date:20120702


On 7/1/2012 7:45 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 8:36 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/1/2012 5:21 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Jul 1, 2012, at 6:27 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/1/2012 2:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Jul 1, 2012, at 2:07 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/1/2012 11:50 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 1:20 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/1/2012 4:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Jul 2012, at 09:41, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/1/2012 12:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Jun 2012, at 22:31, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/30/2012 12:20 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Jun 2012, at 18:44, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


I think that you have mentioned that mechanism 
is
incompatible with materialism. How this follows 
then?


Because concerning computation and emulation (exact
simulation) all universal system are equivalent.

Turing machine and Fortran programs are completely
equivalent, you can emulate any Turing machine  by a
fortran program, and you can emulate any fortran
program by a Turing machine.

More, you can write a fortran program emulating a
universal Turing machine, and you can find a Turing
machine running a Fortran universal interpreter (or
compiler). This means that not only those system
compute the same functions from N to N, but also 
that
they can compute those function in the same manner 
of
the other machine.


But the question is whether they 'compute' anything 
outside
the context of a physical realization?


Which is addressed in the remaining of the post to Evgenii.
 Exactly like you can emulate fortran with Turing, a little
part of arithmetic emulate already all program fortran, 
Turing,
etc. (see the post for more).


Except neither fortran nor Turing machines exist apart from
physical realizations.


Of course they do. Turing machine and fortran program are 
mathematical,
arithmetical actually, object. They exist in the same sense that the
number 17 exists.


Exactly, as ideas - patterns in brain processes.


Brent,

What is the ontological difference between 17 and the chair you are sitting
in?  Both admit objective analysis, so how is either any more real than the 
other?

You might argue 17 is less real because we can't access it with our senses, 
but
neither can we access the insides of stars with our senses.  Yet no one
disputes the reality of the insides of stars.


We access them indirectly via instruments and theories of those instruments.



Are numbers not also inferred from theories of our instruments?


But not perceived.  They are part of the theory, i.e. the language.


Other branches of the wave function are not perceived either.  They are 
part of the
theory though, so can be considered real.


Or not.  They are part of a theory that has great predictive power, which 
is why we
think the theory is a good one - not necessarily *really real*.  Being 
'considered
real' is just a sort of provisional assumption for purposes of calculation. 
 The
wave function that is written down is just a way of summarizing an 
experimental
preparation.  Whether there is also a *really real* wave function of the 
universe
(or even of the laboratory) is moot.



They are real according to the math of QM, which is one of the most solidly established 
theories.  You can doubt they are real, but it is like doubting the theory of evolution.


In any case, my point was that there are many things in science we cannot perceive that 
are given the status of real or extant, so perceptibility cannot be a requirement.


If you need more examples, consider no instrument has ever observed a quark.  Nor has 
any instrument peered beyond the cosmological horizon.  Yet most particle physicists 
believe quarks are real, and most cosmologists believe the universe is more vast than 
the Hubble volume.






Numbers and Turing machines are part of Bruno's theory.  I don't see the
difference.  Why can't Turing machines exist?


Sure they can.  I can program this

Re: Autonomy?



On 01 Jul 2012, at 19:26, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Jul 1, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 There are incompatible from the 1-pov ONLY if you assume there  
can be only one Bruno Marchal


 1-pov means 1-pov from the 1-pov view.

 That's real nice, but the predictions written down in advance were:

1) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Washington and only Washington.
2) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Moscow and only Moscow.


Without making silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno  
Marchal


That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of  
computationalism. After the duplication and differentiation, there is  
only one Bruno Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.

This shows that you don't really make the thought experiment.



show me how these predictions were wrong from ANY perspective you  
care to name.


You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions. You 1) + 2)  
only describe the domain of the 1-indeterminacy.









 There is only one.

Even if there is only one I they third party outside observer  
agree with you, the 1-pov from the 1-pov view about your diary  
entry and it's accuracy.


 Even if I am duplicated into 10^100, all of them will have a  
unique pov.


If there were 10^100 cities then before the experiment you would  
write down 10^100  predictions in your diary and after the  
experiment all 10^100 Brunos would read what they had written in  
their diary and say I was right.

So where is this first person indeterminacy you keep talking about?



If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was wrong.
If 1) + 2) means 1) OR 2):  both will agree it was correct, but  
that OR was necessarily non constructive, and this confirms the 1- 
indeterminacy. Same with 1) + 2) + ... + 10^100).




  just look and see what was written in the diary before the  
experiment started, it's right there clear as a bell in black and  
white. So where is this spectral first person indeterminacy you  
keep talking about?


 The incompatible experience I feel to be in M and I feel to be  
in W. After the experience we can interview the two copies, and  
they will confirm it.


Yes, they will confirm that they feel exactly as they predicted they  
would feel, and there was nothing incompatible in the prediction.


Only if + is interpreted as an OR, confirming the indeterminacy.




 It helps to understand that from the 1-pov, the experience was not  
predictible.


You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your  
diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow. From my first person  
perspective, I live a selection, and I have no mean to have predicted  
it.



Then you, Bruno Washington, receive a fax from Bruno Moscow and see  
that he wrote in his diary  I Bruno Marchal am now in Moscow and  
only Moscow. Please show me what was in error in the predictions  
from ANY point of view.


Let us write more completely your 1) and 2) predictions:

1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome, and I guess now that the question  
was bearing on that, so I got eventually the 1-indeterminacy point.
2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome, and I guess now that the question  
was bearing on that, so I got eventually the 1-indeterminacy point.


So they both eventually understand that their first person povs was  
indeterminate on 1) and 2), and that the + was an OR, as it was  
clear at the start for those who take into account the difference  
between 1-pov and 3-pov.
I have really no clues why you keep NOT taking that difference into  
account. In fact you do, as with the 1)+2), but you keep describing  
the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of listening to each reconstituted  
person, for whom the + can only be interpreted as an OR.

I don't think anyone else but you miss that distinction.

Bruno



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



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Re: what is mechanism?



On 01 Jul 2012, at 20:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/1/2012 4:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Jul 2012, at 09:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/1/2012 12:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Jun 2012, at 22:31, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/30/2012 12:20 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 30 Jun 2012, at 18:44, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:



I think that you have mentioned that mechanism is incompatible  
with materialism. How this follows then?


Because concerning computation and emulation (exact simulation)  
all universal system are equivalent.


Turing machine and Fortran programs are completely equivalent,  
you can emulate any Turing machine  by a fortran program, and  
you can emulate any fortran program by a Turing machine.


More, you can write a fortran program emulating a universal  
Turing machine, and you can find a Turing machine running a  
Fortran universal interpreter (or compiler). This means that  
not only those system compute the same functions from N to N,  
but also that they can compute those function in the same  
manner of the other machine.


But the question is whether they 'compute' anything outside the  
context of a physical realization?


Which is addressed in the remaining of the post to Evgenii.   
Exactly like you can emulate fortran with Turing, a little part  
of arithmetic emulate already all program fortran, Turing, etc.  
(see the post for more).


Except neither fortran nor Turing machines exist apart from  
physical realizations.


Of course they do. Turing machine and fortran program are  
mathematical, arithmetical actually, object. They exist in the same  
sense that the number 17 exists.


Exactly, as ideas - patterns in brain processes.


That would contradict the Arithmetical realism, and thus Church  
thesis, comp, etc.






Brent

We can implement them in physical system, but this does not make  
them physical.





They are abstractions.


If you want. This changes nothing.






There is no need of step 8, here. It is just a mathematical fact  
that arithmetic emulates all programs, in the mathematical sense  
of emulate.


That's a metaphorical sense.


Not at all.



Arithmetic doesn't act or perform anything,



Acting and performing are the metaphor here. Computation is a  
purely mathematical notion discovered before the building of  
physical computer. Some could even argue that the physical reality  
can only approximate them.


Right.  They are idealizations.

And with comp we have to define eventually notion like acting and  
performing from the relation between numbers, and this is rather  
easy to do.


That doesn't follow.  Comp only says that we could substitute some  
different physical structure for part (or all) of a brain, and so  
long as the input/output functions were always


At some level,




the same consciousness would be unchanged.


OK.




 So comp allows that we may still need a physical realization of the  
functionality.


In which case physical inactive object, with respect to a particular  
computation, must be physically active. That is a contradiction. Cf  
step 8.





That this can be described by relations between numbers does not  
entail that it is replaceable by the abstraction.


Indeed, and that is why there is a step 8.




What is difficult is to get the right measure on the computations,  
not to define action and performance.
I am explaining what is a computation on the FOAR list, but you can  
find it also in any textbook on theoretical computer science. No  
notion of physics are involved at all in the definition.


But those definitions are concerned with abstracting away the  
physical,


If you want.



since the physical realization can be different for (approximately)  
the same function.


You are confusing a computation with its implementation in a physical  
reality. Computations have been discovered in the mathematical  
reality, before we implemented them in the physical reality. They  
exist independently of us, once you agree that 17 is prime is true  
independently of us. And 17 is prime independently of us is  
obligatory to explain what Church thesis is, so we assume that  
implicitly when saying yes to the doctor.





 It is no different than abstracting apples and oranges as fruit so  
that we can add one apple to one orange and get two fruit.  It  
doesn't make apples and oranges the same thing.


Sure. But it makes both of them being incarnation of fruit, showing  
that fruit can exist even without apple or without orange.


Bruno

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



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Re: what is mechanism?

2012-07-02 Thread Stephen P. King


On 7/2/2012 4:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Jul 2012, at 20:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/1/2012 4:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Except neither fortran nor Turing machines exist apart from 
physical realizations.



Of course they do. Turing machine and fortran program are 
mathematical, arithmetical actually, object. They exist in the same 
sense that the number 17 exists.


Exactly, as ideas - patterns in brain processes.


That would contradict the Arithmetical realism, and thus Church 
thesis, comp, etc.


Hi!

A big carve out of the preceding thread... We need an exact definition 
of Realism!








Brent

We can implement them in physical system, but this does not make 
them physical.





They are abstractions.


If you want. This changes nothing.






There is no need of step 8, here. It is just a mathematical fact 
that arithmetic emulates all programs, in the mathematical sense 
of emulate.


That's a metaphorical sense.


Not at all.



Arithmetic doesn't act or perform anything,



Acting and performing are the metaphor here. Computation is a purely 
mathematical notion discovered before the building of physical 
computer. Some could even argue that the physical reality can only 
approximate them.


Right. They are idealizations.

And with comp we have to define eventually notion like acting and 
performing from the relation between numbers, and this is rather 
easy to do.


That doesn't follow. Comp only says that we could substitute some 
different physical structure for part (or all) of a brain, and so 
long as the input/output functions were always


At some level,


But is this level reachable by finite means?




the same consciousness would be unchanged.


OK.


But how exactly would we measure this invariance of consciousness? How 
do we deal with the parochial nature of the encodings of the diaries 
that the various observers write such that we have something like a 3p 
account of the experience? What I write in my diary might be in a code 
that only I might understand, so how do we compensate for this 
variability of language?




So comp allows that we may still need a physical realization of the 
functionality.


In which case physical inactive object, with respect to a particular 
computation, must be physically active. That is a contradiction. Cf 
step 8.


In the case of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer we see that what appears to 
be physically purely passive and inactive arms can and does play a real 
and causal part such that its removal makes a difference.




That this can be described by relations between numbers does not 
entail that it is replaceable by the abstraction.


Indeed, and that is why there is a step 8.


But Step 8 makes a leap too far. It mistakes the relative independence 
of computations for complete separation from physical systems.






What is difficult is to get the right measure on the computations, 
not to define action and performance.
I am explaining what is a computation on the FOAR list, but you can 
find it also in any textbook on theoretical computer science. No 
notion of physics are involved at all in the definition.


But those definitions are concerned with abstracting away the physical,


If you want.


We do!



since the physical realization can be different for (approximately) 
the same function.


You are confusing a computation with its implementation in a physical 
reality. Computations have been discovered in the mathematical 
reality, before we implemented them in the physical reality. They 
exist independently of us, once you agree that 17 is prime is true 
independently of us. And 17 is prime independently of us is 
obligatory to explain what Church thesis is, so we assume that 
implicitly when saying yes to the doctor.


There simply is not such thing as a computation if we remove its 
implicated connection to the possibility of actual physical 
implementation. To remove the possibility is to disconnect it completely 
from the ability to be communicated. Purely abstract statements by your 
definition cannot cause any change in a physical system nor be 
correlated with any particular configuration of brain states, thus they 
are perpetually beyond our ability to apprehend them.




It is no different than abstracting apples and oranges as fruit so 
that we can add one apple to one orange and get two fruit. It doesn't 
make apples and oranges the same thing.


Sure. But it makes both of them being incarnation of fruit, showing 
that fruit can exist even without apple or without orange.


Nope, sorry. That simply doesn't work. Categories cannot be defined from 
the inside that do not have non-labelable members. To claim otherwise is 
to refute your entire result. How can you communicate its significance 
if you cannot write it down?


--
Onward!

Stephen

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: what is mechanism?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 03:36, meekerdb wrote:

That's right.  We can discover properties of real things that are  
not part of their defining description - unlike say the number 17.


That's weird. We might discover one day that 17 has some property we  
have not yet think of. The number 24 has been discovered to be a key  
number in the theory of the partition of numbers, and that discovery,  
although everyone agree with it, remains quite mysterious. In fact 24  
has incredible property that we discovered well before defining it.


Bruno


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



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Re: what is mechanism?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 03:36, meekerdb wrote:

I don't discount the possibility that Bruno's 'everything is  
arithmetic' might be a good model, I just haven't seen any  
predictive power yet.


1) A refutation of a theory metaphysical physicalism in the cognitive  
science does not need any predictive power. Comp refute physicalism.  
Comp explains why physicalist have to eliminate the first person  
points of view, or to add magical non Turing emulable property to  
matter.


2) comp predicts retrospectively most quantum weirdness, and ...  
consciousness including the non communicable features (qualia), where  
actual (physical) theories fails to do so.


Bruno



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



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Re: what is mechanism?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 04:45, Jason Resch wrote:

I agree that solving one problem (ontology) has created a new one  
(predicting experiences), but if solutions to old problems didn't  
bring new questions, science would have hit a dead end long ago.   
But just because we are faced with a new problem does not mean we  
haven't gotten anywhere.



Good point. Normally it should be considered as a progress. A problem  
(the mind-body problem) has been reduced into another problem (the  
measure on the relative computational histories).


Bruno

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



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Re: what is mechanism?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 10:28, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 7/2/2012 4:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Jul 2012, at 20:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/1/2012 4:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Except neither fortran nor Turing machines exist apart from  
physical realizations.



Of course they do. Turing machine and fortran program are  
mathematical, arithmetical actually, object. They exist in the  
same sense that the number 17 exists.


Exactly, as ideas - patterns in brain processes.


That would contradict the Arithmetical realism, and thus Church  
thesis, comp, etc.


Hi!

A big carve out of the preceding thread... We need an exact  
definition of Realism!


It is the believe that the principle of excluded middle can be apply  
on the arithmetical sentence. In particular the proof needs ony the  
belief that phi_i(j) converge or diverge, or that the machine i  
applied on j stops or does not stop, and this for any i and j.











Brent

We can implement them in physical system, but this does not make  
them physical.





They are abstractions.


If you want. This changes nothing.






There is no need of step 8, here. It is just a mathematical  
fact that arithmetic emulates all programs, in the mathematical  
sense of emulate.


That's a metaphorical sense.


Not at all.



Arithmetic doesn't act or perform anything,



Acting and performing are the metaphor here. Computation is a  
purely mathematical notion discovered before the building of  
physical computer. Some could even argue that the physical  
reality can only approximate them.


Right. They are idealizations.

And with comp we have to define eventually notion like acting and  
performing from the relation between numbers, and this is rather  
easy to do.


That doesn't follow. Comp only says that we could substitute some  
different physical structure for part (or all) of a brain, and so  
long as the input/output functions were always


At some level,


But is this level reachable by finite means?


Yes, in the sense that the UD will, after a finite number of  
computation steps (in the math sense) reach the corresponding genuine  
computational state(s).









the same consciousness would be unchanged.


OK.


But how exactly would we measure this invariance of consciousness?


Like we do each time we go to the hospital, or in any life situation.



How do we deal with the parochial nature of the encodings of the  
diaries that the various observers write such that we have something  
like a 3p account of the experience? What I write in my diary might  
be in a code that only I might understand, so how do we compensate  
for this variability of language?


For the same reason we agree with Gödel's proof despite he wrote it in  
german. Either use a dictionary or ask an interpreter. In this present  
case, we can ask to the candidate to write W, if he self-localizes  
himself  in Washington, after the duplication/differentiation, and M  
if not.









So comp allows that we may still need a physical realization of  
the functionality.


In which case physical inactive object, with respect to a  
particular computation, must be physically active. That is a  
contradiction. Cf step 8.


In the case of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer we see that what  
appears to be physically purely passive and inactive arms can and  
does play a real and causal part such that its removal makes a  
difference.


But if you simulate that with a Turing machine, you see that the arms  
does play a role, you have just a multiverse. Then we do the step 8 on  
that deeper simulation.








That this can be described by relations between numbers does not  
entail that it is replaceable by the abstraction.


Indeed, and that is why there is a step 8.


But Step 8 makes a leap too far. It mistakes the relative  
independence of computations for complete separation from physical  
systems.


That is the result of step 8. To make the reasoning invalid, it is  
enough to tell us that the result is surprising.









What is difficult is to get the right measure on the  
computations, not to define action and performance.
I am explaining what is a computation on the FOAR list, but you  
can find it also in any textbook on theoretical computer science.  
No notion of physics are involved at all in the definition.


But those definitions are concerned with abstracting away the  
physical,


If you want.


We do!



since the physical realization can be different for  
(approximately) the same function.


You are confusing a computation with its implementation in a  
physical reality. Computations have been discovered in the  
mathematical reality, before we implemented them in the physical  
reality. They exist independently of us, once you agree that 17 is  
prime is true independently of us. And 17 is prime independently  
of us is obligatory to explain what Church thesis is, so we assume  
that implicitly when saying yes to the doctor.


There simply is not

Re: what is mechanism?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 11:54, Bruno Marchal wrote (to Stephen):

It is the believe that the principle of excluded middle can be apply  
on the arithmetical sentence. In particular the proof needs ony the  
belief that phi_i(j) converge or diverge, or that the machine i  
applied on j stops or does not stop, and this for any i and j.


Of course I meant: it is the BELIEF  can be APPLIED ... on the  
arithmetic sentenceS.  In particular ... phi_i(j) convergeS or  
divergeS ...


I feel very sorry for my too quick spelling. Please ask me to rewrite  
any paragraph in case too much spelling mistakes make the statement  
ambiguous. Thanks for your patience.


Bruno

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



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Re: Autonomy?

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 You are, by definition asked to predict which one.


If the person asking the question demands one and only one prediction then
he has made the very silly logical assumption that there can only be one
Bruno Marchal.

 Your two predictions:

 1)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in
 Washington and only Washington.
 2)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Moscow
 and only Moscow.

 cannot work for this, because 1) and 2) are simply incompatible


Yes they are incompatible, but only if you make a very silly assumption,
but I have not done so.

 Each bruno marchal will see that only one of the two has been realized,


Yes, from his point of view he will only have proof that half of the
prediction is true and it will remain that way until he receives a fax from
the other Bruno Marchal definitively proving in black and white that the
entire prediction was 100% correct.

 When the W-John Clark and the M-John Clark will look at their diaries and
 see the two predictions,


Yes.

They will understand that only one of the two prediction has been
 verified, from their first person point of view,


No. I've read my diary and I've read the fax from the other John and from
my first person point of view I know that all the predictions made have
been verified, and the other John agrees, and so does any third party.

 If they redo the experience, they know that the prediction bears on the
 future unique first person experience. Which one cannot be predicted in
 advance for obvious logical reason.


In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is clear,
in this universe we can't know the position and momentum of something with
unlimited accuracy, perhaps in another universe you can but not in this
one. I can imagine a experiment that would prove physical indeterminacy is
untrue, that's why it's meaningful, but when you talk about first person
indeterminacy I don't understand what would satisfy you that it is untrue.
It seems to me you are trying to find something profound from the fact that
the Washington man will not see Moscow because if he did then he would not
be the Washington man, he'd be the Moscow man.

Even if it's not possible I can imagine what the desire to have a magic way
to know the exact momentum and position of something would mean, but I
don't know what  overcoming first person indeterminacy would look like in
this universe or any other. I don't know what you think is missing in the
prediction.

 Just after the experience is done, they will each know for sure which one
 among 1) and 2) has been realized,


They can't very well do it before the experience because before then
neither the Washington man nor the Moscow man exists and only the
experience of living in those cities creates them. I don't understand what
exactly the prediction is lacking that illustrates this first person
indeterminacy that you think is so very deep.

 In case you have not yet grasp the question,


And I most certainly have not grasped the question! I don't understand what
more you expect a successful prediction to do. If the evidence in the
diaries is not good enough exactly what would convince you that  first
person indeterminacy has been overcome. I can tell you exactly what would
convince me that physical indeterminacy has been overcome, just the exact
measurement of the momentum and position of something; all I ask is that
without getting all metaphysical  give me a concrete experiment that could
actually be performed that would convince you that first person
indeterminacy has been overcome. If you can't do that it's not science.

 I insist that the question bears only on that future first person
experience.

Like the first person experience of writing and reading a diary, a
experience which fortunately can be shared with a third party outside
observer; I say fortunately because otherwise we'd be talking about
mystical metaphysics not science.

 Not on a third person description of bodies nor on a third person
description of first person experiences, only on the first person
experience.

The only first person experience I know directly is my own, and science is
not good at making grand universal conclusions from only one example.

 Or give me the algorithm which will choose among 1) and 2)

OK, but First give me a algorithm that produces one unique answer to the
question Is 3 greater than 2 OR is 4 greater than 2?. If you can not
produce a single answer then the question is indeterminate, and it's also
silly.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 July 2012 15:06, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Not on a third person description of bodies nor on a third person
 description of first person experiences, only on the first person
 experience.

 The only first person experience I know directly is my own


For heaven's sake re-read your own statement above and then carefully
re-consider the question you are being asked, and that question only.
 After Bruno has been copied each copy must be in precisely the
first-person position you describe.  It follows, as a precise consequence
of your own statement above, that the first-person position of each is now
indeterminate relative to any prior prediction.  Resist being distracted by
the jointly-describable third-person situation of both copies considered
together.  This joint situation corresponds to *the first-person experience
of neither copy*.  Consequently you are not being asked about that; it is
beside the point.  The point is simply that The only first person
experience I know directly is my own.  Got it now?

David

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Re: Autonomy?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 16:06, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 You are, by definition asked to predict which one.

If the person asking the question demands one and only one  
prediction then he has made the very silly logical assumption that  
there can only be one Bruno Marchal.


Not at all. It uses only the fact that from the point of view of the  
subject he will feel only one unique experience.






 Your two predictions:

1)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Washington and only Washington.
2)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Moscow and only Moscow.


cannot work for this, because 1) and 2) are simply incompatible

Yes they are incompatible, but only if you make a very silly  
assumption, but I have not done so.


No? They are justifiably (if not evidently) incompatible from the  
point of view of the subject or subjects. Both will only *live* only  
one of the two possibilities.






 Each bruno marchal will see that only one of the two has been  
realized,


Yes, from his point of view he will only have proof that half of the  
prediction is true and it will remain that way until he receives a  
fax from the other Bruno Marchal definitively proving in black and  
white that the entire prediction was 100% correct.


Yes. The half. The question was bearing on the experience only. Yes,  
he learn later intellectually that the other has been successfully  
reconstituted, but that fact will not change the P=1/2.
Likewise, in the 1/2^n iterated self-duplication, the fact that you  
hear about the John Clark who saw the Monty Python movie, will change  
anything in the way the vast majority of John Clarks will predict the  
next outcomes if repeated.






 When the W-John Clark and the M-John Clark will look at their  
diaries and see the two predictions,


Yes.

They will understand that only one of the two prediction has been  
verified, from their first person point of view,


No. I've read my diary and I've read the fax



OK. By the very definition I gave, the diary relate the first person  
experience, and the fax make available a third person datum only.
Learning that the other is there will not make you suddenly being that  
one. In dependence with your psychology you can treat the other as a  
stranger, or as a brother, but not as you in the first person sense,  
that here-and-now. Unless you bring non Turing emulable telepathy,  
but then we go out of our working hypothesis.





from the other John and from my first person point of view I know  
that all the predictions made have been verified, and the other John  
agrees, and so does any third party.


Because you have restricted your prediction on the third person view  
on the 1-views. But that is just not answering the question asked.






 If they redo the experience, they know that the prediction bears  
on the future unique first person experience. Which one cannot be  
predicted in advance for obvious logical reason.


In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is  
clear,


This meaning is terribly debated since its inception. You contradict  
the whole literature. The collapse of the wave is still in the  
curriculum. Everett is still not really read. And I just put Everett  
logics one (logical) step further.






in this universe we can't know the position and momentum of  
something with unlimited accuracy, perhaps in another universe you  
can but not in this one. I can imagine a experiment that would prove  
physical indeterminacy is untrue, that's why it's meaningful, but  
when you talk about first person indeterminacy I don't understand  
what would satisfy you that it is untrue.


Even a zombie can fake to not understand the difference between the 1- 
view and the 3-view. If you want to see that all this leads to  
verifiable statement, read more cautiously the definition and go to  
step 4, etc.





It seems to me you are trying to find something profound from the  
fact that the Washington man will not see Moscow because if he did  
then he would not be the Washington man, he'd be the Moscow man.


The profound thing is that in Helsinki he does not know which one he  
will feel to be, so he is confronted with an indeterminacy, and he can  
try to quantify it, by using computer science, for example. See the  
other steps for more and more interesting protocols.






Even if it's not possible I can imagine what the desire to have a  
magic way to know the exact momentum and position of something would  
mean, but I don't know what  overcoming first person indeterminacy  
would look like in this universe or any other. I don't know what you  
think is missing in the prediction.


You did not predict the relative first person experience that you can  
live. You described the correct 3-view of the experiences, including  
charitably the 1-views, but still not listening to them.

Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote

  silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno Marchal


  That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of
 computationalism.


So you've proved that if  computationalism is true then there can be only
one Bruno Marchal, but for the proof to work you've got to start with the
assumption that there can be only one Bruno Marchal. Seems like a lot of
wasted effort to me.

 After the duplication and differentiation, there is only one Bruno
 Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.


And assuming they are logical all the Bruno Marchals would agree with each
other on that point, and I the third party observer agree too.

 You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions.


And that's twice as good if both predictions turn out to be true, and they
do.

 If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was wrong.


How on earth will they know it was wrong when every word that was predicted
to be written in those diaries was in fact written? It's interesting,
you're the one who introduced the idea of the people in the experiment
using diaries so it could be a real scientific experiment, but now you
don't like that idea.

 You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your diary
 I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


  Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow.


For God's sake, you know you're not the one in Moscow because you're not
the one in Moscow!  X is not Y because if it were Y would be X; Where is
the cosmic significance in that?

 1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have
 predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock solid
proof that you DID predict that outcome. Maybe you made other predictions
too, one about some fellow in Moscow, and maybe you made a prediction about
the rain probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant,
it doesn't effect you because you're in Washington.


  2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have predicted
 that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock solid
proof that you DID predict that outcome. Maybe you made other predictions
too, one about some fellow in Washington, and maybe you made a prediction
about the rain probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's
irrelevant, it doesn't effect you because you're in Moscow.

 you keep describing the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of listening to
 each reconstituted person


I am listening to them, and introducing the diaries into this was your idea
not mine.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:

  After Bruno has been copied each copy must be in precisely the
 first-person position you describe.


And one nanosecond after the copying when one receives sensory impulses
that originated in Moscow and the other   receives sensory impulses that
originated in Washington neither would be in precisely the first-person
position they were in before.

Got it now?


Nope.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 July 2012 17:50, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

*And one nanosecond after the copying when one receives sensory impulses
that originated in Moscow and the other   receives sensory impulses that
originated in Washington neither would be in precisely the first-person
position they were in before.*

What does that have to do with anything?  Is it credible that after all
this verbiage you have failed to grasp the difference between the
first-person position of each copy and a third-person description of both
copies together?  Congratulations, John - you really have succeeded in
elevating the straw man argument to a level hitherto unsuspected.

David

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Re: what is mechanism?


On 7/2/2012 1:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 It is no different than abstracting apples and oranges as fruit so that we can add one 
apple to one orange and get two fruit.  It doesn't make apples and oranges the same thing.


Sure. But it makes both of them being incarnation of fruit, showing that fruit can exist 
even without apple or without orange. 


But then your step 8 is analogous to saying that fruit exists in Platonia, independent of 
any physical realizations, and then since we can dispense with an physical realization of 
a fruit, physics is not fundamental but fruit is.


Brent

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Re: Autonomy?



On 02 Jul 2012, at 18:41, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote

  silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno Marchal

 That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of  
computationalism.


So you've proved that if  computationalism is true then there can  
be only one Bruno Marchal,


I will ask you not to use bruno marchal for that can be confusing.

You only forget that the question bears on the first person point of  
view, which, by the given definition and protocols is obviously  
unique, from their own pov, as your own description 1) and 2)  
already recognizes.




but for the proof to work you've got to start with the assumption  
that there can be only one Bruno Marchal. Seems like a lot of wasted  
effort to me.


 After the duplication and differentiation, there is only one Bruno  
Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.


And assuming they are logical all the Bruno Marchals would agree  
with each other on that point, and I the third party observer agree  
too.


So they will all agree having different views, and that the question  
was thus meaningful. They all agree that they could not have predicted  
the particular experience they are living. Such an a prediction  
algorithm is simply nonsensical.





 You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions.

And that's twice as good if both predictions turn out to be true,  
and they do.


Of course not. The one in M and the one in W have different  
incompatible experience. In one diary we see Well I am in Moscow  
now, and in the other diary well I am in Washington now, and the  
question was bearing on that. Not on where the copies are, but where  
the copies feel to be individually.







 If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was  
wrong.


How on earth will they know it was wrong when every word that was  
predicted to be written in those diaries was in fact written? It's  
interesting, you're the one who introduced the idea of the people in  
the experiment using diaries so it could be a real scientific  
experiment, but now you don't like that idea.


If you predicted 1)and 2), you are wrong at the start, because the  
question was on the 1-pov, and 1)-and-2) is not a possible 1-pov.
Or it means that you predicted the 3-view on the 1-view. In that case  
your prediction is correct but does not address the question asked.


Now you are only in W (resp. M), and your prediction fails to predict  
that special happening, which is obvious for you can't experience, in  
the usual cognitive sense of experience, both happening at once.







 You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your  
diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


 Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow.

For God's sake, you know you're not the one in Moscow because you're  
not the one in Moscow!
X is not Y because if it were Y would be X; Where is the cosmic  
significance in that?


The question is asked in Helsinki. Here you seem to be be deliberately  
rhetorically oversimplifying a sentence taken out of the context.






 1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock  
solid proof that you DID predict that outcome.


Then I can predict the winning lotery ticket. It is enough to write
1) ticket 00
2) ticket 01
3) ticket 02
...
100) ticket 99.

Wow. You are quite clairvoyant!



Maybe you made other predictions too, one about some fellow in  
Moscow, and maybe you made a prediction about the rain probability  
in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant, it doesn't  
effect you because you're in Washington.


 2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock  
solid proof that you DID predict that outcome.


Not if I find both 1) and 2), given that here I am living only 2)  
and not 1). So if this means that your prediction is successful, it  
means that you believe you have a mean to predict the winning lottery  
ticket.




Maybe you made other predictions too, one about some fellow in  
Washington, and maybe you made a prediction about the rain  
probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant, it  
doesn't effect you because you're in Moscow.


 you keep describing the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of  
listening to each reconstituted person


I am listening to them, and introducing the diaries into this was  
your idea not mine.


To give two outcomes when you see only one is not what is called  
prediction.


There is one outcome, not because there is only one John Clark, but  
because for all possible John Clarks, there is only one 1-pov, from  
their 1-pov view, and that the question was bearing on which one you  
can predict to be

Re: what is mechanism?


On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and people 
and numbers,



Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones with a large 
information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of anyone who believes physical 
laws are mathematical.


No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a description from the 
thing described.


Brent

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Re: what is mechanism?

2012-07-02 Thread Jason Resch

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

  Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and
 people and numbers,



 Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones
 with a large information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of
 anyone who believes physical laws are mathematical.


 No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a
 description from the thing described.


I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can ever
be made (by observers within a mathematical universe and observers within a
physical universe) then there is no distinction.  You are using physical
as an honorific, but it adds no information.

Jason

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Re: what is mechanism?

On 02 Jul 2012, at 19:39, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/2/2012 1:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It is no different than abstracting apples and oranges as fruit
so that we can add one apple to one orange and get two fruit. It
doesn't make apples and oranges the same thing.

Sure. But it makes both of them being incarnation of fruit, showing
that fruit can exist even without apple or without orange.

But then your step 8 is analogous to saying that fruit exists in
Platonia, independent of any physical realizations, and then since
we can dispense with an physical realization of a fruit, physics is
not fundamental but fruit is.

No doubt that the fruits are physical, and biological, and have deep
relation with our local constitutions.

I am not saying that physics is not fundamental, in the sense that it
determines indeed our local neighborhoods. I am saying that if comp is
correct we have the problem to relate the inference made by the
machines in those computations coherent with what they experienced,
which has to take the complex 1-indeterminacy domain given by UD*, or
by elementary arithmetic. But this results in having to derive physics
from the comp 1-indeterminacy, the global one, below our substitution
level, on UD*, or equivalently the sigma_1 complete part of
arithmetic. That is huge, from inside.

Bruno

Brent

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

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Re: what is mechanism?

2012-07-02 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 02.07.2012 20:12 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and
 people and numbers,



Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really
complex ones with a large information content. This is the
necessary conclusion of anyone who believes physical laws are
mathematical.


No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a
description from the thing described.


Brent,

Where to will you place 'description' in the physicalism? Is this just 
some excitation of natural neural nets or something else?


Evgenii

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Re: what is mechanism?


On 7/2/2012 11:21 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and 
people and
numbers,



Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones 
with a
large information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of anyone who 
believes
physical laws are mathematical.


No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a 
description from
the thing described.


I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can ever be made (by 
observers within a mathematical universe and observers within a physical universe) then 
there is no distinction.  You are using physical as an honorific, but it adds no 
information.


I can point to a chair and say This!

Brent

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Re: what is mechanism?


On 7/2/2012 11:50 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 02.07.2012 20:12 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and
 people and numbers,



Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really
complex ones with a large information content. This is the
necessary conclusion of anyone who believes physical laws are
mathematical.


No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a
description from the thing described.


Brent,

Where to will you place 'description' in the physicalism? Is this just some excitation 
of natural neural nets or something else?


The description is in Platonia.

Brent



Evgenii



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Re: what is mechanism?

2012-07-02 Thread Jason Resch

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 2:01 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/2/2012 11:21 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

  Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and
 people and numbers,



 Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones
 with a large information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of
 anyone who believes physical laws are mathematical.


 No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a
 description from the thing described.


  I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can
 ever be made (by observers within a mathematical universe and observers
 within a physical universe) then there is no distinction.  You are using
 physical as an honorific, but it adds no information.


 I can point to a chair and say This!


Yes, but how do you know you are pointing to a physical chair, rather
than a mathematical chair?

Also, the point test fails to work for past or future times, different
branches of the wave function, etc.

Jason

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread Craig Weinberg

Stephen,

Right, this is all about wholeness. I suggest that 

1. Wholeness can never be 100% independent of context. 

2. Since consciousness is materially related in any definition of wholeness, I 
reason that...

3. There is not necessarily any possible method of extracting, teleporting, 
simulating, or duplicating conscious entities since...

4. Consciousness may always be the top-most 'cream' of any given system. This 
makes sense to me from a statistical mechanics perspective. Awareness can be 
defined as the perpetually least likely possibility in all universes. It is the 
'floating superlative'; like the highest mountain peak in any geographic frame, 
consciousness is the 'peakness' itself - defining the form of the mountain by 
doing nothing more than just not being underneath any other part of itself.

You correctly understood what I was getting at. Brent correctly picked out a 
flaw in my use of teleportation rather than duplication but didn't care that 
it's really irrelevant.

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Re: what is mechanism?


On 7/2/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 2:01 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/2/2012 11:21 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and 
people
and numbers,



Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex 
ones with
a large information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of 
anyone who
believes physical laws are mathematical.


No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a 
description
from the thing described.


I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can ever 
be made
(by observers within a mathematical universe and observers within a physical
universe) then there is no distinction.  You are using physical as an 
honorific,
but it adds no information.


I can point to a chair and say This!


Yes, but how do you know you are pointing to a physical chair, rather than a 
mathematical chair?


I know I'm pointing at a chair.  I don't know what at 'mathematical chair' is. Can you 
point out how it is different from a chair?




Also, the point test fails to work for past or future times, different branches of the 
wave function, etc.


But it's fundamental. All the others depend on it through physical links.

Brent

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Re: what is mechanism?

On 7/2/2012 12:45 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 02.07.2012 21:08 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/2/2012 11:50 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 02.07.2012 20:12 meekerdb said the following:

On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs
and people and numbers,

Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really
complex ones with a large information content. This is the
necessary conclusion of anyone who believes physical laws are
mathematical.

No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish
a description from the thing described.

Brent,

Where to will you place 'description' in the physicalism? Is this
just some excitation of natural neural nets or something else?

The description is in Platonia.

This is presumably one of the reasons that Popper at the end has come to World 3
(equivalent of Platonia):

“If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the world 3 products of the
human mind, acting through the intervention of the human mind then this means that the
worlds 1, 2, and 3, can interact and, therefore, that none of them is causally closed.
The thesis that the physical world is not causally closed but that it can be acted upon
by world 2 and, through its intervention, by world 3, seems to be particularly hard to
swallow for the materialist monist, or the physicalist.”

Yet, as a consequence this should mean as Popper mentioned that the physical world is
not causally closed.

In which case there should be observable events in the brain or elsewhere which are caused
unphysically by events in World 3. It is not clear to me how this would comport with
computationalism which assumes that any mechanism with the same physical functionality
will always compute the same function. Perhaps quantum randomness allows this, although
the evidence seems to point to the brain being functionally classical.

Brent

Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 The profound thing is that in Helsinki he does not know which one he will
 feel to be, so he is confronted with an indeterminacy


Suppose I send the same identical Email to both you and to Craig at the
same identical time, you look at your copy and think  when John hit the
send button on his computer he could not have predicted that I would get
this copy of the Email and not the one Craig got, so it's a example of
indeterminacy and all sorts of profound conclusions can be drawn from that
fact. What makes this ridiculous is that the 2 Emails are identical and
thus completely interchangeable. In the same way the man sent to Washington
and the man sent to Moscow are also identical and thus completely
interchangeable, and they will remain that way until the environments of
Washington and Moscow, being different, change the two so they are
different and no longer interchangeable. So first person indeterminacy is
just the result of the unpredictable nature of what goes on in Washington
and Moscow.

 Learning that the other is there will not make you suddenly being that
 one.


Why would I need to suddenly become that other fellow for a logical man to
conclude that the predictions written in that diary was 100% correct??

  you have restricted your prediction on the third person view on the
 1-views.


I am in Washington and feel like I'm in Washington and only in Washington
and that is just what I predicted would happen. If that's not a 1-view
what is?

 But that is just not answering the question asked.


The answer is 42 but I can't figure out what the question is or why what
was written in that diary is not a successful prediction.

 In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is clear


  This meaning is terribly debated since its inception.


That is entirely incorrect. The meaning of physical indeterminacy has
always been crystal clear, it's the truth or falsehood of it that has been
debated; but when you say first person indeterminacy I don't even know
what you're talking about.

  John K Clark

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Re: what is mechanism?

On 7/2/2012 2:09 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

To summarize our conversation up to this point:

BM: Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and people
and numbers,
JR: Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones with a
large information content. This is the necessary conclusion of anyone who believes
physical laws are mathematical.
BM: No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a description from
the thing described.
JR: I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can ever be made
(by observers within a mathematical universe and observers within a physical universe)
then there is no distinction. You are using physical as an honorific, but it adds no
information.

BM: I can point to a chair and say This!
JR: Yes, but how do you know you are pointing to a physical chair, rather than a
mathematical chair?
BM: I know I'm pointing at a chair. I don't know what at 'mathematical chair' is. Can
you point out how it is different from a chair?

I think we both agree that if the universe follows mathematical laws, then observers can
make no distinction between whether they exist in a platonically existing mathematical
object, or a physical universe. If you agree with this, then there is no fundamental
ontological difference between chairs, people, and numbers, that I can see.

No. The mathematical laws of physics (e.g. the standard model) leave initial conditions
undetermined, they assume inherent randomness (symmetry breaking), they don't specify why
they are the laws of physics instead of some others. So the ontological difference is that
some things exist and some don't. This distinction doesn't exist in Platonia:
exist=having a consistent description. In physics exist=a member of the ontology of the
fundamental model.

That's why Everett, to avoid having some randomness, postulated that we exist in many
copies. Others have postulated multiple copies of the universe beyond the Hubble radius
or in separate inflating spacetimes. Tegmark proposed all mathematical structures.
Most of this strikes me as a metaphysical stretch to equate the physical world with the
Platonic. In Platonia everything not self-contradictory exists. There is no difference
between logical and nomological. Our universe is 'explained' by anthropic selection from
everything. So do you think there were chairs before there were people? Were there
numbers before people?

Facing the question: is the universe a mathematical object, or a physical one, we must
evaluate the two candidate theories as we would any other.

That's not the question. The question is whether all mathematical objects exist while
only some physical ones do. In the latter case we need to find which physical ones exist
and what is their mathematical description.

Does one theory explain more, does one make fewer assumptions, etc. The existence of
the physical universe does not explain the existence of mathematical objects

I think it does. See William S. Coopers The Evolution of Reason.

, but the converse is true.

But only in the cheap sense of 'explain' like God did it. Bruno at least limits his
fundamental ontology to digital computation, but even this threatens to 'explain' too much.

Brent

Re: what is mechanism?

2012-07-02 Thread Jason Resch

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 5:35 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 7/2/2012 2:09 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 To summarize our conversation up to this point:

 BM: Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and
 people and numbers,
 JR: Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex
 ones with a large information content.  This is the necessary conclusion of
 anyone who believes physical laws are mathematical.
 BM: No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a
 description from the thing described.
 JR: I think the identity of indiscernibles applies: If no distinction can
 ever be made (by observers within a mathematical universe and observers
 within a physical universe) then there is no distinction.  You are using
 physical as an honorific, but it adds no information.
 BM: I can point to a chair and say This!
 JR: Yes, but how do you know you are pointing to a physical chair,
 rather than a mathematical chair?
 BM: I know I'm pointing at a chair.  I don't know what at 'mathematical
 chair' is. Can you point out how it is different from a chair?

 I think we both agree that if the universe follows mathematical laws,
 then observers can make no distinction between whether they exist in a
 platonically existing mathematical object, or a physical universe.  If you
 agree with this, then there is no fundamental ontological difference
 between chairs, people, and numbers, that I can see.


 No.  The mathematical laws of physics (e.g. the standard model) leave
 initial conditions undetermined,


Which is equivalent to saying every solution to the Schrodinger equation is
true.


 they assume inherent randomness (symmetry breaking),


No where in the math of quantum mechanics is there anything that suggest
collapse of the wave function.  A strict interpretation of the the math
leaves only MWI (or alternatively, as Ron Garett points out zero-universes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc ).  The randomness is explained
directly by first person indeterminacy in a reality containing all
possibilities.


 they don't specify why they are the laws of physics instead of some
 others.


Many physicists hope that they will one day find a reason that our laws of
physics are unique, some justification why the one they find themselves in
is the only one that can be, but this seeming to be a pipe dream.  Many
physicists dislike anthropic reasoning, perhaps because it spoils their
dream of finding a TOE, but disliking something shouldn't carry any weight
in assessing a theory's validity.


 So the ontological difference is that some things exist and some don't.
  This distinction doesn't exist in Platonia: exist=having a consistent
 description.  In physics exist=a member of the ontology of the fundamental
 model.


What's wrong with Platonia being a fundamental model?



 That's why Everett, to avoid having some randomness, postulated that we
 exist in many copies.


I think there are more reasons than that.  Before Everett, QM was extremely
ugly, being the only non-local, non-time reversible, FTL permitting, theory
in all of physics.  It is more accurate to say Bohr and Heisenberg inserted
collapse into the theory in an attempt to rescue the single-universe idea.
There is nothing in the math of QM to suggest collapse exists, its addition
was entirely artificial, and done to make the theory seem to fit in with
our experience.  Everett showed there was no need to do this to fit with
our experience, as the theory itself explains why we don't feel ourselves
split.


  Others have postulated multiple copies of the universe beyond the Hubble
 radius or in separate inflating spacetimes.  Tegmark proposed all
 mathematical structures.  Most of this strikes me as a metaphysical
 stretch to equate the physical world with the Platonic.


Why?



  In Platonia everything not self-contradictory exists.  There is no
 difference between logical and nomological. Our universe is 'explained' by
 anthropic selection from everything.


And yet another mystery: fine tuning, is explained away.


  So do you think there were chairs before there were people?  Were there
 numbers before people?


There is no before or after in Platonia.  Time is only meaningful to
observers inside certain mathematical structures.




 Facing the question: is the universe a mathematical object, or a physical
 one, we must evaluate the two candidate theories as we would any other.


 That's not the question.  The question is whether all mathematical objects
 exist while only some physical ones do.


No.  If all mathematical objects exist, then all things which could be
considered physical universes exist too.  What possible difference is there
between a physical universe and a mathematical structure isomorphic to that
universe?  Should these extraneous physical universes not be discarded
according to Occam?



  In the latter case we need to find which physical ones exist and what is
 their

Re: what is mechanism?