Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 01 Oct 2012, at 01:56, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data. Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide. I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better explanation consistent with Occam's Razor? Hi Stathis, Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed. Hi Stathis, What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about things that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle ground here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is not related to the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If we do that then we have to have a good reason. So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the difference that makes a difference? The difference between artificial and natural is artificial. And thus it is natural too, apparently for species which develop big ego and develop a feeling of superiority: the Löbian trap, we could say. Evolution is no more intelligent than universal non Löbian arithmetic, humans are no more intelligent than any Löbian machine. The difference which makes the difference might be Löbianity: the fact that we can know that we are universal (and Löbian). Löbianity arrives with the induction axioms, and that is indeed what makes us able to *foreseen* possible futures, to feel different from others, to develop selves, and self-consciousness, etc. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 01 Oct 2012, at 02:02, meekerdb wrote: On 9/30/2012 4:28 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but evolved systems, then they must have the same limitations as evolution itself, unless you can explain why they wouldn't. More nothing buttery. If people are just atoms they must have the same limitations as atoms. Good (ironical) remark. The whole *is* very often more than the parts. Non Löbian entities can create/emulate the Löbian entities. That is why we can take a very simple whole as ontology, be it a tiny arithmetic without induction axioms, or a differential equation (like SWE), and then interview the Löbian entities appearing there. This is what make explanations possible. Many seem to want matter and consciousness primitive, because they don't accept that we can explain them from non material and non conscious things. But we can do that, even if that includes some part necessarily obscure, for logical reason, as there is an arithmetical blind spot for arithmetical creatures. Bruno 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 . 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: Fwd: Sokal-type hoax on two theological conferences
Even if intentionally faked, for sure the article add to theology more than what Margaret Mead added to Anthropology for years, or what global warmists are adding to Meteorology ;) 2012/9/30 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 9/30/2012 4:31 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Hehe. Fine. However, the concrete abstract seems very promising for a theologian. It is clear that Boudry know the concepts that he manage. His abstract is a piece of cake, it is a I solved the Teologian problem of our time! . It is not pure gibberish. Remenber that the Sokal affair was around a complete article, not an abstract. Boudry also wrote a complete aritcle, which was published. You can follow the link and read it, if you'r so inclined. Brent I know that a great number of hoax papers are submitted and accepted in scientific press.Many of them are not for joking purposes, but for people that want relevance, fame and money. This hasn´t to undermine hard sciences. ( Not in the case of modern cultural and gender studies that are pure indoctrination ) In my particular case, I worked in European I+D projects where subsidies depended on the imagination, the length of the documents and the appropriate use of buzzwords. Alberto. -- 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.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- Alberto. -- 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: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 01 Oct 2012, at 10:39, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/9/30 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 30 Sep 2012, at 15:54, Alberto G. Corona wrote: And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Good point. And today, those who get the real power on this planet are still the bacteria. We need them. The vast majority doesn't need us, except, well many but still a minority which lives with us. Strictly speaking those bacteria are as modern as us, as leaves of the fourth dimensional life structure of this planet. But all this might be the result of something more simple, a bit like z := z^2 + c iterations in the complex plane. Bruno Hi bruno: Seen from outside, life has the appearance of regions with low entropy going in the direction of increasing entropy . There is a mathematical definition of entropy: the metric entropy. I do not know if this can be applied to the Mandelbrot set. I guess it can, as the Mandelbrot set is an example of deterministic chaos. It classifies an infinity of more and more complex dynamical processes. But I have not studied this entropic feature very closely. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- Alberto. -- 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: Evolution outshines reason by far
2012/9/30 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 9/30/2012 6:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Did you miss the word macroscopic? Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. But NS couldn't 'invent' it for macroscopic size animals traveling on hard smooth surfaces, because it had already 'invented' legs and there was no evolutionary path from legs to wheels. That is right, but this is not the most important. This is not the complete reason behaind lack of usage of macroscopic wheels by nature. Neiter mine that I expose here below. To gasp how NS works is to admit the basic we don´t know that return us to the human condition. The reason behind is repairability. much of the wheel pieces are not accessible from outside, because a weel is made of topologically disconected pieces. Whenever men manage to create an autonomous robot that can travel trough a planet for years without human support, it will be made of legs rather than wheels. A living being by definition to have control of its parts has to be topologically connected. The weels in the flagella of a bacteria are inside the bacteria, so she can absorb them and create new ones. So, surprise surprise, evolution use also macroscopic wheels inside organisms: The wheels we use daily in the cars are internal to the social organism. That´s why the weels can be repaired. The human societies are natural organisms at a level above animal organisms. There are many levels. A multicellular animal is the result of five levels of natural selection. There is no reason why not consider human societies as a leven in natural evolution. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons You mean the random events and the selection events - there are no *reasons*. The human understanding when he discover a cause consider it as reasonable because it obey a discovered reason. The reasons behind bird wings is the i laws of flying. Apparently if the cause is not discovered, many people despises it as unreasonable or irrational or idiotic. That, by the way is probably the most tragic error in logic of our time. Selection introduces teleology where previously there were non teleological laws. from each level, selection produces the emergence of new teleological levels of meaning and purpose. from non-life, selection creates plant-like life. from this, selection creates the teleology of avoiding suffering and going after pleasure of animals. From this level, selection produces the teleology of avoiding evil and going after beauty, truth and the good of humans in society, that is what we are doing now in this discussion group. behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. Not in general. Some engineers consider it good design to make multiple uses of the same structure, e.g. there was a German
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 10/1/2012 4:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The whole *is* very often more than the parts. Non Löbian entities can create/emulate the Löbian entities. That is why we can take a very simple whole as ontology, be it a tiny arithmetic without induction axioms, or a differential equation (like SWE), and then interview the Löbian entities appearing there. This is what make explanations possible. Many seem to want matter and consciousness primitive, because they don't accept that we can explain them from non material and non conscious things. But we can do that, even if that includes some part necessarily obscure, for logical reason, as there is an arithmetical blind spot for arithmetical creatures. Bruno Hi Bruno, It makes sense for this to be true because if we can interact with something, that something can interact with us. If knowledge or explanation is a form of interaction, it makes sense that there is a symmetrical relation involved. The mutual partial blind spot may be a place where something hides. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Monday, October 1, 2012 1:36:24 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I don't doubt that initial experiments would not yield ideal results. Neural prostheses would initially be used for people with disabilities. Cochlear implants are better than being deaf, but not as good as normal hearing. But technology keeps getting better while the human body stays more or less static, so at some point technology will match and then exceed it. At the very least, there is no theoretical reason why it should not. I'm all for neural mods and implants. Augmenting and repairing brain = great, replacing the brain = theoretically viable only in theories rooted in blind physicalism, in which consciousness is inconceivable to begin with. You're suggesting that even if one implant works as well as the original, multiple implants would not. Is there a critical replacement limit, 20% you feel normal but 21% you don't? How have you arrived at this insight? If you have one brain tumor, you may still function. With multiple tumors, you might not fare as well. Tumors function fine on some levels (they are living cells successfully dividing) but not on others (they fail to stop dividing, perhaps because there is a diminished identification with the sense of the organ as a whole). Because we are 100% ignorant of any objective ontology of consciousness, there is no reason to assume that an implant can possibly function well enough to act as a replacement on all levels, unless possibly if the implant was made of one's own stem cells (probably the best avenue to pursue). PS Someone posted a good AI related quote today that sort of applies: I think the point at which a computer program can be considered intelligent is the point at which — given an error — you, as the programmer, can say *it*made a mistake. If an implanted device doesn't make mistakes, it isn't human intelligence. If it does make mistakes, it has to make the kinds of mistakes that humans can tolerate...the mistakes have to be sourced in the same personal agendas of living beings. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/-/MUoxn-LNZccJ. 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.
Numbers vs monads
Hi Bruno Marchal My responses are indicated with s - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 13:58:19 Subject: Re: Einstein and space Hi Roger Clough, I have regrouped my comments because they are related. On 30 Sep 2012, at 13:34, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King With his relativity principle, Einstein showed us that there is no such thing as space, because all distances are relational, relative, not absolute. With comp there is clear sense in which there is not space, are there is only numbers (or lambda terms) and that they obey only two simple laws: addition and multiplication (resp. application and abstraction). Note that with Einstein, there is still an absolute space-time. ### ROGER: That was a later view of his, apparently in his attempt to restore some absolute order to the universe and to disprove QM. But it was an imaginary universe in which this applied, with no gravitational fields and curved space. So not a general explanation. The Michelson?orley experiment also proved that there is no ether, there is absolutely nothing there in what we call space. I agree, but there are little loopholes, perhaps. A friend of mine made his PhD on a plausible intepretation of Poincar? relativity theory, and points on the fact that such a theory can explain some of the non covariance of the Bohmian quantum mechanics (which is a many- world theory + particles having a necessary unknown initial conditions so that an added potential will guide the particle in one universe among those described by the universal quantum wave. I don't take this seriously, though. ### ROGER: Interesting. I myself, although in a joking manner, have said that the Michaelson-Morley experiment could be interpreted in two different ways: 1) That there was no ether that earth was moving through due to the fact that the measured speed of light is independent of direction, (which was the MM interpretation, ) or, as I jokingly suggested, 2) That the earth was stationary as was the absolute ether. So no directionality would be seen (that was what they observed). Photons simply jump across space, their so-called waves are simply mathematical constructions. In that case you will have to explain me how mathematical construction can go through two slits and interfere. ### ROGER: Quanta are different from particles. They don't move from A to B along particular paths through space (or even through space), they move through all possible mathematical paths - which is to say that they are everywhere at once- until one particular path is selected by a measurement (or selected by passing through slits). ... Note that intelligence requires the ability to select. Selection of a quantum path (collapse or reduction of the jungle of brain wave paths) produces consciousness, according to Penrose et al. They call it orchestrated reduction. . Leibniz similarly said, in his own way, that neither space nor time are substances. They do not exist. They do exist, however, when they join to become (extended) substances appearing as spacetime. OK. (and comp plausible). other post: Hi Stephen P. King Leibniz would not go along with epiphenomena because the matter that materialists base their beliefs in is not real, so it can't emanate consciousness. Comp true . Leibniz did not believe in matter in the same way that atheists today do not believe in God. Comp true . And with good reason. Leibniz contended that not only matter, but spacetime itself (or any extended substance) could not real because extended substances are infinitely divisible. Space time itself is not real for a deeper reason. Why would the physical not be infinitely divisible and extensible, especially if not real? ROGER: Objects can be physical and also infinitely divisible, but L considered this infinite divisibility to disqualify an object to be real because there's no end to the process, one wouldn't end up with something to refer to. Personally. I substitute Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as the basis for this view because the fundamental particles are supposedly divisible. By definition an atom is not divisible, and the atoms today are the elementary particles. Not sure you can divide an electron or a Higgs boson. With comp particles might get the sme explanation as the physicist, as fixed points for some transformation in a universal group or universal symmetrical system. The simple groups, the exceptional groups, the Monster group can play some role there (I speculate). ROGER: You can split an atom because it has parts, reactors do that all of the time. of this particular point, Electrons and other fundamental particles do not have parts.
Re: Re: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads
Hi Stephen P. King Good idea, but unfortunately monads are not numbers, numbers will now guide them or replace them. Monads have to be associated with corporeal bodies down here in contingia, where crap happens. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:22:03 Subject: Re: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads On 9/30/2012 8:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I'm still trying to figure out how numbers and ideas fit into Leibniz's metaphysics. Little is written about this issue, so I have to rely on what Leibniz says otherwise about monads. Previously I noted that numbers could not be monads because monads constantly change. Another argument against numbers being monads is that all monads must be attached to corporeal bodies. So monads refer to objects in the (already) created world, whose identities persist, while ideas and numbers are not created objects. While numbers and ideas cannot be monads, they have to be are entities in the mind, feelings, and bodily aspects of monads. For Leibniz refers to the intellect of human monads. And similarly, numbers and ideas must be used in the fictional construction of matter-- in the bodily aspect of material monads, as well as the construction of our bodies and brains. Dear Roger, Bruno's idea is a form of Pre-Established Hamony, in that the truth of the numbers is a pre-established ontological primitive. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Attacking the brain transplant experiment
Those who have faith in the possibility of brain transplants might consider this: You cannot separate the self (your ID) from the body. Your skin, the envelope of your body and self, is part of you, meaning your self. Why ? If somebody pricks you with a pin, it causes a body reaction. Yoga also uses this wholistic bodymind approach, relaxing muscles relaxwes the mind. Pretty obvious. The sense of touch is our most intimate sense, and that's part of the skin. Intimate to the self. But free will arguments typically leave out the body as a determinant. So, including body in the definition of the self, I prefer to use the term self-determination, meaning that our will and thought and desifre is affected by everything within our skin. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:23:50 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/30/2012 8:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive, at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen. The unstated assumption here is that organism are defined by the bounding surface of their skin, anything 'outside' of that is being assumed to not be part of them. It is not hard to knock down this idea as nonsensical! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
Hi Stathis Papaioannou Numbers were there before man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 11:04:19 Subject: Re: Evolution outshines reason by far On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:54 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don? know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. BUT THESE RULES OF GOOD DESIGN ARE A CONSEQUIENCE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF REASON. Reason does not produce optimal solutions. it produce the optimal solution that he can handle without breaking. Natural selection takes the whole problem and produce the optimal solution without modular limitations. Starting from scratch, evolutionary algoritms have designed electronic circuits with a half or a third of components, that are more fast that the equivalent rational designs. As Koza, for example has done: http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html These circuits designs are impossible to understand rationally. why? because they are not modular. There is no division of the problem in smaller problems. a transistor may be connected to more than one input or output and so on. But they are better, ligther, faster. it seems a Bad design but this is a subjective perception, as a consequience of our rational inherent limitations. It is not a casual that genetic algoritms are used whenever 1) it is or very difficult to break a problem in parts 2) is easy to measure how good a solution is. I have used genetic-evolutionary algoritms for deducing the location of extinction resources in a simulated firing. The algoritm deduced the optimal location every time. the only problem is that we did not know WHY this was the optimal solution. In the same way, an human organ can perform 3 4 5 functionalities at the same time. the capillar tubes in a tree act as pumps, conducts, architectural sustaining foundation and may be many more that still we don? know. In the same way societies are subjects of evolution. A natural socio-biological institution, like the family has many functions, far more than the social engineers think. Its functions can not be extracted away by public institutions ruled by social engineers without a failure of the whole society. That is why conservatives rely on nature where progressives rely on reason and this is the reason why the latter fail. But natural evolution does not start from scratch it has to modify previous designs for new needs, while reason without the help of tradiction, operates
Re: Re: Einstein and space
Hi Stephen P. King Good luck with improving Leibniz, but I see no problem with his ideas. He even has nonlocal QM in his schema. Materialists hate that. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:16:32 Subject: Re: Einstein and space On 9/30/2012 7:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King With his relativity principle, Einstein showed us that there is no such thing as space, because all distances are relational, relative, not absolute. The Michelson?orley experiment also proved that there is no ether, there is absolutely nothing there in what we call space. Photons simply jump across space, their so-called waves are simply mathematical constructions. Leibniz similarly said, in his own way, that neither space nor time are substances. They do not exist. They do exist, however, when they join to become (extended) substances appearing as spacetime. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/30/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Indeed! We just have different ideas about monads. I see the monads, as Leibniz defined them, as flawed. I seek to fix that flaw so that the theory of monads works with other modern concepts. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Stephen P. King Numbers did not evolve, they always were. And always will be. Only imperfect things need to evolve (or can). All necessary truths have always been. The Pythagorean Theorem would be useful to design snowflakes, no ? Contingency is the world of change, which is required for evolution. Imperfect things evolve, they are part of Contingia. But perfect things always were. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 19:56:20 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data. Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide. I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better explanation consistent with Occam's Razor? Hi Stathis, Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed. Hi Stathis, What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about things that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle ground here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is not related to the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If we do that then we have to have a good reason. So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the difference that makes a difference? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 11:45 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You're suggesting that even if one implant works as well as the original, multiple implants would not. Is there a critical replacement limit, 20% you feel normal but 21% you don't? How have you arrived at this insight? If you have one brain tumor, you may still function. With multiple tumors, you might not fare as well. Tumors function fine on some levels (they are living cells successfully dividing) but not on others (they fail to stop dividing, perhaps because there is a diminished identification with the sense of the organ as a whole). Because we are 100% ignorant of any objective ontology of consciousness, there is no reason to assume that an implant can possibly function well enough to act as a replacement on all levels, unless possibly if the implant was made of one's own stem cells (probably the best avenue to pursue). You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act strangely. How can you know that this will happen? You're not just saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Sunday, September 30, 2012 8:02:55 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 9/30/2012 4:28 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but evolved systems, then they must have the same limitations as evolution itself, unless you can explain why they wouldn't. More nothing buttery. If people are just atoms they must have the same limitations as atoms. More reductionist ideology. If people are just atoms then atoms must have the same power to transcend limitations as people. Craig Brent -- 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/-/eIppZLloylsJ. 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: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Stephen P. King intelligent design is an oxymoronism. You can't have design without intelligence. It requires intelligence to form a design, whether by God, by humans or by nature. So there had to be some sort of intelligence prior to the Big Bang in order for the universe to have design or structure. Fill in the dots. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 20:29:55 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/30/2012 8:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/30/2012 4:56 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data. Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide. I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better explanation consistent with Occam's Razor? Hi Stathis, Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed. Hi Stathis, What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about things that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle ground here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is not related to the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If we do that then we have to have a good reason. So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the difference that makes a difference? The difference is that human designers have in mind some goal for their design, they can start from a clean sheet or modify and existing design, they can design, build and test things without making lots of copies. How does your new remark answer my question? Are Humans somehow special? Are we not part of the integrate whole that is Nature? -- Onward! Stephen -- 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: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Exactly. It's one thing for a person to use an artificial hand, but what is it that learns to use an artificial 'you'? It's hard for me to understand how this obvious Grand Canyon is repeatedly glossed over in these conversations. Head amputation? No big deal... Ehhh, not so fast I say, and saying not so fast doesn't make someone a Luddite, it just doesn't make sense that without understanding anything about how or why subjectivity comes to be that we should presume to reproduce it through imitation of the very body parts which seem to show now trace of consciousness without us. You are not located in a special spot in the brain. You are an ensemble of parts working together. If you determine the rules a component in the ensemble follows in response to its neighbours you can replace that part and the ensemble will behave the same. You don't need to know EXACTLY how the part behaves, only APPROXIMATELY, since in ordinary life neurons change from moment to moment and the brain continues to function. Sop if you replace a part, the behaviour of the organism will be unchanged. But if consciousness changes despite behaviour remaining the same you have a really weird situation: a person who feels he has changed but is powerless to prevent his vocal cords from speaking and saying that he has not changed. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers vs monads
Hi Roger Clough, ### ROGER: Quanta are different from particles. They don't move from A to B along particular paths through space (or even through space), they move through all possible mathematical paths - which is to say that they are everywhere at once- until one particular path is selected by a measurement (or selected by passing through slits). Do you agree with Everett that all path exists, and that the selection might equivalent with a first person indeterminacy? ... Note that intelligence requires the ability to select. OK. But the ability to selct does not require intelligence, just interaction and some memory. Selection of a quantum path (collapse or reduction of the jungle of brain wave paths) produces consciousness, according to Penrose et al. They call it orchestrated reduction. . Penrose is hardly convincing on this. Its basic argument based on Gödel is invalid, and its theory is quite speculative, like the wave collapse, which has never make any sense to me. Why would the physical not be infinitely divisible and extensible, especially if not real? ROGER: Objects can be physical and also infinitely divisible, but L considered this infinite divisibility to disqualify an object to be real because there's no end to the process, one wouldn't end up with something to refer to. In comp we end up with what is similar above the substitution level. What we call macro, but which is really only what we can isolate. The picture is of course quite counter-intuitive. Personally. I substitute Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as the basis for this view because the fundamental particles are supposedly divisible. By definition an atom is not divisible, and the atoms today are the elementary particles. Not sure you can divide an electron or a Higgs boson. With comp particles might get the sme explanation as the physicist, as fixed points for some transformation in a universal group or universal symmetrical system. The simple groups, the exceptional groups, the Monster group can play some role there (I speculate). ROGER: You can split an atom because it has parts, reactors do that all of the time. of this particular point, Electrons and other fundamental particles do not have parts. You lost me with the rest of this comment, but that's OK. Yes. Atoms are no atoms (in greek άτομο means not divisible). But if string theory is correct even electron are still divisible (conceptually). I still don't know with comp. Normally some observable have a real continuum spectrum. Physical reality cannot be entirely discrete. I'm still trying to figure out how numbers and ideas fit into Leibniz's metaphysics. Little is written about this issue, so I have to rely on what Leibniz says otherwise about monads. OK. I will interpret your monad by intensional number. let me be explicit on this. I fixe once and for all a universal system: I chose the programming language LISP. Actually, a subset of it: the programs LISP computing only (partial) functions from N to N, with some list representation of the numbers like (0), (S 0), (S S 0), ... I enumerate in lexicographic way all the programs LISP. P_1, P_2, P_3, ... The ith partial computable functions phi_i is the one computed by P_i. I can place on N a new operation, written #, with a # b = phi_a(b), that is the result of the application of the ath program LISP, P_a, in the enumeration of all the program LISP above, on b. Then I define a number as being intensional when it occurs at the left of an expression like a # b. The choice of a universal system transforms each number into a (partial) function from N to N. A number u is universal if phi_u(a, b) = phi_a(b). u interprets or understands the program a and apply it to on b to give the result phi_a(b). a is the program, b is the data, and u is the computer. (a, b) here abbreviates some number coding the couple (a, b), to stay withe function having one argument (so u is a P_i, there is a universal program P_u). Universal is an intensional notion, it concerns the number playing the role of a name for the function. The left number in the (partial) operation #. ROGER: Despisers of religion would do well to understand this point, as follows: Numbers, like all beings in Platonia are intensional and necessary, so are not contingent, as monads are. Thus, arithmetical theorems and proofs do not change with time, are always true or always false. Perfect, heavenly, eternal truths, as they say. Angelic. Life itself. Free spirits. .. Monads are intensional but are contingent, so they change (very rapidly) with time (like other inhabitants of Contingia). Monads are a bit corrupt like the rest of us. Although not perfect, they tend to strive to be so, at least those motivated by intellect (the principles of Platonia, so not entropic. Otherwise, those dominated by the lesser quality, passion,
Re: Attacking the brain transplant experiment
On 01 Oct 2012, at 16:32, Roger Clough wrote: Those who have faith in the possibility of brain transplants might consider this: You cannot separate the self (your ID) from the body. Your skin, the envelope of your body and self, is part of you, meaning your self. Why ? If somebody pricks you with a pin, it causes a body reaction. Do you agree that a brain in a vat can in principle dream about pins and skins, and skins sensations? If yes, why not a computer? And thus a number relatively to some universal numbers? If no, you introduce some magic to keep on some wishes, I think. In particular, you introduce infinities and non computability in the personhood, which is rather speculative imo. Anyway, you would go out of my working hypothesis, which might be very close to Leibniz, though. Bruno Yoga also uses this wholistic bodymind approach, relaxing muscles relaxwes the mind. Pretty obvious. The sense of touch is our most intimate sense, and that's part of the skin. Intimate to the self. But free will arguments typically leave out the body as a determinant. So, including body in the definition of the self, I prefer to use the term self-determination, meaning that our will and thought and desifre is affected by everything within our skin. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:23:50 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/30/2012 8:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive, at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen. The unstated assumption here is that organism are defined by the bounding surface of their skin, anything 'outside' of that is being assumed to not be part of them. It is not hard to knock down this idea as nonsensical! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . 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: Attacking the brain transplant experiment
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Those who have faith in the possibility of brain transplants might consider this: You cannot separate the self (your ID) from the body. Your skin, the envelope of your body and self, is part of you, meaning your self. Why ? If somebody pricks you with a pin, it causes a body reaction. Yoga also uses this wholistic bodymind approach, relaxing muscles relaxwes the mind. Pretty obvious. The sense of touch is our most intimate sense, and that's part of the skin. Intimate to the self. But free will arguments typically leave out the body as a determinant. So, including body in the definition of the self, I prefer to use the term self-determination, meaning that our will and thought and desifre is affected by everything within our skin. If the science is advanced enough to replace the brain, it should also be advanced enough to replace the body. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Monday, October 1, 2012 11:08:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 11:45 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You're suggesting that even if one implant works as well as the original, multiple implants would not. Is there a critical replacement limit, 20% you feel normal but 21% you don't? How have you arrived at this insight? If you have one brain tumor, you may still function. With multiple tumors, you might not fare as well. Tumors function fine on some levels (they are living cells successfully dividing) but not on others (they fail to stop dividing, perhaps because there is a diminished identification with the sense of the organ as a whole). Because we are 100% ignorant of any objective ontology of consciousness, there is no reason to assume that an implant can possibly function well enough to act as a replacement on all levels, unless possibly if the implant was made of one's own stem cells (probably the best avenue to pursue). You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act strangely. They may or may not act strangely depending on who is defining what strange is. Think of how Alzheimers progresses. It's not like dementia can be detected from the first appearance of an amyloid plaque overgrowth. It would really be surprising if any brain change didn't follow this pattern. If you ingest n micrograms of LSD you are fine. If you ingest n+x micrograms, then you have a psychedelic experience lasting several hours. The model of the brain that you seem to assume is based on pure mechanistic assumption. It has no grounding in the physiological realities of what the brain actually is as a living organ. How can you know that this will happen? Because I understand what makes consciousness different from a machine. You're not just saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? The implants would work like proper implants, not like proper sub-persons. Implants have no experiences, therefore a collection of interconnected implants also have no experiences. If you have enough of a living person's brain left to be able to still be a person, then that person can learn to use prosthetic additions and implants to augment functionality or repair damage, but not replace the person themselves. There is no physical law that is broken, there is an assumption of equivalence which I am exposing as fallacious. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/-/5NYuIV4SOncJ. 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: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act strangely. They may or may not act strangely depending on who is defining what strange is. Think of how Alzheimers progresses. It's not like dementia can be detected from the first appearance of an amyloid plaque overgrowth. It would really be surprising if any brain change didn't follow this pattern. If you ingest n micrograms of LSD you are fine. If you ingest n+x micrograms, then you have a psychedelic experience lasting several hours. The model of the brain that you seem to assume is based on pure mechanistic assumption. It has no grounding in the physiological realities of what the brain actually is as a living organ. Physiological realities are mechanistic. Biologists and doctors are mechanists. Even if you claim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts that does not mean that if yoyu replace the parts the whole will stop working. How can you know that this will happen? Because I understand what makes consciousness different from a machine. No, you don't. You claim without any coherent explanation that even an engineer with godlike abilities could not make a replacement brain part that would leave the person functioning normally, and that even if one such part could be made to work surely *two* of them would not! You're not just saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? The implants would work like proper implants, not like proper sub-persons. Implants have no experiences, therefore a collection of interconnected implants also have no experiences. If you have enough of a living person's brain left to be able to still be a person, then that person can learn to use prosthetic additions and implants to augment functionality or repair damage, but not replace the person themselves. There is no physical law that is broken, there is an assumption of equivalence which I am exposing as fallacious. But if the implants worked as implants without experiences the person would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand what this means? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 2:47 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Conservatives are those who find themselves on top and call it 'natural'. What a waste of power to be in the top and wanting to do leave things as they are... In contrast, the progressives supposedly consider themselves in the bottom, but still they want to change everything while insult whatever established before them. it´s a weird way of feeling at the bottom. Isn't? If you're on the bottom it's perfectly rational to want to change things. I see no evidence that progressives want to change *everything* or insult what is established. Did those who established democracies change everything?...those who abolished slavery?...instituted universal education? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 01 Oct 2012, at 18:36, meekerdb wrote: On 10/1/2012 2:47 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Conservatives are those who find themselves on top and call it 'natural'. What a waste of power to be in the top and wanting to do leave things as they are... In contrast, the progressives supposedly consider themselves in the bottom, but still they want to change everything while insult whatever established before them. it´s a weird way of feeling at the bottom. Isn't? If you're on the bottom it's perfectly rational to want to change things. I see no evidence that progressives want to change *everything* or insult what is established. Did those who established democracies change everything?...those who abolished slavery?...instituted universal education? It might be the people on the middle who want the less changes. The bigger is the middle class, the more stable is the state. Bruno 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 . 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: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On 01 Oct 2012, at 18:03, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act strangely. They may or may not act strangely depending on who is defining what strange is. Think of how Alzheimers progresses. It's not like dementia can be detected from the first appearance of an amyloid plaque overgrowth. It would really be surprising if any brain change didn't follow this pattern. If you ingest n micrograms of LSD you are fine. If you ingest n+x micrograms, then you have a psychedelic experience lasting several hours. The model of the brain that you seem to assume is based on pure mechanistic assumption. It has no grounding in the physiological realities of what the brain actually is as a living organ. Physiological realities are mechanistic. Biologists and doctors are mechanists. Even if you claim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts that does not mean that if yoyu replace the parts the whole will stop working. Yes. Anti-mechanist often refer to the whole is bigger than the parts, but nowhere else than in computer and engineering is it more true that the whole is bigger than the part, if only because the whole put some specific structure on the relation between parts. We might simplify this by saying that the whole *structural complexity* grows like an exponential (or more) when the whole cardinality grows linearly. Bruno How can you know that this will happen? Because I understand what makes consciousness different from a machine. No, you don't. You claim without any coherent explanation that even an engineer with godlike abilities could not make a replacement brain part that would leave the person functioning normally, and that even if one such part could be made to work surely *two* of them would not! You're not just saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? The implants would work like proper implants, not like proper sub- persons. Implants have no experiences, therefore a collection of interconnected implants also have no experiences. If you have enough of a living person's brain left to be able to still be a person, then that person can learn to use prosthetic additions and implants to augment functionality or repair damage, but not replace the person themselves. There is no physical law that is broken, there is an assumption of equivalence which I am exposing as fallacious. But if the implants worked as implants without experiences the person would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand what this means? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . 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: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 3:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: You've only demonstrated your own prejudice against reason. no comment Evolution produces many designs that are suboptimal, because natural selection only requires that a design be 'good-enough' suboptimal for what? optimal has a meaning for a finite set of requirements, but not for a almost infinite set of them. good enough is the best design when you have not a single optimization but hundreds of them at different levels. the best trade of between opposite requirements may be the optimum global solution, even if there is no optimal solution for each individual requirement. Do you agree? I agree that there are no optimal solutions except relative to some well defined criteria. But it is you who were praising evolution as more clever than reason. Yet even absent well defined criteria, some 'designs' are better than others and can be seen to be so by reason. It's just obfuscation to say, well there are no well defined criteria so nothing can be judged better or worse. Arthropods make an elastic protein, rezulin, which is much more elastic than that in molluscs (abductin) and in vertebrates (elastin). Thus a fly can flap it's wings with less energy loss than a horse can run or a scallop can swim. Probably the artropods can trade durability or repearability for elasticity. who knows. Do you?. Now you're just making things up. Do you know rezulin is more or less reparable than elastin? All are natural designs. What is the problem?. Probably Artropods rely more in elasticity by the nature of the skeleton. More unsupported conjecture. Where is your evidence for this? In the same way a parasite is an step before the host defenses in parasiting strategies because the parasite has more pressure to be ahead. I fail to see an analogy. The nerves in a mammals eye join the photoreceptor cells at the end facing the pupil. They run across the inside surface of the retina and exit together. Where they exit they create a 'blind spot' in our field of vision. So, first, they partly obstruct the retina and, second, they create a blind spot. This is the vaunted topic of the eye in the mammals. Contrary to other clades The eyes of mamals can rotate, that is a greath advantage. to rotate they have to be spherical. to be spherical the nerves have to be internal. But they could be spherical exactly as they are with the photoreceptor cells flipped end for end so that they faced the light instead of the photons having to pass through the nerves. This would also eliminate the blind spot. Incidentally cephalpods can also see polarization. being internal they have to exit trough a place, to exit, it creates a blind spot. but the faculty of rotating and focusing an object without having to move the entire head or body is a far greater advantage than in non mammals, even if the cost is a blind spot (which does not appear in the brain image, because the eye constantly rotates) You are just inventing stuff. this does not means that octopuses , which have no blind spot have an inferior eye . Probably it is perfect for its requirements. People swallow and breathe through a shared passage. A design that results in many deaths due to choking on food. That is a optimum design for a mammal with articulated talk that still can breathe. After complaining that there can be no optimal, now you are claiming an evolutionary design is optimal. Yet dolphins communicate with separate breathing and swallowing channels. Are they suboptimal? Trade offs appear in any design, there is no way to avoid trade offs when there is more than one requirement. In the ideal world of progressivia perhaps this does not happens. Trade offs implies a simple binary choice. A human designer considers different performance variables and weighs them. Of course there is no single opitmum, but there are still some designs that are better than others. Oxidation of fatty acids unnecessarily reverses the handedness of methylmaloyl. In the biosynthesis of some plant alkaloids, reticuline is formed in the S configuration and then inverted to the R configuration; a step which could have been avoided by just using the S form for all the alkaloids. Lysine is biosynthesized via two different parallel processes when one would have served. Probable we don愒 know the whole story. As many cases in evolution. The last case is the so called Junk DNA which was supposed to be redundant, has a crucial function, And what is that crucial function you have discovered - a Nobel prizes awaits. but self appointed biological engineers considered it a failure of evolution The designer of a larger and heavier vehicle on the softer surface uses more wheels to avoid sinking into the surface. Yet among animals the small ones, arthropods, have six or more legs; while the
The Good, the Bad and the weirdly computable
Hi Bruno Marchal Responses indicated by $$s Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-01, 11:26:24 Subject: Re: Numbers vs monads Hi Roger Clough, ### ROGER: Quanta are different from particles. They don't move from A to B along particular paths through space (or even through space), they move through all possible mathematical paths - which is to say that they are everywhere at once- until one particular path is selected by a measurement (or selected by passing through slits). Do you agree with Everett that all path exists, and that the selection might equivalent with a first person indeterminacy? $$$ 1) Well it's an indeterminantcy, but which path is chosen is done by the geometry of the location or test probe, not the same I would think as logical choice (?) So I would say no. ... Note that intelligence requires the ability to select. BRUNO: OK. But the ability to selct does not require intelligence, just interaction and some memory. $$ ROGER: No, that's where you keep missing the absolutely critical issue of self. Choice is exclusive to the autonomous self, and is absolutely necessary. Self selects A or B or whatever entirely on its own.. That's what intelligence is. INTELLIGENCE = AUTONOMOUS CHOOSER + CHOICES When you type a response, YOU choose which letter to type, etc. That's an intelligent action. Selection of a quantum path (collapse or reduction of the jungle of brain wave paths) produces consciousness, according to Penrose et al. They call it orchestrated reduction. . BRUNO: Penrose is hardly convincing on this. Its basic argument based on G del is invalid, and its theory is quite speculative, like the wave collapse, which has never make any sense to me. ROGER: All physical theories (not mathematical theories) are speculative until validated by data. Why would the physical not be infinitely divisible and extensible, especially if not real? ROGER: Objects can be physical and also infinitely divisible, but L considered this infinite divisibility to disqualify an object to be real because there's no end to the process, one wouldn't end up with something to refer to. BRUNO: In comp we end up with what is similar above the substitution level. What we call macro, but which is really only what we can isolate. The picture is of course quite counter-intuitive. Personally. I substitute Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as the basis for this view because the fundamental particles are supposedly divisible. By definition an atom is not divisible, and the atoms today are the elementary particles. Not sure you can divide an electron or a Higgs boson. With comp particles might get the sme explanation as the physicist, as fixed points for some transformation in a universal group or universal symmetrical system. The simple groups, the exceptional groups, the Monster group can play some role there (I speculate). ROGER: You can split an atom because it has parts, reactors do that all of the time. of this particular point, Electrons and other fundamental particles do not have parts. You lost me with the rest of this comment, but that's OK. Yes. Atoms are no atoms (in greek t??? means not divisible). $$ROGER: The greeks had no means to split the atom, they hadn't even seen one. BRUNO: But if string theory is correct even electron are still divisible (conceptually). I still don't know with comp. Normally some observable have a real continuum spectrum. Physical reality cannot be entirely discrete. $$$ROGER: The monads are just points but not physical objects. Overlaying them, all of L's reality is just a dimensionless dot. I'm still trying to figure out how numbers and ideas fit into Leibniz's metaphysics. Little is written about this issue, so I have to rely on what Leibniz says otherwise about monads. BRUNO: OK. I will interpret your monad by intensional number. ROGER: Numbers do not associate to corporeal bodies, so that won't work. BRUNO: let me be explicit on this. I fixe once and for all a universal system: I chose the programming language LISP. Actually, a subset of it: the programs LISP computing only (partial) functions from N to N, with some list representation of the numbers like (0), (S 0), (S S 0), ... I enumerate in lexicographic way all the programs LISP. P_1, P_2, P_3, ... The ith partial computable functions phi_i is the one computed by P_i. I can place on N a new operation, written #, with a # b = phi_a(b), that is the result of the application of
Re: Re: Attacking the brain transplant experiment
Hi Bruno Marchal A brain in a vat would probably have an autonomous self, which is needed for everything the brain does. I don't see how an autonomous self can be present in a computer, because autonomous means it can't depend on anything--- especially not hardware or software. Let me also say it this alternate way. The output of an algorithm (let's say a choice, given an input) is always dependent on what the algorithm did. And algorithms are software. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-01, 11:32:07 Subject: Re: Attacking the brain transplant experiment On 01 Oct 2012, at 16:32, Roger Clough wrote: Those who have faith in the possibility of brain transplants might consider this: You cannot separate the self (your ID) from the body. Your skin, the envelope of your body and self, is part of you, meaning your self. Why ? If somebody pricks you with a pin, it causes a body reaction. Do you agree that a brain in a vat can in principle dream about pins and skins, and skins sensations? If yes, why not a computer? And thus a number relatively to some universal numbers? If no, you introduce some magic to keep on some wishes, I think. In particular, you introduce infinities and non computability in the personhood, which is rather speculative imo. Anyway, you would go out of my working hypothesis, which might be very close to Leibniz, though. Bruno Yoga also uses this wholistic bodymind approach, relaxing muscles relaxwes the mind. Pretty obvious. The sense of touch is our most intimate sense, and that's part of the skin. Intimate to the self. But free will arguments typically leave out the body as a determinant. So, including body in the definition of the self, I prefer to use the term self-determination, meaning that our will and thought and desifre is affected by everything within our skin. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:23:50 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/30/2012 8:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive, at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen. The unstated assumption here is that organism are defined by the bounding surface of their skin, anything 'outside' of that is being assumed to not be part of them. It is not hard to knock down this idea as nonsensical! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . 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. -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural selection. That is not what I am asking. You are describing ways that they are different, not explaining how it is possible for these differences to arise. I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these differences refers to. Blue-green algae survives all over the world since the Pre-Cambrian Era. Survival is not complex. Acquire nutrients. Reproduce. The end. Blue-green algae are astronomically complex compared to inorganic chemicals, and they are beautifully adapted to fill one niche, but that's not the only niche in the environment and the others can only be filled by organisms that are even more complex than Blue-green algae. But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it could start to use a few inductive rules; This is pure metaphor. Yes, many, perhaps most, of the most profound ideas in the universe are. Evolution doesn't 'find' anything. You are falsely attributing intention and analysis to an unconscious process. It's poetic license, it just never occurred to me that somebody would be so foolish as to think that I meant that random mutation and natural selection was conscious and intended to do anything. And because I still think such misunderstanding is extremely unlikely unless one wants very much to misunderstand something and because I believe such informal language is useful in talking about Evolution I intend to continue doing so. Evolution = The right things in the right places don't die. Nothing else. And Darwin's genius was in finding how wonderful things can come from something as simple as that. This is the last sentence in Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've ever seen you do. Congratulations, you have a very high opinion of yourself. Thanks for the congratulations, and I do think that post was good, very good, I wish you'd read it. I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that inorganic systems cannot, you are. I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot. We agree then. I only say that there may very well be an important reason why they do not which cannot be accessed by existing theory. There are indeed important reasons but they can be accessed by existing evolutionary theory and I explained how in a previous post that you correctly deduced I rather liked. if I was designed better I could reason better. Before long computers will be designed better. By natural people who were designed by natural selection. Before long one generation of computers will design the next more advanced generation, and the process will accelerate exponentially. You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but evolved systems, then they must have the same limitations as evolution itself That is nuts! If tools couldn't do something that people can't then there would be no point in them making tools. And water vapor can't smash your house but water vapor can make a tornado and a tornado can. I am saying that there is no reason for biology to exist in your worldview. Biology doesn't have any cosmic purpose for existing, but there are reasons. John K Clark -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Monday, October 1, 2012 1:52:29 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural selection. That is not what I am asking. You are describing ways that they are different, not explaining how it is possible for these differences to arise. I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these differences refers to. The differences between evolutionary nature (teleonomy) and rational design (teleology) that we are talking about. It is like you are pointing out that the river is water upstream and wine downstream and I'm asking you how do you get wine from water (especially wine that defies gravity). Blue-green algae survives all over the world since the Pre-Cambrian Era. Survival is not complex. Acquire nutrients. Reproduce. The end. Blue-green algae are astronomically complex compared to inorganic chemicals, and they are beautifully adapted to fill one niche, but that's not the only niche in the environment and the others can only be filled by organisms that are even more complex than Blue-green algae. Any meta-molecular system is going to be complex compared to a molecular system, but that doesn't make survival a complex task. The inorganic geology of the Earth as a whole is much more complex than a single cell and it doesn't seem to struggle to 'survive'. But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it could start to use a few inductive rules; This is pure metaphor. Yes, many, perhaps most, of the most profound ideas in the universe are. Evolution doesn't 'find' anything. You are falsely attributing intention and analysis to an unconscious process. It's poetic license, it just never occurred to me that somebody would be so foolish as to think that I meant that random mutation and natural selection was conscious and intended to do anything. I'm ok with that as long as we both are aware that you are using poetic license. I think the fact that it is difficult to talk about without invoking poetic license reveals the limitations of the model though. If we confine ourselves to what we are actually talking about, it becomes clear that teleology can't be both completely alien to nature and purely a product of nature (teleonomy) at the same time. And because I still think such misunderstanding is extremely unlikely unless one wants very much to misunderstand something and because I believe such informal language is useful in talking about Evolution I intend to continue doing so. I'm ok with that, I just wonder how you justify the necessity.You are describing a universe devoid of poetry, but can't describe it without resorting to the very form you deny. Evolution = The right things in the right places don't die. Nothing else. And Darwin's genius was in finding how wonderful things can come from something as simple as that. This is the last sentence in Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” I agree, but Darwin wasn't trying to explain awareness itself. If you have a raw material which contains the potential for forms, beauty, and wonder to begin with, then yes, simple quantitative processes can be seen behind their elaboration. There is no bridge however from evolution of biological forms and functions to the origin of experience, and certainly there is no suggestion of the possibility of equivalence between the experience of an evolved organism and the functioning of an assembly of inorganic mechanisms. In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've ever seen you do. Congratulations, you have a very high opinion of yourself. Thanks for the congratulations, and I do think that post was good, very good, I wish you'd read it. I have nothing against your explanation, it's just doesn't explain something that I didn't already know. I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that inorganic systems cannot, you are. I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot. We agree then. I only say that there may very well be an important reason why they do not which cannot be accessed by existing theory. There are indeed important reasons but they can be accessed by existing evolutionary theory and
Re: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Monday, October 1, 2012 12:03:38 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act strangely. They may or may not act strangely depending on who is defining what strange is. Think of how Alzheimers progresses. It's not like dementia can be detected from the first appearance of an amyloid plaque overgrowth. It would really be surprising if any brain change didn't follow this pattern. If you ingest n micrograms of LSD you are fine. If you ingest n+x micrograms, then you have a psychedelic experience lasting several hours. The model of the brain that you seem to assume is based on pure mechanistic assumption. It has no grounding in the physiological realities of what the brain actually is as a living organ. Physiological realities are mechanistic. Biologists and doctors are mechanists. Even if you claim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts that does not mean that if yoyu replace the parts the whole will stop working. How can you know that this will happen? Because I understand what makes consciousness different from a machine. No, you don't. You claim without any coherent explanation that even an engineer with godlike abilities could not make a replacement brain part that would leave the person functioning normally, and that even if one such part could be made to work surely *two* of them would not! You're not just saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? The implants would work like proper implants, not like proper sub-persons. Implants have no experiences, therefore a collection of interconnected implants also have no experiences. If you have enough of a living person's brain left to be able to still be a person, then that person can learn to use prosthetic additions and implants to augment functionality or repair damage, but not replace the person themselves. There is no physical law that is broken, there is an assumption of equivalence which I am exposing as fallacious. But if the implants worked as implants without experiences the person would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand what this means? I understand exactly what you think it means, but you don't understand why the theoretical assumption doesn't apply to reality. Where consciousness is concerned, the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, or even greater than the sum of it's parts, it is *other than* the sum of it's parts. If the parts are not genetically identical to the whole, then they cannot be expected to even create a sum, let alone produce an experience which is greater or other than that sum. You assume that personal experience is a sum of impersonal mechanisms, whereas I understand that is not the case at all. Impersonal mechanisms are the public back end of sub-personal experiences. If you try to build a person from mechanisms, you will *always fail*, because the sub-personal experiences are not accessible without the personal experiences to begin with. A baby has to learn to think like an adult through years of personal experience. It is the actual subjective participation in the experiences which drives how the neurology develops. We see this with how people blind from birth use their visual cortex for tactile experience. If you gave the blind person a drug with will make their visual cortex function just like a sighted person's, they still won't get any colors. The colors aren't in 'there', there in 'here'. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/-/uaASEuckHpwJ. 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: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads
On 10/1/2012 10:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Good idea, but unfortunately monads are not numbers, numbers will now guide them or replace them. Monads have to be associated with corporeal bodies down here in contingia, where crap happens. Hi Roger, I agree, monads are not numbers. Monads use numbers. Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:22:03 Subject: Re: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads On 9/30/2012 8:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I'm still trying to figure out how numbers and ideas fit into Leibniz's metaphysics. Little is written about this issue, so I have to rely on what Leibniz says otherwise about monads. Previously I noted that numbers could not be monads because monads constantly change. Another argument against numbers being monads is that all monads must be attached to corporeal bodies. So monads refer to objects in the (already) created world, whose identities persist, while ideas and numbers are not created objects. While numbers and ideas cannot be monads, they have to be are entities in the mind, feelings, and bodily aspects of monads. For Leibniz refers to the intellect of human monads. And similarly, numbers and ideas must be used in the fictional construction of matter-- in the bodily aspect of material monads, as well as the construction of our bodies and brains. Dear Roger, Bruno's idea is a form of Pre-Established Hamony, in that the truth of the numbers is a pre-established ontological primitive. -- Onward! -- Onward! Stephen -- 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: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads
String theory and variable fine-structure measurements across the universe suggest that the discrete and distinct monads are ennumerable. On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 10/1/2012 10:17 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Good idea, but unfortunately monads are not numbers, numbers will now guide them or replace them. Monads have to be associated with corporeal bodies down here in contingia, where crap happens. Hi Roger, I agree, monads are not numbers. Monads use numbers. Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 14:22:03 Subject: Re: Numbers and other inhabitants of Platonia are also inhabitants ofmonads On 9/30/2012 8:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I'm still trying to figure out how numbers and ideas fit into Leibniz's metaphysics. Little is written about this issue, so I have to rely on what Leibniz says otherwise about monads. Previously I noted that numbers could not be monads because monads constantly change. Another argument against numbers being monads is that all monads must be attached to corporeal bodies. So monads refer to objects in the (already) created world, whose identities persist, while ideas and numbers are not created objects. While numbers and ideas cannot be monads, they have to be are entities in the mind, feelings, and bodily aspects of monads. For Leibniz refers to the intellect of human monads. And similarly, numbers and ideas must be used in the fictional construction of matter-- in the bodily aspect of material monads, as well as the construction of our bodies and brains. Dear Roger, Bruno's idea is a form of Pre-Established Hamony, in that the truth of the numbers is a pre-established ontological primitive. -- Onward! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Attacking the brain transplant experiment
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:37 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: A brain in a vat would probably have an autonomous self, which is needed for everything the brain does. I don't see how an autonomous self can be present in a computer, because autonomous means it can't depend on anything--- especially not hardware or software. Let me also say it this alternate way. The output of an algorithm (let's say a choice, given an input) is always dependent on what the algorithm did. And algorithms are software. In that case a brain can't be autonomous either, since it depends on hardware (the matter the brain) and software (encoded in the brain through experience). -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: But if the implants worked as implants without experiences the person would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand what this means? I understand exactly what you think it means, but you don't understand why the theoretical assumption doesn't apply to reality. Where consciousness is concerned, the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, or even greater than the sum of it's parts, it is *other than* the sum of it's parts. If the parts are not genetically identical to the whole, then they cannot be expected to even create a sum, let alone produce an experience which is greater or other than that sum. You assume that personal experience is a sum of impersonal mechanisms, whereas I understand that is not the case at all. Impersonal mechanisms are the public back end of sub-personal experiences. And if that were the case you would get a person who would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand why he would behave as if everything were fine? Do you understand why he would internally and impotently notice that his experiences were disappearing or changing? If you try to build a person from mechanisms, you will *always fail*, because the sub-personal experiences are not accessible without the personal experiences to begin with. A baby has to learn to think like an adult through years of personal experience. It is the actual subjective participation in the experiences which drives how the neurology develops. We see this with how people blind from birth use their visual cortex for tactile experience. If you gave the blind person a drug with will make their visual cortex function just like a sighted person's, they still won't get any colors. The colors aren't in 'there', there in 'here'. The problem with someone blind from birth who later has an optical problem corrected in adulthood is that the visual cortex has not developed properly, since this normally happens in infancy. Thus to make them see you would need not only to correct the optical problem but to rewire their brain. If you could do that then they would have all the required apparatus for visual perception and they would be able to see. This is trivially obvious to me and most people: you can't see because your brain doesn't work, and if you fixed the brain you would be able to see. But I'm guessing that you might say that even if the blind person's eyes and brain were fixed, so that everything seemed to work perfectly well, they would still be blind, because the non-mechanistic non-reducible spirit of visual essence would be missing. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 3:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote: An interesting perspective on evolution vs. engineering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdg4mU-wuhI From an engineer who uses evolution to design computers. Notable points: He is unable to understand how some of the outputs of this evolutionary process work, but they work better than any design he could come up with. So does he have a sorting algorithm that's does better than O(n log n)? I've never heard of it. And if he doesn't understand the program how can he be sure it correctly sorts all inputs - did he try them? Traditional engineering methods fail when the human mind can't understand a machine that has billions of independent components (transistors). Can't understand is relative to levels of description and function. Of course computer designers depend on computers to do details of the design, but they still understand it at higher level. He sees us humans not as the end product of evolution, but as a stage, or a tool of evolution to bring about the next thing. But if we don't use our reason to bring it about, it may be radiation resistant blue-green algae that likes hot water. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: structural complexity
On 10/1/2012 1:00 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Physiological realities are mechanistic. Biologists and doctors are mechanists. Even if you claim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts that does not mean that if yoyu replace the parts the whole will stop working. Yes. Anti-mechanist often refer to the whole is bigger than the parts, but nowhere else than in computer and engineering is it more true that the whole is bigger than the part, if only because the whole put some specific structure on the relation between parts. We might simplify this by saying that the whole *structural complexity* grows like an exponential (or more) when the whole cardinality grows linearly. H Bruno, Could you source some further discussions of this idea? From my own study of Cantor's tower of infinities, I have found the opposite, complexity goes to zero as the cardinals lose the ability to be named. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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: The Good, the Bad and the weirdly computable
On 10/1/2012 1:28 PM, Roger Clough wrote: ROGER: Objects can be physical and also infinitely divisible, but L considered this infinite divisibility to disqualify an object to be real because there's no end to the process, one wouldn't end up with something to refer to. Hi Roger, This is part of the thoughts that Leibniz was wrong about since he did not know of computational complexity or universality. His explanations assumed only ideas from the material world. He was an unparalleled genius, there is no doubt of that, but he was far ahead of his time. We can now correct these errors and use the monadology as a mereological model of entities. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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: Forget Zombies, Let's Talk Torture
On Monday, October 1, 2012 8:09:53 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: But if the implants worked as implants without experiences the person would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand what this means? I understand exactly what you think it means, but you don't understand why the theoretical assumption doesn't apply to reality. Where consciousness is concerned, the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, or even greater than the sum of it's parts, it is *other than* the sum of it's parts. If the parts are not genetically identical to the whole, then they cannot be expected to even create a sum, let alone produce an experience which is greater or other than that sum. You assume that personal experience is a sum of impersonal mechanisms, whereas I understand that is not the case at all. Impersonal mechanisms are the public back end of sub-personal experiences. And if that were the case you would get a person who would behave as if everything were fine while internally and impotently noticing that his experiences were disappearing or changing. Do you understand why he would behave as if everything were fine? I understand why you think he would behave as if everything were fine, but you don't understand that I know why this view is reductionist fantasy. Everything that we do and are is an expression of every experience we have ever had. The way we reason is the result of the experiences which we have lived through. Although these experiences play a role in circumscribing the behavior of the neurology, you can't reverse engineer the experiences from the behavior. It's like assuming that you can excise a block out of New York City and replace it with something that you assume to be functionally identical. There is nothing that is functionally identical to a specific block of New York City. You can replace a building here or there and in time the population will embrace it, but the more of the city is replaced, the less able the population is able to assimilate the loss and the whole thing fails. He would *not* behave as if everything were fine because he would not be able to integrate new experiences as a human being would. As with all computing devices, there would be glitches that would be dead giveaways, and they would only become more prominent over time. Do you understand why he would internally and impotently notice that his experiences were disappearing or changing? I understand why you might believe that, but it's again based on a reductionist fantasy of consciousness. Do you think that someone with dementia is fully aware of their condition at all times like some kind of detached voyeur? If someone is falling down drunk are they internally and impotently noticing that their experiences are disappearing or changing? Consciousness isn't like that. It is a vast library of intertwined modalities of apocatastatic-gestalt frames of awareness access. It's not like you can stand aloof from your own psyche being dismantled...there isn't going to be enough of 'you' left to do that. Every part of your brain being replaced has to be compensated for by a live part of your brain picking up the slack, using the devices as prosthetic limbs and antennae. There is only so much that can be amputated and beyond that is irrevocable loss. If you try to build a person from mechanisms, you will *always fail*, because the sub-personal experiences are not accessible without the personal experiences to begin with. A baby has to learn to think like an adult through years of personal experience. It is the actual subjective participation in the experiences which drives how the neurology develops. We see this with how people blind from birth use their visual cortex for tactile experience. If you gave the blind person a drug with will make their visual cortex function just like a sighted person's, they still won't get any colors. The colors aren't in 'there', there in 'here'. The problem with someone blind from birth who later has an optical problem corrected in adulthood is that the visual cortex has not developed properly, since this normally happens in infancy. Thus to make them see you would need not only to correct the optical problem but to rewire their brain. If you could do that then they would have all the required apparatus for visual perception and they would be able to see. If you can't correct the optical problem though, they are not going to be able to see even if you rewire the visual cortex. This is what you are not understanding. Without the optical experience, there is no images in the brain. Nothing that you can do to the brain will generate a visual experience.
RE: The Good, the Bad and the weirdly computable
$$$ 1) Well it's an indeterminantcy, but which path is chosen is done by the geometry of the location or test probe, not the same I would think as logical choice (?) So I would say no. ... Note that intelligence requires the ability to select. BRUNO: OK. But the ability to selct does not require intelligence, just interaction and some memory. I can make a selection without the use of memory. We call such choices by the term arbitrary wrb -- 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.
