Re: Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together
On 06/02/11 22:06, Russell Standish wrote: Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13401 Reminds me of what Colin says he is doing... Cheers Fascinating. At every turn we seem to find additional complexity and holistic phenomena in the processes of life giving rise to biological computation. It reminds me of Bonnie Bassler's quorum function which enables bacteria in the body to act in concert as a single organism. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html Andrew -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The relative point of view
On 07 Feb 2011, at 20:52, Andrew Soltau wrote: How do you define the relative point of view? Do you know Gödel's provability predicate? The points of view are defined by intensional variants of the current provability predicate of the machine with or without some oracle. There are 8 basic points of view p (truth), Bp (provability/believability), Bp p (knowability), Bp Dp (observability), Bp Dp p (sensibility/feelability). Three of them inherits the G/G* splitting, making a total of 8. It is really 4 + 4*infinity, because the 'material points of view' (with Dp) admits themselves graded variants. I know *about* Gödel's provability predicate! Good. (Is the 'intensional' referred to here the 'attach' you used in another email?) Not really, although it is related. Intensional refers to the fact that if you define a provable(x) by beweisbar(x) and x', where x' denote the proposition which has x as Gôdel number, you define a probability predicate, which is not definable by the machine, or in arithmetic, yet proves exactly the same proposition of arithmetic than the one provable. Provable(x) and beweisbar(x) are intensional variant of provability. They are extensionnally equivalent, but intensionnally different, a bit like different algorithm can have the same behavior. More simple beweisbar(x) ~beweisbar(~x) is an intensional variant of beweisbar(x). Intensional variant of bewesibar(x) have been introduced by Rosser in his elimination of Gödel's assumption of omega-completeness in the proof of incompleteness of formal systems. I am still no clearer about how you define the machine, with or without some oracle, and what defines the relative point of view. Oracle have been introduced by Turing for the study of the degree of unsolvability. It is a package of usually infinite information, typically not computable. The halting oracle provides the halting information, that no computer can generate. The goal consisted in showing that some problem remains non solvable, and that some function remains uncomputable, even when powerful oracle are added, and this has been used to study the degrees of unsolvability of arithmetical and mathematical problems. The UD generate all the oracles, like it dovetails on all the reals (trivial exercise; yet people are often wrong on this because they confuse the impossibility of enumerating the reals, with the impossibility of generating them). Think about the iterated self- duplication experiment. Given that you are defining 8 basic points of view in the abstract, applied to intensional variants of the current provability predicate of the machine with or without some oracle, it sounds a bit, well, abstract. Could you be a bit more specific? I try to be more specific in sane04. May be we should start from that. Or search hypostasis or hypostases in the archive, or guardian angel, etc. Read the book by Smullyan, and Boolos 1979 (simpler than Boolos 1993). Read perhaps the Theaetetus by Plato. In short you can say that I model belief or opinion by formal probability (Bp). I define then knowledge, following Theaetetus by the true opinion (Bp p), observation by the consistent opinion (Bp Dp), and sensibility by the true consistent opinion (Bp Dp p). Incompleteness motivates the initial model, even if it leads to a restriction on the ideally correct machine. The whole thing provides an arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus theory of the one, the intellect and the soul + his double (intelligible and sensible) matter theory. The arithmetical matter theory has been compared to the current inferred theory of matter, and it looks, up to now, that Nature is correct :) (correct with respect to comp and its neoplatonist rendering, for sure). 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The propositions of comp?
On 07 Feb 2011, at 21:22, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 07/02/11 19:42, Bruno Marchal wrote: Many would agree that mind might be related to the execution of an algorithm on some physical machine, as I like to explore that idea, but this is at the starting point of the reasoning, and is not, then, related to the fact that physical machines appears as relatively stable products of some unknown number of algorithm too, and that this is already not just described in arithmetic, but emulated in arithmetical truth. This is the starting point I am trying to agree between the two of us. PROPOSITION 1 The mind is related to the execution of an algorithm -- for instance, on some physical machine. Then, we propose, we go beyond the concept of the physical machine, and simply suppose that: PROPOSITION 2 The mind is the execution of an algorithm, an algorithm which simply exists, without the requirement for any physical instantiation, or any physical universe / multiverse in actuality. In other words, the algorithm simply exists, and simply runs, and the subjective experience of this algorithm: Looks exactly like Feels exactly like Sounds exactly like Smells and tastes exactly like a real physical, relativistic, quantum mechanical reality. The first proposition, that the mind is / is related to the execution of an algorithm, I have no problem with whatsoever. This is what I see emphasised in your steps 1-7, with examples of displacement of the observer in space, and then time, and then replacement, and then duplication in space and time. This all makes perfect sense. I think of this as tautological. ? Comp is everything but tautological. It asks for an act of faith. It is a big jump. Even actual machine can prove that they cannot be sound and prove that they are machine. Also, I don't like using the notion of algorithm because it is a very complex notion which does not admit precise definition. I prefer to talk on more concrete programs, which can be see as numbers relative to a universal number. I fix the universal universal system to arithmetic (addition and multiplication), which I assume, and from that I prove the existence of universal numbers and many machines, and they discourses. The consequence of comp are usually judge even more less obvious. Equally, there is no problem, of course, that in the context of the execution of the algorithm, physical machines appears as relatively stable products of some unknown number of algorithm too. But The *obvious* implication is that the physical machines *are* relatively stable products of some unknown number of algorithm, specifically, the algorithm instantiated in the physical quantum mechanical universe. And that physical machines appears as relatively stable products of some unknown number of algorithm too, in the virtual reality each observer generates between the ears, as Deutsch describes. Now Going on from that starting point We are philosophically interested in showing that this execution of the algorithm may be taking place in such a way as to give the appearance of the physical quantum mechanical universe, without there having to be an actual physical quantum mechanical universe. I am delighted to entertain this possibility. However, I have not to date understood the basis on which you are claiming you have found support for it. I'm sure I'll get there! You still miss the point. It is not a question of having any support of that idea. It is a question of understanding that it is a consequence of the comp assumption. It is a theorem, if you want. may be there is still a flaw, but people fails to find it, despite a reasonable number of people have tried. Some can sometimes show that the reasoning might be improved and more pedagogical, but I think it is just a theorem. You can obvioulsy still believe in a primitive physical universe by either abandoning comp, or by adding an invisible physical universe as an epiphenomenon (which is pretty ridiculous 'course). Anyway, I give the tools to extract the physics, so we can already compare. Eventually this can lead to a measuring of our degree of computationalism with respect to nature. Bruno It is hard for me to believe in any of this, but I just follow a theory toward its logical consequences. I know exactly what you mean about this. For years, after I had I deduced the extraordinary implications of Everett's formulation, I acknowledged that very peculiar properties of the transtemporal experiential reality were implied, but I could not really take them as real and actual, let alone make them part of my personal epistemology. (Eventually, however, quite recently, these implications began to become real for me. This, I can report, is a wildly exciting, terrifying, and totally all consuming transition!) I have titled the reply to your email as The propositions of comp? In
Re: CTM and ALG
On 07 Feb 2011, at 21:50, Andrew Soltau wrote: Many thanks you for your points 1) to 4) below. Now I am finding it much easier to see what you are saying. By 'first person indeterminacy' in 1 below, I am reading this as the indeterminacy regarding the actual location and thus physical context / instantiation of this observer. I would include this as an automatic concomitant of the mind being a computation ( dynamic structure of information) i.e. ALG. By 2 below I understand you to be saying that just as the observer can be, and in fact in some circumstances must be, existent simultaneously at two different locations in space at the same time, the observer is similarly existent simultaneously at two different locations in time 'at the same time'. I would also include this as an automatic concomitant with ALG. Point 3 seems to be a direct implication of point 2, the mind is non-local. The observer as mind (as structure of information / algorithm) exists ubiquitously in all physical environments If above you accept arithmetical, you make treachery to invoke the physical here. All right, call it all quantum mechanical environments, meaning simply the mathematical form of quantum mechanics, instantiated as physical or arithmetical environments. It is the same error. You cannot use quantum mechanics at all. I mean in this context. I think you still miss something in the seven step. It is a bit like some one defend the theory of evolution up to the apes, and then say and God appears an creates man. Nice one! LOL! [god thinks this evolution rubbish isn't getting anywhere. Let's have some real people to watch / talk to / wind up / be god to ...] Once you accept that at some level you are Turing emulable, you somehow disperse yourself in infinities of variants, and the physical is some sum on all those variants. Yes, no problem here. Exactly what I hold as 'universe superposition'. Really? So you should understand why you cannot use QM (even just the mathematical QM). If QM is correct, then QM has to be entirely justified in term of machine's dream, that is arithmetical relations and internal measure. That is what the Bp Dp does, with p arithmetical and sigma_1 (DU-accessible). So a physical body is, despite the appearance, a bad locus for instantiating a mind. Why 'bad'? The physical body is one of many possible instantiations, *no more no less* in my view. The problem is that we don't know what is a body. And the first clues from comp is that a body is a projection of the mind, emulated by infinitely many arithmetical relations. The picture is hard to figure out, that is one reason why I eventually use formal tools. The mind, even individual is more associated to a continuum of possible bodies/projection. I would not say 'more'. It is not only associate with a continuum of possible bodies/projection, it is instantiated, given aritmetic and algorithmic form, in continuum of possible bodies/projection. All exist. All are aspects of the arithmetic totality. It is instantiated, simultaneously, in all environments, simulated or physical (simulated physical if you like), in which this mind is formulated. The effective environment of this mind is the simultanetiy of all such possible bodies/projection. This does not mean that the whole thing is not instantiated in the physical. When you will get closer to the tilt, you will understand that we just cannot take for granted any obvious interpretation of the word physical. It is true that it need not be instantiated in a physical reality, but, in my opinion, we still have not made any particular progress towards that point! I think that tiny progresses have been done, but are ignored because physicists have a problem with computer science and mathematical logic, and logicians are not interested in physics or realities. And very few scientist care about persons and consciousness. So in front of hard works ... In fine it depends on the math, the comp physical logic still lacks (a bit laike quantum logic) a good tensor product. My strategy is top down, I work from hypothesis toward constrains. That is all very well and good, but we know the physical explanation works. Quantum mechanics *does* explain the observed results of experiments. Not completely. It explains by using comp, but comp reminds them, or should remind them, that the first person qualia related to the observation cannot be attached to the physical body of the experimenter. Everett QM still use the identity thesis, and this is refuted by comp. QM explains one halve of the picture. If we are going to supersede it, we need a powerful logic which not only does the same thing, fully and completely, without requiring an underlying physical reality. I stay tuned. The necessity of abandoning comp or of solving the comp body problem has been proved.
Re: Multisolipsism
On 08 Feb 2011, at 08:52, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 07/02/11 21:28, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Andrew, On 07 Feb 2011, at 19:22, Andrew Soltau wrote: Hi Bruno The first seven steps of UDA makes the following points: 1) that comp entails the existence of first person indeterminacy in a deterministic context. Step 1-3. This is an original result that I published in 1988 (although I made a dozen of conference on this in the seventies). Many academics have criticize this, but their argument have been debunked. Chalmers did criticize it at the ASSC4. 2) that any measure of uncertainty of the comp first person indeterminacy is independent of the reconstitution delays (step four). 3) that comp entails first person non locality (step this has been more developed in my thesis, long and short version are in my web page). This has been retrieved from sane04 (for reason of place), but is developed in the original 1994 thesis (and in the 1998 short version, recently published). 4) That first person experience does not distinguish real from virtual implementation (this is not original, it is in Galouye, and it is a comp version of the old dream argument in the greek chinese and indian antic literature). Step six. In particular indeterminacy and non locality does not depend on the real or virtual nature of the computation. All good so far. Step seven itself shows the reversal between physics and arithmetic (or any first order theory of any universal system in post Church Turing sense) in case the physical universe exists primitively and is sufficiently big. Because? Because if you universe is as big as running a UD, and containing UD*, if by luck you were here and now in a physical universe, at the next instant you are in the UD* with any reasonable measure of first person uncertainty. Even multiplied by 2^aleph_0. If, and only if, you *assume* existence without needing a physical universe! But this is what you are trying to demonstrate. Not at all. The role of the big universe consists in getting the reversal before showing we don't need the physical running. The big universe elimination is step 8. Only after step 8 we can understand the big universe is not needed, nor any universe, to explain why machine believes in a physical universe, indeed most probably in a quantum universe. In what sense does step seven demonstrate the reversal between physics and arithmetic a priori, as opposed to a working assumption? Answer precisely my question in my last post. I recall it: Could you explain to me how you predict what you will see (qualia) when you abandon an apple free in the air, in a big universe with a running UD in it? How do you predict your experience? If you agree with step 1-6, you don't have much choice, and you will understand the reversal. So UDA1-7 is the one of the main result of the thesis. A theory which want to explain and unify quanta and qualia, and respect comp, has to derive quanta and qualia without postulating them. Yes So you agree we cannot postulate the quanta? We cannot postulate the physical ? That's the point. NO. I agree that A theory which want to explain and unify quanta and qualia, and respect comp, has to derive quanta and qualia without postulating them., which is, of course, the tricky bit! But that is wrong. Without comp, I could keep materialism and keep quantum mechanics as explaining the quanta. But with comp, and the understanding of the qualia problem, we can understand that we have no other choice than to explain both the quanta and the qualia from arithmetic. It might not work, and comp can be false (and thus CTM also). Take it easy. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Maudlin How many times does COMP have to be false before its false?
On 07 Feb 2011, at 23:58, 1Z wrote: On Feb 7, 6:29 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Peter, Everything is fine. You should understand the reasoning by using only the formal definition of arithmetical realism, You reasoning *cannot* be both valid and ontologically neutral because it has ontological conclusions. Wrong. It is enough it has ontological premise. .which is that a machine is arithmetical realist if she believes in the axiom of elementary arithmetic *with* (the realist part) the principle of the third excluded middle (allowing non constructive reasoning, as usual). What machine? Show me one! See my papers. Read a book on logic and computability. Boolos and Jeffrey, or Mendelson, or the Dover book by Martin Davis are excellent. It is a traditional exercise to define those machine in arithmetic. Recently Brent Meeker sent an excellent reference by Calude illustrating how PA can prove the existence of universal machine (or number). I will search it. And I encourage you to interpret all this, including my thesis in purely formal term. AUDA shows, notably, that this is possible. You might also read the book by Judson Webb, which has been recently republished and which shows the positive impact of Gödel on both formalism and mechanism. Actually Webb argues that formalism and mechanism are basically the same philosophy, or the same type of philosophy. And I do follow him on that. A machine is before all a form. A digital machine is a form which can be described locally (relatively to a universal number) by a number. Webb call the kind of AR used here: finitism. And with AUDA you get a conversation with a machine, and a quasi correct explanation why she is not a machine? How could a formalist not love that Gödel is not just the discovery of the provability limitations of formalisms and machines, Godel has no impact on game playing formalism. ? (Well the more usual critic in our context is that Gödel has *only* impact on game playing formalism). I was just saying that Gödel's second incompleteness theorem is a theorem in Peano arithmetic, about Peano arithmetic. Or by Peano Arithmetic, about Peano arithmetic. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together
On 08 Feb 2011, at 09:03, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 06/02/11 22:06, Russell Standish wrote: Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13401 Reminds me of what Colin says he is doing... Cheers Fascinating. At every turn we seem to find additional complexity and holistic phenomena in the processes of life giving rise to biological computation. It reminds me of Bonnie Bassler's quorum function which enables bacteria in the body to act in concert as a single organism. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html Ah ah ! I 3 Bonnie. I 3 bacteria. It is always a pleasure to listen to her. Bacteria are 100% Turing universal. Give me one thousand molecular biologists, and I will build the most powerful parallel computers. The difficulty: mixing a big number of phages and bacteria. Ethical difficulties too. Are bacteria Löbian? I doubt this, but who knows, really. I mean, in great numbers. I think that the eucaryote cells is a bacteria (+ virus, for the nucleus) construction, like the choroplast is a descendent of the cyanobacteria. We are bacteria colonies, bacteria swarm. All my interest in mechanism stemmed from my interest for bacteria and cells, notably at the molecular level. I discovered the computer science IF ... THEN in the Lactose Operon (Jacob and Monod, and then in Gödel's paper). I consider Kleene second recursion theorem (AxEeAz phi_e(z) = phi_x(e, z)) as being the most fundamental theorem in abstract biology. I apply it in the long version of the thesis to program finite and infinite 'planaria' (my favorite worm). The program, when cutted in part, is such that each part generate the whole program, like the bio Planarias who are the champion of animal regeneration. I used an operator form of the theorem due to John Case. I think recursion theory contains an abstract biology, an abstract psychology and an abstract theology, including the theory of matter. -- And recursion theory is easily embedded in the theory of diophantine polynomial. You don't even need more than a polynomial of degree 4, by the work of Matiyazevitch and Jones. This is hardly believable. You can verify the truth on any sigma_1 true sentence by less than 100 additions and multiplication. Of course to emulate the collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda with a low degree universal diophantine polynomial, you will have to encode a lot of information in individual numbers. But no matter the complexity of the task, you can verify it in less than 100 hundred operation (addition and multiplication). You might as well code for the quantum vacuum. The simple counting algorithm 0, 1, 2, 3, ... is not turing universal, but that was close! Just one 100 operations for testing arbitrary lengthy computations. Diophantine polynomials are Turing universal. That would have pleased Hypatia who was teaching Plotinus and Diophantus in Alexandria, some time ago. I am pretty sure. Of degree four! The question of the existence of a universal diophantine polynomial of degree three remains open. We know that there are no universal diophantine polynomial of degree two. (diophantine means that the variables variate on the integers). On the reals, you don't get the Turing universality with the polynomials,. You need the sine or the cosine, to reintroduce the natural numbers, or the complex numbers. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The relative point of view
On 2/8/2011 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Feb 2011, at 20:52, Andrew Soltau wrote: How do you define the relative point of view? Do you know Gödel's provability predicate? The points of view are defined by intensional variants of the current provability predicate of the machine with or without some oracle. There are 8 basic points of view p (truth), Bp (provability/believability), Bp p (knowability), Bp Dp (observability), Bp Dp p (sensibility/feelability). Three of them inherits the G/G* splitting, making a total of 8. It is really 4 + 4*infinity, because the 'material points of view' (with Dp) admits themselves graded variants. I know *about* Gödel's provability predicate! Good. (Is the 'intensional' referred to here the 'attach' you used in another email?) Not really, although it is related. Intensional refers to the fact that if you define a provable(x) by beweisbar(x) and x', where x' denote the proposition which has x as Gôdel number, you define a probability predicate, You mean provability predicate don't you? which is not definable by the machine, or in arithmetic, yet proves exactly the same proposition of arithmetic than the one provable. Provable(x) and beweisbar(x) are intensional variant of provability. They are extensionnally equivalent, but intensionnally different, a bit like different algorithm can have the same behavior. More simple beweisbar(x) ~beweisbar(~x) is an intensional variant of beweisbar(x). Intensional variant of bewesibar(x) have been introduced by Rosser in his elimination of Gödel's assumption of omega-completeness in the proof of incompleteness of formal systems. I am still no clearer about how you define the machine, with or without some oracle, and what defines the relative point of view. Oracle have been introduced by Turing for the study of the degree of unsolvability. It is a package of usually infinite information, typically not computable. The halting oracle provides the halting information, that no computer can generate. The goal consisted in showing that some problem remains non solvable, and that some function remains uncomputable, even when powerful oracle are added, and this has been used to study the degrees of unsolvability of arithmetical and mathematical problems. The UD generate all the oracles, like it dovetails on all the reals (trivial exercise; yet people are often wrong on this because they confuse the impossibility of enumerating the reals, with the impossibility of generating them). Think about the iterated self-duplication experiment. Given that you are defining 8 basic points of view in the abstract, applied to intensional variants of the current provability predicate of the machine with or without some oracle, it sounds a bit, well, abstract. Could you be a bit more specific? I try to be more specific in sane04. May be we should start from that. Or search hypostasis or hypostases in the archive, or guardian angel, etc. Read the book by Smullyan, and Boolos 1979 (simpler than Boolos 1993). Read perhaps the Theaetetus by Plato. In short you can say that I model belief or opinion by formal probability (Bp). You mean formal provability? Mind your ps and vs. :-) I define then knowledge, following Theaetetus by the true opinion (Bp p), You've never said what your answer is to Gettier's example. Brent observation by the consistent opinion (Bp Dp), and sensibility by the true consistent opinion (Bp Dp p). Incompleteness motivates the initial model, even if it leads to a restriction on the ideally correct machine. The whole thing provides an arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus theory of the one, the intellect and the soul + his double (intelligible and sensible) matter theory. The arithmetical matter theory has been compared to the current inferred theory of matter, and it looks, up to now, that Nature is correct :) (correct with respect to comp and its neoplatonist rendering, for sure). 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Multisolipsism
On 2/8/2011 9:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Answer precisely my question in my last post. I recall it: Could you explain to me how you predict what you will see (qualia) when you abandon an apple free in the air, in a big universe with a running UD in it? How do you predict your experience? If you agree with step 1-6, you don't have much choice, and you will understand the reversal. ?? Obviously I would predict seeing the apple fall. This is a consequence of my inference from past experience and even my evolutoinary ancestry. Even babies expect unsupported objects to fall. Do you claim you can predict that apples should be seen to fall from comp+arithimetic alone? Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
