Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 9/09/2017 9:36 am, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 05:08:39PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: OK, proper time is taken from SR and applied only locally, so the concept is not ruled out by GR. The problem is still that you have simply introduced a time parameter out of thin air. If you are to have time in the picture, it must emerge from the timeless bitstrings, and you have given no account of how this might happen. I think you are imposing a requirement for theory completeness I do not impose myself. After all, my theory is not a "theory of everything", but a theory of "Nothing". You are right, that ultimately, we would like to know how subjective time arises - whether it is via Barbour's time capsules, or some other stitching of observer moments, or the natural connection between machine states during a computation in a computationlist account. However, my approach is - OK - we're probably not going to solve this problem any time soon - so let's just assume that psychological time is necessary, and see where that takes us. That is my TIME postulate. If the results are nonsense, then we need to reexamine the various assumptions. So far, they're not nonsense. This is not really what you propose in your book: "Our descriptions are so detailed that perhaps it no longer makes sense to ask Stephen Hawking’s question “what breathes fire into them?”[59]. Putting Hawking’s question aside, a question that has no answer in conventional ontologies, we note that the collection of all possible descriptions has zero complexity, or information content. This is a consequence of algorithmic information theory, the fundamental theory of computer science. There is a mathematical equivalence between the Everything, as represented by this collection of all possible descriptions and Nothing, a state of no information. That some of the descriptions must describe conscious observers who obviously observe something, gives us a mechanism for getting Something from Nothing: Something is the “inside view” of Nothing. Hence my book’s title /Theory of Nothing/." That seems to commit you to finding consciousness in the infinite set of all possible bitstrings. And if you are to find consciousness there, you must, as a preliminary, at least find a decent theory of emergent time there. It seems that as difficulties arise, you shy away from the grand scheme as outlined in the introduction to your book. 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 05:08:39PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > OK, proper time is taken from SR and applied only locally, so the > concept is not ruled out by GR. The problem is still that you have > simply introduced a time parameter out of thin air. If you are to > have time in the picture, it must emerge from the timeless > bitstrings, and you have given no account of how this might happen. > I think you are imposing a requirement for theory completeness I do not impose myself. After all, my theory is not a "theory of everything", but a theory of "Nothing". You are right, that ultimately, we would like to know how subjective time arises - whether it is via Barbour's time capsules, or some other stitching of observer moments, or the natural connection between machine states during a computation in a computationlist account. However, my approach is - OK - we're probably not going to solve this problem any time soon - so let's just assume that psychological time is necessary, and see where that takes us. That is my TIME postulate. If the results are nonsense, then we need to reexamine the various assumptions. So far, they're not nonsense. -- 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 -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 8/09/2017 5:51 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Sep 2017, at 09:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: I think Brent's point, with which I agree BTW, is that an observer can only be defined in relation to an external world -- consciousness requires a world to be conscious of! Why? That seems magical thinking (in the frame of Digital Mechanism). You should explain what an external world is, and how it select the "real" computations. Are you sure we don't need blessed water? Sarcasm is a poor substitute for an argument.. The external world is that which you are conscious of. And it does not have to select the "real" computations, they select themselves: the "real" computations are the ones that are conscious. Just as the relevent bitstrings in the plenum are the ones that are conscious -- no one has to search through the pile to find them. 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 09:48:10AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > That is right, but fortunately, a computation, when executed, is not > a pile of states, is more like a precisely structured set of states. > We still cannot found the observer there, except for some of them, > but that is not important, because the observer itself can do that. > Bitstring are not enough, here I agree with you. You have to keep in mind that my theory is a model - the bitstrings are necessary, but not necessarily sufficient. They represent the data interpreted by an observer. Something like a universal dovetailer gives us the bitstrings by virtue of the Washington-Moscow thought experiment. My argument is that since the only thing we can discuss is appearances (basically phenomenal physics), and appearances are observational interpretation of the data, then taking an ensemble of all bitstrings suffices for working out all that appears in a variety of ensemble theories. I well concede that a collection of bitstrings may not be sufficient to explain consciousness itself. We're a long way from knowing what might be sufficient. > > It is enough to use the fact that elementary arithmetic is a "great > programmer". If someone believe that 2+2=4 independently of himself > or of a universe, then, the whole dovetailing is there too. But with > the reals or the bitstring, we get too much things, without enough > structure. You (Russell) are right that the observer recognize its > own computation(s), but you still need the computations for this. > It is fairly uncontroversial to assume that universal computation is necessary for consciousness, since we humans are capable of that. But it may not be sufficient. We have zilch evidence of the latter. Computationalism is the position that it is both necessary and sufficient, of course. -- 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 -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 9/8/2017 12:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I think Brent's point, with which I agree BTW, is that an observer can only be defined in relation to an external world -- consciousness requires a world to be conscious of! Why? That seems magical thinking (in the frame of Digital Mechanism). You should explain what an external world is, and how it select the "real" computations. Are you sure we don't need blessed water? An external world is what you and others with whom you communicate are conscious of. It's what is not a dream (or a delusion). 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")
*I wrote the following a few days ago but didn't send it because I intended to say more, but other things came up that seemed more important so this will just have to do.* On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 4:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > when in still in Helsinki, can be sure that his first person experience > will be of being in once city, > Mr. His may have been absolutely sure but Mr. His was also absolutely incorrect, that tends to happen a lot. If Mr. His had been correct then after the duplication all the people who remember being Mr. His would be in only one city but clearly they are in two. > > > and that he cannot prdict which one. > Which one? When the prediction was made there was only one. Please explain exactly what that means, hell even approximately what it means would be a vast improvement. > > > "he" will very well know where "he" feel to be after pushing the button. > After? Nobody can make a prediction AFTER pushing the button because then its not a predicting its just reporting. And AFTER the button is pushed there are 2 people who go by the name "he" which causes endless confusion, but that's not a bug its a feature if you want to hide fuzzy thinking. > > > the prediction is about his *future* first person experience. > So you tell me did "his" end up in, one or two? If it's one did it turn out to be Moscow or Washington? >> >> that one and only one city the H-man sees is Helsinki. > > > > > Not after pushing the button. > IRRELEVANT! The question MUST be asked BEFORE pushing the button. What exactly did the Helsinki Man fail to predict? > > > The first person experiences available are "feeling to be in Moscow" and > "feeling to be in Washington" > And after the button is pushed BOTH of those feelings will be felt by somebody who remembers how things were BEFORE the button was pushed. So If Mr. Beforethebuttonispushed said "What one and only one city will I, Mr. Beforethebuttonispushed see after the button is pushed?" is that a question or is that gibberish? If it's a real question then it must have an answer even if that answer can't be predicted, so you tell me, does it have an answer, one and only one answer? > >> >> >> 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 are 2 first-person experience s and the Helsinki man correctly predicted who would see what. And n obody and nothing can predict the thing that caused the m to come into existence because the first requirement in being a good predictor is existing. Seeing Washington cause the Washington Man to exist and seeing Moscow caused the Moscow to exist. > > > There is no ambiguity, > Then name the one and only one city it turned out to be! John K Clark > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")
On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 9:39 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: No, you said: > > True, it's not gibberish. The question is clear, it's about what I expect >> not what will turn out to be true. I might expect to wake up in Santa >> Claus's workshop > > If I expected to be in Santa Claus's workshop tomorrow and you asked me, not where I will be but where I **expected** to be then it would be a real question and "Santa Claus's workshop " would be the correct answer. I'd write more but at the moment Hurricane Irma is more on my mind than more of this silliness. John K Clark > but I might be wrong, my expectations have been proven to be wrong before. > > > > On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 8:32 AM, John Clark wrote: > >> >> 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 >> >> >> -- >> 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 https://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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")
No, you said: True, it's not gibberish. The question is clear, it's about what I expect > not what will turn out to be true. I might expect to wake up in Santa > Claus's workshop but I might be wrong, my expectations have been proven to > be wrong before. On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 8:32 AM, John Clark wrote: > > 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 > > > -- > 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [Sadhu Sanga] what is real -- the Einsteinian view
On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > Hi Jennifer, > > > On 06 Sep 2017, at 04:46, Jennifer Nielsen wrote: > > > If something exists in relation to something else, with one thing having a > stronger quality of some sort than the other, a ratio exists, and therefore > quantity. > > Therefore quantity comes into being at the same time as relative quality. > So the question now becomes whether one believes in quanta or qualia. If > one trusts awareness/perception as a primary way of knowing, quanta and > qualia arise together. > > > > OK. But the whole problem is there. With the "dream argument", or even > better with Mechanism, we just cannot trust awareness/perception as a > primary way of knowing. > If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you’re feeling about it. Feeling is the language of the soul. "God" is always communicating with you, in words, but first of all, through your feelings. Many words have been uttered by others, in "God's' name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by causes not of "God's" direct creation. The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from "God" and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule: "God's" is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source. Now the task of differentiation becomes easy, for it should not be difficult even for you to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest. The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love. Joy, truth, love. These three are interchangeable, and one always leads to the other. It matters not in which order they are placed. [note: I put "God" in quotes, as there are many names, and I do not wish to offend anyone] joe 🤔 > In fact, perception involves billions of "amoeba" chatting on the internal > neuro-net called "brain", and nothing there is primary. We can always > hallucinate. > > Anticipating on further explanations, the qualia comes (logically) first, > and quanta will appear as special sort of sharable qualia. The physical > reality will appear as a special sort of first person plural "video game", > winning a battle for sustaining your experience. > > I don't claim that Digital Mechanism is true, but this makes it testable > and up to now, it fits the observation, thanks to QM (without collapse). > > Bruno > > > > > > > > -- > *From:* Bruno Marchal > *To:* VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL ; Online_Sadhu_Sanga@ > googlegroups.com > *Cc:* Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal ; "Vasavada, Kashyap > V" ; Asingh2384 ; > georgew...@aol.com; Joseph McCard ; Paul > Werbos ; BVKSastry(Gmail) ; > sisir roy ; Stanley A. KLEIN < > skl...@berkeley.edu>; Vivekanand Pandey Vimal ; > "'Chris de Morsella ' via Everything List" < > everything-list@googlegroups.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, September 5, 2017 3:33 PM > *Subject:* Re: [Sadhu Sanga] what is real -- the Einsteinian view > > Dear Vinod, > > > On 05 Sep 2017, at 14:41, VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL wrote: > > Dear Vinod, > > Thank you for your attempt to understand what I try to explain. Let us > indeed try to find where we > might disagree. I think we disagree simply on our assumptions. You assume > primary stuff. > I assume elementary number relations. > > But above is a great difference. > > > I think I see where we disagree. > > > > > > > On 01 Sep 2017, at 13:46, VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL wrote: > > > > There are some more issues for numbers/arithmetic which requires to > be discussed > and explored further > > i) Do numbers/arithmetic have some fundamental non-emergent existence > or do they > manifest in nature as the result of some emergent phenomenon. > > I think numbers and arithmetic can't have any fundamental > non-emergent existence > since numbers per se are devoid of any "ontology with some stuff" and > for the > fundamental existence of anything, it should be possessed with some > "ontology > with some stuff" > > > OK. I might say that we differ on this. I do not believe in stuff. I don't > think that there are > evidences for stuff. > > Yes, there could be no objective evidence for either of the primordial > existence of physical stuff > and numbers. > > > OK. > > Now, assuming the numbers is not a lot. In fact assuming any universal > machinery, in the mathematical sense of Church, Turing, Kleene ... (the > discoverers of the plausible mathematical notion of (universal) digital > computation. It is made philosophically precise by the assumption of > Church's thesis, or Church-Turing thesis, but in my opinion even better > understood and discovered by Emil Post And Stephen Kleene. > > And the physicists assumes also the numbers when developing their > mathematical theories. Wigner asked
Re: A profound lack of profundity (and soon "the starting point")
2017-09-07 14:32 GMT+02:00 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 > > According to John Clark, John Clark believe in MWI (or find it plausible), so according to John Clark where from it's own POV he will be tomorrow (or in the next second) is gibberish... as tomorrow there will be an infinity of John Clark (well, even in the next nanosecond... so scary...). So we have to conclude John Clark is gibberish. Won't say that I knew 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 08 Sep 2017, at 09:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 8/09/2017 12:05 pm, Russell Standish wrote: 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. You really need only SR: proper time is the time kept by an inertial clock. It gives only a local time ordering of events, but that is probably all you want. The real problem is that your have introduced a time parameter from thin air, as it were. Your ontology is static bitstrings. Unless you can find a way for a useful time parameter to emerge from that, your theory fails. 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. GR gives closed time loops only in very exotic cosmologies -- nothing that need really concern us. My point about time in GR is that there is, in general, no unique foliation of space time by spacelike hypersurfaces that could give a natural temporal order -- the problem of 'many fingered' time. 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. If the ontology, including observers, is timeless, then an apparent temporal ordering must emerge from the structure of that static plenum. You simply cannot brush away the problem by imposing a time parameter from outside by fiat. 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. I think Brent's point, with which I agree BTW, is that an observer can only be defined in relation to an external world -- consciousness requires a world to be conscious of! Why? That seems magical thinking (in the frame of Digital Mechanism). You should explain what an external world is, and how it select the "real" computations. Are you sure we don't need blessed water? This does not necessitate a hard distinction between the observer and the data. The observer might be the way the data knows itself. In other words, the observer is also the data. That is indeed reasonable in any monistic theories. Have to
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 08 Sep 2017, at 09:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 8/09/2017 11:40 am, Russell Standish wrote: 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. But the observer must be found within your plenum -- the collection of bitstrings -- there is nowhere else from which one could get an observer. Another way of putting this is that observers cannot supervene on the collection of bitstrings, but rather on the interpretations of those bitstrings. I cannot make sense of this. If the observers are not to be found in the bitstrings, which make up everything there is, then they do not exist. 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. The dovetailer assembles a plenum of computations -- provided one can make sense of this -- so computations are all that there is, and the observer must be found among the computations. If the dovetailer simply assembles a pile of machine states, then you have a problem finding the observer. That is right, but fortunately, a computation, when executed, is not a pile of states, is more like a precisely structured set of states. We still cannot found the observer there, except for some of them, but that is not important, because the observer itself can do that. Bitstring are not enough, here I agree with you. Bruce 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. It is enough to use the fact that elementary arithmetic is a "great programmer". If someone believe that 2+2=4 independently of himself or of a universe, then, the whole dovetailing is there too. But with the reals or the bitstring, we get too much things, without enough structure. You (Russell) are right that the observer recognize its own computation(s), but you still need the computations for this. Bruno Cheers -- 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 8/09/2017 11:40 am, Russell Standish wrote: 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. But the observer must be found within your plenum -- the collection of bitstrings -- there is nowhere else from which one could get an observer. Another way of putting this is that observers cannot supervene on the collection of bitstrings, but rather on the interpretations of those bitstrings. I cannot make sense of this. If the observers are not to be found in the bitstrings, which make up everything there is, then they do not exist. 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. The dovetailer assembles a plenum of computations -- provided one can make sense of this -- so computations are all that there is, and the observer must be found among the computations. If the dovetailer simply assembles a pile of machine states, then you have a problem finding the observer. Bruce 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 -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Do Observer Moments form a Vecor Space?
On 8/09/2017 12:05 pm, Russell Standish wrote: 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. You really need only SR: proper time is the time kept by an inertial clock. It gives only a local time ordering of events, but that is probably all you want. The real problem is that your have introduced a time parameter from thin air, as it were. Your ontology is static bitstrings. Unless you can find a way for a useful time parameter to emerge from that, your theory fails. 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. GR gives closed time loops only in very exotic cosmologies -- nothing that need really concern us. My point about time in GR is that there is, in general, no unique foliation of space time by spacelike hypersurfaces that could give a natural temporal order -- the problem of 'many fingered' time. 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. If the ontology, including observers, is timeless, then an apparent temporal ordering must emerge from the structure of that static plenum. You simply cannot brush away the problem by imposing a time parameter from outside by fiat. 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. I think Brent's point, with which I agree BTW, is that an observer can only be defined in relation to an external world -- consciousness requires a world to be conscious of! This does not necessitate a hard distinction between the observer and the data. The observer might be the way the data knows itself. In other words, the observer is also the data. 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 --
