Re: KIM 2.3 (was Re: Time)
I disagree, and your remark singles out the problem with the bird's eye/frog view of Tegmark. Those two views remains third person point of views. Consciousness is intrinsically a first person view. You cannot describe it in any third person point of view. This explains why the Aristotelians want so much eliminate consciousness. But you are right for memories and the the possible discourse *about* consciousness, this can be compared to marks on some block-structure. Consciousness itself will be more a distributed logical feature in the whole of the block reality. Consciousness, even consciousness of time and space, is not something you can effectively relate to time and space. Assuming comp you can relate it to fixed point of self- observation and other logical (but non geometrical) things. Then discourses made by conscious entities have themselves invariant pattern, like we cannot define it, we cannot explain it that you can (with luck) recognize in the (more geometrical) marks. Bruno Marchal On 03 Jan 2009, at 06:46, Thomas Laursen wrote: If I understand the standard MWI right (with my layman brain) Abram Demski's view of time is very much in accordance with it, except that time should be looked at simply as a fourth space dimension. A bird's eye view on the whole universe (= all it's actualized worlds) would be like a static picture where, lets say, the beginning (big bang) is at the left side (or right if you're Chinese), the present in the middle, and the future at the right. Of course this (2-dimensional) picture is extremely simplified but the idea behind is true (if I understand Everett and others, mainly Deutsch and Tegmark in their popular papers, right). Memory is then nothing but marks in the brain, and consciousness just like other moving things in nature with a (relatively) stable structure (a body, river, plant, etc), only more complex. 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-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Kim 2.4 - 2.5
Bruno, In this step, one of me experiences (or actually does not experience) the delay prior to reconstitution. In Step 2, it was proven to me that I cannot know that any extra time (other than the 4 minutes necessary transmission interval) has elapsed between my annihilation and reconstitution on Mars. The same thing will now happen to one of me in the duplication-plus-delay in Step 4. Essentially, Step 4 is identical to Step 2 with duplication as the only added feature. We cannot attribute a measure to my 1-pov in either step because the outcome is truly random. Here I would merely like to ask, random to whom? Doesn't random mean that no conscious mind (mine or yours) can see the determinism behind it? We are tempted to say probability 1/2 but that is only a comp- style bet. You explained on this in Step 2: We see that the MEC hypothesis, generally considered as imposing a strong determinacy in nature, introduces on the contrary a form of strong indeterminacy. Even a God, or whatever possible Omniscient Being, cannot predict to you, before a duplication (of you) experiment, where you will feel to be after. If he told you you will feel to be the one in room A, the Kim in room A will say that such God was right, but the one in room B will know or believe that that God was wrong, and the point of MEC is that we have no reason to listen more to one Kim than to the other Kim. In particular the Kim of room A will not convince the Kim of room B, that God was right. No Kim will ever be able to convince its counterpart about any possible method of prediction for the particular future. This does not mean that nothing can be predicted. I want to grok this more. At this stage I can only believe you. I have always felt (with Einstein) that reality is fundamentally deterministic, even if we have to point to stochastic features along the way. I know you will be able to debunk this easily and to my (and Einstein's) satisfaction. Maybe dwell a little on this and then move on to Step 5 where you manage to email me to me. This is truly scary because here I meet myself. I recall with horror what Angier did about his double in The Prestige... Actually, I believe I have already met my double. Once, a man stopped outside my house and stroked my cat, which was on the verandah. I greeted him and he told me that he had a cat that looked exactly like my cat and that it was his dearest and most cherished friend (I feel much the same way about my cat). I then asked him what name he had given his cat. He told me Cindy Bingy. I think my mouth must have fallen open in shock because that is the name of my cat too. From memory, the man looked rather like me as well. He then walked off while I stood there wondering about the improbability of all this (I cannot remember whether cannabis was in my system at the time) regards, K --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Revisions to my approach. Is it a UD?
Hi Abram and Bruno: My goal some time ago was to find an origin to a dynamic in the Everything. It seemed that many on the list were pointing to such a dynamic - the UD for example. I came up with the Nothing to Something incompleteness dynamic initiator maybe 10 or more years ago. Since then I have been trying to make the resulting model as simple as I could. I have looked at Abram's idea of adding inconsistency derived traces in the dynamic: I have in recent changes stopped using information to avoid the complications this term seemed to bring with it. This lead to a compact model with just two definitions, one assumption, and the stability trigger question resulting in the dynamic. To maintain this simplicity I note that when a Nothing in a particular All containing just one copy of the Nothing converts to a Something this also converts the particular All into a Something. The All is inconsistent by reason of its absolute completeness. The absence of its Nothing which was consistent but incomplete is not likely to make the Something the All became consistent Something. So this Something may be a source of inconsistency driven traces. As far as learning how to communicate this model in a more mathematical language [logic, set theory, etc.] to aid understanding by others, I have consumed what little time I had available over the years just getting to the current state of the model. It has been said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in some endeavor to become an expert in it. Since I understand less than half the mathematical logic based comments in this tread regarding my model I am far from expert in such a language. My engineering career gives me some formal exposure and practical understanding of it, and I have studied small additional pieces of it in the course of developing this model. However, the current realities of life have made adding new time intensive endeavors such as becoming sufficiently fluent in such a communication method an overcome by events effort. I might find maybe an hour a week for my total participation on the list. This seems extremely insufficient. Thus I suspect that despite my real interest in developing an alternative means of communication for my ideas in this area, my primary reliance for communicating the model will unfortunately have to remain using as small a set of words as I can muster. Hal -Original Message- From: everything-l...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 3:25 AM To: everything-l...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Revisions to my approach. Is it a UD? On 03 Jan 2009, at 02:04, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, Interesting point, but if we are starting at nothing rather than PA, we don't have provability logic so we can't do that! How can we tell if an *arbitrary* set of axioms is incomplete? nothing is ambiguous and depends on the theory or its intended domain. Incompleteness means usually arithmetically incomplete. The theory with no axioms at all? Not even logical axioms? Well, you can obtain anything from that. The theory with nothing ontological? You will need a complex epistemology, using reflexion and comprehension axioms, that is a bit of set theory, to proceed. Nothing physical? You will need at least the numbers, or a physics: the quantum emptiness is known to be a very rich and complex entity. It needs quantum mechanics, and thus classical or intuitionistic logic, + Hilbert spaces or von Neumann algebra. I would say that nothing means nothing in absence of some logic, at least. No axioms, but a semantic. Right, the empty theory is satisfied by all structure (none can contradict absent axioms). But here you will have a metatheory which presupposes ... every mathematical structure. The metatheory will be naïve set theory, at least. I suspect since some time that Hal Ruhl is searching for a generative set theory, but unfortunately he seems unable to study at least one conventional language to make his work understandable by those who could be interested. This can be related with the so-called autonomous progressions studied in the literature, like: PA, PA+conPA, PA+conPA+con(PA +conPA), etc. The etc here bears on the constructive ordinals. conPA is for PA does not derive P~P. I have been wondering recently, if we follow the ... to its end, do we arrive at an infinite set of axioms that contains all of arithmetical truth, or is it gappy? The ... is (necessarily) ambiguous. If it is constructive, it will define a constructive ordinal. In that case the theory obtained is axiomatizable but still incomplete. If the ... is not constructive, and go through all constructive ordinals at least, then Turing showed we can get a complete (with respect to arithmetical truth) theory, but, as can be expected from incompleteness, the theory obtained will not be axiomatizable.
Re: Boltzmann Brains, consciousness and the arrow of time
Hi Bruno, first of all thanks for the long answer, and yes, it was very helpful. You described the production of all reals with a very vivid imagery; it showed a glimpse of the vastness of the UD. And, I agree, _in the limit_ there will be an infinite number of histories. So, as we have to also take into account infinite delay, we must take this limit into account and have infinite histories going through a state (do I understand you correctly?). As to the interacting programs: do you consider them purely because they are part of UD or do you think this is a possible way to share histories? (I am interested in this because I find COMP very convincing, though I am still a bit worried about solipsism). I am also preparing a few thoughts (in a later post, but see hints below) on how consciousness might supervene on large parts of past causal histories, thereby also steering a bit away from solipsism (arguing via the concept of external realism from analytic philosophy, summarized by Putnam's meaning is not in the head). I also have another question (related to the above issue of solipsism): We have considered COMP and MAT and seen that the two are not really compatible. But you also say that with COMP, the universe itself is not computable (I understand why, and I agree with your reasoning as you have presented it). But I have one worry: what if the subsitution level is at the bottom of the universe - (for a moment drawing on materialist intuitions, the universe in the normal sense and not considering infinite histories for the moment). If the universe is a computation, then also an individual in the universe is part of this computation. But this individual can't be duplicated because of the quantum no-cloning theorem (that is what I mean with at the bottom - not above the quantum level). Svozil for instance refers in a number of papers to the work of Moore and Finkelstein that show, assuming we have an automaton, we would witness complementarity. http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/publ.html (see for instance these overview papers: Svozil, K. ``How real are virtual realities, how virtual is reality? The constructive re-interpretation of physical undecidability'', Complexity, 1, 43-54 (1996). Svozil, K. Computational Universes Chaos, Solitons Fractals, 2005, 25, 845-859 Svozil, K. Physical Unknowables physics/0701163, 2007) The results of course would also apply if we were solipsist automatons and the whole not (so the arguments are quite compatible with varying versions of machine conception (universe/person) ). I am just saying that we can't know if we are separable from the universe. To state it differently (and to make the connection with complementarity and duplication): If we assume the whole universe to be an automaton, also it's inhabitants would be mechanical =effectively computable of course - but maybe they could then not be duplicated, because, when person A were trying to make a scan of the properties of person B, the universe as a whole would move into different states and make complementary observables - which _could_ be necessary for a duplication - unavailable. This may only work if consciousness supervenes not on isolated computations, but only if it is embedded in computations constructing whole universes - but then again, we can't exclude this a priori. And we would still have to consider many worlds, but these would then indeed be _worlds_ and not only OMs with incoming/outgoing histories (of course it would still seem this way from the concrete OM, but with greatly reduced danger of white rabbits) - the laws of physics would not emerge for OM's stranded in the UD deployment but for OM's embedded already in highly structured computational environments - we would only have to take into account duplications of OM's where also whole universes are duplicated. So, what I am getting at, wouldn't you have to modify your argument - the reversal physics/machine psychology - insofar that not only a substitution level exists (COMP), but that this level is separable from a possible universe-machine (the possibility of which we can't exclude at the beginning of the argument). A kind of qualified COMP, QCOMP? Of course, the variant where the whole universe is necessary for duplication would still be machine psychology, but at a different level - at the universe level (classical sense again) and not at the level of everday conception of persons. Maybe COMP with the assumption that consciousness needs whole universes to supervene on (I don't mean that a universe is conscious; persons, brains would be conscious, but they would need the surrounding computations supplied by the universe to provide meaning) is even preferable to the view that one can duplicate a person from _within_ a universe (because of the white rabbit problem). Reading through my post above again, I believe that your COMP argument also works with the
Re: Boltzmann Brains, consciousness and the arrow of time
Hi Günther, Nice post! Coments soon. Speaking of Svozil's work, please see: Cristian S. Calude, Peter H. Hertling and Karl Svozil, ``Embedding Quantum Universes in Classical Ones'', Foundations of Physics 29(3), 349-390 (1999) [abstract], [CrossRef DOI:10.1023/A:1018862730956], [pdf], [pdf], [tex], [ps]. How can we derive quantum logics from purely integer (or even real number) based logics? This paper seems to yeild a no-go theorem! Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Günther Greindl guenther.grei...@gmail.com To: everything-l...@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 5:53 PM Subject: Re: Boltzmann Brains, consciousness and the arrow of time Hi Bruno, first of all thanks for the long answer, and yes, it was very helpful. You described the production of all reals with a very vivid imagery; it showed a glimpse of the vastness of the UD. And, I agree, _in the limit_ there will be an infinite number of histories. So, as we have to also take into account infinite delay, we must take this limit into account and have infinite histories going through a state (do I understand you correctly?). As to the interacting programs: do you consider them purely because they are part of UD or do you think this is a possible way to share histories? (I am interested in this because I find COMP very convincing, though I am still a bit worried about solipsism). I am also preparing a few thoughts (in a later post, but see hints below) on how consciousness might supervene on large parts of past causal histories, thereby also steering a bit away from solipsism (arguing via the concept of external realism from analytic philosophy, summarized by Putnam's meaning is not in the head). I also have another question (related to the above issue of solipsism): We have considered COMP and MAT and seen that the two are not really compatible. But you also say that with COMP, the universe itself is not computable (I understand why, and I agree with your reasoning as you have presented it). But I have one worry: what if the subsitution level is at the bottom of the universe - (for a moment drawing on materialist intuitions, the universe in the normal sense and not considering infinite histories for the moment). If the universe is a computation, then also an individual in the universe is part of this computation. But this individual can't be duplicated because of the quantum no-cloning theorem (that is what I mean with at the bottom - not above the quantum level). Svozil for instance refers in a number of papers to the work of Moore and Finkelstein that show, assuming we have an automaton, we would witness complementarity. http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/publ.html (see for instance these overview papers: Svozil, K. ``How real are virtual realities, how virtual is reality? The constructive re-interpretation of physical undecidability'', Complexity, 1, 43-54 (1996). Svozil, K. Computational Universes Chaos, Solitons Fractals, 2005, 25, 845-859 Svozil, K. Physical Unknowables physics/0701163, 2007) The results of course would also apply if we were solipsist automatons and the whole not (so the arguments are quite compatible with varying versions of machine conception (universe/person) ). I am just saying that we can't know if we are separable from the universe. To state it differently (and to make the connection with complementarity and duplication): If we assume the whole universe to be an automaton, also it's inhabitants would be mechanical =effectively computable of course - but maybe they could then not be duplicated, because, when person A were trying to make a scan of the properties of person B, the universe as a whole would move into different states and make complementary observables - which _could_ be necessary for a duplication - unavailable. This may only work if consciousness supervenes not on isolated computations, but only if it is embedded in computations constructing whole universes - but then again, we can't exclude this a priori. And we would still have to consider many worlds, but these would then indeed be _worlds_ and not only OMs with incoming/outgoing histories (of course it would still seem this way from the concrete OM, but with greatly reduced danger of white rabbits) - the laws of physics would not emerge for OM's stranded in the UD deployment but for OM's embedded already in highly structured computational environments - we would only have to take into account duplications of OM's where also whole universes are duplicated. So, what I am getting at, wouldn't you have to modify your argument - the reversal physics/machine psychology - insofar that not only a substitution level exists (COMP), but that this level is separable from a possible universe-machine (the possibility of which we can't exclude at the beginning of the argument). A kind of qualified COMP, QCOMP? Of course, the variant where the whole universe is necessary for
