date:20140202

On 02 Feb 2014, at 19:59, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 4:36:46 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 01 Feb 2014, at 21:12, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 2:16:43 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 01 Feb 2014, at 13:13, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 4:54:47 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Jan 2014, at 21:39, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in  
which no
> program or data is input and from which no data is expected as  
output?

The UD.

Isn't everything output from the UD?

No. The UD has no output. It is a non stopping program.  
"everything physical and theological" appears through its  
intensional activity.

"Appears" = output.

"Appears to me" appears more like input to me. Output of of some  
universe?

Input/output, like hardware/software are important distinction, but  
yet they are relative. My output to you is your input, for example.  
They are indexicals too.

Sure, but they are absolute within a given frame of reference.

That's my point.

It seemed like the point you were making is that appearances were  
inputs rather than outputs so it would agree with what you were  
saying earlier about the UD not having any outputs. I was making the  
point that in order for anything to have an input in a universe  
where the UD is calling the shots, then the UD has to be outputting  
computations to then non-UD (which receives them as inputs).

Why?

The larger point though is that input and output themselves (which I  
see as the sensory motive primitive that information exists  
*within*) is overlooked and taken for granted in comp.

The input output relations are simulated within the activity of the  
UD. As I said the UD itself has no input and no outputs.

You cannot write a program which bypasses the need for inputs and  
outputs by substituting them for a different kind of function. It  
goes back to what I keep saying about not being able to substitute  
software for a cell phone charger or a video monitor, or the  
difference between playing a sport and playing a game which  
simulates a sport.

But then you are the one making an absolute difference here, which  
contradicts you point above.

The difference is absolute when we are talking about the primordial  
case. The magnetic North pole of the compass actually points to the  
South pole of Earth's magnetic field, but if we are talking about  
the magnetic field, we do not say that the difference between North  
and South pole is relative. That's all academic though, my point was  
that Comp does not recognize its own North and South pole, which is  
part of why it cannot see that it is only an object within sense  
which reflects it rather than the source of sense.

That is far to vague.

In fact it uses an intensional Church thesis. Not only all  
universal machines can compute all computable functions, but they  
can all compute them in all the possible ways to compute them. The  
intensional CT can be derived from the usual extensional CT.  
Universal machines computes all functions, but also in all the  
same and infinitely many ways.

How do we know they compute anything unless we input their output?

Oh! It is a bit perverse to input the output, but of course that's  
what we do when we combine two machines to get a new one. Like  
getting a NAND gate from a NOT and a AND gates.

We can also input to a machine its own input, which is even more  
perverse, and usually this leads to interesting "fixed points",  
many simple iterations leads to chaos. The Mandelbrot set  
illustrates this.

But the point is that we don't have to feed the program at the  
bottom level, if you can imagine that 17 is prime independently of  
you, then arithmetic feeds all programs all by itself,  
independently of you.

This is not entirely obvious, and rather tedious and long to prove  
but follows from elementary computer science.

The arithmetic truth of 17 being prime doesn't do anything though.  
That fact needs to be used in the context of some processing of an  
input to produce an output.

So you refer to extrinsic processing, but that contradicts your  
(correct) phenomenological account of sense,

I'm not talking about my view of sense, I'm talking about my  
understanding of your view of the UD, arithmetic truth, and comp  
(which are not a part of my view at all).

You can't criticize a theory by using another theory. That is called  
begging a question.

and that jeopardize the possibility their primitiveness, or as David  
shown, you are back to the POPJ.

In my view, all of arithmetic and processing is subordinate to the  
sensory-motive primitive (the silhouette of which could be  
translated as I/O in information-theoretic terms).

That is a reiteration of your view, not a critic of another view.

To me, everything is intrinsic, and extrinsicity is a pe

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

On 02 Feb 2014, at 19:36, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

 Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital  
transformation of consciousness is perfectly consistent with the  
matter in the desk I'm pounding my hand on right now as simply being  
a subroutine in the johnkclak program, and the same is true of the  
matter in my hand.

>>> Only by a confusion 1p and 3p,

>> OK now were getting to the heart of the matter (no pun  
indented).  Explain exactly why my statement above is confused and  
or wrong and you will have won this year old debate.

> UDA is the explanation of this.

You're going to have to more than just type 3 letters to convince me!

UDA points on a specific argument that you are supposed to have read.  
I have developed in posts on this list regularly. I have given  
reference to free accessible detailed account, like:

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

> You agreed also that consciousness is not localized

Yes I agree, in fact it was me not you who first mentioned it.

It is part of the UDA. Published in 1991, made public in the eighties.

> but you talk like if the object on your desk are localized.

Are you claiming that a computer can emulate a intelligent conscious  
being but can't emulate a desk?

I am not saying that. I am saying that the desk apparent localization  
has to be explained in taking into account the non-localization of  
your consciousness.

  If my consciousness is caused by a computer processing information  
then the world that consciousness interacts with is also cause by  
information. And information like consciousness has no unique  
position.

That's part of my point.

> If your consciousness is not localized, and perhaps supported by  
many other computations (in a physical universe or in arithmetic)  
you need to explain why the object of your desk appear to be made of  
local matter

Because the desk subprogram was written to appear that way to the  
John Clark subprogram;

By God? Why who? and why?

the desk could appear however the master programer (or evolution)  
wished it to appear,

Evolution? How evolution, here and now, could localize your  
consciousness/desk relation?

he could even ignore the laws of physics if he wished and use  
Aristotelian physics, or road runner cartoon physics.

That is part of the problem.

>> it's been over a year and to be honest I don't even remember what  
the first 2 steps were, they may have been just as silly as step 3.

> This shows the complete non seriousness of your attitude.

 I promise to give your ideas all the seriousness they deserve.

How could you know that in advance? You betray you have prejudices.

> it means that you have judged from rumors and not personal study.

You and I have never met so the only thing I have to judge you by is  
by studying the ASCII sequence you have produced.

So focus on the points and stop the insulting tone.

And I have never heard any rumors about you but now you've got me  
curious, what are they?

That the work is "philosophy", to name one which is common, and easy  
to believe due to the nature of the subject. It might be philosophy in  
some large sense, but it is done with the scientific method, and  
illustrates that we can tackle problems, usually approached in  
philosophy or theology, in a purely hypothetico-deductive way. Then  
this has been peer-reviewed by scientists, without any trouble, but I  
have been reported that literary philosophers (who have never accepted  
any public or private meetings) are hurted in their personal  
conviction. And some scientists refer to them as if they have  
authorities (other than academical). Some university use "philosophy"  
as a last tool to justify authoritative arguments, and your rhetoric  
reminds me of them.

> You are an obscurantist religious bigot

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never  
heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.

> and parrot

Stop using the exact same ridiculous insult and I'll stop using the  
exact same rubber stamp reply.

Then explain why you don't read the UDA, or why you don't read AUDA,  
which is the same thesis, but no more using thought experiences. AUDA  
was for the mathematicians who told me that they are not interested in  
cognitive science or philosophy of mind, where such thought experience  
is common.

Stop using rhetorical tricks to escape the fact that your point have  
been debunked. The FPI is not based on any notion of personal  
identity, and you escape the conclusion in keeping a 3 view at a place  
we ask you a question about the 1-views.

Bruno

 John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-l

Re: A humble suggestion to the group

Yes, it's in response to that. It just struck me that although the original
couldn't get out on his own, the duplicates he created could still help him
escape.

On 3 February 2014 20:33, Jason Resch  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 9:58 PM, LizR  wrote:
>
>>
>> Once there were a thousand duplicates at the top of the pit, couldn't
>> they knot toegther their heavy coats and make a rope to pull out the
>> "original" still stuck in the pit?
>>
>> Or am I being too literal minded here? :-)
>>
>
> What is this in response to? This
> http://leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html I imagine, but I don't see
> where it was mentioned..
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A humble suggestion to the group

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 9:58 PM, LizR  wrote:

>
> Once there were a thousand duplicates at the top of the pit, couldn't they
> knot toegther their heavy coats and make a rope to pull out the "original"
> still stuck in the pit?
>
> Or am I being too literal minded here? :-)
>

What is this in response to? This
http://leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.htmlI imagine, but I don't see
where it was mentioned..

Jason


>
>
> On 3 February 2014 16:50, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>> Telmo,
>>
>> Thanks for pointing that out.  I believe I have resolved the issues and
>> it appears to be working now:
>>
>> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/
>>
>> Enjoy.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 6:07 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jason,
>>>
>>> The wiki doesn't seem to be working :( I get a 404...
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Telmo.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 11:43 PM, Jason Resch 
>>> wrote:
>>> > Russell,
>>> >
>>> > Yes, I also tried to salvage what was available from the web archive,
>>> but
>>> > unfortunate it looks like the archiver never found the wiki to begin
>>> with so
>>> > nothing was ever archived. I won't let that happen this time, I will
>>> submit
>>> > the new wiki address such that it gets properly archived should the
>>> worst
>>> > happen.
>>> >
>>> > I don't know what happened with my web-hosting provider, it looks like
>>> the
>>> > database it was referencing simply disappeared..
>>> >
>>> > P.S., I've created a provisonal "Talk page" for myself, in case others
>>> > wanted some kind of template to base your own on:
>>> >
>>> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=User:Jresch
>>> >
>>> > Jason
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Russell Standish <
>>> li...@hpcoders.com.au>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> That is a pity, given I wrote quite a few of those pages. I don't have
>>> >> the time now to repeat the effort :(. But I'll chime on of other
>>> >> people's efforts.
>>> >>
>>> >> We must make sure we have backups this time!
>>> >>
>>> >> PS - checked the Wayback machine, and it did only one archive of the
>>> >> wiki back in 21st of July last year - alas it got an Error 403 :(
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> https://web.archive.org/web/20130721124015/http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx
>>> >>
>>> >> Cheers
>>> >>
>>> >> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 04:13:40PM -0600, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> >> > All,
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Unfortunately it seems the database for previous wiki page was
>>> somehow
>>> >> > deleted, but I have created a fresh version at:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I've also created a number of stub pages, which you can see at:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:AllPages
>>> >> >
>>> >> > If you would like to help make the wiki more complete, feel free to
>>> >> > write
>>> >> > one of the "wanted" pages:
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:WantedPages
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Or flesh out any of the existing pages with more details,
>>> references,
>>> >> > links, etc.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I also think it would be valuable to register and place a
>>> description of
>>> >> > some of your background and ideas you subscribe to on your own talk
>>> >> > page.
>>> >> > We've fallen out of the habit of using Wei Dai's suggested "Joining
>>> >> > Post",
>>> >> > but the wiki might be a good place to registry your beliefs and
>>> >> > background,
>>> >> > as well as update it as your opinions page.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Jason
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
>>> >> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 7:43 PM, LizR  wrote:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > > On 21 January 2014 12:49, Jason Resch 
>>> wrote:
>>> >> > >
>>> >> > >> It looks like I need to update the database connection
>>> information:
>>> >> > >>
>>> >> > >> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki/
>>> >> > >>
>>> >> > >> If others are interested, I will try to find time for that. I
>>> think
>>> >> > >> as
>>> >> > >> useful as any page would be "Bio pages" of members, which state
>>> where
>>> >> > >> people fall on a number of questions, and we can trend that
>>> overtime
>>> >> > >> to see
>>> >> > >> if anyone's mind's change.
>>> >> > >>
>>> >> > >> That would be interesting, if you do have the time.
>>> >> > >
>>> >> > >
>>> >> > > --
>>> >> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> >> > > Groups
>>> >> > > "Everything List" group.
>>> >> > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>> send
>>> >> > > an
>>> >> > > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>>> >> > > To post to this group, send email to
>>> everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>>> >> > > Visit this group at
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>>> >> > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>> >> > >
>>> >> >
>>> >> > --
>>> >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> >>

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On 2/2/2014 10:12 PM, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
Namely that however you jig it, there's still going to be huge spacetime distortion 
representing the sun and a tiny one representing the earth, which - I thought - had to 
bias the objectively true relation between the sun and the earth for the earth being 
gravitationally dominated by the sun not the other way around. 


So the question was whether one could just consider the Sun, calculate the spacetime 
metric due to its mass, and then calculate the orbit of the Earth as an inertial path in 
that metric?  In that case of course the answer is no.  The metric has to take into 
account the mass of the Earth as well as the Sun.  Just as in Newtonian theory, the Sun 
and the Earth, and Jupiter and the other planets all move around their mutual 
center-of-mass.  The center-of-mass is roughly near the surface of the Sun on the side 
nearest Jupiter.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Monday, February 3, 2014 6:12:18 AM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, February 3, 2014 5:38:59 AM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 11:32:26 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 5:13 PM,  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 8:44:07 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
>>> of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
>>> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
>>> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
>>> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
>>> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
>>> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
>>> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
>>> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
>>> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
>>> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
>>> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
>>> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
>>> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
>>> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
>>> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
>>> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
>>> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
>>> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
>>> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
>>> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
>>> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
>>> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
>>> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>>>
>>> Jesse
>>>
>>>  
>>> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
>>> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
>>> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
>>> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
>>> short. 
>>>  
>>> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence 
>>> and relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to 
>>> the absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is 
>>> like., That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms 
>>> at all.
>>>
>>>
>>> Plenty of things aren't relative in relativity, like the proper time 
>>> between two events on a given timelike worldline. As mentioned on the page 
>>> at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm Einstein 
>>> actually called his theory an "Invariententheorie" or "theory of 
>>> invariance"--the name "relativity" was coined by Max Planck, and Einstein 
>>> resisted it because he thought it would lead to the misconception that 
>>> "everything is relative".
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>   
>>> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
>>> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>>>  
>>> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with 
>>> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years 
>>> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it 
>>> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it 
>>> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
>>> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
>>> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 
>>>  
>>> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when 
>>> I wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
>>> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
>>> isn't intuitive and all the rest. 
>>>  
>>> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
>>> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
>>> them apart?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It depends exactly what they meant by "geometry"--are you still in touch 
>>> with them so you can ask, or was the discussion online so it could be 
>>> reviewed? I have always seen physicists use "spacetime geometry" to refer 
>>> to the frame-independent notion of distance along paths in spacetim

Films I think people on this forum might like

One I've mentioned ad nauseum - "Memento".

There is also "The Prestige", which I would definitely recommend.

To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail about why these films might
appeal, but they both address issues mentioned on this list (at least
tangentially, and in a fictional manner).

I might also mention "Chronocrimes" for its portrayal of a block univese.

Sadly no one seems to have filmed "October the First is Too Late" although
the 10-episode epic "Doctor Who" story "The War Games" comes close in some
respects. In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Who story was
inspired by Hoyle's novel, which I think appeared about 3 years beforehand
if I remember correctly. I would semi-recommend this (but you have to
remember that it was made in black and white, for viewing as a weekly
serial in 1969...)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Monday, February 3, 2014 5:38:59 AM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 11:32:26 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 5:13 PM,  wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 8:44:07 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>>
>>
>> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
>> of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
>> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
>> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
>> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
>> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
>> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
>> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
>> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
>> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
>> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
>> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
>> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
>> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
>> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
>> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
>> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
>> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
>> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
>> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
>> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
>> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
>> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
>> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>>
>> Jesse
>>
>>  
>> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
>> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
>> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
>> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
>> short. 
>>  
>> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence 
>> and relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to 
>> the absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is 
>> like., That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms 
>> at all.
>>
>>
>> Plenty of things aren't relative in relativity, like the proper time 
>> between two events on a given timelike worldline. As mentioned on the page 
>> at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm Einstein 
>> actually called his theory an "Invariententheorie" or "theory of 
>> invariance"--the name "relativity" was coined by Max Planck, and Einstein 
>> resisted it because he thought it would lead to the misconception that 
>> "everything is relative".
>>
>>  
>>
>>   
>> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
>> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>>  
>> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with 
>> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years 
>> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it 
>> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it 
>> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
>> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
>> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 
>>  
>> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when 
>> I wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
>> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
>> isn't intuitive and all the rest. 
>>  
>> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
>> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
>> them apart?
>>
>>
>>
>> It depends exactly what they meant by "geometry"--are you still in touch 
>> with them so you can ask, or was the discussion online so it could be 
>> reviewed? I have always seen physicists use "spacetime geometry" to refer 
>> to the frame-independent notion of distance along paths in spacetime 
>> (including "geodesic" paths between events, which are local minima of 
>> proper length for spacelike paths, and local maxima of proper time for 
>> timelike paths) which

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 10:09:10 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>
> Thanks for quoting the Chalmers piece because I didn't have it to hand and 
> was relying on memory. But on rereading it I still believe that my way of 
> formulating the paradox has teeth. Although Chalmers admits in this passage 
> that consciousness looks explanatorily irrelevant to phenomenal judgement 
> on a functional basis, but not necessarily causally irrelevant, one must 
> appreciate that he is hedging his bets, or better reserving his arguments, 
> for a later appeal to psycho-physical causation. And remember too that I 
> agree with him that the relation of acquaintance entails that we cannot 
> coherently accede to any such irrelevance, whether or not we deem it 
> explanatory or causal. If this were not the case there would be no paradox, 
> since there would be nothing to explain but function.
>
> But of course he must still elucidate the psycho-physical principles he 
> seeks, in order to build a bridge from the relation of acquaintance to that 
> of function and I don't think even he would claim to have achieved that 
> beyond some speculative ideas on the role of information. So building such 
> a bridge is a necessity for any theory before we can concede that it has 
> eluded the jaws of the POPJ.
>
> I would certainly be interested to hear how your theory tackles this 
> problem, if in fact we've now succeeded in establishing just what it is. 
>

I think that Chalmers gets most of the way there in general, but in a few 
areas stops short of committing to what I call primordial pansensitivity, 
but could be called Absolute panpsychism. I've been influenced directly 
from Chalmers and his formulation of the Hard Problem, and I see myself in 
many ways as picking up where he leaves off. For all of his boldness in 
approaching the possibility of panpsychism, he is still operating from a 
framework which assumes structure and mechanism, at least as parallel to 
consciousness. What I am looking at is a universe which is fundamentally 
aesthetic, i.e., a self-nesting dream about dreaming. The more nested the 
dream, the more realism can be leveraged, because the scale of time and 
space can be expanded, making sub-dreams seem physical and super-dreams 
seem intuitive from any given dream. It's all being carved out of the 
Totality like a Jack O Lantern (metaphorically, obviously, I'm not talking 
about a carving of a literal container). The totality need not be a deity 
or a Mind as far as I can figure, but human experience might be part of a 
larger kind of experience which may as well be deity-like or Mind like in 
part.

What I propose then is that coherence itself is relativistic and changes 
dynamically as any individual experience becomes more transparent to the 
Totality or more reflective of the insensitivity which masks the totality 
(the bodies-in-spacetime view). I'm not claiming to have an exhaustive 
reinterpretation of physics, only that I might have put together all four 
corners of the frame of such a reinterpretation. It could take centuries to 
fill in the rest of the puzzle, and I have no delusions that it is my 
account that has to be the one which leads us there. If anything at all 
comes of my efforts, I'd be pretty surprised, but I do suspect that any 
correct reinterpretation of physics will be more or less consistent with 
the basic ideas I'm proposing. 

Einstein too, like Chalmers, was on the right track but didn't go far 
enough. He was right not to accept QM also, but he did not take the final 
leap of seeing order itself as a relativistic feature, and that physics 
itself was a protocol of shared perception rather than just dynamic ratios 
of measure. Measure, like computation and information, ultimately can only 
make sense if it is part of a larger and deeper sense of intention and 
appreciation. The current idea of information overlooks the "in" and treats 
all phenomena as formation. This is, in my understanding, only the public 
range of physics. Private physics, or the physics of privacy is the source 
and destination of all forms and functions. Forms are a side view of 
experience which can be appreciated. Functions are a side view of 
experience which represent participation.

Craig

David
>
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 7:43:33 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>> What do you mean by "laying claim to conscious phenomena"? In what way 
>>> does a brain or body lay claim to conscious phenomena?
>>
>>
>> Let me restate it then. Bodies, insofar as they are the manifestations 
>> with which we interact (own brains and bodies included) *appear* to be the 
>> source of any utterance (or thought, in our own case) whatsoever. 
>>
>
> I don't see bodies as manifestations with which we interact. I see them as 
> the back end view of all interactions. They aren't the source of anything 
> except reverberating consequences.
>  
>
>> This incl

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Sunday, February 2, 2014 11:32:26 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 5:13 PM, > wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 8:44:07 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>
>
> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface of 
> a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>
>
>
> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>
> Jesse
>
>  
> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
> short. 
>  
> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence and 
> relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to the 
> absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is like., 
> That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms at all.
>
>
> Plenty of things aren't relative in relativity, like the proper time 
> between two events on a given timelike worldline. As mentioned on the page 
> at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm Einstein 
> actually called his theory an "Invariententheorie" or "theory of 
> invariance"--the name "relativity" was coined by Max Planck, and Einstein 
> resisted it because he thought it would lead to the misconception that 
> "everything is relative".
>
>  
>
>   
> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>  
> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with 
> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years 
> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it 
> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it 
> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 
>  
> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when I 
> wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
> isn't intuitive and all the rest. 
>  
> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
> them apart?
>
>
>
> It depends exactly what they meant by "geometry"--are you still in touch 
> with them so you can ask, or was the discussion online so it could be 
> reviewed? I have always seen physicists use "spacetime geometry" to refer 
> to the frame-independent notion of distance along paths in spacetime 
> (including "geodesic" paths between events, which are local minima of 
> proper length for spacelike paths, and local maxima of proper time for 
> timelike paths) which can be calculated using the metric, see for example 
> http://books.google.com/books?id=sBiWcWwTp5oC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA236 which says 
> "In the framework of general relativity, the

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2/2/2014 4:43 PM, David Nyman wrote:
As Brent has remarked, it is still possible to hold on to the hope that the physical
appearances, however much they appear to be exhaustive and causally closed, still
conceal some truly unexpected nomological necessitation that will suffice to account for
conscious phenomena, although the analogies he gives generally tend to elimination of
the entire category. Chalmers spends a good deal of effort in TCM to show why he thinks
that hope must be indefinitely deferred, unless completely novel "psycho-physical laws"
can be discovered. There is little consensus on this, to say the least, but many people
can't see how psycho-physical laws would constitute an adequate account of consciousness
any more obviously than physical ones.

But they didn't initially see how the motion of atoms could account for temperature or how
life could be accounted for by chemical reactions. I don't see that a reductionist
explaination entails eliminating anything, explanation =/= elimination. To equate them is
the error that Craig and Stephen fall into. There seems to be a certain prejudice against
materialism at work; a sort of "Been there, done that. Let's invent something new". And
it blinds some people to the fact that Bruno's arithmeticism is reductionist too. I
reduces everything to arithmetic instead of particles or strings or whatever is most
fundamental in physics (which could be arithmetic).

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Block Universes


On 2/2/2014 3:35 PM, LizR wrote:
On 3 February 2014 08:03, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 
wrote:


On 2/2/2014 1:44 AM, LizR wrote:

Someone asked how a block universe "comes to exist" and if it comes into 
existence
"all at once, or a bit at a time" (or something like that).

I wish I could find the original question, to make sure exactly what it 
was. But I
haven't managed to find it, and I can't spend all night trawling the forum 
for it,
so I will just put my take on the matter here.

Assuming I've got it right, this seems to me a rather odd question. Asking 
how a
block universe comes into existence presupposes that this is a process that 
must
happen within a time stream.


I can imagine a semi-block universe in which, as you've often remarked, the 
past is
a block and the universe keeps adding new moments and growing.  This would 
be like
Barbour's time capsules, except just sticking everything into one capsule, 
like a
history book that keeps adding pages.  But yes it implies another exterior 
"time" in
which this "happens"; but then so does Bruno's UD.


I don't think Bruno would agree with that. I think the UD is supposed to function simply 
by existing, and each state is defined relative to another onesomehow. (But at this 
point my brain melts...)



My point is that we needn't take these models seriously.  We just use them 
to try to
picture things.

Right maybe not sure what you mean. That is, I'm not sure where the line is 
between which models one should take seriously (if any) and which ones are "just for 
picturing". Did Minkowski take space-time seriously? Does it matter? I thought the 
important things were prediction of (preferably unexpected) consequences, and being open 
to refutation.


I assume as we get more into interpretation and general meta-ness, refutation comes to 
rely more on logical inconsistency or similar meta-refutations. But things can 
occasionally be "de-meta-ised" as our knowledge improves. This happened for block 
universes with SR. The experimental evidence for space-time being a 4D manifold is the 
relativity of simultaneity. I assume that before this, the concept was "just an 
interpretation" - it was the only picture that made sense of Newtonian physics, but 
(apart from thought experiments like "Laplace's godlike being") it was not considered 
experimentally testable. You just had to accept it on logical grounds (or posit extra 
time streams). Then along came Einstein, and showed that it /was/ experimentally 
testable after all.


I guess it's possible the MWI will undergo a similar "demetaisation" at some point, 
perhaps if quantum computers factoring very large numbers become commonplace...


That's sort of what is attempted here:


 Born in an Infinite Universe: a Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum 
Mechanics

Anthony Aguirre ,Max Tegmark 

(Submitted on 5 Aug 2010 (v1 ), last revised 12 Jun 2012 
(this version, v2))


   We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, 
statistically
   uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inflation. It has recently 
been argued
   that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist, the 
standard
   projection operators and Born rule method for calculating probabilities must 
be
   supplemented by estimates of relative frequencies of observers. We argue 
that an
   infinite space actually renders the Born rule redundant, by physically 
realizing all
   outcomes of a quantum measurement in different regions, with relative 
frequencies
   given by the square of the wave function amplitudes. Our formal argument 
hinges on
   properties of what we term the quantum confusion operator, which projects 
onto the
   Hilbert subspace where the Born rule fails, and we comment on its relation 
to the
   oft-discussed quantum frequency operator. This analysis unifies the 
classical and
   quantum levels of parallel universes that have been discussed in the 
literature, and
   has implications for several issues in quantum measurement theory. It also 
shows how,
   even for a single measurement, probabilities may be interpreted as relative
   frequencies in unitary (Everettian) quantum mechanics. We also argue that 
after
   discarding a zero-norm part of the wavefunction, the remainder consists of a
   superposition of indistinguishable terms, so that arguably "collapse" of the
   wavefunction is irrelevant, and the "many worlds" of Everett's 
interpretation are
   unified into one. Finally, the analysis suggests a "cosmological 
interpretation" of
   quantum theory in which the wave function describes the actual spatial 
collection of
   identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the 
observer's
   inability to self-

Re: A theory of dark matter...

On 2/2/2014 3:17 PM, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 9:16:09 PM UTC, Brent wrote:

On 2/2/2014 12:44 PM, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM, wrote:

...
It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with some
guys
(and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years back - that
spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it did not.
That even
between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it that way. I must say I
couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, because for me, the
geometry
would be very clear that there was this huge gravity well oneside, and this
relativily tiny one the other (earth).

Dunno what was meant by "geometry". Einstein's equations relate the metric
of
spacetime to the location of stress energy. That seems plenty definite to
me. Of
course in application it's just a model and one neglects various effects
thought to
be small, e.g. gravity waves coming in from far away.

ok maybe we can bridge this. I'm naively taking the most popularized visual metaphor of
Einstein's theory. The mattress as it were, with the steel ball laying upon it as it
were, and the indentation that ball puts in the mattress as it were, and then the little
animation that often comes next, of the mattress now a plane represented by two sets of
respectively parallel lines, each set normal to the other resulting in little squares,
the indentation now the distortion of those squares and the animated part the
much littler ball rolling around the indented section.
if that's good enough that you can do the bridging work from where I am to where things
need to be for you to provide an answer that is within the limits of what you're
prepared to give in this sort of situation, then, fabulous :o)

That's not too bad a picture. It's mainly misleading in that it's time that's warped.
There's more proper time nearer the Earth than farther away. That's what makes things
"fall down" when they are on inertial paths. But that really doesn't bear on the question
of whether the geometry is definite or not. Do you know what they meant by it not being
definite? Were they just talking about the possible quantum fluctuations in the metric?
Were they talking about general coordinate transformations? or what?

Brent

Re: A humble suggestion to the group

Once there were a thousand duplicates at the top of the pit, couldn't they
knot toegther their heavy coats and make a rope to pull out the "original"
still stuck in the pit?

Or am I being too literal minded here? :-)


On 3 February 2014 16:50, Jason Resch  wrote:

> Telmo,
>
> Thanks for pointing that out.  I believe I have resolved the issues and it
> appears to be working now:
>
> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/
>
> Enjoy.
>
> Jason
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 6:07 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> The wiki doesn't seem to be working :( I get a 404...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Telmo.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 11:43 PM, Jason Resch 
>> wrote:
>> > Russell,
>> >
>> > Yes, I also tried to salvage what was available from the web archive,
>> but
>> > unfortunate it looks like the archiver never found the wiki to begin
>> with so
>> > nothing was ever archived. I won't let that happen this time, I will
>> submit
>> > the new wiki address such that it gets properly archived should the
>> worst
>> > happen.
>> >
>> > I don't know what happened with my web-hosting provider, it looks like
>> the
>> > database it was referencing simply disappeared..
>> >
>> > P.S., I've created a provisonal "Talk page" for myself, in case others
>> > wanted some kind of template to base your own on:
>> >
>> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=User:Jresch
>> >
>> > Jason
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Russell Standish <
>> li...@hpcoders.com.au>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> That is a pity, given I wrote quite a few of those pages. I don't have
>> >> the time now to repeat the effort :(. But I'll chime on of other
>> >> people's efforts.
>> >>
>> >> We must make sure we have backups this time!
>> >>
>> >> PS - checked the Wayback machine, and it did only one archive of the
>> >> wiki back in 21st of July last year - alas it got an Error 403 :(
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20130721124015/http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx
>> >>
>> >> Cheers
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 04:13:40PM -0600, Jason Resch wrote:
>> >> > All,
>> >> >
>> >> > Unfortunately it seems the database for previous wiki page was
>> somehow
>> >> > deleted, but I have created a fresh version at:
>> >> >
>> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Main_Page
>> >> >
>> >> > I've also created a number of stub pages, which you can see at:
>> >> >
>> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:AllPages
>> >> >
>> >> > If you would like to help make the wiki more complete, feel free to
>> >> > write
>> >> > one of the "wanted" pages:
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:WantedPages
>> >> >
>> >> > Or flesh out any of the existing pages with more details, references,
>> >> > links, etc.
>> >> >
>> >> > I also think it would be valuable to register and place a
>> description of
>> >> > some of your background and ideas you subscribe to on your own talk
>> >> > page.
>> >> > We've fallen out of the habit of using Wei Dai's suggested "Joining
>> >> > Post",
>> >> > but the wiki might be a good place to registry your beliefs and
>> >> > background,
>> >> > as well as update it as your opinions page.
>> >> >
>> >> > Jason
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 7:43 PM, LizR  wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > > On 21 January 2014 12:49, Jason Resch 
>> wrote:
>> >> > >
>> >> > >> It looks like I need to update the database connection
>> information:
>> >> > >>
>> >> > >> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki/
>> >> > >>
>> >> > >> If others are interested, I will try to find time for that. I
>> think
>> >> > >> as
>> >> > >> useful as any page would be "Bio pages" of members, which state
>> where
>> >> > >> people fall on a number of questions, and we can trend that
>> overtime
>> >> > >> to see
>> >> > >> if anyone's mind's change.
>> >> > >>
>> >> > >> That would be interesting, if you do have the time.
>> >> > >
>> >> > >
>> >> > > --
>> >> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> >> > > Groups
>> >> > > "Everything List" group.
>> >> > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>> send
>> >> > > an
>> >> > > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> >> > > To post to this group, send email to
>> everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> >> > > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
>> .
>> >> > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>> >> > >
>> >> >
>> >> > --
>> >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> >> > Groups "Everything List" group.
>> >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>> send
>> >> > an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> >> > To post to this group, send email to
>> everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> >> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> >> >

Re: A humble suggestion to the group

Telmo,

Thanks for pointing that out.  I believe I have resolved the issues and it
appears to be working now:

http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/

Enjoy.

Jason


On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 6:07 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> Hi Jason,
>
> The wiki doesn't seem to be working :( I get a 404...
>
> Cheers,
> Telmo.
>
> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 11:43 PM, Jason Resch 
> wrote:
> > Russell,
> >
> > Yes, I also tried to salvage what was available from the web archive, but
> > unfortunate it looks like the archiver never found the wiki to begin
> with so
> > nothing was ever archived. I won't let that happen this time, I will
> submit
> > the new wiki address such that it gets properly archived should the worst
> > happen.
> >
> > I don't know what happened with my web-hosting provider, it looks like
> the
> > database it was referencing simply disappeared..
> >
> > P.S., I've created a provisonal "Talk page" for myself, in case others
> > wanted some kind of template to base your own on:
> >
> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=User:Jresch
> >
> > Jason
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Russell Standish  >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> That is a pity, given I wrote quite a few of those pages. I don't have
> >> the time now to repeat the effort :(. But I'll chime on of other
> >> people's efforts.
> >>
> >> We must make sure we have backups this time!
> >>
> >> PS - checked the Wayback machine, and it did only one archive of the
> >> wiki back in 21st of July last year - alas it got an Error 403 :(
> >>
> >> https://web.archive.org/web/20130721124015/http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >>
> >> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 04:13:40PM -0600, Jason Resch wrote:
> >> > All,
> >> >
> >> > Unfortunately it seems the database for previous wiki page was somehow
> >> > deleted, but I have created a fresh version at:
> >> >
> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Main_Page
> >> >
> >> > I've also created a number of stub pages, which you can see at:
> >> >
> >> > http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:AllPages
> >> >
> >> > If you would like to help make the wiki more complete, feel free to
> >> > write
> >> > one of the "wanted" pages:
> >> >
> >> >
> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki2/index.php?title=Special:WantedPages
> >> >
> >> > Or flesh out any of the existing pages with more details, references,
> >> > links, etc.
> >> >
> >> > I also think it would be valuable to register and place a description
> of
> >> > some of your background and ideas you subscribe to on your own talk
> >> > page.
> >> > We've fallen out of the habit of using Wei Dai's suggested "Joining
> >> > Post",
> >> > but the wiki might be a good place to registry your beliefs and
> >> > background,
> >> > as well as update it as your opinions page.
> >> >
> >> > Jason
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 7:43 PM, LizR  wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > On 21 January 2014 12:49, Jason Resch  wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > >> It looks like I need to update the database connection information:
> >> > >>
> >> > >> http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki/
> >> > >>
> >> > >> If others are interested, I will try to find time for that. I think
> >> > >> as
> >> > >> useful as any page would be "Bio pages" of members, which state
> where
> >> > >> people fall on a number of questions, and we can trend that
> overtime
> >> > >> to see
> >> > >> if anyone's mind's change.
> >> > >>
> >> > >> That would be interesting, if you do have the time.
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > --
> >> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >> > > Groups
> >> > > "Everything List" group.
> >> > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send
> >> > > an
> >> > > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> >> > > To post to this group, send email to
> everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> >> > > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> >> > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
> >> > >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >> > Groups "Everything List" group.
> >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> >> > an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> >> > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com
> .
> >> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >>
> >>
> 
> >> 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
> >>
> >>
> -

Re: How to define finite

Ooh, tricky - could that be Brent Meeker or Bruno Marchal being quoted? (I
have my suspicions of course... :-)

BM: But mathematical truth is not substituted for reality. i show that the
machine's epistemology is already richer than the mathematical truth.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: How to define finite


On 2/2/2014 2:36 PM, John Mikes wrote:

You just scolded John Mikes for assuming he knew what reality is.

Brent

Brent: could you refresh my aging memory and 'quote me' with this stupid 
misunderstanding?
It was last time yesterday when I wrote the opposite.


Here's the exchange:---

JM: I appreciate the mathematical truth (reality) but do not substitute it for *REALITY* 
(of which my agnosticism fails to know more).


BM: But mathematical truth is not substituted for reality. i show that the machine's 
epistemology is already richer than the mathematical truth.


Then, yes, for the ontology, IF we assume comp, then the mathematical, even the 
arithmetical reality, is shown to be complete.

But we stay agnostic on this, as we stay agnostic on comp itself.

Somehow you seem to be non agnostic on the question of reality. You seem to talk like if 
you knew that reality is not the arithmetical reality.





I do not joke about being agnostic,
especially in cases what I 'assume', like 'the existence of a reality'. I call it 
'infinite complexity'
and would really appreciate to learn your definition of the "finite". (Not 
mathematically, of course).


Finite means finished, complete, bounded

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

Thanks for quoting the Chalmers piece because I didn't have it to hand and
was relying on memory. But on rereading it I still believe that my way of
formulating the paradox has teeth. Although Chalmers admits in this passage
that consciousness looks explanatorily irrelevant to phenomenal judgement
on a functional basis, but not necessarily causally irrelevant, one must
appreciate that he is hedging his bets, or better reserving his arguments,
for a later appeal to psycho-physical causation. And remember too that I
agree with him that the relation of acquaintance entails that we cannot
coherently accede to any such irrelevance, whether or not we deem it
explanatory or causal. If this were not the case there would be no paradox,
since there would be nothing to explain but function.

But of course he must still elucidate the psycho-physical principles he
seeks, in order to build a bridge from the relation of acquaintance to that
of function and I don't think even he would claim to have achieved that
beyond some speculative ideas on the role of information. So building such
a bridge is a necessity for any theory before we can concede that it has
eluded the jaws of the POPJ.

I would certainly be interested to hear how your theory tackles this
problem, if in fact we've now succeeded in establishing just what it is.

David

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 7:43:33 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
> What do you mean by "laying claim to conscious phenomena"? In what way
>> does a brain or body lay claim to conscious phenomena?
>
>
> Let me restate it then. Bodies, insofar as they are the manifestations
> with which we interact (own brains and bodies included) *appear* to be the
> source of any utterance (or thought, in our own case) whatsoever.
>

I don't see bodies as manifestations with which we interact. I see them as
the back end view of all interactions. They aren't the source of anything
except reverberating consequences.

> This includes, therefore, *utterances and thoughts that lay claim to
> conscious phenomena*,
>

It just means that you are ruling out immaterial perspectives from the
start. Given the reality of experience and the reality of the appearance of
bodies in that experience, you choose the reality of the appearances - the
contents of the experience, over existential primacy of experience itself.
To understand my hypothesis you would have to pivot 180 degrees on that and
see bodies as a product of nested perception (not just human or biological
perception, but perception beneath the alpha and beyond the omega of all
functions and forms).

> as for example I am exemplifying in this very statement. Even if we take
> the view that it is we who are putting this construction on those
> manifestations,
>

That is not my view. You're talking about human experience, but I'm talking
about primodial pansensitivity. In my view, all human beings could be
erased from the universe and it would not change anything. Experience would
continue as usual.

> we can't ignore the fact that the causally-closed rules they appear to
> follow, at whatever scale, do not entail any aspect of consciousness to
> explain these utterances.
>

This is the most common mistake that I run into: The conflating of human
consciousness with the principle of sense makes a solipsistic straw man of
idealism. I talk about it here if you are interested:
http://multisenserealism.com/about/the-matter-of-objects-and-the-idea-of-subjects/

The bottom line is Berkeley's point: How would you know what entails
consciousness and what doesn't? Since nothing can be experienced without
consciousness, it is an absolutely unscientific act of faith to presume
substances independent of all aesthetic receptivity. The idea of a material
body which is not associated with any experience of detection whatsoever
makes the detection of bodies completely superfluous, and makes any
description of them indiscernible from nothingness.

> Therefore, a fortiori, it must seem inexplicable how these utterances
> could make reference to phenomena which are completely absent from, and
> redundant in, their causal schema.
>

Sure, if you start from an erroneous premise, then it is not surprising
that the result is ultimately absurd. If you start with bodies that don't
need consciousness, and the sole value of functionalism, then consciousness
cannot make sense. What is ignored of course is that 'function' is an
expectation of consciousness, so that unconscious bodies have no capacity
to discern the difference between function and non-function (or any other
difference for that matter).

>
> Chalmers lays all this out quite explicitly in TCM and I think he may even
> have coined the rubric POPJ.
>

Yes, but Chalmers coined it as an attack on modal accounts of
consciousness. He says:

"Chapter 5: *The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment*. On my position, even if
> consciousness cannot be physically explained, behavior and funct

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 7:43:33 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
> What do you mean by "laying claim to conscious phenomena"? In what way 
>> does a brain or body lay claim to conscious phenomena?
>
>
> Let me restate it then. Bodies, insofar as they are the manifestations 
> with which we interact (own brains and bodies included) *appear* to be the 
> source of any utterance (or thought, in our own case) whatsoever. 
>

I don't see bodies as manifestations with which we interact. I see them as 
the back end view of all interactions. They aren't the source of anything 
except reverberating consequences.

> This includes, therefore, *utterances and thoughts that lay claim to 
> conscious phenomena*, 
>

It just means that you are ruling out immaterial perspectives from the 
start. Given the reality of experience and the reality of the appearance of 
bodies in that experience, you choose the reality of the appearances - the 
contents of the experience, over existential primacy of experience itself. 
To understand my hypothesis you would have to pivot 180 degrees on that and 
see bodies as a product of nested perception (not just human or biological 
perception, but perception beneath the alpha and beyond the omega of all 
functions and forms).

> as for example I am exemplifying in this very statement. Even if we take 
> the view that it is we who are putting this construction on those 
> manifestations, 
>

That is not my view. You're talking about human experience, but I'm talking 
about primodial pansensitivity. In my view, all human beings could be 
erased from the universe and it would not change anything. Experience would 
continue as usual.

> we can't ignore the fact that the causally-closed rules they appear to 
> follow, at whatever scale, do not entail any aspect of consciousness to 
> explain these utterances. 
>

This is the most common mistake that I run into: The conflating of human 
consciousness with the principle of sense makes a solipsistic straw man of 
idealism. I talk about it here if you are interested: 
http://multisenserealism.com/about/the-matter-of-objects-and-the-idea-of-subjects/

The bottom line is Berkeley's point: How would you know what entails 
consciousness and what doesn't? Since nothing can be experienced without 
consciousness, it is an absolutely unscientific act of faith to presume 
substances independent of all aesthetic receptivity. The idea of a material 
body which is not associated with any experience of detection whatsoever 
makes the detection of bodies completely superfluous, and makes any 
description of them indiscernible from nothingness.

> Therefore, a fortiori, it must seem inexplicable how these utterances 
> could make reference to phenomena which are completely absent from, and 
> redundant in, their causal schema.
>

Sure, if you start from an erroneous premise, then it is not surprising 
that the result is ultimately absurd. If you start with bodies that don't 
need consciousness, and the sole value of functionalism, then consciousness 
cannot make sense. What is ignored of course is that 'function' is an 
expectation of consciousness, so that unconscious bodies have no capacity 
to discern the difference between function and non-function (or any other 
difference for that matter).

>
> Chalmers lays all this out quite explicitly in TCM and I think he may even 
> have coined the rubric POPJ. 
>

Yes, but Chalmers coined it as an attack on modal accounts of 
consciousness. He says:

"Chapter 5: *The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment*. On my position, even if 
> consciousness cannot be physically explained, behavior and functioning can 
> be. So it seems that consciousness is explanatorily (although perhaps not 
> causally) irrelevant to behavior. In particular it is explanatorily 
> irrelevant to claims such as "I am conscious" and related phenomenal 
> judgments (where judgments are defined in functional terms). I call this 
> the "paradox of phenomenal judgment". I argue that this paradox is 
> counterintuitive but poses no fatal flaws. I address the objections that it 
> implies that we are unable to know about, refer to, or remember our 
> phenomenal states. I argue that these objections rest on causal theories of 
> knowledge and of reference that we have independent reason to reject in the 
> phenomenal case. Knowledge of and reference to phenomenal states is based 
> on something tighter than a causal relation; it is based on a relation of 
> acquaintance. I discuss the content of phenomenal beliefs and the 
> constitutive relation between experience and phenomenal belief."

What he is saying, in my view, is clearly that acquaintance (sensory-motive 
participation, aesthetic realism, direct perception) is more fundamental 
than causality from algorithmic causes (logical representations, programs, 
abstract processing, etc).

> He doesn't deviate, at least until his discussio

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 1 February 2014 09:12, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> It would seem so. But POPJ can still bite panpsychism, I think, although
> this doesn't seem to be widely recognised. My post to Craig elaborates on
> this.
>
> I am afraid he is too much vague to be really bitten. but you can put him
> in the corner, if patient enough, but then he might change the subject, or
> something.
>

I fear you were right :-(

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> After all, Craig, if it were that simple wouldn't it be rather likely that
>> someone other than yourself might have noticed this?
>>
> This is where you reveal that you are really only interested in humbling
> me, and are willing to resort to these kinds of fallacies to do it. In this
> dialogue, you are not motivated by tolerance and curiosity David, but ego.
>

No need for that, I meant no offence. I was simply recommending a personal
rule-of-thumb to you, which is simply that the focus of so many expert
minds for so many years on the topics that interest me generally means that
I'm unlikely to come up with anything really new. It also generally means
that if I disagree with the experts on some widely-accepted idea I'm
probably wrong about it. Of course this won't always hold true but it's a
useful corrective to getting too intoxicated with the originality of one's
own insights. If anything, it's a sobering antidote to ego.

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

You see little because you want to be right. There is more to see, but you
> will have to change your mind to see it.


I presume you aren't implying that I will have to change my mind so that I
want to be wrong?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2 February 2014 19:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

What do you mean by "laying claim to conscious phenomena"? In what way does
> a brain or body lay claim to conscious phenomena?


Let me restate it then. Bodies, insofar as they are the manifestations with
which we interact (own brains and bodies included) *appear* to be the
source of any utterance (or thought, in our own case) whatsoever. This
includes, therefore, *utterances and thoughts that lay claim to conscious
phenomena*, as for example I am exemplifying in this very statement. Even
if we take the view that it is we who are putting this construction on
those manifestations, we can't ignore the fact that the causally-closed
rules they appear to follow, at whatever scale, do not entail any aspect of
consciousness to explain these utterances. Therefore, a fortiori, it must
seem inexplicable how these utterances could make reference to phenomena
which are completely absent from, and redundant in, their causal schema.

Chalmers lays all this out quite explicitly in TCM and I think he may even
have coined the rubric POPJ. He doesn't deviate, at least until his
discussion of "information", from a canonical account of physical phenomena
but it is important to see that it makes no essential difference to his
argument whatever ultimate ontological basis we choose to assume. Hence in
terms of a sensory-motive theory we are still confronted by the
manifestation of a closed physical necessitation schema on which the
stabilisation of our experience utterly relies. This schema makes no appeal
whatsoever to any category of sense but nonetheless suffices completely to
account for all bodily utterances laying claim to sensory appreciation. But
of course we cannot believe this and hence we have the paradox.

As Brent has remarked, it is still possible to hold on to the hope that the
physical appearances, however much they appear to be exhaustive and
causally closed, still conceal some truly unexpected nomological
necessitation that will suffice to account for conscious phenomena,
although the analogies he gives generally tend to elimination of the entire
category. Chalmers spends a good deal of effort in TCM to show why he
thinks that hope must be indefinitely deferred, unless completely novel
"psycho-physical laws" can be discovered. There is little consensus on
this, to say the least, but many people can't see how psycho-physical laws
would constitute an adequate account of consciousness any more obviously
than physical ones.

I hope it is now clear what I mean by bodies laying claim to conscious
phenomena. It is essentially the same argument deployed by Chalmers in TCM.

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-02-02 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 12:36 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>
>>   Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital transformation
>> of consciousness is perfectly consistent with the matter in the desk I'm
>> pounding my hand on right now as simply being a subroutine in the 
>> johnkclak
>> program, and the same is true of the matter in my hand.
>>
>
> >>> Only by a confusion 1p and 3p,
>

>>> >> OK now were getting to the heart of the matter (no pun indented).
 Explain exactly why my statement above is confused and or wrong and you
 will have won this year old debate.

>>>
>>> > UDA is the explanation of this.
>>>
>>
>> You're going to have to more than just type 3 letters to convince me!
>>
>>  > You agreed also that consciousness is not localized
>>>
>>
>> Yes I agree, in fact it was me not you who first mentioned it.
>>
>> > but you talk like if the object on your desk are localized.
>>>
>>
>> Are you claiming that a computer can emulate a intelligent conscious
>> being but can't emulate a desk?  If my consciousness is caused by a
>> computer processing information then the world that consciousness interacts
>> with is also cause by information. And information like consciousness has
>> no unique position.
>>
>> > If your consciousness is not localized, and perhaps supported by many
>>> other computations (in a physical universe or in arithmetic) you need to
>>> explain why the object of your desk appear to be made of local matter
>>>
>>
>> Because the desk subprogram was written to appear that way to the John
>> Clark subprogram; the desk could appear however the master programer (or
>> evolution) wished it to appear, he could even ignore the laws of physics if
>> he wished and use Aristotelian physics, or road runner cartoon physics.
>>
>> >> it's been over a year and to be honest I don't even remember what the
 first 2 steps were, they may have been just as silly as step 3.

>>>
>>> > This shows the complete non seriousness of your attitude.
>>>
>>
>>  I promise to give your ideas all the seriousness they deserve.
>>
>>
>> > it means that you have judged from rumors and not personal study.
>>>
>>
>> You and I have never met so the only thing I have to judge you by is by
>> studying the ASCII sequence you have produced.  And I have never heard any
>> rumors about you but now you've got me curious, what are they?
>>
>> > You are an obscurantist religious bigot
>>>
>>
>> Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
>> that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.
>>
>> > and parrot
>>>
>>
>> Stop using the exact same ridiculous insult and I'll stop using the exact
>> same rubber stamp reply.
>>
>>
>>
>  Do you troll as a hobby or professionally?
>
>
John a pro at trolling?

He always changes his mind when it comes to tactics (victim of insults,
heroic and formidable foe of the diseases of philosophy, theology, acronyms
and abbreviations, atheist on a ledge, professor of philosophy, insult
dispenser), which is much too erratic and transparent for pros.

That's amateur entry club level at best, despite his intelligence, and thus
his posts prove beyond any doubt and absolutely: if god exists => god has a
sense of humor. Closed for diagonalization. PGC


> Jason
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Block Universes

On 3 February 2014 08:03, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 2/2/2014 1:44 AM, LizR wrote:
>
> Someone asked how a block universe "comes to exist" and if it comes into
> existence "all at once, or a bit at a time" (or something like that).
>
>  I wish I could find the original question, to make sure exactly what it
> was. But I haven't managed to find it, and I can't spend all night trawling
> the forum for it, so I will just put my take on the matter here.
>
>  Assuming I've got it right, this seems to me a rather odd question.
> Asking how a block universe comes into existence presupposes that this is a
> process that must happen within a time stream.
>
>
> I can imagine a semi-block universe in which, as you've often remarked,
> the past is a block and the universe keeps adding new moments and growing.
> This would be like Barbour's time capsules, except just sticking everything
> into one capsule, like a history book that keeps adding pages.  But yes it
> implies another exterior "time" in which this "happens"; but then so does
> Bruno's UD.
>

I don't think Bruno would agree with that. I think the UD is supposed to
function simply by existing, and each state is defined relative to another
onesomehow. (But at this point my brain melts...)

>
> My point is that we needn't take these models seriously.  We just use them
> to try to picture things.
>
> Right maybe not sure what you mean. That is, I'm not sure where
the line is between which models one should take seriously (if any) and
which ones are "just for picturing". Did Minkowski take space-time
seriously? Does it matter? I thought the important things were prediction
of (preferably unexpected) consequences, and being open to refutation.

I assume as we get more into interpretation and general meta-ness,
refutation comes to rely more on logical inconsistency or similar
meta-refutations. But things can occasionally be "de-meta-ised" as our
knowledge improves. This happened for block universes with SR. The
experimental evidence for space-time being a 4D manifold is the relativity
of simultaneity. I assume that before this, the concept was "just an
interpretation" - it was the only picture that made sense of Newtonian
physics, but (apart from thought experiments like "Laplace's godlike
being") it was not considered experimentally testable. You just had to
accept it on logical grounds (or posit extra time streams). Then along came
Einstein, and showed that it *was* experimentally testable after all.

I guess it's possible the MWI will undergo a similar "demetaisation" at
some point, perhaps if quantum computers factoring very large numbers
become commonplace...

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...

2014-02-02 Thread Jesse Mazer

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 5:13 PM,  wrote:

>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 8:44:07 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>>>

 Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface
 of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots
 around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case
 the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same
 momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?

>>>
>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact
>>> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram
>>> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a
>>> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays
>>> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the
>>> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is
>>> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this
>>> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same
>>> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment"
>>> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the
>>> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by
>>> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing
>>> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime
>>> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper
>>> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the
>>> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you
>>> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the
>>> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have
>>> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same
>>> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>>>
>>> Jesse
>>>
>>
>> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back,
>> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First
>> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one
>> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it
>> short.
>>
>> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence
>> and relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to
>> the absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is
>> like., That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms
>> at all.
>>
>
Plenty of things aren't relative in relativity, like the proper time
between two events on a given timelike worldline. As mentioned on the page
at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm Einstein actually
called his theory an "Invariententheorie" or "theory of invariance"--the
name "relativity" was coined by Max Planck, and Einstein resisted it
because he thought it would lead to the misconception that "everything is
relative".



>
>> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be
>> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>>
>> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with
>> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years
>> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it
>> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it
>> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so,
>> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge
>> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth).
>>
>> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when
>> I wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity
>> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world
>> isn't intuitive and all the rest.
>>
>> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly
>> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell
>> them apart?
>>
>

It depends exactly what they meant by "geometry"--are you still in touch
with them so you can ask, or was the discussion online so it could be
reviewed? I have always seen physicists use "spacetime geometry" to refer
to the frame-independent notion of distance along paths in spacetime
(including "geodesic" paths between events, which are local minima of
proper length for spacelike paths, and local maxima of proper time for
timelike paths) which can be calculated using the metric, see for example
http://books.google.com/books?id=sBiWcWwTp5oC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA236 which says
"In the framework of general relativity, the spacetime geometry is defined
by a metric" or
http://books.go

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

Brent, lt me skip my frequently written argument about 'mishaps' that
happen in our 'correct' predictions (like falling off airplanes from the
sky, striking sicknesses with no known reason, failed economical
predictions etc. etc..)
Allow me to quote an old Hungarian proverb (they are smart in many cases as
folk-wisdom):
"a blind hen also finds grains"  .
That does not mean I opine all the glory of our science-technology as mere
luck.
John M


On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 2:08 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 2/2/2014 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Dear John,
>
>
>  On 01 Feb 2014, at 23:29, John Mikes wrote:
>
>  Dear Bruno, allow me NOT to repeat the entire shabang with only
> 'interjecing' some remarks.
>
>  My main problem is the "theorem" ("theory, hypothesis" or call it anyway
> you wish) of which - in my opinion - we CANNOT know *all the details*EVER.
>
>
>  It is a bit fuzzy. I would like to say that I agree with this. But that
> does not change the validity or non validity of a reasoning made in that
> theoretical context.
>
>
> But it shows why we place so much credence in a theory that makes a
> surprising and correct prediction.  It means the theory entails details we
> hadn't thought of.
>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2 February 2014 19:31, meekerdb  wrote:

 On 2/2/2014 5:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> Craig, nothing you have said so far diminishes by a single iota the
> significance of the paradox to your theory. It's not so easy to disarm it
> as insouciantly interpolating armfuls of non-sequiturs couched in an
> impenetrable private jargon. You quote Chalmers, but you consistently dodge
> (or perhaps don't really get) the point he is making. His analysis isn't
> merely that physics seems to make consciousness causally irrelevant, though
> that in itself would be daunting enough. The paradoxical entailment comes
> from confronting the stark realisation that, despite this,
> physically-instantiated bodies and brains (i.e. the appearances in terms of
> which we interact both with "ourselves" and with each other) continue to
> behave *as if* they were laying claim to such conscious phenomena.
> Furthermore, they apparently do so by means of a causally-closed mechanism
> that entails that they neither possess these phenomena nor could plausibly
> have any access to them.
>
>
> But the "apparently" in the above is not apparent at all.
>

That was a little difficult to parse but I assume you mean that the causal
closure doesn't necessarily entail what follows?

One could just as well conclude that consciousness is a nomologically
> necessary aspect of the causally-close physics; that it's no more
> separable than is temperature from molecular motion.
>

Yes, that is a possible way out of course. One would have to say that on
the basis of anything currently known, things appear as I've described
them, but that this appearance may ultimately yield to future elucidation
of novel nomological necessitation (e.g. Chalmers's psycho-physical laws).
I think each of us is familiar with the various arguments on both sides of
this debate. I tend to the side that this point-of-view inevitably tends to
the elimination of consciousness tour court and not merely in the sense
that elan vital or phlogiston were properly eliminated as
explanatorilyredundant. I'm ready to be surprised, however.

David

>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

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

Bruno wrote (among many others) on Feb 1 in replying to my post of Jan 31:

*...mathematical truth is not substituted for reality. i show that the
machine's epistemology is already richer than the mathematical truth. *

*Then, yes, for the ontology, IF we assume comp, then the mathematical,
even the arithmetical reality, is shown to be complete.*
*But we stay agnostic on this, as we stay agnostic on comp itself.*

*Somehow you seem to be non agnostic on the question of reality. You seem
to talk like if you knew that reality is not the arithmetical reality. *

*Then it just means that *your* theory is incompatible with the
computationalist hypothesis, and there are no problem with that (especially
that you did say recently that you don't say "yes" to the doctor (which
shows also that you are not agnostic on comp: you believe it to be false).*
*Bruno*

The first 2 par-s are contradictory. Let us forget about 'ontology' for
now, I consider it our 'figment' of what we BELIEVE is existing around us.
If the 'machine's' epistemology is RICHER than math-truth (allow me to
substitute here: math. reality) then the 'overall' (infinite, unknowable
whatever REALITY cannot be restricted to the math-reality (which - in your
choice seems to be required to be specified (=reduced in context) to
"mathematical).
I don't feel it like "non-agnostic". The 'infinite(?) reality' (what we
just do not know) without specifying restrictions, includes domains like
(your) machine epistemology and others from the infinite complexity we have
no access to today.

I "never called" my narrative-based views a THEORY. My position - in my
opinion - does not state that 'comp' is false: it sais only that it is
incomplete and cannot be applied for 'final' conclusions to draw from. I
leave open a backdoor for unknowns.

John M

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Sunday, February 2, 2014 9:16:09 PM UTC, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 2/2/2014 12:44 PM, ghi...@gmail.com  wrote:
>  
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
>>> of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
>>> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
>>> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
>>> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>>>  
>>
>>  
>>  I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
>> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
>> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
>> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
>> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
>> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
>> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
>> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
>> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
>> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
>> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
>> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
>> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
>> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
>> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
>> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
>> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
>> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
>> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
>> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>>
>>  Jesse
>>   
>  
> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
> short. 
>  
> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence and 
> relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to the 
> absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is like., 
> That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms at all. 
>  
> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>  
> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with 
> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years 
> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it 
> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it 
> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 
>  
>
> Dunno what was meant by "geometry".  Einstein's equations relate the 
> metric of spacetime to the location of stress energy.  That seems plenty 
> definite to me.  Of course in application it's just a model and one 
> neglects various effects thought to be small, e.g. gravity waves coming in 
> from far away.
>
 
ok maybe we can bridge this. I'm naively taking the most popularized visual 
metaphor of Einstein's theory. The mattress as it were, with the steel ball 
laying upon it as it were, and the indentation that ball puts in the 
mattress as it were, and then the little animation that often comes next, 
of the mattress now a plane represented by two sets of respectively 
parallel lines, each set normal to the other resulting in little squares, 
the indentation now the distortion of those squares and the animated 
part the much littler ball rolling around the indented section. 
 
if that's good enough that you can do the bridging work from where I am to 
where things need to be for you to provide an answer that is within the 
limits of what you're prepared to give in this sort of situation, 
then, fabulous :o) 

>
>   
> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when I 
> wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
> isn't intuitive and all the rest. 
>  
> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
> them apart? 
>

Re: How to define finite

You just scolded John Mikes for assuming he knew what reality is.

Brent

Brent: could you refresh my aging memory and 'quote me' with this stupid
misunderstanding?
It was last time yesterday when I wrote the opposite. I do not joke about
being agnostic,
especially in cases what I 'assume', like 'the existence of a reality'. I
call it 'infinite complexity'
and would really appreciate to learn your definition of the "finite". (Not
mathematically, of course).
John M


On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 2:11 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 2/2/2014 2:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>  On 02 Feb 2014, at 02:45, meekerdb wrote:
>
>  Maybe we can convert Bruno to Aristotelanism:
>
> https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/e.pdf
>
>
>
>  That can convince the inner god (the soul, S4Grz) of Brouwerism (modern
> Aristotelism about that infinity question).
>
>  But the inner God is already convinced by this.
>
>  Yet, that is not enough to explore reality.
>
>
> You just scolded John Mikes for assuming he knew what reality is.
>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 3 February 2014 08:31, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 2/2/2014 5:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> Craig, nothing you have said so far diminishes by a single iota the
> significance of the paradox to your theory. It's not so easy to disarm it
> as insouciantly interpolating armfuls of non-sequiturs couched in an
> impenetrable private jargon. You quote Chalmers, but you consistently dodge
> (or perhaps don't really get) the point he is making. His analysis isn't
> merely that physics seems to make consciousness causally irrelevant, though
> that in itself would be daunting enough. The paradoxical entailment comes
> from confronting the stark realisation that, despite this,
> physically-instantiated bodies and brains (i.e. the appearances in terms of
> which we interact both with "ourselves" and with each other) continue to
> behave *as if* they were laying claim to such conscious phenomena.
> Furthermore, they apparently do so by means of a causally-closed mechanism
> that entails that they neither possess these phenomena nor could plausibly
> have any access to them.
>
>
> But the "apparently" in the above is not apparent at all.  One could just
> as well conclude that consciousness is a nomologically necessary aspect
> of the causally-close physics; that it's no more separable than is
> temperature from molecular motion.
>

Sounds like Max Tegmark's latest notion?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A news service run by philosophers

Thanx, Brent, - I subscribed to the php - did not join Twitter (what they
wanted for subscription to 'PhilosopherMail').
John M


On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:32 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  My new online news source.  Forget "Fair and Balanced"; it's
> "Comtemplative and Significant".
>
> Brent
>
>
>  Original Message 
>
>
> http://www.philosophersmail.com/WHAT.php
>
>  *The Philosopher's Mail is a new news organisation, based in bureaux in
> London, NYC and Melbourne, run and staffed entirely by philosophers.*
>
>  https://twitter.com/PhilosopherMail/
>
>  *Welcome to all new readers of The Philosophers' Mail, the world's only
> daily news outlet produced by philosophers.*
>
>  *We look at the stories of the mass media, then put our own
> philosophical gloss on them, in the direction of truth, wisdom and
> complexity.*
>
>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 3 February 2014 08:48, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> Your idea of my theory must be very different from mine.
>
> You appear to have Edgar-itis - "I have a theory which I can't explain
clearly, nor can I defend it against criticism except by insisting that
nobody understands it".

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 3 February 2014 08:05, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 2/2/2014 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>  Exactly.  The only thing lagging is the AI.
>
>
>  More or less, but "AI" is a bit relative. I agree with Hofstadter "AI"
> is when the program are not yet written, and once written we take them as
> conventional programming. That is not strictly true, but there is something
> in it.
>
>
> The last time I took a course in AI, in the late 70's, the professor
> explained that intelligence was defined as "whatever the computer can't do
> yet".
>

Exactly. (But one day it may be "what people can't do yet" !)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 3 February 2014 02:37, David Nyman  wrote:

> Chalmers knows he has put his finger on a stark contradiction - a paradox
> in fact - and he is intellectually honest enough to acknowledge its force.
> He shows that it should lead us to the conclusion - per impossibile - that
> we ourselves are in effect merely zombies or physical puppets.
>

Which is exactly Daniel Dennett's viewpoint. He thinks we are indeed
"zombies" who merely think we have some extra magical property called
"consciousness" - but that this is just an "elan vital" and will go the
same way eventually.

On days with an R in them, I suspect he's right...


> To sum up: Your insight that sensory and physical categories of
> representation appear to be "orthogonal" to each other is hardly original;
> indeed it is the common point of departure for any theory that seeks to
> make sense of the subject area. The peculiar virtue of Bruno's approach
> (even considered simply as a bracing intellectual tune-up) is that there
> are concepts naturally to hand in computational theory that offer some hope
> of elucidating that orthogonality in principle. They at least point in the
> direction of how two apparently orthogonal categories can nonetheless be
> synthesised in a third category that may plausibly be coterminous with the
> phenomena of consciousness (in all their first-personal indubitability).
> Furthermore they don't vitiate or do irreparable violence to the lawful
> appearances of physics; rather they hold out some hope of filtering these
> phenomena and those laws from some plausible codification of "everything".
>

Yes, exactly. One day I hope to follow the entire argument and see how far
(or how little) of the way he has got to achieving that.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 3 February 2014 00:04, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
> > Hi Telmo,
> >
> > No, because I don't have to remember that my clock moved. I can actually
> > OBSERVE it in the process of moving. That's one of many reasons block
> times
> > including Bruno's don't make sense.
>
> Could you observe the clock moving if you had no memory? For example,
> could you describe an algorithm that detects movement without
> resorting to keeping state in some variable?
>

Nicely done. You put your finger on the crux of the argument. A block
universe requires that the state of variables are constrained to either
stay the same or change continuously, since all worldlines are 4D
structures embedded in space-time. "Presentism" has no obvious need for
such constraints, hence it has to smuggle in what is effectively a block
universe by making use of memory - which is exactly what BU proponents say
allows us to have a sense of being part of an apparent "flow" of time.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 12:36 PM, John Clark  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>   Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital transformation of
> consciousness is perfectly consistent with the matter in the desk I'm
> pounding my hand on right now as simply being a subroutine in the 
> johnkclak
> program, and the same is true of the matter in my hand.
>

 >>> Only by a confusion 1p and 3p,

>>>
>> >> OK now were getting to the heart of the matter (no pun indented).
>>> Explain exactly why my statement above is confused and or wrong and you
>>> will have won this year old debate.
>>>
>>
>> > UDA is the explanation of this.
>>
>
> You're going to have to more than just type 3 letters to convince me!
>
> > You agreed also that consciousness is not localized
>>
>
> Yes I agree, in fact it was me not you who first mentioned it.
>
> > but you talk like if the object on your desk are localized.
>>
>
> Are you claiming that a computer can emulate a intelligent conscious being
> but can't emulate a desk?  If my consciousness is caused by a computer
> processing information then the world that consciousness interacts with is
> also cause by information. And information like consciousness has no unique
> position.
>
> > If your consciousness is not localized, and perhaps supported by many
>> other computations (in a physical universe or in arithmetic) you need to
>> explain why the object of your desk appear to be made of local matter
>>
>
> Because the desk subprogram was written to appear that way to the John
> Clark subprogram; the desk could appear however the master programer (or
> evolution) wished it to appear, he could even ignore the laws of physics if
> he wished and use Aristotelian physics, or road runner cartoon physics.
>
> >> it's been over a year and to be honest I don't even remember what the
>>> first 2 steps were, they may have been just as silly as step 3.
>>>
>>
>> > This shows the complete non seriousness of your attitude.
>>
>
>  I promise to give your ideas all the seriousness they deserve.
>
>
> > it means that you have judged from rumors and not personal study.
>>
>
> You and I have never met so the only thing I have to judge you by is by
> studying the ASCII sequence you have produced.  And I have never heard any
> rumors about you but now you've got me curious, what are they?
>
> > You are an obscurantist religious bigot
>>
>
> Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
> that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.
>
> > and parrot
>>
>
> Stop using the exact same ridiculous insult and I'll stop using the exact
> same rubber stamp reply.
>
>
>
 Do you troll as a hobby or professionally?

Jason

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Sunday, February 2, 2014 8:44:07 PM UTC, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
>>> of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
>>> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
>>> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
>>> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>>>
>>
>>
>> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
>> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
>> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
>> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
>> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
>> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
>> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
>> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
>> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
>> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
>> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
>> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
>> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
>> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
>> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
>> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
>> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
>> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
>> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
>> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>>
>> Jesse
>>
>  
> Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
> Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
> off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
> big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
> short. 
>  
> I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence and 
> relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to the 
> absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is like., 
> That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms at all. 
>  
> I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
> rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.
>  
> It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with 
> some guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years 
> back - that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it 
> did not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it 
> that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
> because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
> gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 
>  
> But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when I 
> wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
> knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
> isn't intuitive and all the rest. 
>  
> So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
> different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
> them apart? 
>  
> Or has this been a kind of furious debate within the field, or was a 
> furious debate? Is the matter now resolved for blocktime, or is it still 
> controversial, as say, MWI is in the quantum field?
>  
> Could we start there? I'll obviously understand if your response is along 
> the lines, you've been able to deduce my level from my words, and 
> explaining this isn't going to work in a post, and I need to bugger off and 
> read a text book. Of course. However...I would settle for a roughie, and 
> the text book ain't likely to go down at the moment. 
>  
> Over to yous
>
 
p.s. This isn't coming as some  kind suckup to show Edgar I'm all lovin' 
and no antipathy. I stand by the points I made to him, and fully expect 
either a reasoned rejection following a careful reading, or indeed would 
happily settle for no response but clear indication of taking on board in 
changes in style, or attempts that way. What I wouldn't want though would 
be to see the convictions that he feels and has obviously worked very hard 
to develop, ground down in what would be an intellectually underhand way. 
Which wouldn't need to be purposeful on the part of others, but just that 
it is hard t

Fwd: A news service run by philosophers


My new online news source.  Forget "Fair and Balanced"; it's "Comtemplative and 
Significant".

Brent


 Original Message 


http://www.philosophersmail.com/WHAT.php

/The Philosopher's Mail is a new news organisation, based in bureaux in London, NYC and 
Melbourne, run and staffed entirely by philosophers./


https://twitter.com/PhilosopherMail/

/Welcome to all new readers of The Philosophers' Mail, the world's only daily news outlet 
produced by philosophers./

/
/
/We look at the stories of the mass media, then put our own philosophical gloss on them, 
in the direction of truth, wisdom and complexity./


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On 2/2/2014 12:44 PM, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:




On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM, > wrote:


Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
of a
world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
around
that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case the 
light
arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
momentisn't
that saying edgar's  p-time?



I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
intervals of
the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram from SR, what 
would
the dots be? Different events along the path of a single light ray, or 
events along
the paths of multiple light rays radiating from some other event, or 
something else?
It is true that the spacetime "distance" between any two points along a 
light-like
path is zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection 
between this
observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
moment", I'm
not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" normally suggests a 
judgment
about simultaneity, not a judgment about the proper time along a particular 
path
between events. Also, note that by means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like 
that of a
light ray bouncing repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two 
points in
spacetime that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper
time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
assassination of
Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you were to define events 
"at
exactly the same moment" in terms of the existence of a path of zero proper 
time
connecting the events, you'd have to say that all events throughout history 
occurred
"at exactly the same moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with 
Edgar's
p-time.

Jesse

Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back,
Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First off, I 
definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one big pile of steaming 
...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it short.
I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence and relativity 
via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to the absolute, 
non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is like., That you can't 
necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms at all.
I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be rephrasing this 
issue over there at some point too.
It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with some guys (and 
dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years back - that spacetime had a 
definite geometry. They came back very firm it did not. That even between the Earth and 
the Sun you couldn't look at it that way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were 
saying and said so, because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this 
huge gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth).


Dunno what was meant by "geometry".  Einstein's equations relate the metric of spacetime 
to the location of stress energy.  That seems plenty definite to me.  Of course in 
application it's just a model and one neglects various effects thought to be small, e.g. 
gravity waves coming in from far away.


But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when I wouldn't buy 
but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity knowledge, got the usual 
dressing down about intuition and how the world isn't intuitive and all the rest.
So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly different to yours 
- and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell them apart?
Or has this been a kind of furious debate within the field, or was a furious debate? Is 
the matter now resolved for blocktime, or is it still controversial, as say, MWI is in 
the quantum field?
Could we start there? I'll obviously understand if your response is along the lines, 
you've been able to deduce my level from my words, and explaining this isn't going to 
work in a post, and I need to bugger off and read a text book. Of course. However...I 
would settle for a roughie, and the text book ain't likely to go down at the moment.


First read Lewis Carroll Epstein's nice little book "Relativity Visualized" which has 
essentially no equations and yet manages to be pretty rigorously correct.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-l

Re: Unput and Onput

On 3 February 2014 03:29, David Nyman  wrote:

> On 2 February 2014 05:40, LizR  wrote:
>
> Phew. At least it isn't just me who has this reaction. Maybe Craig and
>> Edgar can get together and form a church whose motto is "I am right, and if
>> you don't realise that it's because your little brain can't grasp my
>> magnificent theory."
>>
>> They could call it C & E ... which happens to be the initials of me and
>> my other half (not to mention the Church of England).
>>
>
> No, it's not just you. Trouble is, when I get involved with people who
> display that kind of attitude, try as I might I find myself getting more
> and more irritable and I hate being like that! So unlike Bruno, whose
> patience and fortitude are nothing short of astounding, I usually avoid
> wading into those interminable wrangles but unfortunately sometimes I think
> I spot a gap and just can't help myself :-(
>
> I just wandered in without realising the sort of response that awaited me
(with both Craig and Edgar).

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 3:45:24 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM, > wrote:
>
>>
>> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface 
>> of a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots 
>> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case 
>> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same 
>> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?  
>>
>
>
> I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact 
> intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram 
> from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a 
> single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays 
> radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the 
> spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is 
> zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this 
> observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same 
> moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment" 
> normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the 
> proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by 
> means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing 
> repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime 
> that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper 
> time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the 
> assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you 
> were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the 
> existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have 
> to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same 
> moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.
>
> Jesse
>

Hi Jess/Brent - thanks for getting back, 
Perhaps I should backtrack to my first reaction reading your post. First 
off, I definitely am not at your level on relativity so get ready for one 
big pile of steaming ...misconception. I'll do the right thing, and keep it 
short. 

I thought that one of the big themes from the principle of equivalence and 
relativity via frames, was that there wasn't a complete resolution to the 
absolute, non-relativistic conception of what the whole universe is like., 
That you can't necessarily talk about a landscape in absolute terms at all. 

I read liz's thread on block time (very helpful thanks Liz) and will be 
rephrasing this issue over there at some point too.

It's funny because this came up for me first because I speculated with some 
guys (and dolls) a lot nearer your level than mine - maybe 3/4 years back - 
that spacetime had a definite geometry. They came back very firm it did 
not. That even between the Earth and the Sun you couldn't look at it that 
way. I must say I couldn't accept what they were saying and said so, 
because for me, the geometry would be very clear that there was this huge 
gravity well oneside, and this relativily tiny one the other (earth). 

But they maintained it wasn't legitimate to think that way and then when I 
wouldn't buy but didn't have the expertise to make a case from relativity 
knowledge, got the usual dressing down about intuition and how the world 
isn't intuitive and all the rest. 

So where do we actually stand? Was their point legitimate but subtly 
different to yours - and it's a case of I don't have the knowledge to tell 
them apart? 

Or has this been a kind of furious debate within the field, or was a 
furious debate? Is the matter now resolved for blocktime, or is it still 
controversial, as say, MWI is in the quantum field?

Could we start there? I'll obviously understand if your response is along 
the lines, you've been able to deduce my level from my words, and 
explaining this isn't going to work in a post, and I need to bugger off and 
read a text book. Of course. However...I would settle for a roughie, and 
the text book ain't likely to go down at the moment. 

Over to yous

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2/2/2014 5:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:
Craig, nothing you have said so far diminishes by a single iota the significance of the
paradox to your theory. It's not so easy to disarm it as insouciantly interpolating
armfuls of non-sequiturs couched in an impenetrable private jargon. You quote Chalmers,
but you consistently dodge (or perhaps don't really get) the point he is making. His
analysis isn't merely that physics seems to make consciousness causally irrelevant,
though that in itself would be daunting enough. The paradoxical entailment comes from
confronting the stark realisation that, despite this, physically-instantiated bodies and
brains (i.e. the appearances in terms of which we interact both with "ourselves" and
with each other) continue to behave *as if* they were laying claim to such conscious
phenomena. Furthermore, they apparently do so by means of a causally-closed mechanism
that entails that they neither possess these phenomena nor could plausibly have any
access to them.

But the "apparently" in the above is not apparent at all. One could just as well conclude
that consciousness is a nomologically necessary aspect of the causally-close physics; that
it's no more separable than is temperature from molecular motion.

Brent

Re: Tegmark's new book

2014-02-02 Thread Richard Ruquist

Having just read arXiv:1401.1219 [pdf, other] Title: Consciousness as a
State of Matter,
my take on its conclusion is that human consciousness cannot be understood
on the basis of classical or quantum mechanics-
the former yields only a max of 37 bits
and the latter even less.
Richard


On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Ronald Held  wrote:

> Liz I should have typed which of the two diametrically opposed camps
> has the most members in it.
>
> For another try I have read the following:
>
>
>  arXiv:0704.0646 [pdf, ps, other]
> Title: The Mathematical Universe
> Authors: Max Tegmark (MIT)
> arXiv:0707.2593 [pdf, ps, other]
> Title: Many lives in many worlds
> arXiv:0905.1283 [pdf, ps, other]
> Title: The Multiverse Hierarchy
> Authors: Max Tegmark (MIT)
> arXiv:0905.2182 [pdf, ps, other]
> Title: Many Worlds in Context
>
>  including  arXiv:1401.1219 [pdf, other]
> Title: Consciousness as a State of Matter
>
> Am I going to getting anything different or more clearly explained in his
> book?
>Ronald
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On 2/2/2014 4:13 AM, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface of a world, and 
if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots around that world for 
exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case the light arrives at each point 
from each other point at exactly the same momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time? 


Only if the points are not moving relative to one another.  And since it's "relativity" 
there's no preferred motion to fix the points.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On 2/2/2014 3:04 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

>Hi Telmo,
>
>No, because I don't have to remember that my clock moved. I can actually
>OBSERVE it in the process of moving. That's one of many reasons block times
>including Bruno's don't make sense.

Could you observe the clock moving if you had no memory? For example,
could you describe an algorithm that detects movement without
resorting to keeping state in some variable?

I wonder why these states cannot include derivatives.  If we model a dynamic system, like 
a clock, in a computer, the model is often a set of differential equations.  So the state 
is not just static values but also the derivatives (rate-of-change) of those values.  Then 
the 'movement' is captured in the variables of the state.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: How to define finite


On 2/2/2014 2:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 02 Feb 2014, at 02:45, meekerdb wrote:


Maybe we can convert Bruno to Aristotelanism:

https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/e.pdf



That can convince the inner god (the soul, S4Grz) of Brouwerism (modern Aristotelism 
about that infinity question).


But the inner God is already convinced by this.

Yet, that is not enough to explore reality.


You just scolded John Mikes for assuming he knew what reality is.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On Sunday, February 2, 2014 6:18:28 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:28:38 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: 
> >> 
> >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Craig Weinberg  
> >> wrote: 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: 
> >> >> 
> >> >> Hi Edgar, 
> >> >> 
> >> >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen  
> wrote: 
> >> >> > Liz, 
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving! 
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of 
> reality. 
> >> >> > The 
> >> >> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time. 
> >> >> 
> >> >> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a 
> flow 
> >> >> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear 
> >> >> to flow for each observer. 
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > Does it though, or does it just use emergence as a crutch? 
> >> 
> >> The way I see it I wouldn't even call it emergence. I imagine that all 
> >> the moments where I can be conscious are eternal. They belong to a 
> >> structure (block universe), and what we perceive as time is an aspect 
> >> of this structure. 
>
> Hi Craig, 
>
> Sorry for the delay in replying. I'm having a hard time keeping up 
> with the mailing list and even finding the threads I'm participating 
> in... 
>
> > Right, but if you have the block already, why would you want an 
> "aspect", 
> > and how would that constraint be accomplished? 
> > 
> > What I'm looking at is not a structure of eternal possibilities, but an 
> > ongoing accretion of self-partitioning experience. It's made of 
> aesthetic 
> > novelty from which 'structure' (an aesthetic appreciation of experience 
> from 
> > a distance...slowed to appear static from some perspective) diverges. 
> > 
> >> 
> >> Imagine we are experiencing all the possible 
> >> moments, "eternally", right "now". 
> > 
> > 
> > I don't believe in 'possible' necessarily. What is 'now' possible is 
> > constantly new, but imposes constantly new constraints as well. "We" are 
> not 
> > only experiencing all of the moments that have been experienced, but 
> "we" 
> > *are only* the ongoing experience of them. This is not to say, 
> obviously, 
> > that we personally experience all that has been experienced, because I 
> think 
> > that experiences are constrained into tunnels of insensitivity. 
>
> I'm mostly ok with what you're saying here, but I meant something 
> slightly different by "we". I meant the set of all first person 
> experiences of everybody. What do you mean by tunnels of 
> insensitivity? 
>

If your "everybody" includes non-human and non-biological first person 
experiences as well, then we agree. If you take that further, however, and 
see that there is nothing else that can exist besides those experiences, 
and their exteriorized reflections within each other, then you are getting 
to the full MSR hypothesis. The tunnels of insensitivity are what and how 
each first person experience objectifies all others, as other qualities of 
sense, including object, machines, archetypes, symbols, and ideal truths.  
The reason that I am not you is that we are each experiences which are 
nested deeply within other ongoing experiences - on the level of 
individual, animal, organism, substance, etc.


> >> 
> >> Would things appear any difference 
> >> from the perspective of any of these moments? My point is just that 
> >> this hypothesis is consistent with observed reality. 
> >> 
> >> Do you find this idea incompatible with multi-sense realism? 
> > 
> > 
> > Yes, it's very close. The key though is seeing that 'appear', 
> 'perspective' 
> > and 'aspect' are actually the nature of sense, not of anything else. The 
> > block of possibilities does not need to be there once we relocate these 
> > functions within sense itself. It's kind of like Relativity's 4D mollusk 
> but 
> > from the inside out. We are pushing the mollusk into dimensionalized 
> > alphabets, but its metaphorical; the mollusk has no exterior, it has no 
> need 
> > for containment of fixed indexes of possibilities. It's all ad hoc, but 
> > weighted by the inertia of participation and perception. 
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> > Wouldn't it make 
> >> > more sense for there to be no 'observation' at all? 
> >> 
> >> Yes, even with no block universe, in my opinion. 
> > 
> > 
> > I agree. Unless we define the universe as 'observation' (really 
> > participation) from the start. 
> > 
> >> 
> >> > Block universes need not 
> >> > have any consciousness. What would be the point? 
> >> 
> >> I wish I knew, but I feel the question also applies to non-block 
> >> universes. 
> > 
> > 
> > Exactly. Which leaves us with the option of turning the whole thing 
> inside 
> > out and seeing the universe as the telling of the story of storytelling 
> - 
> > fundamenta

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


On 2/2/2014 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Dear John,


On 01 Feb 2014, at 23:29, John Mikes wrote:

Dear Bruno, allow me NOT to repeat the entire shabang with only 'interjecing' some 
remarks.


My main problem is the "theorem" ("theory, hypothesis" or call it anyway you wish) of 
which - in my opinion - we CANNOT know *all the details* EVER.


It is a bit fuzzy. I would like to say that I agree with this. But that does not change 
the validity or non validity of a reasoning made in that theoretical context.


But it shows why we place so much credence in a theory that makes a surprising and correct 
prediction.  It means the theory entails details we hadn't thought of.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room


On 2/2/2014 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Exactly.  The only thing lagging is the AI.


More or less, but "AI" is a bit relative. I agree with Hofstadter "AI" is when the 
program are not yet written, and once written we take them as conventional programming. 
That is not strictly true, but there is something in it.


The last time I took a course in AI, in the late 70's, the professor explained that 
intelligence was defined as "whatever the computer can't do yet".


Brent  :-)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Block Universes


On 2/2/2014 1:44 AM, LizR wrote:
Someone asked how a block universe "comes to exist" and if it comes into existence "all 
at once, or a bit at a time" (or something like that).


I wish I could find the original question, to make sure exactly what it was. But I 
haven't managed to find it, and I can't spend all night trawling the forum for it, so I 
will just put my take on the matter here.


Assuming I've got it right, this seems to me a rather odd question. Asking how a block 
universe comes into existence presupposes that this is a process that must happen within 
a time stream.


I can imagine a semi-block universe in which, as you've often remarked, the past is a 
block and the universe keeps adding new moments and growing. This would be like Barbour's 
time capsules, except just sticking everything into one capsule, like a history book that 
keeps adding pages.  But yes it implies another exterior "time" in which this "happens"; 
but then so does Bruno's UD.


My point is that we needn't take these models seriously.  We just use them to try to 
picture things.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Unput and Onput

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 4:36:46 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 01 Feb 2014, at 21:12, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Saturday, February 1, 2014 2:16:43 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 01 Feb 2014, at 13:13, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, February 1, 2014 4:54:47 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 31 Jan 2014, at 21:39, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>>

 > Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in which no 

 > program or data is input and from which no data is expected as 
 output? 

 The UD. 

>>>
>>> Isn't everything output from the UD?
>>>
>>>
>>> No. The UD has no output. It is a non stopping program. "everything 
>>> physical and theological" appears through its intensional activity.
>>>
>>
>>
>> "Appears" = output.
>>
>>
>> "Appears to me" appears more like input to me. Output of of some universe?
>>
>> Input/output, like hardware/software are important distinction, but yet 
>> they are relative. My output to you is your input, for example. They are 
>> indexicals too.
>>
>
> Sure, but they are absolute within a given frame of reference. 
>
>
> That's my point.
>

It seemed like the point you were making is that appearances were inputs 
rather than outputs so it would agree with what you were saying earlier 
about the UD not having any outputs. I was making the point that in order 
for anything to have an input in a universe where the UD is calling the 
shots, then the UD has to be outputting computations to then non-UD (which 
receives them as inputs). The larger point though is that input and output 
themselves (which I see as the sensory motive primitive that information 
exists *within*) is overlooked and taken for granted in comp.

>
>
> You cannot write a program which bypasses the need for inputs and outputs 
> by substituting them for a different kind of function. It goes back to what 
> I keep saying about not being able to substitute software for a cell phone 
> charger or a video monitor, or the difference between playing a sport and 
> playing a game which simulates a sport.
>
>
> But then you are the one making an absolute difference here, which 
> contradicts you point above.
>

The difference is absolute when we are talking about the primordial case. 
The magnetic North pole of the compass actually points to the South pole of 
Earth's magnetic field, but if we are talking about the magnetic field, we 
do not say that the difference between North and South pole is relative. 
That's all academic though, my point was that Comp does not recognize its 
own North and South pole, which is part of why it cannot see that it is 
only an object within sense which reflects it rather than the source of 
sense.

>
>
>
>
>
>
>> In fact it uses an intensional Church thesis. Not only all universal 
>> machines can compute all computable functions, but they can all compute 
>> them in all the possible ways to compute them. The intensional CT can be 
>> derived from the usual extensional CT. Universal machines computes all 
>> functions, but also in all the same and infinitely many ways.
>>
>
> How do we know they compute anything unless we input their output?
>
>
>
> Oh! It is a bit perverse to input the output, but of course that's what we 
> do when we combine two machines to get a new one. Like getting a NAND gate 
> from a NOT and a AND gates.
>
> We can also input to a machine its own input, which is even more perverse, 
> and usually this leads to interesting "fixed points", many simple 
> iterations leads to chaos. The Mandelbrot set illustrates this.
>
> But the point is that we don't have to feed the program at the bottom 
> level, if you can imagine that 17 is prime independently of you, then 
> arithmetic feeds all programs all by itself, independently of you.
>
> This is not entirely obvious, and rather tedious and long to prove but 
> follows from elementary computer science.
>

The arithmetic truth of 17 being prime doesn't do anything though. That 
fact needs to be used in the context of some processing of an input to 
produce an output.

So you refer to extrinsic processing, but that contradicts your (correct) 
> phenomenological account of sense, 
>

I'm not talking about my view of sense, I'm talking about my understanding 
of your view of the UD, arithmetic truth, and comp (which are not a part of 
my view at all).

and that jeopardize the possibility their primitiveness, or as David shown, 
> you are back to the POPJ.
>

In my view, all of arithmetic and processing is subordinate to the 
sensory-motive primitive (the silhouette of which could be translated as 
I/O in information-theoretic terms). To me, everything is intrinsic, and 
extrinsicity is a perceptual contraction. I don't get why POPJ would apply 
to MSR at all, it seems to me just a criticism (and a valid one) of 
functionalism and dualism. I use PIP which is a Tesselated or Ouroboran 
Monism.

Craig

Bruno

C

Re: Block Universes

I will come back on this when I have time, but - to continue my suggestions
re SF stories - "Flux" by Michael Moorcock addresses the "momentary frog
question" rather nicely. Philosophically, at least, it is always possible
that we ARE just momentary frogs.


On 3 February 2014 03:19, David Nyman  wrote:

> On 2 February 2014 03:42, LizR  wrote:
>
> To answer the question about the frogs. We imagine we are an "extended
>> frog" because of memory; without it we really would be stuck in the present
>> moment, a series of individual isolated moments - and completely unable to
>> function, of course. (If you haven't seen "Memento" do so because it's very
>> good AND it shows the illusion of continuity up very nicely.)
>>
>> Ironically I don't have any more time to write on this! Later...
>>
>
> Actually I was lucky enough to see Memento when it was premiered at
> Sundance in 2001, I think. Great movie.
>
> Yes, I've got the bit about memory - this allows each "momentary frog" to
> perceive itself as an "extended frog". But now we seem to have conjured up
> a collection of momentary frogs each one of which imagines itself to be an
> extended frog with more or less history, if you see what I mean. What I'm
> interested in is why or how this could resolve into a singular momentary
> frog that has the impression of one history that keeps extending itself.
> One can see that this must be true of each of the momentary frogs, each
> stuck in its pigeon hole, so to speak, but the logic we are discussing
> seems to imply that each such frog is deluded and that its particular
> history (memory, that is ) never in fact changes.
>
> The more I think about this the worse it gets. I realise that I can never
> actually prove that I'm not just one of those momentary frogs stuck in a
> pigeon hole with my memories of a past history, because that frog could
> never observe any "transition" to a future moment (i.e. one not yet encoded
> in its memory) in which that proof would occur. But accepting that "I" am
> just one such momentary frog seems about as difficult as believing I am not
> conscious simply because I apparently can't appeal to consciousness to
> explain why I'm having the thought that I'm conscious (another thread!). I
> think this is what Hoyle was getting at with his flashlight: we can't seem
> to help thinking of ourselves successively as one frog at different times.
> His flashlight idea just pumps the intuition that though we can consider
> the pigeon holes in any order we like, we can't seem to avoid considering
> them in some sort of order, even if that order is merely logical, not
> temporal (because the temporal ordering is already in the pigeon holes
> themselves).
>
> David
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-02-02 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

 Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital transformation of
 consciousness is perfectly consistent with the matter in the desk I'm
 pounding my hand on right now as simply being a subroutine in the johnkclak
 program, and the same is true of the matter in my hand.

>>>
>>> >>> Only by a confusion 1p and 3p,
>>>
>>
> >> OK now were getting to the heart of the matter (no pun indented).
>> Explain exactly why my statement above is confused and or wrong and you
>> will have won this year old debate.
>>
>
> > UDA is the explanation of this.
>

You're going to have to more than just type 3 letters to convince me!

> You agreed also that consciousness is not localized
>

Yes I agree, in fact it was me not you who first mentioned it.

> but you talk like if the object on your desk are localized.
>

Are you claiming that a computer can emulate a intelligent conscious being
but can't emulate a desk?  If my consciousness is caused by a computer
processing information then the world that consciousness interacts with is
also cause by information. And information like consciousness has no unique
position.

> If your consciousness is not localized, and perhaps supported by many
> other computations (in a physical universe or in arithmetic) you need to
> explain why the object of your desk appear to be made of local matter
>

Because the desk subprogram was written to appear that way to the John
Clark subprogram; the desk could appear however the master programer (or
evolution) wished it to appear, he could even ignore the laws of physics if
he wished and use Aristotelian physics, or road runner cartoon physics.

>> it's been over a year and to be honest I don't even remember what the
>> first 2 steps were, they may have been just as silly as step 3.
>>
>
> > This shows the complete non seriousness of your attitude.
>

 I promise to give your ideas all the seriousness they deserve.

> it means that you have judged from rumors and not personal study.
>

You and I have never met so the only thing I have to judge you by is by
studying the ASCII sequence you have produced.  And I have never heard any
rumors about you but now you've got me curious, what are they?

> You are an obscurantist religious bigot
>

Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that
one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.

> and parrot
>

Stop using the exact same ridiculous insult and I'll stop using the exact
same rubber stamp reply.

 John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Unput and Onput

On Sunday, February 2, 2014 10:04:35 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 February 2014 03:52, Craig Weinberg 
> > wrote:
>
> It's because you don't listen, and then project that quality onto me. It's 
>> very common I've found. Not everyone is that way though. I have many 
>> productive conversations with people also. That would be hard to explain if 
>> it was my fault.
>
>
> It's easy for the pot to call the kettle black. But why talk of fault? 
>

Because you are blaming me for your irritation. Why else would I talk of 
fault?

> I know it's nice when we can find agreement and it's understandable to 
> think of such conversations as productive.
>

That's a pass-agg way of insinuating that I only find agreement productive. 
Not so. I disagree with others regularly without any disrespect. For me its 
all about the understanding and ideas, not about worrying what 
sensibilities might be offended.

> But I've found some of my most productive conversations have been with 
> people that I disagreed with at the outset, but who were able to help me 
> see where I was in error by a clear and reasoned step-wise argument. 
>

The expectation of clear steps is a noble one, but not necessarily 
reasonable in this context. Whether pain hurts is not an argument, and how 
it begins to hurt is not susceptible to a step-by-step analysis. The 
phenomena we are talking about is beneath analysis. That doesn't mean my 
hypothesis is beneath analysis, only that sense itself -- the primitive in 
my model, is meta-a priori.

> This has happened more than once on this list. Trouble is, in your case I 
> rarely find that your responses bear any direct relation to my point, no 
> matter how painstakingly I try to phrase it; rather you go off on some 
> tangent of your own. 
>

Why are you expecting me to be led by your train of thought, when you are 
the one asking me about my view? From my perspective, you are going off 
into an irrelevant Zeno's paradox of litigious micromanagement, and I'm 
trying to keep the conversation on track of introducing MSR.

> This is what I mean by your tendency to change the subject rather than 
> respond directly, which strikes me as more like a politician or a lawyer 
> trying to distract attention from a flaw in his position.
>

To the contrary, I have answered your questions each time. It seems like 
you are psychologically blocking it out.

>
> Things would go better if you could start from the point made and try to 
> proceed step-by-step to your conclusion rather than just telling people 
> that they don't understand some hidden sophistication of your theory or 
> that it trumps reason in some unspecified way. 
>

There's nothing hidden about the theory, and there is nothing in it that 
trumps reason. In your impatience to dismiss me personally, you are 
conflating my comments about pansensitivity (which does trump reason as it 
is Primordial and Absolute in my theory) with my claims about the theory 
itself. I have no claims about my theory. I think it makes more sense than 
other views, that's all. Others don't have to agree, but if they want me to 
change my theory or withdraw it, then they will have to come up with an 
important point that I have not considered yet. Mostly, the criticisms that 
I get are not important and not new to me. It gets pretty boring, so I have 
this page to try to address them: 
http://multisenserealism.com/the-competition/common-criticisms/

Your POPJ issue *is* actually new to me, but it does not seem to relate to 
my claims at all, once you understand what I call Eigenmorphism. This means 
that the material can be better understood as the 'far subconscious' but 
from the impersonal perspective. There is no conflict or paradox between 
the exhaustive appearance of causal closure since causality and closure 
itself is a reflection of the reduced perspective from which they emerge.

> You must have noted how Bruno regularly asks you to clarify your 
> assumptions and principles of derivation because that's the only way that a 
> theory can be impartially assessed according to common rules of engagement 
> that everyone can follow.
>

I try to accommodate Bruno, and anyone else to the extent that I can.

> Else all we have is interminable wrangling and talking past each other 
> that usually ends merely in irritation, as it has unfortunately done in 
> this case.
>

If you want to understand my hypothesis, you would have to listen to it 
rather than making demands and complaints. I don't presume to expect anyone 
to want to understand it, so that's perfectly fine if you want to ignore me.

Craig

>
> David
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.g

Re: Tegmark's new book

I am about 1/3rd though it now. So far it is an interesting read, and I
have learned quite a bit about about cosmology. I have not gotten to any of
his ideas about multiple universes or mathematical reality yet.

Jason


On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:53 PM, LizR  wrote:

> A consensus?!? Here???
>
> Excuse me while I ROFLMAO, at least metaphorically.
>
> *I'm *gonna read the damn thing, ha ha, to quote a very old review by
> John Clute of a James Blish novel.
>
> Well, at least, I'm going to give it a go. I like Mad Max's mojo for some
> reason. They laughed at Bozo the clown, after all...
>
>
> On 1 February 2014 07:54, Ronald Held  wrote:
>
>> Has there been any consensus as to the value or worth in buying this
>> book? If not so there is a numerical  GR book next in the queue.
>>
>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 01 Feb 2014, at 23:48, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 2 February 2014 08:41, Bruno Marchal  wrote:


There can be no zombies if consciousness is epiphenomenal.



Just to be sure, I agree with that.

I asked "why?" because I was thinking at the meta-level.

The problem, is that if we can conceive that consciousness is  
epiphenomenal,

we can conceive that consciousness does not exist.

That is why I am afraid that epiphenomenalism makes a step toward the
elimination of the person.

With comp we can eliminate or own person or ego, but that's the  
kind of

thing which needs our own personal consent.


Another way to look at it is that if consciousness is epiphenomenal
then it necessarily exists.


OK, but as you saw yourself, many will argue that if it is  
epiphenomenal, it has no role in what is real, and it can be  
eliminated.  It is "semantics and misleading", but the notion of  
epihenomenalism invites such misleading semantics.


But why not accept that consciousness is phenomenal.

Here comp is closer to the common sense. If I don't put my hands in  
fire, it is because the feeling will be unpleasant. I can refer to my  
conscious experience of it.


I am aware that the price of this common sense is high (for  
aristotelian); as my hands and the fire will be phenomenal realities  
too. But I find this cheaper than believing that my consciousness of  
the unpleasant aspect of having an hand burned has no causal  
connection with my "never-put-my-hand -in -the-fire" behavior.







Equivalently, if consciousness is epiphenomenal we could say it does
not really exist and we are all zombies; but I think that's just
semantics, and misleading.



As I said, that's eliminativism.

Now tell me, is it a crime to torture a p-zombie?

I know a three years kids who broke a doll purposefully. Should we  
send the

kid in jail? In an asylum?

Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, even if the brain might have  
arbitrary
choices in some of the way to sum up big chunks of informations  
available

for the person in act.

Consciousness might better be seen as phenomenal, 1p. It depends on  
truth,

self, and relative consistency.


If the dolls lack consciousness then it is not a crime to torture
them.


OK.



Whether the consciousness is epiphenomenal or not is irrelevant.


Right. The problem is that epiphenomenalism is a step toward  
justifying the consciousness and conscience eliminations.
It makes also consciousness unnatural, not explainable by evolution.  
It makes consciousness basically non-sensical, when consciousness is  
better understood as the opposite: the maker of sense, the attributor  
of meaning, the owner of some faith in some reality.


Bruno


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: How to define finite



On 02 Feb 2014, at 02:45, meekerdb wrote:


Maybe we can convert Bruno to Aristotelanism:

https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/e.pdf



That can convince the inner god (the soul, S4Grz) of Brouwerism  
(modern Aristotelism about that infinity question).


But the inner God is already convinced by this.

Yet, that is not enough to explore reality. It is enough to build  
bombs and rocket only. To confuse what we can do potentially with  
truth is a confusion between []p and []p & p.


It is again a form of solispsism, I am afraid. It can work for a large  
part of math, but has no sense in the fundamental questioning.


Even Nelson himself uses often classical non standard models to  
justify its predicate arithmetic and probability theory.


Nelson is very good and clear, but his philosophy abstracts from all  
questions I am interested.


Bruno





Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

On 01 Feb 2014, at 19:55, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 4:24 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
 then feel free to "invoke some non-comp" or invoke more "comp" if  
that floats your boat, I no longer care. I've given up trying to  
find a consistent definition of your silly little word "comp" that  
is used on this list and nowhere else.

False.

False? Who else besides you and a few other members of this list has  
even heard of "comp"? Take a look at this:

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

Wikipedia lists 27 possible meanings of the word "comp" and not one  
of those 27 meanings has anything to do with AI or mind or the brain  
or consciousness or determinism or materialism or information.  Not  
one!

That is a bit astonishing, but wikipedia is not perfect.

Anyway, you do agree with the comp definition. You stop at step 3, not  
0, as you have illustrated in all your post. So this is again only a  
distracting remark.

> Your endless homemade acronyms that you pretend every educated  
person should know get tiresome too.

> Childish immature remark.

Perhaps, but out of the mouth of babes comes truth. The fact is your  
acronyms are even more obscure than "comp" is.

I use acronym for notion which I have explained in all detail  
repeatedly. Which one you still don't now.

I use comp, for computationalism = "yes doctor" + Church's thesis.
UD = Universal Dovetailer (any problem with that?)
UDA = Universal Dovetailer Argument (= the argument in 8 steps in the  
sane04 paper)
AUDA = Arithmetical UDA = the interview of the universal machine,  
explained in the second part of sane04.

>>>  once you believe that your consciousness is invariant for some  
"digital transformation"

>> I do believe that.

> Good. That's comp.

Apparently "comp" involves a great deal more than that, in  
particular a lot of vague pee pee crap.

No. Comp is only that. But then I derive consequence from that. It is  
up to you to explain why you would assess comp and not the  
consequence. You have made attempts but they have been debunked by  
many people of this list. So you are only insulting here.

>> Although it doesn't necessarily follow the digital transformation  
of consciousness is perfectly consistent with the matter in the desk  
I'm pounding my hand on right now as simply being a subroutine in  
the johnkclak program, and the same is true of the matter in my hand.

> Only by a confusion 1p and 3p,

OK now were getting to the heart of the matter (no pun indented).   
Explain exactly why my statement above is confused and or wrong and  
you will have won this year old debate.

UDA is the explanation of this. You agreed also that consciousness is  
not localized, but you talk like if the object on your desk are  
localized. If your consciousness is not localized, and perhaps  
supported by many other computations (in a physical universe or in  
arithmetic) you need to explain why the object of your desk appear to  
be made of local matter, and how your non localized consciousness can  
refer to those local object. then UDA shows in detail why you can't do  
that. See all my posts or the paper(s) for more on this.

> you are stuck at the step 3.

John Clark is stuck when Bruno Marchal constantly sneaks in personal  
pronouns like "you" and "I" in a proof about personal identity,

I keep repeating this, but that has been debunked repeatedly by many  
people on this list.

You just seem immune to reason.
You keep saying that "you" and "I" are fuzzy, but you neglect the  
difference between 1-you and 3-you, which is the base of the reasoning.
Again you do that systematically, and it is has been shown more than  
one time to be persistent nonsense.

and when reading about  "the 3p" as if were one universal thing,

You made that up. Focus on the points.

but Bruno Marchal's 3p is John Clark's 1p.

On the contrary, the 3p is defined in the relative way right at the  
beginning of the paper, and I have explained it here very often.  
Nobody but you "don't understand" but fail completely in asking  
relevant questions about it.

> You are the only person stuck in step 3 that I know.

I guess they didn't make it that far, but it's been over a year and  
to be honest I don't even remember what the first 2 steps were, they  
may have been just as silly as step 3.

This shows the complete non seriousness of your attitude. If after one  
year you don't know the steps, despite you could print one slide with  
all of them summed up, it means that you have judged from rumors and  
not personal study. You are an obscurantist religious bigot and  
parrot, with no respect at all for reason and genuine dialog.

Bruno

 John k Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to th

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-02-02 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

>  I stated that A began his trip from earth ORBIT, not from blasting off
> from earth's surface, so A's acceleration is 1g for the ENTIRE trip.
>

Then each would see the others clock as running slower than his own. You
might think this would lead to a paradox if they were, for example, timing
the same race with their stopwatch and writing the time in their notebook.
If each clock is going slower than the other shouldn't each number they
write be smaller than the other? The answer is no because the two can't
agree on when the race starts or stops, there is no universal "now" that
they can start and stop their stopwatch at so one of the two numbers
written down will always be larger than or equal to the other; one observer
will see the others stopwatch as running slower but he starts his watch so
much sooner that the number he writes down is the same or larger.

> A's direction of acceleration doesn't JUST change if he decides to
> return. It reverses at the MIDPOINT of the trip so he can slow and stop at
> the galactic center.

Then the journey of the twins is NOT symmetrical, one experienced a change
in the direction of acceleration and one did not.

> If he returns if would have to change it again at midpoint.
>

So the 2 journeys are even more unsymmetrical, so when they got back
together and examined their clocks side by side it wouldn't be a surprise
that they don't match.

> note also that the DIRECTION of B's acceleration is also continually
> changing relative to A's motion simply because the earth is rotating.
>

In your thought experiment if you use the center of the Earth as the origin
then the direction of B's acceleration never changes, it's always directly
toward that center; and A's acceleration is always directly toward that
center or directly away from it. If you use some other point as the origin
the math would become considerably more complex but the answer would be the
same.

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 01 Feb 2014, at 21:21, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


Bruno,

A mathematical ordering is static and does NOT move.


Nor even "not not move". Those physical categories don't apply.




It is not a flowing time.


OK.


Doesn't matter if you claim there is some 1p perspective that is a  
mathematical ordering.


I claim the contrary. The 1p is not mathematical from the 1p view.



Unless some primitive time, such as my p-time, flows then nothing  
moves and you most certainly would NOT be posting your opinions here.


Moving is relative.





And I don't care "what is a computation for a computer scientists  
[sic] is".


But then you should use another world, or at least explain what you  
mean by it, as I have still no clue at all about that.






I care what actual computations continually compute the current  
state of reality.


Which reality, which current state, which actual computations, and  
what do you mean by computations?





You claim various problems with computations but reality


Which reality? What do you mean?



actually does continually compute its current state with NO problem  
at all.


What do you mean by "compute"?

Bruno






Edgar



On Saturday, February 1, 2014 2:33:43 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 01 Feb 2014, at 14:39, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


Bruno,

You have a very strange view of arithmetic if you think it "is full  
of processor cycles".


It is the standard understanding of computer science. That is  
understood (by the theoricians) since Gödel 1931 (symbolically, as  
some have seen this before, and some have made the point more  
transparent, and stronger later).





Can you explain how that works? It seems to imply an innate notion  
of time.


You need the ordering 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... that you can derive from  
the first axioms:


0≠s(x)  (for all x)
x≠y -> s(x) ≠ s(y), (for all x, and y).

and

x + 0 = x   (for all x)
x + s(y) = s(x + y), (for all x, and y).

x < y van be defined by

Ez(y + z = x & (z ≠ 0))

This gives already a digital time which can be used to defined the  
step notion for the computations.


A computation is the sequence of steps of a universal machine when  
emulated by another universal machine.


As elementary arithmetic is Turing complete, we can take elementary  
arithmetic as the base system, and define computation in term of all  
the universal numbers that we can define in arithmetic (we get them  
all, by Church thesis).


It is long to define a universal numbers, and its computations, just  
in terms of 0, s, + and *, but that can be done, and is done in most  
textbook in theoretical computer science.







Note that I agree with this, it's my p-time, but block universe and  
your block comp seem to be lacking it...


I still don't know what is your p-time. I still don't know if it is  
1p or 3p, mathematical or physical, etc.







PLease explain in PLAIN ENGLISH rather than your usual cryptic  
notations and (undefined in the context) terminology..


Just ask when you don't understand, but you seem to ignore what is a  
computation for a computer scientists.


You might read the original papers assembled by Martin Davis 1964.  
It exists in the Dover edition now.
Or a good introductory book like the one by Neil Cutland. Or wait  
that I rexplain the real basic 5cantor and Kleene diagonal) which  
unlike logic, are rather simple, I think.


But a priori, computability has nothing to do with physics, or  
physical implementation of computer. A computation is an intensional  
relative (relational) number property.



Bruno





Edgar



On Saturday, February 1, 2014 3:27:08 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Jan 2014, at 13:13, Edgar L. Owen wrote:


Liz,

Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving!

The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of  
reality. The problem is that you are denying the flow of time.


We deny a *primitive* and *ontological* flow of time. We don't deny  
the internal experience of flow of time.





For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must  
be active processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that...


Arithmetic is full of active processor cycles.

Bruno




Edgar



On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:24:48 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
Why do some people have such a problem with "how change can emerge  
from something static" ? It's as simple as F = ma - a static  
equation describing something changing. Change is by definition  
things being different at different times. If you map out all the  
times involved as a dimension, you will naturally get a "static"  
universe, just as putting together all the moments making up a  
movie gives you a reel of film - but only from a "God's eye  
perspective". This is the perspective science gives us, the  
perspective given by using equations and models and maps to  
describe reality; it isn't the world of everyday experience, which  
(at best) views those equations and so on from within (assuming  
for

Re: Unput and Onput

On 01 Feb 2014, at 21:12, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 2:16:43 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 01 Feb 2014, at 13:13, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 4:54:47 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Jan 2014, at 21:39, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Is there any instance in which a computation is employed in  
which no
> program or data is input and from which no data is expected as  
output?

The UD.

Isn't everything output from the UD?

No. The UD has no output. It is a non stopping program. "everything  
physical and theological" appears through its intensional activity.

"Appears" = output.

"Appears to me" appears more like input to me. Output of of some  
universe?

Input/output, like hardware/software are important distinction, but  
yet they are relative. My output to you is your input, for example.  
They are indexicals too.

Sure, but they are absolute within a given frame of reference.

That's my point.

You cannot write a program which bypasses the need for inputs and  
outputs by substituting them for a different kind of function. It  
goes back to what I keep saying about not being able to substitute  
software for a cell phone charger or a video monitor, or the  
difference between playing a sport and playing a game which  
simulates a sport.

But then you are the one making an absolute difference here, which  
contradicts you point above.

In fact it uses an intensional Church thesis. Not only all  
universal machines can compute all computable functions, but they  
can all compute them in all the possible ways to compute them. The  
intensional CT can be derived from the usual extensional CT.  
Universal machines computes all functions, but also in all the same  
and infinitely many ways.

How do we know they compute anything unless we input their output?

Oh! It is a bit perverse to input the output, but of course that's  
what we do when we combine two machines to get a new one. Like  
getting a NAND gate from a NOT and a AND gates.

We can also input to a machine its own input, which is even more  
perverse, and usually this leads to interesting "fixed points", many  
simple iterations leads to chaos. The Mandelbrot set illustrates this.

But the point is that we don't have to feed the program at the  
bottom level, if you can imagine that 17 is prime independently of  
you, then arithmetic feeds all programs all by itself, independently  
of you.

This is not entirely obvious, and rather tedious and long to prove  
but follows from elementary computer science.

The arithmetic truth of 17 being prime doesn't do anything though.  
That fact needs to be used in the context of some processing of an  
input to produce an output.

So you refer to extrinsic processing, but that contradicts your  
(correct) phenomenological account of sense, and that jeopardize the  
possibility their primitiveness, or as David shown, you are back to  
the POPJ.

Bruno

Craig

Bruno

Craig

> This would suggest that computation can only be defined as a
> meaningful product in a non-comp environment, otherwise there  
would
> be no inputting and outputting, only instantaneous results  
within a

> Platonic ocean of arithmetic truth.

A computation of a program without input can simulate different
programs having many inputs relative to other programs or divine  
(non-

machines) things living in arithmetic

How does the program itself get to be a program without being input?

OK. Good question.

The answer is that the TOE has to choose an initial universal  
system. I use arithmetic (RA).

Then all programs or number are natural inputs of the (tiny)  
arithmetical truth which emulates them.

You need to understand that a tiny part of arithmetic defines all  
partial computable relations. The quintessence of this is already  
in Gödel 1931.

> Where do we find input and output within arithmetic though?

It is not obvious, but the sigma_1 arithmetical relation emulates  
all

computations, with all sort of relative inputs.

It seems to me though, and this is why I posted this thread, that  
i/o is taken for granted and has no real explanation of what it is  
in mathematical terms.

It is the argument of the functions in the functional relations.

If phi_i(j) = k then RA can prove that there is a number i which  
applied to j will give k, relatively to some universal u, (and this  
"trivially" relatively to arithmetic).

> What makes it happen without invoking a physical or experiential
> context?

Truth. The necessary one, and the contingent one.

Does truth make things happen?

Yes. truth('p') -> p.
If "Obama is president" is true, then Obama is president.

>
> As an aside, its interesting to play with the idea of building a
> view of computation from a sensory-motive perspective. When we  
use a

> computer to automate mental tasks it could be said that we are
> 'unputting' the effort

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room



On 01 Feb 2014, at 23:12, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/1/2014 2:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 01 Feb 2014, at 06:48, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/31/2014 9:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
We are potentially immortal in the same way as a car can  
potentially

survive indefinitely provided parts can be repaired or replaced
indefinitely. At present, we can repair or replace some parts in  
the
human body, but not enough to prolong life for more than a few  
years.


Actually I think we can make people live indefinitely now.  I have  
seriously considered starting a business to do this.  I certainly  
think I can do it more legitimately than those cryogenic  
preservation services.  What I would do it is gather as much  
information about the person as possible.  If they were still  
alive this would include extensive video recordings and  
interviews.  Then they would be 3d-modeled in CGI, with adjustment  
of age appearance as desired.  This model would then be inserted  
as an avatar of the person in an artificial CGI world, similar to  
many computer games.  The avatar would be provided with an AI  
based on all the writings, video, interviews etc so that it would  
respond like the person modeled in most conversation.  It could  
access current events etc from the internet so it would be able to  
discuss things.


Would the avatar be conscious?  According to Bruno it would be if  
it's AI were Lobian - which isn't that hard.  But really it's  
beside the point.  AI, such as Watson, could easily appear as  
conscious and intelligent as your 90yr old aunt and tell the  
stories she tells and exhibit the quirks she has.  Would the  
avatar be alive? conscious?  Who would care?  Not the loved ones  
that paid to preserve Grandma for future generations.


Anybody want to invest?  It'll take big bucks to do it right.


Is that not the normal future of facebook or Linkedin, or personal  
family memory?


That is like saying yes to the current doctor, meaning, that the  
level is *very* high.


But it will go lower and lower.


Most plausibly.






The children will not be glad. It is already annoying to listen to  
grandpa nth account of 14-18, every sunday, but now, you have to  
listen to grandpa and grandma, and to their grandgrand-pa, and  
their grandgrand-ma, and so one.


But at least you can turn them off.


Are you sure? If, as you say, the level go lower and lower, I am not  
sure we have the moral right to turn them off once the level is lower  
than the substitution level of the persons concerned.








Chinese have a name for that, it is the cult of ancestors.

It is good, it is human. You can do money but you have to act  
quickly, because that emerges naturally from the net.


Exactly.  The only thing lagging is the AI.


More or less, but "AI" is a bit relative. I agree with Hofstadter "AI"  
is when the program are not yet written, and once written we take them  
as conventional programming. That is not strictly true, but there is  
something in it.


Bruno





Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google  
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,  
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


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



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...

2014-02-02 Thread Jesse Mazer

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 7:13 AM,  wrote:

>
> Jesse - if the assumption is a fundamental geometry akin to the surface of
> a world, and if the speed of light is constant, then you could draw dots
> around that world for exact intervals of the speed of light, in which case
> the light arrives at each point from each other point at exactly the same
> momentisn't that saying edgar's  p-time?
>

I don't understand what you mean by "dots around the world for exact
intervals of the speed of light"--in terms of a standard spacetime diagram
from SR, what would the dots be? Different events along the path of a
single light ray, or events along the paths of multiple light rays
radiating from some other event, or something else? It is true that the
spacetime "distance" between any two points along a light-like path is
zero, if that's what you mean, but I don't see the connection between this
observation and the idea that the light arrives "at exactly the same
moment", I'm not sure how you're defining that phrase. "Same moment"
normally suggests a judgment about simultaneity, not a judgment about the
proper time along a particular path between events. Also, note that by
means of a zig-zag lightlike path (like that of a light ray bouncing
repeatedly between mirrors), you can connect *any* two points in spacetime
that are within one another's light cones by a path of zero proper
time--for example, there is a path of zero proper time between the
assassination of Julius Caesar and me sitting here typing this. So if you
were to define events "at exactly the same moment" in terms of the
existence of a path of zero proper time connecting the events, you'd have
to say that all events throughout history occurred "at exactly the same
moment" which is pretty clearly not how it works with Edgar's p-time.

Jesse

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Unput and Onput

On 2 February 2014 03:52, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

It's because you don't listen, and then project that quality onto me. It's
> very common I've found. Not everyone is that way though. I have many
> productive conversations with people also. That would be hard to explain if
> it was my fault.

It's easy for the pot to call the kettle black. But why talk of fault? I
know it's nice when we can find agreement and it's understandable to think
of such conversations as productive. But I've found some of my most
productive conversations have been with people that I disagreed with at the
outset, but who were able to help me see where I was in error by a clear
and reasoned step-wise argument. This has happened more than once on this
list. Trouble is, in your case I rarely find that your responses bear any
direct relation to my point, no matter how painstakingly I try to phrase
it; rather you go off on some tangent of your own. This is what I mean by
your tendency to change the subject rather than respond directly, which
strikes me as more like a politician or a lawyer trying to distract
attention from a flaw in his position.

Things would go better if you could start from the point made and try to
proceed step-by-step to your conclusion rather than just telling people
that they don't understand some hidden sophistication of your theory or
that it trumps reason in some unspecified way. You must have noted how
Bruno regularly asks you to clarify your assumptions and principles of
derivation because that's the only way that a theory can be impartially
assessed according to common rules of engagement that everyone can follow.
Else all we have is interminable wrangling and talking past each other that
usually ends merely in irritation, as it has unfortunately done in this
case.

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Unput and Onput

On 2 February 2014 05:40, LizR  wrote:

Phew. At least it isn't just me who has this reaction. Maybe Craig and
> Edgar can get together and form a church whose motto is "I am right, and if
> you don't realise that it's because your little brain can't grasp my
> magnificent theory."
>
> They could call it C & E ... which happens to be the initials of me and my
> other half (not to mention the Church of England).
>

No, it's not just you. Trouble is, when I get involved with people who
display that kind of attitude, try as I might I find myself getting more
and more irritable and I hate being like that! So unlike Bruno, whose
patience and fortitude are nothing short of astounding, I usually avoid
wading into those interminable wrangles but unfortunately sometimes I think
I spot a gap and just can't help myself :-(

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Block Universes

On 2 February 2014 03:42, LizR  wrote:

To answer the question about the frogs. We imagine we are an "extended
> frog" because of memory; without it we really would be stuck in the present
> moment, a series of individual isolated moments - and completely unable to
> function, of course. (If you haven't seen "Memento" do so because it's very
> good AND it shows the illusion of continuity up very nicely.)
>
> Ironically I don't have any more time to write on this! Later...
>

Actually I was lucky enough to see Memento when it was premiered at
Sundance in 2001, I think. Great movie.

Yes, I've got the bit about memory - this allows each "momentary frog" to
perceive itself as an "extended frog". But now we seem to have conjured up
a collection of momentary frogs each one of which imagines itself to be an
extended frog with more or less history, if you see what I mean. What I'm
interested in is why or how this could resolve into a singular momentary
frog that has the impression of one history that keeps extending itself.
One can see that this must be true of each of the momentary frogs, each
stuck in its pigeon hole, so to speak, but the logic we are discussing
seems to imply that each such frog is deluded and that its particular
history (memory, that is ) never in fact changes.

The more I think about this the worse it gets. I realise that I can never
actually prove that I'm not just one of those momentary frogs stuck in a
pigeon hole with my memories of a past history, because that frog could
never observe any "transition" to a future moment (i.e. one not yet encoded
in its memory) in which that proof would occur. But accepting that "I" am
just one such momentary frog seems about as difficult as believing I am not
conscious simply because I apparently can't appeal to consciousness to
explain why I'm having the thought that I'm conscious (another thread!). I
think this is what Hoyle was getting at with his flashlight: we can't seem
to help thinking of ourselves successively as one frog at different times.
His flashlight idea just pumps the intuition that though we can consider
the pigeon holes in any order we like, we can't seem to avoid considering
them in some sort of order, even if that order is merely logical, not
temporal (because the temporal ordering is already in the pigeon holes
themselves).

David

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The Robot and the Wizard



On Sunday, February 2, 2014 6:51:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 3:54:54 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> Like, wow. Nice picture (I'm tempted to say it makes a lot more sense 
>>> than some posts around here!)
>>>
>>
>> Hehe, thanks! I got accepted to do a poster presentation at the Tucson 
>> consciousness conference again this year so I'm playing with ideas (and 
>> cannibalizing clipart).
>>
>
> Congrats. I like this picture too!
>

Thanks TM. My favorite thing about doing visual things like this is finding 
unintentional symbolism. The robot has feet but no head, and the wizard has 
a head plus a hat but no feet. His 'legs' are metaphorically externalized 
as the table 'legs', and the whole table + chalice prefigure the robot. 
There's some accidental stuff with the angles of the mirrors too...one has 
an exaggerated but fixed perspective, the other echoes that but is also 
ambiguous, and the far-east one is flat and ambiguously suggests 
illumination of the sun-moon one.
 

>  
>
>>  
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1 February 2014 08:40, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>

 

  -- 
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
 Groups "Everything List" group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
 an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

>>>
>>>  -- 
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
>> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com .
>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com
>> .
>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: The Robot and the Wizard

Me too :) I may get a bit tetchy about your logic but I can still
appreciate the visuals!

David


On 2 February 2014 11:51, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 3:54:54 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>>
>>> Like, wow. Nice picture (I'm tempted to say it makes a lot more sense
>>> than some posts around here!)
>>>
>>
>> Hehe, thanks! I got accepted to do a poster presentation at the Tucson
>> consciousness conference again this year so I'm playing with ideas (and
>> cannibalizing clipart).
>>
>
> Congrats. I like this picture too!
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1 February 2014 08:40, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>>

 

  --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
 Groups "Everything List" group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
 an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

>>>
>>>  --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>
>
>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

Craig, nothing you have said so far diminishes by a single iota the
significance of the paradox to your theory. It's not so easy to disarm it
as insouciantly interpolating armfuls of non-sequiturs couched in an
impenetrable private jargon. You quote Chalmers, but you consistently dodge
(or perhaps don't really get) the point he is making. His analysis isn't
merely that physics seems to make consciousness causally irrelevant, though
that in itself would be daunting enough. The paradoxical entailment comes
from confronting the stark realisation that, despite this,
physically-instantiated bodies and brains (i.e. the appearances in terms of
which we interact both with "ourselves" and with each other) continue to
behave *as if* they were laying claim to such conscious phenomena.
Furthermore, they apparently do so by means of a causally-closed mechanism
that entails that they neither possess these phenomena nor could plausibly
have any access to them. Hence the problem is not merely that consciousness
is a further fact about the world; rather it is how the world, considered
as functioning bodies, could plausibly gain any purchase on such a fact.

I recall at some point you said that you "didn't care" about the relation
of function and phenomena, or some such thing. Bully for you (though not
for your explanatory enterprise). But Chalmers knows he has put his finger
on a stark contradiction - a paradox in fact - and he is intellectually
honest enough to acknowledge its force. He shows that it should lead us to
the conclusion - per impossibile - that we ourselves are in effect merely
zombies or physical puppets. The problem is that he cannot, however,
actually do much to disarm it. He talks rather vaguely about information
without being very clear about how to derive the concept unambiguously from
function, and about the need to elucidate psycho-physical laws that could
plausibly correlate functional and phenomenal levels of representation,
without denying or eliminating either. But he doesn't assist us much in the
matter of what these laws might be.

You, it would appear, are much more sanguine about the nature of the
contradiction because you appear to believe you can ignore or dodge its
impact if you start from the position of "everything" being a matrix of
appearance or sensation (Hume or Berkeley, anyone?). But such an assumption
does nothing whatsoever to vitiate the paradox as it is precisely a paradox
of appearances in the first place. After all, Craig, if it were that simple
wouldn't it be rather likely that someone other than yourself might have
noticed this? The contradiction shows up in any direct attempt to reconcile
two determinedly orthogonal categories of appearance (the functional and
the phenomenal) point-for-point and this continues to be the case whatever
the assumed common ontological basis. In your remarks you refer to the
orthogonality (which is all too obvious) but blithely omit the
reconciliation (which I guess is less so).

To sum up: Your insight that sensory and physical categories of
representation appear to be "orthogonal" to each other is hardly original;
indeed it is the common point of departure for any theory that seeks to
make sense of the subject area. The peculiar virtue of Bruno's approach
(even considered simply as a bracing intellectual tune-up) is that there
are concepts naturally to hand in computational theory that offer some hope
of elucidating that orthogonality in principle. They at least point in the
direction of how two apparently orthogonal categories can nonetheless be
synthesised in a third category that may plausibly be coterminous with the
phenomena of consciousness (in all their first-personal indubitability).
Furthermore they don't vitiate or do irreparable violence to the lawful
appearances of physics; rather they hold out some hope of filtering these
phenomena and those laws from some plausible codification of "everything".

None of the foregoing guarantees the correctness of this approach of
course, merely that it recognises the peculiar difficulties of what is to
be confronted and consequently attempts to marshal adequate conceptual
means to face precisely those difficulties. If you think you have a viable
non-comp alternative it falls on you to show (i.e. in a way that
non-initiates can follow) that you can marshal similarly effective
resources and use them to confront rather than avoid those difficulties.
Thus far I see little evidence that you do much more than underestimate
them or blithely wave them away.

David
On 2 Feb 2014 03:49, "Craig Weinberg"  wrote:

>
>
> On Saturday, February 1, 2014 6:30:52 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>>  On 1 February 2014 21:49, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Found it!
>>>
>>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 11:45:24 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
 On 31 January 2014 01:52, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

 The "we" of individual human beings relies on physical consistency
> because that is a common sensory exp

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-02-02 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Brent, and anyone else who wants to answer,

First, thanks for your patience and consideration in answering my 
questions. I appreciate it, and hope you will also take the time to address 
what I see is the crux of the journey to the center of the galaxy case 
below.

To review: the case of A traveling to the center of the galaxy at 1g 
acceleration and B staying home on earth (also in an exactly equal 1g 
acceleration of earth's gravity). On completion of the journey A's clock is 
found to have slowed greatly relative to B's.

Now you say the actual slowing of A's clock relative to B is due only to 
geometry.

But the question is who's geometry? 

Obviously your answer holds ONLY if we use B's geometry (a frame with B's 
location as origin) to be the correct frame.

But from the POV of A, B's geometry is exactly equal and opposite. It is 
then B who travels 31,000 light years in space, and thus if it's only 
geometry A should see B's clock slow by the same amount that B sees A's 
clock slow. Is that not correct? If so then why is the slowing of A's clock 
relative to B's what both A and B agree upon at the end of the trip?

If relativity is correct and all frames are equally valid and arbitrary 
then why, in this case, must we use only B's frame rather than A's to get 
the correct result? Does that not assume there is some absolute spacetime, 
similar to the aether, that all motion is relative to?

If that is not correct then it can't just be geometry because we must 
choose one possible geometry over the other, one frame over the other as 
the 'correct' frame. It is no longer a matter of just geometry but choosing 
the single one CORRECT geometry since there are two (actually infinite) 
possible geometries.

If we claim that we have to choose B's geometry, that it is somehow right 
and thus absolute in some sense (not just relative, and an arbitrary choice 
of coordinate system) then it seems we have to assume that there is some 
absolute spacetime similar to the aether, that all motion is relative to. 

On the other hand if we claim the effect is NOT due to geometry, but to 
acceleration, we are faced with the problem that A and B both experience 
the exact same 1g acceleration for the entire duration of the trip. So how 
could it be an acceleration effect if the acceleration of both A and B are 
identical? That would seem to violate the Principle of Equivalence would it 
not?

Or, if like Liz, we claim it is due to A's reversal in direction of 
acceleration mid trip then we are faced with the problem that the direction 
of B's 1g acceleration is also continually changing during the trip as 
earth rotates.

Thus we seem to have 3 choices each of which contains an unanswered 
question. Can you clarify please?

Specifically why we must choose B's geometry over A's to get the correct 
result, when if we use A's geometry we get the opposite result, because B 
is moving relative to A during the entire journey the exact same amount 
that A is moving relative to B in B's geometry. So why is B's geometry 
privileged and A's isn't?

I hope my question is clear. If not let me know and I'll try to clarify 
it...

Thanks,
Edgar

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 8:51:28 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 2/1/2014 9:46 AM, John Clark wrote:
>  
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:57 AM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
>  > One might think it was the acceleration that slowed time on A's clock, 
>> BUT the point is that A's acceleration was only 1g throughout the entire 
>> trip which was exactly EQUAL to B's gravitational acceleration back on 
>> earth. So if the accelerations were exactly equal during the entire trip 
>> how could A's acceleration slow time but B's not slow time by the same 
>> amount?
>>  
>
>  If A were going into space and accelerating upward off the surface of 
> the Earth at one g (32 feet per second per second), then he would be 
> experiencing 2g, one g from the Earth and one g from his continuing change 
> in upward velocity.
>   
>
> But A would experience acceleration quickly decreasing to 1g as he left 
> the vicinity of the Earth. And the result wouldn't change if B entered a 
> centrifuge and experienced an exactly equal acceleration while remaining on 
> Earth.  This is why I emphasize that it is NOT an effect of acceleration, 
> it is a geometric effect of different path lengths.
>
> Brent
>
>
> > both = 1g throughout the entire trip
>>
>
>  No, not during the entire trip. And if the space traveler ever wants to 
> return to Earth to rejoin his friend so they can directly compare their 
> clocks then he's going to have to change the direction of his acceleration 
> by 180 degrees. So their clocks will not match because their travel 
> experiences were not symmetrical. 
>  
>John K Clark
>  
>
>
>   -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email t

Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis

2014-02-02 Thread Edgar L. Owen

Brent,

The "centrifuge" is totally unnecessary because B back on earth already IS 
experiencing the exact same 1g gravitational acceleration that A is. B 
doesn't need any centrifuge to experience 1g.

That's why those specs were part of my case, so acceleration could be 
discounted...

Edgar



On Saturday, February 1, 2014 8:51:28 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 2/1/2014 9:46 AM, John Clark wrote:
>  
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:57 AM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
>  > One might think it was the acceleration that slowed time on A's clock, 
>> BUT the point is that A's acceleration was only 1g throughout the entire 
>> trip which was exactly EQUAL to B's gravitational acceleration back on 
>> earth. So if the accelerations were exactly equal during the entire trip 
>> how could A's acceleration slow time but B's not slow time by the same 
>> amount?
>>  
>
>  If A were going into space and accelerating upward off the surface of 
> the Earth at one g (32 feet per second per second), then he would be 
> experiencing 2g, one g from the Earth and one g from his continuing change 
> in upward velocity.
>   
>
> But A would experience acceleration quickly decreasing to 1g as he left 
> the vicinity of the Earth. And the result wouldn't change if B entered a 
> centrifuge and experienced an exactly equal acceleration while remaining on 
> Earth.  This is why I emphasize that it is NOT an effect of acceleration, 
> it is a geometric effect of different path lengths.
>
> Brent
>
>
> > both = 1g throughout the entire trip
>>
>
>  No, not during the entire trip. And if the space traveler ever wants to 
> return to Earth to rejoin his friend so they can directly compare their 
> clocks then he's going to have to change the direction of his acceleration 
> by 180 degrees. So their clocks will not match because their travel 
> experiences were not symmetrical. 
>  
>John K Clark
>  
>
>
>   -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com .
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com
> .
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>
>  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: A theory of dark matter...


On Saturday, February 1, 2014 6:21:41 PM UTC, jessem wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 12:31 PM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
>> Jesse,
>>
>> Yes, that "being at the same point in spacetime" is CALLED the present 
>> moment that I'm talking about.
>>
>
>
> But your present moment goes beyond that and says that there is an 
> objective common "present moment" for events that are *not* at the same 
> point in spacetime. My point is that you have no real argument for 
> generalizing "there is an objective truth about whether events coincide at 
> the same point in spacetime" to "there is an objective truth about whether 
> events occur at the same time, event if they are at different points in 
> spacetime"--the first does not in any way imply the second.
>  
>
>>
>> You are probably repeating the claim that 'coordinate time' falsifies 
>> p-time. It doesn't. Coordinate time is an attempt to explain the obvious 
>> problems with clock time not actually explaining a common present moment 
>> that obviously exists. This is done by coordinate time saying OK we have to 
>> account for the twins being at the same point in spacetime when they 
>> compare clocks so let's just invent a coordinate system that acts as if 
>> clock time doesn't have any effect on something we will call coordinate 
>> time.
>>
>
> No, coordinate time is not meant to "explain" how events can coincide in 
> spacetime--rather the basic starting assumption is that spacetime has an 
> objective geometry, different coordinate systems are just ways of labeling 
> that geometry. Think of a globe, with outlines of continents, rivers etc. 
> on it. It's certainly true that you can *describe* the shape of a river or 
> coastline or whatever using some coordinate system defined on the globe 
> (latitude and longitude for example), but the actual geometry of the 
> shapes--including the notion of the "length" along a particular path 
> between two points (like the length along a river between between two 
> branching points)--is assumed to be more fundamental, prior to any choice 
> of coordinate system. Physicists think of spacetime like that--it has an 
> objective geometry, defined in terms of the lengths of any possible path 
> (whether "timelike", "spacelike" or "lightlike"). Coordinate systems are 
> just ways of labeling this preexisting geometry, and all coordinate systems 
> must agree on these more basic "geometric" facts (like the "proper time" 
> along a timelike path between two events). In general relativity the basic 
> idea of the "metric" is to translate between coordinate intervals and 
> "real" geometric quantities like proper time--the equations of the metric 
> will look different when expressed in different coordinate systems, but in 
> each coordinate system you can integrate the metric to calculate proper 
> time along any timelike path, and you'll get the same answer in each case.
>
> Suppose instead of a globe we are talking about geometry on a flat plane, 
> which has some roads on it. The geometry of the shape of the roads, the 
> distance along each road between any two points, is again taken as 
> fundamental, but here it would be natural to define a Cartesian coordinate 
> system on the plane to label points, with an x and a y axis. But we have a 
> choice of how to orient these axes--depending on the angle of the axes 
> relative to the geometric features like roads, we may get different answers 
> to questions like "do these two points along the road have the same 
> y-coordinate or different y coordinates"? This is akin to how in flat 
> spacetime, we can choose different inertial coordinate systems which give 
> different answers to questions like "do these two events have the same 
> t-coordinate or different t coordinates?" 
>
> But clearly for roads on a plane, there is an objective geometric truth 
> about questions like "do these two roads ever meet at the same point on the 
> plane?" or "if these two roads cross at points A and B, what is the length 
> along each road between A and B?" The answers to these questions don't 
> depend on your choice of cartesian coordinate system. Similarly there is an 
> objective answer, in terms of the geometry of paths through spacetime, to 
> questions like "do these two worldlines ever meet at the same point in 
> spacetime?" or "if these two worldlines cross at events A and B, what is 
> the proper time elapsed on each worldline between A and B"? 
>
> In contrast, your argument seems to be that in order to make sense of 
> questions like "how much has each twin aged between the point where they 
> departed and the point where they reunited", we need an "objective" 
> t-coordinate which gives a single correct answer to whether two events 
> happened at the same t-coordinate or different t-coordinates. But in terms 
> of the analogy, this would be like if someone claimed there was no way to 
> talk about the distance along different roads between places where they 
> c

Re: The Robot and the Wizard

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
>
> On Friday, January 31, 2014 3:54:54 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
>>
>> Like, wow. Nice picture (I'm tempted to say it makes a lot more sense
>> than some posts around here!)
>>
>
> Hehe, thanks! I got accepted to do a poster presentation at the Tucson
> consciousness conference again this year so I'm playing with ideas (and
> cannibalizing clipart).
>

Congrats. I like this picture too!


>
>
>>
>>
>> On 1 February 2014 08:40, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>  --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "Everything List" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
>>>
>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>>
>>
>>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Block Universes

Hi Liz,

Great avatar :)

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 10:44 AM, LizR  wrote:
> Someone asked how a block universe "comes to exist" and if it comes into
> existence "all at once, or a bit at a time" (or something like that).
>
> I wish I could find the original question, to make sure exactly what it was.
> But I haven't managed to find it, and I can't spend all night trawling the
> forum for it, so I will just put my take on the matter here.
>
> Assuming I've got it right, this seems to me a rather odd question. Asking
> how a block universe comes into existence presupposes that this is a process
> that must happen within a time stream. This would presumably be external to
> the 4D manifold, so it would require a 5D "space-time-time" manifold in
> which to operate. This seems like a crypto-religious viewpoint. The
> assumption is that a universe has to be created, and even created /
> sustained at every moment of its existence - rather as Newton imagined God
> keeping the planets in their orbits (he worked out that they were unstable
> over the long term, I believe). In this view a 4D space-time can't simply
> exist due to some logically prior cause. Yet assuming it has to "come into
> existence" within some external time merely pushes the question back a step
> - the time within which the BU is created can also be viewed as a BU, with
> one more time dimension, so one then has to ask how that BU came into
> existence - and so ad infinitum.

This is a very good point.

> This worked rather nicely in Isaac Asimov's novel "The End of Eternity" (in
> which he posited a multiverse and an external time running across it, so his
> "Eternals" could change history and effectively move across the multiverse
> to a new history in their search for a perfect society). But it seems
> unnecessary from a scientific viewpoint, and of course runs foul of Occam's
> razor.

Couldn't the same be achieved through quantum suicide, even without
and external timeline?

Cheers,
Telmo.

>It's possible, of course, but there is no evidence for it (and I
> can't offhand imagine what such evidence would be). It seems to me more
> sensible to try to explain the existence of space-time by positing something
> simpler, from which space-time emerges. Most current approaches to quantum
> gravity use this approach, I believe.
>
> Otherwise, one is just explaining space-time in a circular manner, by
> requiring the existence of what you're trying to explain - another time
> dimension - and, in fact, an infinite number of them, if one takes this idea
> to its logical conclusion ("It's time-tles all the way down...")
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:28:38 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Craig Weinberg 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Friday, January 31, 2014 8:08:32 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi Edgar,
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
>> >> > Liz,
>> >> >
>> >> > Your mouth sure has to move a lot to tell us it's not moving!
>> >> >
>> >> > The problem is not that static equations DESCRIBE aspects of reality.
>> >> > The
>> >> > problem is that you are denying the flow of time.
>> >>
>> >> Why is this a problem? How can you know for sure that there is a flow
>> >> of time? Block universe hypothesis can explain how time would appear
>> >> to flow for each observer.
>> >
>> >
>> > Does it though, or does it just use emergence as a crutch?
>>
>> The way I see it I wouldn't even call it emergence. I imagine that all
>> the moments where I can be conscious are eternal. They belong to a
>> structure (block universe), and what we perceive as time is an aspect
>> of this structure.

Hi Craig,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I'm having a hard time keeping up
with the mailing list and even finding the threads I'm participating
in...

> Right, but if you have the block already, why would you want an "aspect",
> and how would that constraint be accomplished?
>
> What I'm looking at is not a structure of eternal possibilities, but an
> ongoing accretion of self-partitioning experience. It's made of aesthetic
> novelty from which 'structure' (an aesthetic appreciation of experience from
> a distance...slowed to appear static from some perspective) diverges.
>
>>
>> Imagine we are experiencing all the possible
>> moments, "eternally", right "now".
>
>
> I don't believe in 'possible' necessarily. What is 'now' possible is
> constantly new, but imposes constantly new constraints as well. "We" are not
> only experiencing all of the moments that have been experienced, but "we"
> *are only* the ongoing experience of them. This is not to say, obviously,
> that we personally experience all that has been experienced, because I think
> that experiences are constrained into tunnels of insensitivity.

I'm mostly ok with what you're saying here, but I meant something
slightly different by "we". I meant the set of all first person
experiences of everybody. What do you mean by tunnels of
insensitivity?

>>
>> Would things appear any difference
>> from the perspective of any of these moments? My point is just that
>> this hypothesis is consistent with observed reality.
>>
>> Do you find this idea incompatible with multi-sense realism?
>
>
> Yes, it's very close. The key though is seeing that 'appear', 'perspective'
> and 'aspect' are actually the nature of sense, not of anything else. The
> block of possibilities does not need to be there once we relocate these
> functions within sense itself. It's kind of like Relativity's 4D mollusk but
> from the inside out. We are pushing the mollusk into dimensionalized
> alphabets, but its metaphorical; the mollusk has no exterior, it has no need
> for containment of fixed indexes of possibilities. It's all ad hoc, but
> weighted by the inertia of participation and perception.
>
>>
>>
>> > Wouldn't it make
>> > more sense for there to be no 'observation' at all?
>>
>> Yes, even with no block universe, in my opinion.
>
>
> I agree. Unless we define the universe as 'observation' (really
> participation) from the start.
>
>>
>> > Block universes need not
>> > have any consciousness. What would be the point?
>>
>> I wish I knew, but I feel the question also applies to non-block
>> universes.
>
>
> Exactly. Which leaves us with the option of turning the whole thing inside
> out and seeing the universe as the telling of the story of storytelling -
> fundamentally, physically, ontologically, realistically. That is the fabric
> of eternity - not uni-verse but universal weaving, diverting and reverting
> sensory experience.

I don't understand half of what you say but I recognise some themes
that I can agree with, namely the fundamental importance of
self-reference. I suspect that part of what you're trying to do is
doomed to failure because you're trying to communicate the
non-communicable.

Telmo.

> Craig
>
>>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>> >>
>> >> This doesn't prove that block universe
>> >> hypothesis are correct, but they cannot be dismissed that easily
>> >> either.
>> >>
>> >> Now you could argue that this is counter-intuitive, but I would remind
>> >> you that nature doesn't care. Our intuition is just a bunch of
>> >> heuristics evolved to deal with a very narrow set of survival
>> >> scenarios.
>> >>
>> >> > For equations to compute (not just describe) reality, there must be
>> >> > active
>> >> > processor cycles. There is simply NO way around that...
>> >>
>> >> I wonder.
>> >>
>> >> Telmo.
>> >>
>> >> > Edgar
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:

Re: Better Than the Chinese Room

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:
> Hi Telmo,
>
> No, because I don't have to remember that my clock moved. I can actually
> OBSERVE it in the process of moving. That's one of many reasons block times
> including Bruno's don't make sense.

Could you observe the clock moving if you had no memory? For example,
could you describe an algorithm that detects movement without
resorting to keeping state in some variable?

> I don't accept that QM indeterminacy is dependent on the existence of a
> human observer.

Most people who propose this idea do not restrict it to "human"
observers. Bruno includes amoebas, for example. I think you arrive at
strong conclusions by employing your own strong definitions of words,
but it might be interesting to make sure that other people are using
the same definitions. I don't think you already grasped what is
proposed by comp and what "observer" means in comp. Notice that I'm
not trying to convince you to believe in comp, I also have doubts. But
it is important that, if you wish to argue against it, you argue
against the actual idea.

> That's simply nutty as the human observation 'causes'
> collapse interpretation always was. Decoherence conclusively falsifies it...

Can you elaborate?

> As for Russell's theory that "everything exists" it depends on how it is
> understood. I would agree, and in my book on Reality I note this, that
> reality consists of everything that actually exists. In that sense
> everything that does exist does actually exist. But if it is meant in what I
> take to be Bruno's sense that everything, in say some human notion (Bruno's)
> of what arithmetic is, exists in some Platonic non actual, non observable
> sense, then there is no evidence for that.
> Also Russell seems to misunderstand the notion of nothing. It is most
> certainly not =everything.

Are you familiar with this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

What do you think about it?

>
> And I am very careful with the notion of causality. In my book I note that
> in a computational universe there is no actual causality in the usual sense
> because we can't really claim that 1+1 causes 2.
> I note that there is no
> actual term for causality in ANY equation of science. Causality is simply a
> metatheory that describes the fact of the time sequential order of
> computations.

Ok, good.

Telmo.

> When we are able to deprecate causality that leads to a number of important
> other conclusions that I describe in my book...
>
> Edgar
>
>
>
> On Saturday, February 1, 2014 3:24:05 PM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>> Hi Edgar,
>>
>> > Block time and Bruno's comp can only tell us how a set fixed static
>> > sequence
>> > of events could be perceived by some observer as a fixed static sequence
>> > of
>> > events. It simply CANNOT tell us how time moves ALONG that sequence.
>> >
>> > The fact that time flows, that things change, is a fundamental EMPIRICAL
>> > OBSERVATION. It is not some intuitive illusion. It is the basic
>> > measurable
>> > observation of our existence and it never ceases from birth to death.
>>
>> Can you show me this to be the case with resorting to some memory? If
>> not, can you see why you cannot possibly be sure of what you just
>> said?
>>
>> > It
>> > simply cannot be disregarded as some sort of survival mechanism. In fact
>> > if
>> > block time were actually real survival mechanisms would not be needed
>> > because the future is already written deterministically contrary to QM
>> > and
>> > in violation of all sorts of physical laws.
>>
>> Here I claim that you still fail to understand Everett's and Bruno's
>> ideas. First person indeterminacy is precisely how you recover QM at
>> the 1p level from a static 3p multiverse. There is no proof that these
>> ideas are correct and your is wrong, but there is proof that you
>> cannot just dismiss like I do here.
>>
>> > If you think block time exists then where does that entire block come
>> > from?
>> > Did it create itself? Sequentially or all at once? Did something outside
>> > of
>> > it create it? What? How?
>>
>> Here I like Russells' "Theory of Nothing". You probably already know
>> about the book:
>> http://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>>
>> But if I had to über-summarise the relevant part here:
>>
>> Nothing = everything, then add the anthropic principle.
>>
>> (I hope Russell isn't too annoyed by this)
>>
>> Again, nothing is certain, but it's an interesting possibility to
>> contemplate.
>>
>> > Was it created causally in time? Or did it just
>> > magically appear like some kind of miracle? The believers in block time
>> > have
>> > an unfortunate habit of not thinking through the implications of their
>> > crazy
>> > theory.
>>
>> Careful with this "causality" concept. The believers in causality have
>> similar habits...
>>
>> > Again, the best way I can say it is that your mouth has to move plenty
>> > to
>> > tell me it isn't moving!
>>
>> There are a lot of memories of my mout

Re: Block Universes