Re: Joining Post
On 9/26/2011 10:35 PM, nihil0 wrote: It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. Dunno. 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? Can you know something without knowing it for certain? Sure. In fact I'm not so sure mathematical truths can always be known for certain. For example the four-color theorem has a proof so long that it is hard to be sure it is complete and has no errors. I think it has only been checked by computer. And we know computer programs can have bugs. 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? It must be the latter, since we change the laws of physics as we get new information. But I wouldn't say merely. It's quite a feat to have predictively successful theories. I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on any of these questions. I'm very impressed with what I've read so far from people. Glad to be here, Jon Welcome aboard. Brent Each philosopher knows a lot but, as a whole, philosophers don't know anything. If they did, they would be scientists. --- Ludwig Krippahl :-) -- 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: Joining Post
Jon, Welcome to the list. On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:35 AM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. Its never too late ;-) I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. I'm not sure if you were looking for people's input regarding these questions below or not, but I thought I would offer my take. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? The opposite of determinism is indeterminism (randomness) meaning the outcome is not determined by anything as far as we can tell. Let me explain the story of two artificial intelligences, and you tell me which one you believe to have a more free (less restricted) will: Robot A is programmed to have a certain personality, one in which it takes risks to aquire new experiences. It evaluates two competing needs before making a decision, the need to get out of the house and experience novel things (such as skiing, riding a bike, jumping out of a plane, etc.) vs. the need to stay alive to such that it can continue to have new experiences. It's will function evaluates these competing goals, taking into account every factor its algorithms can to make the best decision for itself. The outcome of these algorithms determine what it will do. Robot B is similarly programmed, to have more or less the same personality, but it's risk taking function is a lot simpler. When it decides whether or not to execute a certain plan, it takes the previous closing price of the SP 500 index, multiplies it by the number of nanoseconds since 1970, then divides by 1,000 and takes the remainder. If the remainder is less than 853 it takes the risk, otherwise it does not. What the robot decides do is the robot's own decision, and it obviously favors risk, but the only real input the robot's own algorithms is the risk factor 853 times out of 1,000 it takes the risk. It has no control over the other two inputs which ultimately make the determination as to what it does. One thing is clear from looking at these two robots. The behavior of robot A can be much more nuanced, intelligent, adaptive, etc. It's personality and will are all to itself. Just because we cannot predict what robot B will do in advance does not make its will more free. I will repeat what another on this list asked a while ago, when we say free will, free from what?. Robot A's will is self-determined, and the only way to determine it in advance is to implement all the algorithms and decision making functions that constitute it and evaluate them. In a sense, we are re-implementing, or duplicating its will in order to see what it decides, rather than predicting it. As to your question of what kind of free will is worth having, I will ask you, in what additional ways can Robot A's will be made free? 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. What Bostom's paper does not seem consider (I only looked at the abstract) is that if the universe is infinitely big, you also exist an infinite number of times and places, (as does everyone else) so I would ignore his paper's conclusion that no one can make any meaningful changes in the amount of good or bad. Even if you say everything happens, we can change the relative measure, or the frequency of the things that happen by virtue of the type of people we are. Has anyone ever helped you and have you been glad for it? I think a single affirmative answer to this question disproves Bostrom's conclusion, which is based on some tricks we can mathematically play with infinity. You can use these same tricks to prove there are as many numbers that end in 0 as there are numbers, but would you rather have something happen to you on every Nth day of your life, or only every Nth day that was evenly divisible by 10? After living an infinite number of days, an infinite number of bad things will have happened to you, sure, but in which of those lives will you have suffered more? 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? We cannot even know mathematical truths for certain. Can you trust 100% your math teacher, your reasoning, your eyes, when following a proof, or that of someone else? Perhaps we can be .9 certain of some mathematicians reasoning, and the fact that no one else has yet caught an error, and we are not currently delusional, but there is still an
Re: Why UDA proves nothing
On 27 Sep 2011, at 02:01, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 26 Sep 2011, at 04:42, Pierz wrote: - it's not well explained in the paper yet contains the all the really sweeping and startling assertions. When I presented UDA at the ASSC meeting of 1995 (I think) a famous philosopher of mind left the room at step 3 (the duplication step). He pretended that we feel to be at both places at once after a self-duplication experience. It was the first time someone told me this. I don't know if he was sincere. It looks some people want to believe UDA wrong, and are able to dismiss any step. Was this Chalmers? You mentioned to me at one point that he believed a duplicated person experiences both perspectives. But not at once. Not simultaneously, from their first person experience points of view. The point of self-duplication is to illustrate the indeterminacy of the immediate outcome of some experience/experiment. He left the room too quickly so I cannot even be sure of what he meant. I do think he was a bit brainwashed by some people. This is a view I can sympathize with, in the sense that we are part of a universal person who experiences all perspectives. I sympathize as well. In fact we can argue that such a universal person is described by the 8 arithmetical hypostases. We are the same person in that sense, but that is useless to derive physics from computations statistic. OK. A person who steps into a duplicator does experience both Washington and Moscow, but at either position, does not have the memories of the other, and thus so cannot talk about those experiences. It is similar to a person who is tortured, then given a drug to cause total amnesia. Is it not the same person who experienced being tortured? It can be considered in this way, but this does not make the first person immediate experiences determined in self-multiplication. It is determined in God's eyes, but the indetermination is a local terrestrial happening. 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: Why UDA proves nothing
On 26 Sep 2011, at 21:44, meekerdb wrote: On 9/26/2011 9:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Suppose that you are currently in state S (which exist by the comp assumption). But what does you refer to? Your first person view. Or the owner of your first person view, restricted to that view, without salvia amnesia, if you want. The comp assumption seems ambiguous. Is it the assumption that you are instantiated by a specific computation? No. Something like that can be part of the consequence, but this is clearly not assumed. In fact the UD shows that you is instantiated by an infinity of computations. Or is it the assumption that your brain could be replaced, without you noticing, by a physically different computer, so long as it computed the same function (at some level). Yes. These seem slightly different to me and are only identical if QM is false and the world is strictly classical and deterministic. At a practical level the brain is certainly mostly classical and so I might say 'yes' to the doctor even though my artificial brain will have slightly different behavoir because it has different counterfactual quantum behavior. But this difference seems to present a problem when trying to identify you within the inifinite bundle of computations instantiating a particular state in the UD computations. Why? If my original brain is described by QM (without collapse) it might be said to self-multiply naturally. But that self-multiplication will be contagious on the UD in that universe, so this will not change the relative proportion. On the contrary, the UD itself forces a multiplication to be lived from inside. As to identify yourself in the UD*, this is just impossible in any third person ways. But the indeterminacy is on the first person experiences, not on their description in the UD. So the statistics are lived from inside. A computation is winning, if indeed you feel to be alive through its UD instantiation. Ambiguities remain, but they are part of the measure problem. Of course if you replace the whole universe with an emulation, instead of just my brain, then my emulated brain in the emulated universe can have the same behavior as my natural brain in this universe. Yes, and that is why the reasoning will work in the limiting case where your generalized brain is the entire universe described at some level. The UD will generate all the digital approximation of that universe, and at some level of approximation, you will not see the difference, because we are assuming comp. The UD generates an infinity of computations going through that state. All what I say is that your future is determined by all those computations, and your self-referential abilities. If from this you can prove that your future is more random than the one observed, then you are beginning to refute rigorously comp. But the math part shows that this is not easy to do. In fact the random inputs confer stability for the programs which exploits that randomness, and again, this is the case for some formulation (à-la Feynman) of QM. How is this? Consider the iterated self-duplication experience, like with the random movie, where you expect to see (correctly) a random movie. The movie will seem random because the limiting case is described by a Gaussian (accepting the p = 1/2 for a single duplication). Other considerations make such a randomness occurring below you substitution level, so it might be that the only way to stabilize the computations above the substitution level comes from some phase randomization, similar to Feynman explanation of why QM minimize the path action. We need a notion of negative (amplitude) of probability, extracted from comp, for such a procedure to work, but this is already provided by the logic of self-reference when we add the non-cul-de-sac assumption (Dt) to the provability modality (Bp), with p sigma_1. This can be made enough precise to make sense of how the quantum can be explained by the digital viewed from the digital creature themselves. No doubt that a lot of work remain to be done, but that is exactly what I wanted to show. 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: Joining Post
Hi Jon, welcome, On 27 Sep 2011, at 07:35, nihil0 wrote: It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? Non determinism is useless to explain free will. You can illustrate this with iterated self-duplication, or with the use of random coin. It seems to me that adding randomness can only restrict free will. free will is more of the type of partial self-determination. It might be explained by the ability of some entities (machines) to be partially aware of some ignorance spectrum on the way to achieve some goal. For example your goal is to be happy tonight, but you ignore if this will be realize through going to the movie or to the restaurant. Free-will might correspond to your conscious ability to make a choice despite you have not all information at your disposition. It generates a genuine feeling of responsibility, and dterminism does not eliminate it. A lawyer cannot defend a murderer by saying to the member of the jury that the murderer has only obey to to the deterministic equation of the universe. That defence will be nullified by the jury and judge who will condemn it to jail, arguing that they are also just obeying the same deterministic law. 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Actually this is never justified. To have everything happening, you need the universe being infinitely big, but also homogenous, and robust enough for making possible gigantic connections and gigantic computations, etc. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. You can act on your own proportion of well-being, of you and the people you care about in some neighborhood, in your common future. I would say. 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? Is there any mathematical truth that we can known for certain? I really doubt so. A case can be made for arithmetical truth, but even here, I would say personally that I believe them only with a very high plausibility coefficient. We can do dream in which the feeling of certainty is associated with what we realize, after awakening, to be blatant non sensical idea. I thought, one feverish night, that the color of the curtains did refute the use of the modus ponens rule in classical propositional logic. What is clear is that arithmetic is the most lesser doubtful part of math, and with fever or drugs, seems to be shared by everyone, with the exception of the ultrafinitists, which are rare (and I think inconsistent). I have never meet someone doubting the excluded middle use in arithmetic. It makes sense for intuitionist people too, even if they interpret it differently. Above arithmetic and finitist thinking things are more doubtful, and all mathematicians are glad when analytical proofs are replaced by elementary first order reasoning, which certainty is amenable to finitist or arithmetical reasoning. The mathematical reality is globally not much more certain than physics, and is full of surprises and mysteries. Can you know something without knowing it for certain? yes, and I can prove to you that if we are machine, and if you accept Theaetetus' theory of knowledge, it is even the general rule. In that theory knwoledge is true opinion, and with only once exception, true opinion is subjectively like an opinion and cannot be made certain. The only certainty exception is the fact that you are conscious here and now. All the rest can be doubted. 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? The second one. I might argue from the mechanist hypothesis, but many things should be explained first. In fact I doubt very much about the existence of a primary physical universe. I am willing to think that this is epistemologically incoherent once we assume that the brain works like a machine. The laws of physics need, in that case, to be themselves complex pattern emerging statistically from infinitely many arithmetical relations. This cannot be explained shortly, but if you are patient, opportunities will appear to dig on this issue. Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List
Re: Logics
On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:
On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:
snip
Jason,
I really would like to understand how it is that the
truth valuation of a proposition is not dependent on our
knowledge of it can be used to affirm the meaning of the
referent of that proposition independent of us?
That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it correctly,
you are asking how a truth, independent of our knowledge, can
confer meaning to something without us?
[SPK]
Essentially, yes.
Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are
eventually do make a difference to beings which are aware of the
difference. A comet colliding with the Earth and hitting a pond
of unicellular organisms may have drastically altered the course
of evolution on our planet. That such a comet impact ocurred is
a fact which is either true or false, despite it being
independent of anyone's knowledge of it. Yet it has perceptable
results.
[SPK]
The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the material
universe. I am taking that concept into consideration.
Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth (even
if not comprehended by anyone) can have effects for observers, in
fact, it might explain both the observers themselves and their
experiences.
[SPK]
Slow down! existence of some mathematical truth??? Do you
mean the truth value of some existing mathematical statement? That
is what I mean in my question by the phrase truth valuation of a
proposition. Is a truth value something that exists or does not
exist?
I am not sure what you mean by exists in this case so let me say
this, the state of being true, or the state of being false, for the
proposition in question, was settled before a human made a
determination regarding that proposition.
[SPK]
Is the state of being true a physical state, like the state of
having 10 units of momentum? Is there a truth detector? Are you sure
that state and true are words that go together? AFAIK, true (or
false) are values, like numbers. In fact logics can have truth values
that range over any set of numbers. This puts truth valuations in the
same category as numbers. No?
How does the sentence 17 is prime is a true statement
confer implicit meaning to its referent?
What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you mean by
meaning? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The statement's
existence or non-existence, comprehension or non-comprehension
makes no difference to 17, only what you could say we humans have
discovered about 17.
[SPK]
Is the symbol 17 the same extant as the abstract number it
refers to?
No, as I mentioned to Brent in a post the other day, we ought not
confuse the label for the thing. Nor should we confuse our idea of a
thing for the thing itself.
[SPK]
OK, does not this imply that there are (at least) two separate
categories: Labels and Things? What relation might exist between these
categories?
Do you believe that symbols and what they represent are one and
the same thing???
No, we can apply some simple rules to the symbols in certain way to
learn things about the object in question.
[SPK]
What relation might exist between the rules of symbols and the
rules of things?
How does not the fact that many symbols can represent one and the
same extant disprove this hypothesis? Is the word tree have a
brownish trunk and greenish foliage? What about the case where
sets of symbols that have more than one possible referent?
Consider the word FORD. Does it have wheels and a motor? What is
the height of the water that one displaces when we might walk
across it? There is a categorical difference between an object and
its representations and the fact that one subobject of those
categories exists is not proof that a subobject in another
category has a given truth value. BTW, truth values are not
confined to {True, False}.
For well-defined propositions regarding the numbers I think the values
are confined to true or false.
Jason
--
[SPK]
Not in general, unless one is only going to allow only Boolean
logics to exist. There have been proven to exist logics that have truth
values that range over any set of numbers, not just {0,1}. Recall the
requirement for a mathematical structure to exist: Self-consistency.
Onward!
Stephen
--
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Re: Logics
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: snip Jason, I really would like to understand how it is that the truth valuation of a proposition is not dependent on our knowledge of it can be used to affirm the meaning of the referent of that proposition independent of us? That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it correctly, you are asking how a truth, independent of our knowledge, can confer meaning to something without us? [SPK] Essentially, yes. Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are eventually do make a difference to beings which are aware of the difference. A comet colliding with the Earth and hitting a pond of unicellular organisms may have drastically altered the course of evolution on our planet. That such a comet impact ocurred is a fact which is either true or false, despite it being independent of anyone's knowledge of it. Yet it has perceptable results. [SPK] The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the material universe. I am taking that concept into consideration. Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth (even if not comprehended by anyone) can have effects for observers, in fact, it might explain both the observers themselves and their experiences. [SPK] Slow down! existence of some mathematical truth??? Do you mean the truth value of some existing mathematical statement? That is what I mean in my question by the phrase truth valuation of a proposition. Is a truth value something that exists or does not exist? I am not sure what you mean by exists in this case so let me say this, the state of being true, or the state of being false, for the proposition in question, was settled before a human made a determination regarding that proposition. [SPK] Is the state of being true a physical state, like the state of having 10 units of momentum? If the object under consideration is a physical object, you might be able to say that. If the object under consideration is 17, I would say no. Is there a truth detector? There can be truth detectors, in some sense we may be truth detectors, but us discovery of a truth is not what makes it true. Are you sure that state and true are words that go together? I am at a loss for an english word that conveys the status of true or false. We have the word parity for the status of even or odd, for example, but I could not think of such a word that conveys the same for true or false, which is why I used the state of being true or false. AFAIK, true (or false) are values, like numbers. In fact logics can have truth values that range over any set of numbers. This puts truth valuations in the same category as numbers. No? True and false can be represented by two different numbers, but I am not sure that makes them values in the same sense of numbers. How does the sentence 17 is prime is a true statement confer implicit meaning to its referent? What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you mean by meaning? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The statement's existence or non-existence, comprehension or non-comprehension makes no difference to 17, only what you could say we humans have discovered about 17. [SPK] Is the symbol 17 the same extant as the abstract number it refers to? No, as I mentioned to Brent in a post the other day, we ought not confuse the label for the thing. Nor should we confuse our idea of a thing for the thing itself. [SPK] OK, does not this imply that there are (at least) two separate categories: Labels and Things? What relation might exist between these categories? Labels are a human invention to support communication of ideas, which you might say is yet another category of things. The relation ship might be as follows: if I tell you to multiply 1200 x 1800, you could arrange 1800 rows of 1200 beans and count them all, or you could follow some simple rules of transformation applied to the labels '1200' and '1800' and have a shortcut to the answer, without having to do all that counting. Do you believe that symbols and what they represent are one and the same thing??? No, we can apply some simple rules to the symbols in certain way to learn things about the object in question. [SPK] What relation might exist between the rules of symbols and the rules of things? I think I covered this above. How does not the fact that many symbols can represent one and the same extant disprove this hypothesis? Is the word tree have a brownish trunk and greenish foliage? What about the case where sets of symbols that have more than one possible
Re: Logics
On 9/27/2011 8:28 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:
On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:
On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:
snip
Jason,
I really would like to understand how it is that the
truth valuation of a proposition is not dependent on our
knowledge of it can be used to affirm the meaning of the
referent of that proposition independent of us?
That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it
correctly, you are asking how a truth, independent of our
knowledge, can confer meaning to something without us?
[SPK]
Essentially, yes.
Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are
eventually do make a difference to beings which are aware of
the difference. A comet colliding with the Earth and
hitting a pond of unicellular organisms may have drastically
altered the course of evolution on our planet. That such a
comet impact ocurred is a fact which is either true or
false, despite it being independent of anyone's knowledge of
it. Yet it has perceptable results.
[SPK]
The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the
material universe. I am taking that concept into consideration.
Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth
(even if not comprehended by anyone) can have effects for
observers, in fact, it might explain both the observers
themselves and their experiences.
[SPK]
Slow down! existence of some mathematical truth??? Do
you mean the truth value of some existing mathematical
statement? That is what I mean in my question by the phrase
truth valuation of a proposition. Is a truth value
something that exists or does not exist?
I am not sure what you mean by exists in this case so let me
say this, the state of being true, or the state of being false,
for the proposition in question, was settled before a human made
a determination regarding that proposition.
[SPK]
Is the state of being true a physical state, like the state
of having 10 units of momentum?
If the object under consideration is a physical object, you might be
able to say that. If the object under consideration is 17, I would
say no.
[SPK]
OK. So it is your belief that , in general, objects (of any
categorical type) have specific and definite properties absent the
specification of the means of observation? How do you explain the
existence of conjugate observables in QM?
Is there a truth detector?
There can be truth detectors, in some sense we may be truth detectors,
but us discovery of a truth is not what makes it true.
Are you sure that state and true are words that go together?
I am at a loss for an english word that conveys the status of true or
false. We have the word parity for the status of even or odd, for
example, but I could not think of such a word that conveys the same
for true or false, which is why I used the state of being true or false.
AFAIK, true (or false) are values, like numbers. In fact logics
can have truth values that range over any set of numbers. This
puts truth valuations in the same category as numbers. No?
True and false can be represented by two different numbers, but I am
not sure that makes them values in the same sense of numbers.
[SPK]
I was mentioning the fact that logics with truth values that range
over different sets of values have been proven to exist. Logic is not
limited to truth values over {0,1}, only Boolean logics are so
restricted by their defining rules.
How does the sentence 17 is prime is a true statement
confer implicit meaning to its referent?
What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you
mean by meaning? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The
statement's existence or non-existence, comprehension or
non-comprehension makes no difference to 17, only what you
could say we humans have discovered about 17.
[SPK]
Is the symbol 17 the same extant as the abstract number
it refers to?
No, as I mentioned to Brent in a post the other day, we ought not
confuse the label for the thing. Nor should we confuse our idea
of a thing for the thing itself.
[SPK]
OK, does not this imply that there are (at least) two separate
categories: Labels and Things? What relation might
Re: Bruno List continued
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: OK, so you agree that the *observable* behaviour of neurons can be adequately explained in terms of a chain of physical events. The neurons won't do anything that is apparently magical, right? Are not all of our observations observable behaviors of neurons? You're not understanding how I think observation works. There is no such thing as an observable behavior, it's always a matter of observable how, and by who? If you limit your observation of how neurons behave to what can be detected by a series of metal probes or microscopic antenna, then you are getting a radically limited view of what neurons are and what they do. You are asking a blind man what the Mona Lisa looks like by having him touch the paint, then making a careful impression of his fingers, and then announcing that the Mona Lisa can only do what fingerpainting can do, and that inferring anything beyond the nature of plain old paint to the Mona Lisa is magical. No. It doesn't work that way. A universe where nothing more than paint exists has no capacity to describe an intentional, higher level representation through a medium of paint. The dynamics of paint alone do not describe their important but largely irrelevant role to creating the image. Observable behaviours of neurons include things such as ion gates opening, neurotransmitter release at the synapse and action potential propagation down the axon. I know there may also be non-observables, but I'm only asking about the observables. Do you agree that if a non-observable causes a change in an observable, that would be like magic from the point of view of a scientist? We know that for example, gambling affects the physical behavior of the amygdala. What physical force do you posit that emanates from 'gambling' that penetrates the skull and blood brain barrier to mobilize those neurons? The skull has various holes in it (the foramen magnum, the orbits, foramina for the cranial nerves) through which sense data from the environment enters and, via a series of neural relays, reaches the amygdala and other parts of the brain. What is 'sense data' made of and how does it get into 'gambling'? Sense data could be the sight and sound of a poker machine, which gets into the brain, is processed in a complex way, and is understood to be gambling. Not at all. The amygdala's response to gambling cannot be observed on an MRI. We can only infer such a cause because we a priori understand the experience of gambling. If we did not, of course we could not infer any kind of association with neural patterns of firing with something like 'winning a big pot in video poker'. That brain activity is not a chain reaction from some other part of the brain. The brain is actually responding to the sense that the mind is making of the outside world and how it relates to the self. It is not going to be predictable from whatever the amygala happens to be doing five seconds or five hours before the win. The amygdala's response is visible on a fMRI, which is how we know about it. We can infer this without knowing anything about either gambling or the brain, noticing that input A (the poker machine) is consistently followed by output B (the amygdala lighting up on fMRI). You have not answered it. You have contradicted yourself by saying we *don't* observe the brain doing things contrary to physics and we *do* observe the brain doing things contrary to physics. We don't observe the Mona Lisa doing things contrary to the properties of paint, but we do observe the Mona Lisa as a higher order experience manifested through paint. It's the same thing. Physics doesn't explain the psyche, but psyche uses the physical brain in the ordinary physical ways that the brain can be used. But the Mona Lisa does not move of its own accord. That is what it would have to do for the situation to be analogous to brain changes occurring due to mental processes and not physical processes. You seem to believe that neurons in the amygdala will fire spontaneously when the subject thinks about gambling, which would be magic. You don't understand that you are arguing against neuroscience and common sense. Of course you can manually control your electrochemical circuits with thought. That's what all thinking is. It's not that the amygdala fires spontaneously, it's that the thrills and chills of risktaking *are* the firing of the amygdala. You seem to be saying that the brain has our entire life planned out for us in advance as some kind of meaningless encephalographic housekeeping exercise where we have no ability to make ourselves horny by thinking about sex or hungry by thinking about food, no capacity to do or say things based upon the realities outside of our skull rather than the inside. I'm not sure if you're not understanding or just pretending not to understand. Take any neuron in the brain: it
Re: Logics
On 27 Sep 2011, at 13:49, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
snip
For well-defined propositions regarding the numbers I think the
values are confined to true or false.
Jason
--
[SPK]
Not in general, unless one is only going to allow only Boolean
logics to exist. There have been proven to exist logics that have
truth values that range over any set of numbers, not just {0,1}.
Recall the requirement for a mathematical structure to exist: Self-
consistency.
Consistency is a notion applied usually to theories, or (chatty)
machines, not to mathematical structures.
A theory is consistent if it does not prove some proposition and its
negation. A machine is consistent if it does not assert a proposition
and its negation.
In first order logic we have Gödel-Henkin completeness theorem which
shows that a theory is consistent if and only if there is a
mathematical structure (called model) satisfying (in a sense which can
be made precise) the proposition proved in the theory.
Also, it is true that classical (Boolean) logic are not the only
logic. There are infinitely many logics, below and above classical
propositional logic. But this cannot be used to criticize the use of
classical logic in some domain.
All treatises on any non classical logic used classical (or much more
rarely intuitionistic) logic at the meta-level. You will not find a
book on fuzzy logic having fuzzy theorems, for example. Non classical
logics have multiple use, which are not related with the kind of ontic
truth we are looking for when searching a TOE.
Usually non classical logic have epistemic or pragmatic classical
interpretations, or even classical formulation, like the classical
modal logic S4 which can emulate intuitionistic logic, or the
Brouwersche modal logic B, which can emulate weak quantum logic. This
corresponds to the fact that intuitionist logic might modelize
constructive provability, and quantum logic modelizes observability,
and not the usual notion of classical truth (as used almost everywhere
in mathematics).
To invoke the existence of non classical logic to throw a doubt about
the universal truth of elementary statements in well defined domain,
like arithmetic, would lead to complete relativism, given that you can
always build some ad hoc logic/theory proving the negation of any
statement, and this would make the notion of truth problematic. The
contrary is true. A non classical logic is eventually accepted when we
can find an interpretation of it in the classical framework.
A non standard truth set, like the collection of open subsets of a
topological space, provided a classical sense for intuitionist logic,
like a lattice of linear subspaces can provide a classical
interpretation of quantum logic (indeed quantum logic is born from
such structures). It might be that nature observables obeys quantum
logic, but quantum physicists talk and reason in classical logic, and
use classical mathematical tools to describe the non classical
behavior of matter.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: Logics
On 9/27/2011 4:49 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
[SPK]
Not in general, unless one is only going to allow only Boolean logics to exist.
There have been proven to exist logics that have truth values that range over any set of
numbers, not just {0,1}. Recall the requirement for a mathematical structure to exist:
Self-consistency.
Onward!
Stephen
How do you define consistency for fuzzy or probabilistic logics? If you prove P(x)=0.1
and P(x)=0.2 is that inconsistency?
Brent
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Re: Logics
On 9/27/2011 5:28 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: snip Jason, I really would like to understand how it is that the truth valuation of a proposition is not dependent on our knowledge of it can be used to affirm the meaning of the referent of that proposition independent of us? That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it correctly, you are asking how a truth, independent of our knowledge, can confer meaning to something without us? [SPK] Essentially, yes. Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are eventually do make a difference to beings which are aware of the difference. A comet colliding with the Earth and hitting a pond of unicellular organisms may have drastically altered the course of evolution on our planet. That such a comet impact ocurred is a fact which is either true or false, despite it being independent of anyone's knowledge of it. Yet it has perceptable results. [SPK] The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the material universe. I am taking that concept into consideration. Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth (even if not comprehended by anyone) can have effects for observers, in fact, it might explain both the observers themselves and their experiences. [SPK] Slow down! existence of some mathematical truth??? Do you mean the truth value of some existing mathematical statement? That is what I mean in my question by the phrase truth valuation of a proposition. Is a truth value something that exists or does not exist? I am not sure what you mean by exists in this case so let me say this, the state of being true, or the state of being false, for the proposition in question, was settled before a human made a determination regarding that proposition. [SPK] Is the state of being true a physical state, like the state of having 10 units of momentum? If the object under consideration is a physical object, you might be able to say that. If the object under consideration is 17, I would say no. Is there a truth detector? There can be truth detectors, in some sense we may be truth detectors, but us discovery of a truth is not what makes it true. Are you sure that state and true are words that go together? I am at a loss for an english word that conveys the status of true or false. We have the word parity for the status of even or odd, for example, but I could not think of such a word that conveys the same for true or false, which is why I used the state of being true or false. AFAIK, true (or false) are values, like numbers. In fact logics can have truth values that range over any set of numbers. This puts truth valuations in the same category as numbers. No? True and false can be represented by two different numbers, but I am not sure that makes them values in the same sense of numbers. How does the sentence 17 is prime is a true statement confer implicit meaning to its referent? What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you mean by meaning? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The statement's existence or non-existence, comprehension or non-comprehension makes no difference to 17, only what you could say we humans have discovered about 17. [SPK] Is the symbol 17 the same extant as the abstract number it refers to? No, as I mentioned to Brent in a post the other day, we ought not confuse the label for the thing. Nor should we confuse our idea of a thing for the thing itself. [SPK] OK, does not this imply that there are (at least) two separate categories: Labels and Things? What relation might exist between these categories? Labels are a human invention to support communication of ideas, which you might say is yet another category of things. The relation ship might be as follows: if I tell you to multiply 1200 x 1800, you could arrange 1800 rows of 1200 beans and count them all, or you could follow some simple rules of transformation applied to the labels '1200' and '1800' and have a shortcut to the answer, without having to do all that counting. Do you believe that symbols and what they represent are one and the
Re: Dennett on neurons
Yes, thanks. It's interesting that he goes from showing how neurons plausibly have micro-agency, to then insisting in part 7 that we must reduce consciousness to-unconsciousness. To me, all it takes is to realize that it's not only what the neurons are doing physically that matters, but what the neuronal agents themselves are perceiving, and how perceptions scale up differently than material objects relating across space do. Craig On Sep 26, 8:38 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Craig will like part 6 of Dan Dennett's Harvard lectures http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnbSj1OMA8wfeature=related 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.
Re: Logics
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 1:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
Not in general, unless one is only going to allow only Boolean logics
to exist. There have been proven to exist logics that have truth values that
range over any set of numbers, not just {0,1}. Recall the requirement for a
mathematical structure to exist: Self-consistency.
Okay, there may be other subjects, besides number theory and arithmetical
truth where other forms of logic are more appropriate. For unambiguous
propositions about numbers, do you agree with the law of the excluded
middle?
Jason
I think this an assumption or another axiom. Consider the conjecture that
every even number can be written as the sum of two primes. Suppose there is
no proof of this from Peano's axioms, but we can't know that there is no
proof; only that we can't find one. Intuitively we think the conjecture
must be true or false, but this is based on the idea that if we tested all
the evens we'd find it either true or false of each one. Yet infinite
testing is impossible. So if the conjecture is true but unprovable, then
it's undecidable.
Propositions can be undecidable in the context of a given set of axioms, but
there are stronger systems in which the proposition is decidable.
In any case, whether or not some proposition is decidable (can be
demonstrated as true or demonstrated as false in a series of logical steps
leading to the axioms in question) does not suggest that a mathematical
proposition is true or false dependently of us. Conversely, I think it is
one of the strongest arguments against the idea that math is man-made. Any
system of axioms we develop is imperfect in the sense that it cannot answer
all questions concerning the numbers.
Those who think that the objects of study in mathematics are human
inventions are living in the early 20th century.
Jason
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Re: Logics
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote:
On 9/27/2011 8:28 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote:
On 9/26/2011 7:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.netwrote:
On 9/26/2011 11:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Stephen P. King
stephe...@charter.netwrote:
snip
Jason,
I really would like to understand how it is that the truth valuation
of a proposition is not dependent on our knowledge of it can be used to
affirm the meaning of the referent of that proposition independent of us?
That sentence was hard to parse! If I understand it correctly, you are
asking how a truth, independent of our knowledge, can confer meaning to
something without us?
[SPK]
Essentially, yes.
Things unknown to anyone can have consequences which are eventually do
make a difference to beings which are aware of the difference. A comet
colliding with the Earth and hitting a pond of unicellular organisms may
have drastically altered the course of evolution on our planet. That such a
comet impact ocurred is a fact which is either true or false, despite it
being independent of anyone's knowledge of it. Yet it has perceptable
results.
[SPK]
The web of causes and effects is an aspect of the material universe.
I am taking that concept into consideration.
Correspondingly, the existence of some mathematical truth (even if not
comprehended by anyone) can have effects for observers, in fact, it might
explain both the observers themselves and their experiences.
[SPK]
Slow down! existence of some mathematical truth??? Do you mean the
truth value of some existing mathematical statement? That is what I mean in
my question by the phrase truth valuation of a proposition. Is a truth
value something that exists or does not exist?
I am not sure what you mean by exists in this case so let me say this,
the state of being true, or the state of being false, for the proposition in
question, was settled before a human made a determination regarding that
proposition.
[SPK]
Is the state of being true a physical state, like the state of
having 10 units of momentum?
If the object under consideration is a physical object, you might be able
to say that. If the object under consideration is 17, I would say no.
[SPK]
OK. So it is your belief that , in general, objects (of any categorical
type) have specific and definite properties absent the specification of the
means of observation?
Yes I believe objects have properties even if unobserved. Do you really
believe the cat is both alive and dead (in the same universe) until it is
observed?
How do you explain the existence of conjugate observables in QM?
If you are a CI proponent, you could say being in many places at once, or
having many simultaneous states simultaneously is a property of objects in
superposition. The Everettian might say a more simply that a property of a
particle (or the universe) is that it obeys the Shrodinger equation.
I assume your point is that an particle cannot have a definite momentum and
position, but this is really a statement about observation (the observer
cannot know both simultaneously), not the object (or many objects) under
consideration.
Is there a truth detector?
There can be truth detectors, in some sense we may be truth detectors, but
us discovery of a truth is not what makes it true.
Are you sure that state and true are words that go together?
I am at a loss for an english word that conveys the status of true or
false. We have the word parity for the status of even or odd, for example,
but I could not think of such a word that conveys the same for true or
false, which is why I used the state of being true or false.
AFAIK, true (or false) are values, like numbers. In fact logics can have
truth values that range over any set of numbers. This puts truth valuations
in the same category as numbers. No?
True and false can be represented by two different numbers, but I am not
sure that makes them values in the same sense of numbers.
[SPK]
I was mentioning the fact that logics with truth values that range over
different sets of values have been proven to exist. Logic is not limited to
truth values over {0,1}, only Boolean logics are so restricted by their
defining rules.
I think Bruno addressed this very well.
How does the sentence 17 is prime is a true statement confer
implicit meaning to its referent?
What is the referent in this case? 17? And what do you mean by
meaning? 17's primality is a fact of nature. The statement's existence
or non-existence, comprehension or non-comprehension makes no difference to
17, only what you could say we humans have discovered about 17.
[SPK]
Is the symbol 17 the same extant as
Re: Why UDA proves nothing
On 9/27/2011 1:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 26 Sep 2011, at 21:44, meekerdb wrote: On 9/26/2011 9:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Suppose that you are currently in state S (which exist by the comp assumption). But what does you refer to? Your first person view. Or the owner of your first person view, restricted to that view, without salvia amnesia, if you want. The comp assumption seems ambiguous. Is it the assumption that you are instantiated by a specific computation? No. Something like that can be part of the consequence, but this is clearly not assumed. In fact the UD shows that you is instantiated by an infinity of computations. Or is it the assumption that your brain could be replaced, without you noticing, by a physically different computer, so long as it computed the same function (at some level). Yes. These seem slightly different to me and are only identical if QM is false and the world is strictly classical and deterministic. At a practical level the brain is certainly mostly classical and so I might say 'yes' to the doctor even though my artificial brain will have slightly different behavoir because it has different counterfactual quantum behavior. But this difference seems to present a problem when trying to identify you within the inifinite bundle of computations instantiating a particular state in the UD computations. Why? If my original brain is described by QM (without collapse) it might be said to self-multiply naturally. But that self-multiplication will be contagious on the UD in that universe, so this will not change the relative proportion. That's the step that seems ambiguous. What you write above applies to a physically realized (i.e. quantum) UD, but not to the UD in Platonia. The physically realized UD will have non-zero probabilities of doing something random instead of implementing the intended function. On the contrary, the UD itself forces a multiplication to be lived from inside. As to identify yourself in the UD*, this is just impossible in any third person ways. But the indeterminacy is on the first person experiences, not on their description in the UD. So the statistics are lived from inside. A computation is winning, if indeed you feel to be alive through its UD instantiation. Ambiguities remain, but they are part of the measure problem. Of course if you replace the whole universe with an emulation, instead of just my brain, then my emulated brain in the emulated universe can have the same behavior as my natural brain in this universe. Yes, and that is why the reasoning will work in the limiting case where your generalized brain is the entire universe described at some level. The UD will generate all the digital approximation of that universe, and at some level of approximation, you will not see the difference, because we are assuming comp. The UD generates an infinity of computations going through that state. All what I say is that your future is determined by all those computations, and your self-referential abilities. If from this you can prove that your future is more random than the one observed, then you are beginning to refute rigorously comp. But the math part shows that this is not easy to do. In fact the random inputs confer stability for the programs which exploits that randomness, and again, this is the case for some formulation (à-la Feynman) of QM. How is this? Consider the iterated self-duplication experience, like with the random movie, where you expect to see (correctly) a random movie. The movie will seem random because the limiting case is described by a Gaussian (accepting the p = 1/2 for a single duplication). Other considerations make such a randomness occurring below you substitution level, so it might be that the only way to stabilize the computations above the substitution level comes from some phase randomization, similar to Feynman explanation of why QM minimize the path action. So you're talking about keeping the computation classical, even though realized by a physical device which is microscopically quantum? I don't recognize the reference to the random movie. We need a notion of negative (amplitude) of probability, Negative probability or negative, imaginary probability amplitude? extracted from comp, for such a procedure to work, but this is already provided by the logic of self-reference when we add the non-cul-de-sac assumption (Dt) to the provability modality (Bp), with p sigma_1. This can be made enough precise to make sense of how the quantum can be explained by the digital viewed from the digital creature themselves. No doubt that a lot of work remain to be done, but that is exactly what I wanted to show. You lost me. 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,
Re: Logics
On 9/27/2011 1:40 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/27/2011 4:49 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
[SPK]
Not in general, unless one is only going to allow only Boolean
logics to exist. There have been proven to exist logics that have
truth values that range over any set of numbers, not just {0,1}.
Recall the requirement for a mathematical structure to exist:
Self-consistency.
Onward!
Stephen
How do you define consistency for fuzzy or probabilistic logics? If
you prove P(x)=0.1 and P(x)=0.2 is that inconsistency?
Brent
I am not a in a position to write out such definitions. You might find a
thorough explanation of fuzzy logic in any of Bart Kosko's books on the
subject. I am sure that there are papers and or books that explain the
same for probabilistic logic.
Onward!
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Re: Bruno List continued
On Sep 27, 9:20 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: OK, so you agree that the *observable* behaviour of neurons can be adequately explained in terms of a chain of physical events. The neurons won't do anything that is apparently magical, right? Are not all of our observations observable behaviors of neurons? You're not understanding how I think observation works. There is no such thing as an observable behavior, it's always a matter of observable how, and by who? If you limit your observation of how neurons behave to what can be detected by a series of metal probes or microscopic antenna, then you are getting a radically limited view of what neurons are and what they do. You are asking a blind man what the Mona Lisa looks like by having him touch the paint, then making a careful impression of his fingers, and then announcing that the Mona Lisa can only do what fingerpainting can do, and that inferring anything beyond the nature of plain old paint to the Mona Lisa is magical. No. It doesn't work that way. A universe where nothing more than paint exists has no capacity to describe an intentional, higher level representation through a medium of paint. The dynamics of paint alone do not describe their important but largely irrelevant role to creating the image. Observable behaviours of neurons include things such as ion gates opening, neurotransmitter release at the synapse and action potential propagation down the axon. Those phenomena are observable using certain kinds of instruments. Our native instruments are infinitely more authoritative in observing the behaviors of neurons. I know there may also be non-observables, but I'm only asking about the observables. You are asking about 3-p machine observables. Do you agree that if a non-observable causes a change in an observable, that would be like magic from the point of view of a scientist? Not at all. We observe 3-p changes caused by 1-p intentionality routinely. There is a study cited recently in that TV documentary where the regions of vegetative patients brains associated with coordinated movements light up an fMRI when being asked to imagine playing tennis. http://web.me.com/adrian.owen/site/Publications_files/Owen-2006-FutureNeurology.pdf p. 693-4 Why do you want me to think that the ordinary relationship between the brain and the mind is magic? The 'non-observable cause' is the patient voluntarily imagining playing tennis. There is no other cause. They were given a choice between tennis and house, and the result of the fMRI was determined by nothing other than the patient's subjective choice. So will you stop accusing me of witchcraft about this now or is there going to be some other way of making me seem like I am the one rejecting science when it is your position which broadly reimagines the brain as some kind of closed-circuit Rube Goldberg apparatus? We know that for example, gambling affects the physical behavior of the amygdala. What physical force do you posit that emanates from 'gambling' that penetrates the skull and blood brain barrier to mobilize those neurons? The skull has various holes in it (the foramen magnum, the orbits, foramina for the cranial nerves) through which sense data from the environment enters and, via a series of neural relays, reaches the amygdala and other parts of the brain. What is 'sense data' made of and how does it get into 'gambling'? Sense data could be the sight and sound of a poker machine, which gets into the brain, is processed in a complex way, and is understood to be gambling. By sight and sound do you mean acoustic waves and photons? Those things don't physically 'get into the brain', do they? You won't find 'sights and sounds' in the bloodstream. If you include them in a model of neurology, wouldn't you have to include the entire universe? Not at all. The amygdala's response to gambling cannot be observed on an MRI. We can only infer such a cause because we a priori understand the experience of gambling. If we did not, of course we could not infer any kind of association with neural patterns of firing with something like 'winning a big pot in video poker'. That brain activity is not a chain reaction from some other part of the brain. The brain is actually responding to the sense that the mind is making of the outside world and how it relates to the self. It is not going to be predictable from whatever the amygala happens to be doing five seconds or five hours before the win. The amygdala's response is visible on a fMRI, which is how we know about it. We can infer this without knowing anything about either gambling or the brain, noticing that input A (the poker machine) is consistently followed by output B (the amygdala lighting up on fMRI). Input A does not have to be a poker machine. It can be a
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On Sep 26, 2011, at 6:31 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:45 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: An interesting talk relevant to what constitutes an observer moment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VQ1KI_Jh1QNR=1 Even if the experience is smeared out over time I think it is clear with mechanism that this is the case. Imagine an AI with a single CPU. Here it is obvious that it's state extends through the dimension of time. With the parallel processing of the brain it is less, but still much greater than a Planck time. and has a complex relationship to real world events it could still be the case that it can be cut up arbitrarily. Perhaps arbitrarily in the sense of distinct observer moments, but I don't think so about time. There is no way I can be sure the world was not created a microsecond ago Consider how many CPU cycles are required for the AI to become aware. Even if you think it becomes conscious as soon as the first instruction is executed, the instruction takes some amount of time to complete. If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Jason and there is no way I can be sure there isn't a million year gap between subjective seconds. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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: Is this really true?
On Sep 25, 2011, at 4:10 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/25/2011 12:35 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 12:09 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A theory that can explain anything, fails to explain at all. A few people on this list have repeated this sentiment, but I wonder if it is really so. If there were an oracle that could provide an explanation for any question asked of it, should we conclude this oracle fails to explain anything at all? If not, then what is the difference between a theory that could explain anything and an oracle that could explain anything? Of course that's not what the aphorism means. It means if you have a theory that can explain why wicked people get sick and pious ones don't and the same theory can explain why pious people get sick and wicked ones don't, then that's a theory that fails to explain at all. For a theory to explain something I thought it implied that the something was actually observed (or at least not directly contradicted by observation). You have used this aphorism when arguing against theories that propose everything/infinite/large number of possibility type theories. That is what I was questioning. Since these theories don't purport to explain contradictions such as who both does and does not get sick, I wonder if the aphorism is a legitimate protest against such theories. Jason Brent Physicists spend their lives searching for a physical TOE that could in principal explain anything that happens in this universe. Is their search in vain because this TOE would explain nothing at all? A final thought, are theories that propose the existence of everything, really theories that can explain anything? Jason -- 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 . -- 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 . -- 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: Is this really true?
On Sep 25, 2011, at 11:58 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: two 'naive' replies to your (excellent in it's riet) post: - I interject in bold Italics John M Thank you. On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 3:35 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 12:09 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: A theory that can explain anything, fails to explain at all. A few people on this list have repeated this sentiment, but I wonder if it is really so. If there were an oracle that could provide an explanation for any question asked of it, should we conclude this oracle fails to explain anything at all? If not, then what is the difference between a theory that could explain anything and an oracle that could explain anything? ANYTHING includes the opposite as well. If the 'theory' explains 'everything and its opposite(s) equally - it is of no use. That's plain common sense. I agree if the theory had contradictions it would be an invalid theory. But it seems what you mean by explain is shorthand for explain the existence of. If a thing does not exist is it really a thing, and if not, does it require an explaination? Perhaps the only explanation such a thing deserves is why it does not exist. Physicists spend their lives searching for a physical TOE that could in principal explain anything that happens in this universe. Is their search in vain because this TOE would explain nothing at all? What kind of 'TOE' would have searched physicitst BEFORE Galvani, Pasteur, Copernicus, or M. Curie? Epistemology serves the increase of our knowledge. Would YOU (today) call our knowledge a 'TOE'? No. And even given a unification if the forces we would still have many mathematical questions unanswered, we would still ask why these laws?, and still wonder about higher level phenomena like sociology and economics. so why are you upset that TODAY'S TOE does not include those learnables that will emerge in the future only? - Do you claim omniscience as of today? No, I offered it only as an example of a theory which could in theory answer any physical question. A final thought, are theories that propose the existence of everything, really theories that can explain anything? As an agnostic in sciences (our capacity of knowledge) I cannot believe that humans EVER will know EVERYTHING. I agree with this. Your hypothetical TOE will include the explanation of 'elements' that are controversial with a negative explanation. Of course NOT in our present (human) imagination (conventional sciences). Sorry for my mental modesty G. Thanks. Jason Jason John -- 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 . -- 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 . -- 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: Joining Post
On Sep 27, 2:46 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. Great suggestion. The wikipedia page was fairly informative, but I'll probably buy the book anyway. From what I gather, he believes the kind of free will worth wanting is the appearance (or illusion) that we can control our behavior to a large extent. I agree with him that we don't want to be uncaused causes (or uninfluenced influences) of events, which is how quantum particles appear to behave (i.e., stochastically). Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Technically I think you are right. However, I was only talking about an infinite universe likes ours that operates in accordance with the laws of quantum physics. Let me explain by using what I've read of Victor Stenger and Brian Greene. There are three ingredients in the argument that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe happen infinitely many times. 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. Bruno you say, To have everything happening, you need the universe being infinitely big, but also homogenous, and robust enough for making possible gigantic connections and gigantic computations, etc. I thought that physicists have observed our universe to be homogenous on very large scales, but perhaps I'm mistaken. See the Cosmological Principal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by robust enough for making possible gigantic connections and gigantic computations, etc. but perhaps the following explanation will be helpful. During the inflation right before the Big Bang, all of the now disconnected Hubble volumes were squeezed together and could affect each other. Brian Greene says they conducted a variety of cosmic handshakes, establishing, for example, a uniform temperature. Cheers, Jon On Sep 27, 2:46 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/26/2011 10:35 PM, nihil0 wrote: It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. Dunno. 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? Can you know something without knowing it for certain? Sure. In fact I'm not so sure mathematical truths can always be known for certain. For example the four-color theorem has a proof so long that it is hard to be sure it is complete and has no errors. I think it has only been checked by computer. And we know computer programs can have bugs. 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? It must be the latter, since we change the laws of physics as we get new information. But I wouldn't say merely. It's quite a feat to have predictively successful theories. I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On 9/27/2011 3:55 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sep 26, 2011, at 6:31 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:45 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: An interesting talk relevant to what constitutes an observer moment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VQ1KI_Jh1QNR=1 Even if the experience is smeared out over time I think it is clear with mechanism that this is the case. Imagine an AI with a single CPU. Here it is obvious that it's state extends through the dimension of time. With the parallel processing of the brain it is less, but still much greater than a Planck time. Even assuming signals at c the brain extends about a nano-second in time, 22 orders of magnitude longer than the Planck time. But doesn't this create problems for Bruno's argument, which assumes states are timeless, instant like things in Platonia and that they have no overlap. Should we identify observer moments with bundles of UD computations going thru the same state, but also with extensions of those computations forward and backward over some number of states? But they are not the same forward and backward. Or do we require that the substitution level be pushed down to time slices short compared to a nano-second so that an observer moment will be a whole set of states extending over a short time. In which case the sequence of states will pick out a much smaller set of UD computations that went thru all those states. Brent and has a complex relationship to real world events it could still be the case that it can be cut up arbitrarily. Perhaps arbitrarily in the sense of distinct observer moments, but I don't think so about time. There is no way I can be sure the world was not created a microsecond ago Consider how many CPU cycles are required for the AI to become aware. Even if you think it becomes conscious as soon as the first instruction is executed, the instruction takes some amount of time to complete. If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Jason and there is no way I can be sure there isn't a million year gap between subjective seconds. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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: Joining Post
On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: On Sep 27, 2:46 am, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. Great suggestion. The wikipedia page was fairly informative, but I'll probably buy the book anyway. From what I gather, he believes the kind of free will worth wanting is the appearance (or illusion) that we can control our behavior to a large extent. I agree with him that we don't want to be uncaused causes (or uninfluenced influences) of events, which is how quantum particles appear to behave (i.e., stochastically). Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Technically I think you are right. However, I was only talking about an infinite universe likes ours that operates in accordance with the laws of quantum physics. Let me explain by using what I've read of Victor Stenger and Brian Greene. There are three ingredients in the argument that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe happen infinitely many times. 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. 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.
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
My opinion is that quantum mechanics is essential to define an OM, despite it being in the classical domain. The computational state of an AI is not the precise physical state of the system that generates the AI, it is some coarse grained picture of it. So, if you have a classical computer, then the bits that are zero or one only become visible when you average over the microstates. Then, even the observer does not appear at the level of the bits, you need to extract the information that is present in the bits, and there must be a huge redundancy there too. What we are aware of are patterns in the information that enters our brain, but the same pattern we're aware of can be realized in an astronomically large number of ways. Therefore, if you are aware of something right now, the exact quantum state that describes this is, in general, an entangled state which contains the correlations within the patterns that you are aware of and the information present in the environment that are mapped to those patterns. This state defines the program your brain is running, at least as far as rendering the patterns you are aware of. Saibal Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/27/2011 3:55 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sep 26, 2011, at 6:31 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:45 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: An interesting talk relevant to what constitutes an observer moment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VQ1KI_Jh1QNR=1 Even if the experience is smeared out over time I think it is clear with mechanism that this is the case. Imagine an AI with a single CPU. Here it is obvious that it's state extends through the dimension of time. With the parallel processing of the brain it is less, but still much greater than a Planck time. Even assuming signals at c the brain extends about a nano-second in time, 22 orders of magnitude longer than the Planck time. But doesn't this create problems for Bruno's argument, which assumes states are timeless, instant like things in Platonia and that they have no overlap. Should we identify observer moments with bundles of UD computations going thru the same state, but also with extensions of those computations forward and backward over some number of states? But they are not the same forward and backward. Or do we require that the substitution level be pushed down to time slices short compared to a nano-second so that an observer moment will be a whole set of states extending over a short time. In which case the sequence of states will pick out a much smaller set of UD computations that went thru all those states. Brent and has a complex relationship to real world events it could still be the case that it can be cut up arbitrarily. Perhaps arbitrarily in the sense of distinct observer moments, but I don't think so about time. There is no way I can be sure the world was not created a microsecond ago Consider how many CPU cycles are required for the AI to become aware. Even if you think it becomes conscious as soon as the first instruction is executed, the instruction takes some amount of time to complete. If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Jason and there is no way I can be sure there isn't a million year gap between subjective seconds. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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. -- 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: Joining Post
On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. On Sep 27, 7:47 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. Brent You imply that it's logically possible that there is only a finite number of universes that are filled with matter, and you seem to think few will resemble ours. However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. The currently favored theory is that the initial conditions (the densities and motions of different types of matter early on) were created by quantum fluctuations during the inflation epoch (see section 3). This quantum mechanism generates initial conditions that are for all practical purposes random, producing density fluctuations described by what mathematicians call an ergodic random field. Ergodic means that if you imagine generating an ensemble of universes, each with its own random initial conditions, then the probability distribution of outcomes in a given volume is identical to the distribution that you get by sampling different volumes in a single universe. In other words, it means that everything that could in principle have happened here did in fact happen somewhere else. Inflation in fact generates all possible initial conditions with non-zero probability, the most likely ones being almost uniform with fluctuations at the 10^5 level that are amplified by gravitational clustering to form galaxies, stars, planets and other structures. This means both that pretty much all imaginable matter configurations occur in some Hubble volume far away, and also that we should expect our own Hubble volume to be a fairly typical one — at least typical among those that contain observers. A crude estimate suggests that the closest identical copy of you is about ∼ 10^(10^29)m away. . . (The Multiverse Hierarchy, section 1B, http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283) Do you still disagree with the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition? Which parts of the argument do you accept or deny? Best regards, Jon -- 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: Why UDA proves nothing
OK, well I think this and the other responses (notably Jason's) have brought me a lot closer to grasping the essence of this argument. I can see that the set of integers is also the set of all possible information states, and that the difference between that and the UD is the element of sequential computation. I can also see that my objection to infinite computational resources and state memory comes from the 1-p perspective. For me, in the physical universe, any computation is restricted by the laws of matter and must be embedded in that matter. Now one of the fascinating revelations of the computational approach to physics is the fact that a quantity such as position can only be defined to a certain level of precision by the universe itself because the universe has finite informational resources at its disposal. This was my objection to the UD. But I can see that this restriction need not necessarily apply at the 'higher' 3- p level of the UD's computations. What interests me is the question: does UDA predict that the 1-p observer will see a universe with such restrictions? If it explains why the 1-p observer seems to exist in a world where there is only a finite number of bits available, despite existing in a machine with an infinite level of bit resolution, then that would be a most interesting result. Otherwise, it seems to me to remain a problem for the theory, or at least a question in need of an answer, like dark matter in cosmology. I am going to have to meditate further on arithmetical realism. I don't believe in objective matter either (it seems refuted by Bell's Theorem anyway), but a chasm seems to lie between the statement 17 is prime and the UDA (Robinson arithmetic) executes all possible programs. The problem is one of instantiation. I can conceive of a universe - a singularity perhaps, with only one bit of information - in which the statement 17 is prime can never be made. To formulate, ie instantiate, 17, requires a certain amount of information. To say that a program executes, as opposed to saying it merely is implied by a set of theoretical axioms, requires the instantiation of that algorithm. I suppose this is a restatement of the problem above. Arithemetical realism then would be the postulate that everything implied in arithmetic is actually instantiated. It seems to me I can grant 17 is prime, without granting this instantiation of everything. I'm also troubled by the statement that you have proved in the AUDA that any Lobian machine can apprehend the UDA. Is not a three-year-old child and a cat a Lobian machine? Or indeed my senile father. How can you assert they could comprehend such an abstraction? Either they aren't Lobian machines, or there's hole in the proof somewhere, surely! Jason mentions the anthropic principle (which of course I'm well acquainted with) and the idea of the computations which contain observers. I have read, without following, some of your propositions involving the Beweisbar predicate and self-referential relations and what have you. Is that the formalism that is supposed to define which computations are conscious? Is there a summary somewhere? I am wondering how consciousness can possibly be an attribute of some computations and not others, and why, if it's a matter of some certain mathematical properties of the computations, we could not fairly easily write a conscious algorithm? Surely complexity can't be the defining feature (at what arbitrary level of complexity does the light come on?), so it should be a simple matter. (Though the proof of having created consciousness in the program would be a problem!) Don't we have to define consciousness (not necessarily self-awareness, or the awareness of being aware) as a property of numbers per se? Sadly when you start to talk about the difficulty of proving that our histories in the UD are more random than the actual histories we observe, I can't follow you any more - too much theory I'm unfamiliar with. I can see however that many (nearly all) of the infinite computations passing through our aware states will destroy us, as it were, so we can never exist in those computations (sort of anthropic principle). This also suggests a kind of immortality, the same kind as I propose in a blog post I wrote called the 'cryogenic paradox' in which I argue that there can only be a single observer, a single locus of consciousness underlying all apparently separate consciousnesses, which would really be just different perspectives of this one observer. It seems irresistible as a conclusion (from philosophical arguments quite different to the UDA), and yet also kind of horrific. Only a sort of state-bound recall barrier prevents us from being aware that we suffer every fate possible. I agree re academia. From all I can observe, it is a viper's pit. The ground of accepted truth is fought over as hard as any piece of the Holy Land, and in this as in all struggles, power matters. It is hardly the free and unbiased
Re: Joining Post
On 9/27/2011 8:07 PM, nihil0 wrote: On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. On Sep 27, 7:47 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. Brent You imply that it's logically possible that there is only a finite number of universes that are filled with matter, and you seem to think few will resemble ours. I don't think that. I just noted it's logically possible, contrary to assertions that our universe must be duplicated infinitely many times. However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) It's plausible - but not logically required. Suppose all the infinite universes are number 1, 2, ... Number 1 is ours. Number 2 something different. Numbers 3,4, ...inf are exact copies of number 2. So there are only two arrangements of particles; in spite of there being infinitely many universes. As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. This is questionable. Most theories of the universe starting from a quantum fluctuation or tunneling from a prior universe assume that the universe must start very small - no more than a few Planck volumes. This limits the amount of information that can possibly be provided as initial conditions. So where does all the information come from? QM allows negative information (hidden correlations) so that one possibility is that the net information is zero or very small and the apparent information is created by the existence of the hubble horizon. The currently favored theory is that the initial conditions (the densities and motions of different types of matter early on) were created by quantum fluctuations during the inflation epoch (see section 3). This quantum mechanism generates initial conditions that are for all practical purposes random, producing density fluctuations described by what mathematicians call an ergodic random field. Ergodic means that if you imagine generating an ensemble of universes, each with its own random initial conditions, then the probability distribution of outcomes in a given volume is identical to the distribution that you get by sampling different volumes in a single universe. In other words, it means that everything that could in principle have happened here did in fact happen somewhere else. Inflation in fact generates all possible initial conditions with non-zero probability, the most likely ones being almost uniform with fluctuations at the 10^5 level that are amplified by gravitational clustering to form galaxies, stars, planets and other structures. This means both that pretty much all imaginable matter configurations occur in some Hubble volume far away, and also that we should expect our own Hubble volume to be a fairly typical one — at least typical among those that contain observers. A crude estimate suggests that the closest identical copy of you is about ∼ 10^(10^29)m away. . . (The Multiverse Hierarchy, section 1B, http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283) Do you still disagree with the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition? Which parts of the argument do you accept or deny? See above. Brent Best regards, Jon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: Joining Post
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:52 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/27/2011 8:07 PM, nihil0 wrote: On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. On Sep 27, 7:47 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. Brent You imply that it's logically possible that there is only a finite number of universes that are filled with matter, and you seem to think few will resemble ours. I don't think that. I just noted it's logically possible, contrary to assertions that our universe must be duplicated infinitely many times. If our universe is not duplicated a huge number of times, then quantum computers would not work. They rely on huge numbers of universes different from ours aside from a few entangled particles. Even normal interference patterns are explained by there existing a huge number of very similar universes. However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) It's plausible - but not logically required. Suppose all the infinite universes are number 1, 2, ... Number 1 is ours. Number 2 something different. Numbers 3,4, ...inf are exact copies of number 2. So there are only two arrangements of particles; in spite of there being infinitely many universes. Not logically required, but I would say it is not consistent with our current theories and observations. As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. This is questionable. Most theories of the universe starting from a quantum fluctuation or tunneling from a prior universe assume that the universe must start very small - no more than a few Planck volumes. The generalized theory of inflation is eternal inflation. It leads to an exponentially growing volume which expands forever. This limits the amount of information that can possibly be provided as initial conditions. So where does all the information come from? I haven't heard the theory that there is an upper bound on the information content for this universe set by the big bang. As to where information comes from, if all possibilities exist, the total information content may be zero, and the appearance of a large amount of information is a local illusion. QM allows negative information (hidden correlations) so that one possibility is that the net information is zero or very small and the apparent information is created by the existence of the hubble horizon. The currently favored theory is that the initial conditions (the densities and motions of different types of matter early on) were created by quantum fluctuations during the inflation epoch (see section 3). This quantum mechanism generates initial conditions that are for all practical purposes random, producing density fluctuations described by what mathematicians call an ergodic random field. Ergodic means that if you imagine generating an ensemble of universes, each with its own random initial conditions, then the probability distribution of outcomes in a given volume is identical to the distribution that you get by sampling different volumes in a single universe. In other words, it means that everything that could in
Re: Joining Post
On 9/27/2011 9:13 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:52 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/27/2011 8:07 PM, nihil0 wrote: On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. On Sep 27, 7:47 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. Brent You imply that it's logically possible that there is only a finite number of universes that are filled with matter, and you seem to think few will resemble ours. I don't think that. I just noted it's logically possible, contrary to assertions that our universe must be duplicated infinitely many times. If our universe is not duplicated a huge number of times, then quantum computers would not work. They rely on huge numbers of universes different from ours aside from a few entangled particles. Even normal interference patterns are explained by there existing a huge number of very similar universes. Or by Feynmann paths that zigzag in spacetime. Don't become to enamored of an interpretation. However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) It's plausible - but not logically required. Suppose all the infinite universes are number 1, 2, ... Number 1 is ours. Number 2 something different. Numbers 3,4, ...inf are exact copies of number 2. So there are only two arrangements of particles; in spite of there being infinitely many universes. Not logically required, but I would say it is not consistent with our current theories and observations. As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. This is questionable. Most theories of the universe starting from a quantum fluctuation or tunneling from a prior universe assume that the universe must start very small - no more than a few Planck volumes. The generalized theory of inflation is eternal inflation. It leads to an exponentially growing volume which expands forever. This limits the amount of information that can possibly be provided as initial conditions. So where does all the information come from? I haven't heard the theory that there is an upper bound on the information content for this universe set by the big bang. In one Planck volume there is only room for one bit. That's the holographic principle. As to where information comes from, if all possibilities exist, the total information content may be zero, and the appearance of a large amount of information is a local illusion. QM allows negative information (hidden correlations) so that one possibility is that the net information is zero or very small and the apparent information is created by the existence of the
Re: Why UDA proves nothing
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:44 PM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: OK, well I think this and the other responses (notably Jason's) have brought me a lot closer to grasping the essence of this argument. I can see that the set of integers is also the set of all possible information states, and that the difference between that and the UD is the element of sequential computation. I can also see that my objection to infinite computational resources and state memory comes from the 1-p perspective. For me, in the physical universe, any computation is restricted by the laws of matter and must be embedded in that matter. Now one of the fascinating revelations of the computational approach to physics is the fact that a quantity such as position can only be defined to a certain level of precision by the universe itself because the universe has finite informational resources at its disposal. This was my objection to the UD. But I can see that this restriction need not necessarily apply at the 'higher' 3- p level of the UD's computations. What interests me is the question: does UDA predict that the 1-p observer will see a universe with such restrictions? If it explains why the 1-p observer seems to exist in a world where there is only a finite number of bits available, despite existing in a machine with an infinite level of bit resolution, then that would be a most interesting result. Otherwise, it seems to me to remain a problem for the theory, or at least a question in need of an answer, like dark matter in cosmology. I am going to have to meditate further on arithmetical realism. Nice. I don't believe in objective matter either (it seems refuted by Bell's Theorem anyway), Do you agree that at least something has to be primitively real? but a chasm seems to lie between the statement 17 is prime and the UDA (Robinson arithmetic) executes all possible programs. The problem is one of instantiation. I can conceive of a universe - a singularity perhaps, with only one bit of information - in which the statement 17 is prime can never be made. To formulate, ie instantiate, 17, requires a certain amount of information. True, a certain amount of information is required to realize or represent certain mathematical truths. Our universe may be large, but there are numbers so big we cannot represent them either. My opinion is that this practical restriction placed on us does not mean such mathematical truth is non-existent, only inaccessible. In the same sense that before there were high-powered computers, finding large Mersenne primes was beyond our capacity, but that did not mean they were not already there waiting to be found. To say that a program executes, as opposed to saying it merely is implied by a set of theoretical axioms, requires the instantiation of that algorithm. I suppose this is a restatement of the problem above. Arithemetical realism then would be the postulate that everything implied in arithmetic is actually instantiated. It seems to me I can grant 17 is prime, without granting this instantiation of everything. At what point does mathematical truth stop? It seems to be the existence of some would imply the existence of all. If you think Pi has an objective value, then you should also accept that Chaitin's constant ( http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ChaitinsConstant.html ) has a certain value. If it does, it requires the platonic execution of all programs. Sadly when you start to talk about the difficulty of proving that our histories in the UD are more random than the actual histories we observe, I can't follow you any more - too much theory I'm unfamiliar with. I can see however that many (nearly all) of the infinite computations passing through our aware states will destroy us, as it were, so we can never exist in those computations (sort of anthropic principle). This also suggests a kind of immortality, the same kind as I propose in a blog post I wrote called the 'cryogenic paradox' in which I argue that there can only be a single observer, a single locus of consciousness underlying all apparently separate consciousnesses, which would really be just different perspectives of this one observer. It seems irresistible as a conclusion (from philosophical arguments quite different to the UDA), and yet also kind of horrific. Only a sort of state-bound recall barrier prevents us from being aware that we suffer every fate possible. We also are aware of every possible goodness or blessing. At a minimum, this realization should compel us to treat each other better. In the end, the conclusion is little different from the golden rule or the concept of karma. All the good things we do are experienced by others (ourselves), same with all the bad things. In a sense this thought is scary, but it is also can be unifying and fill us with awe at the infinite possibility and experience that awaits us. Jason -- You received this message
Re: Joining Post
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:52 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/27/2011 9:13 PM, Jason Resch wrote: I don't think that. I just noted it's logically possible, contrary to assertions that our universe must be duplicated infinitely many times. If our universe is not duplicated a huge number of times, then quantum computers would not work. They rely on huge numbers of universes different from ours aside from a few entangled particles. Even normal interference patterns are explained by there existing a huge number of very similar universes. Or by Feynmann paths that zigzag in spacetime. Don't become to enamored of an interpretation. If you assume there is a single photon interfering with itself, how is it that this one particle can evaluate a problem whose computational complexity would exceed that of any conventional computer using all the matter in the universe? However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) It's plausible - but not logically required. Suppose all the infinite universes are number 1, 2, ... Number 1 is ours. Number 2 something different. Numbers 3,4, ...inf are exact copies of number 2. So there are only two arrangements of particles; in spite of there being infinitely many universes. Not logically required, but I would say it is not consistent with our current theories and observations. As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. This is questionable. Most theories of the universe starting from a quantum fluctuation or tunneling from a prior universe assume that the universe must start very small - no more than a few Planck volumes. The generalized theory of inflation is eternal inflation. It leads to an exponentially growing volume which expands forever. This limits the amount of information that can possibly be provided as initial conditions. So where does all the information come from? I haven't heard the theory that there is an upper bound on the information content for this universe set by the big bang. In one Planck volume there is only room for one bit. That's the holographic principle. Yet our universe appears to take more than 1 bit to describe, and it seems to have a possibly infinite volume. As to where information comes from, if all possibilities exist, the total information content may be zero, and the appearance of a large amount of information is a local illusion. QM allows negative information (hidden correlations) so that one possibility is that the net information is zero or very small and the apparent information is created by the existence of the hubble horizon. The currently favored theory is that the initial conditions (the densities and motions of different types of matter early on) were created by quantum fluctuations during the inflation epoch (see section 3). This quantum mechanism generates initial conditions that are for all practical purposes random, producing density fluctuations described by what mathematicians call an ergodic random field. Ergodic means that if you imagine generating an ensemble of universes, each with its own random initial conditions, then the probability distribution of outcomes in a given volume is identical to the distribution that you get by sampling different volumes in a single universe. That's not what ergodic means. In the theory of stochastic processes it means that ensemble statistics are the same as temporal statistics. In the eternal expansion theory it is not assumed that the physics is the same in each bubble universe. This one bubble is infinitely big according to eternal inflation. It is hypothesized that the spontaneous symmetry breaking that results in different coupling constants for the weak, strong, EM, and gravity forces is random. That's how it provides and anthropic explanation for fine-tuning - we're in the one where the random symmetry breaking was favorable to life. This is one hypothesis to explain fine tuning, I am not sure how well it is supported. In other words, it means that everything that could in
