Re: Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity

[Russell Standish]

We did talk about this paper about a year ago - maybe on foar.

I agree its interesting, though.


On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 10:47:39AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> Here's another philosophical/computational paper by Scott Aaronson,
> which I think is more interesting than the one on Knightian freedom.
> It's also quite long (58pg). Section 4 is most relevant to AI and
> Turing tests.
> 
> arXiv:1108.1791v3 [cs.CC] 14 Aug 2011
> 
> Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity
> Scott Aaronson
> *
> Abstract
> One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently
> it can be com- puted is a practical question with little further 
> philosophical importa
> nce. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong.
> In particular, I argue that
> computational complexity theory--the field that studies the
> resources (such as time, space, and ra
> ndomness) needed to solve computational problems--leads to new perspectives 
> on the nature
> of mathematical knowledge, the strong AI debate, computationalism, the 
> problem of logical omn
> iscience, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's grue riddle, the foundations 
> of quantum mech
> anics, economic rationality, closed timelike curves, and several
> other topics of philosophical int erest. I end by discussing aspects
> of complexity theory itself that could benefit from philosop hical
> analysis.
> 
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.1791.pdf
> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: A challenge for Craig

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 9:46 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 5 October 2013 12:53, meekerdb  wrote:

On 10/4/2013 7:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

I

On Friday, October 4, 2013, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/3/2013 5:07 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

You seem to be agreeing with Craig that each neuron alone is conscious.

The experiment relates to replacement of neurons which play some part
in consciousness. The 1% remaining neurons are part of a system which
will notice that the qualia are different.


That assumes that 1% are sufficient to remember all the prior qualia with
enough fidelity to notice they are different.


No, I assume the system of which the neurons are a part will notice a
difference. If not, then the replacement has not changed the qualia.


I don't understand that.  If the system can notice a difference, why does it
need that 1%?  Why can't it detect a difference with 0% of the original
remaining?  What's the 1% doing?

The question is whether swapping out part of the system for a
functional equivalent will change the qualia the system experiences
without changing the behaviour. I don't think this is possible, for if
the qualia change the subject would (at least) notice


That's the point I find questionable.  Why couldn't some qualia change in minor ways and 
the system *not* notice because the system doesn't have any absolute memory to which it 
can compare qualia. Have you ever gone back to a house you lived in as a small child? 
Looks a lot smaller doesn't it.


Brent


and say that the
qualia have changed, which constitutes a change in behaviour.
Therefore, the qualia and the behaviour are somehow inextricably
linked. The alternative, that the qualia are substrate dependent,
can't work.




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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 5 October 2013 12:53, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 10/4/2013 7:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> I
>
> On Friday, October 4, 2013, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>> On 10/3/2013 5:07 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>> You seem to be agreeing with Craig that each neuron alone is conscious.
>>
>> The experiment relates to replacement of neurons which play some part
>> in consciousness. The 1% remaining neurons are part of a system which
>> will notice that the qualia are different.
>>
>>
>> That assumes that 1% are sufficient to remember all the prior qualia with
>> enough fidelity to notice they are different.
>
>
> No, I assume the system of which the neurons are a part will notice a
> difference. If not, then the replacement has not changed the qualia.
>
>
> I don't understand that.  If the system can notice a difference, why does it
> need that 1%?  Why can't it detect a difference with 0% of the original
> remaining?  What's the 1% doing?

The question is whether swapping out part of the system for a
functional equivalent will change the qualia the system experiences
without changing the behaviour. I don't think this is possible, for if
the qualia change the subject would (at least) notice and say that the
qualia have changed, which constitutes a change in behaviour.
Therefore, the qualia and the behaviour are somehow inextricably
linked. The alternative, that the qualia are substrate dependent,
can't work.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: A challenge for Craig

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 7:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

I

On Friday, October 4, 2013, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/3/2013 5:07 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

You seem to be agreeing with Craig that each neuron alone is conscious.

The experiment relates to replacement of neurons which play some part
in consciousness. The 1% remaining neurons are part of a system which
will notice that the qualia are different.


That assumes that 1% are sufficient to remember all the prior qualia with 
enough
fidelity to notice they are different.


No, I assume the system of which the neurons are a part will notice a difference. If 
not, then the replacement has not changed the qualia.


I don't understand that.  If the system can notice a difference, why does it need that 
1%?  Why can't it detect a difference with 0% of the original remaining?  What's the 1% doing?


Brent

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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Stathis Papaioannou]

I

On Friday, October 4, 2013, meekerdb wrote:

>  On 10/3/2013 5:07 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>  You seem to be agreeing with Craig that each neuron alone is conscious.
>
>  The experiment relates to replacement of neurons which play some part
> in consciousness. The 1% remaining neurons are part of a system which
> will notice that the qualia are different.
>
>
> That assumes that 1% are sufficient to remember all the prior qualia with
> enough fidelity to notice they are different.
>

No, I assume the system of which the neurons are a part will notice a
difference. If not, then the replacement has not changed the qualia.

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Re: Aaronson's paper

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 2:14 PM, LizR wrote:
On 5 October 2013 06:53, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


He comes to this because he's *defined* "Knightian uncertainty" as radical
unpredictability without randomness.


I don't see why it doesn't entail randomness, especially if it comes from quantum 
fluctuations during the big bang.


I found that a little puzzling too.  But I happen to be reading Scott's book "Quantum 
Computing Since Democritus" too; and in it he gives more of an explanation.  He notes that 
there are some things which are undetermined but which it doesn't seem possible to assign 
a probability distribution to, more precisely there are quite different probability 
distributions that seem equally applicable. He discusses a few examples.  The Doomsday 
argument is one that is probably known to everyone on this list.  He notes that one could 
estimate a probability using a self-sampling assumption or a self-indicial assumption and 
they produce different answers.  His general conclusion is that there are undetermined 
things that are not random.  I think he would put Bruno's FPI in that class.  And 
apparently that's what he thinks initial conditions of the universe could be.


Incidentally, I highly recommend the book.



But even if it doesn't, it still doesn't seem to me to lead to "free will worth 
having".


I agree with Dennett there: Determinism can provide all the freedom worth 
having.

Brent

The cosmic background radiation seems more likely to have it (if anything does) than 
humans, the latter being made of atoms that have been knocking around on Earth for 
billions of years amd surely losing any correlation with "initial uncertainty" in the 
process. So does the CMB have more free will than we do?



I agree that doesn't seem very significant, e.g. in terms of public policy 
for
example.   Nietzsche says "free will" is an invention of the priestly class 
in order
to justify judgement, guilt, and punishment - all social tools.


Good point! I tend to agree with Neitzsche on that one (would you Adam and Eve 
it? :)

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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[Russell Standish]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 11:54:34AM -0400, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:
> 
> Very well, Professor Standish, given that, could the Hubble Volume
itself, then be considered as one CA? A CA that is 13.7 light years
across, and thus, that old? 

That sounds like what Wolfram proposes.

Is this CA, or all CA's something that emerges from thermo and fluid
dynamics, or does it require (sigh!) a programmer, in the Jurgen
Schmidhuber, sense of the word?  

I don't see why a programmer is required. Presumably, if is some sort
of CA, it just is.

Apologies for my obtuseness, but hey, this what all good primates do, connect 
dots, make assumptions.
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Mitch
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Russell Standish 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Thu, Oct 3, 2013 8:13 pm
> Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology
> 
> 
> There are plenty of examples, but it will take too long to extract the
> literature. For example, the Navier-Stokes equations describing fluid
> flow can be simulated via an appropriate hex tiling (close packed
> spheres) CA (or generalised CA). I've seen people give examples of CAs
> simulating the reaction-diffusion equations that Turing used for his
> famous morphogenesis study.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 05:38:45PM -0400, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:
> > 
> > Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates
> > the behavior of Cellular Automata?  Does cell biology do the tasks
> > of CA, orbis this merely, a mathematical abstraction? Does anything
> > in physics come to mind, when refering to CA?
> > 
> > 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Bruno Marchal 
> > To: everything-list 
> > Sent: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 10:18 am
> > Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology
> > 
> > 
> > On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 
> > >On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 02:54:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> > >>
> > >>On 01 Oct 2013, at 01:30, Russell Standish wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>The real universe is likely to be 11 dimensional, nonlocal with
> > >>>around
> > >>>10^{122} states, or 2^{10^{122}} possible universes, if indeed it
> > >>>is a
> > >>>CA at all. Needles in haystacks is a walk in the park by comparison.
> > >>
> > >>CA are local. The universe cannot be a CA if comp is correct, and
> > >>the empirical violation of Bell's inequality confirms this comp
> > >>feature.
> > >>
> > >>Bruno
> > >>
> > >
> > >There is no particular requirement for CAs to be local, although local
> > >CAs are by far easier to study than nonlocal ones, so in practice they
> > >usually are (cue obligatory lamp post analogy).
> > 
> > We can easily conceive quantum CA.
> > But those are not what is named simply CA (which locality is quite
> > typical).
> > You will not find quantum CA in Wolfram (well, in my edition).
> > 
> > 
> > >
> > >Unless you mean something else by locality. I mean that there is some
> > >neighbourhood radius such that the update function for a given cell
> > >only access the states of cells within the given radius.
> > >
> > >Having said that - I notice that Wikipedia, Wolfram.com and also Andy
> > >Wuensche's article on Discrete Dynamical Networks
> > >(http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/wuensche/) all state that the
> > >update function must be local in the manner described above in their
> > >definitions of "cellular automata". In which case, you are correct.
> > 
> > OK.
> > 
> > >
> > >I am clearly taking about a more general subset of discrete dynamical
> > >networks in which the cells are still tiling an n-dimensional space,
> > >but that the update function does not depend on a local neighbourhood
> > >of the cell to be updated.
> > 
> > Better not to call them CA, but quantum CA, or why not comp-CA, as
> > comp entails non locality, non cloning, indeterminacy, etc.
> > 
> > 
> > >
> > >I don't know what Wolfram was talking about though - I just assumed he
> > >wouldn't be thinking in terms of local update functions for his "CA of
> > >the universe".
> > 
> > Alas, that is what he does, or did.
> > At the time he wrote his books, he put all the QM weirdness under the
> > rug. He said that if non-locality is a real consequence of QM, it
> > means that QM is false.
> > 
> > There are just very few people who grasp those three things at once:
> > 
> > - the mind-body problem
> > - the conceptual QM astonishing features (non locality, non cloning,
> > indeterminacy, etc)
> > - Church thesis and the non triviality of the discovery of the
> > universal machine and its fundamental "creative limitations".
> > 
> > 
> > Bruno
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --
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> > Visit this

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Russell Standish]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 04:51:02PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> Read AUDA, where you can find the mathematical definition for each
> pronouns, based on Kleene's recursion theorem (using the Dx = "xx"
> trick, which I promised to do in term of numbers, phi_i, W_i, etc.
> but 99,999% will find the use of them in UDA enough clear for the
> reasoning. Yet, I have made AUDA as I was told some scientists were
> allergic to thought experiments, and indeed studied only AUDA (and
> got no problem with it).
> 

Hi Bruno,

You meade this comment before, and I just passed over it, because it
didn't seem that relevant to the thread. I am familiar with your AUDA
from your Lille thesis, of course, but don't recall anywhere where you
discuss formalisation of pronouns.

Perhaps you do this in another treatment of the AUDA I haven't read? Or perhaps
you have some slightly different idea in you mind that I'm missing?
Just wondering...

Cheers
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Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
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Re: Aaronson's paper

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 at 02:15:47AM +1300, LizR wrote:
> I'm still slogging through Scott Aaronson's paper, and have now reached
> page 37. It looks as though there are still lots of interesting matters to
> be discussed, but there is something I already have a problem with that
> seems central to what he is saying, namely what is the significance of
> Knightian uncertainty? He has pointed out that it's a valid objection to
> free will being in any useful sense free that all physical processes are
> either deterministic or random (the usual dilemma), but then goes on to say
> that we can get around this if some processes rely on "Knightian
> uncertainty". These are, if I understand correctly, quantum states that go
> back through a causal chain to an initial condition of the universe. These
> states ("freebits") cannot be determined by any measurement. And that
> therefore it's possible that some physical systems contain a source of
> irreducible uncertainty.
> 
> To which I have to say - so what? What is the crucial distinction between a
> source of randomness that happens to go back to the big bang, and one that
> doesn't? How does this in any way get around the argument that free will
> isn't usefully free if it merely relies on determinism and randomness?
> 

I think that argument is that Knightian uncertainty is absolutely
unpredictable, even by gods or daemons. Ordinary uncertainty is at
least predictable in some sense: "there is a range of outcomes,
following this distribution of probabilities".

I agree with you that I don't see why this distinction should really
be important. Evolutionary speaking, it only really matters that you
are unpredicatable by your enemies, god and daemons aren't particularly
relevant. So whilst I do think the picture of amplifying quantum
uncertainty via chaotic dynamics is a likely strategy for evolution to
have used, I'm not convinced it would choose between Knightian
uncertainty and ordinary quantum uncertainty, or even pseudo random
uncertainty when that suffices.

> I will read on, but I feel that my hope of learning why this type of
> randomness is better than anyone else's is going to go unsatisfied, because
> I think Scott thinks he's already explained why, and I didn't get it.
> 
> By the way, it also occurs to me that as time goes on, there will be less
> and less freebits around, since he says they can get turned into "ordinary
> bits" by various processes. So does that mean that a person born in the
> distant future will have less free will than one born now?
> 

Yes - exactly. Scott uses that fact to dismiss the Boltzmann brain
argument.

Personally, I don't think that is necessary, as I think Boltzmann
brains can be banished in the same way as White Rabbits, by the
universal prior measure, which must vanish exponentially as a function
of time (or rather as a function of consumed bits of quantum
uncertainty, which is the same thing).


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Re: The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

[John Mikes]

Richard:
I grew into denying probability in cases where not - ALL - circumstances
are known.
Since we know only part of the infinite complexity of the WORLD, we buy in
for a mistake if fixing anything like 'probability'.
The same goes for "statistical": push the borderlines abit further away and
the COUNT of the studied item (= statistical value) will change. Also the
above argument for probability is valid for results as 'statistical'
values.
JM


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Richard Ruquist  wrote:

> Foad Dizadji-Bahmani, 2013. The probability problem in Everettian quantum
> mechanics persists. British Jour. Philosophy of Science   IN PRESS.
>
> ABSTRACT. Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) results in ‘multiple,
> emergent, branching quasi-classical realities’ (Wallace [2012]). The
> possible outcomes of measurement as per ‘orthodox’ quantum mechanics are,
> in EQM, all instantiated. Given this metaphysics, Everettians face the
> ‘probability problem’—how to make sense of probabilities, and recover the
> Born Rule. To solve the probability problem, Wallace, following Deutsch
> ([1999]), has derived a quantum representation theorem. I argue that
> Wallace’s solution to the probability problem is unsuccessful, as follows.
> First, I examine one of the axioms of rationality used to derive the
> theorem, Branching Indifference (BI). I argue that Wallace is not
> successful in showing that BI is rational. While I think it is correct to
> put the burden of proof on Wallace to motivate BI as an axiom of
> rationality, it does not follow from his failing to do so that BI is not
> rational. Thus, second, I show that there is an alternative strategy for
> setting one’s credences in the face of branching which is rational, and
> which violates BI. This is Branch Counting (BC). Wallace is aware of BC,
> and has proffered various arguments against it. However, third, I argue
> that Wallace’s arguments against BC are unpersuasive. I conclude that the
> probability problem in EQM persists.
>
> http://www.foaddb.com/FDBCV.pdf
> Publications (a Ph.D. in Philosophy, London School of Economics, May 2012)
> ‘The Probability Problem in Everettian Quantum Mechanics Persists’,
> British Journal for Philosophy of Science, forthcoming
>  ‘The Aharanov Approach to Equilibrium’, Philosophy of Science, 2011
> 78(5): 976-988
> ‘Who is Afraid of Nagelian Reduction?’, Erkenntnis, 2010 73: 393-412,
> (with R. Frigg and S. Hartmann)
> ‘Confirmation and Reduction: A Bayesian Account’, Synthese, 2011 179(2):
> 321-338, (with R. Frigg and S. Hartmann)
>
> His paper may be an interesting read once it comes out. Also available in:
> ‘Why I am not an Everettian’, in D. Dieks and V. Karakostas (eds): Recent
> Progress in Philosophy of Science: Perspectives and Foundational Problems,
> 2013, (The Third European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings),
> Dordrecht: Springer
>
> I think this list needs another discussion of the possible MWI probability
> problem although it has been covered here and elsewhere by members of this
> list. Previous discussions have not been personally convincing.
>
> Richard
>
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Re: Vacuum and Entropy.

[John Mikes]

Now: why should I 'believe' those "wise" scientists who based their
thinking on imaginary explanations of phenomena partly observed by
insufficient instrumentation and background knowledge? I esteem their
wisdom and in college had to learn 'them' for exams, but later on, a
'freeer' thinking turned away from 'everything being created ex nihilo'.
Ex WHAT? here comes agnosticism.
All those 'scientific' data are consequences of theories/metatheories and
the level of experienced proportionalities at the time of 'that' thinking.
Compare earlier theorizing with later corrections and the credibility of
oldies is lost.
The 'many' PRACTICAL results quoted usually are ALMOST OK, mishaps occur
and we assign a certain probability to the application of the (meta?)
 theories. There was successful navigation in the 'Flat Earth' times as
well.
JM



On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 12:57 PM, sadovnik socratus wrote:

>  Vacuum and  Entropy. **
>
> #
>
> Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.
> 
>
> Alternative question:
>
> Can the Universe begin to exist from Absolute Vacuum Zero: T=0K?
>
> ==..
>
> We have two opinions about vacuum: 
>
> 1
> The most fundamental question facing 21st century physics will be:
> What is the vacuum? As quantum mechanics teaches us, with
> its zero point energy this vacuum is not empty and the word
> vacuum is a gross misnomer!
> / Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg /
>
> 2
>
> Why do physicists refuse to take vacuum as a fundament of Universe?
> Book : ‘Dreams of a final theory’ by Steven Weinberg. Page 138.
> ‘ It is true . . . there is such a thing as absolute zero; we cannot
> reach temperatures below absolute zero not because we are not
> sufficiently clever but because temperatures below absolute zero
> simple have no meaning.’
> / Steven Weinberg. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 /
>
> ==.
>
> We need to understand what 'nothing' / vacuum is.
>
> Paul Dirac wrote:
> " The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
> is the basic problem now before physics. Really, if you can't correctly
> describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect a correct description
> of something more complex? "
>
> =.
>
> Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.
> 
>
>  As result of 'Big Bang' the temperature in universe is now T=2,7 . . . .*
> ***
>
> .. . .and this T=2,7 every second goes down to  . . . T=0K.
>
> When the universe reach the T=0K  we will be all died. . . . .
>
>  . . . .  but thanks to the ENTROPY, it will not allow this death.
>
> ===…
>
> Socratus
>
> --
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Re: Aaronson's paper

[LizR]

On 5 October 2013 06:53, meekerdb  wrote:

He comes to this because he's *defined* "Knightian uncertainty" as radical
> unpredictability without randomness.
>

I don't see why it doesn't entail randomness, especially if it comes from
quantum fluctuations during the big bang. But even if it doesn't, it still
doesn't seem to me to lead to "free will worth having". The cosmic
background radiation seems more likely to have it (if anything does) than
humans, the latter being made of atoms that have been knocking around on
Earth for billions of years amd surely losing any correlation with "initial
uncertainty" in the process. So does the CMB have more free will than we do?

>
> I agree that doesn't seem very significant, e.g. in terms of public policy
> for example.   Nietzsche says "free will" is an invention of the priestly
> class in order to justify judgement, guilt, and punishment - all social
> tools.
>

Good point! I tend to agree with Neitzsche on that one (would you Adam and
Eve it? :)

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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[Bruno Marchal]

On 04 Oct 2013, at 18:01, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:


Professor Marchal, hello.

What about at the Planck width? Would you say that this best  
describes quantum reality, the home where virtual photons emerge.



I really have no idea. I have only evidences that the winner universal  
machine, for the core bare physics are most plausibly universal  
groups, universal symmetries which seems to break from internal  
relative points of view. I don't believe in the notion of matter made  
of matter (strictly speaking I don't believe this make sense when  
assuming computationalism).



Thus, down in Planck Land, is the place where CA produces a program,  
that may cause all other CA's to emerge, unravel, unfold? In  
essence, a trigger effect?


If the Planck length defines our first person plural substitution  
level, it has to be the appearance on all continuations, a complex sum  
on all possibilities, and can't be described in local boolean terms.  
It might be a quantum CA. This can be studies at many level, but if we  
want NOT eliminate consciousness, we have to recover it from  
arithmetic, where we can exploit the gap between proof and truth about  
ourselves, in a large sense of "our".


Bruno






Mitch
-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Oct 4, 2013 11:23 am
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology


On 03 Oct 2013, at 23:38, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:

>
> Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates
> the behavior of Cellular Automata?

I would say about everything natural and classical behave like fractal
Cellular automata, (the kind of things not so much unrelated to
wavelet analysis).
So clouds, lightnings, rivers, geography, cells, tissue, percolation,
diffusion of anything.
But the quantum reality cannot be described by any of those, as they
don't violate the Bell's inequality, so reality, below our
substitution level is more a mean on infinitely many classical
computations.




> Does cell biology do the tasks of CA, orbis this merely, a
> mathematical abstraction? Does anything in physics come to mind,
> when refering to CA?

Especially diffusion and percolation, although there are competing
theories. There are also many variant of CA, so that the term, as
Russell said, can have larger meaning that what computer scientist
defines.

The game of life looks already like life, fire, or sequences of more
and more complex little machines, according to the pattern.

Bruno



>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Bruno Marchal 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 10:18 am
> Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology
>
>
> On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 02:54:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> On 01 Oct 2013, at 01:30, Russell Standish wrote:

 The real universe is likely to be 11 dimensional, nonlocal with
 around
 10^{122} states, or 2^{10^{122}} possible universes, if indeed it
 is a
 CA at all. Needles in haystacks is a walk in the park by
 comparison.
>>>
>>> CA are local. The universe cannot be a CA if comp is correct, and
>>> the empirical violation of Bell's inequality confirms this comp
>>> feature.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>
>> There is no particular requirement for CAs to be local, although
>> local
>> CAs are by far easier to study than nonlocal ones, so in practice
>> they
>> usually are (cue obligatory lamp post analogy).
>
> We can easily conceive quantum CA.
> But those are not what is named simply CA (which locality is quite
> typical).
> You will not find quantum CA in Wolfram (well, in my edition).
>
>
>>
>> Unless you mean something else by locality. I mean that there is  
some

>> neighbourhood radius such that the update function for a given cell
>> only access the states of cells within the given radius.
>>
>> Having said that - I notice that Wikipedia, Wolfram.com and also  
Andy

>> Wuensche's article on Discrete Dynamical Networks
>> (http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/wuensche/) all state that  
the
>> update function must be local in the manner described above in  
their

>> definitions of "cellular automata". In which case, you are correct.
>
> OK.
>
>>
>> I am clearly taking about a more general subset of discrete  
dynamical
>> networks in which the cells are still tiling an n-dimensional  
space,
>> but that the update function does not depend on a local  
neighbourhood

>> of the cell to be updated.
>
> Better not to call them CA, but quantum CA, or why not comp-CA, as
> comp entails non locality, non cloning, indeterminacy, etc.
>
>
>>
>> I don't know what Wolfram was talking about though - I just assumed
>> he
>> wouldn't be thinking in terms of local update functions for his "CA
>> of
>> the universe".
>
> Alas, that is what he does, or did.
> At the time he wrote his books, he put all the QM weirdness under  
the

> rug. He said that if non-locality is a real consequence of QM, i

Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[Bruno Marchal]

On 04 Oct 2013, at 17:48, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:


Oh that's a typo, and I have never read the Many Forking Paths.


It is a very good one, quoted by Everett, if I remember well.
I think Liz thought on "Tlon Uqbar Orbid Tertius. The first novel in  
"Fiction", which contains the Forking Path novel.

I like most novels in Fiction. Borgess is great.

Bruno



It was funny how philosophers like Borges (a novelist), David Lewis,  
and Hugh Everett the 3rd got to the same conclusion. All about the  
same time.

-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Oct 3, 2013 5:54 pm
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology




On 4 October 2013 10:38,  wrote:

Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates  
the behavior of Cellular Automata?  Does cell biology do the tasks  
of CA, orbis this merely, a mathematical abstraction? Does anything  
in physics come to mind, when refering to CA?


I think some chemical reactions are similar?

(By the way I love the "orbis" - immediately made me think of Borges  
- but I'm guessing it was just a typo :)


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



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Re: Vacuum and Entropy.

[Richard Ruquist]

A quantum gas with a meaningful temperature below absolute zero has been
reported in the journal NATURE:
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 12:57 PM, sadovnik socratus wrote:

>  Vacuum and  Entropy. **
>
> #
>
> Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.
> 
>
> Alternative question:
>
> Can the Universe begin to exist from Absolute Vacuum Zero: T=0K?
>
> ==..
>
> We have two opinions about vacuum: 
>
> 1
> The most fundamental question facing 21st century physics will be:
> What is the vacuum? As quantum mechanics teaches us, with
> its zero point energy this vacuum is not empty and the word
> vacuum is a gross misnomer!
> / Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg /
>
> 2
>
> Why do physicists refuse to take vacuum as a fundament of Universe?
> Book : ‘Dreams of a final theory’ by Steven Weinberg. Page 138.
> ‘ It is true . . . there is such a thing as absolute zero; we cannot
> reach temperatures below absolute zero not because we are not
> sufficiently clever but because temperatures below absolute zero
> simple have no meaning.’
> / Steven Weinberg. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 /
>
> ==.
>
> We need to understand what 'nothing' / vacuum is.
>
> Paul Dirac wrote:
> " The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
> is the basic problem now before physics. Really, if you can't correctly
> describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect a correct description
> of something more complex? "
>
> =.
>
> Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.
> 
>
>  As result of 'Big Bang' the temperature in universe is now T=2,7 . . . .*
> ***
>
> .. . .and this T=2,7 every second goes down to  . . . T=0K.
>
> When the universe reach the T=0K  we will be all died. . . . .
>
>  . . . .  but thanks to the ENTROPY, it will not allow this death.
>
> ===…
>
> Socratus
>
> --
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Re: A challenge for Craig

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 7:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

When a consciousness is not manifested, what is it's content?


Good question. Difficult. Sometimes ago, I would have said that consciousness exists 
only in manifested form.


That's what I would say.

But I am much less sure about that, and such consciousness state  might be something 
like heavenly bliss or hellish terror, depending on the path where you would lost the 
ability of manifesting yourself.


Recognizing that "consciousness" means different things: perception, self-modeling, 
awareness of self-modeling, self-evaluation,... I think we can at least see what it is 
like to not have some of these forms of consciousness because we generally have at most 
one at a given time - and sometimes we don't have any of them.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 7:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Physical time, on the contrary is most plausibly a quantum notion, and should normally 
emerge (assuming comp) from the interference of all computations + the stable first 
person (plural) points of view. 


I don't think physical time is even a single concept.  There is "t" that goes in the 
equations, there is a general relativistic time-like killing vector, there is the 
direction of increase of local entropy, there is expansion of the universe,...  A lot of 
interesting questions in physics arise from studying how these relate to one another.


Brent

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Re: Aaronson's paper

[meekerdb]

On 10/4/2013 6:15 AM, LizR wrote:
I'm still slogging through Scott Aaronson's paper, and have now reached page 37. It 
looks as though there are still lots of interesting matters to be discussed, but there 
is something I already have a problem with that seems central to what he is saying, 
namely what is the significance of Knightian uncertainty? He has pointed out that it's a 
valid objection to free will being in any useful sense free that all physical processes 
are either deterministic or random (the usual dilemma), but then goes on to say that we 
can get around this if some processes rely on "Knightian uncertainty". These are, if I 
understand correctly, quantum states that go back through a causal chain to an initial 
condition of the universe. These states ("freebits") cannot be determined by any 
measurement. And that therefore it's possible that some physical systems contain a 
source of irreducible uncertainty.


To which I have to say - so what? What is the crucial distinction between a source of 
randomness that happens to go back to the big bang, and one that doesn't? How does this 
in any way get around the argument that free will isn't usefully free if it merely 
relies on determinism and randomness?


I will read on, but I feel that my hope of learning why this type of randomness is 
better than anyone else's is going to go unsatisfied, because I think Scott thinks he's 
already explained why, and I didn't get it.


He comes to this because he's *defined* "Knightian uncertainty" as radical 
unpredictability without randomness.


I agree that doesn't seem very significant, e.g. in terms of public policy for example.   
Nietzsche says "free will" is an invention of the priestly class in order to justify 
judgement, guilt, and punishment - all social tools.


Brent



By the way, it also occurs to me that as time goes on, there will be less and less 
freebits around, since he says they can get turned into "ordinary bits" by various 
processes. So does that mean that a person born in the distant future will have less 
free will than one born now?


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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity

[meekerdb]

Here's another philosophical/computational paper by Scott Aaronson, which I think is more 
interesting than the one on Knightian freedom. It's also quite long (58pg). Section 4 is 
most relevant to AI and Turing tests.


arXiv:1108.1791v3 [cs.CC] 14 Aug 2011

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity
Scott Aaronson
*
Abstract
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently
it can be com- puted is a practical question with little further philosophical 
importa
nce. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In particular, I 
argue that
computational complexity theory--the field that studies the resources (such as time, space, 
and ra

ndomness) needed to solve computational problems--leads to new perspectives on 
the nature
of mathematical knowledge, the strong AI debate, computationalism, the problem 
of logical omn
iscience, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's grue riddle, the foundations 
of quantum mech
anics, economic rationality, closed timelike curves, and several other topics of 
philosophical int erest. I end by discussing aspects of complexity theory itself that 
could benefit from philosop hical analysis.


http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.1791.pdf

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 5:18 PM, LizR  wrote:


> > From the point of view of Moscow man, say, it appears (retrospectively,
> at least) that he had a 50-50 chance of going to either place.
>

Retrospective probability? In Many worlds and in these duplicating chamber
thought experiments probability is not a part of the thing itself it is
just a measure of our lack of information. And after something actually
happened we have more information, so it's easy to calculate the
probability that a past event that actually happened actually happened, it
is always exactly 100%.

And the answer to Bruno's "profound" question the Moscow man asks himself
"why did I change from being the Helsinki Man to the Moscow Man?" is really
not profound at all, the answer is simply "because you saw Moscow". If the
Moscow Man had seen something else he would have turned into some other
sort of man, but he didn't so he's not.

> And for an experimenter it would appear that a photon has a 50-50 chance
> of being transmitted or reflected,
>

Yes but that has nothing to do with personal identity because regardless of
if the photon is reflected or transmitted the experimenter will still feel
like the experimenter due to the fact that the experimenter remembers being
the experimenter before the experiment was performed.


> > Bruno is showing in step 3 is that *if *consciousness is a computation,
> *then* in principle it could be treated as we already treat other digital
> processes


I didn't need Bruno or his "proof" to figure that out.

> "forking into two separate address spaces" is, I think, the computational
> parallel for the teleporter.
>

Yes, and what is indeterminate in that?

> if you imagine consciousness instantiated in a computer (as according to
> comp it could be) then it will perhap be clearer what's going on.
>

Yes things are clear, except for where all this "first person
indeterminacy" stuff is that Bruno keeps talking about.

> I certainly can't see why you couldn't teleport HAL9000 via radio waves
> to two separate spaceships.
>

I can't see why you couldn't do that either, but where is the "first person
indeterminacy" that Bruno keeps talking about?

  John K Clark

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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, October 4, 2013 10:39:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 02 Oct 2013, at 19:20, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
>
> > 
> > 
> > On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 12:26:45 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
> > 
> > On 02 Oct 2013, at 06:56, Pierz wrote: 
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 12:46:17 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal   
> >> wrote: 
> > Then the reasoning shows (at a meta-level, made possible with the   
> > assumption used) how consciousness and beliefs (more or less   
> > deluded) in physical realities develop in arithmetic. 
> > 
> > Are 'beliefs in' physical realities the same as experiencing the   
> > realism of public physics though? For instance, I believe that if I   
> > should avoid driving recklessly in the same way as I would in a   
> > driving game as I would in my actual car. Because my belief that the   
> > consequences of a real life collision are more severe than a game   
> > collision, I would drive more conservatively in real life. That's   
> > all ok, but a belief about consequences would not generate realistic   
> > qualia. If someone held a gun to my head while I play the racing   
> > game, the game would not become any more realistic. I always feel   
> > like there is an equivalence between belief and qualia which is   
> > being implied here that is not the case. It's along the lines of   
> > assuming that a hypnotic state can fully replace reality. If that   
> > were the case, of course, everybody would be lining up to get   
> > hypnotized.There is some permeability there, but I think it's   
> > simplistic to imply that the aggregate of all qualia arises purely   
> > from the arbitrary tokenization of beliefs. 
>
>
> Unless the tokenization is made explicit, and then your nuance should   
> be catured by the nuance between (Bp & Dt, inteeligible matter) and   
> (Bp & Dt & p, sensible matter). 
>

Can't you just add an "& p" flag to your token? It need not be sensible or 
intelligible, just consistent.
 

>
>
>
> > 
> > 
> > But that's the mathematical (arithmetical) part. In UDA it is just   
> > shown that if comp is true (an hypothesis on consciousness) then   
> > physics is a branch of arithmetic. More precisely a branch of the   
> > ideally self-referentially correct machine's theology. (always in   
> > the Greek sense). 
> > 
> > There is no pretense that comp is true, but if it is true, the   
> > correct "QM" cannot postulate the wave, it has to derive the wave   
> > from the numbers. That's what UDA shows: a problem. AUDA (the   
> > machine's interview) provides the only path (by Gödel, Löb, Solovay)   
> > capable of relating the truth and all machine's points of view. 
> > 
> > There will be many ways to extract physics from the numbers, but   
> > interviewing the self-introspecting universal machine is the only   
> > way to get not just the laws of physics, but also why it can hurt,   
> > and why a part of that seems to be necessarily not functional. 
> > 
> > I don't think that an interview with anyone can explain why they can   
> > hurt, unless you have already naturalized an expectation of pain. In   
> > other words, if we don't presume that universal machine experiences   
> > anything, there is no need to invent qualia or experience to justify   
> > any mathematical relation. If mathematically all that you need is   
> > non-functional, secret kinds of variable labels to represent machine   
> > states, I don't see why we should assume they are qualitative. If   
> > anything, the unity of arithmetic truth would demand a single   
> > sensory channel that constitutes all possible I/O. 
>
> But then you get zombies, which make no sense with comp.


Because comp is blind to authenticity, which works perfectly: Zombie-hood 
make no sense to zombies.

 

> But you are   
> right, I have to attribute consciousness to all universal machines, at   
> the start. That consciousness will be a computer science theoretical   
> semantical fixed point, that is something that the machine can "know",   
> but cannot prove ("know" in a larger sense than the Theaetetus'   
> notion, it is more an unconscious bet than a belief or proof). (Cf   
> also Helmholtz, and the idea that perception is a form of   
> extrapolation). 
>

It seems to me that treating consciousness as a zero dimensional point 
intersecting two logical sets (known data and unprovable data) is accurate 
from the point of view of Comp, but that's only because Comp is by 
definition blind to qualia. If you are blind, you can define sight as a 
capacity that you know you are lacking, but you can't prove it (since you 
can't literally see what you are missing). 

The Comp perspective can't account for feeling for what it actually is (a 
direct aesthetic appreciation), it can only describe what kinds of things 
happen as a consequence of unprovable knowledge.

Pansensitivity (P) proposes that sensation is a universal property. 


Primordial Pansensitivity (PP) propos

Vacuum and Entropy.

[sadovnik socratus]

 

 Vacuum and  Entropy. 

#

Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.

Alternative question:

Can the Universe begin to exist from Absolute Vacuum Zero: T=0K?

==..

We have two opinions about vacuum: 

1
The most fundamental question facing 21st century physics will be:
What is the vacuum? As quantum mechanics teaches us, with
its zero point energy this vacuum is not empty and the word
vacuum is a gross misnomer!
/ Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg /

2

Why do physicists refuse to take vacuum as a fundament of Universe?
Book : ‘Dreams of a final theory’ by Steven Weinberg. Page 138.
‘ It is true . . . there is such a thing as absolute zero; we cannot
reach temperatures below absolute zero not because we are not 
sufficiently clever but because temperatures below absolute zero
simple have no meaning.’ 
/ Steven Weinberg. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 /

==.

We need to understand what 'nothing' / vacuum is.

Paul Dirac wrote:
" The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
is the basic problem now before physics. Really, if you can't correctly
describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect a correct description
of something more complex? "

=.

Today everybody knows that  the Universe had a beginning from  'Big Bang'.

 As result of 'Big Bang' the temperature in universe is now T=2,7 . . . .

.. . .and this T=2,7 every second goes down to  . . . T=0K.

When the universe reach the T=0K  we will be all died. . . . .

 . . . .  but thanks to the ENTROPY, it will not allow this death.

===…

Socratus

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The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics

[Richard Ruquist]

Foad Dizadji-Bahmani, 2013. The probability problem in Everettian quantum
mechanics persists. British Jour. Philosophy of Science   IN PRESS.

ABSTRACT. Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) results in ‘multiple,
emergent, branching quasi-classical realities’ (Wallace [2012]). The
possible outcomes of measurement as per ‘orthodox’ quantum mechanics are,
in EQM, all instantiated. Given this metaphysics, Everettians face the
‘probability problem’—how to make sense of probabilities, and recover the
Born Rule. To solve the probability problem, Wallace, following Deutsch
([1999]), has derived a quantum representation theorem. I argue that
Wallace’s solution to the probability problem is unsuccessful, as follows.
First, I examine one of the axioms of rationality used to derive the
theorem, Branching Indifference (BI). I argue that Wallace is not
successful in showing that BI is rational. While I think it is correct to
put the burden of proof on Wallace to motivate BI as an axiom of
rationality, it does not follow from his failing to do so that BI is not
rational. Thus, second, I show that there is an alternative strategy for
setting one’s credences in the face of branching which is rational, and
which violates BI. This is Branch Counting (BC). Wallace is aware of BC,
and has proffered various arguments against it. However, third, I argue
that Wallace’s arguments against BC are unpersuasive. I conclude that the
probability problem in EQM persists.

http://www.foaddb.com/FDBCV.pdf
Publications (a Ph.D. in Philosophy, London School of Economics, May 2012)
  ‘The Probability Problem in Everettian Quantum Mechanics Persists’,
British Journal for Philosophy of Science, forthcoming
  ‘The Aharanov Approach to Equilibrium’, Philosophy of Science, 2011
78(5): 976-988
  ‘Who is Afraid of Nagelian Reduction?’, Erkenntnis, 2010 73: 393-412,
(with R. Frigg and S. Hartmann)
  ‘Confirmation and Reduction: A Bayesian Account’, Synthese, 2011 179(2):
321-338, (with R. Frigg and S. Hartmann)

His paper may be an interesting read once it comes out. Also available in:
  ‘Why I am not an Everettian’, in D. Dieks and V. Karakostas (eds): Recent
Progress in Philosophy of Science: Perspectives and Foundational Problems,
2013, (The Third European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings),
Dordrecht: Springer

I think this list needs another discussion of the possible MWI probability
problem although it has been covered here and elsewhere by members of this
list. Previous discussions have not been personally convincing.

Richard

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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[spudboy100]

Professor Marchal, hello.

What about at the Planck width? Would you say that this best describes quantum 
reality, the home where virtual photons emerge. Thus, down in Planck Land, is 
the place where CA produces a program, that may cause all other CA's to emerge, 
unravel, unfold? In essence, a trigger effect?

Mitch


-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Oct 4, 2013 11:23 am
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology



On 03 Oct 2013, at 23:38, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:

>
> Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates  
> the behavior of Cellular Automata?

I would say about everything natural and classical behave like fractal  
Cellular automata, (the kind of things not so much unrelated to  
wavelet analysis).
So clouds, lightnings, rivers, geography, cells, tissue, percolation,  
diffusion of anything.
But the quantum reality cannot be described by any of those, as they  
don't violate the Bell's inequality, so reality, below our  
substitution level is more a mean on infinitely many classical  
computations.




> Does cell biology do the tasks of CA, orbis this merely, a  
> mathematical abstraction? Does anything in physics come to mind,  
> when refering to CA?

Especially diffusion and percolation, although there are competing  
theories. There are also many variant of CA, so that the term, as  
Russell said, can have larger meaning that what computer scientist  
defines.

The game of life looks already like life, fire, or sequences of more  
and more complex little machines, according to the pattern.

Bruno



>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Bruno Marchal 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 10:18 am
> Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology
>
>
> On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 02:54:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> On 01 Oct 2013, at 01:30, Russell Standish wrote:

 The real universe is likely to be 11 dimensional, nonlocal with
 around
 10^{122} states, or 2^{10^{122}} possible universes, if indeed it
 is a
 CA at all. Needles in haystacks is a walk in the park by  
 comparison.
>>>
>>> CA are local. The universe cannot be a CA if comp is correct, and
>>> the empirical violation of Bell's inequality confirms this comp
>>> feature.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>
>> There is no particular requirement for CAs to be local, although  
>> local
>> CAs are by far easier to study than nonlocal ones, so in practice  
>> they
>> usually are (cue obligatory lamp post analogy).
>
> We can easily conceive quantum CA.
> But those are not what is named simply CA (which locality is quite
> typical).
> You will not find quantum CA in Wolfram (well, in my edition).
>
>
>>
>> Unless you mean something else by locality. I mean that there is some
>> neighbourhood radius such that the update function for a given cell
>> only access the states of cells within the given radius.
>>
>> Having said that - I notice that Wikipedia, Wolfram.com and also Andy
>> Wuensche's article on Discrete Dynamical Networks
>> (http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/wuensche/) all state that the
>> update function must be local in the manner described above in their
>> definitions of "cellular automata". In which case, you are correct.
>
> OK.
>
>>
>> I am clearly taking about a more general subset of discrete dynamical
>> networks in which the cells are still tiling an n-dimensional space,
>> but that the update function does not depend on a local neighbourhood
>> of the cell to be updated.
>
> Better not to call them CA, but quantum CA, or why not comp-CA, as
> comp entails non locality, non cloning, indeterminacy, etc.
>
>
>>
>> I don't know what Wolfram was talking about though - I just assumed  
>> he
>> wouldn't be thinking in terms of local update functions for his "CA  
>> of
>> the universe".
>
> Alas, that is what he does, or did.
> At the time he wrote his books, he put all the QM weirdness under the
> rug. He said that if non-locality is a real consequence of QM, it
> means that QM is false.
>
> There are just very few people who grasp those three things at once:
>
> - the mind-body problem
> - the conceptual QM astonishing features (non locality, non cloning,
> indeterminacy, etc)
> - Church thesis and the non triviality of the discovery of the
> universal machine and its fundamental "creative limitations".
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
> Groups "Everything List" group.
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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[spudboy100]

Very well, Professor Standish, given that, could the Hubble Volume itself, then 
be considered as one CA? A CA that is 13.7 light years across, and thus, that 
old? Is this CA, or all CA's something that emerges from thermo and fluid 
dynamics, or does it require (sigh!) a programmer, in the Jurgen Schmidhuber, 
sense of the word?  Apologies for my obtuseness, but hey, this what all good 
primates do, connect dots, make assumptions.

Thanks, 

Mitch


-Original Message-
From: Russell Standish 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Oct 3, 2013 8:13 pm
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology


There are plenty of examples, but it will take too long to extract the
literature. For example, the Navier-Stokes equations describing fluid
flow can be simulated via an appropriate hex tiling (close packed
spheres) CA (or generalised CA). I've seen people give examples of CAs
simulating the reaction-diffusion equations that Turing used for his
famous morphogenesis study.

Cheers

On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 05:38:45PM -0400, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates
> the behavior of Cellular Automata?  Does cell biology do the tasks
> of CA, orbis this merely, a mathematical abstraction? Does anything
> in physics come to mind, when refering to CA?
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Bruno Marchal 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 10:18 am
> Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology
> 
> 
> On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 02:54:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >>On 01 Oct 2013, at 01:30, Russell Standish wrote:
> >>>
> >>>The real universe is likely to be 11 dimensional, nonlocal with
> >>>around
> >>>10^{122} states, or 2^{10^{122}} possible universes, if indeed it
> >>>is a
> >>>CA at all. Needles in haystacks is a walk in the park by comparison.
> >>
> >>CA are local. The universe cannot be a CA if comp is correct, and
> >>the empirical violation of Bell's inequality confirms this comp
> >>feature.
> >>
> >>Bruno
> >>
> >
> >There is no particular requirement for CAs to be local, although local
> >CAs are by far easier to study than nonlocal ones, so in practice they
> >usually are (cue obligatory lamp post analogy).
> 
> We can easily conceive quantum CA.
> But those are not what is named simply CA (which locality is quite
> typical).
> You will not find quantum CA in Wolfram (well, in my edition).
> 
> 
> >
> >Unless you mean something else by locality. I mean that there is some
> >neighbourhood radius such that the update function for a given cell
> >only access the states of cells within the given radius.
> >
> >Having said that - I notice that Wikipedia, Wolfram.com and also Andy
> >Wuensche's article on Discrete Dynamical Networks
> >(http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/wuensche/) all state that the
> >update function must be local in the manner described above in their
> >definitions of "cellular automata". In which case, you are correct.
> 
> OK.
> 
> >
> >I am clearly taking about a more general subset of discrete dynamical
> >networks in which the cells are still tiling an n-dimensional space,
> >but that the update function does not depend on a local neighbourhood
> >of the cell to be updated.
> 
> Better not to call them CA, but quantum CA, or why not comp-CA, as
> comp entails non locality, non cloning, indeterminacy, etc.
> 
> 
> >
> >I don't know what Wolfram was talking about though - I just assumed he
> >wouldn't be thinking in terms of local update functions for his "CA of
> >the universe".
> 
> Alas, that is what he does, or did.
> At the time he wrote his books, he put all the QM weirdness under the
> rug. He said that if non-locality is a real consequence of QM, it
> means that QM is false.
> 
> There are just very few people who grasp those three things at once:
> 
> - the mind-body problem
> - the conceptual QM astonishing features (non locality, non cloning,
> indeterminacy, etc)
> - Church thesis and the non triviality of the discovery of the
> universal machine and its fundamental "creative limitations".
> 
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> 
> 
> 
> --
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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[spudboy100]

Oh that's a typo, and I have never read the Many Forking Paths. It was funny 
how philosophers like Borges (a novelist), David Lewis, and Hugh Everett the 
3rd got to the same conclusion. All about the same time.


-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Oct 3, 2013 5:54 pm
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology







On 4 October 2013 10:38,   wrote:


Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates the 
behavior of Cellular Automata?  Does cell biology do the tasks of CA, orbis 
this merely, a mathematical abstraction? Does anything in physics come to mind, 
when refering to CA?



I think some chemical reactions are similar?


(By the way I love the "orbis" - immediately made me think of Borges - but I'm 
guessing it was just a typo :)



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 04 Oct 2013, at 00:56, chris peck wrote:


Hi Liz / pgc

If I have been abusive to you or Bruno then I apologize without  
hesitation. If you would show where I have been abusive though I  
would appreciate that, because at the moment I regard the suggestion  
as low and mean spirited.


I have made my points and been misrepresented, misunderstood and  
disagreed with. I have clarified as far as I could. No doubt I have  
misrepresented and misunderstood people in return. In what way is  
that out of the ordinary in debate? In what way is that a disservice  
to anyone? The points under debate may seem obvious to you, well I  
apologise for my stupidity but they are not obvious to me. I find it  
stunning that people find anything in the realm of theoretical  
physics remotely obvious.


Bruno should be happy that people are still reading his papers. What  
more respect can anyone give him?


I do not follow his argument. I do not follow his or your attempts  
to clarify them. I see flaws in what you say. Does that really  
insult you?



Just focuse on the flaw.

Let me ask you a variant of the iterated WM-duplication.

I multiply you 24 times per second (24) during 1h30 (60 * 90), into as  
many copies can be sent in front of one of the 2^(16180 * 1)  
possible images on a screen with 16180 * 1 pixels, which can be  
black or white each.


OK?

What do you expect that you will live as experience among the one  
proposed below (non exclusive):


0) I will die instantaneously
1) I will experience seeing all movies (at once)
2) A black and white movie (perhaps quite avant-garde)
3) The always black movie
4) The always white movie
5) A (silent) Hitchcock movie
6) A (silent) Hitchcock movie with greek subtitle
7) A random movie (white noise)
?

And by definition of first person, the confirmation of the possible  
successful prediction are asked to all  2^(16180 * 1) * (60 * 90)  
* 24 copies which go out of the last movie theaters, when the "movie"  
is finished.
You can *define* The 1p indeterminacy, for that protocol, by a  
sampling on the conclusion (about the success of the prediction)  
contained in all diaries.



Bruno






--- Original Message ---

From: "LizR" 
Sent: 4 October 2013 7:20 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com, "Charles Goodwin" >

Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 4 October 2013 06:28, Platonist Guitar Cowboy > wrote:


You were kind enough to let the list know, along with Chris Peck,  
that the flaw in the reasoning concerning step 3 of the UDA is "it  
sucks".


Unless you guys backtrack and quit abusing the fact that Bruno's  
politeness and dedication to critical debate puts him in default  
mode of taking your points seriously and granting you the benefit of  
the doubt that you would not in the faintest be inclined to grant in  
return, these discussions are a one way street into brick walls with  
"you suck" infantile graffiti sprayed on them at the end.


So unless you can state something more substantial than teenage  
insults and ruses á la "I don't understand THIS AND THAT!!!" or the  
more passive but nonetheless authoritative "you're confusing first/ 
third person, everything is first person" etc. , I submit you guys  
are trolling and wasting time on this.


Either be open for genuine discussion and finding of flaws or this  
is pointless as it does a disservice to the readers of this list. It  
is not difficult to see that refuting computationalism in this form,  
would be a major result.


Your aspirations are lofty gentlemen, but they don't jibe with the  
infantilization and the mockery masking itself as poised discourse  
and clear debate. PGC


I would like to frame this post and bring it whenever necessary :)

In fact I will keep a copy, just in case it's ever needed again.  
Thank you, PGC.



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



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Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 23:38, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:



Does anyone know any  phenomena in nature or science that duplicates  
the behavior of Cellular Automata?


I would say about everything natural and classical behave like fractal  
Cellular automata, (the kind of things not so much unrelated to  
wavelet analysis).
So clouds, lightnings, rivers, geography, cells, tissue, percolation,  
diffusion of anything.
But the quantum reality cannot be described by any of those, as they  
don't violate the Bell's inequality, so reality, below our  
substitution level is more a mean on infinitely many classical  
computations.





Does cell biology do the tasks of CA, orbis this merely, a  
mathematical abstraction? Does anything in physics come to mind,  
when refering to CA?


Especially diffusion and percolation, although there are competing  
theories. There are also many variant of CA, so that the term, as  
Russell said, can have larger meaning that what computer scientist  
defines.


The game of life looks already like life, fire, or sequences of more  
and more complex little machines, according to the pattern.


Bruno






-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 10:18 am
Subject: Re: The confluence of cosmology and biology


On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 02:54:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Oct 2013, at 01:30, Russell Standish wrote:


The real universe is likely to be 11 dimensional, nonlocal with
around
10^{122} states, or 2^{10^{122}} possible universes, if indeed it
is a
CA at all. Needles in haystacks is a walk in the park by  
comparison.


CA are local. The universe cannot be a CA if comp is correct, and
the empirical violation of Bell's inequality confirms this comp
feature.

Bruno



There is no particular requirement for CAs to be local, although  
local
CAs are by far easier to study than nonlocal ones, so in practice  
they

usually are (cue obligatory lamp post analogy).


We can easily conceive quantum CA.
But those are not what is named simply CA (which locality is quite
typical).
You will not find quantum CA in Wolfram (well, in my edition).




Unless you mean something else by locality. I mean that there is some
neighbourhood radius such that the update function for a given cell
only access the states of cells within the given radius.

Having said that - I notice that Wikipedia, Wolfram.com and also Andy
Wuensche's article on Discrete Dynamical Networks
(http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/wuensche/) all state that the
update function must be local in the manner described above in their
definitions of "cellular automata". In which case, you are correct.


OK.



I am clearly taking about a more general subset of discrete dynamical
networks in which the cells are still tiling an n-dimensional space,
but that the update function does not depend on a local neighbourhood
of the cell to be updated.


Better not to call them CA, but quantum CA, or why not comp-CA, as
comp entails non locality, non cloning, indeterminacy, etc.




I don't know what Wolfram was talking about though - I just assumed  
he
wouldn't be thinking in terms of local update functions for his "CA  
of

the universe".


Alas, that is what he does, or did.
At the time he wrote his books, he put all the QM weirdness under the
rug. He said that if non-locality is a real consequence of QM, it
means that QM is false.

There are just very few people who grasp those three things at once:

- the mind-body problem
- the conceptual QM astonishing features (non locality, non cloning,
indeterminacy, etc)
- Church thesis and the non triviality of the discovery of the
universal machine and its fundamental "creative limitations".


Bruno



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



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 19:28, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:





On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 6:59 PM, John Clark   
wrote:

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 , LizR  wrote:

>> What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is  
a 100% chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man  
because the Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki  
Man will turn into the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw  
Washington, and a 100% chance that the first person view of the  
Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY of Helsinki because otherwise the  
first person view of the Helsinki Man would not be the first person  
view of the Helsinki man.


> This is uncontraversially, one might say trivially correct,

I would have thought so too, but however trivial it may be for  
reasons I don't understand most on this list are unable to grasp  
this simple truth.


> but it doesn't refute anything about the first person indeterminacy,

I don't know what indeterminacy you're talking about. LizR may not  
be able to predict what LizR sees next, but as far as personal  
identity is concerned that is irrelevant because whatever LizR sees  
LizR will still feel like LizR.



You were kind enough to let the list know, along with Chris Peck,  
that the flaw in the reasoning concerning step 3 of the UDA is "it  
sucks".


Unless you guys backtrack and quit abusing the fact that Bruno's  
politeness and dedication to critical debate puts him in default  
mode of taking your points seriously and granting you the benefit of  
the doubt that you would not in the faintest be inclined to grant in  
return, these discussions are a one way street into brick walls with  
"you suck" infantile graffiti sprayed on them at the end.


So unless you can state something more substantial than teenage  
insults and ruses á la "I don't understand THIS AND THAT!!!" or the  
more passive but nonetheless authoritative "you're confusing first/ 
third person, everything is first person" etc. , I submit you guys  
are trolling and wasting time on this.


Either be open for genuine discussion and finding of flaws or this  
is pointless as it does a disservice to the readers of this list. It  
is not difficult to see that refuting computationalism in this form,  
would be a major result.


Your aspirations are lofty gentlemen, but they don't jibe with the  
infantilization and the mockery masking itself as poised discourse  
and clear debate. PGC


Good post :)

Thanks.

Bruno





  John k Clark








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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 23:18, LizR wrote:


On 4 October 2013 05:59, John Clark  wrote:
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 , LizR  wrote:

>> What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is  
a 100% chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man  
because the Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki  
Man will turn into the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw  
Washington, and a 100% chance that the first person view of the  
Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY of Helsinki because otherwise the  
first person view of the Helsinki Man would not be the first person  
view of the Helsinki man.


> This is uncontraversially, one might say trivially correct,

I would have thought so too, but however trivial it may be for  
reasons I don't understand most on this list are unable to grasp  
this simple truth.


> but it doesn't refute anything about the first person indeterminacy,

I don't know what indeterminacy you're talking about. LizR may not  
be able to predict what LizR sees next, but as far as personal  
identity is concerned that is irrelevant because whatever LizR sees  
LizR will still feel like LizR.


Sorry, I'm using "indeterminacy" because that's the term that was  
first introduced into quantum mechanics when it was believed that's  
what it was, and which I guess is still used even though if the MWI  
is correct it isn't the right word (for the subject the comp  
teleporter is directly parallel to MWI splitting, though it might in  
practice operate at a different level). However you can't call it  
"uncertainty" either - if you're being strictly accurate, you can  
only call it something like "global determinism which gives the  
false appearance of first person indeterminacy / uncertainty /  
probability / whatever" !


Bruno calls it "first person indeterminacy" and I can see why he  
uses that term. From the point of view of Moscow man, say, it  
appears (retrospectively, at least) that he had a 50-50 chance of  
going to either place. And for an experimenter it would appear that  
a photon has a 50-50 chance of being transmitted or reflected,  
especially after multiple measurements, and they might also still  
call that "indeterminacy / uncertainty / probability / whatever"  
even if they believe the MWI to be the correct interpretation of QM.


As I said, this is just a semantic quibble. All Bruno is showing in  
step 3 is that if consciousness is a computation, then in principle  
it could be treated as we already treat other digital processes -  
"forking into two separate address spaces" is, I think, the  
computational parallel for the teleporter. As I said earlier, if you  
imagine consciousness instantiated in a computer (as according to  
comp it could be) then it will perhap be clearer what's going on.


Personally I can't see any problem with step 3, given the  
assumptions. I certainly can't see why you couldn't teleport HAL9000  
via radio waves to two separate spaceships.



Yes, the all setting can be recasted in term of programs, trying to  
predict where some backup will resume. In UDA the definition of first  
person which is used (the personal diary which is teleported along  
with the subject) is purely third person.
And indeed, that's a step to understand that the whole set up will be  
recasted in terms, of purely arithmetical relations (most of them  
being even non computable, non recursively enumerable, etc.).


Thanks for helping John Clark, but his tones makes me suspect that he  
is not ready to be serious on this subject.



It is typical of pseudo-religious people, and this confirms my feeling  
that atheism is quite a pseudo-religion, very close to christianism  
with the "creation" being taken for granted, where mystics, poets, and  
Platonist are less sure, as they think it could be part of a dream, or  
the border of something else.
With comp that dream idea is very natural and economical, and thus  
compelling, as a tiny, constructive (by the UD) part of arithmetic  
already determine all possible dreams. Realities are "just" the dreams  
conjuncted with truth (true dream).


For "truth", I use tarski definition of truth, which is not  
problematic for arithmetic.


Note that the "inside" mathematics of arithmetic is much more complex  
than arithmetic. This makes sense just with the FPI (our indeterminacy  
domain is a complex structure), and the metamathematics (self- 
reference logics).



Bruno


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 17:51, John Clark wrote:


On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> The origin of the indeterminacies is the random use of personal  
pronouns with no clear referents by Bruno Marchal such that all  
questions like "what is the probability "I" will do this or that?"  
become meaningless.


 > ?

Which word didn't you understand?


I understand all words. It is the statement which seems ad hoc. There  
is no use of random pronoun, the referents are clear, and the  
probabilities are not concerned with anything the candidate will do,  
but with what he will feel to observe.


I get the feeling that you are just doing rethorical tricks.




> We need no more "personal identity" notion than we need to say I  
will survive with an artficial brain


The origin of the indeterminacies is the random use of personal  
pronouns with no clear referents by Bruno Marchal such that all  
questions like "what is the probability "I" will do this or that?"  
become meaningless.



Same remark.



Bruno Marchal is simply addicted to personal pronouns because it  
would be obvious to all that Bruno Marchal's ideas are held together  
with only spit and scotch tape without the logically inconsistent  
use of them.


Read AUDA, where you can find the mathematical definition for each  
pronouns, based on Kleene's recursion theorem (using the Dx = "xx"  
trick, which I promised to do in term of numbers, phi_i, W_i, etc. but  
99,999% will find the use of them in UDA enough clear for the  
reasoning. Yet, I have made AUDA as I was told some scientists were  
allergic to thought experiments, and indeed studied only AUDA (and got  
no problem with it).


It obviously leads to a sequence of open problems in logic. The first  
one has been solved by Eric Vandebussche.


AUDA, the arithmetic version of UDA, does not need UDA. The fact that  
you ignore that makes me suspect of you honesty in the game.







> You try to evade the indeterminacy by making it into an ambiguity,

Personal pronouns with no referent


You never made any assertion explicit. Quote a passage of me with a  
personal pronoun without referent.








are the cause of the ambiguity,



There is no ambiguity. Nowhere. Except apparently in your mind.
I think you renamed "indeterminacy", into ambiguity, because it serves  
your purpose of denying the 1p-indeterminacy.




and although it results in clunky prose John Clark can explain John  
Clark's ideas without using them, Bruno Marchal can not explain  
Bruno Marchal's ideas without the liberal use of such pronouns.


>> All that can be said is that from ANY point of view there is a  
100% chance the Helsinki man will turn into the Washington man, and  
a 100% chance  the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man; so if  
"I" is the Helsinki man then there is a 0% chance "I" will see  
either city because very soon "I" will turn into something that is  
not "I".


> That contradicts many posts you sent.

BULLSHIT!

> In particular, this would mean that duplication entails death,

BULLSHIT! As you said yourself "as you said yourself, we need only  
the fact that those remembering having been the guy in Helsinki";  
and in this case both the Washington Man and the Moscow Man remember  
being the Helsinki Man so the Helsinki Man is not dead. True, the  
first person point of view of the Helsinki man no longer exists  
because nobody is in Helsinki anymore, but that is of no more  
interest than the fact that the first person point of view that  
Bruno Marchal had yesterday no longer exists. And that is why all  
this Pov and pee pee stuff is crap.


OK, but this explains the indeterminacy. If you don't die, and know in  
advance that you can logically feel only one city,  but that you are  
reconstituted in both city, you know that any program or god  
predicting where you will feel (you the guy still in Helsinki) will be  
refuted by necessarily one of the copies, and that's enough to refute  
it.


You do understand, but for some unknown reason, you don't want to  
proceed.






>> Huh? Uncertainty about what?

> Uncertainty in Helsinki about which city you

You? Bruno Marchal just can't wean Bruno Marchal off the use of  
personal pronouns even though it causes ambiguity when duplicating  
chambers are involved;


I do not see any ambiguity. Which ambiguity? Where. Can you do precise  
explicit comment?



John Clark believes the reason for this is because without ambiguity  
Bruno Marchal's ideas are obvious nonsense.


An insult is purely suited to make a reasoning invalid. It weaken your  
point considerably, and demotivated to try to understand what you  
attempt to communicate.


You are just doing *very* bad philosophy, here, I'm afraid.



Bruno


People have known since the stone age that people could seldom make  
good predictions about what people would see next, but good  
prediction or bad prediction people always felt like the same people.


  John K Clark





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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 02:23, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 2 October 2013 00:46, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


On 01 Oct 2013, at 15:31, Pierz wrote:

Maybe. It would be a lot more profound if we definitely *could*  
reproduce

the brain's behaviour. The devil is in the detail as they say. But a
challenge to Chalmer's position has occurred to me. It seems to me  
that
Bruno has convincingly argued that *if* comp holds, then  
consciousness
supervenes on the computation, not on the physical matter. But  
functionalism
suggests that what counts is the output, not the manner in which  
it as
arrived at. That is to say, the brain or whatever neural subunit  
or computer
is doing the processing is a black box. You input something and  
then read
the output, but the intervening steps don't matter. Consider what  
this might

mean in terms of a brain.




That's not clear to me. The question is "output of what". If it is  
the entie

subject, this is more behaviorism than functionalism.
Putnam's functionalism makes clear that we have to take the output  
of the

neurons into account.
Comp is functionalism, but with the idea that we don't know the  
level of
substitution, so it might be that we have to take into account the  
oputput
of the gluons in our atoms (so comp makes clear that it only ask  
for the
existence of a level of substitution, and then show that no machine  
can know
for sure its subst. level, making Putnam's sort of functionalism a  
bit

fuzzy).





Let's say a vastly advanced alien species comes to earth. It looks  
at our
puny little brains and decides to make one to fool us. This  
constructed
person/brain receives normal conversational input and outputs  
conversation
that it knows will perfectly mimic a human being. But in fact the  
computer
doing this processing is vastly superior to the human brain. It's  
like a
modern PC emulating a TRS-80, except much more so. When it  
computes/thinks
up a response, it draws on a vast amount of knowledge,  
intelligence and
creativity and accesses qualia undreamed of by a human. Yet its  
response
will completely fool any normal human and will pass Turing tests  
till the

cows come home. What this thought experiment shows is that, while
half-qualia may be absurd, it most certainly is possible to  
reproduce the
outputs of a brain without replicating its qualia. It might have  
completely

different qualia, just as a very good actor's emotions can't be
distinguished from the real thing, even though his or her internal
experience is quite different. And if qualia can be quite  
different even

though the functional outputs are the same, this does seem to leave
functionalism in something of a quandary. All we can say is that  
there must
be some kind of qualia occurring, rather a different result from  
what
Chalmers is claiming. When we extend this type of scenario to  
artificial
neurons or partial brain prostheses as in Chamer's paper, we  
quickly run up
against perplexing problems. Imagine the advanced alien provides  
these
prostheses. It takes the same inputs and generates the same  
correct outputs,
but it processes those inputs within a much vaster, more complex  
system.
Does the brain utilizing this advanced prosthesis experience a  
kind of
expanded consciousness because of this, without that difference  
being
detectable? Or do the qualia remain somehow confined to the  
prosthesis
(whatever that means)? These crazy quandaries suggest to me that  
basically,

we don't know shit.



Hmm, I am not convinced. "Chalmers argument"  is that to get a  
philosophical
zombie, the fading argument shows that you have to go through half- 
qualia,
which is absurd. His goal (here) is to show that "no qualia" is  
absurd.


That the qualia can be different is known in the qualia literature,  
and is a

big open problem per se. But Chalmers argues only that "no qualia" is
absurd, indeed because it would needs some absurd notion of  
intermediate

half qualia.

My be I miss a point. Stathis can clarify this furher.


The argument is simply summarised thus: it is impossible even for God
to make a brain prosthesis that reproduces the I/O behaviour but has
different qualia. This is a proof of comp,


Hmm... I can agree, but eventually no God can make such a prothesis,  
only because the qualia is an attribute of the "immaterial person",  
and not of the brain, body, or computer.  Then the prosthesis will  
manifest the person if it emulates the correct level.
If not, even me, can do a brain prothesis that reproduce the  
consciousness of a sleeping dreaming person, ...
OK, I guess you mean the full I/O behavior, but for this, I am not  
even sure that my actual current brain can be enough, ... if only  
because "I" from the first person point of view is distributed in  
infinities of computations, and I cannot exclude that the qualia  
(certainly stable lasting qualia) might rely on that.






provided that brain physics
is computable, or functionalism if brain

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 02:19, LizR wrote:


On 3 October 2013 13:15, meekerdb  wrote:
Interestingly it appears that most coin tosses may be quantum  
random, arXiv:1212.0953v1 [gr-qc]


(snip)

I say "most" because I know that magicians train themselves to be  
able to flip a coin and catch it consistently.


Interesting. I think there's a slight bias (in non-magicians)  
towards the coin coming down one way or the other - either the same  
as it started or the opposite, I can't remember which (There could  
be an ig-nobel in finding out for sure...)


I gave this as exercise to my students some years ago (and I asked  
that to the FOR list too, but got no answer): how much have you to  
shake a box with a dice, so that the universe get into a superposition  
with the six outcomes.
Most quantitative rough computations shows that you don't have to  
shake it much, indeed. The quantum uncertain adds very quickly. Now, I  
would have said it is still take some time, and the fact that magician  
can trained themselves to get the wanted coin face makes me doubt that  
a simple throw can be enough (I have not yet find the time to look at  
the paper, busy days ...).



Bruno



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



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Oct 2013, at 01:38, chris peck wrote:


Hi Bruno

[JC] Because step 3 sucks.

[Bruno] Why? You have not yet make a convincing point on this.

His point is convincing me.


Could you explain it?

Bruno





regards.


> Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 23:18:07 +0200
> Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
> From: te...@telmomenezes.com
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
>
> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 9:37 PM, meekerdb   
wrote:

> > On 10/2/2013 7:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal  
 wrote:

> >>>
> >>> On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:
> >>>
> >>> However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce  
from the
> >>> logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective  
moment is
> >>> defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future  
states
> >>> (an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of  
brain

> >>> function, for example).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the  
subconscious.

> >>> If
> >>> one conceives a "subjective moment" as just what one is  
conscious of in

> >>> "a
> >>> moment" it doesn't encode very much of the past. And in the  
digital
> >>> simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any  
of it. So

> >>> I
> >>> think each conscious "moment" must have considerable extent in  
(physical)

> >>> time so as to overlap and provide continuity.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first  
person moment

> >>> can
> >>> be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
> >>> computational steps.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That  
last remark

> >>> is
> >>> quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to  
physics. I

> >>> think.
> >>
> >> Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:
> >>
> >> f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)
> >>
> >> So f(0) would go through the steps:
> >> (0)
> >> (0 1)
> >> (0 1 2)
> >> ...
> >>
> >> If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a  
moment, each
> >> step would contain a memory of the past, although the function  
I wrote

> >> is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
> >> Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a  
causality

> >> sequence: (0) -> (0 1) -> (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?
> >
> >
> > They form a sequence of states which overlap and so have an  
inherent order.
> > But that can't be the right model for conscious states because  
they don't
> > contain all past conscious states; in general their content is  
very sparse

> > relative memory.
>
> Sure but it would be trivial to define some recursive function that
> generates a sequence of states with sparse or even distorted  
memories
> of previous states. The recursive function could be as complex as  
you

> like.
>
> Telmo.
>
> > Brent
> >
> >
> > --
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 19:48, John Clark wrote:


On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is  
just as uninformative as your hi-tech version.


> Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an  
indeterminacy from coin throwing,


And the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than  
Washington for no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no  
law of logic that demands every event have a cause.



The point is that in this case the randomness is know to be due to the  
lack of precision in the data, or perhaps the quantum error addition.  
Not something like the self-duplication.






> You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been  
the Helsinki man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man


Agreed? I'm the one who introduced the idea to this list!


Well I assumed you were agreeing with yourself.



And I was very surprised that I even had to talk about such a  
rudimentary concept to a bunch of people who fancy themselves  
philosophers.


> he has just been duplicated

Yes.

> and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.

Please note, if the following seems clunky it's because it contains  
no pronouns, but a inelegant prose style is the price that must be  
payed when writing philosophically about personal identity and  
duplicating chambers:


What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a  
100% chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man  
because the Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki  
Man will turn into the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw  
Washington, and a 100% chance that the first person view of the  
Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY of Helsinki because otherwise the  
first person view of the Helsinki Man would not be the first person  
view of the Helsinki man.


And before Bruno Marchal rebuts this by saying John Clark is  
confusing peas with some other sort of peas please clearly explain  
exactly what question concerning personal identity has a  
indeterminate answer. AND DO SO WITHOUT USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS WITH  
NO CLEAR REFERENT!


I keep repeating that the indeterminacy is not related to personal  
identity, and that the indeterminacy is not bearing on who personal  
identity, given that with comp we know in advance that we are both  
copies.
But we know in advance that each copies can only see one city, and not  
both, and so the immediate result of the self-localization cannot be  
predicted by the guy in Helsinki.


You are playing with words, to deny a simple and obvious fact.





>> if you change the meaning of the personal pronoun "I" you can  
change the probability to 100% for both cities. But no matter what  
"I" means it will always be the case that the man who sees Moscow  
will be the Moscow man.


> Sure. But this does not help to predict. As you have admitted the  
probabilistic equivalence with your low tech coin throwing


Who cares? I'm not interested in prediction


You are interested in something else, just stop saying that there is  
flaw in a reasoning which *is* concerned with prediction.





and certainly not a prediction about which way a coin will fall, I'm  
interested in the nature of personal identity,


That's another thread, and the UDA can bring light to that.



and correct predictions have zero effect on that, exactly the same  
as incorrect predictions do.


> So please, read the step 4

I never read step 4 of any proof unless I thoroughly understand step  
3.


I have no clue, and I think that nobody has any clue about what you  
fail to understand. You oscillate between "not new and trivial", and  
"wrong", like if you were stuck in a loop.


Bruno






  John K Clark



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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 21:30, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/2/2013 6:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:09, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/1/2013 4:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Note also that the expression "computation have qualia" can be  
misleading. A computation has no qualia, strictly speaking. Only  
a person supported by an infinity of computation can be said to  
have qualia, or to live qualia.


Why an infinity of computation??


Because the FPI bears on arithmetic, which contains the running of  
all universal machine implementing your code, below your  
substitution level.


With comp you can attach a mind to some body, but you cannot attach  
one token body to a mind, you can attach only an infinities of such  
bodies, through the interference of all computations which realize  
them in arithmetic.






That would preclude my building an intelligent robot having  
qualia, since it's computations would always be finite.  And I  
doubt there is room in my head for infinite computations -  
certainly not digital ones.


You are right. We cannot build intelligent being with qualia. The  
computer, and the 3p-robot, does not create that consciousness, it  
will only help a consciousness, which is already in Platonia, to be  
able to manifest itself relatively  to you, with the same  
statistic for your and the robot continuations.


When a consciousness is not manifested, what is it's content?


Good question. Difficult. Sometimes ago, I would have said that  
consciousness exists only in manifested form.
But I am much less sure about that, and such consciousness state   
might be something like heavenly bliss or hellish terror, depending on  
the path where you would lost the ability of manifesting yourself.


Bruno





Brent



It is confusing, but this is because we tend to associate mind to  
brain or robot, but mind is an attribute of person, and a brain or  
a body is only needed for a relative purpose.


Bruno




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



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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 20:48, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/2/2013 2:04 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 10:09:03AM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/1/2013 4:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Note also that the expression "computation have qualia" can be
misleading. A computation has no qualia, strictly speaking. Only a
person supported by an infinity of computation can be said to have
qualia, or to live qualia.

Why an infinity of computation??  That would preclude my building an
intelligent robot having qualia, since it's computations would
always be finite.  And I doubt there is room in my head for infinite
computations - certainly not digital ones.


He is alluding to the universal dovetailer here, which contains an
infinite number of distinct computations that implement any given
conscious state.

However, it is not clear that it is necessary for it to be infinite -
in a nonrebust world that doesn't contain a UD, we still consider the
possbility of conscious computations in the MGA.


Yes, I know what he is alluding to.  But if it really does take all  
those infinite threads of computation to realize conscious states,  
then I think that is the same as saying it takes the underlying  
physics of a brain (or computer) to realize consciousness.  But then  
Bruno's program of explaining things from computation hasn't avoided  
relying on the physical. ??


It just mean that human consciousness rely on the physical, but the  
physical itself relies on relative statistics made on infinities of  
computation + the self-referential logical view point. I gave the  
equation; when on the left side you have something defining the  
physical, and on the right side, purely logico-arithmetical notions.
I guess we will come back (as I have already given those equations)  
soon or later. It is quite technical (as we can expected).


Bruno


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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 22:12, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/2/2013 9:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I agree with Brent though on this. Your UDA proceeds on the basis  
that a computer in a single reality (not an infinite sum of  
calculations - that comes later) can have a 1p.


Yes. It has 1p, it is not a zombie. But that 1p, for him, is really  
defined by a cloud of similar and variant corresponding to its  
indeterminacy domain in the universal dovetailing (= already in a  
tiny part of arithmetic).


And doesn't this cloud correspond to the fuzzy, quantum description  
of the underlying physics, i.e. the quantum state of the brain.  And  
isn't it, per Tegmark, quasi-classical.


Hopefully. because if it is not, it means that either  
computationalism, or quantum mechanics is wrong.


Bruno



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Re: A challenge for Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 19:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 12:26:45 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 02 Oct 2013, at 06:56, Pierz wrote:




On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 12:46:17 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:
Then the reasoning shows (at a meta-level, made possible with the  
assumption used) how consciousness and beliefs (more or less  
deluded) in physical realities develop in arithmetic.


Are 'beliefs in' physical realities the same as experiencing the  
realism of public physics though? For instance, I believe that if I  
should avoid driving recklessly in the same way as I would in a  
driving game as I would in my actual car. Because my belief that the  
consequences of a real life collision are more severe than a game  
collision, I would drive more conservatively in real life. That's  
all ok, but a belief about consequences would not generate realistic  
qualia. If someone held a gun to my head while I play the racing  
game, the game would not become any more realistic. I always feel  
like there is an equivalence between belief and qualia which is  
being implied here that is not the case. It's along the lines of  
assuming that a hypnotic state can fully replace reality. If that  
were the case, of course, everybody would be lining up to get  
hypnotized.There is some permeability there, but I think it's  
simplistic to imply that the aggregate of all qualia arises purely  
from the arbitrary tokenization of beliefs.



Unless the tokenization is made explicit, and then your nuance should  
be catured by the nuance between (Bp & Dt, inteeligible matter) and  
(Bp & Dt & p, sensible matter).







But that's the mathematical (arithmetical) part. In UDA it is just  
shown that if comp is true (an hypothesis on consciousness) then  
physics is a branch of arithmetic. More precisely a branch of the  
ideally self-referentially correct machine's theology. (always in  
the Greek sense).


There is no pretense that comp is true, but if it is true, the  
correct "QM" cannot postulate the wave, it has to derive the wave  
from the numbers. That's what UDA shows: a problem. AUDA (the  
machine's interview) provides the only path (by Gödel, Löb, Solovay)  
capable of relating the truth and all machine's points of view.


There will be many ways to extract physics from the numbers, but  
interviewing the self-introspecting universal machine is the only  
way to get not just the laws of physics, but also why it can hurt,  
and why a part of that seems to be necessarily not functional.


I don't think that an interview with anyone can explain why they can  
hurt, unless you have already naturalized an expectation of pain. In  
other words, if we don't presume that universal machine experiences  
anything, there is no need to invent qualia or experience to justify  
any mathematical relation. If mathematically all that you need is  
non-functional, secret kinds of variable labels to represent machine  
states, I don't see why we should assume they are qualitative. If  
anything, the unity of arithmetic truth would demand a single  
sensory channel that constitutes all possible I/O.


But then you get zombies, which make no sense with comp. But you are  
right, I have to attribute consciousness to all universal machines, at  
the start. That consciousness will be a computer science theoretical  
semantical fixed point, that is something that the machine can "know",  
but cannot prove ("know" in a larger sense than the Theaetetus'  
notion, it is more an unconscious bet than a belief or proof). (Cf  
also Helmholtz, and the idea that perception is a form of  
extrapolation).


Bruno



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 Oct 2013, at 16:03, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
(an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
function, for example).


But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the  
subconscious.  If
one conceives a "subjective moment" as just what one is conscious  
of in "a

moment" it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of  
it.  So I
think each conscious "moment" must have considerable extent in  
(physical)

time so as to overlap and provide continuity.


But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person  
moment can

be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.



Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
computational steps.


OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last  
remark is
quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to  
physics. I

think.


Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:

f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)

So f(0) would go through the steps:
(0)
(0 1)
(0 1 2)
...

If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a moment, each
step would contain a memory of the past, although the function I wrote
is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a causality
sequence: (0) -> (0 1) -> (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?


I have not problem. Many definitions of the natural numbers proceed  
like that, like 0 = { }, and n+1 = n union {n}.


You could have asked if the sequence of natural numbers does not  
already define a sort of time, and I would have answered  
affirmatively.  Of course, as you say it is a platonic static notion  
of time, and it is not related a priori to the physical time.


All computations defined a notion of time, through their notion of  
steps, and which is inherited from the sequence of the natural numbers.


Physical time, on the contrary is most plausibly a quantum notion, and  
should normally emerge (assuming comp) from the interference of all  
computations + the stable first person (plural) points of view.


Bruno


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



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Re: Aaronson's paper

[LizR]

I'm still slogging through Scott Aaronson's paper, and have now reached
page 37. It looks as though there are still lots of interesting matters to
be discussed, but there is something I already have a problem with that
seems central to what he is saying, namely what is the significance of
Knightian uncertainty? He has pointed out that it's a valid objection to
free will being in any useful sense free that all physical processes are
either deterministic or random (the usual dilemma), but then goes on to say
that we can get around this if some processes rely on "Knightian
uncertainty". These are, if I understand correctly, quantum states that go
back through a causal chain to an initial condition of the universe. These
states ("freebits") cannot be determined by any measurement. And that
therefore it's possible that some physical systems contain a source of
irreducible uncertainty.

To which I have to say - so what? What is the crucial distinction between a
source of randomness that happens to go back to the big bang, and one that
doesn't? How does this in any way get around the argument that free will
isn't usefully free if it merely relies on determinism and randomness?

I will read on, but I feel that my hope of learning why this type of
randomness is better than anyone else's is going to go unsatisfied, because
I think Scott thinks he's already explained why, and I didn't get it.

By the way, it also occurs to me that as time goes on, there will be less
and less freebits around, since he says they can get turned into "ordinary
bits" by various processes. So does that mean that a person born in the
distant future will have less free will than one born now?

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Wittgenstein in Wonderland, Einstein under Glass

[Craig Weinberg]

Something I posted 
yesterday
.

If I understand the idea correctly – that is, if there is enough of the 
idea which is not private to Ludwig Wittgenstein that it can be understood 
by anyone in general or myself in particular, then I think that he may have 
mistake the concrete nature of experienced privacy for an abstract concept 
of *isolation*. From Philosophical Investigations:

The words of this language are to refer to what can be known only to the 
speaker; to his immediate, private, sensations. So another cannot 
understand the language. 
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/

To begin with, craniopagus (brain conjoined) 
twins,
 
do actually share sensations that we would consider private.

The results of the test did not surprise the family, who had long suspected 
that even when one girl’s vision was angled away from the television, she 
was laughing at the images flashing in front of her sister’s eyes. The 
sensory exchange, they believe, extends to the girls’ taste buds: Krista 
likes ketchup, and Tatiana does not, something the family discovered when 
Tatiana tried to scrape the condiment off her own tongue, even when she was 
not eating it.

There should be no reason that it would not be technologically feasible to 
eventually export the connectivity which craniopagus twins experience 
through some kind of neural implant or neuroelectric multiplier. There are 
already 
computersthat
 can be controlled directly through the brain.

Brain-computer interfaces that monitor brainwaves through EEG have already 
made their way to the market. NeuroSky’s headset uses EEG readings as well 
as electromyography to pick up signals about a person’s level of 
concentration to control toys and games (see “Next-Generation Toys Read 
Brain Waves, May Help Kids 
Focus”).
 
Emotiv Systems sells a headset that reads EEG and facial expression to 
enhance the experience of gaming (see “Mind-Reading Game 
Controller
”).

All that would be required in principle would be to reverse the technology 
to make them run in the receiving direction (computer-brain) and then 
imitate the kinds of neural connections which brain conjoined twins have 
that allow them to share sensations. The neural connections themselves 
would not be aware of anything on a human level, so it would not need to be 
public in the sense that sensations would be available without the benefit 
of a living human brain, only that the awareness could, to some extent, 
could incite a version of itself in an experientially merged environment.

Because of the success and precision of science has extended our knowledge 
so far beyond our native instruments, sometimes contradicting them 
successfully, we tend to believe that the view that diagnostic technology 
provides is superior to, or serves as a replacement for our own awareness. 
While it is true that our own experience cannot reveal the same kinds of 
things that an fMRI or EEG can, I see that as a small detail compared to 
the wealth of value that our own awareness provides about the brain, the 
body, and the worlds we live in. Natural awareness is the ultimate 
diagnostic technology. Even though we can certainly benefit from a view 
outside of our own, there’s really no good reason to assume that what we 
feel, think, and experience isn’t a deeper level of insight into the nature 
of biochemical physics than we could possibly gain otherwise. We *are*evidence 
that physics does something besides collide particles in a void. 
Our experience is richer, smarter, and more empirically factual than what 
an instrument outside of our body can generate on its own. The problem is 
that our experience is so rich and so convoluted with private, proprietary 
knots, that we can’t share very much of it. We, and the universe, are made 
of private language. It is the public reduction of privacy which is 
temporary and localized…it’s just localized as a lowest common denominator.

While It is true that at this stage in our technical development, 
subjective experience can only be reported in a way which is limited by 
their local social skills, there is no need to invoke a permanent ban on 
the future of communication and trans-private experience. Instead of trying 
to report on a subjective experience, it could be possible to share that 
experience through a neurological interface – or at least to exchange some 
empathic connection that would go farther than public communication.

If I had some psychedelic experience which allowed me to see a new primary

Re: A challenge for Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, October 3, 2013 11:48:40 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 10/3/2013 4:36 PM, Pierz wrote:
>  
>   
>>  
> The universe doesn't seem to be too fussed about immense and inescapable 
> redundancy.
>
>
> Of course the universe doesn't care when the immense and inescapable 
> redundancy is in our model of it.
>

Yet under MWI, the multiverse would have to 'care' enough to know the 
difference between unity and multiplicity. The idea of a multiverse or 
universe is also in our model of it, but since we too are made of the same 
elementary physics that everything else in the universe is made of, then 
the difference between any model we have of the universe and any modeling 
capacity that can exist in the universe could only be one of degree not of 
kind. 

All models make sense because they are based on some sense that the 
universe makes. Whatever that elementary sense is cannot be a blind 
statistical exhaustion. As far as I can tell, it must be coherent, 
consistent, sensitive and creative. Once you have coherence and 
sensitivity, then you can mask it with insensitivity to generate 
multiplicity, but it might be more like perceptual fill-in on every level - 
a pseudo-multiplicity rather than a Planck level, granular realism. 
Granularity is a model generated by visual and tactile perception as far as 
I know.

Craig

 

>
> Brent
>  

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Re: The canal effect

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/10/2 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 02 Oct 2013, at 10:35, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
>
>
>
> 2013/10/1 Bruno Marchal 
>
>>
>> On 30 Sep 2013, at 15:56, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>>
>> Not exactly.  And that depends on what we call as science. Many called
>> sciences are pure rubbish, while some other disciplines outside of what is
>> now called science are much more interesting. I´, in favor of good science
>> and good philosophy. I consider good whatever knowledge endavour that is
>> not in the hands of wishful thinking.  There are too much disciplines that
>> call themselves sciences, as well as others outside that are little more
>> that wishful thinking.
>>
>>
>> Good philosophers are scientists (the Greeks, Maudlin, etc.)
>> Good scientists are philosophers (Einstein, Gödel, etc.)
>>
>> In my youth, the academical philosophy nearby was Marxist propaganda, and
>> today, my opponents ask philosophers to criticize the work by authority, as
>> they admit not seeing one flaw. This makes me think that philosophy is the
>> place where argument per authority are still tolerated. This means that
>> philosophy is a tool to imitate institutionalized pseudo-religion.
>>
>> But above the vocabulary, we might try to just understand each others.
>> Personally, I see science as the perpetual fight against prejudices and any
>> form of certainties. Science is just the attitude of being able to doubt
>> and change their mind, and that spirit can be applied in any domain.
>>
>
> The problem with the word science is that it is also being contaminated,
> from outside and from inside of it.  in the same way that philosophy was in
> the past.
>
> It is natural. If you look at charlatans, advertising and different gurus,
> the world that they use most is "science" and "scientific". But lately
> sometimes I can not distinguish a scientist in search of fame from a
> charlatan.  And authoritarian arguments or at least abuse of authority are
> used also in all sciences. There is not such ideal and sane institution of
> human life that is free of humans. The whitest some institution is, the
> more it attract power seeking, inmoral and self deceptive people that will
> try to pervert the rules for his own benefit, and science.
>
>
>
> Some academies are just prostituted to rotten (sometime) politics, often
> just to get enough funding to survive.
>
> Money is not the problem. Black, obscure and grey money is the problem.
>
> Wait, this is indeed the most fundamental question!

The interaction of how knowledge interact with money and power in society
and convert itself in beliefs as a system that prevent further knowledge
must be an integral part of research.

For me this meta-knowledge about knowledge faith and power is a more
fundamental question than knowledge itself.

>
>
> These are facts that can be demonstrated with evolutionary game theory!!
>  Even in physical sciences is very hard to get along. Einstein not only was
> a genius, it was a strongly determined man that wanted to be heard.
>
>
> After reading Jammer's "Einstein and Religion", I would say he was a
> rather good theologian, partially heard and understood by some theologian
> (like Torrance, which, I was glad was aware of the trap of "natural
> theology").
> (Especially that my feeling is that somehow Torrance has been trapped, but
> then probably no more than Einstein itself.
>
> But Jammer eludes Everett, and even Gödel's solution to GR (the rotating
> universes, in which time travel is possible).
> (It is sad a he was rather fair with Everett in his book on the
> pohilosophy of QM)
>
>
> I like (in Pale Yourgrau's book on Einstein and Gödel's legacy)  when
> Gödel told Einstein "I don't believe in the natural science". He was more
> Platonist than I thought.
> But Gödel's missed Church thesis, and that his theorem might be the
> biggest chance for mechanist philosophy, and the Pythagorean version of
> Platonism. (Like me and Judson Webb, and some others (including Hofstadter)
> defend).
>
> At last I got an answer to a question I asked myself for a very long time:
> did Einstein understood at least that Gödel's theorem is a chance for a non
> trivial fundamental realism in mathematics or arithmetics.
> The answer is "yes", Einstein understood apparently that physics might not
> be the most fundamental science. But unlike Gödel, he will not conceive
> that theology might become a science (still less that it *was* a science at
> the beginning of science in occident).
>
> I recommend :)
>
> Jammer:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Religion-Theology-Max-Jammer/dp/069110297X
>
> Palle Yourgrau:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Time-Forgotten-Einstein/dp/0465092942
>
> Bruno
>
>
> Interesting. I´ll take a look although the natural theology  practised by
hard scientists is too much biased to hard science quiestions. I have
enough of this. I had enough of particles and turing machines. Now I want
to understand humans

>
>
>> Many texts in human science can easil