Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:15:59PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Not necessarily. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains. In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. bruno -- 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 -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 01:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. You still miss the point. MGA just shows that physical supervenience makes them equivalent, and as they are not equivalent (from the computer science point of view which is relevant with comp), physical supervenience has to be abandoned if we keep comp. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, A relief, because this is what block the progress toward a solution of the mind-body problem since 1500 years. which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. Proof? The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, One evidence is enough. But there are none. You can try one, but from above, you will beg the question as it seems you take the existence of *primitive* physical universe for granted. it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. Do you mean that comp has been falsified? My work shows that to falsify a classical version of comp, you need to find a difference of prediction between QL, and the logics S4Grz1, X1*, Z1* or variants. Or do you mean that there is a flaw in MGA? Bruno Bruce -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 05:03, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the sequence are causally related. Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality' into a sort of dualist magic. Well, thanks Bruce! In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken. But, as I pointed out to Bruno, causal is a nomological, not logical, relation. He, of course, disagreed. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI. However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene on a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether it could be conscious. C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this particular thought experiment. Again! OK. Good. This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. Would that it were so. But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't make any definite predictions that can be empirically tested. It explains a few things: quantum randomness=FPI and you can't know what program you are. But these things also have other possible explanations and they were already known. Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against comp. Consciousness is not testable, ever. But The UDA+MGA can be translated into arithmetic, by using mainly Gödel's technic, and this leads to the extraction of physics. just accepting a very classical account of knowledge (by Theaetetus), we can, and have, already derived the propositional physics. We fond quantum logic, up to now. So UDA predicts and explains the appearance of the MWI, for almost all universal machines, and AUDA makes it possible to verify this mathematically, and it predicts and explain the quantum logic, from just the Peano axioms of arithmetic. MGA would works against comp, if Gödel's and Everett's
Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!
Clouds, especially high clouds have some effect. They reflect visible bands back to space and they also absorb and reemit IR. Low clouds tend to increase heat load because they reflect in the day, but they insulate day and night. It's not magic, it's just calculation. Of course, I am not suggesting it's anything else. My question is about complex interactions between these several phenomena. Does a change in the composition of the atmosphere affect cloud formation? In what ways? Does temperature? And the vegetation? Don't these things have a role in infraread blocking and sun light refraction/absorption? Vegetation may be less reflective than say snow or bare ground. So, the same as above. I think my question is legitimate given that current models appear to have made incorrect predictions for the last decade. And many other things we might not be thinking about... My point is: who's to say that there isn't some negative feedback loop that keeps the temperature stable? Sure there is. As the Earth gets hotter it's energy loss rate goes up as T^4, so that's what establishes a new equilibrium. The Earth's temperature won't run away like Venus's did. It's not such a silly hypothesis if you think in terms of self-sampling. The Earth must be stable enough to maintain the conditions for uninterrupted biological evolution for almost 4 billion years. It's gone through hotter periods with higher CO2 levels - but not while homo sapiens roamed the Earth. And the rapidity of the rise is faster than anything that can be resolved the paleoclimate record. Fair enough. It's not that the long term temperature rise is so hard to predict, at least within a certain range. What's hard to predict is the effects. There's a lot of focus on sea level rise because that's relatively easy. But there will also be big changes in weather patterns and where which crops will grow. And changes that might be dealt with fairly easily by a rational world government will, in the real world, result in migration, famine, and war. Possibly, but the same is probably true of lowering the energy budget. I understand that fossil fuel production is subsidised, and I think this should stop immediately. Then, alternative energy sources have to be be economically viable, because economically viable just means that they lead to a sustainable allocation of resources. But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I might do the analysis. Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global temperature increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's timeframe), when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century (as defined by the metric in the chart). OK. Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from 1910 to 2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of the century. Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is uniform random, so the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in that interval. The next hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling in the remaining 12yr of that interval, given the hottest had already fallen it. The third hottest year had probability 11/98 of falling in that interval, given the first two had fallen in it, and so on. So the probability of the 10 hottest years falling in that 13yr period is P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11 To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12 P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12 and that they were in the last 11 P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13 and that they were in the last 10 P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14 Summing we get P = 2.10e-11 A p-value good enough for CERN. But this isn't a very good analysis for two reasons. First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same probability you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on any defined 13 years. So you have infer that it means a trend from the fact that these are the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end. Second, it implicitly assumes that yearly temperatures are independent, which they aren't. If temperatures always occurred in blocks of ten for example the observed p-value would be more like 0.1. But this shows why you need to consider well defined, realistic alternatives. Your alternative was no trend, but no trend can mean a lot of things, including random independent yearly temperatures. A better analysis is to select two different years at random and count how many instances there are in which the later year is hotter. Under the null hypothesis only half should count. This directly counts trends. And this is independent of whether successive years are correlated. There
Re: A mathematical description of the level IV Multiverse
Oh it seems all of the results in what I wrote are already known, which I actually sort of hoped for. http://bookzz.org/book/717308/5c7a03/?_ir=1 Especially 1.2 and chapter 6... Now what about the aggregate of all grammatical systems being a candidate for the level 4 multiverse? On Sunday, May 10, 2015 at 10:42:20 PM UTC-7, Brian Tenneson wrote: Hi Everyone, In the final section of the document I linked to earlier, I am trying to prove a principle that, if correct, would be a way to prove something is true for all sets in ZFC; the methods could possibly be adapted to other set theories. I still have a lot of work to do but it feels promising... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1amDb4Yti4egpKfcO2oLcnGAH8UpC8_tKb7ivuH3AT7A/edit?usp=sharing The juicy parts start on page 10-11. I'd like to be proven wrong before I go much further! Cheers Brian On Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 9:30:50 AM UTC-7, Brian Tenneson wrote: Hi Bruno, Thank you! Cheers Brian On Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 6:18:35 AM UTC-7, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Brian, On 06 May 2015, at 18:48, Brian Tenneson wrote: Good morning Everything List, Bruno Marchal's (sorry if I misspelled your name, Bruno!) feedback on my work has been instrumental in helping me realize when certain ideas need revision. I have been trying to figure out which mathematical entity is our external reality. Tegmark and others have suggested that the universe is an ensemble of mathematical objects, such as the ensemble of all computable structures defined in Model theory. Thanks to Bruno, I have had to go back to the drawing board several times, needing to completely scrap my ideas and start anew. And I mean that sincerely. I have been working on something I call grammatical systems. There already is a nice, neatly-formatted description of what I've got over at physicsforums.com. I would appreciate your expert opinions on what I have done so far. Now is a good time to have to scrap it and return to the drawing board as I have not yet gotten very far. Thanks in advance for any and all feedback. Here is the link: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/a-generalization-of-formal-systems-grammatical-systems.812241/ I will take a look, and plausibly make some comments, perhaps out-of- line. Best, 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/d/optout.
Re: The dovetailer disassembled
On 13 May 2015, at 03:52, LizR wrote: Maudlin attempts to show that counterfactuals don't count, as it were, by bolting on vast universes of counterfactual-handling machinery to his already unfeasibly large thought experiment. The MWI does the same sort of thing for free, It does not. Realism on the counter-worlds (the parallel world I am not in) does not account per se for the counterfactuals, nor does counterfactualness requires the parallel worlds. An if-the-else statements makes as much sense in one reality than in many. It needs only us to be able to conceive an alternate world, not his actuality. We might relate the two notions, and formally quantum logic is a conditional logic, but the relation is not faithful, subtle, debatable technically, etc. so if we assume it's the correct interpretation of QM we get a similar result without the same sort of mind-bogglingly large pieces of machinery, though at the cost of mind-boggling numbers of parallel universes. If a system is deterministic, like a brain in the multiverse, then all the might-have-beens are unphysical, and hence not possible (e.g. in branch 1234 zillion, I could have decided to have coffee, but instead I decided to have tea - hence coffee in branch 1234 zillion is not physically possible). How can it make any difference to branch 1234zil that in branch 3456zil I did have coffee? None, according to QM, once they have ceased to interfere - which was way before I was even conscious of which hot beverage related decision I'd made (as I expect everyone here knows, we only become conscious of what we've decided to do some time after the decision has been arrived at unconsciously - at least according to experiments involving brain scans etc - and the relevant brain processes have ceased to interact long before then, on the quantum timescale). So this counterfactual - coffee in branch 1234 zilion - has no relevance to my consciousness in branch 1234 zilion, being physically impossible by virtue of not having happened - and by extension no physically realised elsewhere, but not here counterfactuals can have any influence on my consciousness. This is why I, at least, can't see the point of the damn things. (Although there is a version of me in branch 9876 zillion that may be able to.) But here I don't see flaw, and it looks like you do intuit the above. Counterfactuals, like free will (by the way) does not require MWI. What happens in other computations, or parallel world does not play a role with the consciousness here and now, (although it can change the relative weight of the experience in case of enough similarities and the interference). Bruno I see 144 mails, and I have a deadline (for reviewing paper, but I have a deadline for a finished paper + correction by reviewers, + boring administrative tasks for which even procrastinating demand energy!). I might read some posts and try to make one post with the salient points. -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 07:03, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 8:03 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the sequence are causally related. Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality' into a sort of dualist magic. Whatever it is, it's what Bruno introduces to distinguish computation from a playback of computation. I find the idea of states of an extended body like the brain problematic. The speed of light is finite and the speed of neurons is slow; so to model the state as you propose means modeling it down microseconds or finer in order to capture the signaling relation between different neurons as their axons transmit pulses across several cm. This is way below anything that might be considered a 'thought' or a 'conscious momement', so the later have spacial extent and temporal overlap. To conceive them as separate discrete states is already to concede that consciousness is in platonia. This means that in case you would grasp what is a computation, in the Church-Turing sense, you would, like some computer scientist, disregard the necessity of MGA. With comp, the ontology is discrete. The continuum is recovered only in the mind of the numbers, like eventually the physical laws. But the reason why I distinguish a computation from a play-back, is that a play black computes only trivial projections, , or arbitrary computations, and the boolean graph computes quite complex and specific relations. This entails that consciousness is related to the (immaterial) number relations, and *all* their relative implementations, not just one specific, still less based on the dubious (never defined) primitive matter. Bruno Brent In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken. But, as I pointed out to Bruno, causal is a nomological, not logical, relation. He, of course, disagreed. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI. However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene on a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether it could be conscious. C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this particular thought experiment. But I think it's jumping to a conclusion to say the supervenience on brain activity is overwhelming
Re: Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 4:20 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/12/2015 7:02 PM, LizR wrote: Brent, that link doesn't work for me - did you miss something off the end? Oops! Shoulda been: http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/13/8371781/homesick-is-a-fantasy-walkabout-in-a-scary-lonely-world Excellent work! I'm looking forward to trying it when I have an Occulus. Best of luck to him. Telmo. 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: The dovetailer disassembled
On 13 May 2015, at 00:49, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 02:53:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do not behave identically on all counterfactuals. And that is all what is needed in the MGA to proceed. Bruno Only if it is assumed to be absurd that the counterfactually incorrect recording instantiates a conscious moment. It is absurd from the notion of computation. The recording, if we insist to see it as a computation, is a simple sequence of unrelated constant projection. It is a movie, not a computation made by a computer. Not only is that not obvious, but also a number of people, including you IIRC, say that the issue of counterfactual correctness is a side issue, not really relevant. ISTM it is critical - without resolving that issue, the MGA doesn't proceed, nor is it clear what it even means if it were to. It means that consciousness is an abstract feature of the universal machine in arithmetic, and that it makes sense only through the differentiation and specialization with respect to infinitely many universal numbers. It means that we have to abandon the idea that consciousness is associated to its any particular implementation in one universal numbers (physical or not), but to all possible implementations in arithmetic. We already knew that this has to be the case from step 7, assuming a robust physical universe. Step 8 address only those who claims that the UD has to be executed in some physical reality to plays its role, so that we can avoid the step 7 reversal by postulating a limitation principle (the physical universe is non robust). MGA shows this equivalent with a non valid call to a god-of-the-gap. Bruno -- 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 -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 06:24, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 09:26:02AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. I don't see that, because AFAICT, the MGA only works for a non-robust ontology. So the only valid conclusion to draw is that COMP + non-robustness has been falsified by the experimental results. Which is what I state in my paper. COMP assumes of course at least a robust reality (N, +, *). MGA is just used for people believing that the UD needed to be executed *physically* (i.e. they need a robust physical universe). MGA does not show that illogical, but it shows that physicalism and/or primitive matter invokes a god-of-the-gap. Bruno -- 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 -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. So IIUC, in your terminology, 'primitive physicalism' just stands for the assumption that some definite 'laws of physics' are assumed to be more basic than anything else. If so, on that assumption, such laws would of necessity be the ultimate basis of any effective computation (i.e. in some physical approximation). The MGA then points out that in principle we can always devise ways to preserve the purely physical dispositions of any given approximate realisation (by fortuitous or deliberate one-time interventions) even in circumstances where any or all of its original computational characteristics have been grossly disrupted. MGA then argues that, if conscious experience fundamentally depends on preservation of such physical dispositions, we should thereby conclude that it should be unaffected in such scenarios. But the problem is that the interventions cannot be guaranteed to preserve the original 'computational' architecture (in particular, its counter-factual capabilities). Hence it would seem that, on the one hand, that if consciousness supervenes on particular physical dispositions of the brain it should be preserved, but on the other, if it depends on the particular *computational* characteristics of such dispositions, it could not be (since these can always be disrupted or simplified). It is the incompatibility of these two views that forces a choice between the principles of physical and computational supervenience. It is argued in opposition to the rejection of physical supervenience that it appears everywhere to be supported by observation. However, if two observed phenomena (e.g. brain function and conscious experience) are found to be in constant conjunction, an alternative to one or the other having a 'primary' role would be that they both emanate from some common underlying progenitor. Under computationalism, that role is subsumed by the entire spectrum of computations below the substitution level of either (i.e. the 'computational everything'). Is that more or less your view? 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 12 May 2015, at 22:27, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer seems to me to be a red herring. It was never claimed that projecting the film of the brain substrate instantiated general consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally filmed. That is all that is required. General purpose computing and counterfactual correctness are all beside the point. If the original conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a computation in any sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not supervene on the physical body. The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red herring. No such assumption is required in order to show that the MGA fails to prove its point. It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical activity and only the physical activity, then the recording is conscious. But anyone knowing what is a computation should understand that the recording does not compute more than a trivial sequence of projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean graph. I think there are five concepts of computation in play here: 1. An abstract deterministic computer (TM) or program running with some given external input. This program is assumed to have well defined behavior over a whole class of inputs, not just the one considered. OK. That is the standard concept (although the computation does not have to be deterministic, but that is a detail here). 2. A classical (deterministic) physical computer realizing (1) supra. This is what the doctor proposes to replace part or all of your brain. Yes, and this involves physics. But this is no more a computation in the sense of Church-Turing, which does not refer to physics at all. 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. 4. An execution of (1) with a classical (deterministic) computer that has all the branching points disabled so that it realizes (1) but is not counterfactually equivalent to (1) or (2). This computes one epsilon more than the movie. That is, not a lot. 5. A physical (quantum) computer realizing (1) supra, in it's classical limit. That is the solution we hope for (as it would make comp and QM ally and very plausible). Bruno takes (1) to define computation and takes the hypothesis that consciousness is realized by a certain kind of computation, an instance of (1). So he says that if you believe this you will say yes to the doctor who proposes (2) as a prosthesis. This substitution of a physical deterministic computer will preserve your consciousness. Then he proceeds to argue via the MGA that this implies your consciousness will not be affected by using (4) instead of (2) and further that (4) is equivalent to (3) and (3) is absurd. Having found a reductio, he wants to reject the assumption that your consciousness is realized by the physics of a deterministic computer as in (2). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. this is not the reversal of physics claimed. The Democritan physicist (nothing but atoms and the void) will point out that (2) is not what the doctor can implement. ? What is possible is realizing a prosthetic computation by (5). And (5) cannot be truncated like (4); quantum mechanical systems can only be approximately classical and only when they are interacting with an environment. The classical deterministic computer (TM) is a platonic ideal which, as far as we know, cannot be realized. But then comp is false, as comp is a bet of surviving some digital truncation. Now that doesn't invalidate Bruno just developing his theory of the UD and showing that it realizes QM and the wholistic quasi-classical physical behavior of macroscopic systems in some limit. Right. In the original thesis, UDA and MGA is used only to explain the mind-body problem: the AUDA theory is explained as the main thing before them; and then used to solve the UD and MG Paradoxes. But I do think that they are strong argument, and easier than AUDA, that's why I like to argue on this. But I don't think he can just help himself to the conclusion that there MUST BE some measure or some way of looking at the UD in which this is so because the MGA has refuted Democritus. Only Democritus + (CT+YD). Bruno Brent
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. I think this is where you misunderstand me, Bruno. You are ascribing to me a particular metaphysical position to which I do not necessarily subscribe. As has been said a few times, the basic ontology of physics is whatever our best physical theories tell us it is. This is not generally primitive matter, whatever that is. In my criticism of the MGA, I am not committed to any particular ontology. I am simply pointing to the fact that the physical world exists independently of you or me, just as 2+2=4 exists independently of you or me. Our physical brains are part of this physical world, whether the basic ontology be quarks and electrons, quantum fields, or computations in Platonia. And our consciousness supervenes on these physical brains, however constituted -- the overwhelming weight of neurophysiological and other scientific evidence shows this. As published, the MGA shows that *any* physical supervenience entails that replacing the brain by a recording of its activity will recreate the original conscious state. This is claimed to be absurd, since a recording does not consist of a computation of the kind required by comp, which says that a recording cannot be conscious. So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. If you allow that the recording can be conscious, then the MGA is toothless -- is does not accomplish anything. But in allowing a recording to be conscious, you have contradicted what I take to be one of your basic tenets of comp. So comp is either false or it is incoherent. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 01:03, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 12:19:02PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Exactly. Regardless of truth, it is an interesting model that could well inform us about the truth. Provided it is tractable, of course, which so far it has tended not to be (John Clark's criticism). No, the UD does not need to be tractable, because the first person are not aware of the delays. John simply cannot understand this, because this needs step 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Sorry - you misunderstood me. In this case, I was referring to the consequences of the AUDA, ie the programme of extracting physics from COMP. But that is tractable. The current algorithm that I provided makes it untractable for complex propositions, but that is contingent (CP is NP- complete too). I would worry more if someone found a simple efficacious algorithm, as this would raise a doubt that such logic incarnate quantum computing. Bruno -- 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 -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 07:45, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 15:03, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against comp. I'm not sure that's what Bruno is trying to show, because he knows any TOE must explain all observations to date, at least in principle, so he would hardly be making a claim that is obviously refutable (or not for longer than it took him to notice that it was refutable, I hope). I think Bruno's argument isn't attempting to refute supervention of the mind on the brain, but primary materialism - but I'm sure he will correct me if I'm wrong. That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. It does, as usually supervenience in philosophy of mind means primitively-physical supervenience, and it should be clear that this is what is at stake. Step 0 and 1 makes clear that we do agree that comp, if true, is realized through some physical supervenience (at that stage, we are neutral on the primitiveness of that physical aspect). Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. The argument might then be that since the reconstruction of the brain states from the filmed recording is not a computation to be found in the dovetailer, it does not pass through my actual state, so is not part of what sustains my consciousness. Or something like that. yes. In the worst case of some consciousness superverning on the movie, it might be the consciousness of a mosquito (but frankly, I think that an amoeba is more conscious than such a movie). But I don't think that this move succeeds. Whether the physical universe and its laws come out of the dovetailer or not, I can set up the situation in which the sequence of brain states is reproduced from a recording *in the universe I inhabit*, whatever its ultimate origin. So talk about primitive materialism and computational dovetailer states are both equally irrelevant to the actual MGA. The thought experiment can be carried out, whatever substrate underlies the physical world. Are you claiming that the movie is not only conscious, but that it is the same consciousness (in different time) than the original boolean graph? The claim that the sequence of brain states reconstructed from the recording is not conscious contradicts the physical supervenience hypothesis, whether the 'physical brain' in this case is made of primitive matter (whatever that is) or extracted from the infinite computations of the dovetailer. And physical supervenience in the world we inhabit has overwhelming empirical support. For an Aristotelian who believes a priori in a primitive physical universe. But there is no evidence at all for a primitive physical supervenience, which is the only thing at stake. Bruno Bruce -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 13:08, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. The observed co-variance of physical brain activity and conscious experience, assuming comp, would presumably be the net result of FPI over the entire spectrum of computation underlying both (or else comp is false). If this were indeed the case, I don't see why we would expect consciousness to survive the kind of disruption described in the MGA, despite the preservation of gross physical outcomes on a one-time basis. IOW, the device, after disruption and intervention, has merely degenerated to a one-time simulacrum, the consciousness of the original having depended on *computational* characteristics no longer capable of physical realisation. This doesn't strike me as being particularly counter-intuitive. 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
It's not a phony charge. The reaction is out of preportion to a genuine crisis. All the billionaires that fund neocommunist causes (Stalin with billionaires) get their piece of the action, via regulations. Two examples for you: One is the CEO of Bershire-Hathaway, which owns CSX, which moves oil, exclusively by rail, and contributed generious to both BHO campaigns. The second example is George Soros, the Hedge Fund guru, who owns 35% of Petrobas, but funds Friends of the Earth, all his pro-soviet orgs like Organizing for America, and the Center for American Progress, Accorn, Occupy, and all the other bums. Soros got Obama to approve Atlantic Ocean drilling, (just 2 weeks ago) as well as with George's own Petrobas- for when the price rises again. It's a mafia of the elites, which progressives worship, and do their bidding. Never let a good crisis go to waste - Obama's leitenant, Rahm Emmanuel. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 3:45 pm Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too On 5/12/2015 3:00 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: Well, the researchers pretended that they knew, back then and are still advocating regulations rather then new tech, That's a phony charge. NOBODY is advocating regulation instead of new technology. In fact there are subsidies for encouraging the use of PV and wind. There are research grants for developing better PV and better batteries and other energy storage systems. The validity of a science is it's ability to predict. I myself, advocate, solar energy and clean energy alternative research, Now! Research is uncertain. You can't just order up technological breakthroughs. So failing to implement corrections and mitigations using the techonlogy we have is like sitting around hoping. People who advocate regulations of the serfs require a vigorous woodplane, to the face. There are no serfs; although there are shills for fossil fuel industry. 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. I can get it, but by an indirect route. Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. But it is the only place where we need it. In robust ontologies, UDA1-7 is enough (to get the problem, not his solution!). For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then- else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of empirical satisfaction. I don't think so, unless you mean physical in some non aristotelian sense, in which case you are right, but that does not falsified comp, in that case. So we can conclude either that computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any other ontological property of primitive reality. Therefore we can excise the physicalness of ontology - anything capable of universal computation will do, such as arithmetic. But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it, dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and also that other issue I just raised about the recording player machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole thing falls apart. This is a bit unclear to me. You might decompose your thought in some steps, with what is assumed and what is derived, as I am lost here. Bruno -- 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 -- 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 15:22, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. So IIUC, in your terminology, 'primitive physicalism' just stands for the assumption that some definite 'laws of physics' are assumed to be more basic than anything else. If so, on that assumption, such laws would of necessity be the ultimate basis of any effective computation (i.e. in some physical approximation). The MGA then points out that in principle we can always devise ways to preserve the purely physical dispositions of any given approximate realisation (by fortuitous or deliberate one-time interventions) even in circumstances where any or all of its original computational characteristics have been grossly disrupted. MGA then argues that, if conscious experience fundamentally depends on preservation of such physical dispositions, we should thereby conclude that it should be unaffected in such scenarios. But the problem is that the interventions cannot be guaranteed to preserve the original 'computational' architecture (in particular, its counter-factual capabilities). Hence it would seem that, on the one hand, that if consciousness supervenes on particular physical dispositions of the brain it should be preserved, but on the other, if it depends on the particular *computational* characteristics of such dispositions, it could not be (since these can always be disrupted or simplified). It is the incompatibility of these two views that forces a choice between the principles of physical and computational supervenience. It is argued in opposition to the rejection of physical supervenience that it appears everywhere to be supported by observation. However, if two observed phenomena (e.g. brain function and conscious experience) are found to be in constant conjunction, an alternative to one or the other having a 'primary' role would be that they both emanate from some common underlying progenitor. Under computationalism, that role is subsumed by the entire spectrum of computations below the substitution level of either (i.e. the 'computational everything'). Is that more or less your view? I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Bruno 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On 13 May 2015, at 03:59, Jason Resch wrote: Chalmer's fading quailia argument shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either: 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the functional state of the brain. or 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of quaila His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons. In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance, mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple. Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally equivalent brain to support thoughts such as help! I can't see, I am blind! for the information content in the brain is identical when the neurons are functionally identical. But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so presumably the consciousness is not the same. But also, the information content does not support knowing/believing/expressing/ thinking something is wrong. If anything, the information content of this random brain is much less, but it seems the result is something where the quaila is out of sync with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed some clarity on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of the neurons in a brain is performed? Nice idea, which leads again to the absurdity to link consciousness to the right physical activity, instead of the abstract computation (at the right level). Only one problem, to use Chalmers' strategy, you need to change a neuron one at a time, but then a little change will quickly spread abnormal behavior in the other neurons (which do not yet fire randomly). So you have to change all neurons at once, in this case. This might at first mean going from consciousness to 0 consciousness, except that we already know (by MGA, normally) that consciousness is just not associated to *any* physical activity, not even computations. In fact the people that we can see are sort of p-zombies, in some sense, but this is because we see only the 3p-body, and the 3-p bodies are not conscious: they are only pointer to the person, which is in Platonia, and is conscious, in Platonia. (Note that this mean that we are, in some sense, in Platonia, at the limit of all computations). I am aware that this is counter-intuitive, but not much than general relativity or QM. Bruno 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 14:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. I think this is where you misunderstand me, Bruno. You are ascribing to me a particular metaphysical position to which I do not necessarily subscribe. Apology if I did. As has been said a few times, the basic ontology of physics is whatever our best physical theories tell us it is. This is not generally primitive matter, whatever that is. Primitive matter, is, by definition whatever physical you assume in the fundamental theory. For example the standard model (in physics) assumes some particles, having relation, through some other particles. But you can do physics without assuming the metaphysical assumpitions that those particles are real, and if that there are not fundamenal, they are made of physical things, that we still need to assume. I don't want to classify diverse degree of naivety in the concept of primitive matter, and we can saty at the level of the assumption needed. It also assumes a fundamental physical reality at the ground of all other realities (chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, etc.). In my criticism of the MGA, I am not committed to any particular ontology. I am simply pointing to the fact that the physical world exists independently of you or me, just as 2+2=4 exists independently of you or me. But this is ambiguous. If you use physical world in the aristotelian sense, I have no evidence that it is true. If you define the physical by the (stable) appearance to us, then you already slip on self- reference, and the Platonic idea that we might dream that physical reality. It is less demanding in assumption, given that those dreams exist in virtue of the minimal amount of math we need to talk about the physical reality. if not you beg the question. Our physical brains are part of this physical world, whether the basic ontology be quarks and electrons, quantum fields, or computations in Platonia. And our consciousness supervenes on these physical brains, however constituted -- the overwhelming weight of neurophysiological and other scientific evidence shows this. Yes. Comp starts from this constatation. But we just beg the qeustion of how the physical world, whatver it is, succeed in selecting this or that comp histoiry in arithmetic. Solution: we take them all. And do the math to see if that works, and the thing is that it works, even if modestly. As published, the MGA shows that *any* physical supervenience entails that replacing the brain by a recording of its activity will recreate the original conscious state. In real time, yes. This is claimed to be absurd, since a recording does not consist of a computation of the kind required by comp, Well, required by the guy who was hoping to survive. which says that a recording cannot be conscious. Then all real numbers are conscious, you go out completely from computer science. Your TOE is just the counting algorithm, and you can predict nothing. You dismiss that we say yes to the dorcor, because the artificial brain will do the right computation, which means by defifnition, be counterfactually correct. So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. Yes. Between primitive-physical supervenience (as this what is at stake). But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). With the FPI, yes. So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. Not with empirical evidence, just with the usual identity mind-brain, which is doubted since long, and is related to a difficult problem since the antic time. If you allow that the recording can be conscious, then the MGA is toothless -- is does not accomplish anything. But in allowing a recording to be conscious, you have contradicted what I take to be one of your basic tenets of comp. So comp is either false or it is incoherent. Lol Well tried :) I think that if you understand what is a computation, in the Turing- Church sense, you can't believe that the movie is a computation, except in ad hoc a posteriori sense in which everything can compute everything. But then I have to retract that
Re: The dovetailer disassembled
On 5/13/2015 3:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 00:49, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 02:53:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: The recording is a distinctly different computation, because they do not behave identically on all counterfactuals. And that is all what is needed in the MGA to proceed. Bruno Only if it is assumed to be absurd that the counterfactually incorrect recording instantiates a conscious moment. It is absurd from the notion of computation. The recording, if we insist to see it as a computation, is a simple sequence of unrelated constant projection. It is a movie, not a computation made by a computer. Not only is that not obvious, but also a number of people, including you IIRC, say that the issue of counterfactual correctness is a side issue, not really relevant. ISTM it is critical - without resolving that issue, the MGA doesn't proceed, nor is it clear what it even means if it were to. It means that consciousness is an abstract feature of the universal machine in arithmetic, and that it makes sense only through the differentiation and specialization with respect to infinitely many universal numbers. It means that we have to abandon the idea that consciousness is associated to its any particular implementation in one universal numbers (physical or not), I doubt that anyone on this list every had the idea that consciousness could only be associated to a particular implementation. Certainly everyone is willing to entertain the hypothetical that consciousness, human-level consciousness, could be realized by a digital computer with suitable program and I/O. It just muddles things to make complicated arguments for this starting from comp. The question is whether such consciousness can be abstracted away from ALL implementation and exist in platonia; which only makes sense if one already believes that exist in platonia is the same as exists. I think that exists is relative to a world. So a digital AI consciousness can exist relative to a virtual world in which it is emulated, or it can exist in this world given sufficient I/O to relate it this world as its environment. An abstract AI can exist in platonia relative to an abstract environment in platonia. What I'm interested in is what makes the program/AI conscious. Bruno has an answer, i.e. it can do mathematical induction. But it's not clear to me how this squares with my dog being aware of his name - since I don't think he can understand mathematical induction. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 18:31, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 17:14, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Well, if I were a mosquito, I wouldn't of course be participating in this conversation. So ideally I would want to be able to justify why the kind of observer capable of this class of interaction might be restricted to 'physical' environments of the sort we observe. I think this may be related to Bruno's idea that our being embedded in an observably 'physical' environment is more than merely geographical - i.e. that we are somehow the beneficiaries of some 'absolute' measure battle for the emergence of observably 'lawlike' phenomena. Quentin is right that the predominance is not absolute, but only relative to us. Now, what we can find below our same and sharable subst level has to obey the same law everywhere, as it is defined by the same sum on all computation everywhere. The quantum laws are a very good candidate for that universal physics, but the hamiltonian might be more variable; yet still obey conditional laws, etc. Computationalism offers a criterion to distinguish geography from physics, but it might not be the according to fact that the real physics is given by S4Grz1, Z1*, or X1* ([]p p, etc.). Bruno 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 10:33:42PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. How does that work? Are you saying the counterfactual situations never appear anywhere in the Multiverse? What principle prevents their occurrance? By the meaning of the term: *counter*factual, i.e., contrary to the facts of the situation. As far as I know there is a philosophical theory of counterfactuals based on possible worlds. But these are generally though to be imaginary. And my feeling is that the 'other worlds' of the MWI or other Hubble volumes, etc, are just philosophical possible other worlds. We can say anything about them that we like because it can never be checked -- they are physically inaccessible in principle. But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:04:09PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 12:32, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? Because otherwise there can be no physical influence, and - within the branch(es) in which the MGA is being carried out - the recorded system is identical to the non-recorded one. Without any physical communication / interference there is no difference from a single universe version. Well, ISTM, at least. The physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. That is not the way the term 'worlds' or 'universes' is used in moder quantum physics. The term 'world' is reserved for (related) systems that have totally decohered, so that there is no possibility of recombination. Or, in the cosmological setting, two regions of space-time outside each other's Hubble volume. The small number of people who still think that every possible path in QM is a separate world form a fast-vanishing rump. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 8:49 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. As they say on TV, This just in! /Why Boltzmann Brains Don't Fluctuate Into Existence From the De Sitter Vacuum// //Kimberly K. Boddy, Sean M. Carroll, Jason Pollack// //(Submitted on 11 May 2015)// // //Many modern cosmological scenarios feature large volumes of spacetime in a de Sitter vacuum phase. Such models are said to be faced with a Boltzmann Brain problem - the overwhelming majority of observers with fixed local conditions are random fluctuations in the de Sitter vacuum, rather than arising via thermodynamically sensible evolution from a low-entropy past. We argue that this worry can be straightforwardly avoided in the Many-Worlds (Everett) approach to quantum mechanics, as long as the underlying Hilbert space is infinite-dimensional. In that case, de Sitter settles into a truly stationary quantum vacuum state. While there would be a nonzero probability for observing Boltzmann-Brain-like fluctuations in such a state, observation refers to a specific kind of dynamical process that does not occur in the vacuum (which is, after all, time-independent). Observers are necessarily out-of-equilibrium physical systems, which are absent in the vacuum. Hence, the fact that projection operators corresponding to states with observers in them do not annihilate the vacuum does not imply that such observers actually come into existence. The Boltzmann Brain problem is therefore much less generic than has been supposed. / arXiv:1505.02780v1 [hep-th] Brent 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 mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Theories that explain everything explain nothing
As an aside to recent discussions, it is interesting to point out that physics has some of the problems associated with over-confidence in ideas coming from pure intuition too. http://aeon.co/magazine/science/has-cosmology-run-into-a-creative-crisis This article by Ross Anderson in Aeon Magazine surveys some of the recent history of press announcements by leading cosmologists. Believing too strongly in your own pet theory can be a dangerous pastime. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Occulus (was Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!
Aha, that's more like it. Now I just need something by The Smiths to get me in the right mood... On 13 May 2015 at 21:36, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 4:20 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/12/2015 7:02 PM, LizR wrote: Brent, that link doesn't work for me - did you miss something off the end? Oops! Shoulda been: http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/13/8371781/homesick-is-a-fantasy-walkabout-in-a-scary-lonely-world Excellent work! I'm looking forward to trying it when I have an Occulus. Best of luck to him. Telmo. 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: My comments on The Movie Graph Argument Revisited by Russell Standish
On 14 May 2015 at 05:46, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: The only other meaning of free will that I know of that isn't gibberish is the inability to always know what we will do next before we do it even in an unchanging environment, but almost nobody uses that meaning so all that remains is the sound that chunks of meat make when they flap together. I agree with you on this one. FW as the inability to know what someone will do next (including yourself) seems the only meaningful definition. In fact the suggestion that it has some greater meaning leads to the idea that someone born poor, who is as a result uneducated and can only get menial jobs (say) is somehow responsible for their position in society because they've failed in some way, and they are then blamed (particularly by people of a right wing persuasion) for something theyhad no control over. So it's actually a dangerous notion politically, and not just philosophically meaningless. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? -- 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/d/optout.
Re: My comments on The Movie Graph Argument Revisited by Russell Standish
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:46:49PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Free will is the ability to do something stupid. Nonrational. OK fine free will is non-rational, in other words an event performed for NO REASON, in other words an event without a cause, in other words random. So a radioactive atom has free will when it decays. A radioactive atom isn't a person, consequently does not have will. At least not when I last checked. And if you want to argue that most physicists are wrong when they say that some events have no cause that's fine too, but if nothing is random then nothing is non-rational and so what does free will mean? Sure. I don't argue that, however. I don't normally engage in discussions about free will, Well... if you're going to use the term you'd better be prepared to discuss what the hell it's supposed to mean. I have many times. I will continue to use the term when appropriate, such as discussing the irony of how predictions of a system containing free-willed agents will influence the system, rendering the prediction mute. But I won't bother wasting my time when someone obstinately wants the term to mean something incoherent, or nothing at all. as too many people have nonsensical notions of what it is, including the notion that it just a meaningless sound made be flapping chunks of meat together. The only other meaning of free will that I know of that isn't gibberish is the inability to always know what we will do next before we do it even in an unchanging environment, but almost nobody uses that meaning so all Well it appears that I am such a nobody then, except that I would also restrict it to mean that _no_ possible agent can predict what one will do next, not just that one doesn't know. But I'm prepared to accept the former more generalised meaning for the sake of an argument. that remains is the sound that chunks of meat make when they flap together. if the daemon tells Og what his prediction of Og's behavior will be the situation is not deterministic, or at least it can not be determined by the daemon, for that you'd need a mega-daemon. And then things iterate. No you don't. Because the system is deterministic (after all the whole premiss of this thread of conversation is dynamical chaos, which is a deterministic system), Both Og and the daemon are deterministic but even if we ignore chaos deterministic is not the same as predictable. A very simple program can be written to look for the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of 2 primes and then stop, the program is 100% deterministic but nobody has been able to predict if it will ever stop or not, and even worse Turing tells us that there is a chance nobody will even ever be able to predict that someday somebody will be able to predict if it will stop or not. Are you arguing that Laplace's daemon is impossible? it doesn't matter what the daemon tells Og, Og will do what he was going to do anyway, as he is deterministic, That is incorrect it matters a great deal. The daemon must keep his prediction of Og's behavior secret from Og or lie about what he really thinks Og will do. If Og is DETERMINED to do the opposite of whatever the daemon predicts he will do and Og is told what the prediction is then the daemon's prediction will never be correct. What does DETERMINED mean here? Sounds an awful lot like Og's free will. So to make a correct prediction a mega daemon would be required to predict that the daemon will tell Og that he will go down the left fork in the road ahead and then the mega daemon would know that Og would go down the right fork. But of course the mega daemon couldn't tell Og or the daemon what his predictions were, if he did you'd need a mega mega daemon to make correct predictions. And so it goes. If no daemon can predict what Og will do in this deterministic system, then Laplace's daemon is impossible, for some reason you haven't elucidated. L's daemon knows the positions and momenta of all particles to infinite accuracy, of course. He knows the laws of physics, and has infinite computing capacity, and is obviously not bound by Landau's thermodynamic constaints. Perhaps that means he cannot tell Og anything without violating physical law - don't know. But what I do know is that even such a daemon cannot tell what the Helsinki man will see next in Bruno's WM thought experiment. Hence there is an in-principle distinction between the FPI and uncertainty in dynamical chaos. Also, don't bring in free will here. I don't believe free will is possible in a deterministic universe. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:07:52PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. I can get it, but by an indirect route. Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. But it is the only place where we need it. In robust ontologies, UDA1-7 is enough (to get the problem, not his solution!). For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. It makes the non counterfactually correct version _physically_ different from the counterfactually correct version. So one cannot drive the MGA conclusion, which relies on the versions being physically indistinguishable. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. Sure - but the MGA (if valid) connects them. Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of empirical satisfaction. I don't think so, unless you mean physical in some non aristotelian sense, in which case you are right, but that does not falsified comp, in that case. I mean in the usual sense of physical - atom, electrons and so on. So we can conclude either that computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any other ontological property of primitive reality. Therefore we can excise the physicalness of ontology - anything capable of universal computation will do, such as arithmetic. But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it, dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and also that other issue I just raised about the recording player machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole thing falls apart. This is a bit unclear to me. You might decompose your thought in some steps, with what is assumed and what is derived, as I am lost here. Did you mean the first paragraph of the second? The first paragraph is my argument, that I asking you to focus on in the first sentence of the second para. The latter portion of the second paragraph is just referring to all the niggling issues we've been discussing in this thread - the role of intuition and absurdity, whether counterfactual correctness is required for consciousness and the issue of whether a replayed recording really is physically identical in a non-robust setting (I suspect that it can be made to be, but the usual formulations such as the MGA or Maudlin's are not so clear cut, as the machinery required to implement the replaying is usually ignored). -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
Here's from the Gov of california- http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/climate_action_team/research.html http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/epas-absurd-justifications-power-plant-regulations/ http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059995234 https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change Do you need names from the EPA, or Obama's Physicist Moniz?? -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 7:25 pm Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too On 12 May 2015 at 22:00, spudboy100 via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Well, the researchers pretended that they knew, back then and are still advocating regulations rather then new tech, The validity of a science is it's ability to predict. I myself, advocate, solar energy and clean energy alternative research, Now! People who advocate regulations of the serfs require a vigorous woodplane, to the face. I don't know about researchers advocating anything. If they are recommending we reduce emissions or suffer the consequences, that isn't advocating. These are scientists, so they shouldn't be suggesting policies, just recommending that (within whatever margins of error) a certain course of action will lead to a certain result. It isn't in their area of expertise to say how to bring about that course of action. Can you tell me which researchers are saying what? -- 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 17:14, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Well, if I were a mosquito, I wouldn't of course be participating in this conversation. So ideally I would want to be able to justify why the kind of observer capable of this class of interaction might be restricted to 'physical' environments of the sort we observe. I think this may be related to Bruno's idea that our being embedded in an observably 'physical' environment is more than merely geographical - i.e. that we are somehow the beneficiaries of some 'absolute' measure battle for the emergence of observably 'lawlike' phenomena. 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
It doesn't matter what we say. It's the super rich that rule things. You know what I feel about solar and storage. I am an insect floating around a modern office building, trying to get in. It's an exaggeration, but a true problem, there. Insect 15,877,123, 749 signing out! -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 7:26 pm Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too On 12 May 2015 at 22:04, spudboy100 via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Well your eyes must be very old indeed, because methane releases go back at least 55 million years, when the great warming occurred and did change the climate. Yes, I know. I've seen some of the evidence - the fungus spike and all that. Very nasty, by the looks of it. Moreover, what are you advocating for a fix for this dilemma? This is where X crosses Y. This is the hard part. My first recommendation is to stop denying that it's happening, if anyone still is. -- 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
They might consider me many things, that they don't like. Off-times, the progressive minds find what I say as offensive. I have no love affair with big oil. But the progressive love-affair with the fascist dreams of Left billionaires to become a soviet version of Rulers and Serfs, I despise. So far, only with Tax Payer subsidies, does the solar energy, world-wide, deliver jack shit. No power supply should be subsidized uranium, coal, oil, gas, biofuel, solar, wind, anything. The way progressives talk, its as if they are powering civilization already-which they aren't! -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, May 13, 2015 1:59 am Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too On 5/10/2015 6:02 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: Brent, very true in the sense that I was illustrating (joking) to Liz (a terrible Kiwi!), that the hockey stick, the predictions for a tropical Britian, did not come about. Hence, the constant name changing and re-selling of global warming to anthropogenic global warming, to Climate Catastrophe!! The hockey stick was sawed to bits by the (ahem!) Pause that the climate exaggerators sought to promote. Their predictions failed, simply pur, which is why most of the public views climatologists as self serving liars, I think most of the public would recognize you as a dishonest fossil fuel shill, pretending to want a solution while spreading the obfuscating lies that there is no problem. 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
2015-05-13 17:49 GMT+02:00 David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. Hi, why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Quentin 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/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
The Uma cannot make peace with the Qfur, because it is outlawed by Sharia, Dar Es Salaam = Islam (House of Peace). Dar al Harb = Infidels, (House of War), but do a temporary truce (Hoodna) but that is it. Otherwise the Faithful receive Allah's wrath which can mean eternal hell, or permanent death. Secondly, there is great reward for those loyal to Allah's Laws. So, from a purely practical point of view, there is no incentive for a true believer to cease war, except for a short time, to re-arm. The religions of the West, their politics, can offer nothing to the Uma (Islamic Community) that can match the wrath or glory of Allah. Hence, I have included Eric Steinhart's philosophy into these discussions, not because he met an Archangel in a cave to receive Allah's word, but because he's a very bright, resourceful guy, who, with 7 billion people in the world, chanced to be most accurate. I consider because of this, and our time in human history, that Steinhart has been correct, in the same sense that a broken clock is correct, twice a day! As a theological/atheist/pantheist/spinozaist philosopher, this guy may have won the lotto, the Spanish El Gordo, the Irish Sweepstakes, the Belaggio. I don't know if Sterinharts' ideas can promote calm, but it makes me wonder. -Original Message- From: Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, May 12, 2015 7:52 pm Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too On 12-May-2015, at 6:28 pm, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Does God give any suggestions as to what we should do? Regarding the heating of the seas? No, it's already decreed. This chapter is making the point that this Quran is indeed a message, and reckoning is indeed decreed, hence take warning and prepare for accountability and an eternal life in the hereafter. You can read it here: http://quran.com/81 Samiya On 12 May 2015 at 23:28, Samiya Illiassamiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 11 May 2015 at 17:39, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: European Space Agency (ESA) has this to report about Glacial Melt: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GOCE/GOCE_reveals_gravity_dip_from_ice_loss What does this mean for Global Warming? Well, it means it's happening, it's not 100% predictable by humans (no surprise really), and we should really do something about it before it's too late. The $64,000 question being - what? I came across this report while trying to comprehend a verse of the Quran which foretells the heating of the seas. This might be of interest: http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/10/when-seas-boil.html Samiya -- 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 toeverything-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, visithttps://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:17:34PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 07:45, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. It does, as usually supervenience in philosophy of mind means primitively-physical supervenience, and it should be clear that this is what is at stake. That's never been made clear in the usual discussion of supervenience - eg the Plato.stanford article. Even Maudlin's article doesn't refer to primitiveness. He is still talking about regular physical supervenience. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
RE: Theories that explain everything explain nothing
Perhaps better All posited (so far) scientific TOE are actually wrongly named. They would be correctly named: Theories predicting how the universe appears to an assumed scientific observer inside it Or maybe Theories of everything except the scientific observer By Scientific observer I mean consciousness... What scientific observation uses/is. From here you might ask yourself what a scientist would be doing if they _were_ explaining the scientific observer (consciousness). For whatever that is, it's not a member of the set of the kind of science outcomes in which these so-called TOE sit, smugly claiming everything while actually failing without realizing. Cheers Colin -Original Message- From: Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au Sent: 14/05/2015 9:15 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Theories that explain everything explain nothing As an aside to recent discussions, it is interesting to point out that physics has some of the problems associated with over-confidence in ideas coming from pure intuition too. http://aeon.co/magazine/science/has-cosmology-run-into-a-creative-crisis This article by Ross Anderson in Aeon Magazine surveys some of the recent history of press announcements by leading cosmologists. Believing too strongly in your own pet theory can be a dangerous pastime. Bruce -- 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: The dovetailer disassembled
On 14 May 2015 at 06:42, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: An abstract AI can exist in platonia relative to an abstract environment in platonia. That's all that comp claims, as far as I can tell. What I'm interested in is what makes the program/AI conscious. Bruno has an answer, i.e. it can do mathematical induction. But it's not clear to me how this squares with my dog being aware of his name - since I don't think he can understand mathematical induction. Funnily enough, your dog doesn't need to understand neuroscience in order to be aware of its name, either! -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing - in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist. Russell - just so you know - the expression is dyed in the wool. It refers to the fact that if you dye wool BEFORE spinning it into fabric, the colour is less likely to fade, hence metaphorically like strong beliefs. However, our very own New Zealand detective novelist Ngaio Marsh, who was fond of puns, wrote a novel called Died in the wool in which someone was murdered and the body ends up in a bale of wool (or something like that - it's been a while since I read 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
But oil (for example) is also subsidised. It doesn't pay environmental costs, for a start. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:33:06PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. I do, because it is a computation, albeit a rather trivial one. It is not to evade comp's consequences, however, which I already accept from UDA1-7. I insist on the point, because the MGA is about driving an inconsistency between computational and physical supervenience, which requires care and rigour to demonstrate, not careless mislabelling. Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. Where does the MGA show this? I don't believe you use the word magic in any of your papers on the MGA. Sorry, but this does seem a rhetorical comment. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015 at 12:32, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? Because otherwise there can be no physical influence, and - within the branch(es) in which the MGA is being carried out - the recorded system is identical to the non-recorded one. Without any physical communication / interference there is no difference from a single universe version. Well, ISTM, at least. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: My comments on The Movie Graph Argument Revisited by Russell Standish
On 14 May 2015 at 12:01, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:46:49PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Free will is the ability to do something stupid. Nonrational. OK fine free will is non-rational, in other words an event performed for NO REASON, in other words an event without a cause, in other words random. So a radioactive atom has free will when it decays. A radioactive atom isn't a person, consequently does not have will. At least not when I last checked. But a person choosing what to do as a result of an atom decaying does have free will, I assume? (Perhaps the atom was inside their brain, and its decay just happened to tip the balance of brain chemicals enough that the final decision was in favour of tea rather than coffee... or perhaps the person decided to decide which drink to have on the basis of a reading from a Geiger counter... either way, in this particular case human FW puts them in a bit of a Schroedinger's cat siutation...) -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
Yes, liz. Eliminate oil subsidies unless its for applied science. Aka engineering development. Being a brutal libertarian, let it do the darwinian two-step, that we all as individuals must do. Sent from AOL Mobile Mail -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, May 13, 2015 08:38 PM Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too div id=AOLMsgPart_2_2057c378-fed8-4503-aa3b-6c7435b099d7 div dir=ltr But oil (for example) is also subsidised. It doesn't pay environmental costs, for a start. div class=aolmail_gmail_extra /div /div p/p -- 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 a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com;everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com/a. To post to this group, send email to a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com;everything-list@googlegroups.com/a. Visit this group at a target=_blank href=http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list;http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/a. For more options, visit a target=_blank href=https://groups.google.com/d/optout;https://groups.google.com/d/optout/a. /div -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 10:33:42PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. How does that work? Are you saying the counterfactual situations never appear anywhere in the Multiverse? What principle prevents their occurrance? -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: The dovetailer disassembled
On 13 May 2015 at 22:15, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 03:52, LizR wrote: Maudlin attempts to show that counterfactuals don't count, as it were, by bolting on vast universes of counterfactual-handling machinery to his already unfeasibly large thought experiment. The MWI does the same sort of thing for free, It does not. Realism on the counter-worlds (the parallel world I am not in) does not account per se for the counterfactuals, nor does counterfactualness requires the parallel worlds. Oops, true, that's exactly what I've been arguing with Russell in another thread. Obviously I've been reading Song of myself too much. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:04:09PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 12:32, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? Because otherwise there can be no physical influence, and - within the branch(es) in which the MGA is being carried out - the recorded system is identical to the non-recorded one. Without any physical communication / interference there is no difference from a single universe version. Well, ISTM, at least. The physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. How could it be otherwise? -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: My comments on The Movie Graph Argument Revisited by Russell Standish
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:20:44PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 12:01, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:46:49PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Free will is the ability to do something stupid. Nonrational. OK fine free will is non-rational, in other words an event performed for NO REASON, in other words an event without a cause, in other words random. So a radioactive atom has free will when it decays. A radioactive atom isn't a person, consequently does not have will. At least not when I last checked. But a person choosing what to do as a result of an atom decaying does have free will, I assume? (Perhaps the atom was inside their brain, and its decay just happened to tip the balance of brain chemicals enough that the final decision was in favour of tea rather than coffee... or perhaps the person decided to decide which drink to have on the basis of a reading from a Geiger counter... either way, in this particular case human FW puts them in a bit of a Schroedinger's cat siutation...) Yes. Exactly. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:32:24PM +1200, LizR wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing - in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist. Russell - just so you know - the expression is dyed in the wool. It refers to the fact that if you dye wool BEFORE spinning it into fabric, the colour is less likely to fade, hence metaphorically like strong beliefs. However, our very own New Zealand detective novelist Ngaio Marsh, who was fond of puns, wrote a novel called Died in the wool in which someone was murdered and the body ends up in a bale of wool (or something like that - it's been a while since I read it). Apologies for the mispelling. The pun wasn't intended, nor was there meant to be any implication of dead wool (wool extracted from a sheep's carcass - lower value than that shorn from a living sheep, but valuable none-the-less. My farming background here...) Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. Brent As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 6:04 PM, LizR wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 12:32, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? Because otherwise there can be no physical influence, and - within the branch(es) in which the MGA is being carried out - the recorded system is identical to the non-recorded one. Without any physical communication / interference there is no difference from a single universe version. Well, ISTM, at least. This a point I find confusing. If we're accepting physics as we think it works, then the reason you don't experience a superposition of drinking tea and drinking coffee is that there is interference that nulls out the cross terms in the density matrix. So when we say decoherence has eliminated interference/communication between these two subspaces, we meant at a classical level. At the QM level it is the inteference of the environment that makes the subspaces orthogonal. But if we're not accepting physics, if we're trying to derive physics, as Bruno is, then we're starting from the classical=TM computation and we have to derive the phenomenon of quantum interference within the classical computation. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 02:51:00PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. I would expect that somewhere in the Multiverse, France still has a king in 2015, and has a beard, and somewhere else where he doesn't. If you are talking of a separate universe outside our Hubble volume then you are going to have difficulty defining exactly what you mean by 'now' or '2015'. The other worlds of the MWI are not even in the same universe, so you are going to have even more difficulty in assigning a truth value to the proposition. Philosophical 'possible worlds' are quite distinct from multiverse ideas. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 10:25 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. No. The counterfactuals that Bruno refers to in comp seem to come from the If A the B else C construction of computer programming. This puts no restriction on the worlds containg B and C. That would seem to create conundrums. The counterfactual is A taking a value other than the one it actually did. A is one of the inputs to the prosthetic brain part, so in practice the doctor would only consider a finite number of values of A that could be realized by the sense organ or other brain parts that realize it. But if A can be anything from platonia it could be If this program X halts... or The smallest even integer not the sum of two primes. Brent So it actually has nothing whatsoever to do with MWI. As you say, the possible alternative worlds in MWI come from the eigenfunctions of an eigenselected basis, and those are by no means arbitrary. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. No. The counterfactuals that Bruno refers to in comp seem to come from the If A the B else C construction of computer programming. This puts no restriction on the worlds containg B and C. So it actually has nothing whatsoever to do with MWI. As you say, the possible alternative worlds in MWI come from the eigenfunctions of an eigenselected basis, and those are by no means arbitrary. Bruce -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 02:51:00PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. I would expect that somewhere in the Multiverse, France still has a king in 2015, and has a beard, and somewhere else where he doesn't. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: My comments on The Movie Graph Argument Revisited by Russell Standish
On 12 May 2015, at 18:47, John Clark wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No, what they proved is that physical reality can emulate arithmetic; False. Just read the original paper of Church, Post, Turing, Kleene, please. They don't mention physics at all. Please explain how to build a Turing Machine, or a machine of any sort, without using matter that obeys the laws of physics. Why would Turing machine obeys the laws of physics? Turing machine, like numbers and combinators, does not obeys to laws of physics, but to mathematics. The Turing machine is a mathematical notion which mimics a mathematician doing a computation, of some function from N to N, or NXN to N, etc, with pen and paper. You can implement Turing machine in Lambda calculus, and in that case, you saty in the mathematical. You can implement them in Fortran, in Algol, ... which are still mathematical objects, immaterial, and duplicable. And, you can implement them in the physical reality, apparently, but in that case, and only in that case, you have to take into account the physical laws. Don't ask me to change water in wine. BTW, they prove that the arithmetical reality is NOT emulable by anything. the computable is only a quite tiny part of arithmetic. I know, nearly all numbers are non computable I told you that by numbers I mean integers, what you call number here are non computable functions. It is preferable to stick on the function from N to N, to use the simple tools available there. so physics doesn't know what they are, You don't know that. If we are machine, reality is not a machine, and with comp physics is an important part of that reality, doubtfully completely computable (like the position of an electron going in the slit, note). but mathematics doesn't know what they are either, If by mathematics you mean tha arithmetical truth, then mathematics knows the arithmetical truth. Let me ask you do you believe that the following proposition: either there are positive integers x and y such that x^2 = 991y^2 + 1, or there are none. they aren't the solution to any polynomial equation and no function can produce them, an infinite series can't even approximate one. At this stage, a plea for intuitionism is inadequate. It implies non- comp (strictly speaking). and one sort of physical reality, like a electronic computer, can emulate another sort of physical reality, like a galaxy, but we have no evidence that arithmetic can emulate anything. The proof is in all textbooks Ink on paper is in those textbooks, there is no evidence that any book has ever been able to calculate anything, not even 1+1. You want to fly across the Pacific Ocean on the blueprints of a 747 and it just doesn't work. Grave confusion of level. The sigma_1 arithmetical reality is Turing universal. Robinson arithmetic is Turing universal. Then I suggest you start the Sigma_1 Arithmetical Reality Computer Company with a Robinson Arithmetic subdivision and become the world's first trillionaire. sigh No, the reason is that they want buy physical computer, to enacted the computation relatively to our physical reality. In other words those computer textbooks provide simplified and approximated descriptions of how real computers operate. They described fundamental mathematical object which have been discovered by mathematician working in the foundation of mathematics, bfore we build computers (except for Babbage). Formally, an important set of those objects (functions) appears in Gödel 1931. On the contrary, still today, physical computation is defined by the ability by nature to emulate (approximatively) those mathematical objects. But the physical reality is used only for that relative manifestation, If so then physics can do something mathematics can not, make a calculation that has a relationship with our world. Physics must have some secret sauce that mathematics does not. Only if computationalism is false, as physics has just to be redefined by Plato-Aristotle bastard calculus. Logical mathematical tools gives already the logic of observable for reasonable machine. (once you agree that 2+2=4 is a simpole truth on which we can agree on). We may agree on that but Godel and Turing tell us that there are an infinite number of mathematical statements we will NEVER agree on, They don't say that. They say that for all consistent machine there are statement that they cannot prove. Godel said there are an infinite number of statements that are true (so you can never find a counterexample to prove it wrong) ? You confuse with Chaitin. And Gödel took pain to not use the concept of truth, which was unclear at that time. So I can't see to which theorem you allude too. You would have the slighest understanding of Gödel's theorem,
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 17:49, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. OK. It might be vague, as in arithmetic we have a physical environment itself part of a theological environment, so to speak. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). OK (assuming the Born probabilities, but I do think those are theorems in QM without collapse, and only QM must be derived, but Brent would disagree, but it is technical). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. And with comp, and not eliminating consciousness. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. Yes, indeed, a priori too much, but then we must do the math. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. It predominates because when there is too much white rabbits, you die, and you wake up, where there are less white rabbits. But there is a bottom (sort of) which is where you share the indeterminacy with others, and have the stable first person plural video game. This means we are collectively multiplied. Our type of consciousness needs that we are rare, in deep history (in Bennett sense), yet strongly multiplied, so that we slip on the verge of the physical reality only in dream and death, or with brain perturbation technics. We can test the classical theory on this. We can intuit it, in different ways. With thought experiments, with math and with listening to the others (machines), or with training in altered state of consciousness (with all the caution needed of course). It might be false, also. Bruno 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/d/optout. 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/d/optout.
Re: Michael Shermer becomes sceptical about scepticism!
On 5/13/2015 2:30 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: I am still worried about the reliability of the temperature values themselves. I would be less worried if the raw data was made public. It is public. But what good does that do. Well it does good, at least for people like me. So people who claim that they are kept secret are lying? I am honestly asking. Is there some place where I can download that data? Go to the NOAA website and type in raw data in the search box. Of course there's no such thing as THE raw data. There's the satellite raw data, the ocean surface raw data, the land station raw data,... http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
From a purely commercial pov, uranium fission couldn't cut it economically, and that is what surpressed nuclear. Even thorium 232-uranium 233 reactors, have failed to make it outside of Canada, when cost drives them from the market. The cheapest is coal, which should need no subsidies, and then natgas, of which there is a superabundance of currently. By the way shale gas cannot compete when the price of oil really drops, but competes successfully as the premiere electricity maker of the world! All the worlds nuke plans have been sidelined because natgas is cheaper, safer, and far quicker to build. Lastly, if you want people to agree that solar might take decades more so we need to subsidize it, you must be concluding that climate catastrophe is not hammering us yet, and thus, we can take our own sweet time to develop it?? If you feel that climate catastrophe is not imminent, then you logically must conclude that the threat is real, but exaggerated. On this, you likely are co rrect. Sent from AOL Mobile Mail -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, May 13, 2015 10:05 PM Subject: Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too div id=AOLMsgPart_2_b21c84d0-0855-4013-bd29-970383a2e5c5 div dir=ltr div class=aolmail_gmail_extra div class=aolmail_gmail_quote On 14 May 2015 at 13:36, spudboy100 via Everything List span dir=ltra target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com;everything-list@googlegroups.com/a/span wrote: blockquote class=aolmail_gmail_quote style=margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex Yes, liz. Eliminate oil subsidies unless its for applied science. Aka engineering development. Being a brutal libertarian, let it do the darwinian two-step, that we all as individuals must do. span /span /blockquote div Mind you oil, nuclear etc have had the benefit of decades of subsidies, so if we want to do a proper balanced free market thing they should be cut, while renewables should be given the same subsidies over the same period. /div /div /div p/p -- 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 a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com;everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com/a. To post to this group, send email to a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com;everything-list@googlegroups.com/a. Visit this group at a target=_blank href=http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list;http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/a. For more options, visit a target=_blank href=https://groups.google.com/d/optout;https://groups.google.com/d/optout/a. /div /div -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:38:12AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: Chalmer's fading quailia argument http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either: 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the functional state of the brain. or 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of quaila This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed, it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart. So it does not suggest a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of qualia. This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing - in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist. What is he/I missing? The non functionalist will say that a robot brain is a zombie, and a biological brain is fully conscious with qualia. Along the way of replacing real neurons with artificial ones you will go from an all biological conscious brain to a non-conscious zombie. So if the end result is a zombie, and the starting result is consciousness, then logically (it seems to be) either that on the path of replacing a greater and greater fraction of biological neurons with artificial ones that somewhere along the way the consciousness/qualia either changes or it disappears suddenly. I don't see any way around that. Absolutely. The bit that you're missing is when you subsequently assume that that implies that a a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of qualia. That does not follow. His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons. In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance, mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple. Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally equivalent brain to support thoughts such as help! I can't see, I am blind! for the information content in the brain is identical when the neurons are functionally identical. But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so presumably the consciousness is not the same. That also does not follow from computational supervenience. Difference in computation does not entail a difference in qualia. It's the converse that is entailed. But if you attribute the same consciousness to what is in effect a random computation, then I would think computationalism ceases to be an effective theory of consciousness. This is an appeal to intuition. I can only say what computational supervenience claims, not what we might think it should claim. Searle said (which I very much disagree with): ...as the silicon is progressively implanted into your dwindling brain, you find that the area of your conscious experience is shrinking, but that this shows no effect on your external behavior. You find, to your total amazement, that you are indeed losing control of your external behavior. You find, for example, that when the doctors test your vision,
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. I can get it, but by an indirect route. Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of empirical satisfaction. So we can conclude either that computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any other ontological property of primitive reality. Therefore we can excise the physicalness of ontology - anything capable of universal computation will do, such as arithmetic. But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it, dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and also that other issue I just raised about the recording player machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole thing falls apart. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
On 12-May-2015, at 9:39 pm, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 14:29, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: 1) The Quran reminds us that humans have been made Incharge of Earth and hence are responsible for the welfare of the Earth and all in it 2) The Quran also tells us that we will be held accountable for all that we've been gifted with, hence the more worldly riches or power one has, the greater the responsibility and the greater the accountability So yes, it speaks of all of us and says that every action, intention, everything is being recorded and will be replayed and the criminals will not be able to say anything, rather their bodies will bear witness against themselves. Humans will be recompensed in full in complete justice, and nobody will be wronged in the least. It's a nice fantasy, at least. As opposed to the (apparent) reality that rich people can screw everyone else, each other, and the planet, and still make out like bandits. That is why I suppose facts about creation have been mentioned across the Quran so that those who doubt its authenticity can study and assess for themselves whether this message is from the One who created, knows and is in perfect control of everything to the minutest detail, and is therefore able to carry out His Will and keep His Promise, or if this is just a fantasy. Samiya -- 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/d/optout. -- 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/d/optout.
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 1:07 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:38:12AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 08:59:57PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: Chalmer's fading quailia argument http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either: 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the functional state of the brain. or 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of quaila This syllogism is wrong. After all, when removing links from a network, each time following a different sequence links to be removed, it will be a different link that causes the network to fall apart. So it does not suggest a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of qualia. This was always why I found the fading qualia argument unconvincing - in spite of being a died-in-the-wool functionalist. What is he/I missing? The non functionalist will say that a robot brain is a zombie, and a biological brain is fully conscious with qualia. Along the way of replacing real neurons with artificial ones you will go from an all biological conscious brain to a non-conscious zombie. So if the end result is a zombie, and the starting result is consciousness, then logically (it seems to be) either that on the path of replacing a greater and greater fraction of biological neurons with artificial ones that somewhere along the way the consciousness/qualia either changes or it disappears suddenly. I don't see any way around that. Absolutely. The bit that you're missing is when you subsequently assume that that implies that a a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of qualia. That does not follow. You might have misread me, I never suggested that it necessarily follows, only that there are two possibilities (assuming consciousness decreases nothing somewhere along the way): 1. There is a gradual decrease/change in the qualia eventually reaching nothingness 2. It is not gradual change along the way, but some point is reached where it suddenly disappears In the case of #2, such a discrete all-or-nothing change would come down to a single (arbitrarily minor) change. His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons. In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance, mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple. Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally equivalent brain to support thoughts such as help! I can't see, I am blind! for the information content in the brain is identical when the neurons are functionally identical. But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so presumably the consciousness is not the same. That also does not follow from computational supervenience. Difference in computation does not entail a difference in qualia. It's the converse that is entailed. But if you attribute the same consciousness
Re: Reconciling Random Neuron Firings and Fading Qualia
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 01:49:50AM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: But in this case behavior does not change. And above you say there is some point where it almost immediately shuts off. Would it be a faded quail or partial zombie while in the midst of switching off? Why couldn't it be a Heavyside step function between the two states? As I said, I don't think partial zombies make much sense. I don't think full zombies make much sense either, but recognise that non-functionalism entails their possibility. -- 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 -- 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/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 5:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 22:27, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer seems to me to be a red herring. It was never claimed that projecting the film of the brain substrate instantiated general consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally filmed. That is all that is required. General purpose computing and counterfactual correctness are all beside the point. If the original conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a computation in any sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not supervene on the physical body. The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red herring. No such assumption is required in order to show that the MGA fails to prove its point. It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical activity and only the physical activity, then the recording is conscious. But anyone knowing what is a computation should understand that the recording does not compute more than a trivial sequence of projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean graph. I think there are five concepts of computation in play here: 1. An abstract deterministic computer (TM) or program running with some given external input. This program is assumed to have well defined behavior over a whole class of inputs, not just the one considered. OK. That is the standard concept (although the computation does not have to be deterministic, but that is a detail here). 2. A classical (deterministic) physical computer realizing (1) supra. This is what the doctor proposes to replace part or all of your brain. Yes, and this involves physics. But this is no more a computation in the sense of Church-Turing, which does not refer to physics at all. 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. 4. An execution of (1) with a classical (deterministic) computer that has all the branching points disabled so that it realizes (1) but is not counterfactually equivalent to (1) or (2). This computes one epsilon more than the movie. That is, not a lot. 5. A physical (quantum) computer realizing (1) supra, in it's classical limit. That is the solution we hope for (as it would make comp and QM ally and very plausible). Bruno takes (1) to define computation and takes the hypothesis that consciousness is realized by a certain kind of computation, an instance of (1). So he says that if you believe this you will say yes to the doctor who proposes (2) as a prosthesis. This substitution of a physical deterministic computer will preserve your consciousness. Then he proceeds to argue via the MGA that this implies your consciousness will not be affected by using (4) instead of (2) and further that (4) is equivalent to (3) and (3) is absurd. Having found a reductio, he wants to reject the assumption that your consciousness is realized by the physics of a deterministic computer as in (2). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. this is not the reversal of physics claimed. The Democritan physicist (nothing but atoms and the void) will point out that (2) is not what the doctor can implement. ? What is possible is realizing a prosthetic computation by (5). And (5) cannot be truncated like (4); quantum mechanical systems can only be approximately classical and only when they are interacting with an environment. The classical deterministic computer (TM) is a platonic ideal which, as far as we know, cannot be realized. But then comp is false, as comp is a bet of surviving some digital truncation. That's why you need to distinguish comp1 from comp2. Comp1, which almost everyone agrees to, assumes the doctor will implant a real quantum mechanical, approximately digital device. But the reasoning of leading to the MGA assumes and ideal, abstract digital device which has no interaction with its environment except the TM I/O. 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/d/optout.
