to call into question
the very nature of causality, and its posible role in consciousness. If
we are forced to attribute consciousness to sequences of events which
occur purely by luck, then causality can't play a significant role. This
is the rather surprisin
ly long, meaningful data strings have
their meaning implicitly within themselves, because there is no
reasonable-length program that can interpret them as anything else.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
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Wei Dai writes:
> I promised to summarize why I moved away from the philosophical position
> that Hal Finney calls UD+ASSA. Here's part 1, where I argue against ASSA.
> Part 2 will cover UD.
>
> Consider the following thought experiment. Suppose your brain has been
> de
ability. If two physical worlds instantiate the same OM,
that may cause the OM to have higher measure. In the UDASSA model that
I prefer, OM measure is essentially the sum of the measures of all
programs that output that OM. If two universes instantiate it, both
contribute measure to it (as do "
the
use of approximation and assumptions to get plausible predictions out of
even rather opaque mathematics so it's possible they might get somewhere.
But at this point it looks like the resistance is too strong. Rather
than string theory making the multiverse r
Stathis Papaioannou writes:
> On 20/09/2007, "Hal Finney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > The lifetime formulation also captures the intuition many people have
> > that consciousness should not "jump around" as observer moments are
> > created i
be
> > substantially less than that of a similar person who never teleports.
> >
> > Hal Finney
>
> I note that you have identified yourself with the the ASSA camp in the
> past (at least I say so in my book, so it must be true, right! :). What
> you are proposing
[I want to first note for the benefit of readers that I am Hal Finney
and no relation to Hal Ruhl - it can be confusing having two Hal's on
the list!]
Rolf Nelson writes:
> UDASSA (if I'm interpreting it right, Hal?) says:
>
> 1. The measure of programs that produce OM ("
Rolf writes:
> World-Index-Compression Postulate: The most probable way for the
> output of a random UTM program to be a single qualia, is through
> having a part of the program calculate a Universe, U, that is similar
> to the universe we currently are observing; and then having another
> part of
Part of what I wanted to get at in my thought experiment is the
bafflement and confusion an AI should feel when exposed to human ideas
about consciousness. Various people here have proffered their own
ideas, and we might assume that the AI would read these suggestions,
along with many other ideas
Various projects exist today aiming at building a true Artificial
Intelligence. Sometimes these researchers use the term AGI, Artificial
General Intelligence, to distinguish their projects from mainstream AI
which tends to focus on specific tasks. A conference on such projects
will be held next
Stathis Papaioannou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On 01/06/07, "Hal Finney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > The reference to Susskind is a paper we discussed here back
> > in Aug 2002, Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant,
> > http://arxiv.o
ify
the location of such a brain in terms of Planck moments since the Big
Bang would be vastly greater than for brains like ours existing in the
relative youth of the universe. A measure concept related to information
might therefore reduce the measure of such brains to insignificance.
Hal Finney
xposed to different inputs. Given the problems I mentioned with this
notion of identity across the multiverse, it's not clear that this
concept makes sense.
Hal Finney
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depends only on local physical conditions, while
computationalism would say that consciousness depends on the results of
counterfactual tests done in other branches or worlds of the multiverse.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message becau
scious entities created by non-conscious computations.
Any mapping which could specify such an entity will be enormous and will
not contribute meaningfully to the measure of such entities.
Hal Finney
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than the computation it purports to describe,
then the correspondence is an illusion and is not real.
Hal Finney
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To post to this grou
verse model, if in fact we could come up with a
good justification within a multiverse model for decreasing OM measure
in the future. We'd probably have to have a pretty strong argument
in that regard, though.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this mes
Saibal Mitra writes:
> From: ""Hal Finney"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > The real problem is not just that it is a philosophical speculation,
> > it is that it does not lead to any testable physical predictions.
> > The string theory landscape, even
string theory
all these years. The bottom line is that unless some way is found to
make specific, testable predictions (and not the kind of hand-waving we
sometimes get away with around here, explaining why bunnies can't fly),
the anthropic universe is not physics. It is philosophy, and physici
ningful to
say what a given computation is doing. If every sufficiently complex
computation implements every other, then that contradicts any reasoning
based on the differences between different computations. So I think it
is an important issue to get right and to be clear about.
Hal Finney
--~--~
Stathis Papaioannou writes:
> Hal Finney writes:
>
> > What I argued was that it would be easier to find the trace of a person's
> > thoughts in a universe where he had a physically continuous record than
> > where there were discontinuities (easier in the sense tha
Lee Corbin writes:
> Stathis writes
> > Hal Finney in his recent thread on teleportation thought
> > experiments disagrees with the above view. He suggests
> > that it is possible for a subject to apparently undergo
> > successful teleportation, in that the indivi
If it should
turn out that there are very simple sets of laws that would create very
numerous observers, then that would contradict the theory in this form.
Hal Finney
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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Bruno raises a lot of good points, but I will just focus on a couple
of them.
The first notion that I am using in this analysis is the assumption that a
first-person stream of consciousness exists as a Platonic object. My aim
is then to estimate the measure of such objects. I don't know whether
is interesting to consider the
deeper philosophical issues, and how we might hypothetically behave if
we were free of evolutionary constraints.
Hal Finney
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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everyt
"Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I am reminded of David Chalmer's paper recently mentioned by Hal Finney,
> "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite State Automaton?", which looks at
> the idea that any physical state such as the vibration of
person
using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same. But if there is no way
in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this
philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning.
The MWI doesn't change that.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~~--
"Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Hal Finney writes:
> > I should first mention that I did not anticipate the conclusion that
> > I reached when I did that analysis. I did not expect to conclude that
> > teleportation like this would p
of essentially
no help in producing the mental state in question, because the ouput is
so enormous and we would have no idea where to look. Hence the UD does
not make a dominant contribution to mental state measure and we avoid
the paradox without any need for ad hoc rules.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--
Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 09:35:12AM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:
> > I think that one of the fundamental principles of your COMP hypothesis
> > is the functionalist notion, that it does not matter what kind of system
iated by
the given third-party physical situation.
Hal Finney
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To
yze it based on
computational principles.
Hal Finney
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To unsubscri
ult. And second, these programs take no inputs,
while functions should have at least one input variable.
What do you understand a dovetailer to be, in the context of computable
functions?
Hal Finney
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You received this message because you are subs
in but altered them
in the process to match your own neurons physically and functionally,
then you would never stop being yourself.
Hal Finney
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s of functions
that get big faster and faster than the ones before. I'm not sure how we
use it. Maybe at some point we just tell the fairy, okay, let me live
P1000(1000) years. That's a number so big that from our perspective it
seem
f embedding Latin phrases in the
natural laws would argue strongly against us living in such a universe.
Hal Finney
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To post to this gro
ould be easy to find.
Hal Finney
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To unsubscribe from this group,
f the question brings. The mere fact that we cannot
define consciousness ought to be a pretty big red flag that we should
not be making facile assumptions about who has it and who doesn't!
(Or, if you say that we can in fact define consciousness, tell me how
verses in the larger reality.
If as I wrote yesterday we are able to eventually verify predictions of
this model in terms of physical observations, we would have achieved
a unification of physics and philosophy far deeper than has ever been
accomplished before.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~
t the most inclusive
multiverse, Tegmark's Level 4 where all mathematical objects exist and
physical existence is just a subset of the mathematical, could be the
model that provides the simplest explanation for our observations.
Hal Finney
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You rece
it is even less
likely to ever be able to make physical predictions, and its prospects
are even worse than had been thought. A lot of people seem to be piling
on and saying that it is time for physics to explore alternative ideas.
The hostile NY Times book review is just one example.
Hal Finney
Here is a link to an article I wrote in 2001 explaining what the
Universal Dovetailer is:
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@eskimo.com/msg01526.html
Hal Finney
"matches" my experiences.
That second part is obvious, I guess; I can be assumed to be aware of
my own experiences. But the first part is what is hard, looking at a
computation and deciding what kind of mind it creates. Do your theories
offer insights into this hard part?
Hal Finney
it could never be truly conscious? Or would
your arguments limit its capabilities more strongly? Consciousness is
hard to test for; would there be purely functional limitations that you
could predict?
Hal Finney
rgue from such
general premises that there is no way that living organisms could exist
in that universe?
I am skeptical that we can reach such strong and specific conclusions
from such broad and general assumptions.
Hal Finney
subset of universes.
(The Universal Dovetailer perhaps implies the Universal Distribution.)
And based on this measure you arrive at first-person indeterminacy about
which laws of physics hold for you.
Is that right, is that the mechanical procedure by which someone derives
their laws of physics from comp?
Hal Finney
don't see our present physical models as being very close to that goal.
That doesn't mean that multiverse theories are wrong, but it illustrates
an inconsistency between multiverse models and the belief that we are
"almost there" towards a ToE.
Hal Finney
oint about Plato's allegory of the cave, I
believe that even people in that situation, if they were intelligent
enough, would be able to deduce the nature of the universe they were
observing.
Hal Finney
in different components of
the multiverse than the typical worm, but that is not evidence against
the theory or an example of a flaw in its explanatory power.
Hal Finney
tory power than when
applied to a single instance?
Hal Finney
an have and still expect life to
form and evolve. In conjunction with acceptance of generalized Occam's
Razor, we will have a very good explanation of the universe we see.
Hal Finney
Now that you are experts on this, try your hand on this FTL
signalling device, <http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph?0204108>.
The author, Daniel Badagnani, is apparently a genuine physicist,
<http://cabtep5.cnea.gov.ar/particulas/daniel/pag-db.html>.
Hal Finney
ll shows no interference.
There is no real "erasing" going on. Whoever coined the term "quantum
eraser" was a master of public relations, but unfortunately he confused
millions of lay people into getting the wrong idea about the physics.
Hal Finney
y there to tell us whether a p photon got
through its polarizer or not, so that we know whether to throw away
the s photon measurement.
Hal Finney
utationalism, who would believe that it is
possible for a human mind to be "uploaded" into a computer, but who
would insist that the computer must be physical! A mere potential or
abstractly existing computer would not be good enough. I suspect that
such views would not be particularly rare among computationalists.
Hal Finney
ld come up with a new
word for the combination of comp (aka "Yes Doctor") + CT + AR. Then you
could make it clear when you are just talking about computationalism,
and when you are including the additional concepts.
Hal Finney
done slowly, perhaps one
neuron at a time.) Likewise if you would accept that your mind could
be substituted by a computer, you are a computationalist.
So where do the Church Thesis and Arithmetical realism come into play
as part of the DEFINITION of "comp"? I don't understand this.
Hal Finney
s "Yes Doctor" starting point is
*incompatible* with QM. This is the contradiction that he sees.
I'll stop here and invite Godfrey to comment on whether this is the
admission of incompatibility between premises and conclusions that he
was referring to above.
Hal Finney
distinguishes (or identifies)
awareness, self-awareness, and consciousness for example.
Hal Finney
n others. All in all I don't think this
approach will work as a general method for making consciousness supervene
on physicality.
Hal Finney
e later ones, and merely hints at
the role Kolmogorov complexity can play, but the basic ideas are present.
Hal Finney
te a number, the measure of C. All kinds of bizarre machines
might be imagined which would in some way relate to C, and still in
principle we could estimate out how much measure they would each add to C.
It seems that no paradox can arise from this type of analysis.
Hal Finney
niversal principles: for example the notion of
> classical checkable proof in sufficiently rich system is completely
> captured by the modal logics G and G*.
Well, you lost me on that one!
Hal Finney
Brent Meeker wrote (he always forgets to forward to the list):
> Hal Finney wrote:
> > I'd be curious to know whether you think that Platonic existence could
> > include a notion of time.
>
> I think timelessness is a defining characteristic of Platonic "existence&q
flow to it, causal
dependency of later steps on earlier ones. It seems to be an interesting
intermediate case.
My tentative opinion is that it does make sense to ascribe Platonic
existence to such things but I am interested to hear other people's
thoughts.
Hal Finney
Quentin Anciaux writes:
> Le Lundi 01 Août 2005 05:32, Hal Finney a écrit :
> > I am generally of the school that considers that calculations can be
> > treated as abstract or formal objects, that they can exist without a
> > physical computer existing to run them.
>
> I
rd (IMO) philosophical position.
However I certainly understand that all these arguments are only
persuasive and indicative and certainly do not amount to a proof.
Nevertheless it is my hope that by pursuing these ideas we can construct
testable propositions which, if verified, will add weight to the
did create the observer-moment, because
there was little extra data in the map program. The correspondence was
in the calculation, not in the map.
With such large data sets as observer-moments, the point becomes
very clear. There is effectively no ambiguity about whether a given
calculation instantiates an OM or not. Clocks don't do it; neural network
simulations can do it (with proper input); universe simulations can do it
(using a subset of their output).
Hal Finney
ly brains are noticeably conscious (and
probably only big brains; the nematode with its 302 neurons can't have
much consciousness). Even though our stomachs and earlobes are causal
networks and have their little slivers of consciousness, only our brains
manage to really count. It just seems strange that if consciousness is,
in the metaphysical sense, so easy that it's omnipresent, then why do
so few systems actually exhibit it?
Hal Finney
s not necessarily an argument
against this variant of the QTI, and may in fact be considered evidence
in favor of a long or even immortal life span.
Hal Finney
[1] Near the end of http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m6905.html
real" to some extent. And then, perhaps,
he may choose to accept that the whole multiverse is real, even the parts
which do not affect him. Otherwise he has to say that all programs exist
which happen to include an information pattern corresponding to him,
the observer who is making this claim. That's not a very compelling
theoretical model.
Hal Finney
Brent Meeker wrote:
> [Hal Finney wrote:]
> > When you observe evidence and construct your models, you need some
> > basis for choosing one model over another. In general, you can create
> > an infinite number of possible models to match any finite amount of
> > evid
oubtful that all the rest of Aaronson's
scenario follows.
Hal Finney
Forwarded on behalf of Brent Meeker:
> On 24-Jul-05, you wrote:
>
> > Brent Meeker writes:
> >> Here's my $0.02. We can only base our knowledge on our experience
> >> and we don't experience *reality*, we just have certain
> >> experiences and we create a model that describes them and
> >> predicts
uot; I have a similar view of all mathematics, e.g.
> arithmetic is just the physics of counting.
I don't think this works, for the reasons I have just explained.
Mathematics and logic are more than models of reality. They are
pre-existent and guide us in evaluating the many possible models of
reality which exist.
Hal Finney
ferent, which is that all of the equations
"fly". Each one does come to life but each is in its own universe,
so we can't see the result. But they are all just as real as our own.
In fact one of the equations might even be our own universe but we can't
easily tell just by looking at it.
Hal Finney
works and how you can analyze measure using actual software engineering
concepts. It makes the UDist much more real as a useful tool for
understanding measure and making predictions.
Hal Finney
ke these, where a fractal
or space-filling curve type of path is the right solution, might turn
out to be easier to solve than the general case.
Hal Finney
George Levy writes:
> Hal Finney wrote:
> >http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html , specifically
> >http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf .
>
> Wouldn't it be true that in the manyworld, every quantum branchings that
> is decoupled from othe
iverse perspective which is generally adopted by physicists.
Translating this into a "flow of time" view seems quite challenging
and suggests that that viewpoint may not be as flexible in terms of
deep understanding of the notion of time.
Hal Finney
se factors).
8. We will almost never find ourselves experiencing human observer-moments
that have much lower measure than typical ones (such as being a one million
year old cave man).
I see these as very powerful predictions for such a simple model, and
my hope is that the problems with the UDist will be able to be cleared
up with continual improvements in our understanding of the nature of
computation.
Hal Finney
ven if it
is not a true HPO, if it is nevertheless able to solve every problem we
give it, it's probably worth the money!
Hal Finney
Russell Standish writes:
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:20:27PM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:
> >=20
> > Right, that is one of the big selling points of the Tegmark and
> > Schmidhuber concept, that the Big Bang apparently can be described in
> > very low-informa
pay much attention to these kinds of thought experiments.
I would suggest that evidence for or against the UDist should come
more from the fields of mathematics and logic than from any empirical
experience. My hope is that further study will lead to a computational
model which is distinguished by its uniqueness and lack of ambiguity.
That seems necessary for this kind of explanation of our existence to
be successful.
Hal Finney
What would the MWI say about this? Whatever it would say, I'm pretty sure it
> wouldn't say that there was a single photon in a definite state between the
> two polarizers.
No, I think it does, but I might be wrong. I think it says the universe
splits into two when the photon hits the first polarizer; in one the
photon is absorbed and in the other the photon continues in the 20
degree polarization state. Or you can run time backwards and get the
photon to be in the 40 degree state. I don't think the MWI helps much
with this.
Hal Finney
can comprehend, then automatically we are going to
pick out information systems that have a notion of time, an arrow of time,
and hence a sense of causality. Not all systems have these properties,
but some do, and all the ones that we would identify as observers fall
into that category.
Hal Finney
Jesse Mazer writes:
> Hal Finney wrote:
> >I imagine that multiple universes could exist, a la Schmidhuber's ensemble
> >or Tegmark's level 4 multiverse. Time does not play a special role in
> >the descriptions of these universes.
>
> Doesn't Schmid
hose who kept bringing up
> the distinction between a *description* of something and the
> thing itself. With what I have written above, I see a connection
> now.
For an informational object, a sufficiently precise description is
equivalent to the object itself, in my view. And I am considering an
ontology where everything is an informational object.
Hal Finney
t is a simple
assumption yet it provides a very specific process and rule to answer
this kind of question.
Hal Finney
Lee Corbin writes:
> Hal Finney writes
> > Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the
> > same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some
> > sense), where there is no actual causality?
>
> You yourself have already provided the
are not of
fundamental importance in my view. The most important part is the UD.
We then connect its definition of measure to subjective experience using
the concept that higher measure states are more likely to be experienced.
This is the basic principle from which we attempt to make our predictions
and explanations.
Hal Finney
do we
need more? Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the
same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense),
where there is no actual causality? I have trouble with this idea, but
I'd be interested to hear from those who think that such a distinction
exists.
Hal Finney
t;self", or is it ultimately a matter of taste and opinion for the
individuals involved to make the determination? Is this something that
reasonable people can disagree on, or is there an objective truth about
it that they should ultimately come to agreement on if they work at it
long enough?
Hal Finney
Stathis Papaioannou writes:
> Hal Finney writes:
> >Suppose you will again be simultaneously teleported to Washington
> >and Moscow. This time you will have just one copy waking up in each.
> >Then you will expect 50-50 odds. But suppose that after one hour,
> >the c
cluded when analyzing
thought experiments involving copies, otherwise you are led into paradox
and confusion.
Hal Finney
ressing the button is a win-win situation,
assuming the copies will be OK. I certainly don't think that pressing
the button reduces the measure of my enjoyment of the food.
Hal Finney
w signs of consciousness, and their
brains are generally smaller than humans, especially the cortex, hence
probably with lower information content.
Of course there are a lot more people than other reasonably large-brained
animals, so perhaps our sheer numbers cancel any penalty due to our
larger and more-complex brains.
Hal Finney
t increasing
measure is good, just as our genes quickly learned that lesson in a
world where they can be copied.
Hal Finney
Bruno Marchal writes:
> Le 20-juin-05, =E0 18:16, Hal Finney a =E9crit :
> > That's true, from the pure OM perspective "death" doesn't make sense
> > because OMs are timeless. I was trying to phrase things in terms of
> > the observer model in my reply to
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