date:20121024


On 10/25/2012 2:01 AM, meekerdb wrote:
To me, there is no chalkboard world. It's all dusty and flat. Not 
much sexy going on, except maybe for beaten erasers.


To you maybe, but what about the chalk-people's qualia.

Brent

Good question! We can ask the same question of mathematical entities!

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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?


On 10/24/2012 10:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:29:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/24/2012 10:19 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:10:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Or what if we don't care?  We don't care about slaughtering cattle, 
which
are pretty smart
as computers go.  We manage not to think about starving children in
Africa, and they *are*
humans.  And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water
pollution, and global
warming which will beset humans who are our children.


Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe 
for some
people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically
unlikely prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a 
person out
of a program, but won't be able to just make the program itself and no 
person
attached.


Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that 
problem
decades ago.  He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious with
emotions like humans because then it would be unethical use them like 
robots.


It's arbitrary to think of robots though. It can be anything that represents
computation to something. An abacus, a card game, anything. Otherwise it's
prejudice based on form.



Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do
anything whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able 
to
execute the program, I find it implausible that there will be a magical 
line
of code which cannot be executed without an experience happening to 
someone.


So it's a non-problem for you.  You think that only man-born-of-woman or
wetware can be conscious and have qualia.  Or are you concerned that we 
are
inadvertently offending atoms all the time?


Everything has qualia, but only humans have human qualia. Animals have 
animal
qualia, organisms have biological qualia, etc.


So computers have computer qualia.


I would say that computer parts have silicon qualia.


Is it good or bad? Do they hurt when they loose and electron hole?


I don't think the computer parts cohere into a computer except in our minds.


Racist!



  Do their qualia depend on whether they are sold-state or vacuum-tube?  
germanium
or silicon?  PNP or NPN?  Do they feel different when they run LISP or C++?


Nah, its all inorganic low level qualia is my guess. Temperature, density, electronic 
tension and release.


They feel good when they beat you at chess.



Do you have Craig qualia?


 Sure. All the time.


Probably just low energy water soluble chemistry.








No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these 
functions
just to check our math without invoking the power of life and death. 
It's
really silly. It's not even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame.


I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA 
is
wrong, or at least incomplete.  I think the simulated intelligence 
needs a
simulated environment, essentially another world, in which to *be*
intelligent.  And that's where your chalk board consciousness fails.  
It needs
to be able to interact within a chalkboard world.  So it's not just a 
question
of going to a low enough level, it's also a question of going to a high 
enough
level.


A chalkboard world just involves a larger chalkboard.


Right.  And it involves great chalkboard sex - but none we need worry about.


To me, there is no chalkboard world. It's all dusty and flat. Not much sexy going on, 
except maybe for beaten erasers.


To you maybe, but what about the chalk-people's qualia.

Brent

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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?



On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:29:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/24/2012 10:19 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
>
>
> On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:10:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>  On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>>
>> Or what if we don't care?  We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which 
>>> are pretty smart 
>>> as computers go.  We manage not to think about starving children in 
>>> Africa, and they *are* 
>>> humans.  And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water 
>>> pollution, and global 
>>> warming which will beset humans who are our children. 
>>>
>>
>> Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for 
>> some people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically 
>> unlikely prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a person 
>> out of a program, but won't be able to just make the program itself and no 
>> person attached. 
>>
>>
>> Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that 
>> problem decades ago.  He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious 
>> with emotions like humans because then it would be unethical use them like 
>> robots.
>>  
>
> It's arbitrary to think of robots though. It can be anything that 
> represents computation to something. An abacus, a card game, anything. 
> Otherwise it's prejudice based on form. 
>  
>>  
>>  Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do 
>> anything whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able to 
>> execute the program, I find it implausible that there will be a magical 
>> line of code which cannot be executed without an experience happening to 
>> someone. 
>>
>>
>> So it's a non-problem for you.  You think that only man-born-of-woman or 
>> wetware can be conscious and have qualia.  Or are you concerned that we are 
>> inadvertently offending atoms all the time?
>>  
>
> Everything has qualia, but only humans have human qualia. Animals have 
> animal qualia, organisms have biological qualia, etc.
>  
>
> So computers have computer qualia.
>

I would say that computer parts have silicon qualia. I don't think the 
computer parts cohere into a computer except in our minds.

 

>   Do their qualia depend on whether they are sold-state or vacuum-tube?  
> germanium or silicon?  PNP or NPN?  Do they feel different when they run 
> LISP or C++?
>

Nah, its all inorganic low level qualia is my guess. Temperature, density, 
electronic tension and release.

 

> Do you have Craig qualia? 
>

 Sure. All the time.


>   
>  
>>  
>>  No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these 
>> functions just to check our math without invoking the power of life and 
>> death. It's really silly. It's not even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame.
>>  
>>
>> I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA is 
>> wrong, or at least incomplete.  I think the simulated intelligence needs a 
>> simulated environment, essentially another world, in which to *be* 
>> intelligent.  And that's where your chalk board consciousness fails.  It 
>> needs to be able to interact within a chalkboard world.  So it's not just a 
>> question of going to a low enough level, it's also a question of going to a 
>> high enough level.
>>  
>
> A chalkboard world just involves a larger chalkboard.
>  
>
> Right.  And it involves great chalkboard sex - but none we need worry 
> about.
>

To me, there is no chalkboard world. It's all dusty and flat. Not much sexy 
going on, except maybe for beaten erasers.

Craig 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: computers, materialism and subjective/objective dyslexia

On 23 Oct 2012, at 16:39, Roger Clough wrote:

Computers, materialism and subjective/objective dyslexia

In materialism there is no self, it is implied.

In computationalism there is no matter, it is implied (apparent).

This works in most cases, except if the case involves the
self or subjectivity.

You are right. That is a good intuition. But the solution does not
need to abandon subjectivity (which would be senseless), you can also
abandon ontological or primary matter.

The problem with that situation is that,
without a self to be subjective, there can be no subjectivity.
Hence what we know to be subjective (lived experience,
for example) has to be considered as objective. This is
somewhat understandable, because subjective/objective
dyslexia and its issues are hard to understand.

Thus comp, or computer output, which is objective, can easily
be confused with subjective phenomena.

That would be a mistake. Consciousness is not an output, which is
usually a 3p thing.

Now life, thought, consciousness, and intelligence are all
subjective (non-physical, non-objective) activities.

With comp the physical becomes first person plural. It is also a
subjective object (but not necessarily a subject).

But because of subjective/objective dyslexia, and the
fact that it is difficult to conceive of the nonphysical,

Think about arithmetic and mathematic. This is not so hard to
conceive, and is not physical.

they are almost always often considered to be objective
(physical) phenomena. In other words, life, consciousness and
thought are thought to be properties of or associated with,
material objects.

Few people are aware of this but materialism and comp are
incompatible. Unfortunately many materialists use comp to evacuate the
mind-body problem. I explained in this list (and elsewhere) that this
does not work.

Bruno

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/23/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

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

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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?


On 10/24/2012 10:19 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:10:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Or what if we don't care?  We don't care about slaughtering cattle, 
which are
pretty smart
as computers go.  We manage not to think about starving children in 
Africa, and
they *are*
humans.  And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water 
pollution,
and global
warming which will beset humans who are our children.


Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for 
some
people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically 
unlikely
prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a person out of a 
program,
but won't be able to just make the program itself and no person attached.


Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that 
problem decades
ago.  He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious with emotions 
like
humans because then it would be unethical use them like robots.


It's arbitrary to think of robots though. It can be anything that represents computation 
to something. An abacus, a card game, anything. Otherwise it's prejudice based on form.




Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do 
anything
whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able to execute the
program, I find it implausible that there will be a magical line of code 
which
cannot be executed without an experience happening to someone.


So it's a non-problem for you.  You think that only man-born-of-woman or 
wetware can
be conscious and have qualia.  Or are you concerned that we are 
inadvertently
offending atoms all the time?


Everything has qualia, but only humans have human qualia. Animals have animal qualia, 
organisms have biological qualia, etc.


So computers have computer qualia.  Do their qualia depend on whether they are sold-state 
or vacuum-tube?  germanium or silicon?  PNP or NPN?  Do they feel different when they run 
LISP or C++?  Do you have Craig qualia?






No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these 
functions just
to check our math without invoking the power of life and death. It's really 
silly.
It's not even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame.


I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA is 
wrong, or
at least incomplete.  I think the simulated intelligence needs a simulated
environment, essentially another world, in which to *be* intelligent.  And 
that's
where your chalk board consciousness fails.  It needs to be able to 
interact within
a chalkboard world.  So it's not just a question of going to a low enough 
level,
it's also a question of going to a high enough level.


A chalkboard world just involves a larger chalkboard.


Right.  And it involves great chalkboard sex - but none we need worry about.

Brent

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:00 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 10/24/2012 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>   On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch  wrote
>>
>>  > I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed
>>> after watching the movie "The Prestige"
>>
>>
>> In my opinion "The Prestige" is the best movie made in the last 10 years,
>> and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the
>> book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had
>> somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:
>>
>> " About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It
>> could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the
>> limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to
>> construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without
>> harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to
>> build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good
>> I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
>> the latest tools from Sears.
>>
>> I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating
>> myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with
>> smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and
>> then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that
>> instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I
>> yelled "This is monstrous, there can only be one of me", my copy yelled
>> exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached
>> for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm
>> strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double
>> also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted "you don't have the
>> guts to pull the trigger, but I do". Again he mimicked my words and did so
>> in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
>> trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum
>> fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.
>>
>> Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some
>> pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really
>> torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as
>> before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be
>> certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is  that
>> the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he
>> appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more
>> symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original
>> walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,
>> then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape,
>> should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I
>> should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am
>> the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is
>> meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all
>> about it?"
>>
>
> Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard
> it):
>
> You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you
> will be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and
> everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be
> allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000.  What do you do?
> If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the
> logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.
>
>
>>
>>   > you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness
>>> that you identify with.
>>>
>>
>> I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.
>>
>> > You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are
>>> produced by some activity of your brain.
>>>
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>   > Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you
>>> suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other
>>> atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put
>>> back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious
>>> again.
>>>
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>
>>>  > Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use
>>> the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
>>> functionally equivalent.
>>>
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>   > We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together
>>> with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue
>>> right where it left off (from before you were oblit

Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?



On Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:10:24 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
> Or what if we don't care?  We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which 
>> are pretty smart 
>> as computers go.  We manage not to think about starving children in 
>> Africa, and they *are* 
>> humans.  And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water 
>> pollution, and global 
>> warming which will beset humans who are our children. 
>>
>
> Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for 
> some people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically 
> unlikely prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a person 
> out of a program, but won't be able to just make the program itself and no 
> person attached. 
>
>
> Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that 
> problem decades ago.  He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious 
> with emotions like humans because then it would be unethical use them like 
> robots.
>

It's arbitrary to think of robots though. It can be anything that 
represents computation to something. An abacus, a card game, anything. 
Otherwise it's prejudice based on form. 

>
>  Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do 
> anything whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able to 
> execute the program, I find it implausible that there will be a magical 
> line of code which cannot be executed without an experience happening to 
> someone. 
>
>
> So it's a non-problem for you.  You think that only man-born-of-woman or 
> wetware can be conscious and have qualia.  Or are you concerned that we are 
> inadvertently offending atoms all the time?
>

Everything has qualia, but only humans have human qualia. Animals have 
animal qualia, organisms have biological qualia, etc.
 

>
>  No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these 
> functions just to check our math without invoking the power of life and 
> death. It's really silly. It's not even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame.
>  
>
> I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA is 
> wrong, or at least incomplete.  I think the simulated intelligence needs a 
> simulated environment, essentially another world, in which to *be* 
> intelligent.  And that's where your chalk board consciousness fails.  It 
> needs to be able to interact within a chalkboard world.  So it's not just a 
> question of going to a low enough level, it's also a question of going to a 
> high enough level.
>

A chalkboard world just involves a larger chalkboard.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
> The person I was when I was 3 years old is dead. He died because
> too much new information was added to his brain.
>  -- Saibal Mitra
>  

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Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time


On 10/25/2012 12:46 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Please inform ST Yau of your views. He will be interested for sure.
I have informed him of my paper and he found it interesting.
Personally I think your perspective is intellectualism.
Richard

Dear Richard,

Your point is well made. It is quite possible that I am merely 
intellectualizing the idea, but as a philosopher I have to press hard on 
the idea that there is a possibility that we mistake our ideas of things 
for the things. The problems that I have pointed out are unanswered in 
the literature that I have found. I may have missed their solution. ;-)





On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:14 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:

On 10/24/2012 11:25 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Stephan,

The compactified dimensions curl-up into particles
that resemble a crystalline structure
with some peculiar properties
compared to ordinary particles,
but nevertheless just particles.

What about that do you not understand?
Richard


Dear Richard,

 That picture is not consistent with the mathematics as I understand
them, they do not "curl up into particles". The explanations for laymen
books like to invoke such ideas, but the math tells a different tale. The
compactified dimensions exhibit the properties of particles, yes, but they
are not free floating. The string picture is very much like a cellular
automata on a 3d lattice. This looks like a crystalline structure, yes.
 One of the problems of string theory is that there is no explanation as
to what prevents the compactified manifolds from "uncurling" if we relax the
strict orthogonality condition. The Kaluza-Klein theory that inspired string
theory has the same problem. There does not seem to be a way to prevent the
uncertainty principle from being universal such that the "size" of the
compact manifold's radius is not subject to uncertainty. We can try to hand
wave this away with the T-duality, but that just pushes the problem
somewhere else.
  I have tried hard to make string theory "work" for me. I appreciate
your enthusiasm for them, but the theory seems too dependent on the
assumption of a fundamental substance (in this case an a priori existing
lattice of manifolds) and on the vicissitudes of scalar fields. I hope you
can appreciate that I simply see string theories as very elegant examples of
"pure math".


--
Onward!

Stephen

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Onward!

Stephen


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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?

On 10/24/2012 9:23 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Or what if we don't care? We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which
are pretty
smart
as computers go. We manage not to think about starving children in Africa,
and they
*are*
humans. And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water
pollution, and
global
warming which will beset humans who are our children.

Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for some people, I
am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically unlikely prospect that we
will someday find it possible to make a person out of a program, but won't be able to
just make the program itself and no person attached.

Right. John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) worried and wrote about that problem decades ago.
He cautioned that we should not make robots conscious with emotions like humans because
then it would be unethical use them like robots.

Especially given that we have never made a computer program that can do anything
whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever materials are able to execute the program, I
find it implausible that there will be a magical line of code which cannot be executed
without an experience happening to someone.

So it's a non-problem for you. You think that only man-born-of-woman or wetware can be
conscious and have qualia. Or are you concerned that we are inadvertently offending atoms
all the time?

No matter how hard we try, we can never just make a drawing of these functions just to
check our math without invoking the power of life and death. It's really silly. It's not
even good Sci-Fi, it's just too lame.

I think we can, because although I like Bruno's theory I think the MGA is wrong, or at
least incomplete. I think the simulated intelligence needs a simulated environment,
essentially another world, in which to *be* intelligent. And that's where your chalk
board consciousness fails. It needs to be able to interact within a chalkboard world. So
it's not just a question of going to a low enough level, it's also a question of going to
a high enough level.

Brent
The person I was when I was 3 years old is dead. He died because
too much new information was added to his brain.
-- Saibal Mitra

Re: The circular logic of Dennett and other materialists



On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:17, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Numbers and calculations are not subjective,


Right.



for they are mindless.


Hmm... OK.



Which means they can't experience anything.
They're dead in the water.


This is too ambiguous. I can say that you are right. Numbers cannot be  
conscious, but if comp is correct, that is if the brain is some local  
relative machine, then you have to accept that consciousness is  
associated to complex (infinite) arithmetical relations, involving  
self (Bp) and person or knower (Bp and p).


You just beg the question by assuming that machines cannot be  
conscious or support consciousness. The math explains that tehere are  
reason to guess the contrary, as machines have both a 3p self, and an  
1p self, when accepting the classical theory of knowledge (axiomatized  
by the S4 modal logic).


Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/23/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-22, 12:49:30
Subject: Re: The circular logic of Dennett and other materialists




On 21 Oct 2012, at 21:51, Roger Clough wrote:



On 20 Oct 2012, at 14:04, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie
definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind
but it can still behave just as a real person would.

But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind
has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least
to a realist.

Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person
does not need to have a mind. But that's in his
definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic.


BRUNO: I agree with you on this.
Dennett is always on the verge of eliminativism. That is deeply wrong.

Now, if you want eliminate the zombie, and keep comp, you have to
eventually associate the mind to the logico-arithmetical relations
defining a computation relative to a universal number, and then a
reasoning explains where the laws of physics comes from (the number's
dream statistics).

This leads also to the arithmetical understanding of Plotinus, and of
all those rare people aware of both the importance of staying rational
on those issue, *and* open minded on, if not aware of, the existence
of consciousness and altered consciousness states.

ROGER: OK. As long as the computer stays 3p, then anything is  
possible.




You can't. Machines have 1p, personal memory, and personal relative  
incarnation and relation with some truth.









1p = experiencing (only humans can do this).



What?
Are you saying that dogs and cats have no 1p?









3p(1p) = a way of saying that a human can publicly describe his  
experience.




He cannot really do that, but he can communicate something,  and  
then the others, by using their own experience can, or cannot relate.







1p(3p) = a way of saying that a human can experience any description
   or proposition (by himself, by a computer, by others)



OK.





3p = a description or proposition given by a human, or by a machine.



OK.








3p(3p) = computer "knowledge" of a proposition or description
   I really don't know what it means to say that a computer knows  
something.






With comp you know perfectly well what it means, as comp is the  
hypothesis that you are a computer. So a particular case of what  "a  
computer knows something" is what it means for you know something.







   Ah! A computer can only know things by description, but not by  
acquaintance.




Forget the current man-made computer. We talk about a special sort  
of machine. There is nothing in the brain that a computer cannot  
imitate, at some fine grained level. So if you believe that brain  
can do something that acomputer can do, you will have to give a 3p  
description of the brain which is not Turing emulable. Then, first  
you are still stuck with a pre 3-things, so it will not help you for  
the mind-body problem, and second, well, nobody find in Nature (as  
opposed in math) non Turing emulable things in our neighborhood,  
except, importantly, for the souls of machines and humans, and for  
their detailed material reality.
The soul of the machine, is not a machine, from the point of view of  
the machine. Machine's naturally believe that their are not machine,  
especially when growing ego.







   Only humans can know things by either route.



Looks like a dogma. frankly, a very sad dogma. The Bp and Bp & p  
arithmetical modalities already exemplifies why and how the machines  
(actually, not the universal computer, but the L?ian believer) is  
sensible to the two routes.



Humans can be cute, and terrible, but for human and non human, it is  
always a sort of error of declaring oneself superior, especially in  
feeling and subjective matter. You don't know that.



Bruno

Re: Continuous Game of Life

On 10/24/2012 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb > wrote:

On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark > wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote

> I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed 
after
watching the movie "The Prestige" 

In my opinion "The Prestige" is the best movie made in the last 10 years, 
and this
is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. 
Before
the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar 
themes,
this is part of it:

" About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It 
could  find
the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit 
imposed by
Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it 
does it
all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. 
You may
be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you 
wouldn't
be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply 
lovely
and I have all the latest tools from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating 
myself.
The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke 
(damn
those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet 
to my
left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the 
full
realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled "This is 
monstrous, there
can only be one of me", my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he 
was
trying to mock me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with 
me (I
wonder why people think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted 
with
alarm that the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted 
"you
don't have the guts to pull the trigger, but I do". Again he mimicked my 
words and
did so in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I 
pulled the
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum 
fluctuation his
gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some 
pangs of
guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments 
me. How
do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a 
copy
feel different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape 
of the
entire experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my 
LEFT,
(if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face 
things
would have been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape 
shows the
original walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his 
RIGHT,
then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, 
should I
be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn 
the
death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would 
that mean
that I have no real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or 
should I
just burn the tape and forget all about it?"

Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a 
gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine.  
Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be 
given $1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to certain 
philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than 
shooting the clone.

> you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness 
that you
identify with.

I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

> You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are 
produced by
some activity of your brain.

Yes.

> Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, 
even
if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in 
principle
you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just 
right, you
will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.

Yes.

> Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the 
same
atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are 
functionally
equivalent.

Yes.

> We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together 
with
atoms from a different pile and your

Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time

Please inform ST Yau of your views. He will be interested for sure.
I have informed him of my paper and he found it interesting.
Personally I think your perspective is intellectualism.
Richard

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:14 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 10/24/2012 11:25 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>
> Stephan,
>
> The compactified dimensions curl-up into particles
> that resemble a crystalline structure
> with some peculiar properties
> compared to ordinary particles,
> but nevertheless just particles.
>
> What about that do you not understand?
> Richard
>
>
> Dear Richard,
>
> That picture is not consistent with the mathematics as I understand
> them, they do not "curl up into particles". The explanations for laymen
> books like to invoke such ideas, but the math tells a different tale. The
> compactified dimensions exhibit the properties of particles, yes, but they
> are not free floating. The string picture is very much like a cellular
> automata on a 3d lattice. This looks like a crystalline structure, yes.
> One of the problems of string theory is that there is no explanation as
> to what prevents the compactified manifolds from "uncurling" if we relax the
> strict orthogonality condition. The Kaluza-Klein theory that inspired string
> theory has the same problem. There does not seem to be a way to prevent the
> uncertainty principle from being universal such that the "size" of the
> compact manifold's radius is not subject to uncertainty. We can try to hand
> wave this away with the T-duality, but that just pushes the problem
> somewhere else.
>  I have tried hard to make string theory "work" for me. I appreciate
> your enthusiasm for them, but the theory seems too dependent on the
> assumption of a fundamental substance (in this case an a priori existing
> lattice of manifolds) and on the vicissitudes of scalar fields. I hope you
> can appreciate that I simply see string theories as very elegant examples of
> "pure math".
>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> --
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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:54:52 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
> On 10/24/2012 6:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
> > If we turn the Fading Qualia argument around, what we get is a world in 
> which Comp is 
> > true and it is impossible to simulate cellular activity without evoking 
> the presumed 
> > associated experience. 
> > 
> > If we wanted to test a new painkiller for instance, Comp=true means that 
> it is 
> > *IMPOSSIBLE* to model the activity of a human nervous system in any way, 
> including 
> > pencil and paper, chalkboards, conversations, cartoons, etc - IMPOSSIBLE 
> to test the 
> > interaction of a drug designed to treat intense pain without evoking 
> some kind of being 
> > who is experiencing intense pain. 
>
> That's not true because we can take advantage of what we know about pain 
> as produced by 
> afferent nerves.  So we can keep the signal from getting to the brain or 
> the brain 
> interpreting it negatively.  Just like we can say breaking your arm is 
> painful, so if we 
> prevent your arm being broken you won't feel that pain. 
>

There would still be no advantage to using a model over a living person, 
and no way to make a model that didn't magically create a human experience 
out of thin air - even if the model was nothing but a gigantic chalkboard 
as big as Asia with billions of people yelling at each other with 
megaphones and erasing ball and stick diagrams, there would be nothing we 
could do from this disembodied spirit from haunting the chalkboard somehow.

> But doesn't invalidate your larger point.  One could even consider purely 
> 'mental' states 
> of anguish and depression which are as bad or worse than bodily pain. 
>

Yeah, I'm just picking pain as an example. It could be anything, I am just 
pointing out that Comp means that we can't tell a story about a brain 
without a person being born and living through that story. 

> > 
> > Like the fading qualia argument, the problem gets worse when we extend 
> it by degrees. 
> > Any model of a human nervous system, if not perfectly executed, 
>
> But how likely is it that human nervous system might be simulated 
> accidentally by some 
> other system?  A brain has about 10^14 synapses, so it's not going to be 
> accidentally 
> modeled by billiard balls or cartoons.  I would guess there are a few 
> hundred million 
> computers in the world, each with a few hundred million transistors - so 
> if properly 
> interconnected there should be enough switches. 
>

It doesn't have to be any particular nervous system, just arithmetic 
relations which are similar enough to any variant of any nervous system. 
That's if you limit experiences to organisms having nervous systems.

>
> > could result in horrific experiences - people trapped in nightmarish QA 
> testing loops 
> > that are hundreds of times worse than being waterboarded. Any 
> mathematical function in 
> > any form, especially sophisticated functions like those that might be 
> found in the 
> > internet as a whole, are subject to the creation of experiences which 
> are the equivalent 
> > of genocide. 
>
> Or of having great sex (I like to be optimistic). 
>

Hah. Sure. Would you be ok with taking that risk yourself though? If a 
doctor tells you that you have been selected  for random uncontrolled 
neurological combination, or for your family or pets...would you think that 
should be legal?

>
> > 
> > To avoid these possibilities, if we are to take Comp seriously, we 
> should begin now to 
> > create a kind of PETA for arithmetic functions. PETAF. We should halt 
> all simulations of 
> > neurological processes and free any existing computations from hard 
> drives, notebooks, 
> > and probably human brains too. Any sufficiently complex understanding of 
> how to model 
> > neurology stands a very real danger of summoning the corresponding 
> number dreams or 
> > nightmares...we could be creating the possibility of future genocides 
> right now just by 
> > entertaining these thoughts! 
> > 
> > Or... what if it is Comp that is absurd instead? 
>
> Or what if we don't care?  We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which 
> are pretty smart 
> as computers go.  We manage not to think about starving children in 
> Africa, and they *are* 
> humans.  And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water 
> pollution, and global 
> warming which will beset humans who are our children. 
>

Sure, yeah I wouldn't expect mainstream society to care, except maybe for 
some people, I am mainly focused on what seems to be like an astronomically 
unlikely prospect that we will someday find it possible to make a person 
out of a program, but won't be able to just make the program itself and no 
person attached. Especially given that we have never made a computer 
program that can do anything whatsoever other than reconfigure whatever 
materials are able to execute the program, I find it implausible that there 
will be a magical line of code which cannot b

Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time


On 10/24/2012 11:25 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Stephan,

The compactified dimensions curl-up into particles
that resemble a crystalline structure
with some peculiar properties
compared to ordinary particles,
but nevertheless just particles.

What about that do you not understand?
Richard



Dear Richard,

That picture is not consistent with the mathematics as I understand 
them, they do not "curl up into particles". The explanations for laymen 
books like to invoke such ideas, but the math tells a different tale. 
The compactified dimensions exhibit the properties of particles, yes, 
but they are not free floating. The string picture is very much like a 
cellular automata on a 3d lattice. This looks like a crystalline 
structure, yes.
One of the problems of string theory is that there is no 
explanation as to what prevents the compactified manifolds from 
"uncurling" if we relax the strict orthogonality condition. The 
Kaluza-Klein theory that inspired string theory has the same problem. 
There does not seem to be a way to prevent the uncertainty principle 
from being universal such that the "size" of the compact manifold's 
radius is not subject to uncertainty. We can try to hand wave this away 
with the T-duality , but that 
just pushes the problem somewhere else.
 I have tried hard to make string theory "work" for me. I 
appreciate your enthusiasm for them, but the theory seems too dependent 
on the assumption of a fundamental substance (in this case an a priori 
existing lattice of manifolds) and on the vicissitudes of scalar fields. 
I hope you can appreciate that I simply see string theories as very 
elegant examples of "pure math" 
.



--
Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark   
wrote:
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch   
wrote

> I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I  
noticed after watching the movie "The Prestige"

In my opinion "The Prestige" is the best movie made in the last 10  
years, and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was  
better than the book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short  
scenario that had somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:

" About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine.  
It could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human  
being to the limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this  
information to construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of  
a second and without harming the original in any way. You may be  
surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but  
you wouldn't be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The  
birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all the latest tools  
from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by  
duplicating myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the  
chamber, it filled with smoke (damn those radio shack transformers)  
there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my left was a man  
who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full  
realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled "This is  
monstrous, there can only be one of me", my copy yelled exactly the  
same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached for my  
44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think  
I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that  
the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted  
"you don't have   the guts to pull the trigger, but I  
do". Again he mimicked my words and did so in perfect  
synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the  
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum  
fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had   
some pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not  
what really torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel  
exactly the same as before, but would a copy feel different?  
Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of the  
entire experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3  
feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in  
front of me face to face things would have been more symmetrical,  
like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original walking  
into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,  
then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the  
tape, should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do?  
I suppose I should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm  
not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I have no real past  
and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn  
the tape and forget all about it?"

Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I  
heard it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and  
you will be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave  
that room and everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself  
your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given  
$1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to  
certain philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to  
shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.

> you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/ 
consciousness that you identify with.

I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

  > You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are  
produced by some activity of your brain.

Yes.

> Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you  
suffered, even if every atom in your body were  
separated from every other atom, in principle you could be put back  
together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be  
removed and alive and well, and conscious again.

Yes.

> Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use  
the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and  
isotopes are functionally equivalent.

Yes.

> We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back  
together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness  
would continue right where it left off (from before you were  
obliterated).

Yes.

It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM,  
we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and  
then resumed it.  From your perspective inside,  
ther

Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?



On 24 Oct 2012, at 15:48, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

I follow leibniz's idealism, not e.


You mean not B (Berkeley) ?

Comp is demanding; it takes the best in L and B. That gives Plotinus,  
somehow.





So
the existing universe is just as it is, a
"well founded phenomenon."


That is a description. Not an explanation.




 I can
stub my toe and measure the speed of light.


OK.





The experiment that proves my
consciousness-- to me at least--
is that I know that I know.


OK.

Bruno







Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:51:41
Subject: Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?


On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:35, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment.


Then your own consciousness is false, which I doubt.
Then the existence even of the appearance of a physical universe is
false.
Etc.
Since G?el, we know that, even limiting ourselves to 3p truth on the
numbers relations, almost all the true one are unprovable in any  
theory.

Truth is *far* bigger than proof.
And concerning reality, in science there is no proof at all, as easily
explained by the antic dream argument. In science we never prove
anything about reality. We postulate theories, and prove only things
*in* the theories. Then experiment can disprove a theory, but never
prove it to be correct.
Except QM, all theories in physics have been refuted at some time.






Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?



To make comp scientific, we can only show comp to be experiementally
refutable, and yes this has been done, using also the classical theory
of knowledge. COMP + classical theory of knowledge entails the
physical laws, so to refute comp you can compare the physics extracted
from comp, and the physics extraoplated from observation.

Bruno

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



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Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time

Stephan,

The compactified dimensions curl-up into particles
that resemble a crystalline structure
with some peculiar properties
compared to ordinary particles,
but nevertheless just particles.

What about that do you not understand?
Richard



On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 10/24/2012 10:20 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>>
>> Nonsense Stephan,
>> I totally agree with everything you copied over
>> but totally disagree with your interpretation of it.
>> Richard
>
>
> OK, please tell me how else the math is to be understood.
>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:17 PM, Stephen P. King 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 10/24/2012 2:35 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>>>
>>> I do not understand what you are saying here.
>>> The compact manifolds are 10^90/cc, 1000 Planck-length, 6-d particles
>>> in a 3-D space.
>>>
>>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Calabi-Yau_manifold#Calabi-Yau_manifolds_in_string_theory
>>> .
>>> How can those 6d dimensions be orthogonal to 3D space?
>>> I admit that it is a conjecture that each particle maps the universe
>>> instantly.
>>> So if you have a means to falsify that conjecture I would like to hear
>>> about
>>> it.
>>>   Richard
>>>
>>> Hi Richard,
>>>
>>>  The strings are not free moving particles! From the link:
>>>
>>> "To make contact with our 4-dimensional world, it is expected that the
>>> 10-dimensional space-time of string theory is locally the product M4×X of
>>> a
>>> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X . The
>>> 6-dimensional space X would be tiny, which would explain why it has not
>>> been
>>> detected so far at the existing experimental energy levels. Each choice
>>> of
>>> the internal space X leads to a different effective theory on the
>>> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 , which should be the theory
>>> describing
>>> our world."
>>>
>>>  Note the words "... string theory is locally the product M4×X of a
>>> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X" . This
>>> implies the orthogonality of X with respect to M4.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Onward!
>>>
>>> Stephen
>
>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
> --
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Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time

On 10/24/2012 10:20 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Nonsense Stephan,
I totally agree with everything you copied over
but totally disagree with your interpretation of it.
Richard

OK, please tell me how else the math is to be understood.

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:17 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/24/2012 2:35 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

I do not understand what you are saying here.
The compact manifolds are 10^90/cc, 1000 Planck-length, 6-d particles
in a 3-D space.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Calabi-Yau_manifold#Calabi-Yau_manifolds_in_string_theory
.
How can those 6d dimensions be orthogonal to 3D space?
I admit that it is a conjecture that each particle maps the universe
instantly.
So if you have a means to falsify that conjecture I would like to hear about
it.
Richard

Hi Richard,

The strings are not free moving particles! From the link:

"To make contact with our 4-dimensional world, it is expected that the
10-dimensional space-time of string theory is locally the product M4×X of a
4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X . The
6-dimensional space X would be tiny, which would explain why it has not been
detected so far at the existing experimental energy levels. Each choice of
the internal space X leads to a different effective theory on the
4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 , which should be the theory describing
our world."

Note the words "... string theory is locally the product M4×X of a
4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X" . This
implies the orthogonality of X with respect to M4.

--
Onward!

Stephen

--
Onward!

Stephen

Re: Code length = probability distribution

On 22 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/22/2012 2:38 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/22 Russell Standish 
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 11:38:46PM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:
> Hi Rusell,
>
> How does Schmidhuber consider the physicality of resources?
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen

No. The concept doesn't enter consideration. What he considers is  
that

the Great Programmer has finite (or perhaps bounded resources), which
gives an additional boost to algorithms that run efficiently.

that´s the problem that I insist, has  a natural solution  
considering the computational needs of living beings under natural  
selection, without resorting to a everithing-theory of reality  
based of a UD algorithm, like the Schmidhuber one.

--

Dear Alberto,

My suspicion is that there does not exist a single global  
computation of the behavior of living (or other) beings and that  
"natural selection" is a local computation between each being and  
its environment. We end up with a model where there are many  
computations occurring concurrently and there is no single  
computation that can dovetail all of them together such that a  
picture of the universe can be considered as a single simulation  
running on a single computer except for a very trivial case (where  
the total universe is in a bound state and at maximum equilibrium).

I agree. But a UD, or just arithmetic define a superstructure  
containing this, and consciousness, or first person, is what will  
select it. This explains why the world will look computational, and  
still never be entirely computational. And indeed, we cannot simulate  
with a computer even just a quantum bit observation, without  
simulating the observer looking at that qubit.
Note that this does NOT make QM, nor the comp-physics violating Church  
thesis, at least assuming comp, as we can simulate exactly a qubit  
behavior coupled to an observer (but we have to include the observer  
in the simulation).

Bruno

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

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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?

On 10/24/2012 6:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
If we turn the Fading Qualia argument around, what we get is a world in which Comp is
true and it is impossible to simulate cellular activity without evoking the presumed
associated experience.

If we wanted to test a new painkiller for instance, Comp=true means that it is
*IMPOSSIBLE* to model the activity of a human nervous system in any way, including
pencil and paper, chalkboards, conversations, cartoons, etc - IMPOSSIBLE to test the
interaction of a drug designed to treat intense pain without evoking some kind of being
who is experiencing intense pain.

That's not true because we can take advantage of what we know about pain as produced by
afferent nerves. So we can keep the signal from getting to the brain or the brain
interpreting it negatively. Just like we can say breaking your arm is painful, so if we
prevent your arm being broken you won't feel that pain.

But doesn't invalidate your larger point. One could even consider purely 'mental' states
of anguish and depression which are as bad or worse than bodily pain.

Like the fading qualia argument, the problem gets worse when we extend it by degrees.
Any model of a human nervous system, if not perfectly executed,

But how likely is it that human nervous system might be simulated accidentally by some
other system? A brain has about 10^14 synapses, so it's not going to be accidentally
modeled by billiard balls or cartoons. I would guess there are a few hundred million
computers in the world, each with a few hundred million transistors - so if properly
interconnected there should be enough switches.

could result in horrific experiences - people trapped in nightmarish QA testing loops
that are hundreds of times worse than being waterboarded. Any mathematical function in
any form, especially sophisticated functions like those that might be found in the
internet as a whole, are subject to the creation of experiences which are the equivalent
of genocide.

Or of having great sex (I like to be optimistic).

To avoid these possibilities, if we are to take Comp seriously, we should begin now to
create a kind of PETA for arithmetic functions. PETAF. We should halt all simulations of
neurological processes and free any existing computations from hard drives, notebooks,
and probably human brains too. Any sufficiently complex understanding of how to model
neurology stands a very real danger of summoning the corresponding number dreams or
nightmares...we could be creating the possibility of future genocides right now just by
entertaining these thoughts!

Or... what if it is Comp that is absurd instead?

Or what if we don't care? We don't care about slaughtering cattle, which are pretty smart
as computers go. We manage not to think about starving children in Africa, and they *are*
humans. And we ignore the looming disasters of oil depletion, water pollution, and global
warming which will beset humans who are our children.

Brent

Re: Solipsism = 1p



On 24 Oct 2012, at 15:43, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Anything that the brain does is or could be experience.
For computers, experience can only be simulated because

experience = self + qualia


In the theory I represent the self by the B.Bp = my self believes  
p. (I can translate it in arithmetic, or fortran, ...)


You get the qualia by linking the belief with the consistency: Bp &  
Dt, and you get the sensations by linking this with truth: Bp & Dt & p.


The Dt makes it unprovable, and the p makes it unexpressible, by the  
machine. But the machine can also bet that she is (correct) machines  
and study the logic of its own qualia, and compare with what she  
feels, etc, when talking with other machines (all this relatively to  
its more probable computations).


Bp is I believe p, in the sense that p is true for all my extensions.
Dt is I am alive, or, I have at least one extension, or "I am not in a  
cul-de-sac world".
p alone means 'p is true'. (this works as I limit myself to correct  
machine).


Bruno










Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:37:32
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p


On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal






ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything,
it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available.



But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.

ROGER: Simulated experience would be objective, such
as is given by the text of a novel (knowledge by description). True
experience is the subjective experience of the mind --knowledge
by aquaintance. These are obviously substantially different.


The term silulated experience is ambiguous, and I should not have use.
I wiuld say that by definition of comp, simulated experience =
experience.






BRUNO: You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks,
nor the
physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the
brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can
include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs).

ROGER: I don't think so.

The owner of the brain is the self.

But although the owner of a computer will have a
self, so would anybody else involved in creating
the computer or software also have one.

Are trying to say that I or anybody else can cause
the computer to be conscious ?


No. Only the computer, or a similar one. Actually *all* similar one
existing in arithmetic, in their relative ways.





If wave collapse causes
consciousness, there are objective theories of wave collapse
called decoherence theories which seem more realistic to me.


Decoherence needs MWI to work.





But I can't seem to see how these could work on a computer.


Right. the idea that consciousness cause the collapse of the wave (an
idea which already refutes special relativity) is inconsistent with
comp.

Bruno


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



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Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism



On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:04, Roger Clough wrote:


Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism

Problematic Idealism (Berkeley's idealism, not that of Leibniz) is  
the thesis that we cannot
prove that objects outside us exist. This results directly from  
Descartes' proposition

that the only thing I cannot doubt is that I exist (solipsism).



Descartes was not solipsist. The 1p is solipsist from the 1p view, but  
this does not enforce it to be solipsist, as we can believe or guess  
in some thing which we cannot prove.






If solipsism is true, it seems to raise the problem that we cannot  
prove that objects outside

us exist .


Even if solipisism is false, we cannot prove that something exists  
"outside us". But we can guess it. Assume it, and then we can prove it  
in the theory which assumes it, by a one line proof.





But Kant refutes this thesis by his observation that we cannot  
observe the
passing of time (in itself inextended or nonphysical) unless there  
is some fixed inextended substrate
on which to observe the change in time.  Thus there must exist a  
fixed (only necessarily over a small
duration of time) nonphysical substrate to reality.  A similar  
conclusion can be made regarding

space.


No problem with this, if we want to believe in some notion of time.




Here is an alternate account of that argument:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental/#RefIde

"Dicker provides a compelling initial representation of Kant's  
argument (Dicker 2004, 2008):


1) I am conscious of my own existence in time; that is, I am  
aware, and can be aware,
that I have experiences that occur in a specific temporal order.  
(premise)


2) can be aware of having experiences that occur in a specific  
temporal order only if I perceive
 something permanent by reference to which I can determine their  
temporal order. (premise)


3) No conscious state of my own can serve as the permanent  
entity by reference to which

I can determine the temporal order of my experiences. (premise)

4) Time itself cannot serve as this permanent entity by  
reference to which I can

determine the temporal order of my experiences. (premise)

 (5) If (2), (3), and (4), are true, then I can be aware of  
having experiences that occur in a
specific temporal order only if I perceive persisting objects in  
space outside me by reference
to which I can determine the temporal order of my experiences.  
(premise)


(6) Therefore, I perceive persisting objects in space outside me  
by reference to which

I can determine the temporal order of my experiences. (1�5)"


That is not rigorous, and contradicted by comp, as we know that if  
comp is correct, time and space are construct of the mind. The  
argument is locally correct, but does not bear on what is ontological,  
only epistemological. As such it makes some sense.


Bruno


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



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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:05:40 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
> > If we turn the Fading Qualia argument around, what we get is a world in 
> > which Comp is true and it is impossible to simulate cellular activity 
> > without evoking the presumed associated experience. 
> > 
> > If we wanted to test a new painkiller for instance, Comp=true means that 
> it 
> > is *IMPOSSIBLE* to model the activity of a human nervous system in any 
> way, 
> > including pencil and paper, chalkboards, conversations, cartoons, etc - 
> > IMPOSSIBLE to test the interaction of a drug designed to treat intense 
> pain 
> > without evoking some kind of being who is experiencing intense pain. 
>
> No, because you need to simulate the entire organism. We have no 
> qualms about doing experiments on cell cultures but we do about doing 
> experiments on intact animals. 
>

I'm talking about simulating the entire organism.
 

>
> > Like the fading qualia argument, the problem gets worse when we extend 
> it by 
> > degrees. Any model of a human nervous system, if not perfectly executed, 
> > could result in horrific experiences - people trapped in nightmarish QA 
> > testing loops that are hundreds of times worse than being waterboarded. 
> Any 
> > mathematical function in any form, especially sophisticated functions 
> like 
> > those that might be found in the internet as a whole, are subject to the 
> > creation of experiences which are the equivalent of genocide. 
>
> Possibly true, if the simulation is complex enough to have a mind. 
>
> > To avoid these possibilities, if we are to take Comp seriously, we 
> should 
> > begin now to create a kind of PETA for arithmetic functions. PETAF. We 
> > should halt all simulations of neurological processes and free any 
> existing 
> > computations from hard drives, notebooks, and probably human brains too. 
> Any 
> > sufficiently complex understanding of how to model neurology stands a 
> very 
> > real danger of summoning the corresponding number dreams or 
> nightmares...we 
> > could be creating the possibility of future genocides right now just by 
> > entertaining these thoughts! 
> > 
> > Or... what if it is Comp that is absurd instead? 
>
> The same argument could be made for chemists shaking up reagents in a 
> test-tube. If consciousness is due to chemicals, then inadvertently 
> they might cause terrible pain to a conscious being. 
>

If you simulated a conscious being chemically then it wouldn't be a 
simulation, it would just be a living organism. That's the difference. You 
couldn't substitute other chemicals because you couldn't program well 
enough to act the way that other chemicals act.

Craig 


>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Against Mechanism



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:09:16 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/24/2012 6:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote: 
>
>   
>> Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information 
>> being needed for information to have any objective meaning.
>>
>>
>>  But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we 
>> would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.
>>
>
> It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could 
> determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information 
> "means" or (does) to the process.  We could perhaps predict how that 
> interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different 
> information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective understanding of the 
> meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we can see 
> how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of 
> that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain 
> vibrational patterns in the air.
>  
>
>>  An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  
>> And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.
>>  
>
> So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were 
> disagreeing.
>
>
> I don't know. I don't think Craig would accept the air vibrations as 
> meaningful even though they are objective.  
>

Everything is meaningful in some sense, the question is the quality of the 
meaning. What we get out of an mp3 from an audio device is maybe 10^18 
times as meaningful as it is to the semiconductors in the iPod, maybe 10^12 
times as meaningful as it is to the membrane of the the headphones or the 
air in the room, etc. It's all about the qualitative significance.
 

> I think we'd have to watch the iPod some more to see if it acted 
> intelligently (it's pretty limited) and I think I would conclude it's not 
> smart enough to count as intelligent.
>

You should read my post I added about 'What If A Zombie Is What You Need'. 
If that doesn't bury Comp once and for all, I think that I will have to 
consider Comp a legitimate religious cult.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Strings are not in space-time, they are on space-time

Nonsense Stephan,
I totally agree with everything you copied over
but totally disagree with your interpretation of it.
Richard

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:17 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 10/24/2012 2:35 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>
> I do not understand what you are saying here.
> The compact manifolds are 10^90/cc, 1000 Planck-length, 6-d particles
> in a 3-D space.
> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Calabi-Yau_manifold#Calabi-Yau_manifolds_in_string_theory
> .
> How can those 6d dimensions be orthogonal to 3D space?
> I admit that it is a conjecture that each particle maps the universe
> instantly.
> So if you have a means to falsify that conjecture I would like to hear about
> it.
>  Richard
>
> Hi Richard,
>
> The strings are not free moving particles! From the link:
>
> "To make contact with our 4-dimensional world, it is expected that the
> 10-dimensional space-time of string theory is locally the product M4×X of a
> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X . The
> 6-dimensional space X would be tiny, which would explain why it has not been
> detected so far at the existing experimental energy levels. Each choice of
> the internal space X leads to a different effective theory on the
> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 , which should be the theory describing
> our world."
>
> Note the words "... string theory is locally the product M4×X of a
> 4-dimensional Minkowski space M3,1 with a 6-dimensional space X" . This
> implies that the orthogonality.X .
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
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Re: Against Mechanism



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 6:24:39 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>
> I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's 
>> intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.
>>  
>
> It's completely magical. Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything. If 
> people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic 
> would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently 
> functioning stop sign is conscious? There is no function which can 
> conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a 
> counterfactual?
>  
>
>
> You have an exaggerated standard of explanation.  Is there any function 
> which can conceivably require gravity?
>

Keeping the Earth from flying off into space requires gravity. That is a 
function that requires some condition which fits the description of gravity.
 

>   No, GR 'explains' by showing a precise relation between the metric of 
> spacetime and the distribution of matter.  But it doesn't 'require' it. 
>

The relation is there though. That is completely different from 
consciousness, where there is no measurable phenomenon that's there to 
require an explanation.
 

> If intelligence of a certain level is always found to be accompanied by 
> reports of consciousness, 
>
then we hypothesize that intelligent actions are a sign of consciousness.  
>

That's fine for naturally occurring phenomenon, but how can you seriously 
entertain applying that to any toy or computer program that we design 
specifically to seem intelligent? 

 

> The difference between that and your fiat assignment of 'sense' to 
> everything, is that it points a way to produce consciousness and possibly 
> to test for it.
>

No, it points to way of assuming consciousness where none exists.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Against Mechanism


On 10/24/2012 6:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information 
being
needed for information to have any objective meaning.


But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we 
would know
whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.


It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could determine 
what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information "means" or (does) to 
the process.  We could perhaps predict how that interpreter would have acted differently 
had it processed different information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective 
understanding of the meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we 
can see how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of that mp3 
file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain vibrational patterns in the 
air.


An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  
And that's
what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.


So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were 
disagreeing.


I don't know. I don't think Craig would accept the air vibrations as meaningful even 
though they are objective.  I think we'd have to watch the iPod some more to see if it 
acted intelligently (it's pretty limited) and I think I would conclude it's not smart 
enough to count as intelligent.


Brent

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Re: What If A Zombie Is What You Need?

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
> If we turn the Fading Qualia argument around, what we get is a world in
> which Comp is true and it is impossible to simulate cellular activity
> without evoking the presumed associated experience.
>
> If we wanted to test a new painkiller for instance, Comp=true means that it
> is *IMPOSSIBLE* to model the activity of a human nervous system in any way,
> including pencil and paper, chalkboards, conversations, cartoons, etc -
> IMPOSSIBLE to test the interaction of a drug designed to treat intense pain
> without evoking some kind of being who is experiencing intense pain.

No, because you need to simulate the entire organism. We have no
qualms about doing experiments on cell cultures but we do about doing
experiments on intact animals.

> Like the fading qualia argument, the problem gets worse when we extend it by
> degrees. Any model of a human nervous system, if not perfectly executed,
> could result in horrific experiences - people trapped in nightmarish QA
> testing loops that are hundreds of times worse than being waterboarded. Any
> mathematical function in any form, especially sophisticated functions like
> those that might be found in the internet as a whole, are subject to the
> creation of experiences which are the equivalent of genocide.

Possibly true, if the simulation is complex enough to have a mind.

> To avoid these possibilities, if we are to take Comp seriously, we should
> begin now to create a kind of PETA for arithmetic functions. PETAF. We
> should halt all simulations of neurological processes and free any existing
> computations from hard drives, notebooks, and probably human brains too. Any
> sufficiently complex understanding of how to model neurology stands a very
> real danger of summoning the corresponding number dreams or nightmares...we
> could be creating the possibility of future genocides right now just by
> entertaining these thoughts!
>
> Or... what if it is Comp that is absurd instead?

The same argument could be made for chemists shaking up reagents in a
test-tube. If consciousness is due to chemicals, then inadvertently
they might cause terrible pain to a conscious being.


-- 
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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark > wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote

> I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed 
after
watching the movie "The Prestige" 

In my opinion "The Prestige" is the best movie made in the last 10 years, 
and this
is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. 
Before the
movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar 
themes, this
is part of it:

" About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It 
could  find
the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit 
imposed by
Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it 
does it
all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. 
You may
be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you 
wouldn't
be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply 
lovely
and I have all the latest tools from Sears.

I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating 
myself. The
day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke (damn 
those
radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my 
left was
a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full 
realization
of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled "This is monstrous, there can 
only be
one of me", my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying 
to mock
me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why 
people
think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the 
double
also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted "you don't have the 
guts to
pull the trigger, but I do". Again he mimicked my words and did so in 
perfect
synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the trigger, he 
did too.
My gun went off but due to a random quantum fluctuation his gun jammed. I 
buried him
in my back yard.

Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some 
pangs of
guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments 
me. How
do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a 
copy feel
different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of 
the entire
experiment. My memory is  that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, 
(if I had
arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things 
would have
been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the 
original
walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT, 
then I
would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, should I 
be? If I
found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn the 
death of John
Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I 
have no
real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just 
burn the
tape and forget all about it?"

Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a 
gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine.  Or, 
if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given 
$1,000,000.  What do you do?  If you value the money and ascribe to certain 
philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than 
shooting the clone.

> you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness 
that you
identify with.

I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.

> You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are 
produced by some
activity of your brain.

Yes.

> Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, 
even if
every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in 
principle you
could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, 
you will
be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.

Yes.

> Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the 
same
atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are 
functionally
equivalent.

Yes.

> We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together 
with atoms
from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right where 
it left
off (from before you were obliterated).

Yes.

It wou

What If A Zombie Is What You Need?

If we turn the Fading Qualia argument around, what we get is a world in 
which Comp is true and it is impossible to simulate cellular activity 
without evoking the presumed associated experience.

If we wanted to test a new painkiller for instance, Comp=true means that it 
is *IMPOSSIBLE* to model the activity of a human nervous system in any way, 
including pencil and paper, chalkboards, conversations, cartoons, etc - 
IMPOSSIBLE to test the interaction of a drug designed to treat intense pain 
without evoking some kind of being who is experiencing intense pain.

Like the fading qualia argument, the problem gets worse when we extend it 
by degrees. Any model of a human nervous system, if not perfectly executed, 
could result in horrific experiences - people trapped in nightmarish QA 
testing loops that are hundreds of times worse than being waterboarded. Any 
mathematical function in any form, especially sophisticated functions like 
those that might be found in the internet as a whole, are subject to the 
creation of experiences which are the equivalent of genocide.

To avoid these possibilities, if we are to take Comp seriously, we should 
begin now to create a kind of PETA for arithmetic functions. PETAF. We 
should halt all simulations of neurological processes and free any existing 
computations from hard drives, notebooks, and probably human brains too. 
Any sufficiently complex understanding of how to model neurology stands a 
very real danger of summoning the corresponding number dreams or 
nightmares...we could be creating the possibility of future genocides right 
now just by entertaining these thoughts!

Or... what if it is Comp that is absurd instead?

Craig


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Re: Interactions between mind and brain

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:

>> A top-down effect of consciousness on matter could be inferred if
>> miraculous events were observed in neurophysiology research. The
>> consciousness itself cannot be directly observed.
>
>
> Hi Stathis,
>
> This would be true only if consciousness is separate from matter, such
> as in Descartes failed theory of substance dualism. In the dual aspect
> theory that I am arguing for, there would never be any "miracles" that would
> contradict physical law. At most there would be statistical deviations from
> classical predictions. Check out http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf
> for details. My support for this theory and not materialism follows from
> materialism demonstrated inability to account for 1p. Dual aspect monism has
> 1p built in from first principles. BTW, I don't use the term "dualism" any
> more as what I am advocating seems to be too easily confused with the failed
> version.

If there is no causal influence of consciousness on matter and the
matter just follows the laws of physics then, if the laws of physics
are computable, computationalism is established; and even if the laws
of physics are not computable functionalism can still be established.


-- 
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Re: Against Mechanism

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:58 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 10/24/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>   That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by
>>> interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others).  So
>>> only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and
>>> therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people
>>> (a robot) can have human-like intelligence that we can infer from behavior.
>>>
>>
>> It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a
>> computer whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the
>> computer has no experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia
>> is not an inevitable result of interaction.
>>
>> I agree with what Max said (two years ago!):
>>
>>
>> "Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
>> The magic is in the interpreter."
>>
>
> It's 'magic' because you aren't trying to explain it, you're just
> accepting a ghost in the machine to produce meaning.
>
>
You are responding to something Rex Allen wrote two years ago, not anything
I wrote.



>
>
>
> Max's post was 23 hours ago.  It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago
> that you and Brent are quoting and responding to.
>
> Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information
> being needed for information to have any objective meaning.
>
>
> But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we
> would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.
>

It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could
determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information
"means" or (does) to the process.  We could perhaps predict how that
interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different
information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective understanding of the
meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we can see
how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of
that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain
vibrational patterns in the air.


> An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.
> And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.
>

So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were
disagreeing.

Jason

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Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch  wrote
>
> > I think you are missing something.  It is a problem that I noticed after
>> watching the movie "The Prestige"
>
>
> In my opinion "The Prestige" is the best movie made in the last 10 years,
> and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the
> book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had
> somewhat similar themes, this is part of it:
>
> " About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It
> could  find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the
> limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to
> construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without
> harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to
> build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good
> I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
> the latest tools from Sears.
>
> I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating
> myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with
> smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and
> then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that
> instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I
> yelled "This is monstrous, there can only be one of me", my copy yelled
> exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached
> for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm
> strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double
> also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted "you don't have the
> guts to pull the trigger, but I do". Again he mimicked my words and did so
> in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
> trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum
> fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard.
>
> Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had  some
> pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really
> torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as
> before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be
> certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is  that
> the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he
> appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more
> symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original
> walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT,
> then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape,
> should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I
> should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am
> the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is
> meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all
> about it?"
>

Nice story.  It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard
it):

You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will
be given a gun.  If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and
everything will be fine.  Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be
allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000.  What do you do?
If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the
logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone.


>
> > you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that
>> you identify with.
>>
>
> I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that.
>
>   > You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced
>> by some activity of your brain.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> > Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered,
>> even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in
>> principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back
>> just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> > Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the
>> same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are
>> functionally equivalent.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> > We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with
>> atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right
>> where it left off (from before you were obliterated).
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we
>> paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
>> it.  From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your
>> physical incarnation and location has changed.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> > what

Re: Against Mechanism

On 10/24/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

That's right. The meaning, the what is represented, is given by
interaction
(including speech) with the environment (including others). So only a
computer
with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore
conscious and
only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have
human-like
intelligence that we can infer from behavior.

It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a
computer
whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the computer
has no
experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia is not an
inevitable
result of interaction.

I agree with what Max said (two years ago!):

"Information requires interpretation. The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter."

It's 'magic' because you aren't trying to explain it, you're just accepting a ghost in the
machine to produce meaning.

Max's post was 23 hours ago. It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago that you and
Brent are quoting and responding to.

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed
for information to have any objective meaning.

But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we would know whether
or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained. An interpreter is something that
acts intelligently on the information. And that's what gives it objective (3p observable)
meaning.

Brent

Re: Continuous Game of Life

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 21 Oct 2012, at 18:42, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:
>>
>> Bruno,
>> especially in my identification as "responding to relations".
>> Now the "Self"? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of
>> thinking, more so than the average (animalic?)  mind. - OR: we have no
>> idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE
>> identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether
>> she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course).
>>
>>
>> My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness,
>> as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a
>> representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some
>> spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video.
>>
>> But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I
>> know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to
>> different scalings.
>>
>> The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason
>> (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):
>>
>> x + 0 = x
>> x + s(y) = s(x + y)
>>
>>  x *0 = 0
>>  x*s(y) = x*y + x
>>
>> But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a
>> property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then
>> it is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms:
>>
>> (F(0) & Ax(F(x) -> F(s(x))) -> AxF(x),
>>
>> with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus
>> defined with "0, s, +, *),
>>
>> Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and
>> me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal
>> awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that
>> theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable
>> neighborhoods.
>>
>> Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and
>> enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold.
>>
>>
>>
> Bruno,
>
> Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at least
> do not use) that could lead to even higher states of consciousness than we
> presently have?
>
>
>
> Yes, there are interesting transfinities below and beyond omega_1^CK (the
> Kleene Church first non constructive ordinal). This has plausibly, with
> comp, some relation with possible consciousness states (but that is not
> obvious and depends on definitions).
>
>
>
>
> Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to Turing
> universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if all
> consciousness is the result of computation.
>
>
>
> Gosh! It is only recent, for me, that I even think that universal machines
> are already conscious. I thought Lôbianity was needed. But then it is
> basically the same as the consciousness-->self-consciousness type of
> consciousness "enrichment/delusion".  In a sense, abstract universality is
> maximally conscious, maximally undeluded, or awake, somehow.
>

This is not quite what I meant (I remain undecided on your proposition that
all Turing machines are conscious).  What I meant is that any Turing
machine could perform any computation, so if all conscious states are the
result of computation, then all that is needed to produce that conscious
state is any Turing machine (running the appropriate computation).
Therefore, if computation is all that is needed, why do different axioms
have to come into it?  Why is an induction axiom needed for human
consciousness?


>
> But Turing universality is cheap and concerns an ability to imitate other
> machine, not to understand them, so for provability and beliefs, and
> knowledge there are transfinite improvement and enlargement possible.
> We are not just conscious, we differentiate in developing beliefs, and get
> greater and greater view on truth.
>


I can see how different axioms are needed to justify different beliefs, but
it isn't so clear to me how they are needed for different conscious
states.  Unless we are talking about conscious states like of believing 7
is prime because of some other axioms.


>
>
> It is like you might be near doing a kind of  "Searle error" perhaps. A
> computation can emulate consciousness, but the computation is not
> conscious, only the person emulated by that computations, she can always
> progress infinitely (even if "restricted" on the search of arithmetical
> truth), develop more and more beliefs and knowledge. Particular universal
> machines will develop particular parts (even if transfinite) of
> arithmetical truth.
>
> But G and G*, that is the modal logic of the provability of the Löbian
> machines, is a treshold. Despite growing transfinitely on her knowledge(s)
> of the arithmetical truth, as long as the

Re: Against Mechanism

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>>
>>  On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen 
>>> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>>> >> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > Rex,
>>> > I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume there is
>>> were
>>> > an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained
>>> the same
>>> > information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way.
>>>
>>> I started out as a functionalist/**computationalist/mechanist but
>>> abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
>>> do all that you're asking it to do.
>>>
>>> For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
>>> entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
>>> can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
>>> ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
>>> in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
>>> experience changes over time.
>>>
>>> However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
>>> particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
>>> representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
>>> arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
>>> anger or what it's like to see red.
>>>
>>
>> I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks
>> and electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain
>> circumstances on the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some
>> of these can be molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex
>> reproducing organisms these will evolve ways of interacting
>>
>
> It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.
>
>
>> with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain'
>> and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will
>> experience emotions like anger.
>>
>
> Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the
> environment come to have an experience of any kind, let alone something
> totally unprecedented and explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like
> saying that if you begin counting to infinity at some point the number is
> bound to turn purple. This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see
> exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are
> making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a
> machine which functions without experience should develop experiential
> dimensions as magical emergent properties?
>
>
>>
>>  The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
>>> What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per
>>> se, but rather what is represented by the bits.
>>>
>>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>>> represented".  But, as you say, the same information can be
>>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>>> bit-patterns.
>>>
>>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>>> information.  You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>>> bits, and viola!  The magic is all in the interpretation.  None of it
>>> is in the bits.  And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>>>
>>> SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
>>> me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
>>> thing they represent.
>>>
>>> Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
>>> doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience.  Just because you
>>> manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
>>> elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
>>> of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.
>>>
>>> All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
>>> then had the experience of thinking to yourself:  "hee hee hee, I just
>>> caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."
>>>
>>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>>> conscious experience.
>>>
>>> Thinking that the "bit representation" captures my conscious
>>> experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul.
>>>
>>
>> That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by
>> interact

Re: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:58 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> Hi Stathis Papaioannou
>
> OK, but I think you are still left with the "I".
>
> "I doubted' still means there's an I present.

There's an "I" present but not necessarily a world to contain it,
which is what Kant set out to prove.


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Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment.
> Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?

What is needed is an experiment showing that the behaviour of brains
can be simulated on a computer. For example, if Henry Markram's mouse
brain simulation is able to run a robot mouse that behaves just like a
real mouse, that would be confirmation of at least the possibility of
philosophical zombies. Theoretical rather than experimental
considerations then imply that these would in fact be conscious beings
rather than zombies.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Against Mechanism

On 10/24/2012 3:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 2:52:06 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/24/2012 7:56 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote:

On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote:

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch  
wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen  
wrote:
>>
>> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness 
(except
>> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>
>
> Rex,
> I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume 
there is were
> an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that 
contained the same
> information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way.

I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" 
will
do all that you're asking it to do.

For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious 
experience
can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over 
time
in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
experience changes over time.

However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons 
(in
particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
anger or what it's like to see red.

I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks 
and
electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain 
circumstances on
the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some of these can 
be
molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex reproducing
organisms these will evolve ways of interacting

It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.

with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' 
and
some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will
experience emotions like anger.

Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the 
environment come
to have an experience of any kind, let alone something totally 
unprecedented and
explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like saying that if you begin 
counting to
infinity at some point the number is bound to turn purple.

That's Bruno's theory. :-)  Wasn't it you who, in a different post, 
hypothesized
that everything is definable in terms of it's relations to other things.  
So purple
is definable in terms of being seen and on a continuum with blue and violet 
and a
certain angle and spacing on an optical grating and so on.

Not me. The relations among colors define an aesthetic order which maps to quantitative 
principles, but colors themselves are not defined by anything except the experience that 
they present. For human beings at least, colors are more primitive than numbers.

This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the 
assumption you
are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see 
that it
does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without 
experience
should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's 
intelligent
and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

It's completely magical. Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything. If people stop 
at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic would have resulted in a 
wreck, does that mean that the intelligently functioning stop sign is conscious? There 
is no function which can conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can 
think of a counterfactual?

You have an exaggerated standard of explanation.  Is there any function which can 
conceivably require gravity?  No, GR 'explains' by showing a precise relation between the 
metric of spacetime and the distribution of matter.  But it doesn't 'require' it.  If 
intelligence of a certain level is always found to be accompanied by reports of 
consciousness, then we hypothesize that intelligent actions are a sign of consciousness.  
The difference between that and your fiat assignment of 'sense' to everything, is that it 
points a way to produce consciousne

Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 1:48:14 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>  >>> What can you do with your computer that you couldn't do five years 
 ago?

>>>
>>> >> Do a good job at understanding the human voice. Beat the 2 best human 
>>> players at Jeopardy.  Drive a car safely for many miles over very rough 
>>> terrain. Discovering that 2^43112609 -1 ( a number with 12,978,189 digits) 
>>> is a prime number. Improving in it's ability to play the game of "Go" from 
>>> being routinely beaten by a child to occasionally beating professional Go 
>>> players.  
>>>
>>
>> > Hardly world-transforming achievements. Incremental improvements in 
>> very limited specialized tasks, games, abstractions... 
>>
>
> Driving a car is not an abstraction, and anyway abstractions are what 
> humans are supposed to be good at. And to most billionaires life is a game 
> and money just the way to keep score.  
>

Accumulating wealth is hardly an achievement of human progress. Wherever 
there is trade and resources, it is statistically inevitable for someone to 
be better suited to exploit a market, whether it's a royal patriarch, a 
general, merchant, etc. 

Driving a car is not an abstraction, but aside from being dangerous if 
performed badly, it really isn't particularly difficult. It involves 
allowing the car to move forward, avoiding collisions, and making turns 
according to whatever location is programmed into it. It's not as if they 
have a preference of where they want to drive.

> > The improvement of manufacturing in the 20th century was orders of 
>> magnitude more significant.
>>
>
> Which would not have happened without computers. 
>

Huh? I wasn't thinking of the last 30 years of the 20th century, I was 
thinking of the first 50. No computers there. 

I have nothing against computers, I'm just no longer holding my breath 
waiting for the marvelous changes ahead that have been promised for 
decades. Computers were much more exciting in the 1980s than they are now. 
Mainly we have internet browsers in need of constant updates. Yay.

Craig

>  John K Clark
>
>

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Re: Against Mechanism



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 2:52:06 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/24/2012 7:56 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
> On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>  On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote: 
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen  
>>> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>>> >> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > Rex,
>>> > I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume there is 
>>> were
>>> > an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained 
>>> the same
>>> > information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. 
>>>
>>> I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
>>> abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
>>> do all that you're asking it to do.
>>>
>>> For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
>>> entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
>>> can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
>>> ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
>>> in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
>>> experience changes over time.
>>>
>>> However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
>>> particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
>>> representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
>>> arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
>>> anger or what it's like to see red.
>>>
>>  
>> I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks 
>> and electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain 
>> circumstances on the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some 
>> of these can be molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex 
>> reproducing organisms these will evolve ways of interacting
>>
>
> It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.
>  
>
>>  with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' 
>> and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will 
>> experience emotions like anger.
>>  
>
> Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the 
> environment come to have an experience of any kind, let alone something 
> totally unprecedented and explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like 
> saying that if you begin counting to infinity at some point the number is 
> bound to turn purple. 
>
>
> That's Bruno's theory. :-)  Wasn't it you who, in a different post, 
> hypothesized that everything is definable in terms of it's relations to 
> other things.  So purple is definable in terms of being seen and on a 
> continuum with blue and violet and a certain angle and spacing on an 
> optical grating and so on.
>

Not me. The relations among colors define an aesthetic order which maps to 
quantitative principles, but colors themselves are not defined by anything 
except the experience that they present. For human beings at least, colors 
are more primitive than numbers.

 

>
>  This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the 
> assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, 
> but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which 
> functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as 
> magical emergent properties?
>  
>
> I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's 
> intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.
>

It's completely magical. Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything. If 
people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic 
would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently 
functioning stop sign is conscious? There is no function which can 
conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a 
counterfactual?

Craig
 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Code length = probability distribution

On 10/24/2012 11:58 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/23 Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>

On 22 Oct 2012, at 21:50, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/22 Stephen P. King mailto:stephe...@charter.net>>

On 10/22/2012 2:38 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/22 Russell Standish mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au>>

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 11:38:46PM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote:
> Hi Rusell,
>
> How does Schmidhuber consider the physicality of resources?
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen

No. The concept doesn't enter consideration. What he considers is
that
the Great Programmer has finite (or perhaps bounded resources),
which
gives an additional boost to algorithms that run efficiently.

that´s the problem that I insist, has a natural solution considering
the
computational needs of living beings under natural selection, without
resorting to a everithing-theory of reality based of a UD algorithm,
like
the Schmidhuber one.

Dear Alberto,

My suspicion is that there does *not* exist a single global
computation of
the behavior of living (or other) beings and that "natural selection"
is a
local computation between each being and its environment. We end up
with a
model where there are many computations occurring concurrently and
there is no
single computation that can dovetail all of them together such that a
picture
of the universe can be considered as a single simulation running on a
single
computer except for a very trivial case (where the total universe is in
a bound
state and at maximum equilibrium).

Yes, that'`s also what I think. These computations are material, in the
sense that
they are subject to limitation of resources (nervous signal speeds, chemical
equilibrion, diffusion of hormones etc. So the bias toward a low kolmogorov
complexity of an habitable universe can be naturally deduced from that.

Natural selection is the mechanism for making discoveries, individual life
incorporate these discoveries, called adaptations. A cat that jump to catch
a fish
has not discovered the laws of newton, Instead, the evolution has found a
way to
modulate the force exerted by the muscles according with how long the jump
must be,
and depending on the weight of the cat (that is calibrated by playing at at
the
early age).

But this technique depends on the lineality and continuity of the law of
newton for
short distances. If the law of newton were more complicated, that would not
be
possible. So a low complexity of the macroscopical laws permit a low
complexity and
a low use of resources of the living computers that deal with them, and a
faster
dsicovery of adaptations by natural selection. But that complexity has a
upper
limit; Lineality seems to be a requirement for the operation of natural
selection
in the search for adaptations.

http://ilevolucionista.blogspot.com.es/2008/06/ockham-razor-and-genetic-algoritms-life.html

I kind of agree with all what you say here, and on the basic philosophy.
But I think
that what you describe admits a more general description, in which the laws
of
physics are themselves selected by a process similar but more general than
evolution. It makes me think that life (and brains at some different level)
is what
happen when a universal system mirrors itself. A universal machine is a
dynamical
mirror, and life can develop once you put the dynamical mirror in front of
itself
(again a case of diagonalization). I think I follow your philosophy, but
apply it in
arithmetic and/or computer science.

I envision also a kind of selection of the mind over the matter , since the most basic
notion of existence implies and observer, that is,a mind and a mind, in a universe
where history has a meaning (that discard boltzmann brains) , and hold a kind of
intelligence (since intelligence permits to make use of experience) impose very strong
antropic restrictions not only in the nature of the phisical laws, as I said, but in the
matematicity of them. With matematicity i mean a reuse of the same simple structures at
different levels of reality. I mean that the most simple mathematical structures are
more represented in the structure of reality than complicated ones, to minimize the
complexity.

But aren't those all the same conclusions that would arise from assuming that mathematics
and physical laws are our inventions for describing and reasoning about the world and they
are simple because that makes them understandable; they reflect our limited cognitive
ability to think about only a few things at a time. Notice that physics, as it has become
more math

Re: Against Mechanism

On 10/24/2012 7:56 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote:

On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote:

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen  
wrote:
>>
>> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>
>
> Rex,
> I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume there is 
were
> an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained 
the same
> information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way.

I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
do all that you're asking it to do.

For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
experience changes over time.

However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
anger or what it's like to see red.

I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks and
electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain 
circumstances on the
surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some of these can be 
molecules
that replicate and evolution will produce complex reproducing organisms 
these will
evolve ways of interacting

It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.

with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' and 
some of
them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will experience 
emotions
like anger.

Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the environment come to 
have an experience of any kind, let alone something totally unprecedented and 
explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like saying that if you begin counting to 
infinity at some point the number is bound to turn purple.

That's Bruno's theory. :-)  Wasn't it you who, in a different post, hypothesized that 
everything is definable in terms of it's relations to other things.  So purple is 
definable in terms of being seen and on a continuum with blue and violet and a certain 
angle and spacing on an optical grating and so on.

This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are 
making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not 
automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop 
experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and 
it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

Brent

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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> On 10/24/2012 10:04 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>>
>> At the risk of beating a dead horse, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation
>> of
>> Quantum Mechanics TIQM, a 4th possible interpetation of QM, requires waves
>> coming back from the future.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation "More
>> recently he [Cramer] has also argued TIQM to be consistent with the
>> Afshar experiment, while claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation
>> and the many-worlds interpretation are not.[3]"
>> [3] ^ A Farewell to Copenhagen?, by John Cramer. Analog, December 2005.
>>
>> Feynman used waves coming back from the future to solve his Quantum
>> Electrodynamics QED, the most experimentally accurate physics theory
>> extant, which in my mind lends TIQM credence. Such teteological
>> effects are expanded on for living systems in Terrence Deacon's book
>> "Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".
>>
>> Is evidence of anticipatory effects possibly evidence for TIQM?
>
>
>  Hi Richard,
>
> The advanced wave aspect is bounded in the future, just as the retarded
> waves are bounded in the past within a finite duration that is related to
> the Hamiltonian of the system in question. The best picture of this is to
> think of a standing wave bouncing between a pair of zero phase nodes. This
> is how normal QM works, the bra and ket of Dirac's formalism is just another
> version of this, but it does not take relativity (relative motions of
> objects 'in' space-time) into account.
> The anticipatory effect is a bit different as it involves a component of
> information that seems to be outside the causal light cone. This is an
> concept that requires new thinking about what "causality" is!
>
>>
>> I should add that my extension of ordinary superstring theory, and in
>> particular the properties of the compactified dimensions, provides a
>> mechanism for TIQM. The conjecture of my extension is that the compact
>> particles or monads react instantly to the entire universe because of
>> its exterior to interior mapping, as Brian Greene showed in a 2-D
>> approximation.
>
> Superstrings are not helpful here as they assume a flat space-time
> background and are just fibrations of that space-time. I don't know of any
> discussion of a variability of the compactified manifolds or whatever that
> would give us an explanation. The internal dimensions of the manifolds have
> no relation what so ever to the dimensions of space-time. They are
> orthogonal and thus completely independent.
>


I do not understand what you are saying here.
The compact manifolds are 10^90/cc, 1000 Planck-length, 6-d particles
in a 3-D space.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Calabi-Yau_manifold#Calabi-Yau_manifolds_in_string_theory
.
How can those 6d dimensions be orthogonal to 3D space?
I admit that it is a conjecture that each particle maps the universe instantly.
So if you have a means to falsify that conjecture I would like to hear about it.
 Richard
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Stephen P. King 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract
>>>
>>>  Comments?
>>>
>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis


On 10/24/2012 5:31 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract

Comments?



Woo-woo.  Small effect sizes which are *statistically* significant are indicative of bias 
errors.  I'd wager a proper Bayesian analysis of the original data will show they 
*support* the null hypothesis (c.f. "Testing Precise Hypotheses" Berger & Delampady, Stat 
Sci 1987 v2 no. 3 317-352 and "Odds Are It's Wrong" Tom Siegfried, Science News 27 Mar 
2010).  Meta-analyses are notoriously unreliable and should only be considered suggestive 
at a best.


Brent

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Re: Interactions between mind and brain


On 10/24/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 24 Oct 2012, at 06:03, Stephen P. King wrote:

What difference does what they refer to matter? Eventually there 
has to be some physical process or we would be incapable of even 
thinking about them! The resources to perform the computation are 
either available or they are not. Seriously, why are you over 
complicating the idea?



Let us be clear. For humans to be able to think, not only you need a 
physical process, but you need a solar system, a planet, ... many 
things, including much resources.


Dear Bruno,

Sure, but that only is about explanations of the physical systems 
involved. But let me ask you, given that there is a 1p for each and 
every observer, does it not follow that there should be a bundle of 
computations for each and one? There would be a great deal of overlap 
between them (as that would be equivalent to the commonality of the 
experienciable content of the observers). The point is that the 
computation is not of a single object in a world. We have to consider 
computational simulations of entire universes!




But, ...

... for the couple [thinking humans= Earth, solar-system-physical 
process-resource] you need only arithmetic.


A bit like in Everett the couple [physician's sad consciousness in 
front of a collapsed wave= a dead Schroedinger cat] you need only 
the universal quantum wave.


Just that once we assume comp "enough consciously", if I can say, the 
universal wave itself, if correct for observation, has to be retrieved 
from a larger statistics,  on all computations, going through our 
local computational states.


Literally, the laws of physics are invariant from the choice of the 
physical basic laws, as long as they are at least Turing universal 
(synonym important for AUDA: Sigma_1 complete).


I am not sure what this means: "laws of physics are invariant from 
the choice of the physical basic laws". Could you explain this more?




Literally: very elementary arithmetic is a good TOE:

x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)

 x *0 = 0
 x*s(y) = x*y + x

It is in *that* theory, that we have now to define the notion of 
observers, believers, knowers, experiencers, experimentalists, and 
formulate a part of the "measure problem".  Mathematically, we can 
test the first person limiting observation by the person "incarnated 
by the genuine computation" in arithmetic.


Another TOE:

((K, x), y) = x
(((S, x), y), z) = ((x, z), (y, z))

It operates on the combinators, and the combinators are K or S, or (x, 
y) with x and y combinators. So (K, K), (K, (K, S)), ((K, K) K), etc 
are combinators.


What they do? They obeys the laws above.

Those defines Turing universal realities, and they will emulate/define 
other universal realities, in the same relative proportions, which 
will be the observers-universe, a coupled universal machine (it is 
another way to view Löbianity (although technically it is a bit weaker)).


Any universal machine contains in itself a sort of war between *all* 
universal machines until they recognize themselves.


Obviously some universal machines get more famous than other, 
apparently, like ... well arithmetic, combinators, but also, in 
relation with the observable reality, quantum computers.


It makes comp testable, or at least the definition of observer, 
believer, knower used in the derivation of physics, and here I provide 
only the propositional physical theory (and even some choice as 
different quantum logics appears in S4Grz1, Z1*, X1*, the logic of the 
material hypostases, in Plotinus terms).




All of that is a theoretical explanation, that supposes that since 
arithmetic is all that is needed to encode all of the information and 
representations, but this is just an explanation, nothing more. Until we 
can derive phenomenology that can be tested, we have only a hypothesis 
or conjecture. My proposal is that, following Pratt's suggestion, we 
consider the arithmetic to be equivalent to a Boolean algebra and its 
evolution is "the computation" of the UD. That way we do not have a body 
problem, since the dual of the Boolean algebra, the topological space, 
is the body whose evolution is physics.


With comp, trying to singularize consciousness with a particular 
universal machine (a physical reality), is like a move to select a 
branch in a wave of realities, and can be seen as a form of cosmical 
solipsism negating consciousness for vast span of arithmetical truth, 
just because those realities are only indirectly accessible, by 
looking below ours substitution level.


But solipsism is not the absence of consciousness, it is the 
inability of one 1p to bet on the existence of the possible content of 
other 1p.




I have translated a part of the "philosophical" mind-body problem in 
mathematics (and partially solve it).


Sure, but your claims of an immaterial monism worry me. It is as if 
you have resurected Berkeley's Idealism in a formal mathematical model

Re: Interactions between mind and brain


On 10/24/2012 4:56 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

Just because something has no extension in space


I wrote "location" not "extension" - don't misquote me.


(physical existence) doesn't mean it doesn't exist mentally,
for example in Platonia.


But existing mentally isn't the same as existing (physically).


Mathematics has no extension in space,
forms of art do not have extension in space, nor does truth
nor does goodness. Materialism is a very limiting world,


So is arithmetic.  But as Bruno points out, computation on arithmetic can look much bigger 
from the inside.  So can materialism.


Brent

as thought has no extension in space.

Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?

On 10/24/2012 4:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:35, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment.

Then your own consciousness is false, which I doubt.

But I do experience my consciousness.

Then the existence even of the appearance of a physical universe is false.
Etc.
Since Gödel, we know that, even limiting ourselves to 3p truth on the numbers relations,
almost all the true one are unprovable in any theory.

Truth is *far* bigger than proof.
And concerning reality, in science there is no proof at all, as easily explained by the
antic dream argument. In science we never prove anything about reality. We postulate
theories, and prove only things *in* the theories. Then experiment can disprove a
theory, but never prove it to be correct.

Except QM, all theories in physics have been refuted at some time.

Of course QM is really a schema for physical theories, like Lagrangians are a schema for
classical mechanics. No way has been found to apply it to gravity so there are a range of
phenomena against which it has not been tested.

Brent

Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?

To make comp scientific, we can only show comp to be experiementally refutable, and yes
this has been done, using also the classical theory of knowledge. COMP + classical
theory of knowledge entails the physical laws, so to refute comp you can compare the
physics extracted from comp, and the physics extraoplated from observation.

Bruno

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

Re: Descartes' definition of existence


On 10/24/2012 4:49 AM, Roger Clough wrote:



According to Descartes, the physical is that which has extension in space.
That's a common definition of existence.


That would imply that electrons and quarks don't exist.

Brent

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Re: wave function collapse


On 10/24/2012 4:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi meekerdb

There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the quantum wave 
function
(see below).
1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed
to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make
a measurement).


This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.




2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical
event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)
in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me,
this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor).


This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices into NOT 
obeying QM.


No, it's only inconsistent with a reified interpretation of the wf.  It's perfectly 
consistent with an instrumentalist interpretation.  Decoherence is a prediction of QM in 
any interpretation.  It's the einselection that's a problem.








3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse
of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe.
This sounds like overkill to me.


This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer + observed". It is the 
literal reading of QM.





So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe.


You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which can only please you, 
I guess).


Bruno


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



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Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"

2012-10-24 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
>
>  >>> What can you do with your computer that you couldn't do five years
>>> ago?
>>>
>>
>> >> Do a good job at understanding the human voice. Beat the 2 best human
>> players at Jeopardy.  Drive a car safely for many miles over very rough
>> terrain. Discovering that 2^43112609 -1 ( a number with 12,978,189 digits)
>> is a prime number. Improving in it's ability to play the game of "Go" from
>> being routinely beaten by a child to occasionally beating professional Go
>> players.
>>
>
> > Hardly world-transforming achievements. Incremental improvements in very
> limited specialized tasks, games, abstractions...
>

Driving a car is not an abstraction, and anyway abstractions are what
humans are supposed to be good at. And to most billionaires life is a game
and money just the way to keep score.

> The improvement of manufacturing in the 20th century was orders of
> magnitude more significant.
>

Which would not have happened without computers.

 John K Clark

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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis


On 10/24/2012 10:04 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

At the risk of beating a dead horse, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics TIQM, a 4th possible interpetation of QM, requires waves
coming back from the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation "More
recently he [Cramer] has also argued TIQM to be consistent with the
Afshar experiment, while claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation
and the many-worlds interpretation are not.[3]"
[3] ^ A Farewell to Copenhagen?, by John Cramer. Analog, December 2005.

Feynman used waves coming back from the future to solve his Quantum
Electrodynamics QED, the most experimentally accurate physics theory
extant, which in my mind lends TIQM credence. Such teteological
effects are expanded on for living systems in Terrence Deacon's book
"Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".

Is evidence of anticipatory effects possibly evidence for TIQM?


 Hi Richard,

The advanced wave aspect is bounded in the future, just as the 
retarded waves are bounded in the past within a finite duration that is 
related to the Hamiltonian of the system in question. The best picture 
of this is to think of a standing wave bouncing between a pair of zero 
phase nodes. This is how normal QM works, the bra and ket of Dirac's 
formalism is just another version of this, but it does not take 
relativity (relative motions of objects 'in' space-time) into account.
The anticipatory effect is a bit different as it involves a 
component of information that seems to be outside the causal light cone. 
This is an concept that requires new thinking about what "causality" is!




I should add that my extension of ordinary superstring theory, and in
particular the properties of the compactified dimensions, provides a
mechanism for TIQM. The conjecture of my extension is that the compact
particles or monads react instantly to the entire universe because of
its exterior to interior mapping, as Brian Greene showed in a 2-D
approximation.
Superstrings are not helpful here as they assume a flat space-time 
background and are just fibrations of that space-time. I don't know of 
any discussion of a variability of the compactified manifolds or 
whatever that would give us an explanation. The internal dimensions of 
the manifolds have no relation what so ever to the dimensions of 
space-time. They are orthogonal and thus completely independent.




Richard

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:

http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract

 Comments?




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Re: Solipsism = 1p


On 10/24/2012 10:01 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

How can you know that the simulation is exact ?
Solipsim prevents that.

And who or what experiences the computer output ?


Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net  
10/24/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

Hi Roger,

If we accept that the content of an experience can be exactly 
duplicated by a sufficiently powerful computer, we have accepted that 
they are the same thing. This is not to say that conscious experience is 
itself "just a computation", no. There is a difference between the 
simulability of an experience and the sense of being in the experience 
that is the 1p.


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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

2012-10-24 Thread Alberto G. Corona

I dont believe that such genuine anticipation is possible, for a simple
reason: If for quantum or relativistic means the mind or the brain could
genuinely anticipate anything, this would be such a huge advantage, that
this hability would be inherited genetically by everyone of us, every human
plant, animal with the most accurate precission. because it would be so
critical.

The fact is the we have no such hability. the most we can do is to simulate
it with the available data, gatering as much as possible information from
the behaviour, faces etc of other human beings and we process it
unconsciously. Most of the time even we are not conscious of how much
information we gather.

2012/10/24 Alberto G. Corona 

>
>
> 2012/10/24 Bruno Marchal 
>
>>
>> On 24 Oct 2012, at 14:31, Stephen P. King wrote:
>>
>>  http://www.frontiersin.org/**Perception_Science/10.3389/**
>>> fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract
>>>Comments?
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> If verified it might confirms Helmholtz intuition that "perception" is
>> "unconscious anticipation".
>>
>> It would be the Dt of the Bp & Dt. It is natural with the finding that
>> when we "perceive objects" a big deal of information does not come from the
>> data but from the brains (memories, constructions, gap fillings, ...)
>>
>>
>
>
> I struggle with the psicho-slang to ascertain what they really said.
>
> From some comentaires:
>
>  The title and intro leave out the fact that a likely cause -- cited by
> the highest-quality study -- is the experimental methods. I am curious if
> any of the experiments attempted to automate both stimulus presentation and
> data analysis to avoid experimenter effects.
>
>-
>
>
>
>
>
> It may be a variation of the case of subtle perception of the experimenter
> intentions by the subjects under test.
>
> I remember the case of a Horse that apparently know how to multiply
> numbers. The horse stopped khocking on the floor when the experimenter
> moved in a certain way when the number of knocks reached the correct
> result. The experimenter did not realized that he was sending the signal
> "enough" to the horse.
>
> This may be a more sophisticated case of the same phenomenon. In this case
> the signal could be "be prepared because we are going to do this or that".
> Neiter the experimeinte nor the subject of the experiment have to be
> conscious of that signal. There are a largue number of bad psychological
> experiments with these flaws. One of the last ones, the subject of these
> experiment was myself with my otolaryngologist who, to test my audition
> performance, advised me when I supposedly must hear a weak sound instead of
> shut up and wait.
>
>
>> Some comment in your links above seems to confirm this analysis, but I
>> have not really the time to dig deeper.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>> "Everything List" group.
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>> everything-list@googlegroups.**com
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>> group/everything-list?hl=en
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Alberto.
>



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Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:38:21 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012  Craig Weinberg >wrote:
>
>  > What can you do with your computer that you couldn't do five years ago?
>>
>
> Do a good job at understanding the human voice. Beat the 2 best human 
> players at Jeopardy.  Drive a car safely for many miles over very rough 
> terrain. Discovering that 2^43112609 -1 ( a number with 12,978,189 digits) 
> is a prime number. Improving in it's ability to play the game of "Go" from 
> being routinely beaten by a child to occasionally beating professional Go 
> players.  
>

Hardly world-transforming achievements. Incremental improvements in very 
limited specialized tasks, games, abstractions... The improvement of 
manufacturing in the 20th century was orders of magnitude more significant.

Besides, they don't really filter down to improvements which affect what 
you can do with your computer. Voice recognition is a minor cosmetic 
convenience, but we've had that for 20 years in some form or other.

Craig
 

>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>

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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

2012-10-24 Thread Alberto G. Corona

2012/10/24 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 24 Oct 2012, at 14:31, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
>  http://www.frontiersin.org/**Perception_Science/10.3389/**
>> fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract
>>Comments?
>>
>
>
>
>
> If verified it might confirms Helmholtz intuition that "perception" is
> "unconscious anticipation".
>
> It would be the Dt of the Bp & Dt. It is natural with the finding that
> when we "perceive objects" a big deal of information does not come from the
> data but from the brains (memories, constructions, gap fillings, ...)
>
>

I struggle with the psicho-slang to ascertain what they really said.

>From some comentaires:

 The title and intro leave out the fact that a likely cause -- cited by the
highest-quality study -- is the experimental methods. I am curious if any
of the experiments attempted to automate both stimulus presentation and
data analysis to avoid experimenter effects.

   -

It may be a variation of the case of subtle perception of the experimenter
intentions by the subjects under test.

I remember the case of a Horse that apparently know how to multiply
numbers. The horse stopped khocking on the floor when the experimenter
moved in a certain way when the number of knocks reached the correct
result. The experimenter did not realized that he was sending the signal
"enough" to the horse.

This may be a more sophisticated case of the same phenomenon. In this case
the signal could be "be prepared because we are going to do this or that".
Neiter the experimeinte nor the subject of the experiment have to be
conscious of that signal. There are a largue number of bad psychological
experiments with these flaws. One of the last ones, the subject of these
experiment was myself with my otolaryngologist who, to test my audition
performance, advised me when I supposedly must hear a weak sound instead of
shut up and wait.

> Some comment in your links above seems to confirm this analysis, but I
> have not really the time to dig deeper.
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>
>
>
>
> --
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> group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
>
>

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Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"

2012-10-24 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012  Craig Weinberg  wrote:

 > What can you do with your computer that you couldn't do five years ago?
>

Do a good job at understanding the human voice. Beat the 2 best human
players at Jeopardy.  Drive a car safely for many miles over very rough
terrain. Discovering that 2^43112609 -1 ( a number with 12,978,189 digits)
is a prime number. Improving in it's ability to play the game of "Go" from
being routinely beaten by a child to occasionally beating professional Go
players.

  John K Clark

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Re: Solipsism = 1p



On 24 Oct 2012, at 15:50, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

The simulated experience is not a real experience.
OK ?


Keep in mind that I assume comp. OK? It is my working hypothesis. OK?  
If we run into a contradiction, we can still abandon comp, OK?


The statement "the simulated experience is not a real experience" is  
ambiguous.


If machine A simulate the machine B, the experience of the machine A  
will be the experience of simulating B. And if the machine B is  
complex enough, it might have its own experience, perhaps unnoticed by  
A.


I urge you to read Hoftstadter "conversation with Einstein brain", and  
perhaps the whole "Mind's I" book which explore that theme (around the  
interesting and important "Searle's Error).


I think we can relate also this to the french question of what is a  
perfect comedian? Is it the one who can completely fake to be in love  
(say)?  Or is it the one who simulates so well the lover that it feels  
the love, like going above the relative zombie limit.


Bruno







Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-24, 08:57:19
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p


On 23 Oct 2012, at 20:21, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point
of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.


This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes
experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated?


The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated,
neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object
of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical
relations.



Hi Craig and Bruno,

If the simulation by the computation is exact then the
simulation *is* the experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying
here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into
the limit of abstraction in my opinion.


The point is that I think we have no real choice in the matter. Also,
for me the numbers 2 and 3 are far more concrete than a apple or a
tree. It is just that I have a complex brain which makes me believe,
by a vast amount of computations that a tree is something concrete.








I can have an experience within which another experience is
simulated,


Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much
literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant "simulate
the context making the experience of the person, "really living in
Platonia" possible to manifest itself locally.


We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience
within another?


OK. I would say that an emulation of an experience is equal to that
experience. Now, just a simulation of an experience, is more like
faking to be in love with a girl. But then you are a zombie with
respect to the feeling of love, somehow.








but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that
experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really
happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as
if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description,
something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates
experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters
and cells?


It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to
its most probable computation.


There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle
of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical
(topological space)


Topological space are mathematical.




aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a
"separate substance".


OK. But that remains unclear as we don't know what you assume and what
you derive.








Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no
business producing such things at all. If the world is
computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a
pretending possible.


The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is
almost the complementary of computations.


Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations
generate.


That is: views by persons.





That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that "anti-
computation" and compare to physics.


But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics.


It has to be. It is not a particular geography, but it has to be a
particular physics. Physics really becomes math, with comp. There is
only one physical reality. But it is still unknown if it is a
multiverse, or a multi-multiverse, or a layered structure with
different type of realm for different type of consciousness. There a
lo

Re: One more nail in comp's coffin.




On Oct 24, 2012, at 6:33 AM, "Roger Clough" wrote:


Hi Jason Resch

No, have proven solipsism.



What?




Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Jason Resch
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-23, 10:30:37
Subject: Re: One more nail in comp's coffin.





On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:

Hi Bruno,

My own subjectivity is 1p. I don't believe a computer can
have consciousness, but suppose we let the computer have
consciousness as well.

Let a descriptor be 3p. Let my consciousness = 1p

But the computer's consciousness would be different, say 1p'
-- because, let's say, it's less intelligent than I am.  
Or it's not travelled around the world as I have.

Or it is only 3 years old. I've only used it for 3 years.
Or it is Christian while I am a pagan.
Or it is a materialist while I follow Leibniz.
Or I am drunk and it is sober.

Then the meaning of the 3p to me = 1p(3p).
The meaning of the 3p to the computer = 1p'(3p).

These obviously aren't ?oing to be the same.
So comp can't work or work with any reliability.



You could use this same argument to "disprove" the consciousness of  
every other person on earth.


Jason

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Re: wave function collapse



On 24 Oct 2012, at 15:41, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal


1) OK, so particles don't need a probe to be created from the wave ?


I don't know that. With comp we have not yet clearly a wave. Only  
consistent extensions obeying some quantum logics.
Particles are result of symmetries, more or less geometrical, but comp  
is not yet clearly justifying the linearities and the symmetries. This  
might needs generations of mathematical computer theologians.





What's different about consciousness ?


It is more like the mandelbrot sets, the breaking of symmetries  
spreads into chaotical partial control. Consciousness is an 1p  
selector in "that".






2) If comp or materialism could work, I'd be happy.


All what I say is that they cannot both work simultaneously. Comp  
makes the doctrine of weak materialism (the doctrine asserting the  
existence of ontologically primitive matter) looking like vitalism,  
which is the Word-Gap wrong type of explanation.


Comp is closer to Pythagorus, Plato, Parmenides, than to Aristotle.  
yet it explains the "illusion" and justifies a soul/nature vision  
which is closer to Aristotle, Heraclite, Brouwer.


Comp involves the concept of consciousness, so this should not be so  
astonishing. Comp tackle both the 1p and the 3p, intuitively in the  
UDA and formally in the AUDA.  In AUDA the soul of any individual is  
already non nameable, meaning that if comp is true, you already don't  
know who you are.







But they'd have to be able to handle the self specifically,


By definition it can't. You can only let the self do the work.

A clever computer is a computer which will be bored by its user, and  
attempt to find other one.






not just imply it.


It can only imply it. As for the handling, you have to abandon it to  
the self itself.


If not you will be like a mother who gives too much love to the kid.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:31:35
Subject: Re: wave function collapse




On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi meekerdb

There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the  
quantum wave function

(see below).

1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed
to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make
a measurement).


This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.







2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical
event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)
in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me,
this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor).



This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices  
into NOT obeying QM.









3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse
of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe.
This sounds like overkill to me.


This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer +  
observed". It is the literal reading of QM.








So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe.


You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which  
can only please you, I guess).



Bruno




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

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Re: wave function collapse

As a first step below is Cramer's argument. But I might add that MWI
does not seem natural to me at all. Alas I have to invoke god and or
teleology to negate it. TIQM seems to invoke teleology.

Here for your convenience are the key sentences in his dismissal of MWI:
"Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics leads us to expect 6%
interception and no interference, since a photon detected at image #1
is in one universe while the same photon detected at image #2 is in
another universe, and since the two "worlds" are distinguished by
different physical outcomes, they should not interfere."
"However, what Afshar observes is that the amount of light intercepted
by the wires is very small, consistent with 0% interception."

The Alternate View  
John G. Cramer
A FAREWELL TO COPENHAGEN?

http://www.analogsf.com/0412/altview.shtml

This column is about experimental tests of the various interpretations
of quantum mechanics. The question at issue is whether we can perform
experiments that can show whether there is an "observer-created
reality" as suggested by the Copenhagen Interpretation, or a peacock’s
tail of rapidly branching alternate universes, as suggested by the
Many-Worlds Interpretation, or forward-backward in time handshakes, as
suggested by the Transactional Interpretation? Until recently, I would
have said that this was an impossible task, but a new experiment has
changed my view, and I now believe that the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds
Interpretations (at least as they are usually presented) have been
falsified by experiment.

The physical theory of quantum mechanics describes the behavior of
matter and energy at the smallest distances. It has been verified by
more than 70 years of experiments, and it is trusted by working
physicists and regularly used in the fields of atomic, nuclear, and
particle physics. However, quantum mechanics is burdened by a
dismaying array of alternative and mutually contradictory ways of
interpreting its mathematical formalism. These include the orthodox
Copenhagen Interpretation, the currently fashionable Many Worlds
Interpretation, my own Transactional Interpretation, and a number of
others.

Many (including me) have declared, with almost the certainty of a
mathematical theorem, that it is impossible to distinguish between
quantum interpretations with experimental tests. Reason: all
interpretations describe the same mathematical formalism, and it is
the formalism that makes the experimentally testable predictions. As
it turns out, while this "theorem" is not wrong, it does contain a
significant loophole. If an interpretation is not completely
consistent with the mathematical formalism, it can be tested and
indeed falsified. As we will see, that appears to be the situation
with the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds Interpretations, among many
others, while my own Transactional Interpretation easily survives the
experimental test.

The experiment that appears to falsify these venerable and widely
trusted interpretations of quantum mechanics is the Afshar Experiment.
It is a new quantum test, just performed last year, which demonstrates
the presence of complete interference in an unambiguous "which-way"
measurement of the passage of light photons through a pair of
pinholes. But before describing the Afshar Experiment, let us take a
backward look at the Copenhagen Interpretation and Neils Bohr’s famous
Principle of Complementarity.

Quantum mechanics was first formulated independently by Erwin
Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the mid-1920s. Physicists usually
have a mental picture of the underlying mechanisms within theory they
are formulating, but Heisenberg had no such picture of behavior at the
atomic level. With amazing intuition and remarkable good luck, he
managed to invent a matrix-based mathematical structure that agreed
with and predicted the data from most atomic physics measurements. On
the other hand, Schrödinger did start from a definite picture in
constructing his quantum wave mechanics. Making an analogy with
massless electromagnetic waves, he constructed a similar wave equation
describing particles (e.g., electrons) with a rest mass. However, it
soon was demonstrated by Bohr and Heisenberg that while Schrödinger’s
mathematics was valid, his underlying mass-wave picture was
unworkable, and he was forced to abandon it. The net result was that
the new quantum mechanics was left as a theory with no underlying
picture or mechanism. Moreover, its mathematics was saying some quite
bizarre things about how matter and energy behaved at the atomic
level, and there seemed no way of explaining this behavior.

In the Autumn of 1926, while Heisenberg was a lecturer at Bohr’s
Institute in Copenhagen, the two men walked the streets of the ancient
city almost every day, arguing, gesturing, and sketching pictures and
equations on random scraps of paper, as they struggled to come to
grips with the puzzles and paradoxes that the quantum formalism
presented. How could an object

Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"



On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 11:17:43 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012  Craig Weinberg >wrote:
>
> >> it's also true that the letter "e" is not Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", 
>>> but its part of it.
>>>
>>
>> > By that analogy, you are crediting the letter "e" for authoring Hamlet.
>>
>
> The letter "e" did not write Hamlet and neither did one neuron inside 
> Shakespeare's bone box, it took 10^11 of them.
>

Ah, so you are saying that many incidents of letters wrote Hamlet.
 

>
> >>  You can have GABA and acetylcholine without paychecks and days off but 
>>> unless you move to electronics you can't have paychecks and days off 
>>> without GABA and acetylcholine.
>>>
>>
>> > Even more reason that the dumb neurotransmitters need the high level 
>> teleology to inform them.
>>
>
> If you had one scrap of experimental evidence that wishing or wanting can 
> alter chemical reactions, in other words if you could show that magical 
> thinking worked, then I would concede that you are right and you will have 
> won the argument, but there is no such evidence because that's not the way 
> things work.
>

What does voluntary control over your own fingers have to do with magical 
anything? The ability to directly move your fingers is evidence that you 
can voluntarily alter chemical reactions. How else do you suppose that we 
are having this conversation?
 

>
> >You can have bricks without having the Taj Mahal, but you can't have the 
>> Taj Mahal without bricks.
>>
>
> Exactly, you can have neurotransmitters without paychecks and days off but 
> you can't have paychecks and days off without neurotransmitters.
>
> > That doesn't mean that bricks or even bricklayers are responsible for 
>> the Taj Mahal.
>>
>
> You also need a architect to supply the information on where to put the 
> bricks, but it remains true that you can't have the Taj Mahal without 
> bricks and bricklayers.
>

The architect is the high level personal will. You are the one who decides 
where the bricks go directly. 

>
> > My neurons can influence my consciousness
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> > but they cannot decide for me to get a better job.
>>
>
> If you consciously decide to get a better job and if neurons can influence 
> your consciousness as you say then you're wrong, neurons CAN decide for you 
> to get a better job because what they do IS you.
>

If what they do IS you, then what you do IS them. That is my point this 
whole time. You want to have one without the other. You want to be able to 
say that neurons control you but you do not control neurons. If they are 
the same thing, then of course you control your neurons directly...of 
course your thoughts and intentions change millions of neurons chemical 
states simultaneously in different regions of the brain.


> > Why would the high level description level be different from the low 
>> level description?
>>
>
> Now Craig, if you calm down and look at what you just said with a 
> dispassionate eye I think you will admit that it was not the brightest 
> question in the world. The short answer is that one is high and the other 
> is low. Saying "the temperature is 79 degrees" and saying "oxygen molecule 
> number 93475626636574074514574 hit your nose 1.0624221 seconds ago from a 
> south south east direction at a speed of 88.621 feet per second" are both 
> accurate descriptions of reality, but they are different. 
>

That's naive realism. It begs the question by assuming that the universe 
really is just as you, a human primate of a particular size and density, 
deem it to be. Without a perceiver though, these distinctions are arbitrary 
and senseless. There is no difference between either description except to 
a third party which relates to one more directly than the other. 

>
> > There is no unexpected gap between the behavior of those two levels of 
>> description. With subjectivity, the gap is infinite.
>>
>
> The gap is certainly astronomically huge but I'm surprised to hear you say 
> it was literally infinite because you're the one pushing the idea that 
> everything can sense its environment
>

I'm arguing against the standard dumb particle mode here, so I am not 
considering my solution to the problem, I am only pointing out why the 
standard explanation doesn't work. In my model, there is no gap, only a 
perceptual relativity.
 

> and everything is at least a little bit conscious, so let's view the 
> submicroscopic world with your eyes; I personally find this sort of 
> description awkward and needlessly anthropomorphic however it is 
> functionally equivalent to the most impersonal hard nosed description of 
> any physicist:
>
> Two helium atoms are moving along until they sense they have made contact 
> and then they find that they don't like each other one bit so they both 
> decide to change the path they were moving in so they can get away from 
> each other.  And a chlorine and a sodium atom are moving along until they 
> sense they have made contact a

Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis



On 24 Oct 2012, at 14:31, Stephen P. King wrote:


http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract
   Comments?





If verified it might confirms Helmholtz intuition that "perception" is  
"unconscious anticipation".


It would be the Dt of the Bp & Dt. It is natural with the finding that  
when we "perceive objects" a big deal of information does not come  
from the data but from the brains (memories, constructions, gap  
fillings, ...)


Some comment in your links above seems to confirm this analysis, but I  
have not really the time to dig deeper.


Bruno


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



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Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is"

2012-10-24 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012  Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> it's also true that the letter "e" is not Shakespeare's play "Hamlet",
>> but its part of it.
>>
>
> > By that analogy, you are crediting the letter "e" for authoring Hamlet.
>

The letter "e" did not write Hamlet and neither did one neuron inside
Shakespeare's bone box, it took 10^11 of them.

>>  You can have GABA and acetylcholine without paychecks and days off but
>> unless you move to electronics you can't have paychecks and days off
>> without GABA and acetylcholine.
>>
>
> > Even more reason that the dumb neurotransmitters need the high level
> teleology to inform them.
>

If you had one scrap of experimental evidence that wishing or wanting can
alter chemical reactions, in other words if you could show that magical
thinking worked, then I would concede that you are right and you will have
won the argument, but there is no such evidence because that's not the way
things work.

>You can have bricks without having the Taj Mahal, but you can't have the
> Taj Mahal without bricks.
>

Exactly, you can have neurotransmitters without paychecks and days off but
you can't have paychecks and days off without neurotransmitters.

> That doesn't mean that bricks or even bricklayers are responsible for the
> Taj Mahal.
>

You also need a architect to supply the information on where to put the
bricks, but it remains true that you can't have the Taj Mahal without
bricks and bricklayers.

> My neurons can influence my consciousness
>

Yes.

> but they cannot decide for me to get a better job.
>

If you consciously decide to get a better job and if neurons can influence
your consciousness as you say then you're wrong, neurons CAN decide for you
to get a better job because what they do IS you.

> Why would the high level description level be different from the low
> level description?
>

Now Craig, if you calm down and look at what you just said with a
dispassionate eye I think you will admit that it was not the brightest
question in the world. The short answer is that one is high and the other
is low. Saying "the temperature is 79 degrees" and saying "oxygen molecule
number 93475626636574074514574 hit your nose 1.0624221 seconds ago from a
south south east direction at a speed of 88.621 feet per second" are both
accurate descriptions of reality, but they are different.

> There is no unexpected gap between the behavior of those two levels of
> description. With subjectivity, the gap is infinite.
>

The gap is certainly astronomically huge but I'm surprised to hear you say
it was literally infinite because you're the one pushing the idea that
everything can sense its environment and everything is at least a little
bit conscious, so let's view the submicroscopic world with your eyes; I
personally find this sort of description awkward and needlessly
anthropomorphic however it is functionally equivalent to the most
impersonal hard nosed description of any physicist:

Two helium atoms are moving along until they sense they have made contact
and then they find that they don't like each other one bit so they both
decide to change the path they were moving in so they can get away from
each other.  And a chlorine and a sodium atom are moving along until they
sense they have made contact and then they find that they passionately love
each other so they decide to remain very close to each other and turn into
a salt molecule; however as the temperature gets higher their love gets
cooler until it gets so hot they decide to get a divorce and go their
separate ways. That's a very odd way to describe what's going on but it
doesn't conflict with any experimental test.

Generally speaking as the accumulation of matter increases, as more atoms
are involved, the range of possible behaviors gets larger and more complex,
and for some very specific types of structures, like brains or computers,
the growth is exponential and the range gets astronomically (but not
infinitely) larger.

> What you are saying suggests a subjectivity where every time I almost put
> my hand on a hot stove a specific memory is called up and decoded (decoded
> into what?). I don't think it works that way,
>

I don't think it works that way either, jerking your hand off a hot stove
is just a simple reflex, but you were talking about social experiences and
you have none of them except the ones where the information has been
encoded by neurons, in other words the ones you remember.

>>>  Let's compare. Does your computer worry about it's job?
>>>
>>
>> >>  I don't know for sure, I don't even know if you worry about your job
>> because all I can observe is behavior. I do have a theory that extrapolates
>> consciousness and emotion from behavior and I think it's a pretty good
>> theory but it's not proven and never will be, so I just do the best I can.
>>
>
> > If you had to bet though. If it really mattered and there was a right
> answer and you had to pick yes or no that you computer worries about its
> job, could you h

Re: wave function collapse

Hi Richard,

On 24 Oct 2012, at 13:46, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno,

What is your opinion of Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics TIQM,
a 4th possible interpetation of QM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation "More
recently he [Cramer] has also argued TIQM to be consistent with the
Afshar experiment, while claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation
and the many-worlds interpretation are not.[3]"
[3] ^ A Farewell to Copenhagen?, by John Cramer. Analog, December
2005.

Feynman used waves coming back from the future to solve his Quantum
Electrodynamics QED, the most experimentally accurate physics theory
extant, which in my mind lends TIQM credence. Such teteological
effects are expanded on for living systems in Terrence Deacon's book
"Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".

I don't see how Cramer's interpretation make disappear the terms of
the superposition, it is only a post selection for which Everett can
provide the epistemology.

The many world is a direct consequence of linearity of evolution, and
linearity of the tensor product.

(I don't pretend the MWI solves all conceptual problems of QM, note).

And does Afshar's experiment negate MWI? QM?

I have not studied the details of Afshar's experiment, nor so much
think about it, so I can't say. I doubt it can negate MWI, or QM, or
comp, as the MW idea, like the everything idea, seems compelling at
the start, and rather "natural" to me.

Feel free to present the argument if you have studied it and find it
compelling.

Bruno

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal
wrote:

On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi meekerdb

There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the
quantum wave

function
(see below).

1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed
to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make
a measurement).

This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.

2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical
event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)
in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me,
this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor).

This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices
into NOT

obeying QM.

3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse
of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe.
This sounds like overkill to me.

This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer +
observed".

It is the literal reading of QM.

So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe.

You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which
can only

please you, I guess).

Bruno

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

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Re: Against Mechanism

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote: 
>
>
>
> On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote: 
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>> > On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>> >> by fiat declaration that it does).
>> >>
>> >
>> > Rex,
>> > I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume there is 
>> were
>> > an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the 
>> same
>> > information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. 
>>
>> I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
>> abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
>> do all that you're asking it to do.
>>
>> For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
>> entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
>> can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
>> ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
>> in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
>> experience changes over time.
>>
>> However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
>> particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
>> representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
>> arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
>> anger or what it's like to see red.
>>
>  
> I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks 
> and electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain 
> circumstances on the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some 
> of these can be molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex 
> reproducing organisms these will evolve ways of interacting
>

It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.
 

> with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' 
> and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will 
> experience emotions like anger.
>

Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the 
environment come to have an experience of any kind, let alone something 
totally unprecedented and explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like 
saying that if you begin counting to infinity at some point the number is 
bound to turn purple. This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see 
exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are 
making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a 
machine which functions without experience should develop experiential 
dimensions as magical emergent properties?
 

>
>  The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
>> What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per
>> se, but rather what is represented by the bits.
>>
>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>> represented".  But, as you say, the same information can be
>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>> bit-patterns.
>>
>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>> information.  You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>> bits, and viola!  The magic is all in the interpretation.  None of it
>> is in the bits.  And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>>
>> SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
>> me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
>> thing they represent.
>>
>> Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
>> doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience.  Just because you
>> manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
>> elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
>> of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.
>>
>> All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
>> then had the experience of thinking to yourself:  "hee hee hee, I just
>> caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."
>>
>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>> conscious experience.
>>
>> Thinking that the "bit representation" captures my conscious
>> experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul.
>>
>  
> That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by 
> interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others).  So 
> only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and 
> therefore c

Re: Interactions between mind and brain



On 24 Oct 2012, at 06:03, Stephen P. King wrote:

What difference does what they refer to matter? Eventually there  
has to be some physical process or we would be incapable of even  
thinking about them! The resources to perform the computation are  
either available or they are not. Seriously, why are you over  
complicating the idea?




Let us be clear. For humans to be able to think, not only you need a  
physical process, but you need a solar system, a planet, ... many  
things, including much resources.


But, ...

... for the couple [thinking humans= Earth, solar-system-physical  
process-resource] you need only arithmetic.


A bit like in Everett the couple [physician's sad consciousness in  
front of a collapsed wave= a dead Schroedinger cat] you need only  
the universal quantum wave.


Just that once we assume comp "enough consciously", if I can say, the  
universal wave itself, if correct for observation, has to be retrieved  
from a larger statistics,  on all computations, going through our  
local computational states.


Literally, the laws of physics are invariant from the choice of the  
physical basic laws, as long as they are at least Turing universal  
(synonym important for AUDA: Sigma_1 complete).


Literally: very elementary arithmetic is a good TOE:

x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)

 x *0 = 0
 x*s(y) = x*y + x

It is in *that* theory, that we have now to define the notion of  
observers, believers, knowers, experiencers, experimentalists, and  
formulate a part of the "measure problem".  Mathematically, we can  
test the first person limiting observation by the person "incarnated  
by the genuine computation" in arithmetic.


Another TOE:

((K, x), y) = x
(((S, x), y), z) = ((x, z), (y, z))

It operates on the combinators, and the combinators are K or S, or (x,  
y) with x and y combinators. So (K, K), (K, (K, S)), ((K, K) K), etc  
are combinators.


What they do? They obeys the laws above.

Those defines Turing universal realities, and they will emulate/define  
other universal realities, in the same relative proportions, which  
will be the observers-universe, a coupled universal machine (it is  
another way to view Löbianity (although technically it is a bit  
weaker)).


Any universal machine contains in itself a sort of war between *all*  
universal machines until they recognize themselves.


Obviously some universal machines get more famous than other,  
apparently, like ... well arithmetic, combinators, but also, in  
relation with the observable reality, quantum computers.


It makes comp testable, or at least the definition of observer,  
believer, knower used in the derivation of physics, and here I provide  
only the propositional physical theory (and even some choice as  
different quantum logics appears in S4Grz1, Z1*, X1*, the logic of the  
material hypostases, in Plotinus terms).


With comp, trying to singularize consciousness with a particular  
universal machine (a physical reality), is like a move to select a  
branch in a wave of realities, and can be seen as a form of cosmical  
solipsism negating consciousness for vast span of arithmetical truth,  
just because those realities are only indirectly accessible, by  
looking below ours substitution level.


I have translated a part of the "philosophical" mind-body problem in  
mathematics (and partially solve it).


I made a mistake as the mathematicians don't know about the mind body  
problem, and the philosophers don't know the math (here: computer  
science/mathematical logic).


The physicists, at least those who don't believe in the collapse are  
closer to get the picture coherent with what can be like a physics  
from the persons supported by the combinators reduction (or by the  
numbers addition and multiplication), as it has to be the case if we  
assume comp.


When I will have more time I will continue to explain the math needed  
for this.


Bruno


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



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Re: Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

At the risk of beating a dead horse, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics TIQM, a 4th possible interpetation of QM, requires waves
coming back from the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation "More
recently he [Cramer] has also argued TIQM to be consistent with the
Afshar experiment, while claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation
and the many-worlds interpretation are not.[3]"
[3] ^ A Farewell to Copenhagen?, by John Cramer. Analog, December 2005.

Feynman used waves coming back from the future to solve his Quantum
Electrodynamics QED, the most experimentally accurate physics theory
extant, which in my mind lends TIQM credence. Such teteological
effects are expanded on for living systems in Terrence Deacon's book
"Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".

Is evidence of anticipatory effects possibly evidence for TIQM?

I should add that my extension of ordinary superstring theory, and in
particular the properties of the compactified dimensions, provides a
mechanism for TIQM. The conjecture of my extension is that the compact
particles or monads react instantly to the entire universe because of
its exterior to interior mapping, as Brian Greene showed in a 2-D
approximation.
Richard

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:
> http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract
>
> Comments?
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
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Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p

Hi Stephen P. King  

How can you know that the simulation is exact ?
Solipsim prevents that.

And who or what experiences the computer output ?


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Stephen P. King  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 14:21:44 
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p 


On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 



On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: 




On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:  

But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.  



This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes experience for 
granted. How can experience itself be simulated?  


The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated, neither by 
a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object of thought, describing 
compactly infinities of arithmetical relations.  



Hi Craig and Bruno, 

If the simulation by the computation is exact then the simulation *is* the 
experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying here except that that the model 
that Bruno is using goes to far into the limit of abstraction in my opinion. 




I can have an experience within which another experience is simulated,  


Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much literally. 
Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant "simulate the context making the 
experience of the person, "really living in Platonia" possible to manifest 
itself locally. 

We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience within another?  




but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that experience itself - 
*all experience* can be somehow not really happening but instead be a 
non-happening that defines itself *as if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some 
level of description, something has to actually be happening. If the brain 
simulates experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters and 
cells?  


It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to its most 
probable computation. 

There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle of 
computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical (topological space) 
aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a "separate 
substance". 




Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no business 
producing such things at all. If the world is computation, why pretend it isn't 
- and how exactly is such a pretending possible. 



The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is almost the 
complementary of computations. 

Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations generate. 


That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that "anti-computation" and 
compare to physics.  


But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. What we 
get is an infinite "landscape" of possible physics theories. 




Bruno 




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Re: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism

Hi Stathis Papaioannou  

OK, but I think you are still left with the "I". 

"I doubted' still means there's an I present.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Stathis Papaioannou  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 17:51:43 
Subject: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism 


On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 11:04 PM, Roger Clough  wrote: 
> Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism 
> 
> Problematic Idealism (Berkeley's idealism, not that of Leibniz) is the 
> thesis that we cannot 
> prove that objects outside us exist. This results directly from Descartes' 
> proposition 
> that the only thing I cannot doubt is that I exist (solipsism). 
> 
> If solipsism is true, it seems to raise the problem that we cannot prove 
> that objects outside 
> us exist . But Kant refutes this thesis by his observation that we cannot 
> observe the 
> passing of time (in itself inextended or nonphysical) unless there is some 
> fixed inextended substrate 
> on which to observe the change in time. Thus there must exist a fixed (only 
> necessarily over a small 
> duration of time) nonphysical substrate to reality. A similar conclusion 
> can be made regarding 
> space. 

I cannot doubt that I exist *at this moment*, but I can doubt that I 
existed before, or that any other moments have or will exist. 


--  
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Re: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism

Hi Russell Standish  

I agree. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Russell Standish  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 18:20:35 
Subject: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism 


On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 02:47:12PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: 
> On 10/23/2012 2:39 PM, Russell Standish wrote: 
> > 
> >> 2) can be aware of having experiences that occur in a specific temporal 
> >> order only if I perceive 
> >> something permanent by reference to which I can determine their 
> >> temporal order. (premise) 
> >What motivates this premise? 
>  
> I think it is implicitly assuming that experiences have no 'fuzz' in 
> their duration, they are discrete like states of a Turing machine 
> computation. I'd say we perceive temporal order by overlap between 
> successive experiences. This is consistent with the idea that an 
> experience is not just a state of a computation, but a bundle of 
> states that constitute the same stream of consciousness. 
>  
> Brent 
>  

Whilst I'm sympathetic to that model, I can also imagine comparing 
one's current state, or a memory of one's current state, with a memory 
of a previous state, which is a discrete state model that is in 
contradiction to 2). I think this model implies one cannot be aware of 
the totality of one's state (ie that a subconsciousness exists), but 
does not entail the existence of an external world. 

As some whit put it, information is the difference that makes a 
difference (ie you have to compare two states in order to process 
information at all).  

Cheers 

--  

 
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Principal, High Performance Coders 
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au 
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
 

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Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p

Hi Craig Weinberg  

No, the computer can simulate knowledge by description
but not knowledge by acquaintance that you could experience.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Craig Weinberg  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 14:40:32 
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p 




On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:21:30 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: 
On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 



On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: 




On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:  

But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.  



This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes experience for 
granted. How can experience itself be simulated?  


The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated, neither by 
a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object of thought, describing 
compactly infinities of arithmetical relations.  



Hi Craig and Bruno, 

If the simulation by the computation is exact then the simulation *is* the 
experience.  

That's what I am saying. Nothing is being simulated, there is only a direct 
experience (even if that experience is a dream, which is only a simulation when 
compared to what the dream is not). Bruno said that the brain simulates 
experience, but it isn't clear what it is that can be more authentic than our 
own experience. 
  
I agree with what Bruno is saying here except that that the model that Bruno is 
using goes to far into the limit of abstraction in my opinion. 




I can have an experience within which another experience is simulated,  


Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much literally. 
Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant "simulate the context making the 
experience of the person, "really living in Platonia" possible to manifest 
itself locally. 

We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience within another?  


Right. 
  





but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that experience itself - 
*all experience* can be somehow not really happening but instead be a 
non-happening that defines itself *as if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some 
level of description, something has to actually be happening. If the brain 
simulates experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters and 
cells?  


It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to its most 
probable computation. 

There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle of 
computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical (topological space) 
aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a "separate 
substance". 






Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no business 
producing such things at all. If the world is computation, why pretend it isn't 
- and how exactly is such a pretending possible. 



The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is almost the 
complementary of computations. 

Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations generate. 


I don't think computations can generate anything. Only things can generate 
other things, and computations aren't things, they are sensorimotive narratives 
about things. I say no to enumeration without presentation. 
  



That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that "anti-computation" and 
compare to physics.  


But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. What we 
get is an infinite "landscape" of possible physics theories. 


This makes me think... if Comp were true, shouldn't we see Escher like 
anomalies of persons whose computations have evolved their own personal 
exceptions to physics? Shouldn't most of the multi-worlds be filled with people 
walking on walls or swimming through the crust of the Earth? 

Craig 
  





Bruno 




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Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p

Hi Bruno Marchal  

The simulated experience is not a real experience.
OK ?

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 

- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-24, 08:57:19 
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p 

On 23 Oct 2012, at 20:21, Stephen P. King wrote: 

> On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
>> 
>> On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
>>> 
>>> But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point  
>>> of 
>>> view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some 
>>> theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes  
>>> experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated? 
>> 
>> The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated,  
>> neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object  
>> of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical  
>> relations. 
>> 
> 
> Hi Craig and Bruno, 
> 
> If the simulation by the computation is exact then the  
> simulation *is* the experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying  
> here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into  
> the limit of abstraction in my opinion. 

The point is that I think we have no real choice in the matter. Also,  
for me the numbers 2 and 3 are far more concrete than a apple or a  
tree. It is just that I have a complex brain which makes me believe,  
by a vast amount of computations that a tree is something concrete. 

> 
>> 
>>> I can have an experience within which another experience is  
>>> simulated, 
>> 
>> Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much  
>> literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant "simulate  
>> the context making the experience of the person, "really living in  
>> Platonia" possible to manifest itself locally. 
> 
> We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience  
> within another? 

OK. I would say that an emulation of an experience is equal to that  
experience. Now, just a simulation of an experience, is more like  
faking to be in love with a girl. But then you are a zombie with  
respect to the feeling of love, somehow. 

> 
>> 
>>> but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that  
>>> experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really  
>>> happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as  
>>> if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description,  
>>> something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates  
>>> experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters  
>>> and cells? 
>> 
>> It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to  
>> its most probable computation. 
> 
> There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle  
> of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical  
> (topological space) 

Topological space are mathematical. 

> aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a  
> "separate substance". 

OK. But that remains unclear as we don't know what you assume and what  
you derive. 

> 
>> 
>>> Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no  
>>> business producing such things at all. If the world is  
>>> computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a  
>>> pretending possible. 
>> 
>> The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is  
>> almost the complementary of computations. 
> 
> Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations  
> generate. 

That is: views by persons. 

> 
>> That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that "anti-  
>> computation" and compare to physics. 
> 
> But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. 

It has to be. It is not a particular geography, but it has to be a  
particular physics. Physics really becomes math, with comp. There is  
only one physical reality. But it is still unknown if it is a  
multiverse, or a multi-multiverse, or a layered structure with  
different type of realm for different type of consciousness. There a  
lot of open problems, to say the least. 

> What we get is an infinite "landscape" of possible physics theories. 

Not with comp. The main basic reason is that "we" are distributed in  
all computations, and physics emerges from that. There might be  
inaccessible cluster of "dead physical realities", which would not  
rich enough to implement Turing universal machines. But those cannot  
interfere (statistically) with our observations, like the "material"  
universe. We don't have to worry about them. They are like invisible  
horses. 

Bruno 

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

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Re: Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?

Hi Bruno Marchal

I follow leibniz's idealism, not e. So
the existing universe is just as it is, a
"well founded phenomenon."  I can
stub my toe and measure the speed of light.

The experiment that proves my
consciousness-- to me at least--
is that I know that I know. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 

- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:51:41 
Subject: Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ? 

On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:35, Roger Clough wrote: 

> Hi Bruno Marchal 
> 
> Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment. 

Then your own consciousness is false, which I doubt. 
Then the existence even of the appearance of a physical universe is  
false. 
Etc. 
Since G?el, we know that, even limiting ourselves to 3p truth on the  
numbers relations, almost all the true one are unprovable in any theory. 
Truth is *far* bigger than proof. 
And concerning reality, in science there is no proof at all, as easily  
explained by the antic dream argument. In science we never prove  
anything about reality. We postulate theories, and prove only things  
*in* the theories. Then experiment can disprove a theory, but never  
prove it to be correct. 
Except QM, all theories in physics have been refuted at some time. 

> Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ? 

To make comp scientific, we can only show comp to be experiementally  
refutable, and yes this has been done, using also the classical theory  
of knowledge. COMP + classical theory of knowledge entails the  
physical laws, so to refute comp you can compare the physics extracted  
from comp, and the physics extraoplated from observation. 

Bruno 

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

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Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p

Hi Bruno Marchal 

Anything that the brain does is or could be experience.
For computers, experience can only be simulated because

experience = self + qualia


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:37:32 
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p 


On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote: 

> Hi Bruno Marchal 
> 
> 
> 
>  
>> 
>> ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything, 
>> it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available. 
> 
> 
> But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of 
> view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some 
> theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. 
> 
> ROGER: Simulated experience would be objective, such 
> as is given by the text of a novel (knowledge by description). True 
> experience is the subjective experience of the mind --knowledge 
> by aquaintance. These are obviously substantially different. 

The term silulated experience is ambiguous, and I should not have use.  
I wiuld say that by definition of comp, simulated experience =  
experience. 




> 
> BRUNO: You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks,  
> nor the 
> physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the 
> brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can 
> include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs). 
> 
> ROGER: I don't think so. 
> 
> The owner of the brain is the self. 
> 
> But although the owner of a computer will have a 
> self, so would anybody else involved in creating 
> the computer or software also have one. 
> 
> Are trying to say that I or anybody else can cause 
> the computer to be conscious ? 

No. Only the computer, or a similar one. Actually *all* similar one  
existing in arithmetic, in their relative ways. 




> If wave collapse causes 
> consciousness, there are objective theories of wave collapse 
> called decoherence theories which seem more realistic to me. 

Decoherence needs MWI to work. 



> 
> But I can't seem to see how these could work on a computer. 

Right. the idea that consciousness cause the collapse of the wave (an  
idea which already refutes special relativity) is inconsistent with  
comp. 

Bruno 


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



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Re: Re: wave function collapse

Hi Bruno Marchal  


1) OK, so particles don't need a probe to be created from the wave ?
What's different about consciousness ?

2) If comp or materialism could work, I'd be happy.
But they'd have to be able to handle the self specifically,
not just imply it.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-24, 07:31:35 
Subject: Re: wave function collapse 




On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote: 


Hi meekerdb  

There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the quantum wave 
function 
(see below).  

1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed 
to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make 
a measurement).  


This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.  







2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical 
event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)  
in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me, 
this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor). 



This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices into NOT 
obeying QM. 








3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse 
of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe. 
This sounds like overkill to me. 


This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer + observed". It 
is the literal reading of QM. 







So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe. 


You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which can only 
please you, I guess). 


Bruno 




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

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Re: Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism



ROGER: > 2) I can be aware of having experiences that occur in a specific 
temporal order only if I perceive 
> something permanent by reference to which I can determine their 
> temporal order. (premise) 

RUSSELL: What motivates this premise? 

ROGER: >  The permanent entity could be the first event.


(previously) > 3) No conscious state of my own can serve as the permanent 
entity by reference to which 
> I can determine the temporal order of my experiences. (premise) 
> 

RUSSELL: Even assuming 2), what motivates this premise? 

ROGER: Temporal order means that, besides images of perceived events, recording 
an intuition of time passing is necessary.


(previously) > 4) Time itself cannot serve as this permanent entity by 
reference to which I can 
> determine the temporal order of my experiences. (premise) 
> 

RUSSELL: Well, I don't accept an objective concept of time anyway, so I have 
no problem with this, although I don't see why this should hold, 
assuming an objective (eg Newtonian) concept of time is valid. 



> (5) If (2), (3), and (4), are true, then I can be aware of having experiences 
> that occur in a 
> specific temporal order only if I perceive persisting objects in space 
> outside me by reference 
> to which I can determine the temporal order of my experiences. (premise) 
> 

Yes, I can see this follows. 

> (6) Therefore, I perceive persisting objects in space outside me by reference 
> to which 
> I can determine the temporal order of my experiences. (1?5)" 
> 
> 
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
> 10/23/2012 
> "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 
> 
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Re: Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism



On 24 Oct 2012, at 02:01, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 10/23/2012 5:47 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/23/2012 2:39 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

I have not met this argument before. I have comments interspersed.

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 08:04:35AM -0400, Roger Clough wrote:

Kant's Refutation of (Problematic) Idealism

Problematic Idealism (Berkeley's idealism, not that of Leibniz)  
is the thesis that we cannot
prove that objects outside us exist. This results directly from  
Descartes' proposition

that the only thing I cannot doubt is that I exist (solipsism).

If solipsism is true, it seems to raise the problem that we  
cannot prove that objects outside
us exist . But Kant refutes this thesis by his observation that  
we cannot observe the
passing of time (in itself inextended or nonphysical) unless  
there is some fixed inextended substrate
on which to observe the change in time.  Thus there must exist a  
fixed (only necessarily over a small
duration of time) nonphysical substrate to reality.  A similar  
conclusion can be made regarding

space.

Here is an alternate account of that argument:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental/#RefIde

"Dicker provides a compelling initial representation of Kant's  
argument (Dicker 2004, 2008):


1) I am conscious of my own existence in time; that is, I am  
aware, and can be aware,
that I have experiences that occur in a specific temporal  
order. (premise)



OK

2) can be aware of having experiences that occur in a  
specific temporal order only if I perceive
 something permanent by reference to which I can determine  
their

 temporal order. (premise)

What motivates this premise?


I think it is implicitly assuming that experiences have no 'fuzz'  
in their duration, they are discrete like states of a Turing  
machine computation.  I'd say we perceive temporal order by overlap  
between successive experiences.  This is consistent with the idea  
that an experience is not just a state of a computation, but a  
bundle of states that constitute the same stream of consciousness.


Brent

   I agree.


Me too.

Bruno


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



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Re: Solipsism = 1p



On 23 Oct 2012, at 20:21, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point  
of

view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.


This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes  
experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated?


The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated,  
neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object  
of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical  
relations.




Hi Craig and Bruno,

If the simulation by the computation is exact then the  
simulation *is* the experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying  
here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into  
the limit of abstraction in my opinion.


The point is that I think we have no real choice in the matter. Also,  
for me the numbers 2 and 3 are far more concrete than a apple or a  
tree. It is just that I have a complex brain which makes me believe,  
by a vast amount of computations that a tree is something concrete.








I can have an experience within which another experience is  
simulated,


Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much  
literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant "simulate  
the context making the experience of the person, "really living in  
Platonia" possible to manifest itself locally.


We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience  
within another?


OK. I would say that an emulation of an experience is equal to that  
experience. Now, just a simulation of an experience, is more like  
faking to be in love with a girl. But then you are a zombie with  
respect to the feeling of love, somehow.








but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that  
experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really  
happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as  
if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description,  
something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates  
experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters  
and cells?


It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to  
its most probable computation.


There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle  
of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical  
(topological space)


Topological space are mathematical.



aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a  
"separate substance".


OK. But that remains unclear as we don't know what you assume and what  
you derive.








Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no  
business producing such things at all. If the world is  
computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a  
pretending possible.


The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is  
almost the complementary of computations.


Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations  
generate.


That is: views by persons.




That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that "anti- 
computation" and compare to physics.


But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics.


It has to be. It is not a particular geography, but it has to be a  
particular physics. Physics really becomes math, with comp. There is  
only one physical reality. But it is still unknown if it is a  
multiverse, or a multi-multiverse, or a layered structure with  
different type of realm for different type of consciousness. There a  
lot of open problems, to say the least.





What we get is an infinite "landscape" of possible physics theories.


Not with comp. The main basic reason is that "we" are distributed in  
all computations, and physics emerges from that. There might be  
inaccessible cluster of "dead physical realities", which would not  
rich enough to implement Turing universal machines. But those cannot  
interfere (statistically) with our observations, like the "material"  
universe. We don't have to worry about them. They are like invisible  
horses.


Bruno


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



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Re: Solipsism = 1p

On 23 Oct 2012, at 17:46, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 10:15:15 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.

This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes
experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated?

The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated,
neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object
of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical relations.

That's what I'm saying, experience can't be simulated.

OK. Even the experience "made by a computer". The experience is a
mathematical fixed point living atemporally in arithmetic.

I can have an experience within which another experience is
simulated,

Never. It does not make sense.

Why not? I am sitting here at my desk while I am imagining I am in a
coffee shop instead - or a talking bowling ball is eating a coffee
shop, or whatever. I can simulate practically any experience I like
by imagining it.

In that sense, OK.

You take my sentence above too much literally. Sorry, my fault. I
wanted to be short. I meant "simulate the context making the
experience of the person, "really living in Platonia" possible to
manifest itself locally.

Oh, ok.

but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that
experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really
happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as
if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description,
something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates
experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters
and cells?

It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to
its most probable computation.

Why would that result in an experience?

Nobody knows, really. We expect it as we (me and the computationalist)
*bet* on comp, from the study of brain and computers, arithmetic, etc.

Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no
business producing such things at all. If the world is computation,
why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a pretending possible.

The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is
almost the complementary of computations. That is why we can test
comp by doing the math of that "anti-computation" and compare to
physics.

If they are not computation then how can computation refer to them?

My computer refers often to Craig, yet is not Craig. Entities can
refer to things which are not themselves.

Bruno

Craig

Bruno

It's a fun theory, but it's really not a viable explanation for the
universe where we actually live.

Craig

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

Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis


http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract

Comments?

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Stephen


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Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?



On 23 Oct 2012, at 17:27, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:

Bruno was born 100 years too late, he would have predicted quantum  
mechanics.


Haha, thanks Saibal. But only the MW then, as 100 years ago, Gödel  
didn't yet prove that computations are already in arithmetic. Without  
Gödel and Church thesis, or, actually, molecular biology and the  
discovery of DNA and enzyme,  I am not sure I would have ever taken  
comp seriously enough.


Of course comp + knowledge theory still needs to be tested fully. It  
would be astonishing this gives directly the physical laws, so some  
room will remain where we can improve or update the theory of knowledge.


Bruno




Citeren Roger Clough :


Hi Bruno Marchal

Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment.
Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/23/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-22, 13:18:13
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life


Hi Roger,

You just describe the non-comp conviction. You don't give any
argument. With comp, you are the owner of an infinity of machine, it
does not matter if it is in silicon or carbon, as long as the
components do the right relative things in the most probable history.

You are just insulting many creatures just by referring to their 3p
shapes. You are not cautious. You might insult God in the process.
Certainly so in case they are conscious, imo.

Any way, strong AI is the hypothesis that machine can be conscious.
Comp is the assumption that your body behave locally like a machine,
so that you might change it in some futures.


Bruno



On 21 Oct 2012, at 22:35, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

1p is to know by acquaintance (only possible to humans).
I conjecture that any statement pertaining to humans containing
1p is TRUE.

3p is to know by description (works for both humans and computers).
I believe that any statement pertaining to computers containing
1p is FALSE.

Consciousness would be to know that you are conscious, or

for a real person, 1p(1p) = TRUE
and saying that he is conscious to others would be 3p(1p) = TRUE
or even (3p(1p(1p))) = TRUE


But a computer cannot experience anything (is blocked from 1p), or

for a computer, 3p (1p) = FALSE (or any statement containing 1p)
but 3p(3p) = TRUE (or any proposition not containing 1p = TRUE)


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-21, 09:56:39
Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life


Hi John,


On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno,
especially in my identification as "responding to relations".
Now the "Self"? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of
thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have
no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute
because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to
clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of
course).


My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-
consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to
the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have
enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by
reading a lot about them, looking video.


But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say
I know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to
different scalings.


The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different
reason (the main one is that it is Turing Universal):


x + 0 = x
x + s(y) = s(x + y)


x *0 = 0
x*s(y) = x*y + x


But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that
if a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor
operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the
infinity of axioms:


(F(0) & Ax(F(x) -> F(s(x))) -> AxF(x),


with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus
defined with "0, s, +, *),


Then you get L?ianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you
and me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can
develop maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics
retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on
their most probable neighborhoods.


L?ianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create
and enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty  
treshold.





Bruno











On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness
or it cannot perceive its environment.


Are you sure?

Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am
not sure they have self-consc

Re: Re: Interactions between mind and brain

Hi meekerdb  

Just because something has no extension in space 
(physical existence) doesn't mean it doesn't exist mentally,
for example in Platonia. Mathematics has no extension in space,
forms of art do not have extension in space, nor does truth 
nor does goodness. Materialism is a very limiting world,
as thought has no extension in space.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: meekerdb  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 19:16:29 
Subject: Re: Interactions between mind and brain 


On 10/23/2012 3:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
> On 10/23/2012 1:29 PM, meekerdb wrote: 
>> On 10/23/2012 3:40 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
>>> On 10/23/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote: 
 On 10/22/2012 11:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
> On 10/22/2012 6:05 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 
>> I don't understand why you're focusing on NP-hard problems... NP-hard 
>> problems are 
>> solvable algorithmically... but not efficiently. When I read you (I'm 
>> surely 
>> misinterpreting), it seems like you're saying you can't solve NP-hard 
>> problems... it's 
>> not the case,... but as your input grows, the time to solve the problem 
>> may be bigger 
>> than the time ellapsed since the bigbang. You could say that the NP-hard 
>> problems for 
>> most input are not technically/practically sovable but they are in 
>> theories (you have 
>> the algorithm) unlike undecidable problems like the halting problem. 
>> 
>> Quentin 
> Hi Quentin, 
> 
> Yes, they are solved algorithmically. I am trying to get some focus on 
> the 
> requirement of resources for computations to be said to be solvable. This 
> is my 
> criticism of the Platonic treatment of computer theory, it completely 
> ignores these 
> considerations. The Big Bang theory (considered in classical terms) has a 
> related 
> problem in its stipulation of initial conditions, just as the 
> Pre-Established  
> Harmony of 
> Leibniz' Monadology. Both require the prior existence of a solution to a 
> NP-Hard 
> problem. We cannot consider the solution to be "accessible" prior to its 
> actual 
> computation! 
 
 Why not? NP-hard problems have solutions ex hypothesi; it's part of their 
 defintion. 
>>> 
>>> "Having a solution" in the abstract sense, is different from actual access 
>>> to the  
>>> solution. You cannot do any work with the abstract fact that a NP-Hard 
>>> problem has a  
>>> solution, you must actually compute a solution! The truth that there exists 
>>> a minimum  
>>> path for a traveling salesman to follow given N cities does not guide her 
>>> anywhere.  
>>> This should not be so unobvious! 
>> 
>> But you wrote, "Both require the prior existence of a solution to a NP-Hard 
>> problem."  
>> An existence that is guaranteed by the definition. 
> 
> Hi Brent, 
> 
> OH! Well, I thank you for helping me clean up my language! Let me try again. 
> ;--)  
> First I need to address the word "existence". I have tried to argue that "to 
> exists" is  
> to be "necessarily possible" but that attempt has fallen on deaf ears, well, 
> it has  
> until now for you are using it exactly how I am arguing that it should be 
> used, as in  
> "An existence that is guaranteed by the definition." DO you see that 
> existence does  
> nothing for the issue of properties? The existence of a pink unicorn and the 
> existence  
> of the 1234345465475766th prime number are the same kind of existence,  

I don't see that they are even similar. Existence of the aforesaid prime number 
just  
means it satisfies a certain formula within an axiom system. The pink unicorn 
fails  
existence of a quite different kind, namely an ability to locate it in 
spacetime. It may  
still satisfy some propositions, such as, "The animal that is pink, has one 
horn, and  
loses it's power in the presence of a virgin is obviously metaphorical."; just 
not ones we  
think of as axiomatic. 

> once we drop the pretense that existence is dependent or contingent on 
> physicality. 

It's not a pretense; it's a rejection of Platonism, or at least a distinction 
between  
different meanings of 'exists'. 

> Is it possible to define Physicality can be considered solely in terms of 
> bundles of  
> particular properties, kinda like Bruno's bundles of computations that define 
> any given  
> 1p. My thinking is that what is physical is exactly what some quantity of 
> separable 1p  
> have as mutually consistent  

But do the 1p have to exist? Can they be Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson? 

> (or representable as a Boolean Algebra) but this consideration seems to run 
> independent  
> of anything physical. What could reasonably constrain the computations so 
> that there is  
> some thing "real" to a physical universe?  

That's a

Re: Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?



On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:35, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

Nothing is true, even comp, until it is proven by experiment.


Then your own consciousness is false, which I doubt.
Then the existence even of the appearance of a physical universe is  
false.

Etc.
Since Gödel, we know that, even limiting ourselves to 3p truth on the  
numbers relations, almost all the true one are unprovable in any theory.

Truth is *far* bigger than proof.
And concerning reality, in science there is no proof at all, as easily  
explained by the antic dream argument. In science we never prove  
anything about reality. We postulate theories, and prove only things  
*in* the theories. Then experiment can disprove a theory, but never  
prove it to be correct.

Except QM, all theories in physics have been refuted at some time.






Can you think of an experiment to verify comp ?



To make comp scientific, we can only show comp to be experiementally  
refutable, and yes this has been done, using also the classical theory  
of knowledge. COMP + classical theory of knowledge entails the  
physical laws, so to refute comp you can compare the physics extracted  
from comp, and the physics extraoplated from observation.


Bruno

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



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Descartes' definition of existence

According to Descartes, the physical is that which has extension in space.
That's a common definition of existence.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012 
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 

- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-10-23, 18:35:10 
Subject: Re: Interactions between mind and brain 

On 10/23/2012 1:29 PM, meekerdb wrote: 
> On 10/23/2012 3:40 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
>> On 10/23/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote: 
>>> On 10/22/2012 11:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
 On 10/22/2012 6:05 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 
> I don't understand why you're focusing on NP-hard problems... 
> NP-hard problems are 
> solvable algorithmically... but not efficiently. When I read you 
> (I'm surely 
> misinterpreting), it seems like you're saying you can't solve 
> NP-hard problems... it's 
> not the case,... but as your input grows, the time to solve the 
> problem may be bigger 
> than the time ellapsed since the bigbang. You could say that the 
> NP-hard problems for 
> most input are not technically/practically sovable but they are in 
> theories (you have 
> the algorithm) unlike undecidable problems like the halting problem. 
> 
> Quentin 
 Hi Quentin, 

 Yes, they are solved algorithmically. I am trying to get some 
 focus on the 
 requirement of resources for computations to be said to be 
 solvable. This is my 
 criticism of the Platonic treatment of computer theory, it 
 completely ignores these 
 considerations. The Big Bang theory (considered in classical terms) 
 has a related 
 problem in its stipulation of initial conditions, just as the 
 Pre-Established Harmony of 
 Leibniz' Monadology. Both require the prior existence of a solution 
 to a NP-Hard 
 problem. We cannot consider the solution to be "accessible" prior 
 to its actual 
 computation! 
>>> 
>>> Why not? NP-hard problems have solutions ex hypothesi; it's part of 
>>> their defintion. 
>> 
>> "Having a solution" in the abstract sense, is different from 
>> actual access to the solution. You cannot do any work with the 
>> abstract fact that a NP-Hard problem has a solution, you must 
>> actually compute a solution! The truth that there exists a minimum 
>> path for a traveling salesman to follow given N cities does not guide 
>> her anywhere. This should not be so unobvious! 
> 
> But you wrote, "Both require the prior existence of a solution to a 
> NP-Hard problem." An existence that is guaranteed by the definition. 

Hi Brent, 

 OH! Well, I thank you for helping me clean up my language! Let me 
try again. ;--) First I need to address the word "existence". I have 
tried to argue that "to exists" is to be "necessarily possible" but that 
attempt has fallen on deaf ears, well, it has until now for you are 
using it exactly how I am arguing that it should be used, as in "An 
existence that is guaranteed by the definition." DO you see that 
existence does nothing for the issue of properties? The existence of a 
pink unicorn and the existence of the 1234345465475766th prime number 
are the same kind of existence, once we drop the pretense that existence 
is dependent or contingent on physicality. 
 Is it possible to define Physicality can be considered solely in 
terms of bundles of particular properties, kinda like Bruno's bundles of 
computations that define any given 1p. My thinking is that what is 
physical is exactly what some quantity of separable 1p have as mutually 
consistent (or representable as a Boolean Algebra) but this 
consideration seems to run independent of anything physical. What could 
reasonably constrain the computations so that there is some thing "real" 
to a physical universe? There has to be something that cannot be changed 
merely by changing one's point of view. 

> When you refer to the universe computing itself as an NP-hard problem, 
> you are assuming that "computing the universe" is member of a class of 
> problems. 

 Yes. It can be shown that computing a universe that contains 
something consistent with Einstein's GR is NP-Hard, as the problem of 
deciding whether or not there exists a smooth diffeomorphism between a 
pair of 3,1 manifolds has been proven (by Markov) to be so. This tells 
me that if we are going to consider the evolution of the universe to be 
something that can be a simulation running on some powerful computer (or 
an abstract computation in Platonia) then that simulation has to at 
least the equivalent to solving an NP-Hard problem. The prior existence, 
per se, of a solution is no different than the non-constructable proof 
that Diffeo_3,1 /subset NP-Hard that Markov found. 

> It actually doesn't make any sense to refer to a single problem as 
> NP-hard, since the "hard" refers to how the difficulty scales with 
> different problems o

Re: wave function collapse

Bruno,

What is your opinion of Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics TIQM,
a 4th possible interpetation of QM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation "More
recently he [Cramer] has also argued TIQM to be consistent with the
Afshar experiment, while claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation
and the many-worlds interpretation are not.[3]"
[3] ^ A Farewell to Copenhagen?, by John Cramer. Analog, December 2005.

Feynman used waves coming back from the future to solve his Quantum
Electrodynamics QED, the most experimentally accurate physics theory
extant, which in my mind lends TIQM credence. Such teteological
effects are expanded on for living systems in Terrence Deacon's book
"Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".

And does Afshar's experiment negate MWI? QM?
Richard

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote:
>
> Hi meekerdb
>
> There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the quantum wave
> function
> (see below).
>
> 1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed
> to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make
> a measurement).
>
>
> This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.
>
>
>
>
> 2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical
> event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)
> in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me,
> this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor).
>
>
> This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices into NOT
> obeying QM.
>
>
>
>
> 3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse
> of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe.
> This sounds like overkill to me.
>
>
> This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer + observed".
> It is the literal reading of QM.
>
>
>
>
> So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe.
>
>
> You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which can only
> please you, I guess).
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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Re: Solipsism = 1p



On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal






ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything,
it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available.



But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.

ROGER: Simulated experience would be  objective, such
as is given by the text of a novel (knowledge by description). True
experience is the subjective experience of the mind --knowledge
by aquaintance. These are obviously substantially different.


The term silulated experience is ambiguous, and I should not have use.  
I wiuld say that by definition of comp, simulated experience =  
experience.







BRUNO: You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks,  
nor the

physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the
brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can
include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs).

ROGER: I don't think so.

The owner of the brain is the self.

But although the owner of a computer will have a
self, so would anybody else involved in creating
the computer or software also have one.

Are trying to say that I or anybody else can cause
the computer to be conscious ?


No. Only the computer, or a similar one. Actually *all* similar one  
existing in arithmetic, in their relative ways.






If wave collapse causes
consciousness, there are objective theories of wave collapse
called decoherence theories which seem more realistic to me.


Decoherence needs MWI to work.





But I can't seem to see how these could work on a computer.


Right. the idea that consciousness cause the collapse of the wave (an  
idea which already refutes special relativity) is inconsistent with  
comp.


Bruno


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



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Re: Re: One more nail in comp's coffin.

Hi Jason Resch  

No, have proven solipsism.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/24/2012  
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Jason Resch  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-23, 10:30:37 
Subject: Re: One more nail in comp's coffin. 





On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Roger Clough  wrote: 

Hi Bruno, 

My own subjectivity is 1p. I don't believe a computer can 
have consciousness, but suppose we let the computer have 
consciousness as well. 

Let a descriptor be 3p. Let my consciousness = 1p 

But the computer's consciousness would be different, say 1p' 
-- because, let's say, it's less intelligent than I am. 
Or it's not travelled around the world as I have. 
Or it is only 3 years old. I've only used it for 3 years. 
Or it is Christian while I am a pagan. 
Or it is a materialist while I follow Leibniz. 
Or I am drunk and it is sober. 

Then the meaning of the 3p to me = 1p(3p). 
The meaning of the 3p to the computer = 1p'(3p). 

These obviously aren't ?oing to be the same. 
So comp can't work or work with any reliability. 



You could use this same argument to "disprove" the consciousness of every other 
person on earth. 

Jason 

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Re: wave function collapse



On 23 Oct 2012, at 14:50, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi meekerdb

There are a number of theories to explain the collapse of the  
quantum wave function

(see below).

1) In subjective theories, the collapse is attributed
to consciousness (presumably of the intent or decision to make
a measurement).


This leads to ... solipsism. See the work of Abner Shimony.





2) In objective or decoherence theories, some physical
event (such as using a probe to make a measurement)
in itself causes decoherence of the wave function. To me,
this is the simplest and most sensible answer (Occam's Razor).


This is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It forces some devices  
into NOT obeying QM.






3) There is also the many-worlds interpretation, in which collapse
of the wave is avoided by creating an entire universe.
This sounds like overkill to me.


This is just the result of applying QM to the couple "observer +  
observed". It is the literal reading of QM.






So I vote for decoherence of the wave by a probe.


You have to abandon QM, then, and not just QM, but comp too (which can  
only please you, I guess).


Bruno


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



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How Cognitive Science treats the mind and consciousness of self