date:20121211

On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
wrote:

On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
wrote:

On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And
Calculate),

That's not an interpretation at all.

Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes. His
view is that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the
density matrix (either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just
assumed per Bohr) then you have predicted probabilities. QM is a
probabilistic theory - so predicting probabilities is all you can
ask of it.

Is science just about its applications or about understanding the
world? I would argue that science would not progress so far as
it has if we thought finding the equation was the be all and end
all of science. The shut up and calculate mindset can be
translated as don't ask embarrassing questions, it is the
antithesis of scientific thinking.

Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do
the planets merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting
planetary motion, so shut up and calculate!

Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.

So what's your objection to Omnes? That the world just can't be
probabilistic? So instead there must be infinitely many
inaccessible worlds - which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.

It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory. Where I disagree with
him is in his belief that we can never go beyond that in our
understanding of it. I am not sure how accurate this statement
is, since it is a secondary source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s
says: We will never, Omnès believes, find a common sense
interpretation of quantum law itself. To me, it almost seems as
if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer. I lean more
towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding good
explanations.

Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and
defense of the MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter,
he insist that we have to be irrational, in fine, and select one
reality. This is really cosmo-solipsism, and makes QM indeed no
more rational at all.

What's not rational about it? I think 'rational' just means 'being
able to give coherent reasons'. There's a perfectly good coherent
reason for 'selecting' one reality - we experience one reality.

But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat
earth, we see the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force
to keep the same speed, etc. Usually when we refer to experience we
are wrong (and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot
mention experience in experiment ...).

Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
(consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from
theories already extrapolated.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Against Mechanism



On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:30, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born  
rule. a good explanation.  I'm all for finding a better  
explanation, i.e. a deterministic one.  But simply postulating an  
ensemble of worlds to make the probabilities deterministic in  
arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any improvement.


It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not  
well defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the  
collapse needed to get one physical reality).


That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.


Only against theories which postulate objective indeterminacy (and  
what is that?) to avoid a simpler theory.




The interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.   
The interference happens in one world.  As Omnes says, you don't  
need 'collapse' you just need to accept that you have calculated  
probabilities.  That's what probability means - some state is  
actualized and others aren't.


That sort of probability seems quite magic to me. And useless, as  
first person indeterminacy explains their appearance completely, in  
simpler theories, like the CTM or Everett QM.


Bruno


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Re: Against Mechanism



On 10 Dec 2012, at 19:54, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com  
wrote:


 From whose perspective is there a single unique result?

From my perspective! Whenever I, the simple non-godlike  
experimenter, send a photon (or electron) through 2 slits and it  
hits a photographic I, the simple non-godlike experimenter, always  
see a single unique result. After the experiment I, the simple non- 
godlike experimenter, can always say the photon hit right there on  
the plate and it did not hit way over there on the other side of the  
plate.


The outcome of the 2 slit experiment cannot be predicted precisely  
but once it is performed and the experimenter knows for certain if  
the left hand side of the plate box or the right hand side of the  
plate box should be checked in the lab notebook. After Bruno's  
experiment should the Washington or Moscow box be checked?  Should  
the experimenter believe the Washington man or the Moscow man or  
both? If it's both then the experimenter has learned nothing.


  From the God's-eye view of reality, there certainly is not a  
single outcome.


Perhaps, but I am not God; I applied but unfortunately did not get  
the job.


  Your issue is you use the God's-eye view for Bruno's experiment  
but not for the 2-slit experiment.


No. In Bruno's experiment from my perspective, I the simple non- 
godlike experimenter, always see exactly the same thing, I the  
simple non-godlike experimenter always see 2 people who have a equal  
right to call themselves Bruno always check both the Washington box  
and the Moscow box and thus nothing is learned. And I don't care  
what God sees because this simple non-godlike experimenter does not  
believe in God.


You need only to believe that both the W-man and the M-man have a  
first person experience. And both confirms that sometimes they see W,  
sometimes they see M, and never both.






 it says that in the 2 slit experiment the absolute value of the  
square of the value of the Schrodinger wave equation of a photon at  
a point on a photographic plate will be the classical probability of  
finding the photon at that point when you develop the plate. This  
prediction of Quantum Mechanics has been proven to be correct many  
many times and according to SUAC that's the end of the matter.


 But those predicted probabilities are more similar to those of  
Bruno's first person indeterminacy


No it is not. Quantum Mechanics could have been disproved by  
actually performing the 2 slit experiment and obtaining a different  
probability distribution, but as it happens Quantum Mechanics  
predicted correctly. However there is no way to check Bruno's  
prediction about which city you will see due to the inconsistency of  
what you means, the experiment produces no result.


 In any case, what Tegmark shows is that when reality gets very  
big, stuff like QM becomes unavoidable.


It doesn't matter. If our universe is big enough to have a exact  
copy of me in the way that Tegmark talks about then he is so far  
away that I can never meet him or detect him in any way, not even if  
I had a infinite (and I DON'T just mean very large) number of years  
to do it.  Due to the expansion of the universe that other John  
Clark is already moving much much faster than the speed of light  
away from me, and due to the acceleration of the universe he is  
moving away even faster every day.


 If I remember correctly you are a Platonist.

I prefer to think of Plato as being a Clarkist, and I don't  
understand why people keep saying I have a big head.


  Do you believe there are platonic objects containing patterns  
complex enough to be conscious?


You can't fly to Tokyo on the blueprints of a 747 they need to be  
implemented with matter, but matter is generic, one aluminum atom is  
as good as another so its the information that's important.


  Had QM not been found, it would be strong evidence against the CTM.

It took me long time to figure out that acronym and I'm still not  
sure, I considered Computational Turing Machine but that seemed  
redundant, then with Google's help I thought about Central Texas  
Mountaineers and Children's Theater of Madison and Classic Tile and  
Mosaic, now my best guess is Computer Theory of Mind but I could be  
wrong.


 Say there are 2 computers and both are running the Microsoft Word  
program. I tell you that I am about to type the word red into one  
computer and the word green into the other computer. The two  
computers are never connected so  each computer outputs a single  
definite result. Do you agree that there is a 100% chance that  
Microsoft Word will input the word red from a keyboard and display  
those ASCII characters on a screen and a 100% chance that Microsoft  
Word will input the word green from a keyboard and display those  
ASCII characters on a screen?


 Yes I do.  But that explains things from the God's-eye view.

Unfortunately I am

Re: Whoopie ! The natural INTEGERS are indeed monads

On 10 Dec 2012, at 20:25, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno, I wonder if you know German proverbs: Wirf die Katz' wie du
willst, sie faellt auf die Fűsse (throw the cat as you wish, she
falls onto her feet).

We have it in french. In fact cat really falls onto their feet :)

Bruno

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 5:20 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:

On 09 Dec 2012, at 22:10, John Mikes wrote:

OOps#2: I would have to be a super-Gauss to explain the 12/17ary
system. The last time I really studied math-rules was in 1948,
preparing for my Ph.D. exam, - since then I only forget.

12/17 is surely a value, hopefully applicable in erecting a math-
system, like with 2 the binary, or with 10 the decimal. The
rest is application

(ha ha). Ask the super-duper universal computer of yours.

He is still very dumb, you know. He has not some much practice in
real life. I am already happy he can understand cut, copy, and send,
unlike some participants :)

Sorry for erring into such un-serious and un-scientific corners.

It was fun, no problem. It would still be interesting to see if your
12/17 ary system makes your numbers verify my axioms:

x + 0 = x
x + (y + 1) = (x + y) + 1

x *0 = 0
x*(y + 1) = x*y + x

If that is the case, we can use your numbers, and it will change
noting in the TOE, we will get the same consciousness and the same
physics.

Have a good Christmas time

Happy Christmas to you too John.

Bruno

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

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Re: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p.



On 11 Dec 2012, at 13:17, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal

My personal introspection will always have my personal
memory as context, which a computer will not have.


This is weird. Personal computer have already personal memory, even if  
today they borrow it from their user. But personal memory is easy to  
implement. Now the 1p is not just memory (even if this is enough in  
UDA). There is a distinct person quale associated to it.





One can in fact say that I am my memory.


In some approximation.




My
memory is the identity of my 1p and is what my 1p sees.

This is perhaps the most serioous problem of comp.


Frankly  I can understand people not convinced that a computer can  
have a quale associated to the memory, but memory and personal memory  
does not pose any problem in computers. Then I have explained why they  
have a quale too.


Bruno






[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net]
12/11/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen

- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-12-10, 09:29:08
Subject: Re: Introspection (internal 1p) has been dropped by  
cognitivescience





On 10 Dec 2012, at 13:59, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Russell Standish

Actual introspection is subjective, not objective.
Computers as I understand them can only think objectively.


But now we know better. Computers are champion in introspection, and  
they have a rich subjective life. Even without comp or CTM, and with  
just the usual definition of knowledge in analytical philosophy.



Bruno





[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net]
12/10/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen

- Receiving the following content -
From: Russell Standish
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-12-09, 01:42:47
Subject: Re: Re: Introspection (internal 1p) has been dropped by  
cognitivescience



On Sat, Dec 08, 2012 at 06:34:56AM -0500, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Russell Standish

He's talking about psychological introspection using
everyday language and concepts. Philosophical
introspection a la Kant for example, is more formal
and precise and uses formal categories.



I don't see a distinction in the topic, or problem being solved - just
a difference in tools used.

Modern AI uses less formal logic these days, and more statistical
modelling (such as in the website I referenced).

Cheers

--  



Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
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: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p.

2012-12-11 Thread Telmo Menezes


  My
 memory is the identity of my 1p and is what my 1p sees.

 This is perhaps the most serioous problem of comp.


 Frankly  I can understand people not convinced that a computer can
 have a quale associated to the memory, but memory and personal memory does
 not pose any problem in computers. Then I have explained why they have a
 quale too.


This is not even theoretical anymore. Here's a rather compelling example of
visual information in human brains being uploaded into a computer:

http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Avoiding the use of the word God

2012-12-11 Thread Richard Ruquist

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy
multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote:
 but if the bet is laid open and reasoning somewhat sincere, then I'll listen
 to a mystic over some dull philosopher or scientist and their linguistic
 labyrinths any day.

I do not even try to learn comedy. Yet I learn from mystics more than
any credible scientist.

Of course mystics have posed any number of contradictory realities.
Because of this I rather intuitively rank each posed reality by the
number and dignity of the mystics associated with a particular
hypothetical reality.

I lend more dignity to a mystic if he or she happens to be a
scientist, or a mathematician, or a philosopher, including those
associated with religion.
I also look for underlying principles that make seemingly
contradictory realities consistent, something Moses advised for his
contradictory laws.

So Plato was both philosopher and mystic. Leibniz, both mathematician
and mystic. One might add Godel, Wheeler, even Witten, but not Newton.
I certainly add Buddha, Jesus, even Swedenborg and the early schools
of Hinduism, but not any Pope.

For me what distinguishes a mystic is their possession of what I call
insight, a property of advanced humans that allows them to see or
sense a unique reality that is beyond scientific measurement in space
and in time.

The fact that Buddhists have sensed a lattice of seemingly entangled
particles and that Leibniz seemingly arrived at the same conclusion
logically (however I suspect he sensed that reality as well), and
now that supersymmetric string theory SST has at least deduced the
same reality, gives that reality IMO overwhelming credibility. I say
SST deduced rather than derived because what happened to the extra
dimensions are not (yet) derived from the theory.

That no such mystic has sensed an MWI-type multiverse is also IMO
meaningful. Yet it is clear that particles in the so-called
particle/wave duality exist mostly as waves having numerous quantum
states even in constrained systems like electrons in an atom.

So what is the underlying principle that makes these contradictory realities,
MWI quantum waves versus SWI physical particles, consistent??

(to be continued)

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Re: Against Mechanism

On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And Calculate),

That's not an interpretation at all.

Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes. His view is
that
once you can explain the diagonalization of the the density matrix
(either
by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just assumed per Bohr) then you have
predicted probabilities. QM is a probabilistic theory - so predicting
probabilities is all you can ask of it.

Is science just about its applications or about understanding the world? I
would argue that science would not progress so far as it has if we thought
finding the equation was the be all and end all of science. The shut up
and
calculate mindset can be translated as don't ask embarrassing questions,
it
is the antithesis of scientific thinking.

Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the planets
merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting planetary
motion, so shut up and calculate!

Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.

So what's your objection to Omnes? That the world just can't be probabilistic?
So instead there must be infinitely many inaccessible worlds - which happen to

mimic a probabilistic world.

It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory. Where I disagree with him is in his
belief that we can never go beyond that in our understanding of it. I am not sure
how accurate this statement is, since it is a secondary source, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s says: We will never, Omnès believes,
find a common sense interpretation of quantum law itself. To me, it almost seems as
if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer. I lean more towards David
Deutsch who says science is about finding good explanations.

Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and defense of the MWI,
except that in the last paragraph, or chapter, he insist that we have to be
irrational, in fine, and select one reality. This is really cosmo-solipsism, and makes
QM indeed no more rational at all.

What's not rational about it? I think 'rational' just means 'being able to give
coherent reasons'. There's a perfectly good coherent reason for 'selecting' one
reality - we experience one reality.

But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat earth, we see the
Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force to keep the same speed, etc.

And all those inferences were perfectly rational. The fact that later, more comprehensive
theories were found doesn't change that. Rational is not the same as 'always right'.

Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong

We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about it's
extrapolations.

(and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention experience in experiment
...).

Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something (consciousness, mainly)
and we extrapolate reality from that, and from theories already extrapolated.

I agree. But the model of reality we build should comport with experience. We don't
experience many worlds, so a valid model must include that.

Brent

Re: Against Mechanism


On 12/11/2012 7:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:30, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born rule. a good 
explanation.  I'm all for finding a better explanation, i.e. a deterministic one.  
But simply postulating an ensemble of worlds to make the probabilities 
deterministic in arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any improvement.


It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not well defined 
(apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the collapse needed to get one 
physical reality).


That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.


Only against theories which postulate objective indeterminacy (and what is that?) to 
avoid a simpler theory.




The interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.  The interference 
happens in one world.  As Omnes says, you don't need 'collapse' you just need to accept 
that you have calculated probabilities.  That's what probability means - some state is 
actualized and others aren't.


That sort of probability seems quite magic to me. And useless, as first person 
indeterminacy explains their appearance completely,


It only 'explains' it by recasting the inherent probability into an ignorance of ensemble 
samples form, but with not possible way of resolving the ignorance, so that the two 
'explanations' are strictly equivalent




in simpler theories, like the CTM or Everett QM.


Everett's QM is not a theory; it's just an interpretations.

Brent




Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/



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Re: Avoiding the use of the word God

On 11 Dec 2012, at 17:16, Richard Ruquist wrote:

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy
multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote:
but if the bet is laid open and reasoning somewhat sincere, then
I'll listen
to a mystic over some dull philosopher or scientist and their
linguistic

labyrinths any day.

I do not even try to learn comedy. Yet I learn from mystics more than
any credible scientist.

Of course mystics have posed any number of contradictory realities.
Because of this I rather intuitively rank each posed reality by the
number and dignity of the mystics associated with a particular
hypothetical reality.

I lend more dignity to a mystic if he or she happens to be a
scientist, or a mathematician, or a philosopher, including those
associated with religion.
I also look for underlying principles that make seemingly
contradictory realities consistent, something Moses advised for his
contradictory laws.

So Plato was both philosopher and mystic. Leibniz, both mathematician
and mystic. One might add Godel,

Hmm... Actually Gödel was not mystic. According to Hao Wang, Gödel did
even regret all his life not having had any mystical insight and that
he was was a bit jealous of Descartes on that matter. This shows he
was certainly open to the idea that such kind of experiences exist of
course.

Wheeler, even Witten, but not Newton.

Are you really sure about Newton?

I certainly add Buddha, Jesus, even Swedenborg and the early schools
of Hinduism, but not any Pope.

For me what distinguishes a mystic is their possession of what I call
insight, a property of advanced humans that allows them to see or
sense a unique reality that is beyond scientific measurement in space
and in time.

The fact that Buddhists have sensed a lattice of seemingly entangled
particles and that Leibniz seemingly arrived at the same conclusion
logically (however I suspect he sensed that reality as well), and
now that supersymmetric string theory SST has at least deduced the
same reality, gives that reality IMO overwhelming credibility. I say
SST deduced rather than derived because what happened to the extra
dimensions are not (yet) derived from the theory.

That no such mystic has sensed an MWI-type multiverse is also IMO
meaningful.

You might read type salvia reports. The many-alternate reality
experience is quite common, even by people having never heard about
Everett or CTM's consequences. People usually experience the many
realities, but also the realities from which such many realities
emerge, and many other things hard to describe. This proves nothing of
course.

Bruno

Yet it is clear that particles in the so-called
particle/wave duality exist mostly as waves having numerous quantum
states even in constrained systems like electrons in an atom.

So what is the underlying principle that makes these contradictory
realities,

MWI quantum waves versus SWI physical particles, consistent??

(to be continued)

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Re: Against Mechanism

2012-12-11 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:05 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:

  On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

  And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
 Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And Calculate),


  That's not an interpretation at all.


 Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes.  His view is
 that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the density matrix
 (either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just assumed per Bohr) then you
 have predicted probabilities.  QM is a probabilistic theory - so predicting
 probabilities is all you can ask of it.


 Is science just about its applications or about understanding the world?
 I would argue that science would not progress so far as it has if we
 thought finding the equation was the be all and end all of science.  The
 shut up and calculate mindset can be translated as don't ask
 embarrassing questions, it is the antithesis of scientific thinking.

 Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the
 planets merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
 Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting planetary
 motion, so shut up and calculate!

 Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.


  So what's your objection to Omnes?  That the world just can't be
 probabilistic?  So instead there must be infinitely many inaccessible
 worlds - which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.


 It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory.  Where I disagree with him is
 in his belief that we can never go beyond that in our understanding of it.
 I am not sure how accurate this statement is, since it is a secondary
 source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s says: We will
 never, Omnès believes, find a common sense interpretation of quantum law
 itself.  To me, it almost seems as if he says it is not worth trying to
 find an answer.  I lean more towards David Deutsch who says science is
 about finding good explanations.


  Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and defense
 of the MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter, he insist that
 we have to be irrational, in fine, and select one reality. This is really
 cosmo-solipsism, and makes QM indeed no more rational at all.


 What's not rational about it?  I think 'rational' just means 'being able
 to give coherent reasons'.  There's a perfectly good coherent reason for
 'selecting' one reality - we experience one reality.


  But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat
 earth, we see the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force to
 keep the same speed, etc.


 And all those inferences were perfectly rational.  The fact that later,
 more comprehensive theories were found doesn't change that.   Rational is
 not the same as 'always right'.


  Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong


 We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about it's
 extrapolations.


  (and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention
 experience in experiment ...).

  Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
 (consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from
 theories already extrapolated.


 I agree.  But the model of reality we build should comport with
 experience.  We don't experience many worlds, so a valid model must include
 that.


We don't (in this present) experience our conscious state of 5 minutes ago.
 Would you reject the idea that the universe is a 4-dimensional static
structure with no objective present on this basis?

Jason

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Re: Against Mechanism

2012-12-11 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:09 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 12/11/2012 7:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:30, meekerdb wrote:

  On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born rule. a
 good explanation.  I'm all for finding a better explanation, i.e. a
 deterministic one.  But simply postulating an ensemble of worlds to make
 the probabilities deterministic in arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any
 improvement.


  It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not well
 defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the collapse needed
 to get one physical reality).


 That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.


  Only against theories which postulate objective indeterminacy (and
 what is that?) to avoid a simpler theory.



  The interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.  The
 interference happens in one world.  As Omnes says, you don't need
 'collapse' you just need to accept that you have calculated probabilities.
 That's what probability means - some state is actualized and others aren't.


  That sort of probability seems quite magic to me. And useless, as first
 person indeterminacy explains their appearance completely,


 It only 'explains' it by recasting the inherent probability into an
 ignorance of ensemble samples form, but with not possible way of resolving
 the ignorance, so that the two 'explanations' are strictly equivalent



  in simpler theories, like the CTM or Everett QM.


 Everett's QM is not a theory; it's just an interpretations.


Not quite.  Deutsch's proposed experiment with reversible computation and
an AI yields different results for the CI and MWI, thus they are theories
which can be tested and differentiated.

Talking about many worlds as a interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is like
talking about dinosaurs as an interpretation of the fossil record. --
David Deutsch

Jason

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Re: Against Mechanism



On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 12:23:08 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:



 On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:05 AM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.netjavascript:
  wrote:

  On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 


  On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:

  On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 


  On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.netjavascript:
  wrote:

   On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote: 



 On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.netjavascript:
  wrote:

  On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote: 

  And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum 
 Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And Calculate),
  

  That's not an interpretation at all.

  
 Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes.  His view is 
 that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the density matrix 
 (either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just assumed per Bohr) then 
 you 
 have predicted probabilities.  QM is a probabilistic theory - so 
 predicting 
 probabilities is all you can ask of it.

  
 Is science just about its applications or about understanding the 
 world?  I would argue that science would not progress so far as it has if 
 we thought finding the equation was the be all and end all of science.  The 
 shut up and calculate mindset can be translated as don't ask 
 embarrassing questions, it is the antithesis of scientific thinking.

 Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the 
 planets merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
 Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting 
 planetary motion, so shut up and calculate!

 Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.
  

  So what's your objection to Omnes?  That the world just can't be 
 probabilistic?  So instead there must be infinitely many inaccessible 
 worlds - which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.

  
 It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory.  Where I disagree with him is 
 in his belief that we can never go beyond that in our understanding of it.  
 I am not sure how accurate this statement is, since it is a secondary 
 source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s says: We 
 will never, Omnès believes, find a common sense interpretation of quantum 
 law itself.  To me, it almost seems as if he says it is not worth trying 
 to find an answer.  I lean more towards David Deutsch who says science is 
 about finding good explanations.
  

  Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and 
 defense of the MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter, he 
 insist that we have to be irrational, in fine, and select one reality. This 
 is really cosmo-solipsism, and makes QM indeed no more rational at all.
  

 What's not rational about it?  I think 'rational' just means 'being able 
 to give coherent reasons'.  There's a perfectly good coherent reason for 
 'selecting' one reality - we experience one reality.
  

  But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat 
 earth, we see the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force to 
 keep the same speed, etc. 
  

 And all those inferences were perfectly rational.  The fact that later, 
 more comprehensive theories were found doesn't change that.   Rational is 
 not the same as 'always right'.


  Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong 
  

 We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about it's 
 extrapolations.


  (and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention 
 experience in experiment ...).

  Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something 
 (consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from 
 theories already extrapolated.
  

 I agree.  But the model of reality we build should comport with 
 experience.  We don't experience many worlds, so a valid model must include 
 that.


 We don't (in this present) experience our conscious state of 5 minutes 
 ago.  Would you reject the idea that the universe is a 4-dimensional 
 static structure with no objective present on this basis?


We know by special relativity that there is no objective present. 
Simultaneity is relative.

We do typically experience our conscious state of 5 minutes ago, unless we 
have Dementia or some other physiological condition which inhibits memory.

The idea that the ordinary world which we experience of visible, tangible 
phenomena is an unexplained side-effect of an invisible, intangible set of 
formulas is in no way an improvement on even Cartesian dualism. Descartes, 
flawed as he was, was light years ahead of all of QM and Information 
Science in terms of explaining the actual world which we experience as 
living human beings.

Craig (aka erroneously self-localized probabilistic flux parameter haunting 
the cardinality-vomiting multiverse)


 Jason 


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You received this

Re: Against Mechanism

On 11 Dec 2012, at 18:05, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
wrote:

On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
wrote:

On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among
working
physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And Calculate),

That's not an interpretation at all.

Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes. His
view is that once you can explain the diagonalization of the
the density matrix (either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or
just assumed per Bohr) then you have predicted probabilities.
QM is a probabilistic theory - so predicting probabilities is
all you can ask of it.

Is science just about its applications or about understanding
the world? I would argue that science would not progress so
far as it has if we thought finding the equation was the be all
and end all of science. The shut up and calculate mindset
can be translated as don't ask embarrassing questions, it is
the antithesis of scientific thinking.

Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do
the planets merely appear to move as if earth moved about the
sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting
planetary motion, so shut up and calculate!

Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.

So what's your objection to Omnes? That the world just can't be
probabilistic? So instead there must be infinitely many
inaccessible worlds - which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.

It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory. Where I disagree
with him is in his belief that we can never go beyond that in
our understanding of it. I am not sure how accurate this
statement is, since it is a secondary source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s
says: We will never, Omnès believes, find a common sense
interpretation of quantum law itself. To me, it almost seems
as if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer. I lean
more towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding
good explanations.

Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and
defense of the MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or
chapter, he insist that we have to be irrational, in fine, and
select one reality. This is really cosmo-solipsism, and makes QM
indeed no more rational at all.

What's not rational about it? I think 'rational' just means
'being able to give coherent reasons'. There's a perfectly good
coherent reason for 'selecting' one reality - we experience one
reality.

But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a
flat earth, we see the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need
of force to keep the same speed, etc.

And all those inferences were perfectly rational. The fact that
later, more comprehensive theories were found doesn't change that.
Rational is not the same as 'always right'.

OK. But I was pointing of the fact that there was a pattern in the
mistake, which consists in extrapolating from our experience. Progress
along the path Galileo, Einstein, Everett always come from a better
distinction between what is, and how it can appear to us.
Then in the search of a TOE, we need to use coherent reasons, but we
need also a coherent big picture.

I agree I tend to use rational is an unusually restricted sense:
going from the earth look flat to the earth looks round is
rational. Going from the earth looks flat to the earth *is* round
is irrational.

Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong

We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about
it's extrapolations.

OK. That is what I meant.

(and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention
experience in experiment ...).

Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
(consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and
from theories already extrapolated.

I agree. But the model of reality we build should comport with
experience. We don't experience many worlds, so a valid model must
include that.

But we do experience many worlds. We see those interference that we
can see, and without collapse, that we don't see, this is a sort of
experiencing the many worlds. Like we do experience the roundness of
the earth, through travel, media, pictures, etc. If not, we never
experience anything physical to start with. We are just more and more
conscious of the assumptions we make.

Being rational we prefer to explain the complex from the simple than
the simple from the complex.

Re: Against Mechanism

2012-12-11 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 12:48 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 12/10/2012 10:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:35 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 12/10/2012 10:16 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:30 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born rule.
 a good explanation.  I'm all for finding a better explanation, i.e. a
 deterministic one.  But simply postulating an ensemble of worlds to make
 the probabilities deterministic in arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any
 improvement.


  It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not well
 defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the collapse needed
 to get one physical reality).


 That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.  The
 interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.  The
 interference happens in one world.  As Omnes says, you don't need
 'collapse' you just need to accept that you have calculated probabilities.
 That's what probability means - some state is actualized and others aren't.


  How does Omnes explain the EPR experiment without collapse?  It seems
 you need to give up not only determinism, but also locality.

  Also, what do you think Omnes would predict as the outcome for
 Deutsch's proposed experiment:

   In Deutsch's thought experiment, an atom, which has a determinate spin
 state in one axis, 'left' for example, is passed through a Stern-Gerlach
 apparatus which has the possibility of measuring it in another axis, as
 either spin 'up' or spin 'down' in this case. This means that the atom is
 then in a superposition of 'up' and 'down' states from the perspective of
 an observer who has not yet become entangled with it. This superposition
 travels to the AI's artificial 'sense organ'. Here it is provided with two
 options, it may be detected as either spin 'up' or spin 'down'. The AI's
 conscious mind then records the result. The collapse approach predicts that
 this will cause the atom to collapse into one determinate state, with
 either a determinate 'up' or 'down' (but not 'left' or 'right') spin. The
 Everett approach predicts that the mind will branch into two, one mind will
 record up and one down (but neither will record 'left' or 'right').

  The whole process is then reversed so that the atom emerges from the
 entrance to the Stern-Gerlach apparatus and the mind forgets which result
 it recorded. This process does not erase any of the AI's other memories
 however, including the memory that they did record the atom to be in a
 definite state. If a 'left-right' detector was placed at the entrance of
 the Stern-Gerlach apparatus then the collapse approach predicts that it
 will be detected as being in either a 'left' or 'right' state with equal
 probability.


  I think it is wrong in saying that the erasure of which-way information
 (which I think is actually impossible for a consciousness, artificial or
 otherwise) will leave the atom in an up/down state.


 Isn't that exactly what the quantum erasure experiment shows?


 Quantum erasure requires that the which-way information be eliminated from
 the world.  Once an AI consciousness gets the result I think that implies
 entanglement with the world and after that the result can't be quantum
 erased.


What theory of consciousness are you operating under?  CTM or something
else?


 I know Deutsch supposes a quantum computer AI can 'know' there was
 which-way information even though the which-way information was quantum
 erased.  But I find that doubtful.  And even if it's true, the 'reversal'
 may bring the atom back to 'left'.


That is the proposed result that would prove MWI.  If the left state is
restored always then the universe never collapsed, it split a difference
was observed, and a record of observing that difference was stored, then
all information pertaining to the result is erased such that the two
universes recombine (the split was undone, even though it should have
collapsed because the difference was observed).




  Why do you think it is impossible for a conscious process learn the
 result and then have that result erased as in the quantum eraser experiment?


 Because I think consciousness must be quasi-classical.  Consciousness
 needs stable memory and it needs to interact with its environment -
 together I think that implies it must be essentially classical as a
 computer.


In this case it has stable memory, and is able to interact with its
environment, but then all traces of its memory of the which-way result are
erased.  We operate with unstable memories and forget things, and yet are
still conscious.


 That's one of my reservations about Bruno's oft repeated assertion that he
 has proven that matter doesn't exist.


He says matter exists, but that it is not primitive.  It can be explained
in terms of something

Re: Against Mechanism

On 11 Dec 2012, at 18:09, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/11/2012 7:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:30, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born
rule. a good explanation. I'm all for finding a better
explanation, i.e. a deterministic one. But simply postulating
an ensemble of worlds to make the probabilities deterministic
in arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any improvement.

It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not
well defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the
collapse needed to get one physical reality).

That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.

Only against theories which postulate objective indeterminacy
(and what is that?) to avoid a simpler theory.

The interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.
The interference happens in one world. As Omnes says, you don't
need 'collapse' you just need to accept that you have
calculated probabilities. That's what probability means - some
state is actualized and others aren't.

That sort of probability seems quite magic to me. And useless, as
first person indeterminacy explains their appearance completely,

It only 'explains' it by recasting the inherent probability into an
ignorance of ensemble samples form,

It is only realist on what our best theories describe. Both QM-Everett
and CTM cannot avoid those ensembles. And they are not just
ensemble. In QM Everett its is a universal wave, a solution of the SWE
(or Dirac, or deWitt-Wheeler, ...), and in CTM it is a tiny part of
the arithmetical reality (which after Gödels appears as something
*very* big, and structured in many-ways, with many different inside
views.

but with not possible way of resolving the ignorance, so that the
two 'explanations' are strictly equivalent

CTM illustrates the contrary. It is made testable, and up to now the
two quantum logic resemble enough. of course it might be a
coïncidence, but it is a strong point, imo, that where the UDA tells a
quantum probability should appear, we get indeed an arithmetical
quantization making something quite quantum like, formally, where we
expected it to be, by UDA.

in simpler theories, like the CTM or Everett QM.

Everett's QM is not a theory; it's just an interpretations.

I disagree on this, despite most would agree with you. But perhaps not
Everett itself who talks only about a formulation. And indeed
Everett's main contribution in QM is the formulation of a new QM which
is just the old QM without the collapse postulate. Everett explains
why the observers, in any base in which they can have memories, will
believe in probabilities, until they explain this by the wave itself,
and a notion of first person (called Subjective by Everett).
Then my point is just that if CTM is correct, we have to pursue that
move in the whole arithmetic, not just the wave, which is itself
selected through a similar self-selection process. I show that it
works, thanks to incompleteness, which both makes equivalent all the
points of view, p, Bp, Bp p, Bp Dt, Bp Dt p, yet prevent the
machines to ever know that, which makes the logics behaving very
differently, and giving different views on arithmetical truth, from
arithmetical truth.

Look at the progress in conceptual elegance of those different
theories of reality:

Old QM:

1) Wave
2) collapse
3) Unintelligible theory of mind

Everett:

1) Wave
2) Arithmetic (comp)

Your servitor:

1) Arithmetic (comp)

Bruno

Brent

Bruno

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

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Re: Against Mechanism


On 12/11/2012 9:23 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:05 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:




On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And 
Calculate),


That's not an interpretation at all.


Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes.  His view 
is
that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the density 
matrix
(either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just assumed per Bohr) 
then
you have predicted probabilities.  QM is a probabilistic theory - so
predicting probabilities is all you can ask of it.


Is science just about its applications or about understanding the 
world?  I
would argue that science would not progress so far as it has if we 
thought
finding the equation was the be all and end all of science.  The shut 
up
and calculate mindset can be translated as don't ask embarrassing
questions, it is the antithesis of scientific thinking.

Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the 
planets
merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting 
planetary
motion, so shut up and calculate!

Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.


So what's your objection to Omnes?  That the world just can't be
probabilistic?  So instead there must be infinitely many inaccessible 
worlds
- which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.


It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory.  Where I disagree with him is 
in his
belief that we can never go beyond that in our understanding of it.  I am 
not
sure how accurate this statement is, since it is a secondary source, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s says: We will never, Omnès
believes, find a common sense interpretation of quantum law itself.  To 
me, it
almost seems as if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer.  I lean
more towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding good 
explanations.


Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and defense of 
the
MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter, he insist that we have 
to be
irrational, in fine, and select one reality. This is really 
cosmo-solipsism, and
makes QM indeed no more rational at all.


What's not rational about it?  I think 'rational' just means 'being able to 
give
coherent reasons'.  There's a perfectly good coherent reason for 
'selecting' one
reality - we experience one reality.


But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat 
earth, we see
the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force to keep the same 
speed, etc.


And all those inferences were perfectly rational.  The fact that later, more
comprehensive theories were found doesn't change that.   Rational is not 
the same as
'always right'.



Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong


We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about it's
extrapolations.



(and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention experience in
experiment ...).

Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something 
(consciousness,
mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from theories already 
extrapolated.


I agree.  But the model of reality we build should comport with experience. 
 We
don't experience many worlds, so a valid model must include that.


We don't (in this present) experience our conscious state of 5 minutes ago.  Would you 
reject the idea that the universe is a 4-dimensional static structure with no objective 
present on this basis?


No, but I would expect a theory of conscious experience to include that.

Brent

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Re: Against Mechanism



On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 1:07:16 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:



 Your servitor:

 1) Arithmetic (comp)

 :)

 Bruno


To which I add:

0) That which perceives, understands, participates, and gives rise to comp.

:)

Craig 

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Re: Against Mechanism


On 12/11/2012 9:31 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



in simpler theories, like the CTM or Everett QM.


Everett's QM is not a theory; it's just an interpretations.


Not quite.  Deutsch's proposed experiment with reversible computation and an AI yields 
different results for the CI and MWI, thus they are theories which can be tested and 
differentiated.


Except his proposed experiment relies on a hypothetical quantum computer that is 
conscious.  If there is a form of the experiment in which the 'a definite up/down value 
was measured' is recorded objectively but the atom still comes out pointing 'left' then 
I'd say it's a theory; although I don't see how that would necessitate multiple worlds.  
It would just be a refutation of the idea that consciousness collapses the wave function.  
Is there any explicit calculation of how this quantum computer would work, and why it 
would matter whether it was conscious?


Brent

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Re: Against Mechanism


On 12/11/2012 9:53 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 12:48 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 12/10/2012 10:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:35 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/10/2012 10:16 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:30 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/10/2012 2:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But why isn't It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born 
rule. a
good explanation.  I'm all for finding a better explanation, i.e. a
deterministic one.  But simply postulating an ensemble of worlds to 
make
the probabilities deterministic in arbitrary way doesn't strike 
me as
any improvement.


It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not 
well
defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the collapse
needed to get one physical reality).


That sounds like prejudice against probabilistic theories.  The
interference is inherent in the complex Hilbert space states.  The
interference happens in one world.  As Omnes says, you don't need
'collapse' you just need to accept that you have calculated
probabilities.  That's what probability means - some state is 
actualized
and others aren't.


How does Omnes explain the EPR experiment without collapse?  It seems 
you need
to give up not only determinism, but also locality.

Also, what do you think Omnes would predict as the outcome for Deutsch's
proposed experiment:

In Deutsch's thought experiment, an atom, which has a determinate 
spin
state in one axis, 'left' for example, is passed through a 
Stern-Gerlach
apparatus which has the possibility of measuring it in another 
axis, as
either spin 'up' or spin 'down' in this case. This means that the 
atom is
then in a superposition of 'up' and 'down' states from the 
perspective of
an observer who has not yet become entangled with it. This 
superposition
travels to the AI's artificial 'sense organ'. Here it is provided 
with two
options, it may be detected as either spin 'up' or spin 'down'. The 
AI's
conscious mind then records the result. The collapse approach 
predicts
that this will cause the atom to collapse into one determinate 
state, with
either a determinate 'up' or 'down' (but not 'left' or 'right') 
spin. The
Everett approach predicts that the mind will branch into two, one 
mind
will record up and one down (but neither will record 'left' or 
'right').

The whole process is then reversed so that the atom emerges from the
entrance to the Stern-Gerlach apparatus and the mind forgets which 
result
it recorded. This process does not erase any of the AI's other 
memories
however, including the memory that they did record the atom to be 
in a
definite state. If a 'left-right' detector was placed at the 
entrance of
the Stern-Gerlach apparatus then the collapse approach predicts 
that it
will be detected as being in either a 'left' or 'right' state with 
equal
probability.



I think it is wrong in saying that the erasure of which-way information 
(which
I think is actually impossible for a consciousness, artificial or 
otherwise)
will leave the atom in an up/down state.


Isn't that exactly what the quantum erasure experiment shows?


Quantum erasure requires that the which-way information be eliminated from 
the
world.  Once an AI consciousness gets the result I think that implies 
entanglement
with the world and after that the result can't be quantum erased.


What theory of consciousness are you operating under?  CTM or something else?

I know Deutsch supposes a quantum computer AI can 'know' there was which-way
information even though the which-way information was quantum erased.  But 
I find
that doubtful.  And even if it's true, the 'reversal' may bring the atom 
back to 'left'.


That is the proposed result that would prove MWI.


It doesn't prove MWI, it disproves consciousness causes collapse; which is a theory no 
one holds anymore.


If the left state is restored always then the universe never collapsed, it split a 
difference was observed, and a record of observing that difference was stored, then all 
information pertaining to the result is erased such that the two universes recombine 
(the split was undone, even though it should have collapsed because the difference was 
observed).


Only in a Wignerian theory of collapse where 'observed' means

RE: Against Mechanism

2012-12-11 Thread William R. Buckley

Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
(consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from
theories already extrapolated. 

 

 

Bruno has it down!

 

 

 

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Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows

On Monday, December 10, 2012 5:09:25 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

Craig: The evolutionary Psychology hypothesis are
falsifiablehttps://www.google.es/search?q=Craig%3A+The+evolutionary+Psychology+hypothesis+are+falsifiableoq=Craig%3A+The+evolutionary+Psychology+hypothesis+are+falsifiableaqs=chrome.0.57j58.640sugexp=chrome,mod=2sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8#hl=ensafe=offtbo=dsclient=psy-abq=evolutionary+Psychology+hypotheses++falsifiableoq=evolutionary+Psychology+hypotheses++falsifiablegs_l=serp.3...8248.8713.5.9590.4.4.0.0.0.3.261.878.2-4.4.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.7ojIOs_e60Qpsj=1bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.fp=561e2e0a6415ac8dbpcl=39650382biw=1241bih=584

Your link is just a Google search which shows that there is no consensus on
whether they are falsifiable. Why do you think that they are falsifiable? I
have made my case, given examples, explained why evolutionary psych is so
seductive and compulsive as a cognitive bias, but why am I wrong?

Try it this way. Let's say we are measuring the difference in how long it
takes to recognize a friend versus recognizing a stranger and we find that
there is a clear difference. Which would outcome would evolutionary psych
favor? I could argue that it is clearly more important to identify a
stranger, as they may present a threat to our lives or an opportunity for
trade, security, information, etc. I could equally argue that it is clearly
more important to identify a friend so that we reinforce the bonds of our
social group and foster deep interdependence. I could argue that there
should be no major difference between the times because they are both
important. I could argue that the times should vary according to context. I
could argue that they should not vary according to context as these
functions must be processed beneath the threshold of conscious processing.

Evolutionary Psychology assumptions can generate plausible interpretations
for any outcome after the fact and offers no particular opinions before the
fact, and that opens the door for at least ambiguous falsifiability in many
cases.

Craig

2012/11/30 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:

On Friday, November 30, 2012 3:37:35 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

This speed in the evaluation is a consequence of evolutionary pressures:
A teleological agent that is executing a violent plan against us is much
more dangerous than a casual accident.

Only if there are teleological agents in the first place. There are some
people around here who deny that free will is possible. They insist (though
I am not sure how, since insisting is already a voluntary act) that our
impression that we are agents who can plan and execute plans is another
evolutionary consequence.

The problem with retrospective evolutionary psychology is that it is
unfalsifiable. Any behavior can be plugged into evolution and generate a
just-so story from here to there. If the study showed just the opposite -
that human beings can't tell the difference between acts of nature and
intentional acts, or that it is very slow, why that would make sense too as
a consequence of evolutionary pressure as well. You would want to be *sure*
that some agent is intentionally harming you lest you falsely turn on a
member of your own social group and find yourself cast out. This would
validate representational theories of consciousness too - of course it
would take longer to reason out esoteric computations of intention than it
would take to recognize something so immediately important as being able to
discern emotions in others face. That way you could see if someone was
angry before they actually started hitting you and have a survival
advantage. Evolutionary psychology is its own built in confirmation bias.
Not that it has no basis in fact, of course it does, but I can see that it
is psychology which is evolving, not evolution which is psychologizing.

because the first will continue harming us, so a fast reaction against
further damage is necessary, while in the case of an accident no stress
response is necessary. (stress responses compromise long term health)

Yes, but it's simplistic. There are a lot of things in the environment
which are unintentional but continue to harm us which we would be better
off developing a detector for. There is no limit to what evolution can be
credited with doing - anything goes. If we had a way of immediately
detecting which mosquitoes carried malaria, that would make perfect sense.
If we could intuitively tell fungus were edible in the forest, that would
make sense too.

That distinction may explain the consideration of natural disasters as
teleological: For example earthquakes or storms: The stress response
necessary to react against these phenomena make them much more similar
to teleological plans of unknown agents than mere accidents.

The study shows the opposite though. It shows that we specifically

Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows


On 12/11/2012 11:04 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Try it this way. Let's say we are measuring the difference in how long it takes to 
recognize a friend versus recognizing a stranger and we find that there is a clear 
difference.


Yeah, we don't recognize the stranger.

Brent

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Re: Against Mechanism



On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 1:40:58 PM UTC-5, William R. Buckley wrote:

 Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something 
 (consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from 
 theories already extrapolated. 

  

  

 Bruno has it down!

  

Agreed, but experiencing a single reality is not the same as experiencing 
qualities of realism - which are a significant aspect of our experience and 
one which is not supported by a universe of arithmetic phantoms.
 

  

  


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Re: Mental causes and effects (those outside of spacetime)

2012-12-11 Thread Stephen P. King


On 12/11/2012 9:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Stephen P. King
1) If I cut my hair, my fingerprints don't change.
Monads continually and rapidly undergo changes (in their perceptions
and appetites), but their identites (their souls, their DNA,
their fingerprints, who they are, their names) do not change.


Dear Roger,

I don't see how this claim about monads is consistent with Leibniz' 
definition.


1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is nothing but the simple 
substance, that which makes up all compounds. By 'simple' is meant 
'without parts.'


3. These Monads are the real atoms of nature, which make up things.

4. Monads cannot fail. No simple substance can be destroyed by natural 
means.


5. Neither can any truly simple substance come into being by being 
formed from the combination of parts.


7. Monads have no window, through which anything could come in or go 
out. Neither substance nor accident can come into a Monad from outside.



2) No two monads can be identical or else they would disappear.
Just as no two substances can be identical, all are as different
as DNA or fingerprimts.


Yes, but you seem to not understand the implication of no windows.


3) Malebranche as I recall had God intervening in the operation
of the universe.  Leibniz is different in that, indeed, God is
the only causal entity (because monads are blind and passive)
but everything must change in accordance with everything else
(the-established harmony, not individual intervention).


Yes, both Leibniz and Malebranche (and Spinoza) propose that God is 
the cause of all things. Any notion of free will is illusion at best in 
their schema. I find this troubling as these idea require that all 
events for any 1p be organized ab initio (from the beginning). One 
problem is that there is no such thing as a 'beginning' for an eternal 
universe...


I actually like Malebranche's idea of 'occasionalism' but without 
an explanation of the nature of God's intervention, it is incoherent. In 
L's Monadology,  God's intervention is wholly contained at inception, 
in creation the pre-established harmony. This is where I diverge from 
Leibniz's interpretation of monads and, it seems, from yours.
A pre-ordained harmony as necessitated by L's descriptions, is in 
my humble opinion, equivalent to Julian Barbour's collection of 'time 
capsules' and just as flawed. Why? Because the PEH is a solution to an 
infinite NP-Hard problem and such require 2^N resources to be computed; 
where N is the number of possible differences or different aspects. 
There is simply not enough time or memory or some combination of the 
two, for the solution to obtain prior to the 'creation' of the monads or 
time capsules.



4) There is a hierarchy of monads. just as there is a heirarchy of being.
Besides between levels, on any particular level, some are more dominant
than others (eg faster, more powerful, smarter).  The dominant ones
beat down the less dominant ones and grow stronger.


Leibniz does propose such a hierarchy, but again I break with his 
thinking as my solution to the PEH problem requires that the 
organization be rhyzomic and not hierarchical. No monad is privaledged 
over any other in any absolute sense. Just as we learn from Einstein et 
al that there is no privileged frame of reference or coordinate system 
and we learn from QM that there is no prefered basis, so to are the 
percepts that are the monads.



5) For all of the above comments, your own statement :
These statements are not part of Leibniz' thesis and do not apply to 
monads as they
violate the definition of a monad. Additionally, I need to point out 
that there is no
external hierarchy of 'superiority' between monads. Their relation to 
each other is more
analogous to a rhizome, except that this illustration of the web of 
relations is implicate,

as there is no such thing as an 'outside for monads.
is totally incorrect, except that perhaps monads may act as if they 
are rhizomes,

except that they obey a pre-established harmony.


Do you understand my claim that a P.E.H. is a self-contradictory 
idea? It is equivalent to a solution of a vast calculation that somehow 
can be used prior to the act of doing the calculation itself.  Just as 
one cannot ride in a car that has not yet been built or eat a meal that 
still has not been prepared, any kind of pre-established harmony 
requires that the 'computation' of it occur before it can be used. How 
can a pre-established harmony be computed for a finite universe if that 
universe is all that exists that can act as a means to run the 
computation? If the universe is actually infinite (which I believe it 
is) then it is doubly impossible for a pre-established harmony to exist!
The alternative is that there does not exist a pre-established 
harmony except in an a posteriori (after the fact) and finite sense. It 
is what we call a history or past as seen from some point of view. 
Computations can

Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows



On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 2:06:32 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

  On 12/11/2012 11:04 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

 Try it this way. Let's say we are measuring the difference in how long it 
 takes to recognize a friend versus recognizing a stranger and we find that 
 there is a clear difference.


 Yeah, we don't recognize the stranger.


Does somebody stop being a stranger just because we recognize seeing them 
more than once?

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows

2012-12-11 Thread Alberto G. Corona

Yes, I sent a search link for you to know the opinions about it.

in EP this your example does not offer a clear hypothesis. But there are
others that are evident. It depends on the context. for example , woman
have more accurate facial recognition habilities, but men perceive faster
than women faces of angry men that are loking at him. I think that you can
guess why.

The alignment detection is common in the animal kingdom: somethng that
point at you may be a treat. it

2012/12/11 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com

On Monday, December 10, 2012 5:09:25 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

Your link is just a Google search which shows that there is no consensus
on whether they are falsifiable. Why do you think that they are
falsifiable? I have made my case, given examples, explained why
evolutionary psych is so seductive and compulsive as a cognitive bias, but
why am I wrong?

Craig

2012/11/30 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com

On Friday, November 30, 2012 3:37:35 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

This speed in the evaluation is a consequence of evolutionary
pressures: A teleological agent that is executing a violent plan against us
is much more dangerous than a casual accident.

Re: Avoiding the use of the word God

2012-12-11 Thread Stephen P. King


On 12/11/2012 9:33 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:

Dear Roger,

It's called an attempt at humor. I apologize if it didn't meet your 
standards: I am a learner in comedy, not a knower.


A point here which puts my attempt at humor directly on topic: I ask 
myself whether everybody is a TOE? And is the ability to share that 
some measure for quality? By whose standards?


Everybody breaks down the world into some set of primitives and looks 
at it through that lens + there is some truth to knowledge gleamed 
here, which can be shared and some that cannot. Monads, numbers, 
sense, quarks, humans, a great watch from descartes, the back of a 
turtle, and the plethora of new age perspectives and primitives: they 
might not obey the debatable laws of what constitutes an ontological, 
philosophical, or scientific argument... but if the bet is laid open 
and reasoning somewhat sincere, then I'll listen to a mystic over some 
dull philosopher or scientist and their linguistic labyrinths any day. 
I don't mind if they can express it formally or not.


I raise the bar for TOE: not only must it address problems and be 
formally precise etc: It has to also be cool and have the gonads to 
laugh about itself.


If we can't laugh at our own gods, then they are tyrants or rather 
grumpy. I make fun of my idiocy of seeing the world musically all the 
time.


Roger, why would I want to attack what you hold dear?

My reason for joking is much simpler than oedipal stuff: My Inbox 
reads Monads, Monads this, Monads that, but actually Monads this and 
so I joke about gonads and Leibniz biscuits in X-mas time that are 
everywhere in Germany.


But if you need to make a Freudian oedipal diagnosis, then tell me at 
least what I have to gain by attacking the previous generation on an 
internet list?


The answer is easier than attack: laughing is nice, so I try.

Cowboy 

Hear Hear!

--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows

On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:46:23 PM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

Yes, I sent a search link for you to know the opinions about it.

It's the guessing why which I find unscientific. It helps us feel that we
are very clever, but really it is a slippery slope into just-so story land.
There are some species where the females are more aggressive (
http://www.culture-of-peace.info/biology/chapter4-6.html ) - does that
mean that the females in those species will definitely show the reverse of
the pattern that you mention? Just the fact that some species have more
aggressive females than males should call into question any functionalist
theories based on gender, and if gender in general doesn't say anything
very reliable about psychology, then why should we place much value on any
of these kinds of assumptions.

Evolution is not teleological, it is the opposite. Who we are is a function
of the specific experiences of specific individuals who were lucky in
specific circumstances. That's it. There's no explanatory power in sweeping
generalizations which credit evolution with particular psychological
strategies. Sometimes behaviors are broadly adaptive species-wide, and
sometimes they are incidental, and it is nearly impossible to tell them
apart, especially thousands of years after the fact.

Craig

The alignment detection is common in the animal kingdom: somethng that
point at you may be a treat. it

2012/12/11 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:

On Monday, December 10, 2012 5:09:25 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

Your link is just a Google search which shows that there is no consensus
on whether they are falsifiable. Why do you think that they are
falsifiable? I have made my case, given examples, explained why
evolutionary psych is so seductive and compulsive as a cognitive bias, but
why am I wrong?

Evolutionary Psychology assumptions can generate plausible
interpretations for any outcome after the fact and offers no particular
opinions before the fact, and that opens the door for at least ambiguous
falsifiability in many cases.

Craig

2012/11/30 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com

On Friday, November 30, 2012 3:37:35 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

This speed in the evaluation is a consequence of evolutionary
pressures: A teleological agent that is executing a violent plan against
us
is much more dangerous than a casual accident.

Only if there are teleological agents in the first place. There are
some people around here who deny that free will is possible. They insist
(though I am not sure how, since insisting is already a voluntary act)
that
our impression that we are agents who can plan and execute plans is
another
evolutionary consequence.

Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows



On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 4:41:04 PM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

 You are mixing species. The human specie has his nature. The sea horse, as 
 fine as it is, has another. human males are more aggresive for the same 
 reason that sea horse females are aggressive too: the other sex does the 
 heavier effort in caring for the eggs and thus are the scarce resource for 
 which the other sex has to fight and is the less prone to risk taking, 
 something that is evident by a short game theoretical reasoning.  As simple 
 as that.


It's not that simple at all. Human males vary in their aggressiveness from 
individual to individual, family to family, culture to culture, and 
situation to situation. Had a comet wiped out Homo sapiens from one part of 
Africa which had more aggressive males, then we might now identify females 
with aggressiveness. Even in the last few years gender has changed 
significantly as males have become more feminized in certain ways and 
females have be come more masculine in certain ways. Certainly some of what 
you are saying has truth to it, but it's neither a reliable nor 
particularly important way to derive truth. It's a simplification which 
really is inseparable ultimately with eugenics - which I don't say to put 
the idea down as immoral, only to show that mechanistic views of 
anthropology are inherently and inevitably fallacious.
 


 I was not present in the holocene or whathever in the creatacic  during 
 the millions of years when sea horses switched slowly their male female 
 roles, but this reasoning can be done here and now with the same accuracy.


You make it sound like gender roles are something which exist as some kind 
of objective property. Gender is an invention of evolution. Its roles are 
situational and relativistic. Whether what is secreted by a gland is more 
egg-like or more sperm-like really has no inherent role attached to it. 
Males take care of the kids in some species and in some families. Sometimes 
nobody takes care of the kids.
 


 Evolution is not random . It has rules. 


The rules are called natural selection. They aren't rules though, they are 
consequences of actual experiences and conditions, some intentional, some 
unintentional.
 

 Evolutionary biology has made wonderful discoveries about animal 
 behaviour. E.O Wilson the founder of sociobiology predicted that if a 
 mammal would be found that has social insect organization (with a single 
 reproductive Queen) It would be in tropical humid climate and living in the 
 underground. Sorty after, a specie of rodent according with this 
 description was found.


I'm not knocking evolutionary biology, I'm knocking what Raymond Tallis 
calls Darwinitis - the compulsive application of generic evolutionary 
simplifications to all features of human consciousness. Just because we 
enjoy beautiful mates doesn't mean that the mating function can somehow 
generate beauty to optimize its activities.

Craig



 2012/12/11 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:

 On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:46:23 PM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

 Yes, I  sent a search link for you to know the opinions about it.

 in EP this your example does not offer a clear hypothesis. But there are 
 others that are evident.  It depends on the context. for example , woman 
 have more accurate facial recognition habilities, but men perceive faster 
 than women faces of angry men that are loking at him. I think that you can 
 guess why.


 It's the guessing why which I find unscientific. It helps us feel that we 
 are very clever, but really it is a slippery slope into just-so story land. 
 There are some species where the females are more aggressive ( 
 http://www.culture-of-peace.info/biology/chapter4-6.html  ) - does that 
 mean that the females in those species will definitely show the reverse of 
 the pattern that you mention? Just the fact that some species have more 
 aggressive females than males should call into question any functionalist 
 theories based on gender, and if gender in general doesn't say anything 
 very reliable about psychology, then why should we place much value on any 
 of these kinds of assumptions.

 Evolution is not teleological, it is the opposite. Who we are is a 
 function of the specific experiences of specific individuals who were lucky 
 in specific circumstances. That's it. There's no explanatory power in 
 sweeping generalizations which credit evolution with particular 
 psychological strategies. Sometimes behaviors are broadly adaptive 
 species-wide, and sometimes they are incidental, and it is nearly 
 impossible to tell them apart, especially thousands of years after the fact.

 Craig



 The alignment detection is common in the animal kingdom: somethng that 
 point at you may be a treat. it


 2012/12/11 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com



 On Monday, December 10, 2012 5:09:25 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

 Craig: The evolutionary Psychology hypothesis are

Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows