Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 9:43 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 3:39 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 11:48 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be experimentally verified 
that is, _only_ for ion transport based processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, does that not make 
you pause just a little bit in making your proclamation?

Also see http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4059Dear Brent,
(dec. 18, 2010), Focus on quantum effects and noise in biomolecules 
 , http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2337 
for the latest on the topic. 


None of those have anything to do with neural signaling in the brain.  They are about 
metabolism and other molecular level processes.  If you think that the brain works by 
molecular level processes then you need to explain why it is made of neurons with very 
complex and extensive axon interconnections.  If consciousness were implemented by 
molecular level information processing then a brain could be structured like a liver.


OK, I look forward to you getting a scan of your neuron connection network and 
getting it run as a computational simulation. Then I might have email conversations with 
two Brents! ;-)


That would an impressive technological achievement.  But it might involve destroying the 
first Brent.  :(



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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 9:40 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 3:41 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 12:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Feb 28, 10:43 am, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
substituted for a digital brain.

What if you have two digital substitute brains? Do you become both
copies yourself at once and still not feel any difference? If not, and
you are in brain A, do you appear inside brain B if you turn brain A
off?

Disembodied consciousness is silly.

Craig



The implication of Comp is that there is no "you".  "You" are an abstraction, a 
fiction, just another element in a model of the world.


Brent


Hi,

Just a question about the semantics. What difference is there between a "you" and an 
abstraction that is indistinguishable from it?


The difference is that there isn't *a* "you", there are arbitrarily many or at least there 
will be momentarily.  The absraction is tracing just one of these.  This is already a 
consequence of MWI in which quantum events cause "you" to split into orthogonal 
subspaces.  To the extent consciousness is realized by classical processes the splitting 
only happens when the quantum events have classical level effects.


Brent

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 3:39 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 11:48 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be 
experimentally verified that is, _only_ for ion transport based 
processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, 
does that not make you pause just a little bit in making your 
proclamation?

Also see http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4059Dear Brent,
(dec. 18, 2010), Focus on quantum effects and noise in biomolecules 
 , 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2337 for the latest on the topic. 


None of those have anything to do with neural signaling in the brain.  
They are about metabolism and other molecular level processes.  If you 
think that the brain works by molecular level processes then you need 
to explain why it is made of neurons with very complex and extensive 
axon interconnections.  If consciousness were implemented by molecular 
level information processing then a brain could be structured like a 
liver.


OK, I look forward to you getting a scan of your neuron connection 
network and getting it run as a computational simulation. Then I might 
have email conversations with two Brents! ;-)



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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 3:41 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 12:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Feb 28, 10:43 am, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
substituted for a digital brain.

What if you have two digital substitute brains? Do you become both
copies yourself at once and still not feel any difference? If not, and
you are in brain A, do you appear inside brain B if you turn brain A
off?

Disembodied consciousness is silly.

Craig



The implication of Comp is that there is no "you".  "You" are an 
abstraction, a fiction, just another element in a model of the world.


Brent


Hi,

Just a question about the semantics. What difference is there 
between a "you" and an abstraction that is indistinguishable from it?


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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 3:35 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:

On 2/28/2012 10:46 AM, Terren Suydam wrote:

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchalwrote:

When we are dreaming we are in a higher level relative
emulation (all UMs can do that).

That's confusing. I find it hard to believe a bacteria can dream. The
UM implemented by a bacteria could *potentially* run any program, but
it is *actually* running the bacteria program. To suggest that
bacteria (e.g. one of the class of "all UMs") can dream by virtue of
being definable as a UM generates more confusion than clarity.

Put another way, if a particularly instantiated UM possesses the
ability to dream (to imagine), then that says something non-trivial
about the constitution of that UM's cognitive architecture.

Terren


Hi Terren,

If a bacterium is a physical system capable of implementing a universal
Turing machine aka the particular bacteria's program, then Bruno's argument
shows that it will necessarily be able to dream, for what are dreams if not
alternative TMs running on the same hardware via dovetailing?

Onward!

Stephen

Dreaming in the context of Bruno's remark means that the running of a
single program could result in alternate 1p realities being
constructed... not that multiple programs could be run in the UM. At
least, that's how I interpret it.


Dear Terren,

How does the running of a single program generate different content 
(in the sense that the program is equivalent to a virtual reality 
generator) unless it is a dovetailing of many programs? Is this how you 
get a many = one situation for programs? This makes no sense. AFAIK, 1 = 
1, many = many. many =/= one. Or is my mathematical knowledge faulty?



A bacteria is a universal machine in that it can potentially run any
program. However, bacteria as they appear to us run specific programs
(as selected by evolution). Their instantiation as such is a stable
measure relative to us - the shared 1p plural reality. Bacteria that
run programs capable of dreaming (as above), while possible, would
probably count as white rabbits.

Terren



Could you tell me this explanation in your own words, particularly 
what "the shared 1p plural reality" is. I truly do not comprehend this 
concept as you are using it here. How is 1p content sharable by a 
plurality of entities? AFAIK, any experiencial content that is 
"sharable" by a plurality is 3p, in other worlds content that we all 
agree on as being "real" and having such and such properties is the 
definition of "objective reality".


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Entropy and information

2012-02-28 Thread Alberto G.Corona 
Dear Stephen,

A thing that I often ask myself concerning MMH is  the question about
what is mathematical and what is not?. The set of real numbers is a
mathematical structure, but also the set of real numbers plus the
point (1,1) in the plane is. The set of randomly chosen numbers { 1,4
3,4,.34, 3}  is because it can be described with the same descriptive
language of math. But the first of these structures have properties
and the others do not. The first can be infinite but can be described
with a single equation while the last   must be described
extensively. . At least some random universes (the finite ones) can be
described extensively, with the tools of mathematics but they don´t
count in the intuitive sense as mathematical.

 What is usually considered  genuinely mathematical is any structure,
that can be described briefly. Also it must have good properties ,
operations, symmetries or isomorphisms with other structures so the
structure can be navigated and related with other structures and the
knowledge can be reused.   These structures have a low kolmogorov
complexity, so they can be "navigated" with low computing resources.

So the demand of computation in each living being forces to admit
 that  universes too random or too simple, wiith no lineal or
 discontinuous macroscopic laws have no  complex spatio-temporal
volutes (that may be the aspect of life as looked from outside of our
four-dimensional universe).  The macroscopic laws are the macroscopic
effects of the underlying mathematical structures with which our
universe is isomorphic (or identical).

And our very notion of what is intuitively considered mathematical:
"something  general simple and powerful enough"    has the hallmark of
scarcity of computation resources. (And absence of contradictions fits
in the notion of simplicity, because exception to rules have to be
memorized and dealt with extensively, one by one)

Perhaps not only is that way but even may be that  the absence of
contradictions ( the main rule of simplicity) or -in computationa
terms- the rule of  low kolmogorov complexity  _creates_ itself the
mathematics. That is, for example, may be that the boolean logic for
example, is what it is not because it is consistent simpleand it´s
beatiful,   but because it is the shortest logic in terms of the
lenght of the description of its operations, and this is the reason
because we perceive it as simple and beatiful and consistent.
.
> Dear Albert,
>
>      One brief comment. In your Google paper you wrote, among other
> interesting things, "But life and natural selection demands a
> mathematical universe
> somehow".
> Could it be that this is just another implication of the MMH idea? If
> the physical implementation of computation acts as a selective pressure
> on the multiverse, then it makes sense that we would find ourselves in a
> universe that is representable in terms of Boolean algebras with their
> nice and well behaved laws of bivalence (a or not-A), etc.
>
>      Very interesting ideas.
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Feb 28, 6:10 pm, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
> 2012/2/28 Craig Weinberg 
>
> > On Feb 28, 5:15 pm, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
>
> > > the you
> > > before is no more.
>
> > That's what I have been arguing all along. Yes, doctor = Yes, death.
>
> No... tell me where is the you of 1 second ago ?

I'm still here. The passage of time isn't objectively real. Nothing is
actually disappearing or passing away because of time alone.

> When I say no more.. I
> mean that... the you now, is not the you of one second ago, that you one
> second ago is in the past, he is in the past and nowhere to be found in the
> current moment, in the current moment, there is only the current you.

No, the current me contains my entire history. Nothing is lost, even
if I can't consciously recall particular memories. I don't remember
learning to read these words, but the experience of learning to read
them now is part of my perception of them. It's an inertial frame of
semantic relation that accumulates through experience, regardless of
the passage of time.

>
> Beside that, that identity question is the same in MWI context.

It fails in that context too. The logic doesn't hold up. If I replace
my brain with a digital device, I either go on living my life or I do
not. If I do, then there can be no difference between one digital
brain and two and I would have to be now be living my life out of two
or (or two thousand) brains simultaneously. I think that this is the
only viable answer if we believe in comp, since the idea of arithmetic
truth makes identity something like an eternal radio frequency which
can be accessed at any time and plugged into any universal machine. To
me, it's clear that what would happen instead is that replacing your
brain with a digital puppet would cause you to lapse into a coma and
then die, while your body lived on doing an uncanny imitation of you
for an amazed audience.


Craig

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux 
2012/2/28 Craig Weinberg 

> On Feb 28, 5:15 pm, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
>
> > the you
> > before is no more.
>
> That's what I have been arguing all along. Yes, doctor = Yes, death.
>

No... tell me where is the you of 1 second ago ? When I say no more.. I
mean that... the you now, is not the you of one second ago, that you one
second ago is in the past, he is in the past and nowhere to be found in the
current moment, in the current moment, there is only the current you.

Beside that, that identity question is the same in MWI context.


> It's delightful that there will be a digital imposter/identical twin
> who believes that they are someone with the same qualities that I
> believed I had, before I died, but it really it invalidates any
> pretensions comp has of honoring 1p experience.
>
>
> >
> > > Disembodied consciousness is silly.
> >
> > > I don't think consciousness can exist without a body and an
> environment...
>
> Wait, so we actually agree on something?
>
> >
> > without that what to be conscious of ? The substitution is not something
> > about disembodiment.
>
> Bruno says all kinds of arithmetic dreams. But how can the
> substitution not be synonymous with disembodied 'processes'? What
> binds the experience of the program to the silicon?
>
>
> Craig
>
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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Feb 28, 5:15 pm, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

> the you
> before is no more.

That's what I have been arguing all along. Yes, doctor = Yes, death.
It's delightful that there will be a digital imposter/identical twin
who believes that they are someone with the same qualities that I
believed I had, before I died, but it really it invalidates any
pretensions comp has of honoring 1p experience.


>
> > Disembodied consciousness is silly.
>
> > I don't think consciousness can exist without a body and an environment...

Wait, so we actually agree on something?

>
> without that what to be conscious of ? The substitution is not something
> about disembodiment.

Bruno says all kinds of arithmetic dreams. But how can the
substitution not be synonymous with disembodied 'processes'? What
binds the experience of the program to the silicon?


Craig

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux 
2012/2/28 Stephen P. King 

>  On 2/28/2012 10:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
> difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
> substituted for a digital brain.
>
>
>  Hi Quentin,
>
> OK, but could you elaborate on this statement?
>

It means an hypothetical "you" after mind uploading would feel as conscious
as you're now in your biological body, and you would steel *feel* and feel
being you and conscious and all...


> Is the differentiation that one *might* feel, given the wrong
> substitution level, different from what *might* occur if a "digital
> uploading" procedure is conducted that fails to generate complete
> continuity?
>

It depends on the wrongness of the substitution or the lack of
continuity... it's not binary outcome.


> Those "does not feel any difference" terms are a bit ambiguous and vague,
> IMHO.
>
>
>
>  Digital physics says that the whole universe can be substituted with a
> program, that obviously imply comp (that we can substitue your brain with a
> digital one), but comp shows that to be inconsistent, because comp implies
> that any piece of matter is non-computable... it is the limit of the
> infinities of computation that goes through your consciousness current
> state.
>
>
> Can you see how this would be a problem for the entire digital
> uploading argument if functional substitution cannot occur in a strictly
> classical way, for example by strictly classical level measurement of brain
> structure?
>

Yes, and if it is, it is a big indication that comp is somehow wrong...


> Any dependence of consciousness on quantum entanglement will prevent any
> form of digital substitution. This might not be a bad thing for Bruno's
> ontological argument - as it would show that 1p indeterminacy is a function
> or endomorphism of entire "universes" in the many-worlds sense - but would
> doom any change of immortality via digital uploading.
>

Sure, but if the level is that down... then even if it is still compatible
with comp, for all practical purposes, it's the same as if it was wrong...

Quentin

>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux 
2012/2/28 Craig Weinberg 

> On Feb 28, 10:43 am, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
> >
> > Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
> > difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
> > substituted for a digital brain.
>
> What if you have two digital substitute brains? Do you become both
> copies yourself at once


No


> and still not feel any difference? If not, and
> you are in brain A, do you appear inside brain B if you turn brain A
> off?
>
> Brain A and Brain B will feel has being a continuation of the you "before"
substitution... they'll both be your future you and both feel it... the you
before is no more. (even if you keep your "current" body... it's just
adding a brain C... and same reasonning).


> Disembodied consciousness is silly.
>
> I don't think consciousness can exist without a body and an environment...
without that what to be conscious of ? The substitution is not something
about disembodiment.

Quentin


> Craig
>
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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Feb 28, 3:41 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

>
> The implication of Comp is that there is no "you".  "You" are an abstraction, 
> a fiction,
> just another element in a model of the world.
>

That's why I say comp has only a pseudo-1p conception of
consciousness. It's not difficult to claim that the hard problem isn't
so hard if you allow the hardness of it to be fictional.

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 12:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Feb 28, 10:43 am, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
substituted for a digital brain.

What if you have two digital substitute brains? Do you become both
copies yourself at once and still not feel any difference? If not, and
you are in brain A, do you appear inside brain B if you turn brain A
off?

Disembodied consciousness is silly.

Craig



The implication of Comp is that there is no "you".  "You" are an abstraction, a fiction, 
just another element in a model of the world.


Brent

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 11:48 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 2:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 1:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. COMP is the 
conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am 
now not sure of the definition of "Digital physics" given this thread so far... From 
what I can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at 
some level or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any 
functionally equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of 
computational universality. This idea shows us that our consciousness is not 
dependent on a particular form of physical system if and only if our consciousness is 
algorithmic or computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do not 
see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our brain's implementation of consciousness does 
not involve quantum entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion locations in neural 
processes is much faster than neural signaling, therefore brain processing is almost 
all classical.  It is classical *because* there is quantum entanglement between the 
ions and the environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an environment (something 
with many degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence and classical behavior.  If 
you substitute for some neurons a silicon chip that is designed to be functionally 
identical, that "functionally identical" means it acts as a classical device to 
implement a certain computational algorithm.  Of course it will be quantum entangled 
with its environment because that's what makes it classical.


Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve quantum coherent 
superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.


Brent
--

Dear Brent,

Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be experimentally verified 
that is, _only_ for ion transport based processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, does that not make you 
pause just a little bit in making your proclamation?
Also see http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4059 (dec. 18, 2010), Focus on quantum effects 
and noise in biomolecules  , 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2337 for the latest on the topic. 


None of those have anything to do with neural signaling in the brain.  They are about 
metabolism and other molecular level processes.  If you think that the brain works by 
molecular level processes then you need to explain why it is made of neurons with very 
complex and extensive axon interconnections.  If consciousness were implemented by 
molecular level information processing then a brain could be structured like a liver.


Brent

Classicality is not so easy to assume any more. I may seem unusually confident but I do 
have indirect knowledge, via personal friend, of the latest work at UC Berkeley on this 
question.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Terren Suydam 
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 2/28/2012 10:46 AM, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>>
>>> When we are dreaming we are in a higher level relative
>>> emulation (all UMs can do that).
>>
>> That's confusing. I find it hard to believe a bacteria can dream. The
>> UM implemented by a bacteria could *potentially* run any program, but
>> it is *actually* running the bacteria program. To suggest that
>> bacteria (e.g. one of the class of "all UMs") can dream by virtue of
>> being definable as a UM generates more confusion than clarity.
>>
>> Put another way, if a particularly instantiated UM possesses the
>> ability to dream (to imagine), then that says something non-trivial
>> about the constitution of that UM's cognitive architecture.
>>
>> Terren
>>
> Hi Terren,
>
>    If a bacterium is a physical system capable of implementing a universal
> Turing machine aka the particular bacteria's program, then Bruno's argument
> shows that it will necessarily be able to dream, for what are dreams if not
> alternative TMs running on the same hardware via dovetailing?
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen

Dreaming in the context of Bruno's remark means that the running of a
single program could result in alternate 1p realities being
constructed... not that multiple programs could be run in the UM. At
least, that's how I interpret it.

A bacteria is a universal machine in that it can potentially run any
program. However, bacteria as they appear to us run specific programs
(as selected by evolution). Their instantiation as such is a stable
measure relative to us - the shared 1p plural reality. Bacteria that
run programs capable of dreaming (as above), while possible, would
probably count as white rabbits.

Terren

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Re: Entropy and information

2012-02-28 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi 

Alberto,

I am thermodynamicist and I do not know exactly what is information and 
computation. You have written that living beings perform computations. 
Several questions in this respect.


Are computations are limited to living beings only?

Does a bacteria perform computations as well?

If yes, then what is the difference between a ballcock in the toilet and 
bacteria (provided we exclude reproduction from consideration)?


Evgenii

On 27.02.2012 12:16 Alberto G.Corona said the following:


Perhaps a more basic, and more pertinent question related with
entrophy and information in the context of this list is the relation
of computability, living beings , the arrow of time and entropy,

What the paper (http://qi.ethz.ch/edu/qisemFS10/papers/
81_Bennett_Thermodynamics_of_computation.pdf)  that initiated the
discussion suggest is that in practical terms it is necessary a
driving force that avoids random reversibility to execute practical
computations, this driving force implies dissipation of energy and
thus an increase of entropy.  This is so because most if not all
practical computations are exponentually branched (Fig 10).

And here comes the living beings. As the paper says in  the
introduction, living beings perform computations at the molecular
level, and it must be said, at the neural level. Therefore given the
said above, life must proceed from less to more entrophy and this
defines the arrow of time.

Besides the paper concentrates itself in what happens inside a
computation some concepts can be used to dilucidate what happens with
the interaction of a living being and its surrounding reality.  The
reality behaves like a form of ballistic computer at the microscopic
level., with elemental particles ruled by the forces of nature instead
of ellastic macroscopic collisions.  At the macroscopic level,
however, there is a destruction of information and irreversibility.

However in the direction of entropy dissipation, it is possible to
perform calculations in order to predict the future at the macroscopic
level. That愀 a critical function of living beings. An extreme example
of the difference between macro and micro computation is to "predict"
the distrubution of water in a water collector after rain.   It is not
necessary to know the position and velocity of every water molecule,
not even the position and velocity of each drop of water.  is this
erase of information  that the increase of entropy perform at the
macroscopic level (that indeed is the reason of the mere concept of
macro-state in statistical mechanics)  the process that permit
economically feasible computations.  Since computation is expensive
and the process of discovery of the world by living beings trough
natural selection very slow, (trough the  aggregation of complexity
and sophistication by natural selection is in the order of magnitude
of the age of the universe : thousands of millions years) Then the
macroscopic laws of nature must be simple enough, and there must be a
privileged direction of easy computation for life to exist.

  The fact that evolution for intelligent life and age of the Universe
are in the same magnitudes means that this universe is constrained to
the maximum discoverable-by-evolution complexity in the
computationally  privileged direction of the arrow of time.

This is my brief presentation about this:

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dd5rm7qq_142d8djhvc8

This is my previous post in this group about entrophy arrow of time
and life:

http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg15696.html



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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Feb 28, 10:43 am, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
>
> Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
> difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
> substituted for a digital brain.

What if you have two digital substitute brains? Do you become both
copies yourself at once and still not feel any difference? If not, and
you are in brain A, do you appear inside brain B if you turn brain A
off?

Disembodied consciousness is silly.

Craig

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 11:38 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 1:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. COMP is the 
conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am 
now not sure of the definition of "Digital physics" given this thread so far... From 
what I can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at 
some level or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any 
functionally equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of 
computational universality. This idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent 
on a particular form of physical system if and only if our consciousness is 
algorithmic or computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do not 
see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our brain's implementation of consciousness does 
not involve quantum entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion locations in neural 
processes is much faster than neural signaling, therefore brain processing is almost 
all classical.  It is classical *because* there is quantum entanglement between the 
ions and the environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an environment (something 
with many degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence and classical behavior.  If you 
substitute for some neurons a silicon chip that is designed to be functionally 
identical, that "functionally identical" means it acts as a classical device to 
implement a certain computational algorithm.  Of course it will be quantum entangled 
with its environment because that's what makes it classical.


Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve quantum coherent 
superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.


Brent
--

Dear Brent,

Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be experimentally verified 
that is,_only_ for ion transport based processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, does that not make you 
pause just a little bit in making your proclamation?


No. Obviously all processes are quantum, the question is whether neural signaling involves 
coherent superpositions.


Brent



Onward!

Stephen

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 2:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 2/28/2012 1:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. 
COMP is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and 
Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now not sure of the definition of 
"Digital physics" given this thread so far... From what I can tell, 
Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at 
some level or scale for physical systems, such that a given 
algorithm will run on any functionally equivalent physical system; 
it is basically a restatement of computational universality. This 
idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on a 
particular form of physical system if and only if our consciousness 
is algorithmic or computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on 
this because I do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our 
brain's implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum 
entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion 
locations in neural processes is much faster than neural signaling, 
therefore brain processing is almost all classical.  It is classical 
*because* there is quantum entanglement between the ions and the 
environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an environment 
(something with many degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence 
and classical behavior.  If you substitute for some neurons a silicon 
chip that is designed to be functionally identical, that 
"functionally identical" means it acts as a classical device to 
implement a certain computational algorithm.  Of course it will be 
quantum entangled with its environment because that's what makes it 
classical.


Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve 
quantum coherent superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.


Brent
--

Dear Brent,

Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be 
experimentally verified that is, _only_ for ion transport based 
processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, does 
that not make you pause just a little bit in making your proclamation?
Also see http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4059 (dec. 18, 2010), Focus on 
quantum effects and noise in biomolecules 
 , 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2337 for the latest on the topic.  
Classicality is not so easy to assume any more. I may seem unusually 
confident but I do have indirect knowledge, via personal friend, of the 
latest work at UC Berkeley on this question.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 1:40 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Stephen did wrote that, not me... ;)

2012/2/28 meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write
them. COMP is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis
and Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now not sure of the
definition of "Digital physics" given this thread so far... From
what I can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional
substitutability at some level or scale for physical systems,
such that a given algorithm will run on any functionally
equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of
computational universality. This idea shows us that our
consciousness is not dependent on a particular form of physical
system if and only if our consciousness is algorithmic or
computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I
do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our brain's
implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum
entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion
locations in neural processes is much faster than neural
signaling, therefore brain processing is almost all classical.  It
is classical *because* there is quantum entanglement between the
ions and the environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an
environment (something with many degrees of freedom) that produces
decoherence and classical behavior.  If you substitute for some
neurons a silicon chip that is designed to be functionally
identical, that "functionally identical" means it acts as a
classical device to implement a certain computational algorithm. 
Of course it will be quantum entangled with its environment

because that's what makes it classical.

Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve
quantum coherent superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.

Brent


Hi Quentin,

Thank you for that. ;-)

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 1:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. 
COMP is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and 
Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now not sure of the definition of 
"Digital physics" given this thread so far... From what I can tell, 
Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at 
some level or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm 
will run on any functionally equivalent physical system; it is 
basically a restatement of computational universality. This idea 
shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on a particular form 
of physical system if and only if our consciousness is algorithmic or 
computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do 
not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our brain's implementation 
of consciousness does not involve quantum entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion 
locations in neural processes is much faster than neural signaling, 
therefore brain processing is almost all classical.  It is classical 
*because* there is quantum entanglement between the ions and the 
environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an environment 
(something with many degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence and 
classical behavior.  If you substitute for some neurons a silicon chip 
that is designed to be functionally identical, that "functionally 
identical" means it acts as a classical device to implement a certain 
computational algorithm.  Of course it will be quantum entangled with 
its environment because that's what makes it classical.


Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve quantum 
coherent superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.


Brent
--

Dear Brent,

Not so fast! Tegmark's argument only holds, if it can be 
experimentally verified that is,_only_ for ion transport based 
processes. Consider theexperimental evidence 
 
for quantum entanglement in the photosynthesis process in algea, does 
that not make you pause just a little bit in making your proclamation?


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 10:46 AM, Terren Suydam wrote:

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

When we are dreaming we are in a higher level relative
emulation (all UMs can do that).

That's confusing. I find it hard to believe a bacteria can dream. The
UM implemented by a bacteria could *potentially* run any program, but
it is *actually* running the bacteria program. To suggest that
bacteria (e.g. one of the class of "all UMs") can dream by virtue of
being definable as a UM generates more confusion than clarity.

Put another way, if a particularly instantiated UM possesses the
ability to dream (to imagine), then that says something non-trivial
about the constitution of that UM's cognitive architecture.

Terren


Hi Terren,

If a bacterium is a physical system capable of implementing a 
universal Turing machine aka the particular bacteria's program, then 
Bruno's argument shows that it will necessarily be able to dream, for 
what are dreams if not alternative TMs running on the same hardware via 
dovetailing?


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Yes Doctor circularity

2012-02-28 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Feb 28, 5:42 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


> > There is no such thing as evidence when it comes to qualitative
> > phenomenology. You don't need evidence to infer that a clock doesn't
> > know what time it is.
>
> A clock has no self-referential ability.

How do you know? By comp logic, the clock could just be part of a
universal timekeeping machine - just a baby of course, so we can't
expect it to show any signs of being a universal machine yet, but by
comp, we cannot assume that clocks can't know what time it is just
because these primitive clocks don't know how to tell us that they
know it yet.

> You reason like that: no animals can fly, because pigs cannot fly.

You mistake my common sense reductio for shortsighted prejudice. I
would say that your reasoning is that if we take a pig on a plane, we
can't rule out the possibility that it has become a bird. This is
another variation on the Chinese Room. The pig can walk around at
30,000 feet and we can ask it questions about the view from up there,
but the pig has not, in fact learned to fly or become a bird. Neither
has the plane, for that matter.

Craig

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 10:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any 
difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was 
substituted for a digital brain.


 Hi Quentin,

OK, but could you elaborate on this statement? Is the 
differentiation that one _might_ feel, given the wrong substitution 
level, different from what _might_ occur if a "digital uploading" 
procedure is conducted that fails to generate complete continuity? Those 
"does not feel any difference" terms are a bit ambiguous and vague, IMHO.



Digital physics says that the whole universe can be substituted with a 
program, that obviously imply comp (that we can substitue your brain 
with a digital one), but comp shows that to be inconsistent, because 
comp implies that any piece of matter is non-computable... it is the 
limit of the infinities of computation that goes through your 
consciousness current state.


Can you see how this would be a problem for the entire digital 
uploading argument if functional substitution cannot occur in a strictly 
classical way, for example by strictly classical level measurement of 
brain structure? Any dependence of consciousness on quantum entanglement 
will prevent any form of digital substitution. This might not be a bad 
thing for Bruno's ontological argument - as it would show that 1p 
indeterminacy is a function or endomorphism of entire "universes" in the 
many-worlds sense - but would doom any change of immortality via digital 
uploading.


Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Entropy and information

2012-02-28 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi 

Dear Brent,

First thank you for your time. Your answers as well as answers of other 
participants has helped me to understand better the opposite viewpoint 
and better to organize my thoughts.


You are right that the best is to study a good book but first I have 
already a stack of books to read and second reading a book alone is 
usually boring. I like much more to clear a question in a discussion. It 
is more enjoyable.


What I will probably do is read more about the history development with 
Maxwell's demon that John has mentioned. Somehow I have missed it.


I believe that it is normal when we have different opinions but I hope 
that my emails has helped you to understand the opposite viewpoint better.


As for engineers and physicists, I do not know. Let us take for example 
a landfill. There are too many of them in the modern society and 
engineers are trying to find a solution to reuse waste. An open 
question: Does your statement that all physical processes are not 
irreversible will help engineers to find a better solution?


Finally the JANAF Tables assume that the magnetic field is zero. If it 
is not, then one has to add a corresponding term.


Best wishes,

Evgenii



On 27.02.2012 20:43 meekerdb said the following:

On 2/27/2012 10:59 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 27.02.2012 00:13 meekerdb said the following:

On 2/26/2012 5:58 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

I have written a summary for the discussion in the subject:

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/02/entropy-and-information.html

No doubt, this is my personal viewpoint. If you see that I have
missed something, please let me know.


I think you are ignoring the conceptual unification provided by
information theory and statistical mechanics. JANAF tables only
consider the thermodynamic entropy, which is a special case in which
the macroscopic variables are temperature and pressure. You can't
look up the entropy of magnetization in the JANAF tables.


I do not get your point. JANAF Tables have been created to solve a
particular problem. If you need change in concentration, surface
effects, magnetization effects, you have to extend the JANAF Tables.
And this has been to solve particular problems. Experimental
thermodynamics is not limited to JANAF Tables. For example, the
databases in Thermocalc already include dependence on concentration.


And you don't get my point. Of course all forms of entropy can be
measured and tabulated, but the information theory viewpoint shows how
they are unified by the same concept.




Yet
magnetization of small domains is how information is stored on hard
disks, c.f. Donald McKay's book "Information Theory, Inference, and
Learning Algorithm" chapter 31.


Do you mean that when we consider magnetization, then the entropy
become subjective, context-dependent, and it will be finally filled
with information?


It is context dependent in that we consider the magnetization. What does
the JANAF table assume about the magnetization of the materials it
tabulates?




Did you actually read E. T. Jaynes 1957 paper in which he introduced
the idea of basing entropy in statistical mechanics (which you also
seem to dislike) on information? He wrote "The mere fact that the
same mathematical expression -SUM[p_i log(p_i)] occurs in both
statistical mechanics and in information theory does not in itself
establish a connection between these fields. This can be done only by
finding new viewpoints from which the thermodynamic entropy and
information-theory entropy appear as the same /concept/." Then he


I have missed this quote, I have to add it. In general, the first
Jaynes's paper is in a way reasonable. I wanted to better understand
it, as I like maximum likelihood, I have been using it in my own
research a lot. However, when I have read in Jaynes's second paper the
following (two quotes below), I gave up.

“With such an interpretation the expression “irreversible process”
represents a semantic confusion; it is not the physical process that
is irreversible, but rather our ability to follow it. The second law
of thermodynamics then becomes merely the statement that although our
information as to the state of a system may be lost in a variety of
ways, the only way in which it can be gained is by carrying out
further measurements.”

“It is important to realize that the tendency of entropy to increase is
not a consequence of the laws of physics as such, … . An entropy
increase may occur unavoidably, due to our incomplete knowledge of the
forces acting on a system, or it may be entirely voluntary act on our
part.”

This I do not understand. Do you agree with these two quotes? If yes,
could you please explain, what he means?


Yes. The physical processes are not irreversible. The fundamental
physical laws are time reversible. The free-expansion of a gas is
*statistically* irreversible because we cannot follow the individual
molecules and their correlations, so when we consider only the
macroscopic variables of pressure, density, temperature

Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread meekerdb 

On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. COMP is the 
conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now 
not sure of the definition of "Digital physics" given this thread so far... From what I 
can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at some level 
or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any functionally 
equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of computational universality. 
This idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on a particular form of 
physical system if and only if our consciousness is algorithmic or computable in the 
Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) 
that our brain's implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum entanglement. 


This is ambiguous.  Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion locations in neural 
processes is much faster than neural signaling, therefore brain processing is almost all 
classical.  It is classical *because* there is quantum entanglement between the ions and 
the environment.  It is quantum entanglement with an environment (something with many 
degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence and classical behavior.  If you substitute 
for some neurons a silicon chip that is designed to be functionally identical, that 
"functionally identical" means it acts as a classical device to implement a certain 
computational algorithm.  Of course it will be quantum entangled with its environment 
because that's what makes it classical.


Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve quantum coherent 
superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.


Brent

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 28 Feb 2012, at 16:29, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 2/28/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 27 Feb 2012, at 20:02, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 2/27/2012 12:26 PM, ronaldheld wrote:

What observations or measurements can I perform that would falsify
COMP?


Hi,

   Any measurement of a physical process that cannot be simulated  
by a Turing Machine equivalent computation.


That would contradict digital physics. But digital physics is self- 
contradictory (indeed it implies comp which implies the falsity of  
digital physics). Roughly speaking: if "I" am a machine, then  
everything else is not.


Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them.  
COMP is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and  
Arithmetic Realism, correct?


Yes, but note that this is redundant. "yes doctor" means "yes" for a  
digital transplant. Church thesis is needed to make the term "digital"  
mathematically precise. And AR is needed to make Church thesis making  
sense.





I am now not sure of the definition of "Digital physics" given this  
thread so far... From what I can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the  
idea of functional substitutability at some level or scale for  
physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any  
functionally equivalent physical system; it is basically a  
restatement of computational universality.


I can say yes, to be short. but logically, universality is not used  
here. But this is a technical point on which I don't want to digress  
now. Primitive recursive function can have equivalent programs,  
despite there is no universal primitive recursive functions.




This idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on a  
particular form of physical system if and only if our consciousness  
is algorithmic or computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on  
this because I do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our  
brain's implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum  
entanglement.
My answer to Ronald's question was based on what I thought I  
understood of COMP, so it seems that I still do not understand COMP.  
Does not COMP require that any observation of our physical world be  
faithfully representable as a finite list of yes or no type  
questions and their answers?


See Quentin's comment.
Comp is a priori neutral on any question of physics, until physics is  
derived from comp.










IOW, any non-computational physical process.


Comp implies non-comp (non Turing emulable first plural person)  
physical processes. Indeed the "comp primitive matter" is not  
Turing emulable, it is an infinite sum on infinite computations.


But this definition (of "comp primitive matter") is fraught with  
the measure problem!


OK, but a precise one that we can handle with mathematical tools.  
That's the progress. Comp is fraught with tuns of problems. Comp is  
just a toll for making those problem precise.






Does this exclude an infinite collection of possible worlds to  
represent the physical systems that can implement that infinite  
computations?


A priori, no. Now in your sentence, the word "worlds" is ambiguous, so  
I  chose favorable interpretations of it, to make sense of what you say.




I suppose that you could say that it does as the UD "will generate  
all possible Turing machine states, infinitely often (why?),


Due to the closure of the diagonalization, it can be proved that the  
phi_i sequence goes through all equivalent programs an infinity of  
times. It is called the "padding theorem". It is obvious for most  
computer scientists, because you can always add useless code, but it  
is also a consequence of Kleene's second recursion theorem.





which (by comp) includes all your virtual reconstitutions  
corresponding to (hopefully) consistent extensions of yourself, in  
all possible (locally) emulable environments or computational  
histories."
The usual idea that I am considering is that a physical system  
will have to be potentially infinite to satisfy the requirements of  
a universal Turing machine, as it has to have at least an infinite  
tape.


The tape is not part of the universal machine. It is better to think  
about the universal machine as the code of such a machine on the tape  
(of some other one). Once a fixed ontological toe is given, a  
universal machine is a number. It is a finite object. This is  
important to keep in mind. i would not say that human or juming spider  
are Löbian (and thus universal) if that needs some infinity. For the  
1p, it is different because the 1p is indeterminate on infinity of  
computations, and this structures the logic differently.






You write:

"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a  
machine state] at space-time
(x,t), we are obliged  to associate  [the pain  I  feel at  space- 
time  (x,t)]  to a  type or a  sheaf of
computations  (existing  forever  in  the arithmetical  Platonia   
which

Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Terren Suydam 
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> When we are dreaming we are in a higher level relative
> emulation (all UMs can do that).

That's confusing. I find it hard to believe a bacteria can dream. The
UM implemented by a bacteria could *potentially* run any program, but
it is *actually* running the bacteria program. To suggest that
bacteria (e.g. one of the class of "all UMs") can dream by virtue of
being definable as a UM generates more confusion than clarity.

Put another way, if a particularly instantiated UM possesses the
ability to dream (to imagine), then that says something non-trivial
about the constitution of that UM's cognitive architecture.

Terren

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Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux 
2012/2/28 Stephen P. King 

>  On 2/28/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 27 Feb 2012, at 20:02, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
> On 2/27/2012 12:26 PM, ronaldheld wrote:
>
> What observations or measurements can I perform that would falsify
> COMP?
>
>  Hi,
>
>Any measurement of a physical process that cannot be simulated by a
> Turing Machine equivalent computation.
>
>
> That would contradict digital physics. But digital physics is
> self-contradictory (indeed it implies comp which implies the falsity of
> digital physics). Roughly speaking: if "I" am a machine, then everything
> else is not.
>
>
> Dear Bruno,
>
> Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. COMP
> is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and Arithmetic
> Realism, correct? I am now not sure of the definition of "Digital physics"
> given this thread so far... From what I can tell, Yes Doctor is built on
> the idea of functional substitutability at some level or scale for physical
> systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any functionally
> equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of computational
> universality. This idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on
> a particular form of physical system if and only if our consciousness is
> algorithmic or computable in the Turing sense. I am agnostic on this
> because I do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark) that our brain's
> implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum entanglement.
> My answer to Ronald's question was based on what I thought I
> understood of COMP, so it seems that I still do not understand COMP. Does
> not COMP require that any observation of our physical world be faithfully
> representable as a *finite* list of yes or no type questions and their
> answers?
>

Comp substitute "consciousness"... such as you could not feel any
difference (in your consciousness from your POV) if your brain was
substituted for a digital brain.

Digital physics says that the whole universe can be substituted with a
program, that obviously imply comp (that we can substitue your brain with a
digital one), but comp shows that to be inconsistent, because comp implies
that any piece of matter is non-computable... it is the limit of the
infinities of computation that goes through your consciousness current
state.


>
>
>
> IOW, any non-computational physical process.
>
>
> Comp implies non-comp (non Turing emulable first plural person) physical
> processes. Indeed the "comp primitive matter" is not Turing emulable, it is
> an infinite sum on infinite computations.
>
>
> But this definition (of "comp primitive matter") is fraught with the
> measure problem! Does this exclude an infinite collection of possible
> worlds to represent the physical systems that can implement that infinite
> computations? I suppose that you could say that it does as the UD "will
> generate all possible Turing machine states, infinitely often (why?), which
> (by comp) includes all your virtual reconstitutions corresponding to
> (hopefully) consistent extensions of yourself, in all possible (locally)
> emulable environments or computational histories."
> The usual idea that I am considering is that a physical system will
> have to be potentially infinite to satisfy the requirements of a universal
> Turing machine, as it has to have at least an infinite tape. You write:
>
> "Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine
> state] at space-time
> (x,t), we are obliged  to associate  [the pain  I  feel at  space-time
> (x,t)]  to a  type or a  sheaf of
> computations  (existing  forever  in  the arithmetical  Platonia  which
> is  accepted  as  existing
> independently of  our  selves  with  arithmetical  realism)."
>
> This seems to bypass the requirement of the concrete implementation of
> the UTM by appeal to the independent of the truth value of sigma_1
> sentences (or equivalent) such that you can then claim that:
>
> "not only physics has been  epistemologically  reduced to machine
> psychology, but that ‘‘matter’’ has been ontologically  reduced  to
> ‘‘mind’’ where mind  is defined  as  the  object  study of fundamental
> machine psychology."
>
> Therefore any considerations of, for example, thermodynamics is
> irrelevant as such would be derivable from the "accidental correctness" of
> Sigma_1 sentences.  This is interesting on its own as it strongly resembles
> the "occasionalism " of
> Malebranche and others that was proposed to explain psycho-psychical
> parallelism between mental and physical events. Pratt's 
> residuationsolves
>  this problem without AR's idealism, among other thi

Re: COMP test (ontology of COMP)

2012-02-28 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 2/28/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Feb 2012, at 20:02, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 2/27/2012 12:26 PM, ronaldheld wrote:

What observations or measurements can I perform that would falsify
COMP?


Hi,

   Any measurement of a physical process that cannot be simulated by 
a Turing Machine equivalent computation.


That would contradict digital physics. But digital physics is 
self-contradictory (indeed it implies comp which implies the falsity 
of digital physics). Roughly speaking: if "I" am a machine, then 
everything else is not.


Dear Bruno,

Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. 
COMP is the conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and 
Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now not sure of the definition of 
"Digital physics" given this thread so far... From what I can tell, Yes 
Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at some level 
or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on 
any functionally equivalent physical system; it is basically a 
restatement of computational universality. This idea shows us that our 
consciousness is not dependent on a particular form of physical system 
if and only if our consciousness is algorithmic or computable in the 
Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do not see any evidence 
(pace Tegmark) that our brain's implementation of consciousness does not 
involve quantum entanglement.
My answer to Ronald's question was based on what I thought I 
understood of COMP, so it seems that I still do not understand COMP. 
Does not COMP require that any observation of our physical world be 
faithfully representable as a _finite_ list of yes or no type questions 
and their answers?






IOW, any non-computational physical process.


Comp implies non-comp (non Turing emulable first plural person) 
physical processes. Indeed the "comp primitive matter" is not Turing 
emulable, it is an infinite sum on infinite computations.


But this definition (of "comp primitive matter") is fraught with 
the measure problem! Does this exclude an infinite collection of 
possible worlds to represent the physical systems that can implement 
that infinite computations? I suppose that you could say that it does as 
the UD "will generate all possible Turing machine states, infinitely 
often (why?), which (by comp) includes all your virtual reconstitutions 
corresponding to (hopefully) consistent extensions of yourself, in all 
possible (locally) emulable environments or computational histories."
The usual idea that I am considering is that a physical system will 
have to be potentially infinite to satisfy the requirements of a 
universal Turing machine, as it has to have at least an infinite tape. 
You write:


"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine 
state] at space-time
(x,t), we are obliged  to associate  [the pain  I  feel at  space-time  
(x,t)]  to a  type or a  sheaf of
computations  (existing  forever  in  the arithmetical  Platonia  which  
is  accepted  as  existing

independently of  our  selves  with  arithmetical  realism)."

This seems to bypass the requirement of the concrete implementation 
of the UTM by appeal to the independent of the truth value of sigma_1 
sentences (or equivalent) such that you can then claim that:


"not only physics has been  epistemologically  reduced to machine 
psychology, but that ''matter'' has been ontologically  reduced  to 
''mind'' where mind  is defined  as  the  object  study of fundamental 
machine psychology."


Therefore any considerations of, for example, thermodynamics is 
irrelevant as such would be derivable from the "accidental correctness" 
of Sigma_1 sentences.  This is interesting on its own as it strongly 
resembles the "occasionalism 
" of Malebranche and others 
that was proposed to explain psycho-psychical parallelism between mental 
and physical events. Pratt's residuation 
 
solves this problem without AR's idealism, among other things, by 
reducing global computations to pairwise interactions between a 
potentially infinite number of computations. This is a form of 
accidentalism , but is more 
subtle as the relationship between mental and physical states/events 
does not need a causal explication. Additionally, Pratt's residuation 
proposal  (similar to this 
 concept) generates 
only consistent extensions of first person indeterminacy modulo 
arbitrarily large memory resources. It is only when memory resources are 
limited to being finite ("Forgetfulness" as what occurs in the Telephone 
game

Re: Bruno, question

2012-02-28 Thread marty684 
Thank you.  m.a.





From: Quentin Anciaux 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, February 28, 2012 9:22:38 AM
Subject: Re: Bruno, question

It's the first.



2012/2/28 marty684 

The sentence underlined below can be read in two ways: Which is correct?
> 
>1. You can no longer believe that ...etc.
> 
>2. (Idiomatic)  You can no more believe ...computation at some level than you 
>can believe...
>
>
>
>
>

From: Bruno Marchal 
>To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
>Sent: Tue, February 28, 2012 6:07:34 AM
>Subject: Re: Bruno, question
>
>
>Marty, 
>
>
>
>
>On 27 Feb 2012, at 17:11, marty684 wrote:
>
>I've been reading The Origin of Physical Laws...and have a question about the 
>following quote:"you can modify the device in such a way that the amount of 
>physical activity involved isarbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming 
>experience which has no inputs and no outputs".
>> 
>> 
>>It seems to me that physical activity can never be arbitrarily low or null 
>>because there will always be atomic motion going on, even in a corpse.

But comp assumes a level where that activity is not relevant, and that is 
enough 
for making the physical supervenience thesis absurd. If such a level is 
relevant, then lower the comp subst level, until the reasoning can be applied. 
If such a level does not exist, then matter can exist primitively, OK, but you 
can no more believe that you will survive an artificial brain transplant in 
virtue of the fact that it enacts the right computation at some correct level.

Bruno


>http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/
>
>
>
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Re: Bruno, question

2012-02-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux 
It's the first.


2012/2/28 marty684 

> The sentence underlined below can be read in two ways: Which is correct?
>
>
>
> 1. You can no longer believe that ...etc.
>
>
>
> 2. (Idiomatic)  You can no more believe ...computation at some level *than
> you can believe...*
>
>
>  --
> *From:* Bruno Marchal 
> *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
> *Sent:* Tue, February 28, 2012 6:07:34 AM
> *Subject:* Re: Bruno, question
>
> Marty,
>
>
>  On 27 Feb 2012, at 17:11, marty684 wrote:
>
>   *I've been reading The Origin of Physical Laws...and have a question
> about the following quote:*
> "you can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical
> activity involved is
>
> *arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no
> inputs and no outputs".*
>
> **
>
> **
>
> *It seems to me that physical activity can never be arbitrarily low or
> null because there will always be atomic motion going on, even in a corpse.
> *
>
>
> But comp assumes a level where that activity is not relevant, and that is
> enough for making the physical supervenience thesis absurd. If such a level
> is relevant, then lower the comp subst level, until the reasoning can be
> applied. If such a level does not exist, then matter can exist primitively,
> OK, but *you can no more believe that you will survive an artificial
> brain transplant in virtue of the fact that it enacts the right computation
> at some correct level.*
>
> Bruno
>
>
>  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
> --
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Re: Bruno, question

2012-02-28 Thread marty684 
The sentence underlined below can be read in two ways: Which is correct?
 
1. You can no longer believe that ...etc.
 
2. (Idiomatic)  You can no more believe ...computation at some level than you 
can believe...





From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, February 28, 2012 6:07:34 AM
Subject: Re: Bruno, question

Marty, 



On 27 Feb 2012, at 17:11, marty684 wrote:

I've been reading The Origin of Physical Laws...and have a question about the 
following quote:"you can modify the device in such a way that the amount of 
physical activity involved isarbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming 
experience which has no inputs and no outputs".
> 
> 
>It seems to me that physical activity can never be arbitrarily low or null 
>because there will always be atomic motion going on, even in a corpse.

But comp assumes a level where that activity is not relevant, and that is 
enough 
for making the physical supervenience thesis absurd. If such a level is 
relevant, then lower the comp subst level, until the reasoning can be applied. 
If such a level does not exist, then matter can exist primitively, OK, but you 
can no more believe that you will survive an artificial brain transplant in 
virtue of the fact that it enacts the right computation at some correct level.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Bruno, question

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 

Marty,


On 27 Feb 2012, at 17:11, marty684 wrote:

I've been reading The Origin of Physical Laws...and have a question  
about the following quote:


"you can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical  
activity involved is
arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no  
inputs and no outputs".






It seems to me that physical activity can never be arbitrarily low  
or null because there will always be atomic motion going on, even in  
a corpse.




But comp assumes a level where that activity is not relevant, and that  
is enough for making the physical supervenience thesis absurd. If such  
a level is relevant, then lower the comp subst level, until the  
reasoning can be applied. If such a level does not exist, then matter  
can exist primitively, OK, but you can no more believe that you will  
survive an artificial brain transplant in virtue of the fact that it  
enacts the right computation at some correct level.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 28 Feb 2012, at 01:43, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 04:38:05PM -0600, Joseph Knight wrote:
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:26 PM, meekerdb   
wrote:



On 2/27/2012 2:15 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:

With COMP it's all "inside your head" so I don't see the problem.


That IS the problem.  Since they are both "inside your head" why is
dreaming so different from being awake.



I don't see how the answer would be any different from how one would
naively respond: That's just the way things *are *when your brain  
is in

those atypical states.




I agree with Brent that there is a problem here. What distinguishes
what's "inside the head" from what's "outside" is that in the outside
case, reality must be consistent with your existence as part of that
reality, aka the Anthropic Principle. Dreams do not seem to have this
requirement - except perhaps in the case of lucid dreams.

Idealistic theories, such as COMP do have trouble with the AP. I
discuss this in my book, but it remains an open problem IMHO.


Yes. Comp is many problems, not a solution. But it makes the problems  
precisely formulable, and it gives the (non-aristotelian) shape of  
reality if a solution of those problems exist.
Indeed the problems might even happen to have solutions contradicting  
the empirical knowledge, in which case we are refuting it. It is the  
whole point: comp leads to a very precise, non aristotelian, toe.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 23:26, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/27/2012 2:15 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:




On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Craig Weinberg > wrote:

On Feb 27, 3:15 pm, Joseph Knight  wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 11:26 AM, ronaldheld  
 wrote:
> > What observations or measurements can I perform that would  
falsify

> > COMP?
>
> The best thing would be to work in the other direction, and see  
if you can
> derive the "wrong" laws of physics from COMP itself. If you could  
do that,

> then COMP is false.

Since I can fly sometimes in dreams, that proves that if comp were
true, it is capable of varying the laws of physics. I have not yet
heard why comp prefers one set of physical laws outside of my head  
and

many spontaneously shifting sets of physical non-laws inside my head.

With COMP it's all "inside your head" so I don't see the problem.


That IS the problem.  Since they are both "inside your head" why is  
dreaming so different from being awake.


Because when we are awake, we are in front of the matter generated by  
all computations. When we are dreaming we are in a higher level  
relative emulation (all UMs can do that). The difference is that  
reality is a deep arithmetical sharable dreams by machines having in  
common a very long, and statistically persistent high number of  
computations.

Personal dreams are more 1p singular than 1p plural.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Yes Doctor circularity

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 23:15, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Feb 27, 4:52 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

On 2/27/2012 1:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Feb 27, 3:32 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

On 2/27/2012 11:54 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



  AIs can generate their own software. That is the point of AI.
They don't have to generate their own software though, we have  
to tell

them to do that and specify exactly how we want them to do it.
Not exactly.  AI learns from interactions which are not known to  
those who write the AI

program.
...when we program them specifically to 'learn' in the  the exact  
ways

which we want them to.


They can learn by higher level program modifications too, and those  
can also be random.
So there is no evidence that their learning is qualitatively  
different from yours.


There is no such thing as evidence when it comes to qualitative
phenomenology. You don't need evidence to infer that a clock doesn't
know what time it is.


A clock has no self-referential ability.
You reason like that: no animals can fly, because pigs cannot fly.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Yes Doctor circularity

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 21:56, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Feb 25, 4:50 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 24 Feb 2012, at 23:40, Craig Weinberg wrote:










On Feb 23, 9:41 pm, Pierz  wrote:

Let us suppose you're right and... but hold on! We can't do that.
That
would be "circular". That would be sneaking in the assumption that
you're right from the outset. That would be "shifty', "fishy", etc
etc. You just don't seem to grasp the rudiments of philosophical
reasoning.



I understand that it seems that way to you.



'Yes doctor' is not an underhand move.



Not intentionally.



It asks you up-front
to assume that comp is true in order then to examine the  
implications

of that, whilst acknowledging (by calling it a 'bet') that this is
just a hypothesis, an unprovable leap of faith.


I think that asking for an unprovable leap of faith in this  
context is

philosophically problematic since the purpose of computation is to
make unprovable leaps of faith unnecessary.


This is were you are the most wrong from a theoretical computer
science pov.
It is just an Aristotelian myth than science can avoid leap of faith.
Doubly so for a (meta) theory like comp, where we bet on a form of
reincarnation.
Betting on a reality or on self-consistency gives a tremendous
selective advantage, but it can never be 100% justified rationally.
Comp meta-justifies the need of going beyond pure reason. Correct
betting mechanism cannot be 100% rational. That'swhat is cute  
with

incompleteness-like phenomena, they show that reason *can* see beyond
reason, and indeed 99,9% of the self-referential truth belongs to the
unjustifiable.



How can it really be said to be computational though? 2+2 =
unjustifiable self-referential 'truth'...f


?


orm of
reincarnation...faith?


Yes. Comp is a scheme of possible theologies.
















You complain that
using the term 'bet' assumes non-comp (I suppose because computers
can't bet, or care about their bets), but that is just daft.



Saying 'that is just daft' to something which is clearly the honest
truth in my estimation doesn't persuade me in the slightest.



You might
as well argue that the UDA is invalid because it is couched in
natural
language, which no computer can (or according to you, could ever)
understand. If we accepted such arguments, we'd be incapable of
debating comp at all.



That would be ok with me. I don't see anything to debate with comp,
because I understand why it seems like it could be true but actually
isn't.


But, as you seem to believe yourself, it is just the case that the 1p
cannot feel like comp is true. It is due to the clash between Bp and
Bp & p I have just been talking about in my previous mail.


It's not a feeling that comp isn't true, it's an understanding that
comp can't be causally efficacious.


You beg the question.




Computation can only inform those
who can be informed by it.


You beg the question.




To make something happen, information has
to be acted upon subjectively through sense and motive.


OK.





Sense works on
multiple levels though, so that we can cajole a computer into opening
and closing logic gates which seem meaningful to us, but have no
larger coherence to the computer itself.


Provably wrong in comp. You forget that we can define self-referential  
machine, and even study their "non definable" knowledge.












Saying 'no' to the doctor is anyone's right - nobody forces you to
accept that first step or tries to pull the wool over your eyes if
you
choose to say 'yes'. Having said no you can then either say "I  
don't
believe in comp because (I just don't like it, it doesn't feel  
right,
it's against my religion etc)" or you can present a rational  
argument

against it.



Or you can be rationally skeptical about it and say "It has not been
proved" or "I see through the logic and understand the error in its
assumptions".


I will never been proved, for purely logical reason. Comp can only be
refuted, or hoped. Comp remains science, at the meta-level, but  
saying

"yes" to a doctor asks for a leap of faith.


I don't think that comp can ask for that. Even within a program, you
can't have a GOTO "leap of faith".


The contrary is true. Self-referential programs cannot avoid the leap  
of faith.

Consciousness itself is plausibly based on an unconscious leap of faith.





It is only we who can ask or offer
a leap of faith.


That's anthropocentrism.





Computers need to know. Since they don't know where
they've been and they don't know who they are, they have nothing to
invest in such a leap. If it could then we could beg our ATM that we
lost our wallet and it could agree to help us out.


You beg the question.




















That is to say, if asked to justify why you say no, you
can either provide no reason and say simply that you choose to bet
against it - which is OK but uninteresting - or you can present  
some

reasoning which attempts to refute comp. You've made many such
attempts, though to be h

Re: COMP theology

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 21:38, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/27/2012 11:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


You can make matter behave in any way relatively to virtual reality  
that you are building, but the 3-creature, relative to you, will be  
able to deduce from their observation that they are in a simulated  
reality, by comparing what they can  measure with what can  
relatively emerge from *all* computations.


That sounds good but its implementation is problematic.  What can  
relatively emerge from all computations is not something we can know  
if your theory if correct.


Why?
On the contrary we can know that by interviewing simple machine that  
we can prove to be correct, like PA.





  And if what can emerge is essentially anything (which I think is  
likely)


The propositional logic of the observable have already been derived.  
It is not *anything* at all. It is a precise arithmetical orthologic,  
or minimal quantum logic.


Let me give you an example how to test comp in practice. You can take  
a quantum-empirical tautology, like a Bell inequality:


A & B => (A & C) V (B & ~C)

which is true in the Boolean algebra, but not necessarily satisfied in  
"physical" comp, as it is not in the natural quantum ortholattice of  
quantum propositions.


You need to represent it in modal terms, by using the quantization  
translation of Goldblatt, this gives:


[]<>A & []<>B => []<>([]<>A & []<>B) V ([]<>B & []<>(~[]<>C)

This should be seen as a formula in the material hypostases, so you  
need to translate this in G*, this will give a very long formula,  
because just []<>A becomes []([]A v <>A) & <>([]A v <>A), so we get



[]([]A v <>A) & <>([]A v <>A) & []([]B v <>B) & <>([]B v <>B) => etc  
(very long due to the double nesting of the quantizations []<>#).


This gives a long formula that you can test in G*, more exactly in G*1  
(G + p->[]p, need to makes the machine assuming comp, and restricting  
herself on the UD accessible states).


The whole formula is already to complex for my 1990 modal theorem  
prover, unfortunately. My translation above is also not completely  
correct because the deduction "=>" should be replaced by "->", which  
itself is rather long to translate. But my point was only illustrative.


If G* does not find a counter-example to the last, corrected, formula,  
it means that the comp-physics does not violate the simple Bell  
inequality. If G* finds a counter-example, then you can read it as a  
description of a possible experience in the comp physics which  
violates that Bell's inequality. G* is complete, and you can ask it  
all experiences/counter-examples to that Bell inequality.


In 1990 I predicted that comp (+ classical knowledge theory) would be  
refuted before 2000. This has not yet happened, though.
From a paper of Rawling and Selesnick there are evidences that comp  
might define a canonical quantum computer in the background physics of  
all universal machine. That is some comp-physics tautologies seems to  
be rich enough to implement universal quantum gate.


Anyway, by the UDA reasoning you can know that we should get the whole  
physics in the corresponding, non necessarily propositional, logics,  
so it is hard to imagine a more "refutable" theory than comp, once we  
accept Theaetetus or the classical theory of knowledge (verified  
notably by the Theaetetus idea when applied on the notion of comp  
belief).


Bruno





then no observation can falsify the theory.

Brent

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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 20:02, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 2/27/2012 12:26 PM, ronaldheld wrote:

What observations or measurements can I perform that would falsify
COMP?


Hi,

   Any measurement of a physical process that cannot be simulated by  
a Turing Machine equivalent computation.


That would contradict digital physics. But digital physics is self- 
contradictory (indeed it implies comp which implies the falsity of  
digital physics). Roughly speaking: if "I" am a machine, then  
everything else is not.








IOW, any non-computational physical process.


Comp implies non-comp (non Turing emulable firs plural person)  
physical processes. Indeed the "comp primitive matter" is not Turing  
emulable, it is an infinite sum on infinite computations.


So to refute comp you need to find a non recoverable, by the first  
person indeterminacy, physical processes. If there were evidences that  
the wave function collapse, that might be considered as a refutation  
of comp. But after a century of the collapse speculation, we can only  
say that this evidences is meagre.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Interesting Feynman Quote

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 19:15, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Feb 26, 3:50 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


it is space-time observations which emerges from arithmetical self-
observation.


Why would they though? I can have a dream in which I observe myself
participating in a space-time world, but it is not consistent with
physics.


Then, if you are lucid enough, you can deduce that eiher comp is  
false, or you are in a simulation, and this you can test or awake from.






Things appear and disappear without formally appearing or
disappearing. You can crawl under a bed and find the gardens at
Versailles. The bed may or may not be gone at this point but it is
clear from the sense of the dream that it doesn't matter. Nothing is
reliable or testable in dreams.

What makes the arithmetic computations of my dream emerge as such a
multivalent fugue of inconsistencies, but makes all real world physics
emerge in precisely the opposite way - as a reliable and unified
context?


Study UDA, and you should grasp that it needs to be like that.





Why do all physical events have to formally occur but dream
events has no comparable formality?


Because they occur at a higher level, and this can be tested if you  
are lucid enough. If you are not, then you can't, but this is true for  
any theory. So, if you keep faith in comp, you can measure your degree  
of simulation, and if the test gives the comp-physics, then you have  
evidence that you are at the level zero. The comp level zero is  
quantum like, and the physical test gives evidence that this  
discussion occurs at that level.


I don't expect you to grasp this if you have not ruminate some time on  
the thought experiments, though.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: The free will function

2012-02-28 Thread 1Z 


On Feb 27, 6:40 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:
> On 27.02.2012 17:47 John Clark said the following:
>
> > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Craig
> > Weinbergwrote:
>
> >> There is no simulation of red. Red is only red.
>
> > But red itself is a simulation. Electromagnetic waves a length of
> > 700 nanometers can produce the quale "red" in the minds of most (but
> > not all) human beings if it enters their eye, so the red quale
> > simulates (represents) the location and intensity of 700 nanometer
> > electromagnetic radiation. But red can stand for other things that
> > have nothing to do with light; go into a pitch dark room and close
> > your eyes and apply gentle pressure to your closed eyelid, you often
> > see splotches of red. So in this case the red quale simulates
> > (represents) the location and intensity of pressure.
>
> You may want look at synaesthetes for whom red could appears for example
> when they hear a word "blue". You can certainly claim that in this case
> sound waves simulate red but then the question is what the intensity of
> 700 nanometer electromagnetic radiation has to do with this.
>
> Also I believe that one feels red not only with 700 nanometer wavelength
> but with other combinations of wavelengths as well. This is not one to one.

Even more so if your depart from vision and consider other senses,
such as taste and smell. There is no simple chemical property
that corresponds to sweet, bitter, etc.

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Re: COMP test

2012-02-28 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 27 Feb 2012, at 18:26, ronaldheld wrote:


What observations or measurements can I perform that would falsify
COMP?


[COMP + classical theory of knowledge] gives all the laws of physics,  
if one such law is contradicted by an experiment, then comp is false,  
or we are dreaming or in a simulation.


COMP + classical theory of knowledge (which by the way are more  
definition than theory, so I will often just say comp) gives already  
the propositional logic of the observable. That is what the logics  
S4Grz1, Z1* and X1* (which are the modal logic of the "material  
hypostases" give. From this you can already make many tests. Up to  
now, Quantum inferred logic confirm the quantum deduced logic. The  
problem is that the complex propositional sentences are quickly  
intractable (despite decidable at the propositional level).


AUDA, or the interview of the Löbian machine, is all about that:  
showing that comp is testable.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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