Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 20:58, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/27/2013 10:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:50, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 14:18, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:47 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:03, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be  
impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer  
entails

the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under  
anesthesia?...forever?


Surely not, because from a first person perspective one just  
goes to sleep and wakes up again (or experiences dreams). "No  
cul de sac" implies there's no way to stop consciousness  
permanently.




I know it implies that, but I see no reason to believe it.  The  
question isn't whether consciousness continues, but whether  
*your* consciousness, a particular consciousness continues.  To  
say otherwise is like saying youcan't  
kill the guy in Moscow because he has a duplicate in Washington.


This is the "Haraclitus" problem (or observation, if you don't  
consider it a problem). The man can't step into the same river  
because he isn't the same man. The consciousness that continues  
after any given moment is, presumably, the next moment of  
consciousness which is the "best continuation" of the last one.  
This seems similar to the view in FOR that the multiverse is made  
of "snapshots" which give the appearance of forming continuous  
histories (ignoring whether you can slice up space-time into  
snapshots...)



But I think this is a confusion.  Because computations have states  
and nothing corresponding to transition times between states  
people are tempted to identify those states with states of  
consciousness and make an analogy with frames of film in a movie  
(hence 'the movie graph argument').  But there's a huge mismatch  
here.  A conscious thought has a lot of duration, I'd estimate  
around 0.02sec.  The underlying computation that sustains the  
quasi-classical brain at the quantum level has a time constant on  
the order of the Planck time 10^-43sec. And even if it isn't the  
quantum level that's relevant, it's obvious that most thinking is  
unconscious and a computer emulating your brain would have to go  
through many billions or trillions of states to instantiate one  
moment of consciousness.  That means that at the fundamental level  
(of say the UD) there can be huge overlap between one conscious  
thought and the next and so they can form a chain, a stream of  
consciousness.




So there's a certain amount of "mini-death-and-mini-rebirth"  
going on every second in the normal process of consciousness (in  
this view). Deciding what counts as a continuation and what  
doesn't seems a bit ... problematic. (And of course there are  
many continuations from any given moment.)


Not if there's nothing to overlap.  Sure there is, by some  
measure, a closest next continuation.  But when you're eighty  
years old and fading out on the operating table, it's going to be  
another eighty year old fading out on some other operating table.   
I think someone has suggested that if you fade out completely then  
the next closest continuation could be a newborn infant who is  
just 'fading in'.  Which is a nice thought - but is it you?


That happens each time you smoke salvia, you fade into your baby  
state (which makes you look like a retard, which you are, in some  
sense, or, on higher dose, well beyond the baby states (which  
actually knows already a lot, from the "beyond" perspective)). Then  
you fade back into the actual "you", at least that is what you  
thought, but you can doubt it also.
Deep enough (in the amnesia/disconnection) you can experience a  
consciousness state which is experienced as time independent.  
Perhaps the consciousness of "all" simple virgin universal machine/ 
loop/numbers. It would be the roots of the consciousness flux; the  
set of all universal numbers (a non recursively enumerable set).


So what do you suppose is the physical effect of salvia in your brain?


Difficult question, but my current theory is that it simply shut down  
part of the brain. The shut down of the corpus callosum would explain  
the "feminine presence", which would be how the left (analytical  
brain, [] p) perceive the right (intuitive, [] p & p) brain, for  
example. In that case the right brain is also the one specialized with  
our connection to truth (the ultimate platonic goddess!).
Other connecting parts of the brain might be shut down, making us  
disconnected from the long term memory, and eventually we would live  
the "galois connection" effect, and consciousness would be related to  
our possible extensions, in some direct way (linking consciousness  
with its logical ancestor: consistency).
Of course this is hig

The confluence of cosmology and biology

[freqflyer07281972]

So it seems to me that all of us are situated within a spectacular 
confluence of cosmological and biological factors.
 
The cosmological factors include the fact that dark energy hasn't gotten 
strong enough to rip the whole works apart,
that the moon just so happens to be just as big as it is to provide us a 
perfect occlusion of the sun during an eclipse,
that we are just around the right time of our sun's evolution that we can 
rely on it to be stable for the next billion years or so,
that the moon is already properly tidally locked to our planet, such that 
it won't have any future effect on our rotation period (good for life!)
 
The biological factors include the fact that some self replicating molecule 
was able to find purchase on a home (DNA),
that it had enough time to evolve (it's home star was 'kind' and didn't 
burp ionizing radiation one or two or dozens of times the way we know other 
stars do)
that it had a kind substrate (i.e. earth) that provided the kind of 
atmospheric protection for life required in case the home star did burp
that we have come from a long line of survivors, and therefore we are 
almost automatically very robust, both physically and mentally
 
And yet we talk about whether we are made from numbers and their inexorable 
arithmetic relations(Bruno),
And we talk about whether sensation is ultimately primary, and perhaps the 
only thing (Craig),
 
But it really all comes down to the confluence of these various factors 
that allows us to have this conversation in the first place,
 
comp be damned, do I assume primitive physical reality? well, look at the 
sky and the moon and the time it's taken for this arbitrary contingent 
thing to evolve, how could it be computational?
multisense realism be damned, look at how things are conditioned by their 
structure and function as we find them objectively... there's a reason why 
hex wrenches open hex bolts, and it has nothing to do with sensation
 
 
Peace,

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 04:33:15AM +, chris peck wrote:
> Hi Russel
> 
> Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I think Brent 
> does too, because he said he had an initial reaction to the step like this 
> and then offered an analysis of the probabilities to me all of which were 
> certainties rather than indeterminacies. He didn't get back to me on that, 
> but I think he has doubts or should have.
> 
> >>If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
> experience?
>  
> a) Nothing
> b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
> c) being in Moscow and Washington
> d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington
>  
> Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
> compatible with COMP.
> 
> 
> You have to remember that the question is asked before the man is duplicated 
> and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I hope Bruno's ideas are not 
> too dependent on b being compatible with comp, because b is incompatible.
> 
> If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then that 'I'ness 
> must be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given comp, prior to duplication 
> he should expect to experience both moscow and washington.
> 
> All the best.
> 
> 

Experiencing both Washington and Moscow at the same time would be a
sort of madness, a schizophrenic experience. That is why I said it did
violence to the notion of surviving the duplication. With b) on the
other hand, it matters not whether you experience Washington, or you
experience Moscow, you have survived the experience. That is why b) is
compatible.

I suppose in retrospect, strictly speaking, d) is also compatible with
COMP, but a bit of a strange choice. One wonders what you possibly could be
experiencing in this case, given the protocol.

-- 


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: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[chris peck]

Hi Russel

Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I think Brent does 
too, because he said he had an initial reaction to the step like this and then 
offered an analysis of the probabilities to me all of which were certainties 
rather than indeterminacies. He didn't get back to me on that, but I think he 
has doubts or should have.

>>If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
experience?
 
a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington
 
Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
compatible with COMP.


You have to remember that the question is asked before the man is duplicated 
and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I hope Bruno's ideas are not 
too dependent on b being compatible with comp, because b is incompatible.

If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then that 'I'ness must 
be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given comp, prior to duplication he 
should expect to experience both moscow and washington.

All the best.



> From: stath...@gmail.com
> Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 14:02:44 +1000
> Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> 
> On 28 September 2013 05:54, John Clark  wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR  wrote:
> >
> >> > Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought experiment
> >> > should logically have the same problem with the MWI.
> >
> >
> > No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is about
> > what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to us Everett's
> > ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's "proof" is about a feeling
> > of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not think you're the
> > same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made a prediction about
> > today that turned out to be correct, you think you are the same person you
> > were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you remember being Liz
> > yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make incorrect predictions all
> > the time and when I do I don't feel that I've entered oblivion, instead I
> > feel like I am the same person I was before because I can remember being the
> > guy who made that prediction that turned out to be wrong.
> >
> > Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the future,
> > but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string and you can
> > only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of self has
> > nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise, and in fact
> > you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.
> 
> Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to see.
> 
> If you toss a coin and teleport to either Washington or Moscow that is
> like a single world interpretationof QM.
> 
> If teleport to both Washington and Moscow that is like the MWI.
> 
> It is generally accepted that you can't tell which is the case from
> experience. If you think they are different then you would have a
> proof or disproof of the MWI. Is that what you claim?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou
> 
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to
> see.
>

And I have no objection to thought experiments of that sort, but Bruno is
not talking about assigning the probability you will see Moscow or
Washington, he's talking about the probability you will become the
Washington Man or the Moscow Man, and the two things are not the same. He
claims that if personal diaries were kept and predictions about the future
were made in them it would be concrete evidence on who is who and have a
bearing on the nature of personal identity, but that is nonsense. If
yesterday I wrote in my diary that there is a 100% chance I would make
money in the stock market tomorrow but today I lost my shirt my failed
prediction would not destroy my identity, I would not enter oblivion I'd
just be broke. Personal identity can only be traced from the past to the
present, the future is unknown.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 28 September 2013 05:54, John Clark  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> > Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought experiment
>> > should logically have the same problem with the MWI.
>
>
> No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is about
> what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to us Everett's
> ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's "proof" is about a feeling
> of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not think you're the
> same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made a prediction about
> today that turned out to be correct, you think you are the same person you
> were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you remember being Liz
> yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make incorrect predictions all
> the time and when I do I don't feel that I've entered oblivion, instead I
> feel like I am the same person I was before because I can remember being the
> guy who made that prediction that turned out to be wrong.
>
> Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the future,
> but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string and you can
> only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of self has
> nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise, and in fact
> you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.

Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to see.

If you toss a coin and teleport to either Washington or Moscow that is
like a single world interpretationof QM.

If teleport to both Washington and Moscow that is like the MWI.

It is generally accepted that you can't tell which is the case from
experience. If you think they are different then you would have a
proof or disproof of the MWI. Is that what you claim?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

>> I said that if Russell Standish were duplicated then Russell Standish
>> would be in Moscow and Washington.
>>
>
> > This is only true from the POV of an external observer which is not
> Russell Standish
>

Don't give me that pee pee POV bullshit, Russell Standish will see Moscow
and Washington PERIOD.

> both Russell will only feel from their *own* POV to be in one and only
> one place (either washington or moscow).
>

How in the world does that conflict with my statement that Russell Standish
would be in Moscow and Washington? It says so plain as day but for some
reason people just keep ignoring the fact that RUSSELL STANDISH HAS BEEN
DUPLICATED and keep on using pronouns like "I" and "he" just as they always
have as if nothing unusual has happened.

 > that's the *main* point.
>

Yes, and I realized very early that if Bruno's main point was as worthless
as that then there was no reason to keep reading his "proof".

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Russell Standish]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 01:55:40PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish  wrote:
> 
> > I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
> > you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
> > the duplicator experiment.
> >
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
> > places at once,
> 
> 
> No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
> duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington. I also
> said the vague and sloppy use of words like "you"and  "he" and "I" and "the
> man" is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently yours as
> well.

If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
experience?

a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington

Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
compatible with COMP.




> 
>  > which does violence to the notion of "survival after copying" assumption
> > of COMP.
> >
> 
> Bullshit. 

Which is bullshit? That you subscribed to option c) above (I did
qualify that claim with an "I seem to recall"), or that option c) is
contra COMP?


-- 


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: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 27 September 2013 16:08, chris peck  wrote:
>>> If there is an entity that remembers being me at time t1 then the me
> at time t1 survives. For example, if I fall asleep on a plane and wake
> up on another continent 8 hrs later, I have survived despite the time
> and space gap and despite the fact that the matter in metabolically
> active parts of my brain has changed. The principle is the same with
> larger discontinuities in time, space and matter.
>
> If you and Liz fall asleep on a plane and I come along and read your
> memories and put them in Liz, and take Liz's memories and put them in you,
> who;s who?

We swap bodies.

> What if I take your memory of being you and put it in Liz, without erasing
> her memory of being her, so that when she wakes up she remembers being her
> and being you? Who's she?
>
> Ultimately these are just discontinuities in space and matter.

We become one melded person. Ultimately, there are objective facts
about which body is where, which memories and other mental attributes
are attached to which body, but there are no objective facts about
personal identity.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Me doesn't have an I, because me is a materialist.

[Roger Clough]

Hi - 

Me doesn't have an I, because me is a materialist.


Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000]
See my Leibniz site at
http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR  wrote:

> Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought experiment
> should logically have the same problem with the MWI.
>

No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is about
what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to us
Everett's ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's "proof" is
about a feeling of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not
think you're the same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made
a prediction about today that turned out to be correct, you think you are
the same person you were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you
remember being Liz yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make
incorrect predictions all the time and when I do I don't feel that I've
entered oblivion, instead I feel like I am the same person I was before
because I can remember being the guy who made that prediction that turned
out to be wrong.

Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the
future, but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string
and you can only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of
self has nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise, and
in fact you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[meekerdb]

On 9/27/2013 10:31 AM, John Clark wrote:


On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

>> You make a big deal about duplicating chambers and what city you end 
up in
and make all sorts of mystical conclusions from it; but all it comes 
down to is
the fact that different data streams (like one coming from Washington 
and
another from Moscow)  will result in different conclusions (like I am in
Washington or I am in Moscow) when the calculation is concluded.

> It just boils down to: if you can be duplicated


Well of course you can be duplicated!! I find it astonishing that in the 21'st century 
the average person still thinks this question deserves further debate.


> Scott Aaronson dismisses the problem by concentrating on the idea that 
duplication
must be duplication of the quantum state, so that the no-cloning theorm 
applies.


If you need to stay in the same quantum state to retain your identity then you would be 
changing into a different person many millions of trillions a time a second. And if you 
never changed, if you always remained in the same quantum state, then you couldn't 
think, thought needs change.


But there could be a difference between unitary evolution of your state (which presumably 
Scott considers to still be "you") and a non-unitary duplication.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[meekerdb]

On 9/27/2013 10:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:50, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 27 September 2013 14:18, meekerdb > wrote:


On 9/26/2013 6:47 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:03, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer entails
the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
anesthesia?...forever?


Surely not, because from a first person perspective one just goes to sleep 
and
wakes up again (or experiences dreams). "No cul de sac" implies there's no 
way to
stop consciousness permanently.



I know it implies that, but I see no reason to believe it.  The question 
isn't
whether consciousness continues, but whether *your* consciousness, a 
particular
consciousness continues.  To say otherwise is like saying you can't kill 
the guy
in Moscow because he has a duplicate in Washington.

This is the "Haraclitus" problem (or observation, if you don't consider it a problem). 
The man can't step into the same river because he isn't the same man. The 
consciousness that continues after any given moment is, presumably, the next moment of 
consciousness which is the "best continuation" of the last one. This seems similar to 
the view in FOR that the multiverse is made of "snapshots" which give the appearance 
of forming continuous histories (ignoring whether you can slice up space-time into 
snapshots...)



But I think this is a confusion.  Because computations have states and nothing 
corresponding to transition times between states people are tempted to identify those 
states with states of consciousness and make an analogy with frames of film in a movie 
(hence 'the movie graph argument').  But there's a huge mismatch here.  A conscious 
thought has a lot of duration, I'd estimate around 0.02sec.  The underlying computation 
that sustains the quasi-classical brain at the quantum level has a time constant on the 
order of the Planck time 10^-43sec. And even if it isn't the quantum level that's 
relevant, it's obvious that most thinking is unconscious and a computer emulating your 
brain would have to go through many billions or trillions of states to instantiate one 
moment of consciousness.  That means that at the fundamental level (of say the UD) 
there can be huge overlap between one conscious thought and the next and so they can 
form a chain, a stream of consciousness.




So there's a certain amount of "mini-death-and-mini-rebirth" going on every second in 
the normal process of consciousness (in this view). Deciding what counts as a 
continuation and what doesn't seems a bit ... problematic. (And of course there are 
many continuations from any given moment.)


Not if there's nothing to overlap.  Sure there is, by some measure, a closest next 
continuation.  But when you're eighty years old and fading out on the operating table, 
it's going to be another eighty year old fading out on some other operating table.  I 
think someone has suggested that if you fade out completely then the next closest 
continuation could be a newborn infant who is just 'fading in'.  Which is a nice 
thought - but is it you?


That happens each time you smoke salvia, you fade into your baby state (which makes you 
look like a retard, which you are, in some sense, or, on higher dose, well beyond the 
baby states (which actually knows already a lot, from the "beyond" perspective)). Then 
you fade back into the actual "you", at least that is what you thought, but you can 
doubt it also.
Deep enough (in the amnesia/disconnection) you can experience a consciousness state 
which is experienced as time independent. Perhaps the consciousness of "all" simple 
virgin universal machine/loop/numbers. It would be the roots of the consciousness flux; 
the set of all universal numbers (a non recursively enumerable set).


So what do you suppose is the physical effect of salvia in your brain?

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[meekerdb]

On 9/26/2013 9:28 PM, LizR wrote:


I'm not sure that it's clear using the contents of consciousness, either. The thing is, 
if comp is right then there are definite computational steps that can be talked about, 
analysed and so on, but thoughts might be a long way above them. Thoughts may be huge 
constructs relative to the computational underpinnings, each one (perhaps) an ocean full 
of computational fish. But it isn't easy to imagine or discuss the computational steps 
down there at the Planck length (or whevever)... one can't get one's head around it.


But you'd have to measure the states, and what counts as a closest continuation, using 
those steps, ultimately - wouldn't you?


My idea is that all those computational underpinnings are instantiating the physics of 
your brain, body, environment and are necessary to support the constructs of conscious 
thought, which are more like little waves on the surface of the ocean of unconsciousness 
(i.e. physics).  So your continuity of memory resides in this subconscious level, memories 
are stored in the physical structure of the brain. That's why I think the physical is 
necessary to underpin consciousness, whether the physical is fundamental or not.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[David Nyman]

On 27 September 2013 17:00, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> The NDAA bill is equivalent with  "If you fear me, I will put you
> indefinitely in jail".

I confess that I hadn't been giving this issue much attention.
However, I now read the following:

"Section 1021 of the NDAA bill of 2012 allowed for the "indefinite
detention of American citizens without due process at the discretion
of the President."

When David Frost challenged Richard Nixon on his illegal activities in
the 1970's, Nixon replied, in all seriousness apparently, "if the
President does it, it's not illegal". Well, 40-odd years later, it
looks like he was right.

David


>
> On 26 Sep 2013, at 12:34, David Nyman wrote:
>
>> On 26 September 2013 08:14, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
 You argue, I think, that
 computationalism escapes this by showing how computation and logic
 emerge naturally from arithmetic.
>>>
>>>
>>> And how this explains the appearance of discourse on consciousness and
>>> matter
>>
>>
>> Yes, ISTM that this is where identity theories break down finally; the
>> explanation of the self-referential discourses is perhaps the most
>> persuasive aspect of comp. I was reflecting recently on "panpsychist
>> matter" theories such as those proposed by Galen Strawson (or Chalmers
>> in certain moods). ISTM that ideas like these run foul of the problem
>> of how to attribute consciousness to some "intrinsic" aspect of matter
>> whilst simultaneously justifying our ability to discourse about it.
>> Since the discourse part is rather obviously relational in nature it
>> is rather difficult to see how this could refer to any supposedly
>> "intrinsic" aspect of the relata. Any such aspect, even if it existed,
>> would be inaccessible to the relational level. After all, we don't
>> expect the characters in TV dramas to start discussing the intrinsic
>> qualities of the TV screen on which they are displayed!
>>
>>> Then I think there is a genuine concern due to the opposition between
>>> life
>>> and afterlife. may be theology is not for everybody, a bit like salvia:
>>> it
>>> asks for a genuine curiosity, and it can have some morbid aspect. I try
>>> to
>>> understand why some machines indeed want to hold a contradictory
>>> metaphysics, even up to the point of hiding obvious fact, like personal
>>> consciousness.
>>
>>
>> Yes, ISTM that there's also often a kind of reflexive self-abnegation,
>> or a shrinking back from any idea that consciousness could have a role
>> to play in the story, let alone a central one. This is perhaps
>> understandable in the light of historically mistaken attempts to place
>> humanity at the centre of the cosmos. Science is therefore seen as
>> having finally defeated religion and superstition by taking the human
>> perspective entirely out of the equation. But ironically, taken to
>> extremes, such a one-eyed (or no-eyed) perspective may have the effect
>> of leaving us even more blind to our true nature than we ever were
>> before.
>
>
> Very well said.
>
>
> I think that this is due in part to the fact that many humans want to
> control other humans.
> It is simpler to do that with fairy tales and associative tricks
> (propaganda, the confusion between p->q and q->p) than with logic and common
> sense. The controller minded person fear the inconceivable freedom of the
> rigorous, honest, self-observing machine.
>
> But fear sellers invest in ignorance, and certainties are only wall
> solidifying the ignorance, even from generations to generations.
>
> Institutionalized religions make, often, the root of science, doubt, into
> the devil, making inquiry impossible.
> Another typical (and frightful) example is the NDAA 2012 bill, which is
> formulated in such a way that if you doubt the consistency of that very
> bill, makes you suspect of terrorism, and thus in risk to be detained
> indefinitely without trial. It is equivalent logically with "you cannot
> doubt me", it is about of the type [] <>t, it entails, [] f, whose fuzzy
> type is "promised catastrophes".
>
> Some laws make inquiries about the very law impossible. The making of
> cannabis into schedule one is an example, as it forbids research on
> cannabis. The NDAA is another one. I think only bandits does that. I
> discovered that the founders of the American constitution were aware of such
> possibility and tried to prevent such laws, but apparently they failed. I
> heard that the supreme court judged the NDAA unconstitutional, but
> apparently the unnerving ambiguity remained in the NDAA 2013.
>
> The NDAA bill is equivalent with  "If you fear me, I will put you
> indefinitely in jail". It is bit like "if you don't love me, I will send you
> to hell for eternity". That's powerful self-replicating memes, which
> prevents thinking, and make other people controlling you by fears. To make
> this into a law is a mistake or a tyranny trick.
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
>>
>> David
>>
>>>
>>> On 25 Sep 2013, at 20:51, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
 On 25 September 20

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Quentin Anciaux]

2013/9/27 John Clark 

>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish  wrote:
>
> > I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
>> you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
>> the duplicator experiment.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
> > I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
>> places at once,
>
>
> No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
> duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington.
>

This is only true from the POV of an external observer which is not Russell
Standish... both Russell will only feel from their *own* POV to be in one
and only one place (either washington or moscow)... I know you'll still
hand wave that, but that's the *main* point.

Quentin


> I also said the vague and sloppy use of words like "you"and  "he" and "I"
> and "the man" is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently
> yours as well.
>
>  > which does violence to the notion of "survival after copying"
>> assumption of COMP.
>>
>
> Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go back
> to square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the first few
> pages that I read, I have already written about  6.02*10^23 posts that
> covers the subjects in this post and most are in far far greater detail. I
> have come to the conclusion that logical arguments will not convince
> anybody if it is their policy to first decide what they want to believe and
> only then look for evidence to support it.
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish  wrote:

> I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
> you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
> the duplicator experiment.
>

Yes.

> I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
> places at once,


No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington. I also
said the vague and sloppy use of words like "you"and  "he" and "I" and "the
man" is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently yours as
well.

 > which does violence to the notion of "survival after copying" assumption
> of COMP.
>

Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go back to
square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the first few pages
that I read, I have already written about  6.02*10^23 posts that covers the
subjects in this post and most are in far far greater detail. I have come
to the conclusion that logical arguments will not convince anybody if it is
their policy to first decide what they want to believe and only then look
for evidence to support it.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:50, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 14:18, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:47 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:03, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be  
impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer  
entails

the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under  
anesthesia?...forever?


Surely not, because from a first person perspective one just goes  
to sleep and wakes up again (or  
experiences  dreams). "No cul de sac"  
implies there's no way to stop consciousness permanently.




I know it implies that, but I see no reason to believe it.  The  
question isn't whether consciousness continues, but whether *your*  
consciousness, a particular consciousness continues.  To say  
otherwise is like saying you can't kill the guy in Moscow because  
he has a duplicate in Washington.


This is the "Haraclitus" problem (or observation, if you don't  
consider it a problem). The man can't step into the same river  
because he isn't the same man. The consciousness that continues  
after any given moment is, presumably, the next moment of  
consciousness which is the "best continuation" of the last one.  
This seems similar to the view in FOR that the multiverse is made  
of "snapshots" which give the appearance of forming continuous  
histories (ignoring whether you can slice up space-time into  
snapshots...)



But I think this is a confusion.  Because computations have states  
and nothing corresponding to transition times between states people  
are tempted to identify those states with states of consciousness  
and make an analogy with frames of film in a movie (hence 'the movie  
graph argument').  But there's a huge mismatch here.  A conscious  
thought has a lot of duration, I'd estimate around 0.02sec.  The  
underlying computation that sustains the quasi-classical brain at  
the quantum level has a time constant on the order of the Planck  
time 10^-43sec. And even if it isn't the quantum level that's  
relevant, it's obvious that most thinking is unconscious and a  
computer emulating your brain would have to go through many billions  
or trillions of states to instantiate one moment of consciousness.   
That means that at the fundamental level (of say the UD) there can  
be huge overlap between one conscious thought and the next and so  
they can form a chain, a stream of consciousness.




So there's a certain amount of "mini-death-and-mini-rebirth" going  
on every second in the normal process of consciousness (in this  
view). Deciding what counts as a continuation and what doesn't  
seems a bit ... problematic. (And of course there are many  
continuations from any given moment.)


Not if there's nothing to overlap.  Sure there is, by some measure,  
a closest next continuation.  But when you're eighty years old and  
fading out on the operating table, it's going to be another eighty  
year old fading out on some other operating table.  I think someone  
has suggested that if you fade out completely then the next closest  
continuation could be a newborn infant who is just 'fading in'.   
Which is a nice thought - but is it you?


That happens each time you smoke salvia, you fade into your baby state  
(which makes you look like a retard, which you are, in some sense, or,  
on higher dose, well beyond the baby states (which actually knows  
already a lot, from the "beyond" perspective)). Then you fade back  
into the actual "you", at least that is what you thought, but you can  
doubt it also.
Deep enough (in the amnesia/disconnection) you can experience a  
consciousness state which is experienced as time independent. Perhaps  
the consciousness of "all" simple virgin universal machine/loop/ 
numbers. It would be the roots of the consciousness flux; the set of  
all universal numbers (a non recursively enumerable set).


Bruno



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



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  meekerdb  wrote:

>> You make a big deal about duplicating chambers and what city you end up
>> in and make all sorts of mystical conclusions from it; but all it comes
>> down to is the fact that different data streams (like one coming from
>> Washington and another from Moscow)  will result in different conclusions
>> (like I am in Washington or I am in Moscow) when the calculation is
>> concluded.
>>
>
>
> It just boils down to: if you can be duplicated
>

Well of course you can be duplicated!! I find it astonishing that in the
21'st century the average person still thinks this question deserves
further debate.

> Scott Aaronson dismisses the problem by concentrating on the idea that
> duplication must be duplication of the quantum state, so that the
> no-cloning theorm applies.
>

If you need to stay in the same quantum state to retain your identity then
you would be changing into a different person many millions of trillions a
time a second. And if you never changed, if you always remained in the same
quantum state, then you couldn't think, thought needs change.

  John K Clark




>
>

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:48, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 27 September 2013 12:34, meekerdb  wrote:

On 9/26/2013 7:15 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 11:03, meekerdb  wrote:

On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible  
to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer  
entails

the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
anesthesia?...forever?

It makes permanent loss of consciousness (which is what death is)
impossible.


How?  If temporary loss of consciousness is possible, what puts a  
time limit
on it?  What is the limit? an hour?  a day?  a year?  a billion  
years?


If you're unconscious for a trillion years or a minute it's all the
same. Death is when you never, ever wake up.


Death is when you are a zombie.

(Hell is more like when you are considered as a zombie).

Such absolute death does not make sense, I think (without comp). (with  
comp I am pretty sure).


Bruno



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



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Re: How PIP solves the hard problem of consciousness

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Sep 2013, at 19:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 2:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
which for a logician are more demanding than the reals, as the  
first order theory of the real is NOT Turing complete


Bruno, could point to a pedagogical reference on that?


i deduce it from a Theorem by Tarski which shows that the first order  
theory of addition and multiplication on the real is decidable. Any  
polynomial equation, for example, can be solved by Sturm-Liouville  
method, when Diophantine polynomial can be Turing universal.
Think about x^n+y^n = z^n. There are trivially solutions for all n,  
and the theory is not complex. The same equation on the natural  
numbers has many non trivial solutions for n = 2 (already known 6000  
BC, apparently), and it took 300 years, and quite advanced  
mathematics, to show that there in no such non trivial solutions for n  
bigger than 2.


Note that if you add a trigonometrical real function, you get turing  
universality, as you can define the natural numbers by pi-scaling zero  
of sinus, for example. Waves is how real numbers invoke the natural  
numbers!


I am not sure about the reals + addition + multiplication +  
exponentiation, but I bet it is not yet Turing emulable.
But on the complex numbers, reals + addition + multiplication +  
exponentiation, you get back Turing universality, given that complex  
exponential can simulate trigonometrical functions.


I will try to look for some reference, but beside Tarski's paper, and  
technical textbook I don't see simple pedagogical references.


Bruno







thnx, Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 03:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 6:00 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:51, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 5:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:18, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 4:51 PM, chris peck wrote:
"Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the  
experiencer must confess he cannot predict with certainty the  
personal outcome of the experiment. He is confronted to an  
unavoidable uncertainty."


And the situations are very different because prior to  
teleportation there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent  
to both locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one  
at either location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


Mainly because it makes "I" ambiguous.  One answer would be the  
probability of me being in Moscow is zero and the probability of  
me being in Washington is zero, because I am going to be destroyed.


Another answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is  
one and the probability of me being in Washington is one, because  
there are going to be two of me.


Surely this is directly analogous to the situation in the MWI.


The only difference I can see is that in MWI the whole world  
splits, and by this I mean that in each branch your body maintains  
all the quantum entanglements.  In the teleporter it is only the  
classical structure of you that can be duplicated (no cloning) and  
so all the entanglements are not duplicated (which why you can end  
up in two classically different places).  Of course that all  
depends on assuming MWI is true.  Sometimes I think it is a little  
ironic that the advocates of MWI reduce everything to computation/ 
information - but they reject the Bayesian/epistemic interpretation  
of QM in order to support it.


Good point, which I would say depends on exactly how the teleporter  
actually works. (Are we, for the sake of argument, assuming  
"Heisenberg compensators" ? :-)


I assume that in comp the substitution level is assumed to be above  
the level of quantum entanglement - indeed, all that has to be  
duplicated is the data structure that is (supposedly) stored in  
your brain. That is presumably classical data, not qubits. So the  
same argument would apply if a copy of you is made in a computer.


That's what must be assumed for the teleporter to work.  But then  
Bruno hypothesizes that the world is made of computations (by the UD)


Not really. I assume only that our brain is Turing emulable (in a  
large sense of brain). Then I explain why if that is the case, there  
is no world made of computations, there are only computations,  
determining consciousness flux, and physical realities are invariant  
pattern in such consciousness flux. I take into account that a  
universal turing machine cannot distinguish anything (computable or  
not) from a diophantine approximation of its local history, so that  
physics is build from the statistical appearance on infinities of  
diophantine equations, or more simply any one universal.





at the most fundamental level which means at the quantum level (or  
lower) and the quantum uncertainty comes from the uncertainty of you  
being 'duplicated' in MW.


More precisely, of you multiplied in infinities  of solutions of a  
Diophantine universal equation (to put it in this way).


The point being that this is not true, but that 1) it follows from  
comp, and 2) it is testable/refutable.









This is of course pushing the idea of the brain as digital computer  
(or emulable by one) as far as it will go, to see if the wheels  
come off. The question is, do they?




I don't think so, but it's not completely clear to me.  For one  
thing both the brain and the digital computer are (if comp is right)  
classical objects.


Only above the substitution level (an that's part of hat we have still  
to justify, the apparent winning of many classical universal machines).





That means from a quantum view they must be represented by "bundles"  
or "threads" of computations (like Feynmanpaths) to take account  
of all the entanglement with the environment that makes them (quasi)  
classical.  This entanglement will be different when you plug and  
electronic artificial neuron in place of a biological one.   
Presumably this doesn't make any significant difference in 'you',  
but it *could* make a difference in some circumstance and the  
arguments to dispense with the physical seems to rely on  
anticipating all those possible counterfactuals.  Which is why I  
suspect you can't dispense with the physical even if it's not  
fundamental.


Absolutely. Although with comp this is not entirely clear in "near  
death" state and in some possible persistent dreamy states.
At some point "physical" has to be made more precise, and for the  
machine, I suspect three different notions of physical. Life and  
(some) afterlife may have different physics, for exam

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 02:18, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 4:51 PM, chris peck wrote:

Hi

Well Im sure that I am missing something important, but I can't see  
it so far...


>>The diary is the one that you have with you. You will not have two
diaries, since you cannot experience being in Moscow and Wsahington  
at

the same time with contradicting the "survivability" axiom of
COMP. Therefore the probability of the diary containing 'I am in
Washington not Moscow' is decidedly less than 1. That it is precisely
0.5 is a little more debatable, however, particularly in the later  
steps.


ISTM you are thinking about things after the teleportation has  
occurred. If one of the 'me's is asked after teleportation but  
before the doors are opened what are the chances of being in  
moscow, then I can see that there is indeterminacy.


But the way the step is formulated is that I am asked prior to  
teleportation:


"Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the experiencer  
must confess he cannot predict with certainty the personal outcome  
of the experiment. He is confronted to an unavoidable uncertainty."


And the situations are very different because prior to  
teleportation there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent to  
both locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one at  
either location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


Mainly because it makes "I" ambiguous.



That is why I make precise (as much as needed for the reasoning) the  
different notion of "I" used in the reasoning.
The first person I (described by the content of his diary that he  
takes with him in the teleportations and self-mutliplication). (The  
first person itself is the owner of the diary. despite the diaries  
will be multiplied, the person too, and the realtionship between the  
persons and their diary will remain exclusive).


And the third person I. Like in "I have two eyes", or this is the  
doctor description of my brain at this or that  substitution level.






One answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is zero  
and the probability of me being in Washington is zero, because I am  
going to be destroyed.


Making comp false.




Another answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is one  
and the probability of me being in Washington is one, because there  
are going to be two of me.


That is the 3-views on the 1-views, without listening to the content  
of the 1-views;  which are "Oh! Washington only", and "Oh Moscow only!".


They can guess that they could not have predicted that *experience*,  
of being in only this or that city. If they do it again, they have  
perhaps a better understanding about what was asked, and they can bet  
they have no idea at all where they might feel to be reconstituted in  
the next experience.


Bruno









If I am sufficiently described by the reading process to maintain  
'I'ness then this 'I'ness goes to washington and moscow. Given I am  
supposed to be a 'comp practitioner' and therefore believe that  
nothing over and above the data read constitutes 'I' then, when I  
am asked what chance there is of me experiencing moscow in the  
future, the probability must be 1. No 1-p indeterminacy.


The indeterminacy of the situation after teleportation is dependent  
on an absence of knowledge concerning which 'me' is being asked the  
question: 'moscow me' or 'washington me'. But the situation prior  
to teleportation is certain because I know I will be both 'moscow  
me' and 'washington me'. If you like, both diaries will be  
identical up to the point of teleportation.


>> "I disagree that the 'I' concept is illicit in this argument. It  
is

upfront with the "folk" concept of surviving an artificial brain
transplant. The 'I' is what survives."

No, I assume comp and assume that comp is sufficient. Them are the  
rules of the game. I am not arguing that the comp 'I' is illicit.  
The illicit 'I' is something I feel has to be smuggled in  
(subconsciously?) to get the feeling of indeterminacy. An  
intuition, if you will, that despite trying to assume comp and that  
this description is being sent to both places, 'I' (an illicit I)  
only ends up at one.


What's "illicit" is the implication forced by language that "I" and  
"me" are necessarily singular.  If you were the Borg, you would  
answer the probability that we will be in Moscow is one and the  
probability we will be in Washington is one.




>>That's one of the troubles with intuition pumps. To be quite  
honest,

that intuition pump fails me

Perhaps you don't, but it isn't important. I think it is generally  
accepted, perhaps not on this list, that one would be banging at  
the walls of the teleporter, screaming to be released, certain of  
impending death. That kind of intuition. The kind it has been  
fruitful not to ignore in our evolutionary past. ;)


Probably not if you really believed in th

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Sep 2013, at 02:51, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 5:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:18, meekerdb  wrote:
On 9/26/2013 4:51 PM, chris peck wrote:
"Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the experiencer  
must confess he cannot predict with certainty the personal outcome  
of the experiment. He is confronted to an unavoidable uncertainty."


And the situations are very different because prior to  
teleportation there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent  
to both locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one at  
either location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


Mainly because it makes "I" ambiguous.  One answer would be the  
probability of me being in Moscow is zero and the probability of me  
being in Washington is zero, because I am going to be destroyed.


Another answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is  
one and the probability of me being in Washington is one, because  
there are going to be two of me.


Surely this is directly analogous to the situation in the MWI.


The only difference I can see is that in MWI the whole world splits,  
and by this I mean that in each branch your body maintains all the  
quantum entanglements.  In the teleporter it is only the classical  
structure of you that can be duplicated (no cloning) and so all the  
entanglements are not duplicated (which why you can end up in two  
classically different places).  Of course that all depends on  
assuming MWI is true.  Sometimes I think it is a little ironic that  
the advocates of MWI reduce everything to computation/information -  
but they reject the Bayesian/epistemic interpretation of QM in order  
to support it.



I agree. Comp, and QM needs the epistemic interpretation of QM (that's  
even why we can suspect the quantization brought by Bp & Dt & p, to be  
closer to Everett QM, that the quantization brought by Bp & Dt, or Bp  
& p (which exists when p is restricted to the sigma_1 sentences, that  
the is the UD in arithmetic).


We have both the many worlds, and a quantum wave describing relative  
internal (but plural) first person views.


Bruno





Brent

If I measure a quantum event like a photon bouncing off / through a  
semi-silvered mirror, the chances of each result is 50%. In  
"classic" qnautum theory I say there is a 50% chance of seeing the  
photon reflect, say. In the MWI I do the same, but I am now aware  
that the probabilities work out as they do because I'm duplicated  
in the process (or two pre-existing but fungible versions of me  
have now become distinct - or perhaps 2 lots of infinite numbers of  
copies...)


Ignoring the teleporter and just looking at the MWI gives the same  
results but is perhaps a bit more intuitive. In the MWI "I" am also  
destroyed from moment to moment (or even in classical single- 
universe physics, if you attach me to a "brain state" it all gets  
very Heraclitean), and/or I am also duplicated from moment to  
moment (at least).


But the probabilities still work - I have a 50-50 chance of seeing  
the photon bouncing or transmitting, and equivalently I have a  
50-50 chance to end up in Moscow or Washington. It just seems less  
obvious when I'm the particle in the experiment.


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Sep 2013, at 12:34, David Nyman wrote:


On 26 September 2013 08:14, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


You argue, I think, that
computationalism escapes this by showing how computation and logic
emerge naturally from arithmetic.


And how this explains the appearance of discourse on consciousness  
and

matter


Yes, ISTM that this is where identity theories break down finally; the
explanation of the self-referential discourses is perhaps the most
persuasive aspect of comp. I was reflecting recently on "panpsychist
matter" theories such as those proposed by Galen Strawson (or Chalmers
in certain moods). ISTM that ideas like these run foul of the problem
of how to attribute consciousness to some "intrinsic" aspect of matter
whilst simultaneously justifying our ability to discourse about it.
Since the discourse part is rather obviously relational in nature it
is rather difficult to see how this could refer to any supposedly
"intrinsic" aspect of the relata. Any such aspect, even if it existed,
would be inaccessible to the relational level. After all, we don't
expect the characters in TV dramas to start discussing the intrinsic
qualities of the TV screen on which they are displayed!

Then I think there is a genuine concern due to the opposition  
between life
and afterlife. may be theology is not for everybody, a bit like  
salvia: it
asks for a genuine curiosity, and it can have some morbid aspect. I  
try to

understand why some machines indeed want to hold a contradictory
metaphysics, even up to the point of hiding obvious fact, like  
personal

consciousness.


Yes, ISTM that there's also often a kind of reflexive self-abnegation,
or a shrinking back from any idea that consciousness could have a role
to play in the story, let alone a central one. This is perhaps
understandable in the light of historically mistaken attempts to place
humanity at the centre of the cosmos. Science is therefore seen as
having finally defeated religion and superstition by taking the human
perspective entirely out of the equation. But ironically, taken to
extremes, such a one-eyed (or no-eyed) perspective may have the effect
of leaving us even more blind to our true nature than we ever were
before.


Very well said.


I think that this is due in part to the fact that many humans want to  
control other humans.
It is simpler to do that with fairy tales and associative tricks  
(propaganda, the confusion between p->q and q->p) than with logic and  
common sense. The controller minded person fear the inconceivable  
freedom of the rigorous, honest, self-observing machine.


But fear sellers invest in ignorance, and certainties are only wall  
solidifying the ignorance, even from generations to generations.


Institutionalized religions make, often, the root of science, doubt,  
into the devil, making inquiry impossible.
Another typical (and frightful) example is the NDAA 2012 bill, which  
is formulated in such a way that if you doubt the consistency of that  
very bill, makes you suspect of terrorism, and thus in risk to be  
detained indefinitely without trial. It is equivalent logically with  
"you cannot doubt me", it is about of the type [] <>t, it entails, []  
f, whose fuzzy type is "promised catastrophes".


Some laws make inquiries about the very law impossible. The making of  
cannabis into schedule one is an example, as it forbids research on  
cannabis. The NDAA is another one. I think only bandits does that. I  
discovered that the founders of the American constitution were aware  
of such possibility and tried to prevent such laws, but apparently  
they failed. I heard that the supreme court judged the NDAA  
unconstitutional, but apparently the unnerving ambiguity remained in  
the NDAA 2013.


The NDAA bill is equivalent with  "If you fear me, I will put you  
indefinitely in jail". It is bit like "if you don't love me, I will  
send you to hell for eternity". That's powerful self-replicating  
memes, which prevents thinking, and make other people controlling you  
by fears. To make this into a law is a mistake or a tyranny trick.


Bruno




David



On 25 Sep 2013, at 20:51, David Nyman wrote:


On 25 September 2013 15:01, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

I agree. It is in that sense that we can say that modern  
biophysics makes

vitalism irrelevant.

(I am actually arguing that computationalism makes materialism  
irrelevant

in that same sense).



Yes, I see that.


Of course the standard riposte to this riposte is indeed simply to
deny that there are "really" any such further first-person facts  
at

all



Which is or should be seen as contradictory by any non-zombie  
entity.



True, but nevertheless they don't always admit to it. I'm trying to
put my finger on just what it is that is so question-begging about
such a position.


(a position that Dennett has characterised as third person
absolutism).



Despite this, and because it takes Matter for granted, he still  
slips

himself into it, alas.



It's worse than th

Re: How PIP solves the hard problem of consciousness

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, September 27, 2013 9:47:57 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 26 Sep 2013, at 14:57, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
>
> > Not at all. The prediction must be based on the precise math of   
> > number's imagination. 
> > 
> > But how could flavor be predicted by any math? What would be the   
> > point also? If you have mathematical encodings which are represented   
> > as molecules, why would there be any flavor required. The molecules   
> > of your olfactory bulbs just read the codes and update the registers   
> > of the olfactory system without ever conjuring a 'flavor'. 
>
>
> The math can explain why things of the type "flavor" can be expected   
> from the machine self-referential points of view. 
>
>
What things of the type "flavor" are there though, other than flavor? I 
don't think that drawing a box where 'flavor type things' should go will 
have any effect in generating the presence of flavor.
 

>
>
>
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> Comp is not a theory of everything, 
> >> 
> >> Indeed. It is a philosophical or theological principle or   
> >> assumption. Then, if we make that assumption, the theorem is that   
> >> the theory of everything is given by arithmetic or anything Turing   
> >> equivalent. 
> >> 
> >> It's still only a theory of Turing equivalence, which doesn't   
> >> include any epistemic access to the question of what lies beyond. 
> > 
> > Epistemic access is explained by the self-reference ability of the   
> > universal numbers. 
> > 
> > Which is the same ability which would make all aesthetic   
> > presentation superfluous and redundant. 
>
> This seems to me to be a common error made by many reductionists. It   
> is not because something is emergent that it does not exist, or is   
> redundant. 
> Addition and multiplication do not make prime numbers redundant, nor   
> their distribution trivial. 
>

Emergence is not the reason why self-reference ability of the universal 
numbers makes presentation redundant. It's redundant because there is no 
plausible reason for presentation to emerge in the first place, given the 
fact of epistemic coherence on demand. It would be like installing cameras 
and monitors on networked computers so that they could also see each other. 
Such cameras would be redundant and would never plausible emerge from 
network connectivity.
 

>
>
>
>
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> its a dualism of everything computational vs everything imagined   
> >>> by computations. 
> >> 
> >> Imagined by people supported by infinities of computations. But the   
> >> imagination is reduced itself to arithmetical relations (even   
> >> finite one, now), so it is a monism. 
> >> 
> >> If it could be reduced, then why wouldn't it be? It's still a   
> >> dualism of that which is computation and that which can be reduced   
> >> from computation. The question is, where does computation inflate   
> >> itself to in the first place? 
> > 
> > Computations exist, like prime number exists. It is not dualism, it   
> > is elementary math derivation. Then we get an octalism (and many   
> > dualism) in the epistemology of the universal numbers. 
> > 
> > Computations may not exist so much as they can be extracted   
> > analytically from certain things which exist. Flavor exists. We can   
> > count flavors, but we can't flavor accounting. 
>
>
> Again (see just above). 
>

Next time your sun in law wants some steak, I'll tell him that math lets 
him expect 'things of the type steak "flavor" instead. That should be a 
good match for his mathematically expected 'things of the type "want"'. 


>
>
> > 
> >>> 
> >>> Because flavors exist, but comp has no reason to imagine them. 
> >> 
> >> Well, the one saying "yes" to the doctor does have a reason to hope   
> >> for it, and he can hope that the evidences (the Turing emulability   
> >> of biophysical known object) are not misleading. 
> >> 
> >> But we already know they are misleading, otherwise there would be   
> >> no dualism concept to begin with. 
> > 
> > 
> > ? 
> > 
> > We know that there are no kitchens in the brain cooking up blueberry   
> > muffins when we remember the smell of blueberry muffins. 
>
> Well ... Exactly, but this seems to make my point. 
>

This is the same odd leap that you make with incompleteness. Wherever we 
can reason that logic, measurement, or arithmetic is not sufficient to 
describe reality,. you seem to conclude that must mean that reality must be 
hidden within arithmetic...that it is our access to reality which is 
incomplete in that it fails to reveal the totality of arithmetic 
imagination. It's a fun line of thinking, but it is not the universe that 
we live in. Where we live, numbers always exist as an experience or a group 
of bodies, never as independent beings. Where we live, measurement and 
countability does not have an agenda of its own, to the contrary, 
automation is about making that which we do not wish to be aware o

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

Hello Chris,

On 27 Sep 2013, at 01:51, chris peck wrote:


Hi

Well Im sure that I am missing something important, but I can't see  
it so far...


>>The diary is the one that you have with you. You will not have two
diaries, since you cannot experience being in Moscow and Wsahington at
the same time with contradicting the "survivability" axiom of
COMP. Therefore the probability of the diary containing 'I am in
Washington not Moscow' is decidedly less than 1. That it is precisely
0.5 is a little more debatable, however, particularly in the later  
steps.


ISTM you are thinking about things after the teleportation has  
occurred.



Precisely: the expectation evaluation is asked to the person in  
Helsinki, before the duplication is done, and it concerns where the  
person asked will feel to be, from his first person point of view.






If one of the 'me's is asked after teleportation but before the  
doors are opened what are the chances of being in moscow, then I can  
see that there is indeterminacy.


OK. So you can derive the First Person Indeterminacy (FIP) from the  
Delayed Uncertainty Principle: If I can predict with certainty (modulo  
default hypothesis) that tomorrow I will feel to be uncertain about  
some outcome of some experience, then I am already uncertain now about  
that outcome.






But the way the step is formulated is that I am asked prior to  
teleportation:


Yes.




"Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the experiencer  
must confess he cannot predict with certainty the personal outcome  
of the experiment. He is confronted to an unavoidable uncertainty."


And the situations are very different because prior to teleportation  
there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent to both  
locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one at either  
location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


That entails there are probabilities! Indeed.

There is one me befoe the duplication, and two me's after, from the or  
a third person point of view.


But, assuming comp, there is always only one "me", from the first  
person points of view. In Helsinki, you can predict with certainty  
that you will write in your diary that you are specifically in only  
one precise city, and the umber of first-person-me has not changed, it  
is still one. From that view, you inherit a doppelganger in the other  
city, but it is another "first-person" entity, even if intellectually  
( or from a third person view) you can consider that it is a "you".








If I am sufficiently described by the reading process to maintain  
'I'ness then this 'I'ness goes to washington and moscow.



That is a third person view on the first person view. You are right.  
But the question in Helsinki concerned the first person view on the  
first person view.




Given I am supposed to be a 'comp practitioner' and therefore  
believe that nothing over and above the data read constitutes 'I'  
then, when I am asked what chance there is of me experiencing moscow  
in the future, the probability must be 1. No 1-p indeterminacy.


The reconstituted "you" in Washington will understand that you were  
wrong. Or you will suddenly understand the question, as you are force  
to write "Washington" in the diary (as you feel directly it from the  
1p view), and I tell you explicitly that the question was bearing on  
that.








The indeterminacy of the situation after teleportation is dependent  
on an absence of knowledge concerning which 'me' is being asked the  
question: 'moscow me' or 'washington me'.


It is your usual "you" in Helsinki, and the question was about the  
result of an experience "which city", and does not concern your  
personal identity (later, the thought experience and its follow up  
*can* provide some light on this, but it is not needed to grasp what I  
mean by the FPI, and how and why it will make physics a branch of  
arithmetic/computer-science.




But the situation prior to teleportation is certain because I know I  
will be both 'moscow me' and 'washington me'.


You know (actually bet) that you will be both from a third person  
point of view, but you know also that each of them will feel unique  
and see only one city, and the question asked in helsinki concerned  
the effective localization result you will *feel* to see after the  
duplication.





If you like, both diaries will be identical up to the point of  
teleportation.


Yes, and they diverge after.






>> "I disagree that the 'I' concept is illicit in this argument. It is
upfront with the "folk" concept of surviving an artificial brain
transplant. The 'I' is what survives."

No, I assume comp and assume that comp is sufficient. Them are the  
rules of the game. I am not arguing that the comp 'I' is illicit.  
The illicit 'I' is something I feel has to be smuggled in  
(subconsciously?) to get the feeling of indeterminacy. An intuition,  
if

Re: How PIP solves the hard problem of consciousness

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Sep 2013, at 14:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Not at all. The prediction must be based on the precise math of  
number's imagination.


But how could flavor be predicted by any math? What would be the  
point also? If you have mathematical encodings which are represented  
as molecules, why would there be any flavor required. The molecules  
of your olfactory bulbs just read the codes and update the registers  
of the olfactory system without ever conjuring a 'flavor'.



The math can explain why things of the type "flavor" can be expected  
from the machine self-referential points of view.
















Comp is not a theory of everything,


Indeed. It is a philosophical or theological principle or  
assumption. Then, if we make that assumption, the theorem is that  
the theory of everything is given by arithmetic or anything Turing  
equivalent.


It's still only a theory of Turing equivalence, which doesn't  
include any epistemic access to the question of what lies beyond.


Epistemic access is explained by the self-reference ability of the  
universal numbers.


Which is the same ability which would make all aesthetic  
presentation superfluous and redundant.


This seems to me to be a common error made by many reductionists. It  
is not because something is emergent that it does not exist, or is  
redundant.
Addition and multiplication do not make prime numbers redundant, nor  
their distribution trivial.















its a dualism of everything computational vs everything imagined  
by computations.


Imagined by people supported by infinities of computations. But the  
imagination is reduced itself to arithmetical relations (even  
finite one, now), so it is a monism.


If it could be reduced, then why wouldn't it be? It's still a  
dualism of that which is computation and that which can be reduced  
from computation. The question is, where does computation inflate  
itself to in the first place?


Computations exist, like prime number exists. It is not dualism, it  
is elementary math derivation. Then we get an octalism (and many  
dualism) in the epistemology of the universal numbers.


Computations may not exist so much as they can be extracted  
analytically from certain things which exist. Flavor exists. We can  
count flavors, but we can't flavor accounting.



Again (see just above).







Because flavors exist, but comp has no reason to imagine them.


Well, the one saying "yes" to the doctor does have a reason to hope  
for it, and he can hope that the evidences (the Turing emulability  
of biophysical known object) are not misleading.


But we already know they are misleading, otherwise there would be  
no dualism concept to begin with.



?

We know that there are no kitchens in the brain cooking up blueberry  
muffins when we remember the smell of blueberry muffins.


Well ... Exactly, but this seems to make my point.

Bruno



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



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Re: How PIP solves the hard problem of consciousness

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Sep 2013, at 14:40, Richard Ruquist wrote:


If so then the cosmos is not rich enough to derive people.



Why would this follow?



I have to reject comp on that basis for the cosmos existed long  
before people.


Locally, it existed long before the human people.
Globally, there is no time, and humans bodies existence is out of  
time, and distributed in the arithmetical reality.





In my paper arithmetic and logic come from the Calabi-Yau manifolds
of the metaverse


I am not sure that the Calabi-Yau manifolds does not presuppose  
arithmetic.






and the universe which come into being during the big bang of each.


Like Gödel said to Einstein: (I discover recently): I do not believe  
in natural science.




The arithmetic and logic of the Metaverse manifolds provide for the  
universe big bang

as well as the apriori energy and matter.
That is why you probably think that my paper is too physicalist


Indeed. And what you say must contradict the computationalist theory  
of mind (and matter), as you seem to agree, and so we agree where we  
differ, good :)


Bruno





Richard


On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 5:12 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 26 Sep 2013, at 10:21, Richard Ruquist wrote:


Bruno,

Is there cosmos without arithmetic?


It might depend how you define "cosmos". I can easily imagine some  
poor cosmos, based only on real numbers, and without the arithmetic  
of the natural number (which for a logician are more demanding than  
the reals, as the first order theory of the real is NOT Turing  
complete).


But if your cosmos is rich enough to be Turing universal, then it  
will contain arithmetic.


With comp, cosmos is a derived notion, and it has "only" physical  
existence. The physical has become a machine's "illusion", in the  
same sense that time is an illusion in Gödel's solution of  
Einstein's equation.


Bruno






Richard


On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 2:41 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 25 Sep 2013, at 18:53, Richard Ruquist wrote:


You are saying there is no cosmos without people???


?
I do not say that.  I say that there is no people without cosmos  
(and that there is no arithmetic without people).






Well anyway you pointed out the arithmetic and logic
necessary for the cosmos to evolve people
and I thank you for that.


Thanks. You might cite the papers (It is much older than Tegmark,  
btw, and tegmark is still missing the first person indeterminacy. I  
suspect you to are not yet taking into account that indeterminacy.  
You still link, like Tegmark, the mind to a machine, and the  
machine to a mind, but mind is attached to infinities of machines  
and computations. By machine I mean the immaterial mathematical one  
(as always).


I will make other comments. You link Göel's theorem with  
arithmetic, but Gödel's original theorem was done on a typed set  
theory, and Gödel's theorem works for all rich mathematics (ZF,  
etc.). It is not related to arithmetic per se. Your use of it is a  
bit obscure for me, and alas, I don't know enough of string theory  
to evaluate some other part of the paper.
If one day you can explain string theory for the dummy ... (I read  
Kac's book on Vertex Algebra, and my knowledge of it is quite  
formal).


Your paper seems interesting, but still too much "physicalist" with  
respect of the computationalist assumption.


Bruno







On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:03 AM, Bruno Marchal  
 wrote:

Hi Richard,


On 25 Sep 2013, at 16:29, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno: "Imagined by people supported by infinities of  
computations. But the imagination is reduced itself to  
arithmetical relations (even finite one, now), so it is a monism."


Richard: Are you saying that without people there cannot be comp?  
I would prefer a more cosmic machine as in http://vixra.org/abs/1303.0194




Where does such cosmos come from? You start from what I show we  
have to derive (from arithmetic, which you assume too).


Without people, there is no arithmetic, because arithmetic implies  
(logically) the existence of people (and with comp they are  
conscious).



Bruno







On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal  
 wrote:


On 25 Sep 2013, at 14:40, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 25, 2013 2:58:25 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 24 Sep 2013, at 20:58, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Monday, September 23, 2013 1:16:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


shape belongs to the category of numbers imagination, and with  
comp this is given by  arithmetical relations.



Numbers imagination seem like human imagination to me.


Nice. That is a reason for taking number's talk seriously.


I had more of 'numbers imagination = pathetic fallacy' meaning  
in mind.



OK, but then you beg the question, and just repeat: I believe  
that comp is wrong, without explaining why.











It is not. What is important is to not impose certainties on  
other. To make clear what we assume.


That's what I am trying to do - make clear what y

Re: A challenge for Craig

[Telmo Menezes]

On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:49:29 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Craig Weinberg 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thursday, September 26, 2013 6:17:04 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi Craig (and all),
>> >>
>> >> Now that I have a better understanding of your ideas, I would like to
>> >> confront you with a thought experiment. Some of the stuff you say
>> >> looks completely esoteric to me, so I imagine there are three
>> >> possibilities: either you are significantly more intelligent than me
>> >> or you're a bit crazy, or both. I'm not joking, I don't know.
>> >>
>> >> But I would like to focus on sensory participation as the fundamental
>> >> stuff of reality and your claim that strong AI is impossible because
>> >> the machines we build are just Frankensteins, in a sense. If I
>> >> understand correctly, you still believe these machines have sensory
>> >> participation just because they exist, but not in the sense that they
>> >> could emulate our human experiences. They have the sensory
>> >> participation level of the stuff they're made of and nothing else.
>> >> Right?
>> >
>> >
>> > Not exactly. My view is that there is only sensory participation on the
>> > level of what has naturally evolved.
>>
>> This sounds a bit like vitalism. What's so special about natural
>> evolution that can't be captured otherwise?
>
>
> It's not about life or nature being special, it's about recognizing that
> nature is an expression of experience, and that experience can't be
> substituted.

Ok. How did you arrive at this belief? How can you believe this
without proposing some mechanism by which it happens? Or do you
propose such a thing?

> A player piano can be made to play the notes of a song, but no
> matter how many notes it plays, it will never know the significance of what
> notes or music is.
>
>>
>>
>> > Since the machine did not organize
>> > itself, there is no 'machine' any more than a book of Shakespeare's
>> > quotes
>> > is a machine that is gradually turning into Shakespeare.
>>
>> But the books are not machines. Shakespeare possibly was. If he was,
>> why can't he be emulated by another machine?
>
>
> I was using the example of a book to show how different a symbol is from
> that which we imagine the symbol represents. If we want a more machine-like
> example, we can use a copy machine. The copier can reproduce the works of
> any author mechanically, but does it appreciate or participate in the
> content of what it is copying?

Ok. Yes, of course. But consider this: when you read a book, your
brain triggers in super-complex ways that constantly find patterns,
correlate with previous informations, trigger emotions and so on. This
clearly isn't happening with the copying machine. This would also not
happen if I was forced to copy a book in Japanese by hand. So I don't
think the comparison is fair. I'm not trying to argue that brain
complexity generates consciousness, but I am inclined to believe that
his complexity creates the necessary space for a human-like 1p. I
don't see why this couldn't be equally done in a computer.

>>
>> > What we see as
>> > machines are assemblies of parts which we use to automate functions
>> > according to our own human sense and motives - like a puppet.
>> > There is sensation going on two levels: 1) the very local level, and 2)
>> > at
>> > the absolute level. On the 1) local level, all machines depend on local
>> > physical events. Whether they are driven by springs and gears, boiling
>> > water
>> > in pipes, or subatomic collisions, Turing emulation rides on the back of
>> > specific conditions which lock and unlock small parts of the machine.
>> > Those
>> > smallest of those parts would be associated with some sensory-motive
>> > interaction - the coherence of molecular surfaces, thermodynamics,
>> > electrodynamics, etc, have a very local, instantaneous, and presumably
>> > primitive sensory involvement. That could be very alien to us, as it is
>> > both
>> > very short term and very long term - maybe there is only a flash of
>> > feeling
>> > at the moment of change, who knows?
>>
>> This part I can somewhat agree with. I do tend to believe that 1p
>> experience is possibly not limited to living organisms. I think about
>> it like you describe: "flashes of feeling" and "who knows" :)
>>
>> > On the 2) absolute level, there is the logical sensibility which all 1)
>> > local events share - the least common denominator of body interactions.
>> > This
>> > is the universal machine that Bruno champions. It's not sense which is
>> > necessarily experienced directly, rather all local sense touches on this
>> > universal measuring system *when it measures* something else.
>> >
>> > The problem with machines is that there is no sense in between the
>> > momentary, memoryless, sensation of lock/unlock and the timeless,
>> > placeless
>> > sensibility of read/wr