are always what we
> believe them to be until we discover otherwise so we have no
> guarantee that our attempts to do the right thing are
> necessarily the best. However we have a right to believe that so
> long as we have tried to sort out the facts of our situation and
> purposed not to cause avoidable harm to others then we are being
> as ethical as we know how to be and this counts for something
> and at least we tried. But with comp, assuming there are no
> intrinsic barriers to the formation of worlds and experience
> wherein we can come to truly believe we and our world have a
> coherent history, we have no reason to assume that this current
> experience _and the whole noumenal world we believe to exist_
> cannot just wink out of existence. By definition it seems, it
> must always be possible that everything we take to be an
> indication of duration 'out there' is a transient artefact of
> this slice of multiverse.
>
> That is a pretty rugged conception to present to people as
> _necessarily_ possible. I therefore take comfort in the
> difficulties that people have in integrating Comp into a
> coherent explanation of the universe we perceive. I realise that
> much can be done with higher mathematics but just because people
> can create a formal language system in which algorithmic
> processes can be referred to with simple symbols, and sets of
> such symbols can be syntaxed together with indicators that mean,
> effectively, 'and so on so forth for ever and ever', this does
> not mean that the universe outside of peoples' heads can ever
> reflect this. I think it behoves contributors here to consider
> whether the universal dovetailer can ever be more real than Jack
> and his Beanstalk. Jack and his magic vegetable have been around
> for a couple of centuries now. The universal dovetailer may do
> likewise. We just need to keep in touch with the idea though
> that 'It Ain't Necessarily So!'.


Standard computationalism is just the theory that your brain could be
replaced with an appropriately configured digital computer and you would not
only act the same, you would also feel the same. Bruno goes on to show that
this entails there is no separate physical reality by means of the UDA, but
we can still talk about computationalism - the predominant theory in
cognitive science - without discussing the UDA. And in any case, the ideas
Brent and I have been discussing are still relevant if computationalism is
wrong and (again a separate matter) there is only one universe.

Stathis Papaioannou

--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you a

Re: Statistical Measure, does it matter?

[Mark Peaty]

I hope you guys will forgive my irreverence, but in the last 
couple of hours for the first time I have managed to read this 
thread to here. Having done so, and in the spirit of this 
everything-list wherein it is assumed everything is not only 
possible but _will_ happen and indeed may already have happened 
in a universe near you [and of course is that possibility 
exists, then it definitely already always has happened], I get 
the feeling that comp could lead to madness. But then, of 
course, it already has hasn't it ... in another universe 
somewhere/when else ... of course ... :-)

The thing is Brent and Stathis have been going around and around 
this critical point of duration and continuity for some time 
now, without wanting to admit that *our experience of being 
aware of being here and now [respectively] is intrinsically 
paradoxical*. Well I have felt compelled to that viewpoint for 
more than a decade or so now, and I find from reading this 
discussion that comp does not solve this. OK, it may well be 
that Loebian machines, whether modest or not in other universes, 
or just modest but smarter than me - the latter not hard :-) can 
get on with the computation of their ontology and somehow 
transcend the apparent paradox. The paradox I have thus far 
asserted to be primary is the comparatively simple thought that 
we are constantly mistaken in taking our experience to be more 
or less _all of what is happening_ when it is really only our 
brain's construction of its model of self in the world, which is 
nothing to sniff at of course but then the processes for doing 
this have been scores of millions of years in the making.

Comp makes the whole thing much more Comp-licated! AFAICS under 
Comp, we are each and every one of us confined to an anthropic 
view which does not even have a consolation that we are 
participating in a genuine continuity. Pre-comp, one could 
assume that, no matter how deluded one might be, as long as 'I' 
am able to be coherent long enough to recognise that it doesn't 
make sense to say 'I don't exist' then the chances were very 
good that the world is going on independently of me and I have 
the chance of really contributing. In a pre-comp universe a wise 
person will recognise that, well, things are always what we 
believe them to be until we discover otherwise so we have no 
guarantee that our attempts to do the right thing are 
necessarily the best. However we have a right to believe that so 
long as we have tried to sort out the facts of our situation and 
purposed not to cause avoidable harm to others then we are being 
as ethical as we know how to be and this counts for something 
and at least we tried. But with comp, assuming there are no 
intrinsic barriers to the formation of worlds and experience 
wherein we can come to truly believe we and our world have a 
coherent history, we have no reason to assume that this current 
experience _and the whole noumenal world we believe to exist_ 
cannot just wink out of existence. By definition it seems, it 
must always be possible that everything we take to be an 
indication of duration 'out there' is a transient artefact of 
this slice of multiverse.

That is a pretty rugged conception to present to people as 
_necessarily_ possible. I therefore take comfort in the 
difficulties that people have in integrating Comp into a 
coherent explanation of the universe we perceive. I realise that 
much can be done with higher mathematics but just because people 
can create a formal language system in which algorithmic 
processes can be referred to with simple symbols, and sets of 
such symbols can be syntaxed together with indicators that mean, 
effectively, 'and so on so forth for ever and ever', this does 
not mean that the universe outside of peoples' heads can ever 
reflect this. I think it behoves contributors here to consider 
whether the universal dovetailer can ever be more real than Jack 
and his Beanstalk. Jack and his magic vegetable have been around 
for a couple of centuries now. The universal dovetailer may do 
likewise. We just need to keep in touch with the idea though 
that 'It Ain't Necessarily So!'.



Regards

Mark Peaty  CDES

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/





Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/22/07, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
> 
> No.  I'm talking about a sort of program/data division - which I
> recognize is arbitrary in computer program - but I think may have an
> analogue in brains.  When I write a simulation of a system of ODEs
> the time evolution of the ODEs define the states.  But in the
> simulation, what actually evolves them is passing them to another
> program that takes them and the current state as data and
> integrates; thus producing a sequence of states.  When you talk
> about isolated OMs, what we are conscious of, I think of them as the
> states.  They are what we write into memory;

Re: String theory and Cellular Automata

[Mark Peaty]

Thanks John, now I don't feel so bad. 

For what it's worth, my plain-English translations of the terms 
you mention:
_mass_ = the intrinsic [its own] resistance to being pushed of 
something that isn't otherwise stuck down;
_energy_ = motion, particularly as measured and accounted for in 
scientific terms, ie energy is to science and engineering what 
money is to economics and housekeeping;
_space-time_ = where and when everything is and happens;
_matter_ = anything that can fall to bits or otherwise 
disintegrate and become dirt.

NB: I have no problem with the word 'belief'. I think we only 
get into real problems if we don't acknowledge what is opinion 
and belief. Ultimately belief is all for us who claim to be 
aware that we exist. 'Knowledge' is just tested beliefs that 
have so far proved to be the most effective and efficient 
descriptions of our world. I happen to *believe* that our 
experience, to the extent that we are aware of it and at least 
part of the time feel sufficiently confident to call 
consciousness, is constructed by and within our own brains - 
with help from our friends and relations of course. A little 
thought shows that, if what I am assuming is true, then by 
definition all we ever have is belief and science is just the 
most effective method of deriving  ['constructing'] the best 
descriptions for dealing with practical problems and challenges. 
In particular scientific method is good where the objects of 
observation and manipulation do not learn from their 
experiences, unless it is only mechanisms and parts of the 
learning process that are being studied.

Scientific method can assist with other methods in dealing with 
people and their/our problems but memory, self-reference, and 
reflection mean that we are changed by what we do and thus are 
not all interchangeable like atoms and molecules are [etc].


Regards

Mark Peaty  CDES

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/





John Mikes wrote:
> Mark,
> let me play with your postulate (plain English) vs your text YOU wrote.
> To be translated into plain language: Mass, energy, space-time, even 
> 'matter'. (The last one SOUNDS like plain English, yet not in the 
> context we use it.)
> Don't take it too hard. We are used to this lingo, after the 1000th 
> level of applying its consequences all assumptions sound real. We THINK 
> we understand them. (Did not write: believe, because Russell does not 
> take it kindly if I hint to 'religious science' beliefs.)
> 
> I like your idea to call the pre-inflational 'seed' of our universe a 
> very concentrated (massive?) central(?) point. I faced the problem in my 
> narrative-writing to eliminate the dreamed-up 'inflation' (dreamed up - 
> just to have a better fit of the equations applied by the physical(ist)  
> cosmology-narrative) and ended up with the pop-up 'seed' of some  
> complexity (postulated in the spaceless-timeless plenitude of everything 
> - for logical reasons I do not go into now) and got assigned to form 
> THIS universe - a system WITH the ordinates "space and time" (whatever 
> they are). Now the transition from a spaceless construct into a 'spaced' 
> one means the emergence of (a huge) space from a zero one (= no space at 
> all), which could be mistaken by the cosmo-  physicists as inflation. 
> Glory saved.
>  Time ditto, when the originating concepts formed from a timeless into a 
> timed system, the forming occurrences happened in that VERY first 
> instant (introducing TIME into the timelessness), explaining the 
> "calculated?" times of the first BB-steps as "in the 1st - 1^-42th sec, 
> or 1^-32th sec  froze out this or that". Weird.
> Then came the inflation (space).
> 
> All nicely calculated in the quantitative correlations deduced from our 
> observations in the 'expanded' (i.e. unconcentrated) physical system's 
> rules. And - propagated linearly (reversing as was linearly retrogaded) 
> in the nonlinear development we live in.
> 
> I don't think Brent and you are talking from the same platform. Nor do 
> I.  I don't know how 'densly matter-energy was packed in the early 
> Universe' (it was before my time) - I don't have to assign different 
> characteristics to some 'early' universe, if I accept that our ideas of 
> the  material world are fictive. (Some say: consciousness before matter 
> and NO primitive material world).
> 
> The best
> 
> John M
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/24/07, *Mark Peaty* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
> 
> 
> No.  I don't know of any cosmogony that postulates a massive
> central point.  They generally assume zero mass-energy.
> 
> Well, OK, put that into plain-English. I think that in doing so
> you have to explain why the e= m.c^2 mass-energy 'equivalence' is
> not a problem. You can 'assume zero mass-energy' to start with,
> but straight after that you did have mass and energy to spare.
> Furthermore I understand that it has been all of space-time that
> has