Re: Platonia
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2011, at 00:39, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Isn't it enough to say everything that we *could* describe in mathematics exists in platonia? The problem is that we can describe much more things than the one we are able to show consistent, so if you allow what we could describe you take too much. If you define Platonia by all consistent things, you get something inconsistent due to paradox similar to Russell paradox or St-Thomas paradox with omniscience and omnipotence. Why can inconsistent descriptions not refer to an existing object? The easy way is to assume inconsistent descriptions are merely an arbitrary combination of symbols that fail to describe something in particular and thus have only the content that every utterance has by virtue of being uttered: There exists ... (something). So they don't add anything to platonia because they merely assert the existence of existence, which leaves platonia as described by consistent theories. I think the paradox is a linguistic paradox and it poses really no problem. Ultimately all descriptions refer to an existing object, but some are too broad or explosive or vague to be of any (formal) use. I may describe a system that is equal to standard arithmetics but also has 1=2 as an axiom. This makes it useless practically (or so I guess...) but it may still be interpreted in a way that it makes sense. 1=2 may mean that there is 1 object that is 2 two objects, so it simply asserts the existence of the one number two. But what is two if 2 = 1. I can no more have clue of what you mean. Two is the successor of one. You obviously now what that means. So keep this meaning and reconcile it with 2=1. You might get the meaning two is the one (number) that is the succesor of one. Or one (number) is the successor of two. In essence it expresses 2*...=1*... or 2*X=1*Y. And it might mean the succesor of one number is the succesor of the succesor of one number. or 2+...=1+... or 2+X=1+Y. The reason that it is not a good idea to define 2=1 is because it doesn't express something that can't be expressed in standard arithmetic, but it makes everything much more confusing and redundant. In mathematics we want to be precise as possible so it's good rule to always have to specifiy which quantity we talk about, so that we avoid talking about something - that is one thing - that is something - that is two things - but rather talk about one thing and two things directly; because it is already clear that two things are a thing. Bruno Marchal wrote: Now, just recall that Platonia is based on classical logic where the falsity f, or 0 = 1, entails all proposition. So if you insist to say that 0 = 1, I will soon prove that you owe to me A billions of dollars, and that you should prepare the check. You could prove that, but what is really meant by that is another question. It may simply mean I want to play a joke on you. All statements are open to interpretation, I don't think we can avoid that entirely. We are ususally more interested in the statements that are less vague, but vague or crazy statements are still valid on some level (even though often on an very boring, because trivial, level; like saying S afs fdsLfs, which is just expressing that something exists). Bruno Marchal wrote: 3=7 may mean that there are 3 objects that are 7 objects which might be interpreted as aserting the existence of (for example) 7*1, 7*2 and 7*3. Logicians and mathematicians are more simple minded than that, and it does not always help to be understood. If you allow circles with edges, and triangles with four sides in Platonia, we will loose any hope of understanding each other. I don't think we have disallow circles with edges, and triangles with four sides; it is enough if we keep in mind that it is useful to use words in a sense that is commonly understood. I think it is a bit authoritarian to disallow some statements as truth. I feel it is better to think of truth as everything describable or experiencable; and then we differ between truth as non-falsehood and the trivial truth of falsehoods. It avoids that we have to fight wars between truth and falsehood. Truth swallows everything up. If somebody says something ridiculous like All non christian people go to hell., we acknowledge that expresses some truth about what he feels and believes, instead of only seeing that what he says is false. I believe the only way we can learn to understand each other is if we acknowledge the truth in every utterance. Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't think the omnipotence paradox is problematic, also. It simply shows that omnipotence is nothing that can be properly conceived of using classical logic. We may assume omnipotence and non-omnipotence are compatible; omnipotence encompasses non-omnipotence and is on some level equivalent to it. For example: The omnipotent
Re: Platonia
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2011, at 13:13, benjayk wrote: Brent Meeker-2 wrote: On 2/19/2011 3:39 PM, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Isn't it enough to say everything that we *could* describe in mathematics exists in platonia? The problem is that we can describe much more things than the one we are able to show consistent, so if you allow what we could describe you take too much. If you define Platonia by all consistent things, you get something inconsistent due to paradox similar to Russell paradox or St-Thomas paradox with omniscience and omnipotence. Why can inconsistent descriptions not refer to an existing object? Because an inconsistent description implies everything, whether the object described exists or not. From Sherlock Holmes is a detective and is not a detective. anything at all follows. I think it is perfectly fine when something implies everything. For me it makes very much sense to think of everything as everything existing. The distinction something existant / something non-existant is a relative one, in the absolute sense existence is all there is - and it includes relative non-existence (for example Santa Claus exists, but has relative non-existence in the set of things that manifests in a consistent and predictable way to many observers). Aso, it emerges naturally from seemingly consistent logic that everything exists (see Curry's paradox). Curry paradox was a real contradiction, Curry put his theory in the trash the day he sees the contradiction, and begun some other less ambitious theory (the illetive theory of combinators). OK, but this doesn't change the rest of the rest of the argument. Also, the Curry paradox is still there in natural language, which seems capable of making useful statements even though the Curry paradox entails the truth of every statement in natural language. Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent Meeker-2 wrote: The easy way is to assume inconsistent descriptions are merely an arbitrary combination of symbols that fail to describe something in particular and thus have only the content that every utterance has by virtue of being uttered: There exists ... (something). But we need utterances that *don't* entail existence. If we find something that doesn't entail existence, it still entails existence because every utterance is proof that existence IS. We need only utterances that entail relative non-existence or that don't entail existence in a particular way in a particular context. You need some non relative absolute base to define relative existence. The absolute base is the undeniable reality of there being experience. Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent Meeker-2 wrote: So we can say things like, Sherlock Holmes lived at 10 Baker Street are true, even though Sherlock Holmes never existed. Whether Sherlock Holmes existed is not a trivial question. He didn't exist like me and you, but he did exist as an idea. Even if you met *a* Sherlock Holmes in Platonia, you have no cirteria to say it is the usual fictive person created by Conan Doyle, because, in Platonia, he is not created by Conan Doyle, ... In Platonia he is not created by Conan Doyle, which makes sense, given the possible that other people use the same fictional character, so he is essentially discovered, not created. But I don't know what you want to imply with that. Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent Meeker-2 wrote: So they don't add anything to platonia because they merely assert the existence of existence, which leaves platonia as described by consistent theories. I think the paradox is a linguistic paradox and it poses really no problem. Ultimately all descriptions refer to an existing object, but some are too broad or explosive or vague to be of any (formal) use. I may describe a system that is equal to standard arithmetics but also has 1=2 as an axiom. This makes it useless practically (or so I guess...) but it may still be interpreted in a way that it makes sense. 1=2 may mean that there is 1 object that is 2 two objects, so it simply asserts the existence of the one number two. 3=7 may mean that there are 3 objects that are 7 objects which might be interpreted as aserting the existence of (for example) 7*1, 7*2 and 7*3. The problem is not that there is no possible true interpretation of 1=2; the problem is that in standard logic a falsity allows you to prove anything. Yes, so we can prove anything. This simply begs the question what the anything is. All sentences we derive from the inconsistency would mean the same (even though we don't know what exactly it is). We could just write 1=1 instead and we would have expressed the same, but in a way that is easier to make sense of. This is not problematic, it only makes the proofs in the inconsisten system worthless (at least in a formal context were we assume
Re: Platonia
On 21 Feb 2011, at 13:26, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2011, at 00:39, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Isn't it enough to say everything that we *could* describe in mathematics exists in platonia? The problem is that we can describe much more things than the one we are able to show consistent, so if you allow what we could describe you take too much. If you define Platonia by all consistent things, you get something inconsistent due to paradox similar to Russell paradox or St-Thomas paradox with omniscience and omnipotence. Why can inconsistent descriptions not refer to an existing object? The easy way is to assume inconsistent descriptions are merely an arbitrary combination of symbols that fail to describe something in particular and thus have only the content that every utterance has by virtue of being uttered: There exists ... (something). So they don't add anything to platonia because they merely assert the existence of existence, which leaves platonia as described by consistent theories. I think the paradox is a linguistic paradox and it poses really no problem. Ultimately all descriptions refer to an existing object, but some are too broad or explosive or vague to be of any (formal) use. I may describe a system that is equal to standard arithmetics but also has 1=2 as an axiom. This makes it useless practically (or so I guess...) but it may still be interpreted in a way that it makes sense. 1=2 may mean that there is 1 object that is 2 two objects, so it simply asserts the existence of the one number two. But what is two if 2 = 1. I can no more have clue of what you mean. Two is the successor of one. You obviously now what that means. So keep this meaning and reconcile it with 2=1. You might get the meaning two is the one (number) that is the succesor of one. Or one (number) is the successor of two. In essence it expresses 2*...=1*... or 2*X=1*Y. And it might mean the succesor of one number is the succesor of the succesor of one number. or 2+...=1+... or 2+X=1+Y. The reason that it is not a good idea to define 2=1 is because it doesn't express something that can't be expressed in standard arithmetic, but it makes everything much more confusing and redundant. In mathematics we want to be precise as possible so it's good rule to always have to specifiy which quantity we talk about, so that we avoid talking about something - that is one thing - that is something - that is two things - but rather talk about one thing and two things directly; because it is already clear that two things are a thing. OK. Bruno Marchal wrote: Now, just recall that Platonia is based on classical logic where the falsity f, or 0 = 1, entails all proposition. So if you insist to say that 0 = 1, I will soon prove that you owe to me A billions of dollars, and that you should prepare the check. You could prove that, but what is really meant by that is another question. It may simply mean I want to play a joke on you. All statements are open to interpretation, I don't think we can avoid that entirely. We are ususally more interested in the statements that are less vague, but vague or crazy statements are still valid on some level (even though often on an very boring, because trivial, level; like saying S afs fdsLfs, which is just expressing that something exists). We formalize things, or make them as formal as possible, when we search where we disagree, or when we want to find a mistake. The idea of making things formal, like in first order logic, is to be able to follow a derivation or an argument in a way which does not depend on any interpretation, other than the procedural inference rule. Bruno Marchal wrote: 3=7 may mean that there are 3 objects that are 7 objects which might be interpreted as aserting the existence of (for example) 7*1, 7*2 and 7*3. Logicians and mathematicians are more simple minded than that, and it does not always help to be understood. If you allow circles with edges, and triangles with four sides in Platonia, we will loose any hope of understanding each other. I don't think we have disallow circles with edges, and triangles with four sides; it is enough if we keep in mind that it is useful to use words in a sense that is commonly understood. That is why I limit myself for the TOE to natural numbers and their addition and multiplication. The reason is that it is enough, by comp, and nobody (except perhaps some philosophers) have any problem with that. I think it is a bit authoritarian to disallow some statements as truth. I feel it is better to think of truth as everything describable or experiencable; and then we differ between truth as non-falsehood and the trivial truth of falsehoods. It avoids that we have to fight wars between truth and falsehood. Truth swallows everything up. If somebody says something ridiculous like All non christian people go to
Vic Stenger on information models
This, from my friend Vic Stenger, might be of interest to you Bruno. Brent Original Message My latest HuffBlog is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-new-information-theol_b_825648.html Vic -- 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: How embryogenesis fits in the mind-body problem?
Thank you for your answer. I am also sorry for confusion as with What mind-body research says about the development of mind from a single cell and then its death? I have meant What mind-body research says about the development of mind from a single cell and then the death of mind? So it was not about single cell organisms, it was just misplaced its. Right now I am not trying to follow your UDA, rather I am trying to understand the consequences. I am a chemist by background and I prefer follow my intuition rather than following proofs. I agree with you in that what people refer to as I is not associated with the brain only. Let me quote two citations from the book Spontaneity of Consciousness by Russian scientist Vasily Nalimov that I like a lot: Human consciousness is seen by us as a text. Personality is primarily the text that interprets itself. The book seems not be translated in English but if you interested there is a paper from Journal of Humanistic Psychology that introduces the author: http://www.biometrica.tomsk.ru/nalimov/NALIMOV9.htm Hence I would agree that when my body dies I will presumably remain in my archives on the hard disc of my computer (or somewhere in Platonia), or something like this. Yet, then let us consider the birth as it could be even more interesting. Let me put it this way. Some time ago my wife and I have conceived a daughter that now she is in Netherlands where she likes making photos (http://fortunaa.viewbook.com/). I guess that this is my first person view. Well, I also agree that there are actually many my first person views, as I have changed a lot during my life. Still in my current first person view there is some invariant that I refer to as I. By the way, how would you define such an invariant in your theory? Moreover my first person view assumes that there are some others first person views, for example, that of my wife and that of my daughter. Then a question is how the first person view of my daughter has been formed according to your theory. Finally what happens from the third person view if we compare my current first person view with that before conceiving the daughter? Thank you, Evgenii On 20.02.2011 22:16 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 20 Feb 2011, at 19:46, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Dear Bruno, Embryogenesis concerns a multicellular organism Obviously. But you ask for the *mind* of cells, which are unicellular, (although I like currently to see them as bacteria (+ a virus) occupying a sort of house). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryogenesis I am not sure if one can speak of embryogenesis of amoeba or bacteria. I was talking on the multicellular planaria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9EuFuJF9N0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXN_5SPBPtM My self-regenerating program PLANARIA was made of many cells, subprograms occupying different locations (in the code), and having different functions. Yet you can cut it in many pieces as little as one cell, and any such one cell regenerates the entire program! It is described in the volume 2, 2, here: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/consciencemecanisme.html (That work describes theorem provers, in LISP, for each hypostasis). The recursion theoretic answer to self-regeneration gives the conceptual solution to embryogenesis, as that one cell regenerating complete planaria illustrates. Of course the whole thing is far more sophisticated for the carbon implemented local living beings. So my question was actually about human being. I believe that I was conceived by fertilization the ovum in my mother by sperm from my father. Then the question is how my first person view has been developed and what happens with it after my death? That's the question I have always been interested in. OK, I will answer it, but please add as many grains of salt as needed. The answer is that it depends to what you identify your soul to. If you identify yourself (your 1-self) as you in company of your dog Pluto, you will already die the day Pluto dies. So your first person view will go as far as the condition are met such that you can say OK, I survive this far. Where is located your 'first person', your 'soul'. Well the theory (Bp p) says that is located both - 'on earth', by which I mean 'effectively implemented', that is by a number ( a 'body') incarnating (implementing itself) a set of beliefs (Bp), - and in Platonia (p), because the soul keep up the umbilical cord between its body (Bp) and truth p. How? Lucklily or because glued by an explosive sheaves of coherent histories in the computational continuum (but this is more sensibility: Bp Dp p). So what happens after your death? First there is no evidence that 'death' ever happens as a first person experience. Second, as I said, it might depend on what you identify yourself with. You do know, accepting the theory of the universal lobian machine, that you have a part on Earth (Bp, provable) and
Re: Vic Stenger on information models
There is something a bit different about information than the other conceptions of reality. We must, by definition, interact with reality by information - we cannot know any other reality. What is possibly in doubt is our theories of what information is - but I'm sceptical that the hard-won insights of the likes of Turing, von Neumann, Shannon, Kolmogorov, Solomonoff, Chaitin et al. will be overturned. In any case, I don't understand what Vic means by the following: If the universe is a digital computer, that computer still is made of elementary particles. Theologian Gregersen makes a key observation: The theological candidate that the divine Logos is the informational resource of the universe would be scientifically falsified if the concept of information could be fully reduced to properties of mass and energy transactions. Well, I don't know if this constitutes a falsification, but as far as I can tell, information does reduce to mass and energy transactions. This seems pivotal to his HuffPosting. Maybe I should ask him. Cheers On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 10:53:28AM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote: This, from my friend Vic Stenger, might be of interest to you Bruno. Brent Original Message My latest HuffBlog is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-new-information-theol_b_825648.html Vic -- 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. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: information does reduce to mass and energy transactions?
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 4:57 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Vic Stenger on information models There is something a bit different about information than the other conceptions of reality. We must, by definition, interact with reality by information - we cannot know any other reality. What is possibly in doubt is our theories of what information is - but I'm sceptical that the hard-won insights of the likes of Turing, von Neumann, Shannon, Kolmogorov, Solomonoff, Chaitin et al. will be overturned. In any case, I don't understand what Vic means by the following: If the universe is a digital computer, that computer still is made of elementary particles. Theologian Gregersen makes a key observation: The theological candidate that the divine Logos is the informational resource of the universe would be scientifically falsified if the concept of information could be fully reduced to properties of mass and energy transactions. Well, I don't know if this constitutes a falsification, but as far as I can tell, information does reduce to mass and energy transactions. This seems pivotal to his HuffPosting. Maybe I should ask him. Cheers On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 10:53:28AM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote: This, from my friend Vic Stenger, might be of interest to you Bruno. Brent Original Message My latest HuffBlog is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-new-information-theol_b_825648.html Vic -- Dear Russell, Could you elaborate on how information does reduce to mass and energy transactions? I am having trouble with this idea because it seems that that reduction would amount to a isomorphism between information and mass/energy transactions. This seems fine at first but things get complicated. For example, it is a fact that for any given mass/energy transaction there exist multiple information structures that can represent said transaction faithfully. Additionally, for a given information structure there exist many different ways to implement that structure. For example, say that we have a Rolls Royce Phantom automobile and we which to describe it so that we can create copies of it or we wish to create Virtual Reality version of the car that exactly matches its behaviors in many different environments. Is there not more than one language that we could use to accomplish this goal? Once we have the faithful description of the Phantom, what media are we going to print the description on? What font, what scale, etc.? None of these variables are necessitated by the mere existence of the object. Now say that we have created a program that generates that Virtual Phantom, what machine are we going to run it on? I hope you can see the idea here... The fact that there does not exist just a single language and grammar for all persons and the fact that we can implement a given description or VR simulation of a given physical system seems to argue strongly against the reduction of information to mass and energy transactions. What am I missing? Onward! Stephen -- 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: Observers Class Hypothesis
On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 03:46:45PM -0800, Travis Garrett wrote: Hi Stephen, Sorry for the slow reply, I have been working on various things and also catching up on the many conversations (and naming conventions) on this board. And thanks for your interest! -- I think I have discovered a giant low hanging fruit, which had previously gone unnoticed since it is rather nonintuitive in nature (in addition to being a subject that many smart people shy away from thinking about...). Ok, let me address the Faddeev-Popov, gauge-invariant information issue first. I'll start with the final conclusion reduced to its most basic essence, and give more concrete examples later. First, note that any one structure can have many different descriptions. When counting among different structures thus it is crucial to choose only one description per structure, as including redundant descriptions will spoil the calculation. In other words, one only counts over the gauge-invariant information structures. This is essentially what one does in the derivation of the Solomonoff-Levin distribution, aka Universal Prior. That is, fix a universal prefix Turing machine, which halts on all input. Then all input programs generating the same output are considered equivalent. The universal prior for a given output is given by summing over the equivalence class of inputs giving that output, weighted exponentially by the length of the unique prefix. This result (which dates from the early 70s) gives rise to the various Occams razor theorems that have been published since. My own modest contribution was to note that any classifier function taking bit strings as input and mapping them to a discrete set (whether integers, or meanings, matters not) in a prefix way (the meaning of the string, once decided, does not change on reading more bits) will work. Turing machines are not strictly needed, and one expects observers to behave this way, so an Occams razor theorem will apply to each and every observer, even if the observers do not agree on the relative complexities of their worlds. However, this only suffices to eliminate what Bruno would call 3rd person white rabbits. There are still 1st person white rabbits that arise through the failure of induction problem. I will explain my solution to that issue further down. A very important lemma to this is that all of the random noise is also removed when the redundant descriptions are cut, as the random noise doesn't encode any invariant structure. Thus, for instance, I agree with COMP, but I disagree that white rabbits are therefore a problem... The vast majority of the output of a universal dovetailer (which I call A in my paper) is random noise which doesn't actually describe anything (despite optical illusions to the contrary...) and can therefore be zapped, leaving the union of nontrivial, invariant structures in U (which I then argue is dominated by the observer class O due to combinatorics). It is important to remember that random noise events are not white rabbits. A nice physicsy example of the distinction is to consider a room full of air. The random motion of the molecules are not white rabbits, that is just normal thermal noise. All of the molecules being situated in one small corner of the room, however, so that an observer sitting in the room ends up suffocating is a white rabbit. One could say that white rabbits are extremely low entropy states that happen by chance, which is the key to udnerstanding why they're never observed. To be low entropy, the state must have significance to the observer, as well as being of low probability. Otherwise, any arbitrary configuration will have low entropy. When observing data, it is important that observers are relatively insensitive to error. It does not help to not recognise a lion in the African savannah, just because it is partically obscured by a tree. Computers used to be terrible at just this sort of problem - you needed the exact key to extract a record from a database - now various sorts of fuzzy techniques, particularly ones inspired by the neural structure in the brain - mean computers are much better at dealing wiuth noisy data. With this observation, it becomes clear that the myriad of nearby histories that differ only in a few bits are not recognised as different from the original observation. These are not white rabbits. It requires many bits to make a white rabbit, and this, as you eloquently point out, is doubly exponentially suppressed. Bruno will probably still comment that this does not dispose of all the 1st person white rabbits, but I fail to see what other ones could exist. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australia
