Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?

[Russell Standish]

On Thu, Sep 07, 2017 at 09:44:02PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On 6/09/2017 5:39 pm, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> >On 6/09/2017 2:52 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
> >>More importantly, I'm sure you appreciate that codings are also entirely
> >>arbitrary, that every possible bitstring will represent the OM of me
> >>sitting at this keyboard typing to you under some coding. It is only by
> >>fixing a coding that we can talk about bit strings having meaning, ie
> >>some bitstrings represent (eg the aforementioned OM) whilst others
> >>don't.
> >
> >We have skirted round the coding problem. While I do not for a moment
> >think that there is any possible coding that can relate every possible
> >bitstring to my present (or any other) observer moment (there is no
> >coding that can make a complex entity out of a string consisting
> >entirely of ones, or of an infinite sequence of alternate 0s and 1s,
> >and so on), the problem of where the coding comes from, and how it is
> >interpreted, seems insurmountable. Perhaps that is, in fact, the
> >Achilles heel of the whole enterprise.
> 
> On reflection, I realize that coding is not really an issue if we
> have a plenum consisting of all possible bit strings. After all, any
> coding of any particular bitstring simply gives another bitstring --
> coding is nothing more than a map of the plenum to itself. So any
> possible coding of any possible bitstring is already a string in the
> pile!
> 
> The question, then, is what particular strings are 'self-realizing'
> as time capsules? If this is a possibility, how ever low the
> probability, it must be realized among the infinite number of
> bitstrings in the plenum. Nothing more need be done!
> 
> Of course, we have not actually explained anything, but that is one
> of the problems of any form of 'everythingism'.
> 

Of course. That is why explanations must be relativised to the
observer. All that can be hoped to explain with any "everything"
theory is the appearance of things, why some things appear more likely
than others, given a particular observer, and then abstract away the
local details of the observer to common properties of all observers.

Another way of putting this is that observers cannot supervene on the
collection of bitstrings, but rather on the interpretations of those
bitstrings. It is the same way that in computationalism, observers do
not supervene on the universal dovetailer, or even on specific program
code, but rather on the computations themselves. One of my main points
in my 2004 paper is that there is no external reference machine, like
there is with Schmidhuber's "Great Programmer", but rather the
observer defines the machine running the computations.

Cheers
-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 05:39:07PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On 6/09/2017 2:52 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
> >On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 11:44:12AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> >>I find the discussion in your book rather cursory, unless I have not
> >>located the relevant passages -- numbers of pages or sections to
> >>look at might help.
> >Time is discussed in S4.3,
> 
> That discussion is rather misleading. You introduce general
> relativity to clarify the notion of coordinate time. But all you are
> actually using is special relativistic Minkowski space -- in GR time
> is extremely problematic since arbitrary coordinate transformations
> can mix time and space in arbitrary ways. This is the problem of
> time in GR, and there is no generally agreed solution. 

My point about GR is the distinction it makes between coordinate time
and proper time. Proper time is the relevant concept for the TIME
postulate. As you know, GR permits closed spacetime loops in some rather
exotic situations in such a case a given spacetime coordinate (event)
can be visited multiple times with different proper times. How to
interpret what that all means is, of course, an open question.

> Julian
> Barbour's work is a response to this general problem -- that is
> really at the base of what I have proposed later. But I think you
> 'Time Postulate' in S4.3 is seriously deficient because you
> essentially propose a topologically simple time parameter, which
> does not exist in general relativity, Your discussion is deficient
> in that it does not go beyond special relativity.

Topology applies to coordinate time. Not to proper time, which even in GR
is still a simple 1D real parameter.

>  In S4.3 you quote
> Wheeler: "Time is what prevents everything happening at once." But
> in a timeless block Minkowski universe, everything does, indeed,
> happen at once: the observer moment corresponding to you as a baby
> co-exists with your present observer moment. There is a temporal
> relation between these two events, but that is intrinsic to the
> events, not a separate ordering. No general foliation of space-time
> into a sequence of spacelike hypersurfaces is possible in GR.
> 

Which I've never implied.

The importance of Wheeler's quote is that events need to be separated
in time to allow an observer to measure a difference (that makes a
difference). One wonders if spatial separation should be enough, but
it appears that observers are not actually spatially extended things -
I forget now all the details, but this seems to be the conclusion of a
number of people in this area: Daniel Dennett and Michael Lockwood to
name two.

> >  the projection postulate is described as
> >really anthropic selection, a concept discussed in S5.3. Lewontin's
> >principles are described in S6.1. S6.4 is an argument that we must
> >live in an evolutionary universe. Putting it all together for deriving
> >QM is discussed in S7.1.
> 
> Reliance on an evolutionary argument like this requires a
> distinction between the observer and data, and I am doubting the
> viability of that distinction.
> 

I think there must always be a self-other distinction, a distinction
between observer and er environment. Consequently, there will be a
distinction between observer and observed (data). Brent Meeker has
also been banging on a bit about this over the years, particularly in
relation to the MGA.

> >>But there does seem to be a divide between the starting point of all
> >>possible bitstrings and the operational idea of an observer
> >>interpreting these strings. It seems to me that since the observer
> >>must be part of these bitstrings, you have to make that central. So
> >>an observer moment is the set of all bit sequences that correspond
> >>to that moment -- there being nothing else that relates these
> >>strings to each other. A different OM will be a different set of bit
> >>sequences that pass through a separate moment.  I presume you then
> >>call on observer self-selection to join these separate sets into a
> >>connected conscious experience.
> >Presumably, although I don't address this in the book, largely because
> >there is no concensus as to how to go about doing this.
> >
> >>  I do not know how this might be, but
> >>that seems to be what is required, if I have understood the set-up
> >>correctly.
> >You haven't convinced me that it is required (yet).
> 
> Well, something has to connect up OMs. That function is performed by
> Barbour's time capsules, but these are something that you have not
> considered. I do not like the notion that development is simply a
> process of accreting bits to the observer string.
> 

I haven't considered it explicitly because it is something people are
in general very confused about. Yes, Barbour's time capsules is one
approach, but it doesn't deal with memory erasure particularly well as
one of its problems.

> >>None of this requires that some set of bitstrings 'read'
> >>or 'interpret' some other set that comprises the 

Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")

[John Clark]

On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 3:23 PM, Terren Suydam 
wrote:

​> ​
> You admitted earlier that the question is not gibberish when you don't
> know you're being duplicated elsewhere.
>

​I admitted nothing of the sort! The question is always 100% pure gibberish
but I did not know it was gibberish because I was deceived and given false
information.​

​If you give me incorrect data I will form incorrect conclusions.​

 John K Clark

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Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?

[Bruce Kellett]

On 6/09/2017 5:39 pm, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 6/09/2017 2:52 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

More importantly, I'm sure you appreciate that codings are also entirely
arbitrary, that every possible bitstring will represent the OM of me
sitting at this keyboard typing to you under some coding. It is only by
fixing a coding that we can talk about bit strings having meaning, ie
some bitstrings represent (eg the aforementioned OM) whilst others
don't.


We have skirted round the coding problem. While I do not for a moment
think that there is any possible coding that can relate every possible
bitstring to my present (or any other) observer moment (there is no
coding that can make a complex entity out of a string consisting
entirely of ones, or of an infinite sequence of alternate 0s and 1s,
and so on), the problem of where the coding comes from, and how it is
interpreted, seems insurmountable. Perhaps that is, in fact, the
Achilles heel of the whole enterprise.


On reflection, I realize that coding is not really an issue if we have a 
plenum consisting of all possible bit strings. After all, any coding of 
any particular bitstring simply gives another bitstring -- coding is 
nothing more than a map of the plenum to itself. So any possible coding 
of any possible bitstring is already a string in the pile!


The question, then, is what particular strings are 'self-realizing' as 
time capsules? If this is a possibility, how ever low the probability, 
it must be realized among the infinite number of bitstrings in the 
plenum. Nothing more need be done!


Of course, we have not actually explained anything, but that is one of 
the problems of any form of 'everythingism'.


Bruce

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Re: Is math real?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Sep 2017, at 19:45, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 9/6/2017 7:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Some physicists can be immaterialist, but still believe that the  
fundamental reality is physical, a bit like Tegmark who remains  
(despite he is willing to think differently) open to the idea that  
the physical reality is a special mathematical structure among all  
mathematical structures, for example. That is problematical for  
pure mathematical reason: the notion of all mathematical structures  
do not make much mathematical sense, but it is of course  
problematic also with Mechanism, where the physical reality becomes  
the border of the whole "computable mathematics" (which is very  
tiny, as it is the tiny sigma_1 part of arithmetic).


I think Tegmark has changed his opinion and now only champions all  
computable universes.


Yes. The problem now, is that there are no computable physical  
universes. Here he miss the first person indeterminacy in arithmetic.  
He miss that any universal machine looking below its substitution  
level is confronted to its infinity of implementations in arithmetic.  
In fact, he remains somehow physicalist, and does not seem aware of  
the computationalist mind-body problem.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Sep 2017, at 18:38, John Clark wrote:




On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 4:21 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


​It contradicts nothing. We're not talking about the H-person,  
you're complaining that neither the Moscow Man nor the Washington  
Man could​ ​have made a prediction, and they couldn't because  
they didn't exist before the duplication.​


​> ​That contradicts your statement that the H-episode belongs to  
the life of both copies.


​My statement was if "the H man"  is anyone tomorrow who remembers  
being in H today then tomorrow "the H man" will be in 2 cities.


That is right in some third-person description. But the two H-man will  
feel to be in only one city, and so, the H-man, when in still in  
Helsinki, can be sure that his first person experience will be of  
being in once city, and that he cannot prdict which one.





My statement is crystal clear and as I said contradicts nothing.


Only because you confuse "where will you be from an outsider pov" with  
the question asked: "where do you expect to feel to be after pushing  
the button". Obviously you do not expect to *feel* to be in the two  
cities simultaneously.






Your statement is, today before the duplication "he" can't predict  
that "he" will be in Moscow tomorrow after the duplication;



No. My statement is, today before the duplication "he" can't predict  
where "he" will feel to be.






and nobody will ever know if your statement contradicts something or  
not because nobody will ever know who "he" is suposed to be.



That is false, "he" will very well know where "he" feel to be after  
pushing the button.








 ​>​>>​ ​​ ​indeed, in both cities).

​​>> ​Yes, in BOTH cities!!​​ ​So will the Helsinki ​ 
Man see both cities? I say yes, Bruno says no. Go figure.


​> ​He will see both cities from the 3-1 view.

​Good old Mr. He, don't you just love him! What a great job "he"  
does at sweeping logical absurdities under the rug.  ​


​> ​Obviously, The H-man will see only one city in his first  
person views accessible from Helsinki,


Yes. ​If it's before the duplication, and I assume that's when you  
want the prediction to be made because otherwise it's not a  
prediction,


Of course. But the prediction is about his *future* first person  
experience.




then that one and only one city the H-man sees is Helsinki. ​


Not after pushing the button. The first person experiences available  
are "feeling to be in Moscow" and "feeling to be in Washington", and  
only one of them can occur for any of its future first person  
experience.


You just continue to ignore that the question is on a future first- 
person experience.


There is no ambiguity, thanks to the numerical precision we have with  
the digital hypothesis.


The H-man knows, with probability 1, that he will feel to have  
survived in one city among two possible one. He knows in Helsinki that  
after pushing the button, and opening the door, he will see only one  
city, and get a cup of coffee. But after pushing the button, and  
before opening the door, he cannot know which city is behind the door.  
He can look at a screen telling him that the reconstitution has been a  
success, but he (wherever "he" is now) cannot know which city is  
there. He is in a state of complete uncertainty, and then he open the  
door, see one city, and write its name in the diary, and, as predicted  
in Helsinki, he got that one bit of information he expected. "he"  
refers always to the H-man, and its sense only differ according to the  
first or third person view in consideration. After pushing the button,  
we can say, to be short, that "he" is in two city, and "he" feels to  
be in one city, indeed, "he" feels that in the two cities. Now, just  
take into account that the question is about what he expect to live,  
feel, experience, ... always in the FIRST-PERSON sense.



Bruno






​John K Clark​





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