Re: Why I am I?
On Jan 8, 12:38 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote: > Welcome RMahoney, > > Nice thought experiments. But they need amnesia (like in going from > you to Cruise). I tend to think like you that it may be the case that > we are the same person (like those who result from a self- > duplication, both refer as being the same person as the original, yet > acknowledge their respective differentiation. Yes I think I understand what you mean by amnesia, you couldn't carry any rememberance of your old self when changing to Tom Cruise, but you would in the intermediary steps and gradually would lose the concept of your old self that is gradually replaced by Tom's self concept. Thing is, it is very similar to the process happening as we age. I began a journal when I was in my 20's, capturing my thoughts every time I visited this subject in my "mind trips". So when I read a page from that journal today, I sometimes go "wow, I was thinking that, then?" I've obviously acquired a bit of amnesia. Yet I feel like I'm the same person because I've always had this body (although an aging body). What would it be like if everyone had default amnesia such that any thought older than 20 years is erased? So you wouldn't remember your earlier years but you were that person once. I could claim to have originated from Tom Cruise's childhood and it wouldn't make any difference. Just like I don't believe it makes any difference to say why I am I? and not you?, as we are we, simultaneously, and we are they, all those who lived past lives, etc. RMahoney -- 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: problem of size '10
On 28 Jan 2010, at 02:46, Jack Mallah wrote: I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main "measure again '10" thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my "absolute" measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. Does the size of the components affects the computation? My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. I don't assume the quantum stuff. It is what I want to understand. I gave an argument showing that if we assume computationalism, then we have to derive physics from (classical) computer science if we want to note annihilate the chance to progress on the consciousness/reality riddle. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of "classical water" waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro- electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the "Doomsday argument" - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? You wrote convincing posts on the implementation problem. I thought, and still think, that you understood that there is no obvious way to attribute a computation to a physical process. With strict criteria we get nothing, with weak criteria even a rock thinks. But comp, well as I understand it, attributes consciousness to computations, in the digital sense made precise by mathematicians. In that case we get a "theory of mind", indeed, the theory of what the universal machines (computers, interpreters, ...) are able to prove, and bet, about themselves and anything else. We just don't try to ascribe consciousness to anything material or observable. It is a mathematical phenomenon which appears when a universal machine observes itself. It accelerates with two universal machines in front of each other, and admit innumerable n-couplings. Digital Mechanism makes Kant right, I think, that time and space belongs to the category of mind, with mind being arithmetic as viewed from the average universal machine "inside". It is idealism, but it is realism too, with respect to the elementary aritmetical truth, including computer science and computer's computer science. And so, it is precise and testable, thanks to the hard work of Gödel, Löb and many others. To understand this you have to be agnostic, not just about the Creator, but also about the Creation. I hope yo are not religious on materialism or physicalism. Arithmetic, through comp, determines a (very vast and intricate) web of relative consistent (n-person) histories, and it is an open problem if that web coheres enough to determine a unique, in which sense?, "physical reality". It is probably simpler to (re)define physics as invariant for the universal computable base. Computer scientists say "machine independent". No doubt we share deep computations, which are made stable below our substitution level by multiplications on the reals, or some ring. Comp is Church thesis, mainly, and the idea that "we" are Turing emulable. Bruno Marchal http://iridi
Re: UDA steps 5 and 6: huh?
On 27 Jan 2010, at 19:31, Mark Buda wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-janv.-10, à 01:39, Mark Buda a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 23:15, Mark Buda wrote: On 25 Jan 2010, at 04:39, Mark Buda wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm In step 8, you seem to be doing away with the need for a physical universe of any sort, since it doesn't actually do anything. If it was even there in the first place. Is that correct? OK, but you are using a rather strong Occam razor. You have either to believe strongly in comp, or to have extracted already a big part of physics to use it with some assurance. I believe strongly in comp. It is your right. I confess I find it the most plausible theory today. But, like the Godelian sentence reltaive to the machine M, which asserts its own unprovability by M, somehow the comp hypothesis asserts its own unbelievability by machines. If we are machine, then to use that fact, we need some form of faith, and nobody can make you accept any comp practices. One part at a time: Yes, Doctor hypothesis: Physically, there is no part of my body that can't be replaced with a functional equivalent. At the subatomic level, all the protons, neutrons, and electrons are indistinguishable anyway. Any cell in my body could be replaced by a functional equivalent and I'd still be me. Any cell in my body could, in fact, just die, and I'd still be me, and this happens all the time, and nobody finds it unusual. My intuition for comp comes indeed from my reading of books in biology. Some videos sum up them well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PKjF7OumYo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mtLXpgjHL0 But after discovering Cantor-Post-Gödel-Kleene discovery, I will do math instead of biology. "Cantor-Post-Gödel-Kleene" have solved the conceptual problem of self-reference (both self-transformation, and self-invocation). We think there's a problem when it comes to replacing the brain because we believe that's where our consciousness "is", but it isn't. Consciousness isn't anywhere. I agree with this. Ask a primitive who believes he thinks with his heart whether he'd go for a brain transplant and he'd have no more issues with self-identity than a modern-day human having a heart transplant. Not so sure. The first time we made vaccination on "primiive's children", they parents cut they arms of. I am not sure it would be moral to even propose them a brain transplant, because they would not been able to say "ys" qua computatio. It is always delicate to apply medicine from one culture to another. Medicine is always at the intersection of science, art, and religion, and comp preserves this. Eventually it is a personal question. What would Phineas Gage have to say about comp, I wonder? In "The Emperor's New Mind" Roger Penrose mentions a split-brain patient, P.S., who appeared to have two distinct consciousnesses after his commissurotomy. This is consistent with the idea that for each "human" there exists an infinite number of conciousnesses, each with a similar set of beliefs (including beliefs about the past). Before the surgery, no omniscient being could have told P.S. which hemisphere his subjective experience would end up in, because of the first person indeterminacy. OK. But it is a very complex question, given the asymmetry of the brains, etc. I think that salvia divinorum (+ some other stuff like psilocibine) can make the corpus callosum (linking the two hemispheres) sleeping a short time, and that we may succeed in developing non surgical protocol to deepen such analysis. I wrote my dreams in diary since 1973, and on four rare occasions, I got the feeling that I was doing two different (but sometimes slightly interfering) dreams. Astonishingly enough, Jouvet, the french onirolog (dream researcher) describes similar cases and he suggests the corpus callosum could break down for awhile during sleep. Because there were an infinite number of P.S. consciousnesses all along, and the commissurotomy partitioned them, literally and figuratively, into the sets that experienced the left-hemisphere future and right- hemisphere future. For a more concrete example of more than one consciousness in one body, look at the case of Abigail and Brittany Hensel. I follow them since a long time, and others. Step 8 eliminates even that use of Occam, for a much weaker one. Step 8 derives directly an epistemological contradiction between the physical supervenience thesis, and the digital mechanist thesis (comp). To be sure, to apply this on the "real world", there is still an amount of Occam needed to avoid the use of fanciful ad hoc definition of god or matter allowing to say yes to the doctor and still believing in a primitive form of matter. That is the usual obligatory use of Occam i
Re: problem of size '10
On 28 January 2010 12:46, Jack Mallah wrote: > I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue > than the others have. My reply to the main "measure again '10" thread will > follow under the original title. > > --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my >> consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or >> to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains >> unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are >> very thin , my "absolute" measure can be made quasi null, despite my >> behavior remains again non affected. > > This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of > the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. > > My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will > not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't > change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still > parameters of the overall system. > > But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the > size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is > proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. > > I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out > of "classical water" waves, the measure might be proportional to the square > of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals > for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it > could come out either way. > > I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some > might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: > > - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men > and not mice. > > - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro-electronic > systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the "Doomsday > argument" - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are > not in that era. > > - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give > rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility > to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. > Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are > many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who > knows? Do you think that simply doubling up the size of electronic components (much easier to do than making brains bigger) would double measure? For example, you could make the copper tracks on a circuit board twice as thick, put two transistors in parallel rather than one, double the surface area as well as the separation of the plates in the capacitors, and so on. It would take a bit of design effort, but you could make a circuit where every component was doubled up and connected by a wire bridge with a switch, and all the switches controlled by one master switch. You could then flick the switch and alternate between two separate but parallel circuits or one circuit. Would flicking the switch cause a doubling/halving of measure? Would it be tantamount to killing one of the consciousnesses every time you did it? -- 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-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.
