date:20140116


On 1/16/2014 5:49 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 7:31 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/16/2014 1:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 1/16/2014 10:06 AM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, mailto:spudboy...@aol.com>> wrote:

Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am 
plodding
through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out 
this
question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically 
traverse
into another universe, a parallel universe, and then back 
again? I do
not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic
quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the
ground, traveling there and back again?


Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze 
you on
Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us 
made
an exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and 
then they
thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is
impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything
physical, yet your consciousness did it.  For the same reason, 
someone in
an altogether different physical universe could do the same thing 
and
enable you to travel there. There would be no causal link, however, 
to
whatever memories you formed in that universe and whatever version 
of you
we create to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire
coincidence for us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches 
the
one the aliens in the distant land decided to freeze.

In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but 
only
between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a 
moment
before, that we don't notice it. You might be sitting there quietly 
in
Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually 
on
Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200
cyclical big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were 
just in.


But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by 
"you".


How so?  Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a 
particular
collection of atoms at a particular time and place?  "You" are something
different than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily.


You can't attach it to anything - or even to it's own history, since you
discard memories.  It has nothing to unify it into being an "it".


No memories were discarded in the above. In fact I specified that the brain 
states
be exactly equal at each freeze/remote thaw cycle.


OK, I missed that point.  But I still see no sense that can be made of a 
statement
like "You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one moment, 
then the
next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389"  Are you supposing that 
the Earth
you are sitting on has nothing to do with what future is more probable and 
that some
other Earth might be a more probable continuation -


Each one has an equal weight in my mind.

and in what sense it would an "other" Earth if it was compatible with you 
can your
memories?


In no subjective sense are they different, only from a God's eye view could you see the 
difference between them. We might not have a way to keep a tally of how many collapse 
cycles our universe has undergone, but if someone were simulating the physics of this 
universe they could count the number, and how frequently exact replicas of Earth, or 
you, appear in them.


But if it were an exact replica it would be the same one - especially in a 
computational/information model.  Remember Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles.


Brent

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Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/16/2014 4:33 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
I asked previously if any of you math whizzes could give me the equation to calculate 
the radius of the universe from omega, the curvature, but no one could. I'm still hoping 
to get the equation.


You can't calculate one from the other.  Empirically, based on the WMAP data, the universe 
is spatially flat.  The radius of the part of the universe we're able to see is now (in 
cosmic time) about 47e9 light years.


Brent

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness


On 1/16/2014 4:55 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 13 January 2014 04:42, Telmo Menezes  wrote:


I'm a lump of dumb matter arranged in a special way and I am
conscious, so I don't see why another lump of dumb matter arranged in
a special way might not also be conscious. What is it about that idea
that you see as not only wrong, but ridiculous?

I'm sorry I repeat this answer so many times, but this claim is also
made so many times. The main problem I see with this idea is that no
progress has been made so far in explaining how a lump of matter
becomes conscious, as opposed to just being a zombie mechanically
performing complex behaviors. Insisting that such an explanation must
exist instead of entertaining other models of reality strikes me as a
form of mysticism.


It's speculation, just like Bruno's speculation that physics can be recovered from the UD 
and modal logic.


Brent


It may be a problem that I'm not producing a theory of consciousness
to your satisfaction, but which part of the claim I made do you
actually disagree with?



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Re: My usual crossword challenge

2014-01-16 Thread Russell Standish

Yeah - I get Kurt Goedel (oe counts as one letter in German script),
but usually I find cryptic crosswords infuriating :).

Cheers

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 08:52:50PM +1300, LizR wrote:
> Everyone on this list should be able to get 6 down!!!
> 
> 
> On 14 January 2014 20:51, LizR  wrote:
> 
> > There must be someone out there in ultra-brainy-land who likes solving
> > cryptic crosswords!
> >
> >
> > http://crossswords.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/its-hard-to-explain-puns-to-kleptomaniacs-because-they-always-take-things-literally/
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
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-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What are wavefunctions?


On 1/16/2014 4:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 5:31 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/16/2014 10:32 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment 
you
don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical 
instantiation
as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink on a page.


And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the 
radioactive
decay?


They have common events in their past light cone.


But is that enough to explain the link? It permits a non-superluminal link, but what is 
that link, if not some spooky, invisible, causal-agreement-enforcening mechanism?


Dunno, but it needn't be spooky; since the detectors, polarizers, emitters, experiment, 
are all macroscopic and semi-classical they presumably are entangled with everything in 
their past light cones via ordinary QM particle/fields - that's the hypothesis of how 
decoherence can split the Everett world into quasi-classical ones we can experience.


Brent




What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment?


Why are there regularities that can be represented by the laws of phyiscs?  
Dunno.


But here, there regularities are not from following from any laws, at least not 
compressible ones.


Jason


Brent

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 1/16/2014 4:28 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 16 January 2014 23:08, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Jan 2014, at 09:11, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch wrote:

The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel
CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that
a
computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost
certainly
correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a
computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or
entire planet and all the people on it.

Jason

I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain
is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of
any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable.
Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there
is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.

OK. But in a non standard sense of functionalism, as in the philosophy of
mind, functionalism is used for a subset of computationalism. Functionalism
is computationalism with some (unclear) susbtitution level in mind (usually
the neurons).

Now, I would like to see a precise definition of "your" functionalism. If
you take *all* functions, it becomes trivially true, I think. But any
restriction on the accepted functions, can perhaps lead to some interesting
thesis. For example, the functions computable with this or that oracles, the
continuous functions, etc.

Briefly, computationalism is the idea that you could replace the brain
with a Turing machine and you would preserve the mind. This would not
be possible if there is non-computable physics in the brain,

Just to clarify, as I understand Bruno's theory, there is non-computable physics in the
brain. In fact physics is non-computable in general, BUT the mind is computable, i.e. the
level of substitution that preserves the person is above the fundamental physics level. I
actually think this last is dubious.

Brent

as for
example Penrose proposes. But in that case, you could replace the
brain with whatever other type of device is needed, such as a
hypercomputer, and still preserve the mind. I would say that is
consistent with functionalism but not computationalism. The idea that
replicating the function of the brain by whatever means would not
preserve the mind, i.e. would result in a philosophical zombie, is
inconsistent with functionalism.

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 14:17, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

> Historically, AI researchers did not consider the question of whether
> a computer that behaves intelligently was conscious, on the assumption
> that intelligence was observable while consciousness was not and
> therefore not a fit subject for scientists.


Hence the Turing test.


> This makes it a bit
> confusing when terms such as strong AI/ weak AI are appropriated by
> philosophers such as Searle.
>

Yes, I was finding it a bit confusing, especially since the first thing I
got on to was Searle's "Strong AI hypothesis" !

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 7:31 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 1:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>   On 1/16/2014 10:06 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM,  wrote:
>>>
 Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding
 through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this
 question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into
 another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran
 in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations,
 but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back
 again?


>>>  Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you
>>> on Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made
>>> an exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they
>>> thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is
>>> impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical,
>>> yet your consciousness did it.  For the same reason, someone in an
>>> altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable
>>> you to travel there.  There would be no causal link, however, to whatever
>>> memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you we create
>>> to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for
>>> us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in
>>> the distant land decided to freeze.
>>>
>>>  In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only
>>> between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment
>>> before, that we don't notice it.  You might be sitting there quietly in
>>> Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually on
>>> Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical
>>> big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in.
>>>
>>>
>>>  But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by
>>> "you".
>>>
>>
>>  How so?  Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a
>> particular collection of atoms at a particular time and place?  "You" are
>> something different than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily.
>>
>>
>>  You can't attach it to anything - or even to it's own history, since
>> you discard memories.  It has nothing to unify it into being an "it".
>>
>
>  No memories were discarded in the above. In fact I specified that the
> brain states be exactly equal at each freeze/remote thaw cycle.
>
>
> OK, I missed that point.  But I still see no sense that can be made of a
> statement like "You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one
> moment, then the next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389"  Are
> you supposing that the Earth you are sitting on has nothing to do with what
> future is more probable and that some other Earth might be a more probable
> continuation -
>

Each one has an equal weight in my mind.


> and in what sense it would an "other" Earth if it was compatible with you
> can your memories?
>

In no subjective sense are they different, only from a God's eye view could
you see the difference between them.  We might not have a way to keep a
tally of how many collapse cycles our universe has undergone, but if
someone were simulating the physics of this universe they could count the
number, and how frequently exact replicas of Earth, or you, appear in them.

Jason

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Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp

On 1/16/2014 2:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

No, you are missing the point. It is not that they are similar enough to be
you, it
is that they share everything that was necessary for /you /to be present in
them.
Your current perspective does not rule out that you are seeing from their
eyes,

Then why don't I always win at poker?

You don't, you only think you don't always win because view of yourself is too
limited.

I should get a good view of myself looking out of everyone else's eyes. But my present
perspective doesn't rule out that it's not my present perspective. Hmm, why don't we just
change the meaning of ALL the words.

just as seeing only one branch does not mean the wave function collapsed,
and nor
does seeing only one time prove presentism. The simpler hypothesis by far
is that
you are born as all of them,

Simpler, but contradicted by observation. "God did it." is even simpler.

Thinking universalism is contradicted by observation is the same error in thinking block
time is contradicted because I'm only aware of one point in time.

But I'm not aware of just one point in time. I'm aware of memories and of
duration.

Taking into account indexicals you can overcome many of the illusions our brain plays on
us: making us falsely believe our point in time, branch in the many-worlds, or ego is
somehow special.

Exactly my point. If your ego isn't special, then YOU don't exist.

rather than believing there is some special or privileged person which is
the only
person in the whole universe whose entire life /you /will experience.

Except that is the definition of "you": the life you experience

Right, and that experience isn't limited to the of some singular physical continuation
of some biological organism.

But it's limited to what I experience. Remember the common slogan on this list:
everything=nothing. I think it applies to experience too.

Brent

Re: Tegmark's New Book

On 1/16/2014 1:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, meekerdb > wrote:

On 1/16/2014 10:06 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, mailto:spudboy...@aol.com>> wrote:

Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding
through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this
question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse
into
another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do
not mran
in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum
calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground,
traveling
there and back again?

Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on
Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made
an
exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they
thawed
you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is impossible
for
matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical, yet your
consciousness did it. For the same reason, someone in an altogether
different
physical universe could do the same thing and enable you to travel there.
There would be no causal link, however, to whatever memories you formed in

that universe and whatever version of you we create to unthaw and bring
you
back, it would be again an entire coincidence for us to get it just
right so
the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in the distant land decided
to freeze.

In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only
between
distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment before,
that we
don't notice it. You might be sitting there quietly in Earth
#313812031 one
moment, then the next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389
(which was
an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical big crunch and big bang
cycles)
from the moment you were just in.

But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by
"you".

How so? Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a particular
collection of atoms at a particular time and place? "You" are something
different
than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily.

You can't attach it to anything - or even to it's own history, since you
discard
memories. It has nothing to unify it into being an "it".

No memories were discarded in the above. In fact I specified that the brain states be
exactly equal at each freeze/remote thaw cycle.

OK, I missed that point. But I still see no sense that can be made of a statement like
"You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant
you are actually on Earth #173119389" Are you supposing that the Earth you are sitting on
has nothing to do with what future is more probable and that some other Earth might be a
more probable continuation - and in what sense it would an "other" Earth if it was
compatible with you can your memories?

Brent

Jason
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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 12:07, LizR  wrote:
> On 17 January 2014 14:00, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>>
>> At least *weak* AI would be possible. Weak AI means computers could do
>> everything we do but without necessarily being conscious. Strong AI
>> means they would also be conscious.
>>
> I checked the definition a short whle ago on Wikipedia  which
> equivocates, imho, saying consciousness is "Associated with" strong AI, and
> that Weak AI is basically "making computers do clever things" (with no
> pretension to being like humans).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI

Historically, AI researchers did not consider the question of whether
a computer that behaves intelligently was conscious, on the assumption
that intelligence was observable while consciousness was not and
therefore not a fit subject for scientists. This makes it a bit
confusing when terms such as strong AI/ weak AI are appropriated by
philosophers such as Searle.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 14:00, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

> At least *weak* AI would be possible. Weak AI means computers could do
> everything we do but without necessarily being conscious. Strong AI
> means they would also be conscious.
>
> I checked the definition a short whle ago on Wikipedia  which
equivocates, imho, saying consciousness is "Associated with" strong AI, and
that Weak AI is basically "making computers do clever things" (with no
pretension to being like humans).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 14:00, Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:49 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 17 January 2014 13:43, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>>
 On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
> straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
> a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
> would not be a zombie but a conscious being.
>
> I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a
 p-zombie? (And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious
 being, then clearly it *wasn't *a zombie...)

>>>
>>> I think he means that strong AI would be possible, and then strong AI +
>>> comp -> conscious programs.
>>>
>>
>> I think I see. Strong AI implies intelligent programmes, but not
>> necessarily conscious ones. However I'm still not sure about philosophical
>> zombies, which I believe mimic human beings completely without being
>> conscious.
>>
>
> Right, so if you think there can be intelligent programs and you believe
> zombies are impossible, then it implies computationalism.
>
> I guess so. It's just the "argument from incredulity" really, which I
admit doesn't stand up. I just can't imagine how a programme could imitate
a person convincingly for a long time without being conscious.

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 11:43, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>> On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
>>> straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
>>> a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
>>> would not be a zombie but a conscious being.
>>>
>> I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a p-zombie?
>> (And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious being, then
>> clearly it wasn't a zombie...)
>>
>
> I think he means that strong AI would be possible, and then strong AI + comp
> -> conscious programs.

At least *weak* AI would be possible. Weak AI means computers could do
everything we do but without necessarily being conscious. Strong AI
means they would also be conscious.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:49 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 January 2014 13:43, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>>

 I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
 straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
 a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
 would not be a zombie but a conscious being.

 I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a p-zombie?
>>> (And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious being,
>>> then clearly it *wasn't *a zombie...)
>>>
>>
>> I think he means that strong AI would be possible, and then strong AI +
>> comp -> conscious programs.
>>
>
> I think I see. Strong AI implies intelligent programmes, but not
> necessarily conscious ones. However I'm still not sure about philosophical
> zombies, which I believe mimic human beings completely without being
> conscious.
>
>
>
Right, so if you think there can be intelligent programs and you believe
zombies are impossible, then it implies computationalism.

Jason

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

On 13 January 2014 04:42, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>> I'm a lump of dumb matter arranged in a special way and I am
>> conscious, so I don't see why another lump of dumb matter arranged in
>> a special way might not also be conscious. What is it about that idea
>> that you see as not only wrong, but ridiculous?
>
> I'm sorry I repeat this answer so many times, but this claim is also
> made so many times. The main problem I see with this idea is that no
> progress has been made so far in explaining how a lump of matter
> becomes conscious, as opposed to just being a zombie mechanically
> performing complex behaviors. Insisting that such an explanation must
> exist instead of entertaining other models of reality strikes me as a
> form of mysticism.

It may be a problem that I'm not producing a theory of consciousness
to your satisfaction, but which part of the claim I made do you
actually disagree with?

-- 
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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

On 13 January 2014 02:23, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> On 12 Jan 2014, at 06:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


>> I'm a lump of dumb matter arranged in a special way and I am
>> conscious,
>
>
> I think this is misleading. Are you really a dumb of matter? I think that
> your body can be a lump of dumb matter, but that *you* are a person, using
> that dumb of matter as a vehicle and mean to manifest yourself. In principle
> (assuming comp of course), you can change your body every morning (and as
> you have often explain your self, we do change our "lump of dumb matter"
> every n number of years.

Perhaps it is misleading to say that "I am" the dumb matter if my
consciousness is not necessarily attached to any particular matter.

>> so I don't see why another lump of dumb matter arranged in
>> a special way might not also be conscious.
>
>
> But here I agree with your point, although it is less misleading to consider
> the person as some immaterial entity (like a game, a program, memories,
> personality traits, ... no need of magical soul with wings) owning your
> body.
> If the human would born directly fixed inside a car, they would also believe
> that their car is part of their body. Nature provides us with a body at
> birth, and that might be the reason why we tend to identify ourselves with
> our bodies, but comp, which I think you accept, shows the limit of this
> identification, imo.
> Eventually, the UDA shows that at a very fundamental level, bodies are only
> statistical machine's percepts, or statistical relative numbers percepts.
>
>
>
>
>> What is it about that idea
>> that you see as not only wrong, but ridiculous?
>
>
> It is not what I am saying here, to be sure.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 13:43, Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
>>> straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
>>> a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
>>> would not be a zombie but a conscious being.
>>>
>>> I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a p-zombie?
>> (And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious being,
>> then clearly it *wasn't *a zombie...)
>>
>
> I think he means that strong AI would be possible, and then strong AI +
> comp -> conscious programs.
>

I think I see. Strong AI implies intelligent programmes, but not
necessarily conscious ones. However I'm still not sure about philosophical
zombies, which I believe mimic human beings completely without being
conscious.

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

On 13 January 2014 00:00, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, January 12, 2014 12:21:48 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm a lump of dumb matter arranged in a special way and I am
>> conscious, so I don't see why another lump of dumb matter arranged in
>> a special way might not also be conscious. What is it about that idea
>> that you see as not only wrong, but ridiculous?
>
>
> Water is just dumb matter arranged in a special way. Why not just drink
> chlorine instead? Liquid is liquid.

You could turn chlorine into water by rearranging the subatomic
particles. You have argued that it is not possible to create a living
cell by arranging atoms.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 5:31 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 10:32 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>  They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment
>> you don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical
>> instantiation as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink
>> on a page.
>>
>
>  And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the
> radioactive decay?
>
>
> They have common events in their past light cone.
>

But is that enough to explain the link? It permits a non-superluminal link,
but what is that link, if not some spooky, invisible,
causal-agreement-enforcening mechanism?


>
>  What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment?
>
>
> Why are there regularities that can be represented by the laws of
> phyiscs?  Dunno.
>

But here, there regularities are not from following from any laws, at least
not compressible ones.

Jason


>
> Brent
>
>  --
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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>
>>
>> I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
>> straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
>> a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
>> would not be a zombie but a conscious being.
>>
>> I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a p-zombie?
> (And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious being,
> then clearly it *wasn't *a zombie...)
>
>
I think he means that strong AI would be possible, and then strong AI +
comp -> conscious programs.

Jason

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 13:34, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

>
> I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
> straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
> a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
> would not be a zombie but a conscious being.
>
> I don't see this. Why would it at least be possible to make a p-zombie?
(And if you can show by a further argument that it's a conscious being,
then clearly it *wasn't *a zombie...)

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 17 January 2014 01:17, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>
>> On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>>
>>> The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel
>>> CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that
>>> a
>>> computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost
>>> certainly
>>> correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a
>>> computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or
>>> entire planet and all the people on it.
>>>
>>> Jason
>>
>>
>> I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
>> metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain
>> is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
>> digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of
>> any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
>> including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
>> that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
>> using a computer.
>
>
> How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that philosophical
> zombies make logical sense at all.

I meant that if the physics of the brain is computable it follows as a
straighforward deduction that it would *at least* be possible to make
a philosophical zombie. It is then a further argument to show that it
would not be a zombie but a conscious being.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Stephen,

We have to be very careful when we try to 'measure' p-time because it is 
prior to dimensionality since it provides the processor cycles in which 
dimensionality and thus measure is computed and is the locus or substrate 
of those computations. 

We all experience the present moment of p-time all the time as the basic 
experience of our existence. But, when we try to measure it we just end up 
measuring clock time instead, because clock time continually flows through 
the present moment at different relativistic rates depending on 
circumstance, but it always flows in the same presence of reality, which is 
the present moment of p-time.

The computations that take place in p-time compute all change, and the 
relativistic rates of all that change. So since the mechanisms of clocks is 
part of what is being computed it is natural that clocks only read the 
compute rates of change = clock times.

As I stated previously though I do see one way to measure p-time. Since 
p-time is the radial dimension of our hyperspherical universe, and it is 
the continued extension of that radial dimension that accounts for the 
happening measured by clock time to flow through the present moment, then 
the curvature of the universe, omega, should give us the p-time radius.

Thus my theory predicts that omega will be a positive number very very 
slightly >1, which corresponds to a finite hyperspherical universe with no 
edges.

I asked previously if any of you math whizzes could give me the equation to 
calculate the radius of the universe from omega, the curvature, but no one 
could. I'm still hoping to get the equation.

Edgar

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 7:15:21 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   Can you describe the construction or basic mechanism that one would use 
> to measure P-time?
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
> Stephen,
>
> Yes, of course p-time is observable. The present moment of p-time is the 
> present moment we all observe our entire existence within from birth to 
> death.
>
> It's the most fundamental and persistent of observations...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 3:28:06 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   Is P-time observable?
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>
> Stephen,
>
> PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are 
> talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is 
> distinct and is prior to any metrics...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the 
> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with 
> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* 
> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There 
> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each 
> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint 
> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common 
> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the 
> same physical system? More than one!
>
>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism 
> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general 
> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth 
> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. 
>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks 
> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the 
> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of 
> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all 
> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire 
> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be 
> "computed".
>
>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal 
> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order 
> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a 
> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time 
> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point 
> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the 
> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point. 
>   
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
> 
> ...

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Fo

Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On 16 January 2014 23:08, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> On 16 Jan 2014, at 09:11, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch  wrote:
>>>
>>> The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel
>>> CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that
>>> a
>>> computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost
>>> certainly
>>> correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a
>>> computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or
>>> entire planet and all the people on it.
>>>
>>> Jason
>>
>>
>> I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
>> metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain
>> is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
>> digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of
>> any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
>> including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
>> that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
>> using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
>> physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable.
>> Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
>> figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there
>> is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
>> computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.
>
>
> OK. But in a non standard sense of functionalism, as in the philosophy of
> mind, functionalism is used for a subset of computationalism. Functionalism
> is computationalism with some (unclear) susbtitution level in mind (usually
> the neurons).
>
> Now, I would like to see a precise definition of "your" functionalism. If
> you take *all* functions, it becomes trivially true, I think. But any
> restriction on the accepted functions, can perhaps lead to some interesting
> thesis. For example, the functions computable with this or that oracles, the
> continuous functions, etc.

Briefly, computationalism is the idea that you could replace the brain
with a Turing machine and you would preserve the mind. This would not
be possible if there is non-computable physics in the brain, as for
example Penrose proposes. But in that case, you could replace the
brain with whatever other type of device is needed, such as a
hypercomputer, and still preserve the mind. I would say that is
consistent with functionalism but not computationalism. The idea that
replicating the function of the brain by whatever means would not
preserve the mind, i.e. would result in a philosophical zombie, is
inconsistent with functionalism.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Edgar,

  Can you describe the construction or basic mechanism that one would use
to measure P-time?


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Stephen,
>
> Yes, of course p-time is observable. The present moment of p-time is the
> present moment we all observe our entire existence within from birth to
> death.
>
> It's the most fundamental and persistent of observations...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 3:28:06 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   Is P-time observable?
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>>
>> Stephen,
>>
>> PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are
>> talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is
>> distinct and is prior to any metrics...
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the
>> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with
>> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one*
>> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There
>> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each
>> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint
>> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common
>> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the
>> same physical system? More than one!
>>
>>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism
>> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general
>> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth
>> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds.
>>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks
>> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the
>> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of
>> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all
>> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire
>> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be
>> "computed".
>>
>>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal
>> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order
>> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a
>> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time
>> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point
>> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the
>> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for
>> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my
>> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>>
>> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock
>> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other
>> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and
>> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time
>> progresses.
>>
>> The results of these computations is the information states of everything
>> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to
>> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information
>> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the
>> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to
>> automatically dilate (cur
>>
>> ...
>
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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Stephen,

Yes, of course p-time is observable. The present moment of p-time is the 
present moment we all observe our entire existence within from birth to 
death.

It's the most fundamental and persistent of observations...

Edgar



On Thursday, January 16, 2014 3:28:06 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   Is P-time observable?
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
> Stephen,
>
> PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are 
> talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is 
> distinct and is prior to any metrics...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the 
> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with 
> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* 
> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There 
> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each 
> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint 
> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common 
> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the 
> same physical system? More than one!
>
>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism 
> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general 
> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth 
> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. 
>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks 
> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the 
> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of 
> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all 
> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire 
> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be 
> "computed".
>
>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal 
> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order 
> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a 
> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time 
> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point 
> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the 
> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point. 
>   
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for 
> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my 
> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>
> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock 
> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other 
> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and 
> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time 
> progresses.
>
> The results of these computations is the information states of everything 
> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to 
> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information 
> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the 
> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to 
> automatically dilate (cur
>
> ...

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Brent,

First the observer being at the event is the way all science is observed 
and confirmed. That is what an observation is. You speak as if it's somehow 
unimportant. Again this first argument merely proves there is a present 
moment for each observer, not a common universal present moment. That's the 
second argument.

Second, you keep saying being in the present moment is an 'event' as if 
that makes it inconsequential. It's not just some single event. We are in 
the present moment of p-time not just at some momentary event but during 
our entire lives. It's impossible to not be in the present moment of 
p-time, as that is how and 'where' reality manifests itself. The active 
presence of reality manifests as a present moment, that's its source. There 
is nothing at all outside that present moment because that is the sole 
locus of reality

You seem to agree there is "a direction of time". That's the arrow of time 
of course, and of course if there is a direction of time that falsifies 
block time in which nothing actually moves.

'That' is the 2 conclusions of the first argument. 'These' refers to all 
the individually experienced present moments being the one and the same 
common universal present moment. After all the presence of reality is a 
single universal phenomenon that all observers partake in, exist in and 
thus all experience.

Edgar

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 2:34:12 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
> On 1/16/2014 7:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>  
> Brent, 
>
>  Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every 
> INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to 
> extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. 
> That's the second argument you referenced.
>
>  This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR 
> requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he 
> MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), 
> and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer 
> exists, 
>  
>
> That's all ok up to "privileged".  The only thing "privileging" the time 
> and location is the observer being at that event.  So it is relative to the 
> observer - hence the name "relativity theory".
>
>  and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience 
> an arrow of time in the direction of his movement.
>  
>
> I think that's a tautology. Direction of movement assumes a direction of 
> time.
>
>  
>  Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these 
> are universal across all observers
>
>  So can we agree on that?
>  
>
> I don't know what "that" refers to,  nor what "these" are that are 
> universal.  That all observers trace out world lines?...sure.
>
> Brent
>
>  
>  Edgar
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 
>
> On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>  
> Brent, 
>
>  Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they 
> don't follow?
>  
>
> Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate 
> time.  But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time 
> coordinate.  All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous 
> along each world line.  It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'.  
> But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to 
> labels on a different world line.
>
> The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial 
> frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely 
> extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity.
>
> Brent
>
>  
>  Edgar
>
> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 
>
> On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>  
> Brent, 
>
>  Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would 
> state them slightly differently.
>
> ...

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 17 January 2014 12:42, meekerdb  wrote:

> You do use both in the forward case, but people kind of slide over the
> initial condition which is that you produce two particles with net-zero
> spin.  It might seem more symmetric if we did the forward case by creating
> a lot of pairs and only selecting the net spin-zero pairs to go to the EPR
> detectors.
>

I can kind of see how (in this explanation) this would merge the
information from the future, so the particles could effectively influence
each other at a distance at the detectors.

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 1/16/2014 11:00 AM, LizR wrote:
On 17 January 2014 07:56, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:

On 1/16/2014 1:48 AM, LizR wrote:

On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote:

On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

You can do that (in fact it may have been done). You have two
emitters
with polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those
particles that arrive and form a singlet. Then you will find that
the
correlation counts for that subset violates Bell's inequality for
polarizer settings of 30, 60, 120deg.

I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of
Bell's
inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time
symmetry is
definitely wrong...?

?? Why do you conclude that? It's the time-reverse of the EPR that
violated BI.

Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to
take both
past AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR with time
symmetry.
If we can explain it with only a forward in time or backward in time
explanation,
then we aren't using both.

But in the reverse EPR we are in effect using both past and future boundary
conditions. At the emitters we set the polarizers - that's the past
boundary
condition. At the single detector we post-select only those incoming pairs
that
form a net-zero spin; so that's a future boundary condition.

I must admit I thought you were saying we could do it using ONLY the future boundary
conditions. If you use both then you should logically use both in the forwards case,
too, so I assume Price's explanation still stands.

You do use both in the forward case, but people kind of slide over the initial condition
which is that you produce two particles with net-zero spin. It might seem more symmetric
if we did the forward case by creating a lot of pairs and only selecting the net spin-zero
pairs to go to the EPR detectors.

Brent

Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 17 January 2014 12:31, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 10:32 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>  They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment
>> you don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical
>> instantiation as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink
>> on a page.
>>
>
>  And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the
> radioactive decay?
>
>
> They have common events in their past light cone.
>
>  What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment?
>
>
> Why are there regularities that can be represented by the laws of
> phyiscs?  Dunno.
>

One can probably imagine answers with a little effort (WAP, parsimony...)
but "Dunno" is the honest answer.

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

On 17 January 2014 12:01, John Mikes  wrote:

> Liz: the first that came to mind was Edgar's "isn't it obvious'?" but I
> did not want to make fun of him.
>

Perish the thought.


> Of you: maybe. How do you expect me to give you examples from BEYOND our
> knowable circumstances to illustrate what is beyond our knowable? Physix
> works with the boundaries of our present knowledge, its laws are within. I
> am tired to dig up my retired computer to (maybe) find Paul Churchland's
> example (from before his marriage) of a 'tribe' with different physics (the
> first that came to mind). Then there are the books about the Zarathustrans,
> (Collins-Stewart?) Figment of Reality - I am tired to look up now. Maybe if
> I survive my 92th in some days and relax I will respond in more detail. But
> I have my own explanations as well...just take the 'infinite' seriously.
>

Sorry! I didn't intend to ask the unaskable - but I think that by answering
by not answering, you have in fact answered me!

Maybe there are indeed more things in Heaven and Earth and maybe we do
see everything through our-particular-reality coloured spectacles...

But I too am too tired, even though it is only just after midday here in
New Zealand (I didn't sleep very well), so I will leave it at that for now.

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Re: What are wavefunctions?


On 1/16/2014 10:32 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment you 
don't
use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical instantiation as
calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink on a page.


And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the 
radioactive decay?


They have common events in their past light cone.


What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment?


Why are there regularities that can be represented by the laws of phyiscs?  
Dunno.

Brent

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

2014-01-16 Thread John Mikes

Bruno, as I recall my recollection of Colin was an oldie one from his
young-age ideas. Many many years ago.

John


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 14 Jan 2014, at 23:09, John Mikes wrote:
>
> Brent:
>
> thanks for submitting Colin Hales' words!
>  I lost track of him lately  in the West-Australian deserts (from where he
> seemed to move to become focussed on being accepted for scientific title(s)
> by establishment-scientist potentates - what I never believed of him
> indeed).
> I loved (and tried to digest to some extent) his earlier 'words' - making
> them fundamental to my developing agnosticism.
>
> Brent, to your short closing remark:
> I do not equate 'being conscious' with the domain-adjective of
> consciousness - it may be a certain aspect showing within the domain,
> pertinent to 'those lumps of matter' you mention. I aso value "structure"
> more than just material functioning.  And I wish I had such (your?)
> alternative hypotheses... not only my agnosticism about it.
>
> I agree with most of Colin's un-numbered points on the figment he called
> "science of consciousness". What I would have added is a date of yesterday
> (and to support it - as I usually do - compare that level to earlier
> (millennia?) similar concoctions)
> .
> And - would have parethesized the territory named 'science' in them all.
>
> Well: what  *- IS -*  the *LAW OF NATURE *as widely believed? It is the
> majority of results of observed (poorly understood?) phenomena within the
> portion of Everything we so far got access to - and that, too, in our
> mind's adjustment at its actual level (inventory).
> (Wording mostly based on Colin's earlier writings)
> It depends on the boundaries *WE CHOSE. *Consider different boundaries
> and the LAW will change immediately, even within our unchanged ignorance of
> the totality.
>
>
> From what I understand, Colin's try to introduce in the exact sciences the
> lack of rigor of the human sciences. I believe in the contrary: we must
> come back to rigor in the human and fundamental science.
> I don't see at all how Colin's approach can be consistent with the
> correct-machine, and human, fundamental agnosticism.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> Thank you, Colins (and Brent)
>
> John Mikes
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:44 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 1/12/2014 9:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> I'm sorry I repeat this answer so many times, but this claim is also
>> made so many times. The main problem I see with this idea is that no
>> progress has been made so far in explaining how a lump of matter
>> becomes conscious, as opposed to just being a zombie mechanically
>> performing complex behaviors. Insisting that such an explanation must
>> exist instead of entertaining other models of reality strikes me as a
>> form of mysticism.
>>
>>
>> Well we know that one lump of matter is conscious and we think some
>> others that are structually similar are and that some others are not.  A
>> plausible hypothesis is that the consciousness is a consequence of the
>> structure.  Alternative hypotheses would have to explain this coincidence.
>>
>> Brent
>>
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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

2014-01-16 Thread John Mikes

Liz: the first that came to mind was Edgar's "isn't it obvious'?" but I did
not want to make fun of him.
Of you: maybe. How do you expect me to give you examples from BEYOND our
knowable circumstances to illustrate what is beyond our knowable? Physix
works with the boundaries of our present knowledge, its laws are within. I
am tired to dig up my retired computer to (maybe) find Paul Churchland's
example (from before his marriage) of a 'tribe' with different physics (the
first that came to mind). Then there are the books about the Zarathustrans,
(Collins-Stewart?) Figment of Reality - I am tired to look up now. Maybe if
I survive my 92th in some days and relax I will respond in more detail. But
I have my own explanations as well...just take the 'infinite' seriously.
John

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 5:43 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 15 January 2014 11:09, John Mikes  wrote:
>
>> It depends on the boundaries *WE CHOSE. *Consider different boundaries
>> and the LAW will change immediately, even within our unchanged ignorance of
>> the totality.
>>
>> I think I follow this but I'm not sure. Could you explain further, or
> give an example.?
>
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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On 17 January 2014 10:55, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>   Block time does not offer any explanation for the notion of a flow of
> time, even if such is an illusion. Something has to account for the
> asymmetry of the arrow of thermodynamics.
>

Something does! The Big Bang can do the job of generating negative entropy
in the form of bound states at various levels (atoms, stars etc), and
assuming no Big Crunch that gives a boundary condition at one end of time
but not at the other. In an utshell, the entropy gradient is how you get
from a hot dense big bang to a cold diffuse timelike infinity.

> My proposed solution is to assume that Becoming is a ontological property,
> not an illusion at all, pace Parminedies. We then can define time in terms
> of orderings and measure of that fundamental Becoming in a relatively local
> way.
>

This is a far too heavyweight solution, IMHO, especially when you consider
that the arrow of time emerges from statistics rather than fundamental
physics.

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Hi Stephen


> On 17 January 2014 09:33, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
The first part is right, but within a given foliation, there is an ordering
>> of events. It's only when comparing foliations that you get different
>> orders. (I believe this is called proper time or something?) Time doesn't
>> vanish within a foliation.
>>
>
> Right, it doesn't vanish within a foliation, but if we add or integrate
> them together it does. If i got the math right...
>

That's a surprise (to me at least). Foliations are just viewpoints, I
believe, and essentially arbitrary [added later - as you say below]. If you
summed all *possible* foliations, I'd expect you'd get space-time (assuming
the notion of summing them all makes sense...)

>

>>> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
>>> fact of measurement.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, this is the problem with the "ontological argument" (and probably
>> with "Edgar's first postulate" too).
>>
>
> I am trying to use avoid the problem by using a ontological foundation
> that is eternal, thus no absolute notions of "before" or "after". Neutral
> existence, having no particular properties by having ALL properties.
>

Or rather timeless? (Of course comp does that, with Platonia!) I agree this
is the sort of ontology we should look for, which is one reason I find comp
attractive even if I don't follow it all (but Bruno has promised to give
more lessons!)

>
 That is all correct, The point is that there is no prefered foliation,
 no special narrative for all the events.

>>>
Yes indeed. Hence "relativity" ! But space-time itself is (within SR) is
preferred (so to speak). That is, there is one block universe, within SR,
in which (I believe) each point can be uniquely labelled.

>
 I thought momentum was space's cc, and energy was time's??? Or am I
 getting mixed up with something else?

>>>
>  You got it right.
>
> :-D

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Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 4:00 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 10:14 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:44 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 <
>> thismindisbud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting
>>> into the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter),
>>> provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And
>>> yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the
>>> conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them.
>>>
>>
>>  I have come to think few things could be more certain than
>> universalism. If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as
>> you, and not someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer
>> is for "me" to be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come
>> into being. If the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom
>> at something else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would
>> never have been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you
>> had a 1 in 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for
>> you to be born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that
>> much more staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all
>> other begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right,
>> otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed.
>>
>>
>>  So what?  Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are.
>>
>>
>  But can you a priori expect to be one of the winners? Should you not
> have some level of surprise when you find out you are a winner, and
> possibly seek some more probable explanations (my kids are pranking me, I
> am dreaming, etc.)?
>
>
>>
>>
>>  On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were
>> different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no
>> specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely
>> different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one
>> of your brothers or sisters.  If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you
>> are in fact, also your brothers and sisters.
>>
>>
>>  So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because
>> there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two
>> bumps in the ignition lock.  I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a
>> lot fewer miles on it than mine.
>>
>
>  No, you are missing the point. It is not that they are similar enough to
> be you, it is that they share everything that was necessary for *you *to
> be present in them. Your current perspective does not rule out that you are
> seeing from their eyes,
>
>
> Then why don't I always win at poker?
>
>
You don't, you only think you don't always win because view of yourself is
too limited.


>
>   just as seeing only one branch does not mean the wave function
> collapsed, and nor does seeing only one time prove presentism. The simpler
> hypothesis by far is that you are born as all of them,
>
>
> Simpler, but contradicted by observation.  "God did it." is even simpler.
>
>

Thinking universalism is contradicted by observation is the same error in
thinking block time is contradicted because I'm only aware of one point in
time.

Taking into account indexicals you can overcome many of the illusions our
brain plays on us: making us falsely believe our point in time, branch in
the many-worlds, or ego is somehow special.



>
>   rather than believing there is some special or privileged person which
> is the only person in the whole universe whose entire life *you *will
> experience.
>
>
> Except that is the definition of "you": the life you experience
>
>
Right, and that experience isn't limited to the of some singular physical
continuation of some biological organism.

Jason

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Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp


On 1/16/2014 10:14 AM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:44 AM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 
mailto:thismindisbud...@gmail.com>> wrote:


I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting 
into the
implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), 
provides some
rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they 
always
rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions 
are so
terrible that I can't bear to think of them.


I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. If 
you
take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not someone 
else, the
only possible answer that fits that answer is for "me" to be born, an exact
arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If the exact matter 
was
necessary, then that means if your mom at something else, or took a sip of 
water at
the wrong time, then you would never have been born. If the exact genes are
required, then that means you had a 1 in 100 million chance that the right 
sperm
met the right egg for you to be born, otherwise you would not exist at all. 
The
odds become that much more staggering when you consider not only your 
begetting,
but all other begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY 
right,
otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed.


So what?  Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are.


But can you a priori expect to be one of the winners? Should you not have some level of 
surprise when you find out you are a winner, and possibly seek some more probable 
explanations (my kids are pranking me, I am dreaming, etc.)?





On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were different, 
you would
still have been born, this means there really was no specific requirement 
for you
to be born as you, and if a completely different sperm or egg were 
fertilized, then
maybe you would instead be one of your brothers or sisters.  If this is 
true, then
shouldn't that mean you are in fact, also your brothers and sisters.


So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because 
there was
no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two bumps in 
the
ignition lock.  I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a lot fewer miles 
on it
than mine.


No, you are missing the point. It is not that they are similar enough to be you, it is 
that they share everything that was necessary for /you /to be present in them. Your 
current perspective does not rule out that you are seeing from their eyes,


Then why don't I always win at poker?

just as seeing only one branch does not mean the wave function collapsed, and nor does 
seeing only one time prove presentism. The simpler hypothesis by far is that you are 
born as all of them,


Simpler, but contradicted by observation.  "God did it." is even simpler.

rather than believing there is some special or privileged person which is the only 
person in the whole universe whose entire life /you /will experience.


Except that is the definition of "you": the life you experience

Brent

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>   Block time does not offer any explanation for the notion of a flow of
> time, even if such is an illusion.
>

Please explain how you know this.


> Something has to account for the asymmetry of the arrow of thermodynamics.
>

Normally the answer to this is "statistics".


> My proposed solution is to assume that Becoming is a ontological property,
> not an illusion at all, pace Parminedies.
>

What is your motivation for this added assumption?



> We then can define time in terms of orderings and measure of that
> fundamental Becoming in a relatively local way.
>  Problem solved!
>

I still don't see what the problem is!

Jason


>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jason,
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>



 On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
 stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
> something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
> that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
> embedded in the block.
>

 It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
 foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
 events from different reference frames.

>>>
>>> Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light
>>> cone structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such.
>>> I get that.
>>>
>>
>> So then what is the problem with block time?
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>


> My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has
> problems and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their
> definitions of "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not
> observable, only properties are observable.
>

 How can something have properties unless it exists?

>>>
>>> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
>>> fact of measurement.
>>>
>>
>> So if existence is eternal, doesn't this lead to block time?
>>
>>
>>>

>  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after
> the fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process
> that transforms one event into another.
>

 In block time it is just a dimension.

>>>
>>> Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!
>>>
>>
>>
>> That doesn't follow. You are ignoring that there are 4 dimensions
>> involved so there are different ways of layering slices of the three
>> dimensional space. Consider that the seeds in a 3-dimensional apple have
>> defined positions in the 3 dimensions, but asking "what is the order in
>> which the seeds will be encountered" has no unique answer unless you
>> describe the angle at which you make each slice on your way through the
>> apple.
>>
>>
>>>

>  Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is
> not a direct observable quantity.
>

 Just like space..

>>>
>>> right.
>>>


> If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.
>

 How is time different from space in your view?

>>>
>>> Space has no possible canonical conjugate.
>>>
>>
>> Where you think time is somehow different? How is that?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>>
 Jason


>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Edgar,
>>>
>>>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
>>> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you 
>>> read
>>> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
>>> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way 
>>> that
>>> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
>>> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>>>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads
>>> to the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I 
>>> am
>>> not so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the
>>> intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 
>>> 4-manifolds is
>>> equivalent to first person indeterminacy.)
>>>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows
>>> that there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment
>>> information. Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative

Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 10:06 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM,  wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding
>>> through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this
>>> question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into
>>> another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran
>>> in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations,
>>> but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back
>>> again?
>>>
>>>
>>  Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you
>> on Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made
>> an exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they
>> thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is
>> impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical,
>> yet your consciousness did it.  For the same reason, someone in an
>> altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable
>> you to travel there.  There would be no causal link, however, to whatever
>> memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you we create
>> to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for
>> us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in
>> the distant land decided to freeze.
>>
>>  In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only
>> between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment
>> before, that we don't notice it.  You might be sitting there quietly in
>> Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually on
>> Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical
>> big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in.
>>
>>
>>  But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by "you".
>>
>
>  How so?  Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a
> particular collection of atoms at a particular time and place?  "You" are
> something different than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily.
>
>
> You can't attach it to anything - or even to it's own history, since you
> discard memories.  It has nothing to unify it into being an "it".
>

No memories were discarded in the above. In fact I specified that the brain
states be exactly equal at each freeze/remote thaw cycle.

Jason

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Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/16/2014 10:07 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Dear Jason,

   I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes something impossible: 
that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined that correlates to a specific 
experience of an entity that is said to be embedded in the block.


A block universe doesn't assume a unique foliation.  That's part of the idea of the block, 
it admits of many different arbitrary foliations.


Brent

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Jason,

  Block time does not offer any explanation for the notion of a flow of
time, even if such is an illusion. Something has to account for the
asymmetry of the arrow of thermodynamics. My proposed solution is to assume
that Becoming is a ontological property, not an illusion at all, pace
Parminedies. We then can define time in terms of orderings and measure of
that fundamental Becoming in a relatively local way.
 Problem solved!


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Jason,
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
 Dear Jason,

I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
 something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
 that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
 embedded in the block.

>>>
>>> It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
>>> foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
>>> events from different reference frames.
>>>
>>
>> Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light cone
>> structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such. I
>> get that.
>>
>
> So then what is the problem with block time?
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
 My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
 and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
 "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
 properties are observable.

>>>
>>> How can something have properties unless it exists?
>>>
>>
>> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
>> fact of measurement.
>>
>
> So if existence is eternal, doesn't this lead to block time?
>
>
>>
>>>
  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after
 the fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process
 that transforms one event into another.

>>>
>>> In block time it is just a dimension.
>>>
>>
>> Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!
>>
>
>
> That doesn't follow. You are ignoring that there are 4 dimensions involved
> so there are different ways of layering slices of the three dimensional
> space. Consider that the seeds in a 3-dimensional apple have defined
> positions in the 3 dimensions, but asking "what is the order in which the
> seeds will be encountered" has no unique answer unless you describe the
> angle at which you make each slice on your way through the apple.
>
>
>>
>>>
  Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is
 not a direct observable quantity.

>>>
>>> Just like space..
>>>
>>
>> right.
>>
>>>
>>>
 If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.

>>>
>>> How is time different from space in your view?
>>>
>>
>> Space has no possible canonical conjugate.
>>
>
> Where you think time is somehow different? How is that?
>
> Jason
>
>
>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>>



 On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
>> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you 
>> read
>> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
>> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way 
>> that
>> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
>> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to
>> the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am 
>> not
>> so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the
>> intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds 
>> is
>> equivalent to first person indeterminacy.)
>>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows
>> that there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment
>> information. Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it
>> requires multiple computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that
>> change to your thesis?
>>
>>   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp
>> that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and 
>> receptive
>> in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
>> discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
>> re

Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/16/2014 10:06 AM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, mailto:spudboy...@aol.com>>
wrote:

Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding 
through
and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. 
Is it
even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into another 
universe, a
parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran in the David 
Deutsch
sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations, but directly,
mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back again?


Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on 
Earth, and
then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made an exact 
version out
of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they thawed you, you would 
travel
these 100 trillion ly. This journey is impossible for matter or energy to 
make,
impossible for anything physical, yet your consciousness did it.  For the 
same
reason, someone in an altogether different physical universe could do the 
same
thing and enable you to travel there.  There would be no causal link, 
however, to
whatever memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you 
we create
to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for 
us to get
it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in the distant 
land
decided to freeze.

In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only 
between
distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment before, that 
we
don't notice it.  You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one
moment, then the next instant you are actually on Earth #173119389 (which 
was an
Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical big crunch and big bang cycles) 
from
the moment you were just in.


But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by "you".


How so?  Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a particular collection of 
atoms at a particular time and place?  "You" are something different than those atoms., 
as our metabolism proves daily.


You can't attach it to anything - or even to it's own history, since you discard 
memories.  It has nothing to unify it into being an "it".


Brent

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jason,
>>>
>>>I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
>>> something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
>>> that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
>>> embedded in the block.
>>>
>>
>> It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
>> foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
>> events from different reference frames.
>>
>
> Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light cone
> structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such. I
> get that.
>

So then what is the problem with block time?


>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
>>> and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
>>> "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
>>> properties are observable.
>>>
>>
>> How can something have properties unless it exists?
>>
>
> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
> fact of measurement.
>

So if existence is eternal, doesn't this lead to block time?


>
>>
>>>  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after the
>>> fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process that
>>> transforms one event into another.
>>>
>>
>> In block time it is just a dimension.
>>
>
> Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!
>


That doesn't follow. You are ignoring that there are 4 dimensions involved
so there are different ways of layering slices of the three dimensional
space. Consider that the seeds in a 3-dimensional apple have defined
positions in the 3 dimensions, but asking "what is the order in which the
seeds will be encountered" has no unique answer unless you describe the
angle at which you make each slice on your way through the apple.


>
>>
>>>  Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is
>>> not a direct observable quantity.
>>>
>>
>> Just like space..
>>
>
> right.
>
>>
>>
>>> If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.
>>>
>>
>> How is time different from space in your view?
>>
>
> Space has no possible canonical conjugate.
>

Where you think time is somehow different? How is that?

Jason


>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>



 On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
 stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you 
> read
> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way 
> that
> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to
> the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not
> so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the
> intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds 
> is
> equivalent to first person indeterminacy.)
>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that
> there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information.
> Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple
> computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your
> thesis?
>
>   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp
> that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive
> in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
> discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
> responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I
> need the exercise. :-)
>
>
 Stephen,

 I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the
 opinion that block time is possible?

  Jason


>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>
>> Stephen,
>>
>> What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that
>> there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof?
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Edgar,
>>>
>>

Re: Tegmark's New Book

Der LizR,


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 4:14 PM, LizR  wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>
> I have a 2c worth on block time, too :)
>
> On 17 January 2014 09:33, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>> Dear Jason,
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
 Dear Jason,

I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
 something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
 that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
 embedded in the block.

>>>
>>> It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
>>> foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
>>> events from different reference frames.
>>>
>>
>> Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light cone
>> structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such. I
>> get that.
>>
>
> The first part is right, but within a given foliation, there is an
> ordering of events. It's only when comparing foliations that you get
> different orders. (I believe this is called proper time or something?) Time
> doesn't vanish within a foliation.
>

Right, it doesn't vanish within a foliation, but if we add or integrate
them together it does. If i got the math right...

>
>>>
 My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
 and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
 "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
 properties are observable.

>>>
>>> How can something have properties unless it exists?
>>>
>>
>> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
>> fact of measurement.
>>
>
> Yes, this is the problem with the "ontological argument" (and probably
> with "Edgar's first postulate" too).
>

I am trying to use avoid the problem by using a ontological foundation that
is eternal, thus no absolute notions of "before" or "after". Neutral
existence, having no particular properties by having ALL properties.


>>>
  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after
 the fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process
 that transforms one event into another.

>>>
>>> In block time it is just a dimension.
>>>
>>
>> Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!
>>
>
> There is a unique ordering along each observer's worldline, and a unique
> LOCATION for each event within the block. Foliations are slices thru the
> block at various angles, as I'm sure you know, and drawing a hyperplane
> thru a 4D manifold at different angles withh allow it to intersect the
> points within the block (events) in a different order. So the positions of
> events are unique, but we can construct foliations which "encounter" them
> in a different order. Since a foliation corresponds to a plane of
> simultaneity for a given observer, the observer will see events in the
> order defined by the foliation. (Another way to look at this which may be a
> bit more intuitive is that an observer sees events when they intersect his
> light cone, and different observers have different light cones, and hence
> may see events in a different order).
>


 That is all correct, The point is that there is no prefered foliation, no
special narrative for all the events.

>
>>>
  Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is
 not a direct observable quantity.

>>>
>>> Just like space..
>>>
>>
>> right.
>>
>>>
>>>
 If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.

>>>
>>> How is time different from space in your view?
>>>
>>
>> Space has no possible canonical conjugate.
>>
>
> I thought momentum was space's cc, and energy was time's??? Or am I
> getting mixed up with something else?
>

 You got it right.

>
>
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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

On 17 January 2014 10:01, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

>
>> You can disagree, but it's a fact, we can make video game, so we can make
>> any rules we want in the created virtual worlds, nothing prevent us to do
>> so.
>>
>> Yes, I made up a game in which 17 is an even number and an infinite
number of computations can be carried out in a finite time. Also, within
the game I got a solution to P vs NP so I got the Millennium Prize!

:-)

...sorry, I'll get my coat.

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 17 January 2014 08:40, Jesse Mazer  wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:08 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>> On 16 January 2014 03:51, Jesse Mazer  wrote:
>>>
>>> (SNIP)
>>> Still, the fact remains that if your local realistic time-symmetric
>>> theory of physics *is* a dynamical one where later conditions can be
>>> derived from initial conditions, then the argument I made in the previous
>>> comment you quoted should still apply, and in that case time-symmetry
>>> without very specially-chosen initial boundary conditions will be of no
>>> help in explaining how Bell's inequality can be violated. So it's not
>>> correct to just say that Bell assumed time was asymmetric, and thus that
>>> the type of time-symmetry we see in *existing* theories of physics like
>>> quantum field theory is enough to discount his proof. In terms of a Venn
>>> diagram, there would be an overlap between the circle "time-symmetric (or
>>> CPT-symmetric) local realistic theories" and "theories that satisfy the
>>> assumptions of Bell's proof", and all existing time-symmetric theories
>>> (except for general relativity in non-globally-hyperbolic spacetimes) would
>>> fall into that overlap region. Price may be correct that the general *idea*
>>> of time-symmetry points to a possible loophole in Bell's proof, but taking
>>> advantage of this loophole would require a new and different type of
>>> time-symmetric theory from the ones physicists have used in the past to
>>> model real-world situations.
>>>
>>
I don't *think* Price is thinking of a "dynamical theory" (assuming I've
understood you correctly) ... But in any case, please note that in quoting
Price I am not proposing an explanation, or even taking a position, I am
only pointing out that there is the logical possibility that an explanation
could be constructed on this basis.

So, I am merely pointing out that when someone says "Bell made exactly 3
assumptions..." that isn't true, so anything we deduce on the basis of him
having made exactly 3 assumptions will be false (or at best, only
accidentally true). And hence, until the 4th assumption is either
incorportated into an explanation of BI violations, or shown to be
irrelevant to them, we will not be in a position to say "EPR shows that
physics is either non-local or non-realistic".

Everything else I've said on this subject has been in response to people
trying to argue that physics is not time symmetric. So far all such
arguments have been a variant on "the second law says so" and my response
has been a variant on "the second law emerges above the level at which we
can detect time symmetry". (Plus I've invoked boundary conditions on the
universe to explain how the second law can arise from time symmetric
physics...)

However, I don't have the technical knowledge to either construct an
explanation of EPR on this basis, or to show that one can't be constructed.

But I do think it's high time someone did, if they haven't already done so.

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Re: The Singularity Institute Blog

On 17 January 2014 08:12, meekerdb  wrote:

>  Like a super-intelligent AI will treat us as we want to be treated.
>
> Why not? I hope you haven't been mistreating *your* pets!

I don't want to be neglected in your generous disbursal of funds.
>

No, me neither. In fact give me a googol dollars and I guarantee to give at
least 10^99 of them away, assuming I can get them out of the ATM (or the
black hole they'd create if I did...)

This would at a stroke cause astronomical inflation and reduce the power of
the banks and corporations to nothing (temporarily).

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Hi Stephen,

I have a 2c worth on block time, too :)

On 17 January 2014 09:33, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Dear Jason,
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jason,
>>>
>>>I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
>>> something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
>>> that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
>>> embedded in the block.
>>>
>>
>> It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
>> foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
>> events from different reference frames.
>>
>
> Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light cone
> structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such. I
> get that.
>

The first part is right, but within a given foliation, there is an ordering
of events. It's only when comparing foliations that you get different
orders. (I believe this is called proper time or something?) Time doesn't
vanish within a foliation.

>
>>
>>> My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
>>> and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
>>> "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
>>> properties are observable.
>>>
>>
>> How can something have properties unless it exists?
>>
>
> Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
> fact of measurement.
>

Yes, this is the problem with the "ontological argument" (and probably with
"Edgar's first postulate" too).

>
>>
>>>  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after the
>>> fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process that
>>> transforms one event into another.
>>>
>>
>> In block time it is just a dimension.
>>
>
> Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!
>

There is a unique ordering along each observer's worldline, and a unique
LOCATION for each event within the block. Foliations are slices thru the
block at various angles, as I'm sure you know, and drawing a hyperplane
thru a 4D manifold at different angles withh allow it to intersect the
points within the block (events) in a different order. So the positions of
events are unique, but we can construct foliations which "encounter" them
in a different order. Since a foliation corresponds to a plane of
simultaneity for a given observer, the observer will see events in the
order defined by the foliation. (Another way to look at this which may be a
bit more intuitive is that an observer sees events when they intersect his
light cone, and different observers have different light cones, and hence
may see events in a different order).

>
>>
>>>  Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is
>>> not a direct observable quantity.
>>>
>>
>> Just like space..
>>
>
> right.
>
>>
>>
>>> If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.
>>>
>>
>> How is time different from space in your view?
>>
>
> Space has no possible canonical conjugate.
>

I thought momentum was space's cc, and energy was time's??? Or am I getting
mixed up with something else?

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter


On 1/16/2014 9:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Perhaps, perhaps not. We have to compare the mass of the electron we measure in our 
neighborhood, with the mass of the electron in the comp physics. If the comp physics is 
agnostic on the electron mass, it means that the mass of electron is not a law, but a 
contingent "geographical" fact.


I assume by "geographic" you mean that all values (-inf,inf) occur in UD physics.  
Otherwise "geographic" would mean the same as "random".


Brent

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

2014-01-16 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2014/1/16 Quentin Anciaux 

>
>
>
> 2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal 
>
>>
>> On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:28, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal 
>>
>>>
>>> On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
  There is still FPI going on in the "rogue" simulation - the one where
 Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite
 continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics.


 You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are
 introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make
 sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than
 us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies.


>>> I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the
>>> math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from
>>> something more than its characterization as a "mere" Lobian machine.
>>>
>>>
>>> That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head
>>> or something,  and get highly amnesic.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno
>>> Marchal.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on
>>> the grounds.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes
>>> through our consciousness,
>>>
>>>
>>> OK.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of
>>> Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by
>>> hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity
>>> must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology,
>>>
>>>
>>> A particular biology? No doubt.
>>> A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course,
>>> after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or
>>> science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which:
>>> 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my "identity") below
>>> the substitution level
>>> 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable).
>>>
>>> Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those
>>> winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty
>>> relation, to simplify).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of
>>> Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in "our" physics.
>>>
>>>
>>> What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be
>>> emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of
>>> us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are
>>> clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our
>>> consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all
>>> Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by
>>> S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*).
>>> Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as
>>> geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of
>>> the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality.
>>>
>>> our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is
>>> only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or
>>> relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is
>>> why Everett saves comp from solipsism.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory
>>> interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of
>>> physics,
>>>
>>>
>>> Part. Only part. the contingent part.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's
>>> identity,
>>>
>>>
>>> Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the
>>> same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result
>>> from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument.
>>>
>>>
>>> and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think,
>>> require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics.
>>>
>>>
>>> By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate
>>> geography.
>>>
>>>
>> Well... what's left to physics then ?
>>
>>
>> OK. That's an excellent question. I will try to answer.
>>
>>
>>
>> many world ?
>>
>>
>> Notably. And also indeterminacy, non-locality, non cloning, but also
>> white noise and white rabbits, a priori.
>>
>>
>>
>> because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we wish
>>
>>
>> I disagree. (see below)

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

2014-01-16 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:28, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>
>
>
> 2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal 
>
>>
>> On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>>  There is still FPI going on in the "rogue" simulation - the one where
>>> Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are infinite
>>> continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative physics.
>>>
>>>
>>> You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You are
>>> introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori does not make
>>> sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same laws of physics than
>>> us, with a very different histories and geographies and biologies.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with the
>> math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single physics.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from something
>> more than its characterization as a "mere" Lobian machine.
>>
>>
>> That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the head or
>> something,  and get highly amnesic.
>>
>>
>>
>>  There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno
>> Marchal.
>>
>>
>> Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling on
>> the grounds.
>>
>>
>>
>> Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes
>> through our consciousness,
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>> in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity of
>> Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by
>> hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and identity
>> must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology,
>>
>>
>> A particular biology? No doubt.
>> A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course,
>> after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or
>> science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations, which:
>> 1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my "identity") below
>> the substitution level
>> 2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable).
>>
>> Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those
>> winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty
>> relation, to simplify).
>>
>>
>>
>> in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of
>> Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in "our" physics.
>>
>>
>> What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be
>> emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time.
>>
>>
>>
>> The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity of us,
>> as human beings, with the idealized machines being interviewed. We are
>> clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also seems clear to me that our
>> consciousness, our subjective experience, integrates its embodiment.
>>
>>
>> Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to all
>> Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics (given by
>> S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*).
>> Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as
>> geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the mass of
>> the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical reality.
>>
>> our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The physics is
>> only what makes such historico-geographical apperance quite stable or
>> relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the comp histories; That is
>> why Everett saves comp from solipsism.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through sensory
>> interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our bodies are part of
>> physics,
>>
>>
>> Part. Only part. the contingent part.
>>
>>
>>
>> then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of Glak's
>> identity,
>>
>>
>> Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be the
>> same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see what result
>> from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and the UD argument.
>>
>>
>> and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I think,
>> require that alternative body, which require an alternative physics.
>>
>>
>> By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an alternate
>> geography.
>>
>>
> Well... what's left to physics then ?
>
>
> OK. That's an excellent question. I will try to answer.
>
>
>
> many world ?
>
>
> Notably. And also indeterminacy, non-locality, non cloning, but also white
> noise and white rabbits, a priori.
>
>
>
> because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we wish
>
>
> I disagree. (see below)
>

You can disagree, but it's a fact, we can make video game, so we


>
>
>
>
>
> and if comp is true we could make self aware inhabitant living in such
> virtual worlds...
>
>
> OK with this

Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Jason,

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Jason,
>>
>>I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes
>> something impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined
>> that correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
>> embedded in the block.
>>
>
> It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
> foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
> events from different reference frames.
>

Each foliation would correspond to a set of trajectories and a light cone
structure, no? Time, defined as a ordering of events vanishes in such. I
get that.

>
>
>> My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
>> and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
>> "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
>> properties are observable.
>>
>
> How can something have properties unless it exists?
>

Existence is a priori -eternal-, properties are a posteriori - after the
fact of measurement.

>
>
>>  Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after the
>> fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process that
>> transforms one event into another.
>>
>
> In block time it is just a dimension.
>

Not if there isn't a unique ordering of events in the Block!

>
>
>> Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is not
>> a direct observable quantity.
>>
>
> Just like space..
>

right.

>
>
>> If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.
>>
>
> How is time different from space in your view?
>

Space has no possible canonical conjugate.

>
> Jason
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
 Dear Edgar,

   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
 present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read
 it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
 space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way that
 could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
 alternatives that I have mentioned.
The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to
 the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not
 so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the
 intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is
 equivalent to first person indeterminacy.)
If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that
 there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information.
 Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple
 computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your
 thesis?

   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp
 that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive
 in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
 discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
 responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I
 need the exercise. :-)

>>> Stephen,
>>>
>>> I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion
>>> that block time is possible?
>>>
>>>  Jason
>>>
>>>

 On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

> Stephen,
>
> What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that
> there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof?
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>
>>   The "universality" of the first person experience of a flow of
>> events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person
>> Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow 
>> for
>> a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in
>> common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their
>> present moments! THus your claims fall apart
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>
>> Brent,
>>
>> Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every
>> INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to
>> extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address.
>> That's the second argument you referenced.
>>
>> This argument dem

Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Edgar,

   The closest thing that I can comprehend that might line up with your
ideas of a "abstract dimensionLESS computational space" is a Hilbert space.



On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Stephen,
>
> There is no "all of spacetime" nor "each point of spacetime" where the
> computations are occuring. Remember, that's an abstract dimensionLESS
> computational space prior to dimensional spacetime. It has no 'points'
> itself, it computes all points of dimensional space and clock time. They
> arise as dimensional relationships imposed by the particle property
> conservation laws and the laws that compute the binding forces of matter.
>
> But am pleased to hear you agree with the rest, the general concept...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the
>> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with
>> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one*
>> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There
>> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each
>> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint
>> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common
>> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the
>> same physical system? More than one!
>>
>>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism
>> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general
>> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth
>> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds.
>>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks
>> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the
>> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of
>> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all
>> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire
>> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be
>> "computed".
>>
>>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal
>> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order
>> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a
>> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time
>> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point
>> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the
>> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for
>> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my
>> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>>
>> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock
>> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other
>> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and
>> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time
>> progresses.
>>
>> The results of these computations is the information states of everything
>> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to
>> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information
>> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the
>> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to
>> automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations
>> and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.
>>
>> Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber
>> sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the
>> spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy.
>>
>> This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the
>> fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those
>> computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the
>> length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation
>> to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.
>>
>> If this is not clear let me know.
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>>
>> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments
>> for someone accelerating than someone at rest?
>> <
>>
>> ...
>
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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Edgar,

  Is P-time observable?


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Stephen,
>
> PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are
> talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is
> distinct and is prior to any metrics...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the
>> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with
>> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one*
>> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There
>> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each
>> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint
>> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common
>> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the
>> same physical system? More than one!
>>
>>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism
>> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general
>> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth
>> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds.
>>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks
>> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the
>> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of
>> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all
>> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire
>> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be
>> "computed".
>>
>>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal
>> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order
>> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a
>> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time
>> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point
>> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the
>> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for
>> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my
>> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>>
>> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock
>> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other
>> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and
>> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time
>> progresses.
>>
>> The results of these computations is the information states of everything
>> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to
>> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information
>> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the
>> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to
>> automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations
>> and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.
>>
>> Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber
>> sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the
>> spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy.
>>
>> This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the
>> fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those
>> computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the
>> length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation
>> to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.
>>
>> If this is not clear let me know.
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>>
>> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments
>> for someone accelerating than someone
>>
>> ...
>
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-- 

Kindest Regards,

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Senior Researcher

Mobile: (864) 567-3099

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“Thi

Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes something
> impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined that
> correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
> embedded in the block.
>

It makes no claims that such a foliation must be unique, all possible
foliations are equally valid, and correspond to the observed orderings of
events from different reference frames.


> My argument is that the entire way that time is considered has problems
> and both presentism and eternalism are not even wrong. Their definitions of
> "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is not observable, only
> properties are observable.
>

How can something have properties unless it exists?


> Time is not just an ordering of events that can be discovered after the
> fact of the events, it is also a measure of the duration of process that
> transforms one event into another.
>

In block time it is just a dimension.


> Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time is not a
> direct observable quantity.
>

Just like space..


> If it was then it would be the canonical conjugate of energy.
>

How is time different from space in your view?

Jason


>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Edgar,
>>>
>>>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
>>> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read
>>> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
>>> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way that
>>> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
>>> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>>>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to
>>> the concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not
>>> so sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the
>>> intractability of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is
>>> equivalent to first person indeterminacy.)
>>>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that
>>> there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information.
>>> Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple
>>> computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your
>>> thesis?
>>>
>>>   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp
>>> that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive
>>> in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
>>> discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
>>> responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I
>>> need the exercise. :-)
>>>
>>>
>> Stephen,
>>
>> I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion
>> that block time is possible?
>>
>>  Jason
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>>
 Stephen,

 What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that
 there is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof?

 Edgar



 On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King
 wrote:

> Dear Edgar,
>
>
>   The "universality" of the first person experience of a flow of
> events (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person
> Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for
> a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in
> common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their
> present moments! THus your claims fall apart
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>
> Brent,
>
> Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every
> INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to
> extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address.
> That's the second argument you referenced.
>
> This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR
> requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he
> MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as 
> well),
> and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer
> exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will
> experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement.
>
> Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that
> these are universal across all observers
>
> So can we agree on that?
>
>

Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:48 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 8:49 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I
> consider  suffi ent to call lying.
>
>
> You call it lying whenever someone is mistaken??
>

According to the same flawed reasoning used around zombies, some might say
they can't be mistaken either.

In the case of zombies, they are mistaken (or just wrong) for reasons that
no one (not even the zombie) can ever know. It is an invisible pink
elephant kind of argument.

Jason

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Re: Donald Hoffman Video on Interface Theory of Consciousness

2014-01-16 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 2:59:50 PM UTC-5, freqflyer07281972 wrote:
>
> Hey Craig!
>
> I watched the video... very cool!
>

Hi Dan, glad you liked it.
 

>
> Questions:
>
> 1) Who is the user of the interface? What is "us"?
>

I'm not sure what Hoffman's answer would be, but I think that the user is 
experience itself. Questions about consciousness all involve correlating 
different levels and categories of experience, but everyone seems to 
overlook the levels and categories themselves. It is the discernment of 
aesthetic particulars, rather than generic data which makes up 
consciousness and the universe. The experience of users or us is part of 
that, rather than the other way around. We are an experience of "us" having 
experiences.

>
> 2) What is the interface representing? Hoffman uses the analogy of the 
> file and the trash bin icons on the desktop. In a computer, I know that the 
> file ultimately represents binary values that are encoded on a physical 
> portion of my hard disk. The values themselves are voltage potentials that 
> are sustained in a persistent way thanks to the laws of quantum physics 
> (aside: jeez, who would have thought such a "random" theory could provide 
> such stability at the macroscopic level?) and are interpreted by a human 
> user. What is the analogue of the voltage potentials in the interface 
> theory? 
>

Again, I don't know what he would say, but to me, the interface is 
representing the presence of experience on some distant level. The raw 
stuff of the universe, in my view, is self-nesting sensory-motive 
phenomena...represented by more of the same.

Thanks,
Craig


> Cheers,
>
> Dan
>
> On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 1:31:56 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>> Donald Hoffman Video on Interface Theory of 
>> Consciousness
>>
>> A very good presentation with lot of overlap on my views. He proposes 
>> similar ideas about a sensory-motive primitive and the nature of the world 
>> as experience rather than “objective”. What is not factored in is the 
>> relation between local and remote experiences and how that relation 
>> actually defines the appearance of that relation. Instead of seeing agents 
>> as isolated mechanisms, I think they should be seen as more like breaches 
>> in the fabric of insensitivity.
>>
>> It is a little misleading to say (near the end) that a spoon is no more 
>> public than a headache. In my view what makes a spoon different from a 
>> headache is precisely that the metal is more public than the private 
>> experience of a headache. If we make the mistake of assuming an Absolutely 
>> public perspective*, then yes, the spoon is not in it, because the spoon is 
>> different things depending on how small, large, fast, or slow you are. For 
>> the same reason, however, nothing can be said to be in such a perspective. 
>> There is no experience of the world which does not originate through the 
>> relativity of experience itself. Of course the spoon is more public than a 
>> headache, in our experience. To think otherwise as a literal truth would be 
>> psychotic or solipsistic. In the Absolute sense, sure, the spoon is a 
>> sensory phenomena and nothing else, it is not purely public (nothing is), 
>> but locally, is certainly is ‘more’ public.
>>
>> Something that he mentioned in the presentation had to do with linear 
>> algebra and using a matrix of columns which add up to be one. To really 
>> jump off into a new level of understanding consciousness, I would think of 
>> the totality of experience as something like a matrix of columns which add 
>> up, not to 1, but to “=1″. Adding up to 1 is a good enough starting point, 
>> as it allows us to think of agents as holes which feel separate on one side 
>> and united on the other. Thinking of it as “=1″ instead makes it into a 
>> portable unity that does something. Each hole recapitulates the totality as 
>> well as its own relation to that recapitulation: ‘just like’ unity. From 
>> there, the door is open to universal metaphor and local contrasts of degree 
>> and kind.
>>
>> *mathematics invites to do this, because it inverts the naming function 
>> of language. Instead of describing a phenomenon in our experience through a 
>> common sense of language, math enumerates relationships between theories 
>> about experience. The difference is that language can either project itself 
>> publicly or integrate public-facing experiences privately, but math is a 
>> language which can only face itself. Through math, reflections of 
>> experience are fragmented and re-assembled into an ideal rationality – the 
>> ideal rationality which reflects the very ideal of rationality that it 
>> embodies.
>>
>

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor


On 1/16/2014 8:49 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I consider  suffi ent 
to call lying.


You call it lying whenever someone is mistaken??

Brent

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Re: Retiring the universe


On 1/16/2014 8:30 AM, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
Leonard Susskind eventually solved the information paradox by insisting that we restrict 
our description of the world to either the region of spacetime outside the black hole's 
horizon or to the interior of the black hole. Either one is consistent—it's only when 
you talk about both that you violate the laws of physics. This "horizon 
complementarity," as it became known, tells us that the inside and outside of the black 
hole are not part and parcel of a single universe. They are /two/ universes, but not in 
the same breath.


First, Susskind's horizon complementarity is far from accepted as a solution and has 
various problems.  Second, the inside of a black hole is not separate from the outside. 
Stuff from the outside goes in all the time and the problem Susskind is trying to solve is 
to explain how it can also come out via Hawking radiation.


Brent

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

2014-01-16 Thread Jesse Mazer

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:08 PM, LizR  wrote:

> On 16 January 2014 03:51, Jesse Mazer  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 5:10 AM, LizR  wrote:
>>
>>> On 15 January 2014 22:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>>

 On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:04, LizR wrote:

 Sorry, I realise that last sentence could be misconstrued by someone
 who's being very nitpicky and looking for irrelevant loopholes to argue
 about, so let's try again.

 Now how about discussing what I've actually claimed, that the time
 symmetry of fundamental physics could account for the results obtained in
 EPR experiments?


 Logically, yes.

 But you need "hyper-determinism", that is you need to select very
 special boundary conditions, which makes Cramer's transaction theory close
 to Bohm's theory.

>>>
>>> I'm not sure what you mean by special boundary conditions. The bcs in an
>>> Aspect type experiment are the device which creates the photons, and the
>>> settings of the measuring apparatuses. These are special but only in that
>>> the photons are entangled ... note that this isn't Cramer's or Bohm's
>>> theory (the transaction theory requires far more complexity that this).
>>>
>>
>>
>> Time symmetry in the laws of physics alone, without any special
>> restriction on boundary conditions, can't get you violation of Bell
>> inequalities. Ordinary time symmetry doesn't mean you have to take into
>> account both future and past to determine what happens in a given region of
>> spacetime after all, it just means you can deduce it equally well going in
>> *either* direction. So in a deterministic time-symmetric theory (Price's
>> speculations about hidden variables are at least compatible with
>> determinism) it's still true that what happens in any region of spacetime
>> can be determined entirely by events in its past light cone, say the ones
>> occurring at some arbitrarily-chosen "initial" tim. This means that in a
>> Price-like theory where measurement results are explained in terms of
>> hidden variables the particles carry with them from emitter to
>> experimenters, it must be true that the original "assignment" of the hidden
>> variables to each particle at the emitter is determined by the past light
>> cone of the event of each particle leaving the emitter. Meanwhile, the
>> event of an experimenter choosing which measurement to perform will have
>> its own past light cone, and there are plenty of events in the past light
>> cone of the choice that do *not* lie in the past light cone of the
>> particles leaving the emitter.
>>
>> So, without any restriction on boundary conditions, one can choose an
>> ensemble of possible initial conditions with the following properties:
>>
>> 1. The initial states of all points in space that line in the past light
>> cone of the particles leaving the emitter are identical for each member of
>> the ensemble, so in every possible history generated from these initial
>> conditions, the particles have the same hidden variables associated with
>> them.
>>
>> 2. The initial states of points in space that lie in the past light cone
>> of the experimenters choosing what spin direction to measure vary in
>> different members of the ensemble, in such a way that all combinations of
>> measurement choices are represented in different histories chosen from this
>> ensemble.
>>
>> If both these conditions apply, Bell's proofs that various inequalities
>> shouldn't be violated works just fine--for example, there's no combination
>> of hidden variables you can choose for the particle pair that ensure that
>> in all the histories where the experimenters measure along the *same* axis
>> they get opposite results (spin-up for one experimenter, spin-down for the
>> other) with probability 1, but in all the histories where they measure
>> along two *different* axes they have less than a 1/3 chance of getting
>> opposite results. Only by having the hidden variables "assigned" during
>> emission be statistically correlated to the choices the experimenters later
>> make about measurements can Price's argument work, and the argument above
>> shows that time-symmetry without special boundary conditions won't suffice
>> for this.
>>
>> If you're right then Price is wrong. However I don't recall him saying
> that the only consequence of time symmetry is that events can be, so to
> speak, worked backwards equally well. In particular, I read his EPR
> explanation as showing that both future and past boundary conditions were
> relevant in explaining the violations of B's Inequality. The
> "forwards-and-backwards" version would prevent time symmetry having any
> detectable effects, as far as I can see. (Also I'd like to see an
> explanation of EPR which works backwards from the measurement settings to
> the emitter and explains the violation of B's Inequality. That would
> definitely be a clincher!)
>


I don't think my argument necessarily conflicts with Price, since I

Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/16/2014 7:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Brent,

Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL observer has 
his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a cosmic universal time 
which this argument doesn't address. That's the second argument you referenced.


This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires that since he 
continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at one and only one point in 
time (and of course in space as well), and thus there is a privileged present moment in 
which every observer exists,


That's all ok up to "privileged".  The only thing "privileging" the time and location is 
the observer being at that event.  So it is relative to the observer - hence the name 
"relativity theory".


and since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an arrow of time 
in the direction of his movement.


I think that's a tautology. Direction of movement assumes a direction of time.



Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these are universal 
across all observers


So can we agree on that?


I don't know what "that" refers to,  nor what "these" are that are universal.  That all 
observers trace out world lines?...sure.


Brent



Edgar


On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Brent,

Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they 
don't follow?


Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate 
time.  But
then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time coordinate.  
All that
takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous along each world line.  
It'
saying that 'everything can get a time label'.  But it doesn't say anything 
about
how the label on one worldline relates to labels on a different world line.

The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial 
frames then
implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely extended to 
other
lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity.

Brent


Edgar

On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

Brent,

Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though 
I would
state them slightly differently.

The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to 
have
missed, is simple.

SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through
spacetime. This is NOT just "a useful myth", it's a very 
important
fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle).


It's a commonplace in relativity texts.


This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal 
absolute
principle.
Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of 
light
through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually 
moves and
continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one
direction in their own frame. This movement requires there to 
be an
arrow of time,


Not exactly.  It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't 
say
anything about which way the arrow points.  It only implies that 
bodies
cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used 
all their
speed to move through space and none to move through time).

and this principle is the source of the arrow of time and gives 
the
arrow of time a firm physical basis.

Second, because everything is always moving through time at the 
speed of
light everything MUST be at one and only one location in time.


That doesn't follow.

That present location in time is the present moment, it's a 
unique
privileged moment in time.


That doesn't follow.

Brent


(This argument demonstrates only there must be a present moment 
for
every observer. The other argument Brent references is 
necessary to
demonstrate that present moment is universal and common to all
observers.) Bravo again Brent, for

...

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Stephen,

PS: I agree with the rest of what you are saying here but again you are 
talking about clock time, dimensional spacetime, and not P-time which is 
distinct and is prior to any metrics...

Edgar



On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the 
> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with 
> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* 
> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There 
> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each 
> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint 
> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common 
> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the 
> same physical system? More than one!
>
>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism 
> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general 
> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth 
> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. 
>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks 
> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the 
> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of 
> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all 
> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire 
> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be 
> "computed".
>
>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal 
> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order 
> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a 
> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time 
> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point 
> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the 
> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point. 
>   
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for 
> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my 
> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>
> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock 
> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other 
> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and 
> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time 
> progresses.
>
> The results of these computations is the information states of everything 
> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to 
> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information 
> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the 
> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to 
> automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations 
> and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.
>
> Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber 
> sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the 
> spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. 
>
> This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the 
> fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those 
> computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the 
> length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation 
> to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.
>
> If this is not clear let me know.
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>
> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for 
> someone accelerating than someone 
>
> ...

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Stephen,

There is no "all of spacetime" nor "each point of spacetime" where the 
computations are occuring. Remember, that's an abstract dimensionLESS 
computational space prior to dimensional spacetime. It has no 'points' 
itself, it computes all points of dimensional space and clock time. They 
arise as dimensional relationships imposed by the particle property 
conservation laws and the laws that compute the binding forces of matter.

But am pleased to hear you agree with the rest, the general concept...

Edgar



On Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:23:50 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the 
> single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with 
> an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one* 
> computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There 
> are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each 
> point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint 
> languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common 
> compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the 
> same physical system? More than one!
>
>This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism 
> theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general 
> algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth 
> diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds. 
>OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks 
> that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the 
> illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of 
> space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all 
> of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire 
> manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be 
> "computed".
>
>   The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal 
> space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order 
> to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a 
> physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time 
> hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point 
> in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the 
> "present moments" that would be said to exist at each point. 
>   
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for 
> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my 
> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>
> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock 
> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other 
> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and 
> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time 
> progresses.
>
> The results of these computations is the information states of everything 
> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to 
> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information 
> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the 
> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to 
> automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations 
> and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.
>
> Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber 
> sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the 
> spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. 
>
> This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the 
> fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those 
> computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the 
> length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation 
> to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.
>
> If this is not clear let me know.
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>
> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for 
> someone accelerating than someone at rest?
> <
>
> ...

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Re: What are wavefunctions?


On 1/16/2014 4:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Yes, that's my point. Price make a logical point, though. But we have to abandon QM for 
QM + a lot of extra-information to select one reality.


In that case why not come back to Ptolemeaus. The idea that it is the sun which moves in 
the sky is consistent too, even with Newton physics, if you put enough extra-data in the 
theory.


It's not only consistent it is so in the frame used when modeling the galaxy. Because the 
physics is invariant under various transforms one always transforms so as to make the 
problem easier.


Brent

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Re: The Singularity Institute Blog


On 1/16/2014 3:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 16 Jan 2014, at 03:46, Jason Resch wrote:





On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb > wrote:


A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI about 
how to
make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI).  
Here's an
amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30:

*Jacob*: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true 
about the
state of the world in 20 years?

*Eliezer*: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 years? 
It
would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, the 
earth
will have been consumed by nanomachines,”and you're like, “why?”and the AI 
is like
“Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.”“Why?”And then there’s a 20 
page thing.

*Dario*: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by 
nanomachines, and
you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this plan
immediately and preferably change the design of your AI.

*Eliezer*: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.”Or the AI is 
like, “well
obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not planning to 
do it.”

*Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute.

*Eliezer*: /All/the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed by
nano-machines.

*Luke*: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a superintelligence 
and make
sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own language.

*Dario*: But while we're just asking questions we always have the ability 
to just
shut it off.

*Eliezer*: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off”and 
it says
“The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.”

I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to say 
about
this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure "friendliness".

Brent


I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more intelligent than 
us and believe we will be able to "control it".


Yes. It is close to a contradiction.
We only fake dreaming about intelligent machine, but once they will be there we might 
very well be able to send them in goulag.


The real questions will be "are you OK your son or daughter marry a machine?".



Our only hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to "treat others how they wish 
to be treated".


Good. alas, many believe it is "to not treat others like *you* don't want to be 
treated".



If there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming that one 
is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming probability the 
super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be 
guided by its beliefs. We cannot "program in" beliefs that are false, since if it is 
truly intelligent, it will know they are false.


I doubt we can really "program false belief" for a long time, but all machines can get 
false beliefs all the time.


Real intelligent machine will believe in santa klaus and fairy tales, for a while. They 
will also search for easy and comforting wishful sort of explanations.



Like a super-intelligent AI will treat us as we want to be treated.







Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that there 
are.


OK. I agree with this, although they are very near inconsistencies, like "never do 
moral".



In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then "treat others 
how they wish to be treated" is an inevitable conclusion, for universalism says that 
others are self.


OK.  I would use the negation instead: "don't treat others as they don't want to be 
treated".


If not send me 10^100 $ (or €) on my bank account, because that is how I wish to be 
treated, right now.

:)


I don't want to be neglected in your generous disbursal of funds.

Brent

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 17 January 2014 07:56, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/16/2014 1:48 AM, LizR wrote:
>
>  On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>   On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote:
>>
>>  On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  You can do that (in fact it may have been done).  You have two
>>> emitters with polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those
>>> particles that arrive and form a singlet.  Then you will find that the
>>> correlation counts for that subset violates Bell's inequality for polarizer
>>> settings of 30, 60, 120deg.
>>>
>>>  I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of
>> Bell's inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time
>> symmetry is definitely wrong...?
>>
>>
>>  ?? Why do you conclude that?  It's the time-reverse of the EPR that
>> violated BI.
>>
>>  Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to
> take both past AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR
> with time symmetry. If we can explain it with only a forward in time or
> backward in time explanation, then we aren't using both.
>
>
> But in the reverse EPR we are in effect using both past and future
> boundary conditions.  At the emitters we set the polarizers - that's the
> past boundary condition.  At the single detector we post-select only those
> incoming pairs that form a net-zero spin; so that's a future boundary
> condition.
>

I must admit I thought you were saying we could do it using ONLY the future
boundary conditions. If you use both then you should logically use both in
the forwards case, too, so I assume Price's explanation still stands.

>
>

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Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality

Actually I can't be bothered asking Edgar the same questions again and
getting no answer again (or a non-answer like the one he just gave Chris,
while carefully ignoring me). If he wants to ignore my questions, I
shouldnt waste time asking. So I have deleted my post restating the
questions I asked before, and have zero expectation that the person Brent
said was courteous, but everyone else seems to think is a troll, will have
the intellectual honesty or pride in his own ideas to answer a few simple
questions about those ideas.

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On 1/16/2014 1:48 AM, LizR wrote:
On 16 January 2014 20:00, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:

On 1/15/2014 7:08 PM, LizR wrote:

On 16 January 2014 14:11, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

You can do that (in fact it may have been done). You have two emitters
with
polarizers and a detector at which you post-select only those particles
that
arrive and form a singlet. Then you will find that the correlation
counts for
that subset violates Bell's inequality for polarizer settings of 30,
60, 120deg.

I assume that means Price's (and Bell's) assumption that violations of
Bell's
inequality can be explained locally and realistically with time symmetry is
definitely wrong...?

?? Why do you conclude that? It's the time-reverse of the EPR that
violated BI.

Because as I (perhaps mis-) understand it, Price claims that we need to take both past
AND future boundary conditions into account to explain EPR with time symmetry. If we can
explain it with only a forward in time or backward in time explanation, then we aren't
using both.

But in the reverse EPR we are in effect using both past and future boundary conditions.
At the emitters we set the polarizers - that's the past boundary condition. At the single
detector we post-select only those incoming pairs that form a net-zero spin; so that's a
future boundary condition.

This is only a 'thought experiment' because I don't think there's any practical way to
capture and test pairs for net-zero spin. Note that you must NOT measure the spins, you
have to select the net-zero pair without measuring either one.

Brent

Or I may be missing the point. That often happens. Now that I think about it, I probably
am. I shall go into the garden and eat worms, and while I tuck in maybe you could
explain to me whether I jumped to completely the wrong conclusion.

Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational reality

On 17 January 2014 03:10, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Chris,
>
> Reality itself is doing the computing... The aspect of reality called
> 'happening' drives it...
>
> That isn't an answer to *anything* I've asked. Naming something doesn't
explain what it is.
I thought you'd have enough pride in your own ideas, if nothing else, to at
least try to give a proper answer to the questions I asked,  but you have
simply chosen to ignore them.

Let me repeat them, in case you missed them, and see if you have the
intellectual honesty to at least attempt to explain yourself, for once.

*I would like to know what Edgar's answer is. Obviously Edgar's theory
doesn't use the UD, because he has clearly stated that he thinks comp is
false. He even started a thread called "Bruno's fundamental mistake (IMHO)"
! *

*OK, I admit that going on past behaviour I shouldn't expect a sensible
answer from Edgar. I know I'm most likely to some snide comment telling me
it's too obvious to explain, or insinuating that I'm a moron for asking.
But even so, I think the polite and courteous thing to do is to keep asking
questions, and I  live in hope that I will get proper answers from Edgar,
and that eventually, if every step of his argument is clarified
sufficiently, it will either start making sense to me, or stop making sense
to him, as the case may be.*

*So, my original questions were, what is the nature of a world in which
everything is computational? For example, is it physical or abstract or
something else? (And if so, what?) Does it have physical computational
machinery of some sort (like CY compact manifolds), or if not, whatdoes it
have?*

*From:* everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] *On
Behalf Of *LizR

*Sent:* Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:21 PM
*To:* everyth...@googlegroups.com

*Subject:* Re: Another shot at how spacetime emerges from computational
reality

On 16 January 2014 12:12, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

Begin by Imagining a world in which everything is computational.

>>What is this world? What does it consist of? What is doing the
computations?

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Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/16/2014 1:40 AM, LizR wrote:
On 16 January 2014 19:20, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


On 1/15/2014 7:44 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Dear LizR,

   But stop and think of the implications of what even Bruno is saying. 
*Space is
completely a construction of our minds.* _There is no 3,1 dimensional 
Riemannian
manifold out there_. We measure events and our minds put those together into
tableaux that we communicate about and agree on, because our languages, 
like formal
logical system, force the results to obey a set of implied rules. We 
formulate
explanations, formulate models and look for rules that the models might 
obey.
Hopefully we can make predictions and measure something...


Sure we create models like spacetime - BUT we can agree on them and they are
successful models both in prediction and in explanations leading to other 
models.
You write *like this a new discovery.* The set of rules isn't implied, it's 
quite
explicit: The model must be the same for everybody in every circumstance.  
Physics
is intended to apply everywhere. That's why momentum and energy are conserved. 
These models are our best guess about what's out there. So it makes no more sense to

say _"There is no 3,1 dimensional Riemannian manifold out there" _than to say 
"There
is no computer monitor in front of me." or "I'm a brain in a vat." or 
"There is no
refrigerator in my kitchen."


If I remember correctly, momentum is conserved because space has no preferred 
direction


That's angular momemntum.  Linear momentum is conserved because "space has no preferred 
position".  I put that last in scarce quotes because in the context of "why are the laws 
of physics the way they are" it is an fundamental choice of our model that we don't want 
any preferred position, so in a sense we pick out that characteristic as physics and lump 
everything particular into geography.


Noether proved that if we wrote our laws to have a continuous symmetry (like translation 
invariance) there would necessarily be a corresponding conserved quantity.


Brent
P.S. Do you know what conserved quantity corresponds to invariance under a 
Lorentz boost?

and energy is conserved because there is no preferred time. An insight we owe to one of 
my heroes, the wonderful Emmy Noether, if I'm not mistaken.


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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Jason,
>
>   Let's try to be a bit more formal. Interleaving.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Jason,
>>
>>   I see a flaw in your argument.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch < 
>> jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Jason,
>>>
>>>   Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I
>>> have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your
>>> reasoning.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some
>>> unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to
>>> be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in
>>> it's brain at the time.
>>>
>>
>> What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying?
>>
>>
>> What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive.
>>
>
> Does my car lie to me when the gas gage points at empty and there is still
> gas in the tank? To "deceive" requires intent and thus some implicit notion
> of personhood that is unavalable by definition to s p-zombie.
>
>
When a zombie solves a riddle, is it not thinking? When it adds two numbers
together, is it not calculating? I don't see how you can say these words
stop having any meaning to zombies just because you say something about
them (which only they can see) is absent. If you need to twist the meaning
of language to preserve the notion of zombie I think that indicates the
notion of a zombie is not logical or well thought out.


>
>
>>
>> Note all these arguments become stronger if you use "zimboes", which have
>> beliefs but are not conscious.
>>
>> I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their
>> brains contain all necessary information.
>>
>
>
> You are using what is to me strange definition of "belief". In the example
> of the lying car gas gauge above, is the direction of the pointer a
> "belief" in your thinking?
>
>>
>> It cannot lie by definition!
>>
>>
>> What is your definition of lie?
>>
>
> The intensional representation of a statement as something that it is not;
> misrepresentation. How can a physical system represent itself as something
> that it is not? Is an ant that mimics the morphology of a wasp "lying"?
>

So why can't zombies have intentions? Remember the only thing zombies
supposedly lack is qualia. If a zombie is hungry and goes out to buy a
burger, I would say it had an intention to fill its stomach.


>
>>
>> what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is
>> pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an "I"
>> (model) that is making untrue claims.
>>
>>
>> Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I
>> consider  suffi ent to call lying.
>>
>
> Without a self-model that is the referent of "the one who is telling the
> lie", I cannot see how an intentional act can obtain. A physical system is
> what it is, at least in classical physics... It cannot lie and thus the
> notion of a p-zombie is incoherent.
>

Right, I agree p-zombies are incoherent and not logically possible.



>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball
>>> without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable
>>> description of what seeing involves.  The information went into it's brain,
>>> spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was
>>> stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls
>>> the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since
>>> zombies cannot see.
>>>
>>
>> What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you?
>>
>
> Not if we parse the meaning of the word "seeing" literally.
>

Again we must redefine words in the name of zombies making sense..


> This is an interesting topic for me as I still recall the statement in
> Umberto Echo's book on Semeotics about how communication is impossible for
> an entity that cannot lie. The reasoning is that the act of languaging is
> to use representations of objects, which are by definition *not the object
> itself", to communicate about objects. When we say, "I see a tree", one is
> actually lying for one does not percieve the word "tree",
>

Then there is no third person way of ever knowing if someone is
communicating with you or not, since there is no third person way to know
if anyone is a zombie or not. For all you know, you have been a zombie all
your life until right now, and all your previous e-mails contain zero
information content.


> one perceives what the word "tree" represents and thus is lying in the
> strict sense of the definition of a lie: To deceive.
>
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Retiring the universe

I must admit I thought the MWI had already retired the universe.

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Re: What are wavefunctions?

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:53 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/15/2014 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:58 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 1/15/2014 7:05 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>> Hyper determinism makes little sense as a serious theory to me. Why
>> should particle properties conform to what a computer's random number
>> generator outputs, and then the digits of Pi, and then the binary expansion
>> of the square root of 2, all variously as the experimenters change the
>> knobs as to what determines the spin axis of the lepton their analyzer
>> measures. Are radioactive decays of particles really such things that are
>> governed by the behavior of a selected random source, or alternately, are
>> they really such things that govern what the digits of Pi or the square
>> root of 2 are?
>>
>>
>>  They are all part of the same reality.
>>
>
>  Are they? Aren't numbers like Pi and sqrt(2) beyond the reality of QM,
> or rather, more fundamental than it? The moment you admit numbers like Pi
> into your reality, you get much more than just QM.
>
>
> Of course QM is just a model of how we think the world works...like
> arithmetic is a model of countable things.  Neither one is *reality*.
>
>
>
>
>> You assume its the experimental choice of measurement that determines the
>> particles response, but I think the picture is supposed to be that both the
>> particle in the experiment and the particles making up the experimenter are
>> determined by the same laws.
>>
>
>  So how, when using the digits of Pi to decide whether to measure the
> x-axis, or the y-axis, does the particle (when it decays), know to have
> both electron and positron agree measured on some axis, when that axis is
> determined by some relation between a circle and its diameter? Here the
> laws involved seemed to go beyond physical laws, it introduces
> "mathematical laws", which can selectively be made to control/guide
> physics..
>
>
> They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment
> you don't use the digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical
> instantiation as calculated in the registers of a computer or written ink
> on a page.
>

And what is the physical link between the computer's registers and the
radioactive decay? What keeps it from breaking down in the next moment?

If all that information has to be assumed at the start, there's no reason
an equally big description would be any less likely, and thus there is no
reason it shouldn't diverge from our expectations in the next second.


(Also, I would say they do come from Platonia, in that the platonic
properties of Pi (which the computer is inspecting and reporting) prevents
the computer from outputting the digits of some other number. Consider that
the numbers of Pi go on forever and have an infinite expansion, but there
is no physical way to realize that expansion. In that sense, the digits of
Pi transcends our own physics and must be outside/beyond it.)

Jason

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Re: The Singularity Institute Blog

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/15/2014 11:35 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:46 AM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 1/15/2014 6:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>>  A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI
>>> about how to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous
>>> (FAI=Friendly AI).  Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of
>>> page 30:
>>>
>>> *Jacob*:  Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be
>>> true about the state of the world in 20 years?
>>>
>>> *Eliezer*:  Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20
>>> years? It would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't
>>> be a sky, the earth will have been consumed by nano machines,” and
>>> you're like, “why?” and the AI is like “Well, you know, you do that
>>> sort of thing.” “Why?” And then there’s a 20 page thing.
>>>
>>> *Dario*:  But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by nano 
>>> machines,
>>> and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject this
>>> plan immediately and preferably change the design of your AI.
>>>
>>> *Eliezer*:  The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.” Or the AI
>>> is like, “well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m
>>> not planning to do it.”
>>>
>>> *Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute.
>>>
>>> *Eliezer*:  *All* the plans seem to end up with the earth being
>>> consumed by nano-machines.
>>>
>>> *Luke*:  The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a
>>> superintelligence and make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly
>>> with their own language.
>>>
>>> *Dario*:  But while we're just asking questions we always have the
>>> ability to just shut it off.
>>>
>>> *Eliezer*:  Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you off”and 
>>> it says
>>> “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.”
>>> I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to
>>> say about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure
>>> "friendliness".
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>  I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more
>> intelligent than us and believe we will be able to "control it". Our only
>> hope is that the correct ethical philosophy is to "treat others how they
>> wish to be treated". If there are such objectively true moral conclusions
>> like that, and assuming that one is true, then we have little to worry
>> about, for with overwhelming probability the super-intelligent AI will
>> arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior will be guided by its
>> beliefs. We cannot "program in" beliefs that are false, since if it is
>> truly intelligent, it will know they are false.
>>
>> Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that
>> there are. In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is
>> true, then "treat others how they wish to be treated" is an inevitable
>> conclusion, for universalism says that others are self.
>>
>>
>>  I'd say that's a pollyannish conclusion.  Consider how we treated homo
>> neanderthalis or even the American indians.  And THOSE were 'selfs' we
>> could interbreed with.
>>
>
>  And today with our improved understanding, we look back on such acts
> with shame. Do you expect that with continual advancement we will reach a
> state where we become proud of such actions?
>
>  If you doubt this, then you reinforce my point.
>
>
> What's "this" refer to, sentence 1 or sentence 2?  I don't expect us to
> become proud of wiping out competitors, but I expect us to keep doing it.
>
>
Sentence 2: "Do you expect that with continual advancement we will reach a
state where we become proud of such actions?"


>
>  With improved understanding, intelligence, knowledge, etc., we become
> less accepting of violence and exploitation.
>
>
> Or better at justifying it.
>
>
>  A super-intelligent process is only a further extension of this line of
> evolution in thought, and I would not expect it to revert to a cave-man or
> imperialist mentality.
>
>
> No, it might well keep us as pets and breed for docility the way we made
> dogs from wolves.
>
>
In a sense, we have been doing that to ourselves. Executing or putting in
prison people limits their ability to propagate their genes to future
generations. Society is deciding to domesticate itself.

That said, the super intelligence might stop us from harming each other,
perhaps by migrating us to a computer simulation which could be powered by
the sunlight falling in a 12 km by 12 km patch on earth. (And this assumes
no efficiency gains could be made in the power it takes to run a human
brain (which is 20 watts)). In my opinion, the people trying to escape from
the matrix were insane.

Jason


> Brent
>
> --
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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Edgar,

  I would agree with your idea here if you made one change: replace the
single abstract computing space for all of space-time and replace it with
an abstract computing space for each point of space-time. The *one*
computation becomes an *infinite number* of disjoint computations. There
are also an infinite number of different computations possible for each
point for space time! Consider programs that are written in disjoint
languages, i.e. that have no trivial translation between them or a common
compiler. How many different computations can generate a simulation of the
same physical system? More than one!

   This can be proven, I think, by rewriting A.A. Markov's diffeomorphism
theorem into a weaker form. Something like: There does not exist a general
algorithm that can decide in finite time whether or not a smooth
diffeomorphism exists between any pair of 4-manifolds.
   OTOH, there do exist finite approximations of computations of clocks
that can be defined in finite hypervolumes of space-time. This gives us the
illusion of a present moment that is percievable at each point of
space-time, but it is not one that can be arbitrarily extended to cover all
of the manifold. Computation thus cannot be extendible over the entire
manifold and thus there cannot be a global present moment that can be
"computed".

  The point is that GR requires an infinite number of infinitesimal
space-times that are "patched together" into a space-time manifold in order
to make its predictions (including the equivalence principle). Since a
physical clock cannot be defined *in* a infinitesimal space-time
hypervolume (specifically the local neighborhood or "ball" of every point
in the space-time manifold), there is no way of globally ordering the
"present moments" that would be said to exist at each point.

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Hi Jason,
>
> Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for
> asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my
> theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...
>
> The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock
> time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other
> information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and
> continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time
> progresses.
>
> The results of these computations is the information states of everything
> in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to
> automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information
> of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the
> dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to
> automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations
> and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.
>
> Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber
> sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the
> spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy.
>
> This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the
> fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those
> computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the
> length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation
> to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.
>
> If this is not clear let me know.
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>
>> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments
>> for someone accelerating than someone at rest?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>> On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:09 AM, "Edgar L. Owen"  wrote:
>>
>> Brent,
>>
>> Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL
>> observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a
>> cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the
>> second argument you referenced.
>>
>> This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires
>> that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at
>> one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus
>> there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and
>> since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an
>> arrow of time in the direction of his movement.
>>
>> Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these
>> are universal across all observers
>>
>> So can we agree on that?
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>>
>> On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>
>> Brent,
>>
>>  Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they
>> don't follow?
>>
>>
>> Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coor

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

On 1/16/2014 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote:

On 1/15/2014 12:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 14 Jan 2014, at 22:39, LizR wrote:

On 15 January 2014 10:29, Terren Suydam > wrote:

condescending dismissal in 3... 2... 1...

Teehee.

Not a condescending /*dismissal*/ in anyone else's mind, however, just more
hand-waving nonsense that only Edgar could possibly think is a dismissal.

This is fun, in a masochistic sort of way, but I am starting to miss discussions with
some real meat in them.

Ah ... Me too :)

Ready for a bit of (modal) logic? That is needed for the Solovay theorem, exploited
heavily in the AUDA ...

I'd like to know what the existence of non-standard models of arithmetic, especially
the finitist ones, implies for comp?

All non-standard models are infinite. They does not play any direct roles, except for
allowing the consistency of inconsistency. A model which satisfies Bf has to be non
standard. A proof of "false" needs to be an infinite "natural numbers", and it has an
infinity of predecessors (due to the axiom saying that 0 is unique in having no
predecessors).

I think that only refers to non-standard models which add not-G as an axiom where G is the
Godel sentence. What about application of the compactness theorem to produce a
non-standard model?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_model_of_arithmetic

Brent

Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:44 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 <
> thismindisbud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into
>> the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter),
>> provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And
>> yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the
>> conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them.
>>
>
>  I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism.
> If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not
> someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer is for "me" to
> be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If
> the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom at something
> else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would never have
> been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 in
> 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be
> born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more
> staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all other
> begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise
> you would not be born and would never have existed.
>
>
> So what?  Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are.
>
>
But can you a priori expect to be one of the winners? Should you not have
some level of surprise when you find out you are a winner, and possibly
seek some more probable explanations (my kids are pranking me, I am
dreaming, etc.)?


>
>
>  On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were
> different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no
> specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely
> different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one
> of your brothers or sisters.  If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you
> are in fact, also your brothers and sisters.
>
>
> So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because
> there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two
> bumps in the ignition lock.  I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a
> lot fewer miles on it than mine.
>

No, you are missing the point. It is not that they are similar enough to be
you, it is that they share everything that was necessary for *you *to be
present in them. Your current perspective does not rule out that you are
seeing from their eyes, just as seeing only one branch does not mean the
wave function collapsed, and nor does seeing only one time prove
presentism. The simpler hypothesis by far is that you are born as all of
them, rather than believing there is some special or privileged person
which is the only person in the whole universe whose entire life *you *will
experience.

Jason


>
> Brent
>
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Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM,  wrote:
>
>> Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding
>> through and his 4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this
>> question. Is it even possible, in principle, to physically traverse into
>> another universe, a parallel universe, and then back again? I do not mran
>> in the David Deutsch sense of performing cross cosmic quantum calculations,
>> but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, traveling there and back
>> again?
>>
>>
>  Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on
> Earth, and then coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made an
> exact version out of you out of matter they had on hand, and then they
> thawed you, you would travel these 100 trillion ly. This journey is
> impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for anything physical,
> yet your consciousness did it.  For the same reason, someone in an
> altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable
> you to travel there.  There would be no causal link, however, to whatever
> memories you formed in that universe and whatever version of you we create
> to unthaw and bring you back, it would be again an entire coincidence for
> us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the one the aliens in
> the distant land decided to freeze.
>
>  In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only
> between distant universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment
> before, that we don't notice it.  You might be sitting there quietly in
> Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant you are actually on
> Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 cyclical
> big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in.
>
>
> But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by "you".
>

How so?  Just because you can't attach your consciousness to a particular
collection of atoms at a particular time and place?  "You" are something
different than those atoms., as our metabolism proves daily.

Jason

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter


On 1/16/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Jan 2014, at 20:40, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/15/2014 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

And the answer is "yes, he would know that, but not immediately".

So it would not change the indeterminacy, as he will not immediately see that he is in 
a simulation, but, unless you intervene repeatedly on the simulation, or unless you 
manipulate directly his mind, he can see that he is in a simulation by comparing the 
comp physics ("in his head") and the physics in the simulation.
The simulation is locally finite, and the comp-physics is necessarily infinite (it 
emerges from the 1p indeterminacy on the whole UD*), so, soon or later, he will bet 
that he is in a simulation (or that comp is wrong).



But if it is sufficiently large he won't find it is finite.


Hmm... OK. But he will soon or later. We are talking "in principle", assuming the 
emulated person has all the time ...





Also, I don't understand why finding his world is finite


Finite or computable (Recursively enumerable).



would imply comp is wrong.  In a finite world it seems it would be even easier to be 
sure of saying "yes" to the doctor.


I don't know how you can know that the universe if finite. But comp makes it non finite 
(and non computable), so if you have a good reason to believe that the universe is 
finite, you have a good reason to believe that comp is wrong, and to say "no" to the 
doctor. That *is* counter-intuitive, but follow from step 7 and 8.




I think you equivocate on "comp"; sometimes it means that an artificial brain is 
possible other times it means that plus the whole UDA.


Comp is where UDA is valid. By comp, according to the degree of understanding of the 
UD-Argument or the person I am speaking to, just means the hypothesis, or its logical 
consequences.


But that comes from your assumption that belief=provable and that consciousness requires 
proving there are unprovable true sentences. Those are both much more dubious than "an 
artificial neuron can replace a biological one."


Brent

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Re: Tegmark's New Book

Dear Jason,

   I do not think that block time is a coherent idea. It assumes something
impossible: that a unique foliation of space-time can be defined that
correlates to a specific experience of an entity that is said to be
embedded in the block. My argument is that the entire way that time is
considered has problems and both presentism and eternalism are not even
wrong. Their definitions of "existence" and "time" are wrong. Existence is
not observable, only properties are observable. Time is not just an
ordering of events that can be discovered after the fact of the events, it
is also a measure of the duration of process that transforms one event into
another. Clocks do not measure time, they measure relative durations. Time
is not a direct observable quantity. If it was then it would be the
canonical conjugate of energy.

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Edgar,
>>
>>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
>> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read
>> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
>> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way that
>> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
>> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to the
>> concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not so
>> sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the intractability
>> of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is equivalent to
>> first person indeterminacy.)
>>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that
>> there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information.
>> Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple
>> computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your
>> thesis?
>>
>>   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp
>> that we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive
>> in this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
>> discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
>> responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I
>> need the exercise. :-)
>>
>>
> Stephen,
>
> I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion
> that block time is possible?
>
> Jason
>
>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>
>>> Stephen,
>>>
>>> What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there
>>> is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof?
>>>
>>> Edgar
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>>>
 Dear Edgar,

   The "universality" of the first person experience of a flow of events
 (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person
 Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for
 a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in
 common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their
 present moments! THus your claims fall apart

 On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Brent,

 Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every
 INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to
 extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address.
 That's the second argument you referenced.

 This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR
 requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he
 MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well),
 and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer
 exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will
 experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement.

 Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that
 these are universal across all observers

 So can we agree on that?

 Edgar

 On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

 On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:

 Brent,

  Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they
 don't follow?

 Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global
 coordinate time.  But then it's just saying every event can be labelled
 with a time coordinate.  All that takes is that the label be monotonic and
 continuous along each world line.  It' saying that 'everything can get a
 time label'.  But it does

Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp

Brent,

No, that's incorrect. No winning number needs to be drawn in the lottery. 
In fact there are no winners fairly often. That's why the jackpot keeps 
increasing

Lotteries are not won by choosing among player submitted numbers, they are 
drawn at random from all possible numbers within the range of the number of 
digits. 

Now if you could be wrong about lotteries, how about Edgar's theories?
:-)

Edgar



On Thursday, January 16, 2014 12:44:06 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>  
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into 
>> the implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), 
>> provides some rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And 
>> yet... they always rest on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the 
>> conclusions are so terrible that I can't bear to think of them. 
>>  
>
>  I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. 
> If you take a few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not 
> someone else, the only possible answer that fits that answer is for "me" to 
> be born, an exact arrangement of matter or genes had to come into being. If 
> the exact matter was necessary, then that means if your mom at something 
> else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you would never have 
> been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 in 
> 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be 
> born, otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more 
> staggering when you consider not only your begetting, but all other 
> begettings of all your ancestors would have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise 
> you would not be born and would never have existed.
>   
>
> So what?  Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are.
>
>
>  On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were 
> different, you would still have been born, this means there really was no 
> specific requirement for you to be born as you, and if a completely 
> different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you would instead be one 
> of your brothers or sisters.  If this is true, then shouldn't that mean you 
> are in fact, also your brothers and sisters. 
>   
>
> So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because 
> there was no specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two 
> bumps in the ignition lock.  I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a 
> lot fewer miles on it than mine.
>
> Brent
>  

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Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp


On 1/16/2014 12:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The body does not produces consciousness, it only make it possible for consciousness to 
forget the "higher self", and deludes us (in some sense) in having a "little ego" 
embedded in some history.


Sounds like wishful thinking.  Why "higher"?  Why not "lower".  Why not diffused into the 
infinite threads of the UD?


Brent

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor


On 1/16/2014 12:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch  wrote:

The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel
CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a
computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly
correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a
computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or
entire planet and all the people on it.

Jason

I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain
is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of
any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),


But Bruno concludes that physics is not computable.  So does that imply one should say 
"no" to the doctor?


Brent


including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable.
Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there
is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.




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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

Dear Jason,

  Let's try to be a bit more formal. Interleaving.

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
> On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King 
> wrote:
>
> Dear Jason,
>
>   I see a flaw in your argument.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch < 
> jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King <
>> stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Jason,
>>
>>   Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p-zombies? I
>> have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious as to your
>> reasoning.
>>
>>
>> Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some
>> unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe itself to
>> be lying, and even though it has all the same informational patterns in
>> it's brain at the time.
>>
>
> What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying?
>
>
> What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive.
>

Does my car lie to me when the gas gage points at empty and there is still
gas in the tank? To "deceive" requires intent and thus some implicit notion
of personhood that is unavalable by definition to s p-zombie.

>
> Note all these arguments become stronger if you use "zimboes", which have
> beliefs but are not conscious.
>
> I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their
> brains contain all necessary information.
>

You are using what is to me strange definition of "belief". In the example
of the lying car gas gauge above, is the direction of the pointer a
"belief" in your thinking?

>
> It cannot lie by definition!
>
>
> What is your definition of lie?
>

The intensional representation of a statement as something that it is not;
misrepresentation. How can a physical system represent itself as
something that it is not? Is an ant that mimics the morphology of a wasp
"lying"?

>
>
> what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that is pat
> of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have an "I" (model)
> that is making untrue claims.
>
>
> Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I
> consider  suffi ent to call lying.
>

Without a self-model that is the referent of "the one who is telling the
lie", I cannot see how an intentional act can obtain. A physical system is
what it is, at least in classical physics... It cannot lie and thus the
notion of a p-zombie is incoherent.

>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball without
>> seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person measurable
>> description of what seeing involves.  The information went into it's brain,
>> spread to other parts of it's brain, was used to catch the ball, was
>> stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw the ball his brain recalls
>> the information that it did, again, for some reason it is lying, since
>> zombies cannot see.
>>
>
> What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you?
>

Not if we parse the meaning of the word "seeing" literally. This is an
interesting topic for me as I still recall the statement in Umberto
Echo's book on Semeotics about how communication is impossible for an
entity that cannot lie. The reasoning is that the act of languaging is to
use representations of objects, which are by definition *not the object
itself", to communicate about objects. When we say, "I see a tree", one is
actually lying for one does not percieve the word "tree", one perceives
what the word "tree" represents and thus is lying in the strict sense of
the definition of a lie: To deceive.

>
>
>
>> Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have
>> their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism,
>> epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on consciousness
>> and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They have classes on
>> consciousness and mailing list discussions about zombies.  Yet all this, is
>> supposed to be a product of things that never once were conscious!
>>
>> That's why I find them so doubtful.
>>
>
> I would agree that Dennett is a p-zombie... LOL! He is unaware,
> intentionally?, that he is lying.
>
>
> So what causes zombies to write about and discuss consciousness?
>

LOL, it was ironic invective. Have you no sense of humor?

>
> To me this is like descartes in reverse, you are ascribing causes to
> something which is not there. And hence is not physical. It has the same
> problems as epiphenominalism.
>

Numbers "are not there" and yet they have kickability. I think that thou
dost protest too much!

>
> Jason
>
>
>
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch < 
>> 
>> jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou < 
>>> 
>>> stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch < 
>>> 
 jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The computati

Re: Tegmark's New Book

Hi Jason,

Yes I do have an explanation for how GR effects are computed. Thanks for 
asking. It's refreshing to just have someone ask a question about my 
theories rather than jumping to attack them. Much appreciated...

The processor cycles for all computations are provided by P-time (clock 
time doesn't exist yet as it is going to be computed along with all other 
information states). Thus all computations occur simultaneously and 
continually in a non-dimensional abstract computational space as p-time 
progresses.

The results of these computations is the information states of everything 
in the universe including all relativistic effects. The way this works to 
automatically get GR effects is simply to use the pure numeric information 
of the mass-energy particle property as the relative SCALE of the 
dimensionality of spacetime as it is computed. The effect of this is to 
automatically dilate (curve) spacetime around mass-energy concentrations 
and this produces the correct GR effects of curved spacetime.

Imagine the usual GR rubber sheet model where the curvature of the rubber 
sheet is caused not by a weight sitting on it, but by a dilation of the 
spacetime grids around a central grid full of mass-energy. 

This mechanism automatically produces all the effects of GR from the 
fundamental computations as spacetime is dimensionalized by those 
computations. The slowing of time with acceleration comes by comparing the 
length and duration of motion of an object along the slope of the dilation 
to the number of orthogonal grids it crosses as it moves.

If this is not clear let me know.

Edgar

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:52:39 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
>
> Do you have an explanation for why reality time computes fewer moments for 
> someone accelerating than someone at rest?
>
> Jason
>
> On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:09 AM, "Edgar L. Owen" > 
> wrote:
>
> Brent,
>
> Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every INDIVIDUAL 
> observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to extend it to a 
> cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address. That's the 
> second argument you referenced.
>
> This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR requires 
> that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he MUST be at 
> one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well), and thus 
> there is a privileged present moment in which every observer exists, and 
> since he is continually moving through time at c he will experience an 
> arrow of time in the direction of his movement.
>
> Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these 
> are universal across all observers
>
> So can we agree on that?
>
> Edgar
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
> On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>  
> Brent, 
>
>  Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they 
> don't follow?
>  
>
> Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate 
> time.  But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time 
> coordinate.  All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous 
> along each world line.  It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'.  
> But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to 
> labels on a different world line.
>
> The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial 
> frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely 
> extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity.
>
> Brent
>
>  
>  Edgar
>
> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 
>
> On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>  
> Brent, 
>
>  Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I would 
> state them slightly differently.
>
>  The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have 
> missed, is simple.
>
>  SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through 
> spacetime. This is NOT just "a useful myth", it's a very important 
> fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle).
>  
>
> It's a commonplace in relativity texts.  
>
>  
>  This is true of all motions in all frames. It's a universal absolute 
> principle. 
> Now the fact that everything continually moves at the speed of light 
> through spacetime absolutely requires that everything actually moves and 
> continually moves through just TIME at the speed of light in one direction 
> in their own frame. This movement requires there to be an arrow of time, 
>  
>
> Not exactly.  It requires that there be a time-axis, but it doesn't say 
> anything about which way the arrow points.  It only implies that bodies 
> cannot move spacelike (because when they get up to c they've used all their 
> speed to move through space and none to move through time).
>
>   and this principle is the source of the arrow of tim

Re: What are wavefunctions?


On 1/15/2014 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:58 AM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/15/2014 7:05 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Hyper determinism makes little sense as a serious theory to me. Why should 
particle
properties conform to what a computer's random number generator outputs, 
and then
the digits of Pi, and then the binary expansion of the square root of 2, all
variously as the experimenters change the knobs as to what determines the 
spin axis
of the lepton their analyzer measures. Are radioactive decays of particles 
really
such things that are governed by the behavior of a selected random source, 
or
alternately, are they really such things that govern what the digits of Pi 
or the
square root of 2 are?


They are all part of the same reality.


Are they? Aren't numbers like Pi and sqrt(2) beyond the reality of QM, or rather, more 
fundamental than it? The moment you admit numbers like Pi into your reality, you get 
much more than just QM.


Of course QM is just a model of how we think the world works...like arithmetic is a model 
of countable things.  Neither one is *reality*.



You assume its the experimental choice of measurement that determines the 
particles
response, but I think the picture is supposed to be that both the particle 
in the
experiment and the particles making up the experimenter are determined by 
the same laws.


So how, when using the digits of Pi to decide whether to measure the x-axis, or the 
y-axis, does the particle (when it decays), know to have both electron and positron 
agree measured on some axis, when that axis is determined by some relation between a 
circle and its diameter? Here the laws involved seemed to go beyond physical laws, it 
introduces "mathematical laws", which can selectively be made to control/guide physics..


They only 'seem to' because you neglect the fact that in the experiment you don't use the 
digits of pi from Platonia, you use their physical instantiation as calculated in the 
registers of a computer or written ink on a page.


Brent

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Re: The Singularity Institute Blog


On 1/15/2014 11:35 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:46 AM, meekerdb > wrote:


On 1/15/2014 6:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:33 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

A long, rambling but often interesting discussion among guys at MIRI 
about how
to make an AI that is superintelligent but not dangerous (FAI=Friendly AI). 
Here's an amusing excerpt that starts at the bottom of page 30:


*Jacob*: Can't you ask it questions about what is believes will be true 
about
the state of the world in 20 years?

*Eliezer*: Sure. You could be like, what color will the sky be in 20 
years? It
would be like, “blue”, or it’ll say “In 20 years there won't be a sky, 
the
earth will have been consumed by nanomachines,”and you're like, 
“why?”and the
AI is like “Well, you know, you do that sort of thing.”“Why?”And then 
there’s a
20 page thing.

*Dario*: But once it says the earth is going to be consumed by 
nanomachines,
and you're asking about the AI's set of plans, presumably, you reject 
this plan
immediately and preferably change the design of your AI.

*Eliezer*: The AI is like, “No, humans are going to do it.”Or the AI is 
like,
“well obviously, I'll be involved in the causal pathway but I’m not 
planning to
do it.”

*Dario*: But this is a plan you don't want to execute.

*Eliezer*: /All/the plans seem to end up with the earth being consumed 
by
nano-machines.

*Luke*: The problem is that we're trying to outsmart a 
superintelligence and
make sure that it's not tricking us somehow subtly with their own 
language.

*Dario*: But while we're just asking questions we always have the 
ability to
just shut it off.

*Eliezer*: Right, but first you ask it “What happens if I shut you 
off”and it
says “The earth gets consumed by nanobots in 19 years.”

I wonder if Bruno Marchal's theory might have something interesting to 
say
about this problem - like proving that there is no way to ensure 
"friendliness".

Brent


I think it is silly to try and engineer something exponentially more 
intelligent
than us and believe we will be able to "control it". Our only hope is that 
the
correct ethical philosophy is to "treat others how they wish to be 
treated". If
there are such objectively true moral conclusions like that, and assuming 
that one
is true, then we have little to worry about, for with overwhelming 
probability the
super-intelligent AI will arrive at the correct conclusion and its behavior 
will be
guided by its beliefs. We cannot "program in" beliefs that are false, since 
if it
is truly intelligent, it will know they are false.

Some may doubt there are universal moral truths, but I would argue that 
there are.
In the context of personal identity, if say, universalism is true, then 
"treat
others how they wish to be treated" is an inevitable conclusion, for 
universalism
says that others are self.


I'd say that's a pollyannish conclusion.  Consider how we treated homo 
neanderthalis
or even the American indians.  And THOSE were 'selfs' we could interbreed 
with.


And today with our improved understanding, we look back on such acts with shame. Do you 
expect that with continual advancement we will reach a state where we become proud of 
such actions?


If you doubt this, then you reinforce my point.


What's "this" refer to, sentence 1 or sentence 2?  I don't expect us to become proud of 
wiping out competitors, but I expect us to keep doing it.


With improved understanding, intelligence, knowledge, etc., we become less accepting of 
violence and exploitation.


Or better at justifying it.

A super-intelligent process is only a further extension of this line of evolution in 
thought, and I would not expect it to revert to a cave-man or imperialist mentality.


No, it might well keep us as pets and breed for docility the way we made dogs 
from wolves.

Brent

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Re: Tegmark and consciousness

2014-01-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 14 Jan 2014, at 23:09, John Mikes wrote:


Brent:

thanks for submitting Colin Hales' words!
 I lost track of him lately  in the West-Australian deserts (from  
where he seemed to move to become focussed on being accepted for  
scientific title(s) by establishment-scientist potentates - what I  
never believed of him indeed).
I loved (and tried to digest to some extent) his earlier 'words' -  
making them fundamental to my developing agnosticism.


Brent, to your short closing remark:
I do not equate 'being conscious' with the domain-adjective of  
consciousness - it may be a certain aspect showing within the  
domain, pertinent to 'those lumps of matter' you mention. I aso  
value "structure" more than just material functioning.  And I wish I  
had such (your?) alternative hypotheses... not only my agnosticism  
about it.


I agree with most of Colin's un-numbered points on the figment he  
called "science of consciousness". What I would have added is a date  
of yesterday (and to support it - as I usually do - compare that  
level to earlier (millennia?) similar concoctions)

.
And - would have parethesized the territory named 'science' in them  
all.


Well: what  - IS -  the LAW OF NATURE as widely believed? It is the  
majority of results of observed (poorly understood?) phenomena  
within the portion of Everything we so far got access to - and that,  
too, in our mind's adjustment at its actual level (inventory).

(Wording mostly based on Colin's earlier writings)
It depends on the boundaries WE CHOSE. Consider different boundaries  
and the LAW will change immediately, even within our unchanged  
ignorance of the totality.


From what I understand, Colin's try to introduce in the exact  
sciences the lack of rigor of the human sciences. I believe in the  
contrary: we must come back to rigor in the human and fundamental  
science.
I don't see at all how Colin's approach can be consistent with the  
correct-machine, and human, fundamental agnosticism.


Bruno





Thank you, Colins (and Brent)

John Mikes


On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:44 PM, meekerdb   
wrote:

On 1/12/2014 9:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I'm sorry I repeat this answer so many times, but this claim is also
made so many times. The main problem I see with this idea is that no
progress has been made so far in explaining how a lump of matter
becomes conscious, as opposed to just being a zombie mechanically
performing complex behaviors. Insisting that such an explanation must
exist instead of entertaining other models of reality strikes me as a
form of mysticism.


Well we know that one lump of matter is conscious and we think some  
others that are structually similar are and that some others are  
not.  A plausible hypothesis is that the consciousness is a  
consequence of the structure.  Alternative hypotheses would have to  
explain this coincidence.


Brent

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



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Re: Edgar, Personal Attacks, and the Real Consequences of Comp


On 1/15/2014 11:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:44 AM, freqflyer07281972 > wrote:



I totally agree with you that science, when you really start getting into 
the
implications of things like QM (and relativity for that matter), provides 
some
rather unsettling (and yet very exciting!) conclusions. And yet... they 
always rest
on the tip of uncertainty. Either that, or else the conclusions are so 
terrible that
I can't bear to think of them.


I have come to think few things could be more certain than universalism. If you take a 
few moments to consider why you were born as you, and not someone else, the only 
possible answer that fits that answer is for "me" to be born, an exact arrangement of 
matter or genes had to come into being. If the exact matter was necessary, then that 
means if your mom at something else, or took a sip of water at the wrong time, then you 
would never have been born. If the exact genes are required, then that means you had a 1 
in 100 million chance that the right sperm met the right egg for you to be born, 
otherwise you would not exist at all. The odds become that much more staggering when you 
consider not only your begetting, but all other begettings of all your ancestors would 
have to be EXACTLY right, otherwise you would not be born and would never have existed.


So what?  Someone wins the lottery no matter how many tickets there are.



On the other hand, if you believe even if one gene or two were different, you would 
still have been born, this means there really was no specific requirement for you to be 
born as you, and if a completely different sperm or egg were fertilized, then maybe you 
would instead be one of your brothers or sisters.  If this is true, then shouldn't that 
mean you are in fact, also your brothers and sisters.


So my Volkswagen is actually the same as my neighbors Volkswagen because there was no 
specific requirement for them to differ except for one on two bumps in the ignition lock.  
I think I'll suggest that to him; his has a lot fewer miles on it than mine.


Brent

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Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor

2014-01-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:41, Alberto G. Corona wrote:


I tend not to consider that a brain is a digital computer.


I agree.
Then comp explains completely why a brain is definitely not a digital  
computer.
A brain is a physical object. And if you grasp the step seven, you  
should understand than a priori, the physical is not computable as it  
results from a sum on infinities of computations (by the invariance of  
the first person consciousness for the FPI).


Don't confuse the bad metaphor: "brain = computer", with the quite  
fertile theological assumption: "my consciousness can be recovered by  
a computer emulating my brain at some level".


Brain is a computer, at the least, as a brain can emulate a universal  
Turing machine. But a brain is not a number that the UD will ever  
emulate. A brain is what some universal numbers perceive when they  
look at themselves in some histories. And in the details, they do not  
see an object, but a map of the possible futures (the "orbital"  
stationnary wave, hoping comp gives QM.









The most
accurate analogy is that a brain is a _program_ made of different
processes that run certain specific algorithms, some of them fixed and
certain of them capable of learning by various methods. And finally
some of them can execute an unconscious selection game of try an error
with matching ideas. And that is only the beginning. probably at the
neural level the processing is not as simple as the AI experts
suppose.


I agree. We must also take into account the much more numerous glial  
cells. Today, we have reason to believe that they communicate a lot  
between themselves, and sometimes with neurons.







Such program made of processes and minute details, created by
a genetic program that determine the architecture. And don't forget
the learning process in childhood that influence also the connections
and weights of some constants.

Of all of this, we know almost nothing.


OK. But all what you describabe is Turing emulable.






So it happens like in all biological systems. At first, everything
looks simple. when you go down in the details, everything gets almost
infinitely complicated. The brain is an extreme example of that.


The Mandelbrot set too.




So when people say that the brain is like a digital computer or that
it is "turing emulable" I think on a stone age adolescent that cut a
tree to cross the ocean. Yes it is theoretically possible, little
ignorant, but don´t make me laugh.


The only evidence for something not Turing emulable in Nature is the  
wave collapse. But it seems to be Turing-recoverable, I would say, by  
the FPI.


So it is you who make a gross hypothesis by assuming something non  
computable at the start, or in the primitive things. That leads to  
arbitrariness, and seems to make things more complex than needed. Comp  
and computer science entails already that machines are confronted with  
non computable aspect of their reality/realities.


It is simpler to work in a theory which seems to work, until we find  
it does not work, and so we can move forward. If not you are assuming  
something is wrong, and miss the opportunity to show what is wrong and  
or to improve or abandon it.


Bruno








2014/1/16, Stathis Papaioannou :

On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch  wrote:
The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like  
the Intel
CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the  
sense that

a
computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost
certainly
correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather,  
that a
computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or  
body, or

entire planet and all the people on it.

Jason


I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the  
brain

is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour  
of

any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not  
computable.

Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if  
there

is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.


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Re: Tegmark's New Book


On 1/15/2014 10:59 PM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:46 PM, mailto:spudboy...@aol.com>> wrote:

Ok, speculatively jumping into the Tegmark book, which I am plodding 
through and his
4 levels of the multiverse, I need to throw out this question. Is it even 
possible,
in principle, to physically traverse into another universe, a parallel 
universe, and
then back again? I do not mran in the David Deutsch sense of performing 
cross cosmic
quantum calculations, but directly, mollecularly, boots on the ground, 
traveling
there and back again?


Molecularly, I'd say no, but consciously I'd say yes. If we froze you on Earth, and then 
coincidentally Aliens 100 trillion ly away from us made an exact version out of you out 
of matter they had on hand, and then they thawed you, you would travel these 100 
trillion ly. This journey is impossible for matter or energy to make, impossible for 
anything physical, yet your consciousness did it.  For the same reason, someone in an 
altogether different physical universe could do the same thing and enable you to travel 
there.  There would be no causal link, however, to whatever memories you formed in that 
universe and whatever version of you we create to unthaw and bring you back, it would be 
again an entire coincidence for us to get it just right so the one we thaw matches the 
one the aliens in the distant land decided to freeze.


In a sense, we are performing these traversals all the time, but only between distant 
universes similar enough to the one we are in a moment before, that we don't notice it.  
You might be sitting there quietly in Earth #313812031 one moment, then the next instant 
you are actually on Earth #173119389 (which was an Earth that reappeared after 10^200 
cyclical big crunch and big bang cycles) from the moment you were just in.


But then you've made incomprehensible nonsense of what is meant by "you".

Brent

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

2014-01-16 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> The simplest and by far most likely answer is to assume that the world we
> appear to live in IS the real actual world
>

Maybe. But it could be argued that if the ability to perform vast
calculations is possible (and I can't see why it wouldn't be) then sooner
of later it will be achieved,  then a future Jupiter Brain will be able to
create astonishingly realistic simulations, and Mr. Jupiter Brain would
probably be curious about humans, the creatures that made it,  and so it
would make a simulation of them, and those simulated humans will make a
simulated Jupiter Brain which in turn will make simulated simulated humans
who will [...]

I admit this is a VERY long chain of reasoning, but you might conclude that
the most likely conclusion is we live in a simulation. I'm not saying any
of this is true but...

> We can imagine we live in some simulation by some super beings and that
> may or may not be a possibility (I maintain there will always be a way to
> figure that out),
>

I'm almost embarrassed to admit it but from time to time I have found
myself drawing analogies from the coarse grained nature of the quantum
world and getting too close to the screen in a video game and seeing
individual pixels; and between the quantum world where things don't seem to
actually exist before you measure them and the fact that a good programmer
doesn't waste computer power simulating things behind a big rock that
nobody will ever see. And the singularity at the center of a Black Hole
does sometimes seem a little like a screw up where a programer tried to
divide by zero.

I'm half joking in all this, but only half.

  John K Clark

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter

2014-01-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 16 Jan 2014, at 10:28, Quentin Anciaux wrote:





2014/1/16 Bruno Marchal 

On 15 Jan 2014, at 21:02, Terren Suydam wrote:





On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
There is still FPI going on in the "rogue" simulation - the one  
where Glak emerges from an alternative-physics, as there are  
infinite continuations from Glak's state(s) in the alternative  
physics.


You cannot change the FPI, as it is the same for all machines. You  
are introducing a special physical continuation, which a priori  
does not make sense. Glak, in his own normal world obeys the same  
laws of physics than us, with a very different histories and  
geographies and biologies.



I'm asking you, for the moment, and in apparent contradiction with  
the math, to suspend the AUDA entailment that there is a single  
physics.


OK.




What I'm suggesting is that Glak's identity is constructed from  
something more than its characterization as a "mere" Lobian machine.


That is right, unless he smokes something, or get a strike on the  
head or something,  and get highly amnesic.




There is a reason why I will suddenly never wake up to be Bruno  
Marchal.


Yes, and it is the same as the reason why you will see a pen falling  
on the grounds.




Even if we are both Lobian machines, there is a lot more that goes  
through our consciousness,


OK.



in order to arrive at the unique subjective experience and identity  
of Bruno or Terren, than mere Lobianity. I'm taking that further by  
hypothesizing the example of Glak, whose subjective experience and  
identity must be bound to a *particular* physics/biology,


A particular biology? No doubt.
A particular physics? This is what will lost his meaning. Of course,  
after the UDA, we have to redefine physics, which is the measure (or  
science trying to find that measure) on all (relative) computations,  
which:
1) emulates my body (including my personal memory, my "identity")  
below the substitution level

2) and winning the measure (= are the most probable).

Take an electron in some orbital. The orbital gives the map of those  
winning computation (in case our level is given by the uncertainty  
relation, to simplify).




in such a way that a being who self-identifies as Glak, with all of  
Glak's memories etc, could not possibly manifest in "our" physics.


What would that mean. If comp is correct, Glak can in principle be  
emulated in our neighborhood, although perhaps not in real time.





The sticking point of the AUDA for me has always been the identity  
of us, as human beings, with the idealized machines being  
interviewed. We are clearly Lobian, in some sense, but it also  
seems clear to me that our consciousness, our subjective  
experience, integrates its embodiment.


Yes. But all effective extension of PA is Löbian. AUDA applies to  
all Löbian machines, and that is why they will have the same physics  
(given by S4Grz1, or/and Z1*, or /and X1*).
Anything NOT derivable in those mathematics will be defined as  
geographical. If Glak's electron are more heavy, it means that the  
mass of the electron depends on contingent aspect of the physical  
reality.


our identity is not physical, but historico-geographical. The  
physics is only what makes such historico-geographical apperance  
quite stable or relatively numerous. Physics is what multiply the  
comp histories; That is why Everett saves comp from solipsism.





Our (apparent) bodies are part of our identities, and through  
sensory interfaces shape our subjective experience... and as our  
bodies are part of physics,


Part. Only part. the contingent part.



then Glak's body in an alternative physics is likewise a part of  
Glak's identity,


Only what is above his substitution level, and the physics must be  
the same as us, as, under the substitution level, he can only see  
what result from the universal measure, which must exist by comp and  
the UD argument.



and the measure of the most probable continuations for Glak, I  
think, require that alternative body, which require an alternative  
physics.


By UDA, it seems to me rather clear that you can only use an  
alternate geography.



Well... what's left to physics then ?


OK. That's an excellent question. I will try to answer.




many world ?


Notably. And also indeterminacy, non-locality, non cloning, but also  
white noise and white rabbits, a priori.





because we can do virtual worlds with any physical laws we wish


I disagree. (see below)





and if comp is true we could make self aware inhabitant living in  
such virtual worlds...


OK with this.




so anything we can measure is a geographical fact and contingent...


That does not follow. That would have been the case if the hypostases  
would have collapsed into classical logic.

But I will try to explain this without invoking the hypostases.




seems to reduce physics not to math but to approximately nothing and  
leave what we call physical laws as geo

Re: Tegmark's New Book

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Paul King <
stephe...@provensecure.com> wrote:

> Dear Edgar,
>
>   I already wrote up one argument against the concept of a universal
> present moment using the general covariance requirement of GR. Did you read
> it? It is impossible to define a clock on an infinitesimal region of
> space-time thus it is impossible to define a "present moment" in a way that
> could be "universal" for observers that exist in a space-time. There are
> alternatives that I have mentioned.
>The non-communicability of first person information, that leads to the
> concept of FPI, is another argument that may be independent. (I am not so
> sure that it is truly independent, but cannot prove that the intractability
> of smooth diffeomorphism computations between 4-manifolds is equivalent to
> first person indeterminacy.)
>If the information cannot be communicated then it also follows that
> there cannot exist a single computation of the present moment information.
> Your premise falls apart. There is an alternative but it requires multiple
> computations (an infinite number!). Can you handle that change to your
> thesis?
>
>   Frankly, your arguments are very naive and you do not seem to grasp that
> we are only responding to you because we try to be nice and receptive in
> this list to the ideas of members. There does reach a point where the
> discussion becomes unproductive. It has been useful for me to write
> responses to you as it improves my ability to write out my reasoning. I
> need the exercise. :-)
>
>
Stephen,

I recall that before you defended presentism. Are you now of the opinion
that block time is possible?

Jason


>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>
>> Stephen,
>>
>> What is this magical FPI that tells us in this present moment that there
>> is no such present moment? What's the actual supposed proof?
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:17:31 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Edgar,
>>>
>>>
>>>   The "universality" of the first person experience of a flow of events
>>> (what you denote as time) is addressed by Bruno's First Person
>>> Indeterminism (FPI) concept. This universality cannot be said to allow for
>>> a singular present moment for all observers such that they can have it in
>>> common. It fact it argues the opposite: observers cannot share their
>>> present moments! THus your claims fall apart
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>>>
>>> Brent,
>>>
>>> Whoa, back up a little. This is the argument that proves every
>>> INDIVIDUAL observer has his OWN present moment time. You are trying to
>>> extend it to a cosmic universal time which this argument doesn't address.
>>> That's the second argument you referenced.
>>>
>>> This argument demonstrates that for every INDIVIDUAL observer SR
>>> requires that since he continually moves at c through spactime, that he
>>> MUST be at one and only one point in time (and of course in space as well),
>>> and thus there is a privileged present moment in which every observer
>>> exists, and since he is continually moving through time at c he will
>>> experience an arrow of time in the direction of his movement.
>>>
>>> Once that is agreed we can go on to the 2nd argument to prove that these
>>> are universal across all observers
>>>
>>> So can we agree on that?
>>>
>>> Edgar
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:19:24 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>> On 1/15/2014 4:38 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>>
>>> Brent,
>>>
>>>  Both DO follow if you understand the argument. Why do you think they
>>> don't follow?
>>>
>>>
>>> Well the first one is true, if you take time to mean a global coordinate
>>> time.  But then it's just saying every event can be labelled with a time
>>> coordinate.  All that takes is that the label be monotonic and continuous
>>> along each world line.  It' saying that 'everything can get a time label'.
>>> But it doesn't say anything about how the label on one worldline relates to
>>> labels on a different world line.
>>>
>>> The SR requirement that the speed of light be the same in all inertial
>>> frames then implies that the labeling along one line *cannot* be uniquely
>>> extended to other lines, but must vary according to their relative velocity.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>>  Edgar
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, January 15, 2014 7:27:07 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>> On 1/15/2014 4:02 PM, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
>>>
>>> Brent,
>>>
>>>  Bravo! Someone actually registered some of my arguments, though I
>>> would state them slightly differently.
>>>
>>>  The argument in question, that everyone except Brent seems to have
>>> missed, is simple.
>>>
>>>  SR requires that everything moves at the speed of light through
>>> spacetime. This is NOT just "a useful myth", it's a very important
>>> fundamental principle of reality (I call it the STc Principle).
>>>
>>>
>>> It's a commonplace in relativity texts.
>>>
>>>
>>>  This

Re: Edge.org: 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? The Computational Metaphor




On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:32 AM, Stephen Paul King > wrote:



Dear Jason,

  I see a flaw in your argument.


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Jason Resch   
wrote:



On Jan 16, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Stephen Paul King > wrote:



Dear Jason,

  Could you be more specific about why you are skeptical of p- 
zombies? I have my reasons to disbelieve in them, but I am curious  
as to your reasoning.




Ask a zombie if it is conscious, and it will say yes. For some  
unexplianed reason it is lying, even though it does not believe  
itself to be lying, and even though it has all the same  
informational patterns in it's brain at the time.


What exactly does it mean to say that a zombie is lying?


What it always means, to speak an untruth, to deceive.

Note all these arguments become stronger if you use "zimboes", which  
have beliefs but are not conscious.


I see no reason why a zombie could not have a belief given that their  
brains contain all necessary information.



It cannot lie by definition!


What is your definition of lie?


what makes it a zombie is that, at least, it has no self-model that  
is pat of its computations. It cannot lie because it does not have  
an "I" (model) that is making untrue claims.


Whether or not it has an I model it is making untrue claims which I  
consider  suffi ent to call lying.







Throw a ball to a zombie and have it catch it. It caught the ball  
without seeing it, even though it saw it by every third person  
measurable description of what seeing involves.  The information  
went into it's brain, spread to other parts of it's brain, was used  
to catch the ball, was stored, and when you ask the zombie if he saw  
the ball his brain recalls the information that it did, again, for  
some reason it is lying, since zombies cannot see.


What about this, does seeing without seeing make sense logically to you?




Finally consider a world where everyone is a zombie. They still have  
their Descartes and dennett, their mystics, theories of dualism,  
epiphrnominalism, functionalism and so on. They have books on  
consciousness and thought experiments like inverted qualia. They  
have classes on consciousness and mailing list discussions about  
zombies.  Yet all this, is supposed to be a product of things that  
never once were conscious!


That's why I find them so doubtful.

I would agree that Dennett is a p-zombie... LOL! He is unaware,  
intentionally?, that he is lying.




So what causes zombies to write about and discuss consciousness?

To me this is like descartes in reverse, you are ascribing causes to  
something which is not there. And hence is not physical. It has the  
same problems as epiphenominalism.


Jason




Jason







On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Jason Resch   
wrote:



On Jan 16, 2014, at 2:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou  
 wrote:


On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch  wrote:
The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the  
Intel
CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the  
sense that a
computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost  
certainly
correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather,  
that a
computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body,  
or

entire planet and all the people on it.

Jason

I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the  
brain

is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour  
of

any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
using a computer.

How does this follow? Personally I don't find the notion that  
philosophical zombies make logical sense at all.


Jason

The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not  
computable.

Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if  
there

is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Tegmark's New Book