Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Craig Weinberg]

On Mar 21, 3:23 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> On 21 Mar 2012, at 17:40, Craig Weinberg wrote (partially).
>
>
>
> >>> It's not just 'we' but our entire participation in the world that is
> >>> assumed to be digitally interchangeable. A digitizable body can only
> >>> exist within a digitizable universe.
>
> >> False. The exact contrary has been proved.
>
> > How has it been proved? How can we be ourselves without a world to
> > exist in?
>
> Sure. What has been proved is that if comp is true we can only be in a
> non digitizable world.
> Digital physics is non sense, except as tool for building approximate
> theory.
> Comp is not digital physics.

How does a digital artificial intelligence make sense of it's world
without converting or sampling every truth about that world available
to it into digital?

>
>
>
> >> If you negate this, it means that
> >> you assume the level to be "infinitely low",
>
> > No, it means I understand that your assumption that description can be
> > quantified is simplistic and inaccurate.
>
> Description of my (generalized) brain. With your theory we have
> zombie.

Never zombie, only puppet. Zombie is like calling water 'wet fire'.

> But that's OK. remember that when we assume something, it does
> not mean that we believe it is true. I am not interested in doing
> philosophy.
>
> > Just as these words seem word-
> > like enough to us doesn't mean that they can't be revealed as generic
> > pixels on closer inspection. There is no universal level of
> > description, it is entirely relative to the sensory capacities of the
> > audience - the qualitative capacities, not just the quantitative
> > resolution.
>
> You are talking in another theory. I work in the theory comp, that's
> all.
> Read the paper to convince you that I do not put the 1p under the rug.

It's not under the rug, it is showing the bottom of the rug and saying
it's the floor.

>
> You stop at step zero. It is your right.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >> so that you need to
> >> introduce actual infinity and non computability of all levels. It is
> >> your right, but you fail to present a theory of this.
>
> > That has been your knock on me the whole time, but you aren't seeing
> > that my position is an order of magnitude more radical than that. I am
> > saying that finite and infinite qualities are not relevant at all. Not
> > even a little bit.
>
> > The uniqueness of the self and the indeterminacy of 1p are important
> > but nearly irrelevant compared to the presentational-participatory
> > aspects. It's not just that we feel different from other people or
> > that we can't predict how living things behave as well as we might
> > chemical or physical reactions. It makes sense that we would seize on
> > these aspects as important because we can work with them
> > arithmetically; they are the most quantitative functions of the self.
>
> > These are only the flattened shadows of selfness though. They mention
> > of the self but they don't actually use it. A picture of a bell, a
> > printout of a song, etc. That we feel unique or free is nothing
> > compared to the reality that we feel at all. This is the sticking
> > point. If we had reason to believe that programs or furniture could be
> > coaxed into feeling in the first place, we would not be having this
> > discussion. We would be talking instead about whether it is moral to
> > turn off our computers or to replace them when we get tired of them.
>
> Nice.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >>> Comp exports inorganic naive realism to a
> >>> universal level and builds from there.
>
> >> In particular it does
> >> answer the question "where does the universe come from?". The
> >> answer
> >> is, by the truth about addition and multiplication, and the
> >> technical
> >> details are accessible to any universal machines.
> >> You will ask: "where does addition and multiplication comes
> >> from".
> >> This, in the comp theory can be answered: we will never know, at
> >> least
> >> in any publicly communicable way.
>
> > Why add the extra step of addition and multiplication?
>
>  To get a Turing complete ontology.
>
> >>> What does it further us though to have a Turing complete ontology
> >>> relate to the question in the first place? Instead of trying to make
> >>> it answer 'where does the universe come from?', why not 'where does
> >>> computing come from'?
>
> >> Because it is provable that computing exists once the addition and
> >> multiplication laws are assumed. Indeed computation has been
> >> discovered there.
>
> > I have no problem with that, but what does that have to do with
> > computing becoming the universe?
>
> Study the sane04 paper.  Or search in the archive. It is a consequence
> of comp that physics emerge from the way numbers can bet on
> arithmetical relations. It is not entirely obvious.

I don't have a problem with physics emerging from comp, I have a
problem with consciousness emerging from either one.

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Joseph Knight]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

>
> Dear Joseph,
>
> How do numbers implement that necessary capacity to define each other
> and themselves? What kind of relational structure is necessary? From what I
> can tell, it looks like a "net of Indra" where every jewel, here a number,
> reflects all others. This is a non-well founded structure.
>

You'll have to be more explicit than this if I am to make any sense of it.


>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> There are many arguments about how the brain is a classical machine and
>>> those are fine but if you examine them they all seem to be narrowly focused
>>> on some particular aspect of brain physiology. Max Tegmark's paper focused
>>> on ion transport.
>>>
>>
>>  Wrong. Tegmark's result is *very *general because it shows that
>> decoherence timescales are *many *orders of magnitude smaller than those
>> of brain functioning (neuron firing, etc.).
>>
>>
>>  Dis he consider any form of mechanism that might factor up the
>> degrees of freedom in brain structures? no. Did he consider structures that
>> will cause attenuation of the phonon transport mechanism that he was using
>> in his model? No. His paper is the modern equivalent of the papers written
>> by eminent scientist back in the day that "proved" that bumblebees could
>> not fly. Pfft. Does not the fact that quantum coherence mechanism have
>> actually been found in biological systems that operate at room temperature
>> and timescales that are useful?
>>
>
>  Yeah yeah, I never hear the end how mind-blowing it is that quantum
> effects play a role in photosynthesis.
>
>
> In the case of photosynthesis, it increases the efficiency of the
> effect to useful proportions. QM effects could play a similar role in brain
> processing and may also use EPR effects to synchronize sense data so that
> we have the "unity of awareness" effect. A study of the brains of
> schizophrenics and others that have dissociative disorders may show this.
>

Right. I am not entirely opposed to this idea. Preliminary work on quantum
networks shows that they have intriguing differences from classical
networks. (Example: entangled quantum networks can rewire themselves
globally via local node operations (1 ), so
this is somewhat tantalizing, because the "unity of consciousness" for me
is a fairly big problem.)


>
>
>
>
>> Please, just be a bit agnostic and not doctrinaire.
>>
>
>  I am just a realistic agnostic. (Also, I am playing the Devil's Advocate
> a bit here.)
>
>
> I do appreciate that!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Resent research has proven that quantum effects are indeed used by
>> organic systems to increase their efficiency in energy conversion
>> processes,
>>
>
>  Indeed, for biophysical systems whose relevant timescales are comparable
> to those of decoherence.
>
>
>> and we have barely scratched the surface, so why are we so eager to go
>> all in with the assumptions about classicality?
>>
>
>  I for one am not so eager. I am neutral on whether consciousness is
> related to quantum phenomena, in spite of the contravening evidence. In
> fact, I am probably more open to the idea than the average commentator. But
> it doesn't matter in this context.
>
>
>   OK, then let's put that aside for now and address the measure
>> problem directly. What is the measure supposed to do, exactly? I would like
>> to see your explanation of it.
>>
>
>  Measure is what gives sense to the question "When I perform a physics
> experiment, what do I expect to observe?"assuming that is what you are
> referring to. I won't pretend to have all the answers here. You seem to be
> skeptical of the idea that such a measure exists. If it doesn't, then COMP
> is false.
>
>
> OK. What I am claiming is that the measure is not a global regime; it
> cannot be for reasons that involve computational complexity issues. My
> proposal is a local notion of measure, as per what Prof. Kitada explains in
> his work . Waht I have found is a
> general sketch of how Pratt's Chu space idea can work with Kitada's Local
> Systems, but I am not yet adept enough to create a formal model of this. It
> is a bit over my paygrade... So, in summary, I claim that measures can
> exist, but not a global measure
>

What is a global measure? Measure in this context is the measure on
computational states going "through" your current state (which exists
assuming COMP is true). If the measure doesn't exist, or has other
"problems" (white rabbit etc.) then COMP is exploded.


> that would make sense of "When I perform a physics experiment, what do I
> expect to observe?"; since the "physics experiment" is local so to will be
> the expected results of the observation. There is no such thing as a
> "global observation" and local observations cannot be arbitrarily summed or
> integrated over to create global observations. (Simplified reason:
> Observables are, in general, non-commutative and thus

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2012, at 18:35, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> on the 3-view you can have on your two necessary existing 1-views.  
[...] if you confuse the 1-view on the 1-view, (really still just  
the 1-view), and some 3-view on 1-views, which is just empathy  
[...]  At the end of UDA, we know it is not 3p, but 1p-plural.


This illustrates the problem I have with your ideas, it's not your  
mathematics it's the assumption you make right at the start which is  
the foundation for everything else.


Which assumption?



The foundation is sand. You make all sorts of distinctions between  
convoluted "view" and "p plural" stuff


Those admit precise and simple definition, related to the duplication  
and multiplication thought experience.

First person = content of a diary bring in the duplication devices.
Third person = content of a diary of an external observers.
First person plural = content of the diaries of a collection of person  
duplicated together.





but you can't give a scrap of evidence that such differences  
actually exist,


Just look at the content of the diaries. It contains statements like  
"I predict that I will feel to be in W or in M, I am in M, so I win",  
pr "I predict that I will see Flying circus, but I see nothing  
recognizable, so I fail", etc.




nor can you give even the ghost of a hint of a hint of a idea as to  
how or why such a enormous change (that is nevertheless undetectable  
by the scientific method) has occurred, you just ask us to believe  
that it has.


Well, if you believe in comp, the difference is as big as finding  
oneself in W, and finding oneself in M.

I have no real clue what you are talking about.




You don't claim that one hydrogen atom is different from another and  
I'm sure you will grant that information can be duplicated, and yet  
when information and generic atoms get together and form another  
identical body and brain of Bruno Marchal then for reasons you never  
explain you say you've got to start differentiating between  
different "views" and start talking about "1p,2p,3p'". And through  
all this science can find no difference to make a differentiation  
between. I'm sorry Bruno but I just can't get past that.


I am sorry for you. You are the first to have a problem with the  
difference of the 1-view and 3-view. Those are rather standard in  
coginitive science, and already use in projective geometry, in  
Everett, in AI. Of course, once duplication is introduced, it makes  
the 1-view indeterminate. But as you say oddness should be expected in  
such setting.






For example: If the body and brain of the Helsinki man is  
annihilated a instant after the information in his body and brain  
was read out and used to make identical copies in Washington and  
Moscow then you say the Helsinki man is dead.


I have never said that. I have said that the original is annihilated.  
If I said it, it might have been a slip on my tongue, or I said it in  
a context to get a reductio ad absurdo, or just to say he is  
annihilated, unlike the step 5 where the one copied is not cut.

Obviously, by just the definition of comp, he does not die.



But I don't understand why you say that, there is certainly someone  
(actually in this example 2 people) who would very very strongly  
disagree with you about him being dead because he remembers being  
the Helsinki man and remembers walking into the duplication chamber  
just seconds ago, and he has no gaps or jumps or discontinuity of  
any sort in his subjective experience.


Yes. As I told you in the last post, which you might reply, that is  
exactly my point. If the guy annihilated die, then he would say that  
P(M) = P(W) = 1/2, and there would be no 1-indeterminacy.







He remembers walking out of the chamber only to find himself in a  
distant city, and now you tell him he's dead.


I have never said that.



He wouldn't believe you and neither would I. I just don't see what  
more the Helsinki man needs to do to survive, he's survived from his  
own point of view and after all that's the only one that matters.


So all your fuss about not understanding the difference between the 1- 
view and the 3-view are illustrated by an example where you put in my  
mouth the exact contrary of what I am saying.





>we are neutral on the natire of matter.

Nor that. And if you're not a big fan of matter I don't understand  
why it's so significant to you that the atoms in the Helsinki man's  
body have been rearranged into ashes, especially when there are 2  
perfectly good identical replacement bodies available that were made  
of atoms that were just as good as the atoms the have in Helsinki  
and arranged in exactly the same way .


To simplfy the reasoning, but you have to study it. The paragraph  
above shows that you have not yet understand what is meant by comp,  
given that comp implies by definition that the guy in Helsinki does  
not die. You are criticizing 

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2012, at 17:40, Craig Weinberg wrote (partially).



It's not just 'we' but our entire participation in the world that is
assumed to be digitally interchangeable. A digitizable body can only
exist within a digitizable universe.


False. The exact contrary has been proved.


How has it been proved? How can we be ourselves without a world to
exist in?



Sure. What has been proved is that if comp is true we can only be in a  
non digitizable world.
Digital physics is non sense, except as tool for building approximate  
theory.

Comp is not digital physics.




If you negate this, it means that
you assume the level to be "infinitely low",


No, it means I understand that your assumption that description can be
quantified is simplistic and inaccurate.


Description of my (generalized) brain. With your theory we have  
zombie. But that's OK. remember that when we assume something, it does  
not mean that we believe it is true. I am not interested in doing  
philosophy.






Just as these words seem word-
like enough to us doesn't mean that they can't be revealed as generic
pixels on closer inspection. There is no universal level of
description, it is entirely relative to the sensory capacities of the
audience - the qualitative capacities, not just the quantitative
resolution.


You are talking in another theory. I work in the theory comp, that's  
all.

Read the paper to convince you that I do not put the 1p under the rug.

You stop at step zero. It is your right.






so that you need to
introduce actual infinity and non computability of all levels. It is
your right, but you fail to present a theory of this.


That has been your knock on me the whole time, but you aren't seeing
that my position is an order of magnitude more radical than that. I am
saying that finite and infinite qualities are not relevant at all. Not
even a little bit.

The uniqueness of the self and the indeterminacy of 1p are important
but nearly irrelevant compared to the presentational-participatory
aspects. It's not just that we feel different from other people or
that we can't predict how living things behave as well as we might
chemical or physical reactions. It makes sense that we would seize on
these aspects as important because we can work with them
arithmetically; they are the most quantitative functions of the self.

These are only the flattened shadows of selfness though. They mention
of the self but they don't actually use it. A picture of a bell, a
printout of a song, etc. That we feel unique or free is nothing
compared to the reality that we feel at all. This is the sticking
point. If we had reason to believe that programs or furniture could be
coaxed into feeling in the first place, we would not be having this
discussion. We would be talking instead about whether it is moral to
turn off our computers or to replace them when we get tired of them.


Nice.
















Comp exports inorganic naive realism to a
universal level and builds from there.



In particular it does
answer the question "where does the universe come from?". The
answer
is, by the truth about addition and multiplication, and the
technical
details are accessible to any universal machines.
You will ask: "where does addition and multiplication comes  
from".

This, in the comp theory can be answered: we will never know, at
least
in any publicly communicable way.



Why add the extra step of addition and multiplication?



To get a Turing complete ontology.



What does it further us though to have a Turing complete ontology
relate to the question in the first place? Instead of trying to make
it answer 'where does the universe come from?', why not 'where does
computing come from'?


Because it is provable that computing exists once the addition and
multiplication laws are assumed. Indeed computation has been
discovered there.


I have no problem with that, but what does that have to do with
computing becoming the universe?


Study the sane04 paper.  Or search in the archive. It is a consequence  
of comp that physics emerge from the way numbers can bet on  
arithmetical relations. It is not entirely obvious.







The deus ex
mysterium of the latter answer nullifies any value of the former
answer, which now becomes:



"where does the universe come from?"
"we will never know, at least in any publicly communicable way. "



For the universe of number, or arithmetical truth, you are right.



But the rest becomes explainable for that, as interfering numbers
dreams, which are defined by sequences and subsequences of  
numbers in

arithmetic, or the UD*.



It seems to me that the idea of numbers dreams is a plug for the
gaping rift between the two. If we have numbers, we don't need  
dreams,


?


I can unplug the monitor and sound card of my computer and all
programs will function without them. Why would the programs (even uber
sophisticated meta programs) need to dream?


They don't need to dream. But they can (trivially with comp that I  
assume

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Joseph Knight]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

No, my critique is that you seem to not see a problem with the fact
> that COMP shows that the physical world is epiphenomena and thus
> unnecessary. I see this as denying the mere possibility of observational
> falsification. AS I have said before, you seem to reason as if the your
> chalkboard (as the one in your picture
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/courses/Saturday_20070602_LNash/t_blackboard_1.png)
> does not really exist. If you say that the physical world does exist but
> only as a collective hallucination or dream, but if I understand the Bp&p
> concept correctly, this is not quite right as it makes the possibility of
> relationship between bodies epiphenomena. Ummm, I need to understand the
> role of the "Girard-Abramski like theory" with COMP.
>

Stephen, I am starting to think that you have fundamentally misunderstood
the UDA. You have repeatedly voiced this misconception, that COMP implies
that the physical world does not exist. It exists, but it is not
fundamental. It is still phenomenal.

I will respond to your other message shortly, and discuss the issue of
communicability and the need for physical instantiation a little more.


>
>
>
>
>
>
> which is exactly what we are claiming when we say that "... our
> generalized brains  ..." are this and that, such as what is implied by
> "...the latter is just a restatement of the former." The point is that we
> first need to dig a bit deeper and establish by natural mathematical means
> that 1) digital substitution is a sound mathematical concept and 2) that it
> is possible.
>
>
> 1) Yes, thanks to the notion of level, digital substitution is well
> defined, and sound (if the level is correctly chosen).
>
>
> Yes, and this makes it "local" not "global" and thus is not consistent
> with a representation in Platonic terms.
>
>
>  UDA shows the passage from local to global. Why and how it occurs. You
> lost me.
>
>
> Could you be more specific? Are you thinking of UDA3? But is this
> global plurality not collapsed in UDA4 and UDA5? Let me be clear about what
> I am thinking with regards to the words local and global. By "Global" I
> mean pertaining to all of a collection of many from any kind of
> partitioning on the collection. By "local" I mean pertaining to a
> collection from only one partitioning of the collection. For example, in
> physics, an effect is global if it is invariant to shifts from one point of
> view to another, the potential of the electromagnetic field is a good
> example. In physics, an effect is local if it vanishes when one shifts to a
> different point of view.
>
>
>
>
> 2) That it is (in principle) possible *is* the comp assumption.
>
>
> OK, but you are assuming more. You are assuming that computations have
> particular and definite properties merely because they are true,
>
>
>  "true" does not apply to computations, but to proposition.
>
>
> This does not change the implication of what I wrote. You are still
> thinking that mere existence defines properties. My claim is that this is
> ontologically and epistemologically incoherent as it implies that the
> difference of the properties that one object X has from the properties that
> another object Y has follows merely from the existence of X and Y. How does
> the mere existence of X and Y require that X and Y are different at all?
>
>
>
>
>
>  you are claiming implicitly that properties supervene on the soundness
> of the object having such properties.
>
>
>
>  "sound" applies to "theories", not to object.
>
>
> OK. So we say that if there is a sound theory of an object then the
> object must exist? I am just trying to be sure I understand.
>
>
>
>
>  This is, I claim, equivalent to postulating the existence of a Universal
> Observer that can somehow percieve all UTM strings and define by fiat which
> are equivalent to which
>
>
>  You miss the 1-indeterminacy here. We don't need to know which
> computations are equivalent or not, because we live them.
>
>
> No, I was considering how you assume that properties follow from mere
> existence. You are thinking of theories as constructions to define the
> existence of an object, say a computation, and then forgetting that you
> constructed the theory that implied the properties of the object so that
> you can claim "look it exists and has properties completely independent of
> me". This is just the logical conclusion of thinking that computations are
> independent of the necessity of any physical implementation. This is one
> piece of your thinking that upsets me, you are taking the universality
> concept too far.
>
>
>
>
>  without having to actually implement all of them
>
>
>  by step 8.
>
>
> Again, just because a computation does not require a particular
> physical implementation does not make it independent of the need for at
> least one implementation. To claim the contrary is equivalent to talking
> about things that you cannot

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> on the 3-view you can have on your two necessary existing 1-views. [...]
> if you confuse the 1-view on the 1-view, (really still just the 1-view),
> and some 3-view on 1-views, which is just empathy [...]  At the end of UDA,
> we know it is not 3p, but 1p-plural.
>

This illustrates the problem I have with your ideas, it's not your
mathematics it's the assumption you make right at the start which is the
foundation for everything else. The foundation is sand. You make all sorts
of distinctions between convoluted "view" and "p plural" stuff but you
can't give a scrap of evidence that such differences actually exist, nor
can you give even the ghost of a hint of a hint of a idea as to how or why
such a enormous change (that is nevertheless undetectable by the scientific
method) has occurred, you just ask us to believe that it has. You don't
claim that one hydrogen atom is different from another and I'm sure you
will grant that information can be duplicated, and yet when information and
generic atoms get together and form another identical body and brain of
Bruno Marchal then for reasons you never explain you say you've got to
start differentiating between different "views" and start talking about
"1p,2p,3p'". And through all this science can find no difference to make a
differentiation between. I'm sorry Bruno but I just can't get past that.

For example: If the body and brain of the Helsinki man is annihilated a
instant after the information in his body and brain was read out and used
to make identical copies in Washington and Moscow then you say the Helsinki
man is dead. But I don't understand why you say that, there is certainly
someone (actually in this example 2 people) who would very very strongly
disagree with you about him being dead because he remembers being the
Helsinki man and remembers walking into the duplication chamber just
seconds ago, and he has no gaps or jumps or discontinuity of any sort in
his subjective experience. He remembers walking out of the chamber only to
find himself in a distant city, and now you tell him he's dead. He wouldn't
believe you and neither would I. I just don't see what more the Helsinki
man needs to do to survive, he's survived from his own point of view and
after all that's the only one that matters.

> I don't assume physics.


That doesn't sound good.

>we are neutral on the natire of matter.
>

Nor that. And if you're not a big fan of matter I don't understand why it's
so significant to you that the atoms in the Helsinki man's body have been
rearranged into ashes, especially when there are 2 perfectly good identical
replacement bodies available that were made of atoms that were just as good
as the atoms the have in Helsinki and arranged in exactly the same way .

  John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Craig Weinberg]

On Mar 21, 5:12 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> On 20 Mar 2012, at 20:24, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 20, 1:27 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> >> On 20 Mar 2012, at 17:40, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> On Mar 20, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>  to explain things. But comp is a (scientific, modest) theology, in
>  which we can "believe", hope, or fear, and which makes just many
>  fundamental question technically formulable.
>
> >>> There is no consideration that the very act of technical formulation
> >>> could have an effect on the answer. As the Tao Te Ching begins: "The
> >>> name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name."
> >>> This
> >>> is not modest at all, it is in fact a reckless and arrogant
> >>> assumption.
>
> >> No, because it is presented as an assumption, not as a truth (like
> >> you
> >> did).
> >> Then comp agree with the TAO, the "real thing" cannot be named.
> >> But once you accept an assumption, if only for the sake of an
> >> argument, you can derive conclusion.
>
> > The conclusion you derive relates only to your assumption though.
>
> Thanks for making this precise. That's the goal.
>
> > The
> > truth could in fact be precisely the opposite of the conclusion which
> > presents itself without accepting an assumption.
>
> Yes.
>
> > In that case, the
> > accepting of the assumption itself actually prevents any possibility
> > of seeing the error of the conclusion.
>
> ?

Assumption: To test something scientifically, we should first flatten
it with a steam roller.
Conclusion: Once they are flattened, it can be clearly seen that all
people are actually dead.

> It is the contrary. It is only by accepting the assumption that we can
> derive the conclusion, test them, and re-evaluate the assumption.

How does that work out with the steam roller? 100 out of 100 of people
flattened are revealed to be medically deceased. How does that allow
us to re-evaluate the assumption?

>
> > This is because of the symmetry
> > of consciousness. When we objectify our own awareness, it becomes a
> > character within our awareness, and therefore denatured and lacking
> > subjectivity.
>
> I don't see any reason for that.

I know. That's the problem. I happened to hear these lyrics yesterday
on a biography of Oscar Hammerstein:

"A bell's not a bell 'til you ring it, A song's not a song 'til you
sing it"

This is the symbol grounding problem, the use-mention distinction, the
Chinese Room, the China Brain, Leibniz windmill, etc. It's an
interesting problem in that degree to which the problem exists depends
upon where you are looking at it from. In 3p, there is no reason to
make such a distinction. Since the program has to define a bell as
ringable or a song as singable in advance, there is no way to 'show'
the difference. In 1p, the perspective is exactly flipped. The
continuous discovery and participation in the 'show' is everything.
The assumption of Comp cannot be made without flattening 1p to a 3p
shadow. It is a toy model of 1p but has no sense of presentation, only
an black box where numbers dream (of things besides numbers,
presumably...for reasons we can never know).

>
>
>
> > It sounds like the comp position is that since the real thing cannot
> > be named, that lets us off the hook and we can just figure everything
> > else out and leave a hole where consciousness/qualia is supposed to
> > be.
>
> It is not the comp position. It is derived from it, and it is not used
> except when comparaing Plotinus' theology with machine's theology.

I still think that is the implicit Comp position. I don't see any Comp
argument make a point of trying to relate specific qualia to comp, it
is always partitioned off as if it weren't the source of all human
experience and epistemology but rather some troublesome bag of extra
screws and unidentifiable parts.

>
> > I think of it instead that the unnamable nature of experience is a
> > positive affirmation of epistemological validity. It is unnamable-ness
> > itself. It the self-evident nature of truth itself (sense) which makes
> > it true, not a mechanism which forces truth upon us. We can experience
> > truth and illusion directly and indirectly but the fact of experience
> > in the first place is perpetually true.
>
> No problem.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >>> Comp assumes that its own framework can accommodate all
> >>> things and that no framework can reduce it to another, while further
> >>> assuming that this assumption is irrelevant or unavoidable. It may
> >>> be
> >>> useful to think of it that way for specific purposes, but as a bet
> >>> of
> >>> universal significance, it seems to me an obvious catastrophe.
>
> >> Not at all. That is what we can partially test. Comp assumes only we
> >> can survive with a digitalizable body.
>
> > It's not just 'we' but our entire participation in the world that is
> > assumed to be digitally interchangeable. A digitizable body can only
> > exist within a digitizable uni

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Mar 2012, at 20:24, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Mar 20, 1:27 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 20 Mar 2012, at 17:40, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Mar 20, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:



to explain things. But comp is a (scientific, modest) theology, in
which we can "believe", hope, or fear, and which makes just many
fundamental question technically formulable.



There is no consideration that the very act of technical formulation
could have an effect on the answer. As the Tao Te Ching begins: "The
name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name."  
This

is not modest at all, it is in fact a reckless and arrogant
assumption.


No, because it is presented as an assumption, not as a truth (like  
you

did).
Then comp agree with the TAO, the "real thing" cannot be named.
But once you accept an assumption, if only for the sake of an
argument, you can derive conclusion.


The conclusion you derive relates only to your assumption though.


Thanks for making this precise. That's the goal.





The
truth could in fact be precisely the opposite of the conclusion which
presents itself without accepting an assumption.


Yes.



In that case, the
accepting of the assumption itself actually prevents any possibility
of seeing the error of the conclusion.


?
It is the contrary. It is only by accepting the assumption that we can  
derive the conclusion, test them, and re-evaluate the assumption.





This is because of the symmetry
of consciousness. When we objectify our own awareness, it becomes a
character within our awareness, and therefore denatured and lacking
subjectivity.


I don't see any reason for that.




It sounds like the comp position is that since the real thing cannot
be named, that lets us off the hook and we can just figure everything
else out and leave a hole where consciousness/qualia is supposed to
be.


It is not the comp position. It is derived from it, and it is not used  
except when comparaing Plotinus' theology with machine's theology.






I think of it instead that the unnamable nature of experience is a
positive affirmation of epistemological validity. It is unnamable-ness
itself. It the self-evident nature of truth itself (sense) which makes
it true, not a mechanism which forces truth upon us. We can experience
truth and illusion directly and indirectly but the fact of experience
in the first place is perpetually true.


No problem.







Comp assumes that its own framework can accommodate all
things and that no framework can reduce it to another, while further
assuming that this assumption is irrelevant or unavoidable. It may  
be
useful to think of it that way for specific purposes, but as a bet  
of

universal significance, it seems to me an obvious catastrophe.


Not at all. That is what we can partially test. Comp assumes only we
can survive with a digitalizable body.


It's not just 'we' but our entire participation in the world that is
assumed to be digitally interchangeable. A digitizable body can only
exist within a digitizable universe.


False. The exact contrary has been proved.



My point though, is that by
assuming that things can be truly, ontologically digitized (and not
merely imitated to the perceptual satisfaction of a given audience),
comp already fails to recognize the use-mention distinction (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use–mention_distinction) of consciousness.


I don't see this.




Assuming that we can survive with a digitized body is only the tip of
the iceberg of assumptions about pattern that take pattern recognition
utterly for granted.


We don't need to take for granted any mental ability. Just the  
existence of a level of description. If you negate this, it means that  
you assume the level to be "infinitely low", so that you need to  
introduce actual infinity and non computability of all levels. It is  
your right, but you fail to present a theory of this.





Comp exports inorganic naive realism to a
universal level and builds from there.






In particular it does
answer the question "where does the universe come from?". The  
answer
is, by the truth about addition and multiplication, and the  
technical

details are accessible to any universal machines.
You will ask: "where does addition and multiplication comes from".
This, in the comp theory can be answered: we will never know, at
least
in any publicly communicable way.



Why add the extra step of addition and multiplication?


To get a Turing complete ontology.


What does it further us though to have a Turing complete ontology
relate to the question in the first place? Instead of trying to make
it answer 'where does the universe come from?', why not 'where does
computing come from'?


Because it is provable that computing exists once the addition and  
multiplication laws are assumed. Indeed computation has been  
discovered there.









The deus ex
mysterium of the latter answer nullifies any value of the former
answer, which now becomes:



"where does the univers