I noticed someone taking my name in vain. ;) (though experiment where
I, Tom, am a clone of Will Riker) The magic of thought experiments,
it's amazing. I felt my measure decrease, but only after I read the
thought experiment.
I trust this will not derail anyone's personal identity here, but I
I agree that religion, and a lot of other stuff, produces a lot of
fake certainty. Not good. So that implies that atheism is the way to
go?
But doesn't it make sense that if God were personal, and a human
person like us could relate to him/her as a person, then that would
result in expanding
On May 5, 1:27 am, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
On 04/05/2009, at 12:57 PM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote:
But doesn't it make sense that if God were personal, and a human
person like us could relate to him/her as a person, then that would
result in expanding our consciousness?
On May 4, 6:13 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/4 daddycay...@msn.com:
I agree that religion, and a lot of other stuff, produces a lot of
fake certainty. Not good. So that implies that atheism is the way to
go?
But doesn't it make sense that if God were
On May 6, 3:14 pm, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
On 07/05/2009, at 4:33 AM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote:
The purpose of my questions was to question the suggested advantage of
using atheism as the [preferred] fixed point from which to view the
universe [by a person].
OK - the
On May 6, 12:47 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote:
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:33:52 -0700
Subject: Re: Temporary Reality
From: daddycay...@msn.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
On May 4, 6:13 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/4
On May 7, 1:42 am, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
So - going back to God then, let's maybe do an OPV on him/her/it
Hint:
If I can't do an OPV on God, then I'm not convinced that:
1. God is a person (100% convinced)
2. There is a God (74% convinced)
People here keep thinking
On May 14, 4:45 pm, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
At the same time position 1 completely fails to explain an
observer of the kind able to do 1a.
I would say that position 2 fails to explain the observer too, you
have to actually explain the observer to claim that a position
On May 14, 9:47 pm, daddycay...@msn.com wrote:
On May 14, 4:45 pm, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
At the same time position 1 completely fails to explain an
observer of the kind able to do 1a.
I would say that position 2 fails to explain the observer too, you
have to
Hello everyone,
I have an M.S. in Mathematics. I've done casual reading, e.g. The Loss of Certainty (Kline), The Emperor's New Mind (Penrose), The Elegant Universe (Greene),Pensees (Pascal), lots of papers online.
Tom Caylor
...but of courseexplanation is more fundamental than prediction.
Tom Caylor-Original Message-From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: everything-list@eskimo.comSent: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 10:24:42 -0700Subject: Against Fundamentalism!
Hal Finney writes
Lee Corbin writes:
But in general,
I'm new to this so I haven't read about all your people's different
theories. I've read quite a bit on transhumanist stuff, Aubrey DeGrey,
Freeman Dyson, ... it seems people are trying anything they can imagine,
and expanding into what they can't imagine, to look for immortality. Now
if
Tom wrote:
Now if continuousconsciousness is not necessarily required for immortality, then why are you waiting around for copying? Won't cloning come far sooner? What is it about copying that is better than cloning.
Stathis wrote:
Why do you say that continuous consciousness is not
Hal wrote:
I actually think this is a philosphically defensible position. Why shouldone OM care about another, merely because they happen to be linked bya body? There's no a priori reason why an OM should sacrifice, it doesn'tget any benefit by doing so.
But I'll tell you why we don't work this
Hal wrote: I actually think this is a philosphically defensible position. Why should one OM care about another, merely because they happen to be linked by a body? There's no a priori reason why an OM should sacrifice, it doesn't get any benefit by doing so. But I'll tell you why we don't work
Stathis wrote:
You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there
What's wrong with the reasoning here?
This is also in response to your explanation to me of copying etc. in your last post to "Many pasts?..."
I think there is too much we don't know
Stathis wrote:
...Once the difficulty of creating an AI was overcome, it would be a
trivial matter to copy the program to another machine (or as a separate process
on the same machine) and give it the same inputs.
OK this is weird. Every time I get an email from Stathis, I actually
get
... or should I say "spooky"?
Tom Caylor
Stathis wrote:
Scouring the universe to find an exact copy of RM's favourite marble may seem a very inefficient method of duplication, but when it comes to conscious observers in search of a successor OM, the obvious but nonetheless amazing fact is that nobody needs to search or somehow bring the
Stathis wrote:To summarise my position, it is this: the measure of an observer moment is relevant when a given observer is contemplating what will happen next... Now, minimising acronym use, could you explain what your understanding is of how measure changes with number of copies of an OM which
Stathis wrote:
quote: I don't think Hal Finney was agreeing with me, I think he was pointing out how absurd my position was to lead to this conclusion! But I don't really understand your objection: are you disagreeing that your consciousness will continue as long as there is a successor OM
Tom wrote:
quote:
I'm disagreeing that your consciousness will "continue" as long as there is a successor OM somewhere. You have to consider the possibility that the instances where there is a successor OM somewhere makes up a subset of measure zero of the set needed for continued
Bruno Marchal writes:I will keep reading your posts hoping to make sense of it. Still I was about asking you if you were assuming the "multiverse context" or if you were hoping to extract (like me) the multiverse itself from the OMs. In which case, the current answer seems still rather hard to
Brent Meeker:
The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predictedby assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* islikely false. I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like RolandOmnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and
Bruno,
After reading your Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) and I?d like to
give you my reaction. It seems to me that the trick is hidden in your
assumptions. I think you?ve even stated that before (using ?embedded?
rather than ?hidden?), referring especially to comp. But I?d say that
Bruno, After reading your Universal Dovetailer
Argument (UDA) I'd like to giveyou my reaction.
Thanks, It seems to me that the trick is hidden in your
assumptions. Certainly. In a mathematical theory the theorems are
always "hidden" in the axioms.As such, I appreciate your willingness to
Tom Instead of conscious brain I should have said consciousness.
The yes-doctor hypothesis in comp tells me that you are assuming the
existence of consciousness.
Bruno Yes. Under the form of a minimal amount of what is called (in
philosophy of mind/cognitive science) grandmother or folk
[SPK]
Oh no, I am not a time denier. I am arguing that Change, no,
Becoming, is a Fundamental aspect of Existence and not Static Being.
...Try this idea: We do NOT exist in a single space-time manifold.
That structure is a collective illusion - but still a reality- that
results from the
Tom: I guess I'll have to ponder this more. In general I am
uncomfortable with having terms like physics and
psychology/consciousness defined (redefined?) later on in an argument
rather than at the beginning.
Bruno: That is a little bit curious because in SANE I *exceptionally*
do give
[SPK]
Oh no, I am not a time denier. I am arguing that Change, no,
Becoming, is a Fundamental aspect of Existence and not Static
Being.
...Try this idea: We do NOT exist in a single space-time manifold.
That structure is a collective illusion - but still a reality-
that results from the
May I offer the following quote as a potential catalyst for Bruno and
Colin:
If thought is laryngeal motion, how should any one think more truly
than the wind blows? All movements of bodies are equally necessary, but
they cannot be discriminated as true and false. It seems as nonsensical
to
Tom wrote:
May I offer the following quote as a potential catalyst for Bruno
and Colin: If thought is laryngeal motion,
how should any one think more truly than the wind blows? All
movements of bodies are equally necessary, but they cannot be
discriminated as true and false. It seems
[Col replies---]
Tom, in your very eloquent fashion you have touched upon the essence
of my approach to the issue of a theory of everything.
I need to make sure that everyone knows that the very eloquent words
are not mine, but those of H.W.B. Joseph in the reference
It seems to me (oh no, subjectivity!) that believing in an objective
reality is doing the same epistemic move as Bruno's belief in
arithmetic realism and Godel's Platonism. Isn't belief in objective
reality really by definition simply saying that there's something
CAUSING ALL of our
John:
Perhaps I'm intruding since you didn't address this to me, regarding
your rhetorical question:
since we have only our subjective access to out
there does it make any difference if it is REALLY?
like we interpret it, or in an untraceable manner:
different?
Didn't you practically give
Well, Godfrey, I just want to voice my reaction that I am
disappointed that in the end you really have no new point.
It seems that you are more like the Mad Hatter or Cheshire Cat.
Tom
[BM]
So, this means you could just be *in advance* of my thesis! That would
still be very interesting of
OK, you said All comments welcome. You asked for it.
First, there's a lot to read here, so I assumed you were presenting the
basic gist of your ideas in the first few paragraphs, and so I have a
few comments about those paragraphs.
I commend you for trying to explain values as part of the
Whether it's ignoring the unperceived or unperceivable, what I'm asking
is: Why do you limit metaphysics, at the outset, to being for the
purposes of understanding general intelligence? On the other hand,
how do we know what general intelligence is if all we have is our
human understanding?
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you
beside.-Emily DickinsonIn all of the history of
humans' exploration of the universe, theperpetual message that keeps
coming back to us from the universe isthat the
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you
beside.-Emily DickinsonIn all of the history of
humans' exploration of the universe, theperpetual message that keeps
coming back to us from the universe isthat the
I've been looking a little into what there is on-line about descriptive
set theory, a relatively new field.
It seems that with the questions about cardinality and descriptions on
this list, that descriptive set theory (Polish spaces being an
important element) would be useful, if not essential.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7050/full/436467a.html
-Original Message-
From: John Ross [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 'Saibal Mitra' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:34:26 -0700
Subject: RE: Neutrino shield idea
Name one.
-Original
I am entertained by the discussion with John Ross, and can think of
more entertaining questions for him (such as how about travelling by
firing a neutrino gun at objects that you want to travel to? sorry I
couldn't help it), but I believe it is off topic.
Tom Caylor
-Original
If we are leaving all rationality aside, then how can be talk about
relative absurdity and justification?
Tom Caylor
-Original Message-
From: Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:59:10 +0200
Subject: Re: Let There Be Something
Hi,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I guess I'll break the symmetry of relative silence on this list
lately.
I just don't get how it can be rationally justified that you can get
something out of nothing. To me, combining the multiverse with a
selection principle does not explain anything. I see no
My phrase something from nothing was not meant
to restrict my inquiry to origins, in the sense of time or causality,
but can be viewed in terms of information in general.
It seems that the discussion has not contradicted my initial idea that,
when it comes to explaining why things are the way
Bruno,
So why is it that from the 3rd person point of view everyone dies?
Also along the lines of the Let There Be Something thread, isn't it
also true that a finite set of finite histories, or even a countable
set of infinite histories, is of measure zero in the continuum? If
this is the
I should have said a countable set of countable histories.
Tom
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:05:39 -0500
Subject: Re: Quantum Immortality (was Re: Quantum Suicide)
Bruno,
So why is it that
Hal,
I disagree. How can the worm apply a probability distribution over
things that he knows nothing of, such as trees, people, and evolution?
Using the Wormopic Principle, when the worm proclaims that, The
universe is just complex enough to produce and sustain such a worm as
I, and the
I should make another point, that it seems very likely that the worm
has no way of developing the in-apple technology to find out about
quantum mechanics or DNA. This emphasizes the fact that we, with our
quantum theories, M-theories, and loop gravity etc. could be just as
far away from
Perhaps there needs to be a new thread for the new topic (Game of Life,
etc.).
It seems my original inquiry has been left unanswered, but this is my
point. My challenge was that multiverse theory is just pulling things
out of thin air just as much as any other metaphysical theory. At each
To me it's very simple, and I've already laid it out in just a few words
below, and in more words in different ways in my previous posts on this
thread.
Russell, you've even said in your Why Occam's Razor paper that the
Plenitude is ontologically to Nothing. To it follows that the following
Bruno wrote:
Le 11-déc.-05, à 11:58, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
You find yourself alone in a room with a light that alternates
red/green with a period of one minute. A letter in the room informs
you that every other minute, 10^100 copies of you are created and run
in parallel for one
Stathis wrote:
Tom Caylor writes:
In response to Stathis' thought experiment, to speak of an experiment
being
set up in a certain way is to base probabilities on an irrelevant
subset of the whole, at least if the multiverse hypothesis is true.
In the
Plenitude, there are an additional
The reason why you don't buy lottery tickets could just as easily be
explained in a single universe.
I short-changed my argument. I should've said, The reason why you
don't buy lottery tickets can only be explained in a single universe.
Tom Caylor
Jesse wrote:
Tom Caylor wrote:
The reason why you don't buy lottery tickets could just as easily be
explained in a single universe.
I short-changed my argument. I should've said, The reason why you
don't buy lottery tickets can only be explained in a single
universe.
Tom Caylor
The white rabbit problem is a problem only for multiverse believers.
By the way, thanks for the reference to rabbits. It caused a
rabbit-repellent ad to appear in the margin of the archive. It is
lemon-scented (and another one is fox-scented!) and this will be more
pleasant for me than
Hi,
My paper has been published and should be available
on the site of Elsevier (not freely, except if your
institution has a free acces on Elsevier Journals).
The official reference are:
Marchal B. Theoretical computer science and the natural
science, Physics of Life Reviews, Vol 2/4, pp.
Saibal Mitra wrote:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/12/2/1
Not that there aren't enough discussions going on already, I wanted to
know what people think about Paul Davies' argument using Seth Lloyd's
calculations, concluding that a quantum computer can never be built? I
suppose
Lennart Nilsson wrote:
What on earth does the following footnote mean? Are we back to
consciousness
where the quantumbuck stops?
/LN
Understanding Deutsch's Probability in a Deterministic Multiverse by
Hilary
Greaves
Footnote 16
The following objection is sometimes raised against the
Bruno wrote:
Thanks Hal.
I add that your link provide a way to recover my old conversation
with Joel Dobrzelewski on the list (28 June 2001), which
presents the simplest version of the Universal Dovetelair
Argument (UDA), i.e. the argument showing that the
computationalist hypothesis (in the
Bruno wrote:
I think everyone has religious faith...
Amen, Bruno, and Ben also! This is of course a searing statement,
which goes back to why the word theology is taboo. As it's commonly
said, the two topics to stay away from in conversation are religion and
politics.
But, without using
Tom wrote:
what are we left with?
To make my point more plain, I will give my own answer to this
question. If we abandon a belief in truth, or if we totally separate
truth from our lives, then what are we left with? We are left devoid
of meaning in our lives. We would end up with
...even the statement 'I am not making sense' does not make sense
because I don't believe in sense. I'll shut up... and be alone... and
die...
Tom
Norman wrote:
I'm agnostic, yet it strikes me that even if
there
is no God, those that decide to have faith,
and
have the ability to have faith,in a benign
God
have gained quite a bit. They have faith in
an
afterlife, in ultimate justice, in the triumph of
good
over evil, etc. Without
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 30-janv.-06, à 18:49, Brent Meeker a écrit : Bruno
Marchal wrote: Le 29-janv.-06, à 20:02, Brent Meeker a écrit
: I largely agree with Stathis. I note a subtle
difference in language between Danny and Stathis.
Danny refers to "believe in". I don't think a
Brent Meeker wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bruno wrote:
I think everyone has religious faith...
Amen, Bruno, and Ben also! This is of course a
searing statement, which goes back to why the word "theology" is
taboo. As it's commonly said, the two topics to stay away
from in
Jeanne Houston wrote:
I am a layperson who reads these discussions out of avid interest,
and I
hope that someone will answer a question that I would like to ask in
order
to enhance my own understanding.
There is an emphasis on AI running through these discussions, yet
you
seem to
Bruno wrote:
Jeanne Houston wrote:
I am a layperson who reads these discussions
out of avid interest, and I hope that someone
will answer a question that I would like to ask
in order to enhance my own understanding.
There is an emphasis on AI running through
these discussions, yet you
Georges wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
So Bruno says that:
a) I am a machine.
b) ...no man can grasp all aspect of man
Tom says that to philosophize is one aspect of
humanness that is more than a machine (i.e.
simply following a set of instructions).
Jef and Brent say that we are machines
Bruno wrote:
... and note that the coherence of taking simultaneously
both a and b above is provided by the incompleteness
results (Godel, ...) which can be summarized by ... no
machine can grasp all aspect of machine.
Bruno
Thanks, Bruno, for the above and also your more lengthy response,
Responses interspersed below.
Le 15-févr.-06, à 17:30, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :
As Bruno said, now we really don't know what a machine is.
Bruno:
Actually I was just saying that no machine can *fully* grasp *all
aspect* of machine. But machines can know what machines are. Only, if a
Bruno:
That is why I propose simple definitions. Reasoning =
provability = Bp = Beweisbar(p) cf Godel 1931. Soul =
first person = provability-and-truth = Bp p =
third Plotinus' hypostase. This can look as an oversimplification
but the gap between truth and provability (incarnated in the
corona
Bruno,
In this context, what are you taking to be the truth value of the empty
set?
In other words, how can you say that {Empty set} p = {Empty set} ?
I thought that you were taking to operate on propositions, not sets.
Doesn't {Empty set} p mean saying nothing in conjunction with the
truth
Bruno wrote:
So the divine intellect of the Vimalakirti Machine will contains all
proposition of the form:
~Bwhatever:
more example:
~B(an asteroid will not hurt earth in 2102)
~B(an asteroid will hurt earth in 2102)
~B(1+1 = 4)
~B(1+1 ? 4)
~B(PI is rational)
~B(PI is not rational)
Is isomorphism or a one-to-one correspondence a mathematical concept or
a metamathematical (or metaphysical? another complication in the
discussion) concept? I take them as mathematical concepts, so that
speculating about isomorphisms of things like the multiverse is in
itself assuming that
Yes, Iwas assuming that the descriptions "lose information", or
generalize, just as "mammal" is a generalization, and just as Bruno's
duplicationloses information. Otherwise, I would call it a
re-representation of*ALL* the details of something, *as seen from a
certain perspective*, into
Of course, we can't be sure when we close ourselves in from any
explanation that is meaningless.
We can run but we cannot hide from the fact that we will always have to
make assumptions that are without basis. Even when we close ourselves
in from any explanation that is not based on what we
There is also the issue of scientific prediction or induction, the
prediction that someone who has murdered is more likely to murder
again. I think this is more important that memory when it comes to the
issue of the practical societal definition guilt. How can we predict
that I might
Interesting! This reminds me of the old standby example of being able
to find anysequence of digits in the digits of pi, and therefore being
able to find whole digital "recordings" of "Gone With The Wind" or anything you
desire, including your-whole-life-as-you-desire-it-to-be, if yousearch
John,
If I understand what you're asking: A digital recording of Gone With
The Wind, say on a CD, is recorded in bits, binary digits, 1's and
0's. You can also express pi in binary, it's simply the base-2
representation of pi, all 1's and 0's, just like the movie recording.
So you have an
Can this be shown with an extension of a pre-fix/don't care bits
argument? I'm just making this up on the spot, so I'm sticking my neck
out. It's not rigorous, but it could go something like this:
The binary (say) recording of Gond With The Wind can be viewed as one
huge but finite binary
Quentin:
I don't know from your wink at the end whether you are half-serious or
not.
But just in case (and Bruno can do better than I can on this), I think
I can correctly appeal to Peano's distinction between mathematical and
linguistic paradox. The meaning of the symbols is defined at a
Bruno,
To help us understand this: How is this different from saying the toss
of a coin is both unpredictable and yet determined by laws?
Another thought is that there are the two extremes of the meaning of
law:
1) The reductionist definition that something can be predicted by the
sum of
Another categorization of this dichotomy could be the Plato universals
corresponding to Intensional definitions and the possible, vs. the
Aristotle particulars corresponding to the Extensional definitions and
the actual. The Intensional can also be associated with mathematical
descriptions
I'm not a physicist, so I'm asking a question. How much of this we
have no information loss in this universe prinicple are we simply
assuming at the outset? I know that a lot of it is unverified theory,
like in the case of Stephen Hawking's black hole vs. no black hole from
infinity
Bruno,
Taking your assumption that I am a machine or number and so I can be
plugged into an equation (You = Tom or George...), I will say speaking
for myself that I would like a couple of days to think about this. If
we all are one person, then I will not be surprised that George feels
the
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