Re: QTI and eternal torment
Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On Jun 8, 8:45 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? I've drawn the branches so that they represent a 3p viewpoint of someone observing us over time - i.e. we are schrodingers cat! So U means observer sees us as unconsciouss and D means observer sees us as dead. The ist person view that we see would always be C according to the branches I've drawn, provided that you discard all branches that have death D preceded by U. I wish I could draw it but I'm limited on this user interface. ist branch is C - U or C then from the U of this branch, we get U or D or C I'm bothered by the fact that the observer would end up seeing zombies! If you have a C-U or C and then if the new branch from the U is U - D or U or C then 1p (cat) would see only C as expected. His route woud be C-C because the whole second branch is deleted. However the observer that goes down the U branch would see the cat go into some sort of scenario resulting in U or C or D. If it turns out that C occurs then the cat is seen as consciouss and yet it is disjoint from the conscioussness of the original cat. I'll have to really think about this one in terms of the early steps of your UDA. Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. What do you mean by backtracking? Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
Using mathematics, computations and symbols; human embodied consciousness can (using computers) create models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations etc. of observations of the physical universe and its processes. This assumes that the actual observable physical universe is exemplified by, and is, instantiations of, mathematics and computations. 1) Does this mean that mathematics is *en-coded* as formulas in matter and energy? 2) If so, are models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations, a mathematical computational *decoding* of an *en-coded* mathematical physical reality? Thanks -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On Jun 8, 3:00 pm, Pzomby htra...@gmail.com wrote: Using mathematics, computations and symbols; human embodied consciousness can (using computers) create models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations etc. of observations of the physical universe and its processes. We can create models for ourselves, but nothing else in the universe reads them that way. This assumes that the actual observable physical universe is exemplified by, and is, instantiations of, mathematics and computations. 1) Does this mean that mathematics is *en-coded* as formulas in matter and energy? If so that would mean that mathematics is either: a) encoded in something other than mathematics - if so, whatever it is that math can be encoded into (matter) makes encoding redundant and unexplainable. If you have something other than math, then why does math need to be encoded as it? b) encoded as some other mathematical formula - if so, then the appearance of the encoded non-math is redundant and unexplainable. 2) If so, are models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations, a mathematical computational *decoding* of an *en-coded* mathematical physical reality? They are a partial decoding. The modeling process allows our mind to recover some essential sense experience of the physics, thereby superimposing a supersignifying abstraction layer on our experience of it's reality. My view in a nutshell: Sense is not an emergent property of information. Significance is a recovered property* of sense. Matter is a form of significance. A sensible persistence through time which we perceive as volume-densities divided from us and each other by space. To be informed is to recover significance through sense. Sense is primordial, concrete, essential, and viscerally real. Information is a derivative, redundant term which models sense from a hypothetical third person view (a view which, taken literally, could only be that of a formless, non-sense, omniscient voyeur), rendering consciousness a generic, sterile, and meaningless wireframe of experience. Extrapolating a worldview based on this inversion of sense-making and inert data is useful for modeling computation but is catastrophic if applied literally to consciousness, as it makes life, order, emotion, and intelligence itself into a meaningless function for the sake of function. It makes sense into a kind of non-sense. Craig *By recovered property I mean that significance cannot emerge from nothing, it can only be recovered or discovered from everything. Consciousness is a splinter or temporal diffraction of the cosmos as a whole, which, when experienced outside of ‘our world’ (umwelt, perceptual inertial frame, or cumulative history of perception), would be an undiffracted totality or eternal instant…devoid of everything except absence of any absence and filled with nothing except the presence of presence …and I mean that in the most non-mystical and unambiguous sense (/ Cheshire grin) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
I don't know, somehow this whole argument is not something I could take seriously enough to get worked up over - too many what ifs piled up on other what ifs. But I think I see a couple of flaws in this argument. Firstly, I am not sure about the equation of unconsciousness with death. Why should coma be any different from deep sleep - i.e. a state of minimal consciousness which one cannot remember in retrospect but which nevertheless is a legitimate 1p view? One does not miraculously avoid sleep each night (well, come to think of it, I do, but that's another story!). I think this is the point Bruno is making. But there's a deeper problem I think with the idea of avoiding the 'vicinity' of death. QI says you can never end up on a branch in which you are dead. That's clear enough - so long as you grant that death is 'no-point-of-view', i.e., there is no no afterlife. But *someone* ends up on all the branches, so long as there is a point of view associated with them. Even if there is a cul-de-sac branch in which the probability of death is 100%, some version of you goes down that track. So right up until the very brink of death, you should expect your experience to follow the probabilities given by normal physics and statistical expectations. You can't, by QI, 'foresee' that a branch is a cul-de-sac in advance and so trim it out of your possible futures. But because there is always a finite, if vanishingly small, probability of not dying, one might expect that one will always find oneself 'sliding along the edge of death' so to speak, always just barely avoiding oblivion. But this is reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. How can one's experience follow normal statistical rules right up until a certain limit, then diverge from them to an ever greater, more improbable extent? QI is another of the absurd paradoxes that arises when trying to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. I think we'd be better adopting something analogous to Einstein's assumption with regard to speed - namely that the laws of physics appear the same to us regardless of our velocity. By the same type of reasoning, we should assume that the laws of statistical probability (physics) will continue to apply at every point of our experience, even at liminal points like death. I personally favour the idea of primary consciousness, so I'm quite happy with the idea that 1p experience bridges death. If you don't swallow that, I suppose the onus is on you to explain away the paradox by some other means. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Y0X4SnVyTkQJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 6/8/2012 7:02 PM, Pierz wrote: I don't know, somehow this whole argument is not something I could take seriously enough to get worked up over - too many what ifs piled up on other what ifs. But I think I see a couple of flaws in this argument. Firstly, I am not sure about the equation of unconsciousness with death. Why should coma be any different from deep sleep - i.e. a state of minimal consciousness which one cannot remember in retrospect but which nevertheless is a legitimate 1p view? One does not miraculously avoid sleep each night (well, come to think of it, I do, but that's another story!). I think this is the point Bruno is making. But there's a deeper problem I think with the idea of avoiding the 'vicinity' of death. QI says you can never end up on a branch in which you are dead. That's clear enough - so long as you grant that death is 'no-point-of-view', i.e., there is no no afterlife. But *someone* ends up on all the branches, so long as there is a point of view associated with them. Even if there is a cul-de-sac branch in which the probability of death is 100%, some version of you goes down that track. So right up until the very brink of death, you should expect your experience to follow the probabilities given by normal physics and statistical expectations. You can't, by QI, 'foresee' that a branch is a cul-de-sac in advance and so trim it out of your possible futures. But because there is always a finite, if vanishingly small, probability of not dying, one might expect that one will always find oneself 'sliding along the edge of death' so to speak, always just barely avoiding oblivion. But this is reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. How can one's experience follow normal statistical rules right up until a certain limit, then diverge from them to an ever greater, more improbable extent? QI is another of the absurd paradoxes that arises when trying to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. I think we'd be better adopting something analogous to Einstein's assumption with regard to speed - namely that the laws of physics appear the same to us regardless of our velocity. By the same type of reasoning, we should assume that the laws of statistical probability (physics) will continue to apply at every point of our experience, even at liminal points like death. I personally favour the idea of primary consciousness, so I'm quite happy with the idea that 1p experience bridges death. If you don't swallow that, I suppose the onus is on you to explain away the paradox by some other means. Even if computation is fundamental and physics is derivative, that still leaves consciousness as derivative too and possibly derivative from physics. If 'you' is identified with certain computations, some of which constitute your consciousness it is still the case that there are a great many threads of computation that are *not* you, so it is possible that all those threads that are 'you' stop being you, e.g. you're dead. Of course it may be that the threads constituting 'you' approach some simple state so that the closest continuation is the simple computational thread of a lizard, bacterium, or fetus. So you now can think of 'you' as continuing in this way - although it becomes rather arbitrary which lizard you will be. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
