Re: Consciousness is information?
I think in regards to conscious, you can't have one without the other. Both information and computation are needed, as the computation imparts meaning to the information, and the information accumulates meaning making each computation and its result more meaningful. If I sent you an arbitrary binary string, it would have no meaning unless you either knew in advance how to interpret it or how it was produced. Either interpretation or understanding of how it was produced can be described with computer programs, but without that foreknowledge the binary string is meaningless because there would be an infinite number of ways to interpret that string. To understand how information accumulates through successive a computations, consider how today's most common processors can only consider 32-bit numbers at a time, yet like any Turing machine they are nonetheless capable of performing any computation, including those involving numbers much larger than can be expressed in 32-bits. Consider what the neurons do (at least artificial ones), essentially they only multiply and add (multiply the strength of a received signal by the connection strength, then sum the received signals to determine if they met the threshold to fire). At a low level the additions might correspond to the intensity of one color for one pixel in a visual field, say the brightness of red. Another neuron might then sum the intensities of red, green, and blue colors to arrive at a color for that pixel, while another one aggregates a collection of those results into a field of colors. Finally this field of colors might be processed by an object identification part of the neural network to identify objects. Whether or not an object is identified as a cat or a dog, might ultimately be determined by the firing of just one neuron, yet at every stage the same basic computation is done (multiplication and addition). The only difference is the consequence of the computation at each stage; how it is ultimately interpreted by the next level. So the question comes down to where does the consciousness lie: during the computation of information, the computed result, or in the computations upon the computed results. Maybe it requires a loop of such hierarchies as Douglas Hofstadter suggests. I don't have an answer but it is something I too wonder about. Jason On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:47 AM, Kelly harmon...@gmail.com wrote: What is the advantage of assigning consciousness to computational processes (e.g. UDA), as opposed to just assigning it to the information that is produced by computational processes? For example, to take Maudlin's Computation and Consciousness paper, if you just say that the consciousness is found in the information represented by the arrangement of the empty or full water troughs, then that basically removes the problem he is pointing out. Similarly, associated consciousness only with information seems to resolve problems with random processes interfering with the causal structure of physically implemented computations which then, despite having the causal chain interrupted, would still seem to produce consciousness. (more on the irrelevance of causality: http://platonicmindscape.blogspot.com/2009/02/irrelevance-of-causality.html) Bruno Marchal has mentioned this in his movie graph argument, where a cosmic ray interrupts a logical operation in a transistor on a computer that is running a brain simulation, but due to good fortune the result of the operation is still correct despite the break in the causal chain that produced the answer. Conscious being associated with information would also seem to address the problems with Davidson's swampman scenario, and the related quantum swampman scenario (http://platonicmindscape.blogspot.com/ 2009/03/quantum-swampman.html). So, many different programs can produce the same information, using many different algorithms, optimizations, shortcuts, etc. But if all of these programs all accurately simulate the same brain, then they should produce the same conscious experience, regardless of the various implementation details. The most obvious thing that all such programs would have in common is that they work with the same information...the state of the brain at each given time slice. Even if this state is stored in different forms by each of the various programs, there must always be a mapping between those various storage formats, as well as a mapping back to the original brain whose activity is being simulated. Therefore, it seems better to me to say: Consciousness is information, not the processes that produce the information. What are the drawbacks of this view when contrasted with computationalism? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Kelly harmon...@gmail.com wrote: On Apr 21, 11:31 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: We could say that a state A access to a state B if there is a universal machine (a universal number relation) transforming A into B. This works at the ontological level, or for the third person point of view. But if A is a consciousness related state, then to evaluate the probability of personal access to B, you have to take into account *all* computations going from A to B, and thus you have to take into account the infinitely many universal number relations transforming A into B. Most of them are indiscernible by you because they differ below your substitution level. So, going back to some of your other posts about transmitting a copy of a person from Brussels to Moscow. What is it that is transmitted? Information, right? So for that to be a plausible scenario we have to say that a person at a particular instant in time can be fully described by some set of data. It would seem to me that their conscious state at that instant must be recoverable from that set of data. The only question is, what conditions must be met for them to experience this state, which is completely described by the data set? I don't see any obvious reason why anything additional is needed. What does computation really add to this? I think I agree with this, that consciousness is created by the information associated with a brain state, however I think two things are missing: The first is that I don't think there is enough information within a single Plank time or other snapshot of the brain to constitute consciousness. As you mention below, under the view of block time, the brain, and all other things are four-dimensional objects. Therefore the total information composing a moment of conscious may be spread across some non-zero segment of time. The second problem is immediately related to the first. Lets assume that there is consciousness within a 10 second time period, so we make a recording of someone's brain states across 10 seconds and store it in some suitable binary file. The question is: Are there any logical connections between successive states when stored in this file? I would think not. When the brain state is embedded in block time, the laws of physics serve as a suitable interpreter which connect the information spread out over four-dimensions, but without computer software running the stored brain state, there is no interpreter for the information when it is just sitting on the disk. I think this is the reason some of us feel a need to have information computed as opposed to it simply existing. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Kelly harmon...@gmail.com wrote: I don't say that they are rare, I say they don't make any sense. A big difference. I say that every possible event is perceived to happen, and so nothing is more or less rare than anything else. There are only things that are rare in your experience. They are not rare in an absolute sense. Why do I say this? Because I think that platonism is the best explanation for conscious experience, and the above view is (I think) the logical conclusion of that platonic view of reality. I am not sure that the measure problem can be so easily abandoned/ignored. Assuming every Observer Moment had has an equal measure, then the random/white-noise filled OMs should vastly outnumber the ordered and sensible OMs. Though I ever only have one OM to go by, the fact I was able to maintain a non-random/non-white-noise filled OMs long enough to compose this post should serve as some level of evidence that all OMs are not weighted equally. Bruno has suggested that computationalism is a candidate for answering the measure problem in a testable way. However there may be other ways to answer it by considering platonic objects, for example counting the umber of paths to a state, that is how often it reappears as a substructure of other platonic objects, etc. Whether or not this is testable is another question, but whether the ultimate explanation of consciousness is computation or information, I feel that measure is important. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Kelly harmon...@gmail.com wrote: On Apr 26, 2:01 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: I am not sure that the measure problem can be so easily abandoned/ignored. Assuming every Observer Moment had has an equal measure, then the random/white-noise filled OMs should vastly outnumber the ordered and sensible OMs. The ordered and sensible OM's may be vastly outnumbered, but they are there. And thus if you assume that everything happens, they will happen, and that explains your current experience of an ordered and sensible reality. I don't see the problem. Again, I'm lead to this conclusion by the line of reasoning mentioned in my previous posts. I didn't start with this assumption and then try to come up with supporting evidence. It is a strange conclusion, but it seems to me that any theory that explains conscious experience is going to have to be strange. I think this one is only slightly odder than Bruno's. And it's not really much odder than MWI, or the implications of an infinite universe (e.g., infinite Kellys), or of infinite time (e.g., poincare recurrence, boltzmann brains). Or strange compared to thinking about where a material universe could have come from, what proceeded it, what caused it, what underlies it, etc. That we exist at all is pretty strange I think. Though I ever only have one OM to go by, the fact I was able to maintain a non-random/non-white-noise filled OMs long enough to compose this post should serve as some level of evidence that all OMs are not weighted equally. If all possible OMs are real, then you will have successfully completed all possible posts. So, where's the problem? You are one of the Jason's who successfully completed a post. Where does your experience depart from what the theory predicts? You can only experience one path through life. One reality per customer. The reality that you are experiencing HAD to be experienced by someone, this is mandatory in my theory. Using the fact that you ARE in fact experiencing it to try to disprove my theory I think is not a valid option. My theory does make one definite prediction, and so is (first person) falsifiable. It predicts that there is always a next moment. Always another conscious experience. So, if you die and that's it, just oblivion...then I was wrong. Oops. So, we just have to wait...we will have our answer soon enough! I understand that all possible experiences by definition are experienced, and that rare experiences, however rare they may be, will still be experienced. In fact I used that same argument with Russell Standish when he said that ants aren't conscious because if they were then we should expect to be experiencing life as ants and not humans. However, in your theory you explain that there are always next moments to be experienced, if you were to wager on your next experience would you guess that it will be random or ordered? If you say ordered, is that not a contradiction when the random experiences so greatly outnumber the ordered? If your theory is true, then certainly there are observers who experience every moment as sensible, yet I would liken those to a branch of the multiverse where every time an experimenter measures the quantum state of any particle, it comes out the same, in that branch perhaps they never develop the field of quantum mechanics, but how long into the future would you expect that illusion to hold? Perhaps in your theory next and previous OMs aren't really connected, only the illusion of such a connection? Would you say you belong to the ASSA or RSSA camp? http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki/index.php?title=ASSA http://everythingwiki.gcn.cx/wiki/index.php?title=RSSA Or perhaps something different entirely? Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
Kelly, Your position as you have described it sounds a lot like ASSA only without taking measure into consideration. I am curious if you believe there is any merit to counting OMs or not. Meaning, if I have two computers and set them up to run simulations of the same mind, are there two minds or one? Let's say I devised an evil simulation in which a mind suffers horribly and is tortured, and I set the simulation to run each day, and at the end of the day reset the simulation to the initial state, such that after the first day, no new information or computations take place, but they are repeated. If given the choice, would you unplug the computer to stop the suffering of the mind in the computer, or having already been simulated once would you consider it futile/meaningless to stop it. If the number of implementations of minds does not matter and if all experiences already exist, then would it not be meaningless to do anything? All actions, whatever the consequence would be rendered neutral, having already happened somewhere. If no act of good or evil matter this philosophy leads to utter fatalism. I don't consider something happening with 100% probability to be mutually exclusive with happening more than once. The question is whether or not that makes any difference to the observer(s?). Jason On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Kelly harmon...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: In fact I used that same argument with Russell Standish when he said that ants aren't conscious because if they were then we should expect to be experiencing life as ants and not humans. Did you win or lose that argument? I've heard that line of reasoning before also. Doesn't it also conclude that we're living in the last days? If there are more conscious beings in the future than in the present, then we should expect to live there and not here, so there must not be more conscious beings in the future? And also it predicts that there are no significant number of (conscious) aliens? Because if there were, we should expect to be one of them and not a human? Sounds like over-use of a good idea. In this case it ignores all other available information to just focus only on one narrow statistic. Why should we ignore everything else we know and only credit this single argument from probability? Surely, after studying ants and humans, the knowledge that we gain has to alter our initial expectations, right? But that isn't taken into account here (at least not in your one line description of the discussion...ha!). I think the problem with Russell's ant argument stems from trying to use a priori reasoning in an a posteriori situation. There is extra information available that he isn't taking into consideration. Probably the same applies to the Doomsday argument and aliens. There is extra information available that isn't being taking into account by SSA. Pure SSA type reasoning only applies when there is no extra information available on which to base your conclusion, I think. However, in your theory you explain that there are always next moments to be experienced, if you were to wager on your next experience would you guess that it will be random or ordered? If you say ordered, is that not a contradiction when the random experiences so greatly outnumber the ordered? I have no choice in the matter. Some of me are going to bet random. Some of me are going to bet ordered. When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Really and truely, I think the best rule of thumb is to bet the way that leaves you looking LEAST FOOLISH if you're wrong. Usually that'll be ordered. Perhaps in your theory next and previous OMs aren't really connected, only the illusion of such a connection? Right, that's exactly what I'm saying. Would you say you belong to the ASSA or RSSA camp? Or perhaps something different entirely? I guess something different entirely. I'm saying that the only rule is: Everything happens. And sometimes, by sheer coincidence, it makes sense. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:05 AM, russell standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: What you are talking about is what I call the Occam catastrophe in my book. The resolution of the paradox has to be that the random/white-noise filled OMs are in fact unable to be observed. In order for the Anthropic Principle to hold in a idealist theory requires that the OM must contain a representation of the observer, ie observers must be self-aware. Amongst such OMs containing observers, ones that are the result of historically deep evolutionary processes are by far the most common. And evolution of those observer moments must also be constrained to be similar to those previously observed, eliminating white rabbits, due to robustness of the observer. Cheers Hi Russell, What you said reminded me of this article, which appeared in the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/graphics/011109_hacking_your_brain/ See the section on hallucinating with ping pong balls and a radio. It would seem the way the brain is organized it doesn't accept perception of pure randomness (at least not for long, I have not yet tried the experiment myself). If it can't find patterns from the senses it looks like it gives up and invents patterns of its own. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The mathematical Universal Dovetailer, the splashed universal Turing Machine, the rational Mandelbrot set, or any creative sets in the sense of Emil Post, does all computations. Really all, with Church thesis. This is a theorem in math. The rock? Show me just the 30 first steps of a computation of square-root(2). ... Bruno, I am interested about your statement regarding the Mandelbrot set implementing all computations, could you elaborate on this? Thank you, Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: With just arithmetic, when we stop to postulate a primitive or ontological material world, all primitive ad-hocness is removed, given that the existing internal interpretations are all determined, with their relative frequency, by addition and multiplication rules, and physics will be defined by the (absolute) probability of relative computations (here = probability of relative number theoretical relations. Bruno, In other posts I have seen you mention that the rule of succession is not enough, that addition and multiplication are needed. Why is it that it stops at multiplication, and not exponentiation or tetration? Is it enough to say some form of iteration + succession are required? (e.g. a for loop with succession gives addition, a for loop with addition yields multiplication, etc.) Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Temporary Reality
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:30 AM, daddycay...@msn.com wrote: 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 that I am trying to convince people that God is a person and/or that there is a God. Let me give you a hint that that's not the kind of thing that I would think is worthwhile to try to convince people about my wife. (convince Wow, we westerners sure thing we have a lot of power.) And even if I thought that it was worthwhile, I certainly wouldn't go about try to accomplish that by doing an OPV with that person about my wife. If we on this list believe that everything (or at least everything with a self consistent definition) exists, then we must also believe that all possible gods exist. Be they artificial intelligences that occur in the universal dovetailer with access to unbounded computing power and memory, an evolved species who reaches an omega point or technological singularity, or anything else you might imagine. What can we say about the personalities, behaviors and abilities of these gods? It is said that when intelligent people disagree, it is often due to a difference in available data. Assuming these gods all possess superior intellects, then they should all come to the same conclusion when presented with the same data. Mathematics, containing universal truths and accessible regardless of the physical universe or environment one finds his or her self in, might serve as a platform for all gods to reach identical conclusions regarding everything. Perhaps they would also conclude or even prove the existence of all else as we on the everything list believe. If it is possible, I would expect those gods would develop a model for consciousness, which would likely lead to the idea that other self-aware structures in math exist, and perceive. Though no god would have the power to eliminate what inevitably exists in math (thus explaining the problem of evil), they would still be able to run simulations of their own over which they may exercise full control. Perhaps the gods explore reality and the limits of consciousness by instantiating universes and the observers they contain, but for the god to really 'know' what it is like to be someone else, that persons memories and experiences must somehow be merged into the mind of that god, not simply simulated (Like Mary the color scientist). Thus whatever gods are simulating this universe (and inevitably some explanations for our universe include a higher level simulation) then we might be able to conclude some beliefs or properties of that god if we assume that whatever truth we may find, the mind of God has already come upon. This is just one narrow definition of god as a creator, yet there are certainly others. A monotheistic God might have to be equivalent to the everything, as it would be the only object for which there are no others, and would be the ultimate source of the existence of all else including the 'lesser gods' discussed above. We could also choose to define God as the collection of all first person experiences, meaning each of us is a small part of God. Interestingly you can somewhat map these different god definitions to the trinity from Christianity. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
John, Great question I am glad you asked it. I think I was driven to this list because of big questions, especially those which most people seem to believe are unanswerable. Questions such as: Where did this universe come from? Why are we here and why am I me? Is there a God? What is responsible for consciousness? What is time? Is there life after death? Etc. After much reading and thought I am now mostly satisfied with the answers I have arrived at, and keeping up with this list and the issues people raise on various topics helps me to keep updating my models of reality to hopefully become more correct. I think it is good mental exercise to ponder the questions people on this list raise, and despite all the disagreement, chains of assumptions, and inability to test many of the conjectures I think this list is slowly making progress toward truth. Jason On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 3:42 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno, merci pour le nom Jean Cocteau. J'ai voulu montrer que je semble vivant. I told my young bride of 61 years (originally economist, but follows all the plaisantries I speculate on) about the assumptions you guys speculate on and connect to assumptions of assumptions, Torgny the zombie, Stephen Leibnitz' Monads, you numbers, others Q-immortality/suicide and partial teleportation at the level of highest science - and she asked - (because she believes in her love that I am into all that, - understanding): What do you guys hope to achieve by all this speculation? I replied: it's getting late, let's go to sleep. Well??? (I believe this is the most meaningful word in English) John M On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, On 11 May 2009, at 22:49, John Mikes wrote: who was that French poet who made puns after death? ... A french poet said, after he died (!) : friends, pretend only to cry because poet pretends only to dye. (Faites semblant de pleurer mes amis puisque les poètes font semblant de mourrir). It is Jean Cocteau. In Le Testament d'Orphée. A movie, made by Jean Cocteau, where he plays the role of the dying poet. I am not entirely sure of the total correctness of the quote. It could be Faites semblant de pleurer mes amis puisque les poètes ne font que semblant d'être mort. Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: No MWI
The following link shows convincingly that what one gains by accepting MWI is far greater than what one loses (an answer to the born probabilities) http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/if-many-worlds.html The only law in all of quantum mechanics that is non-linear, non-unitary, non-differentiable and discontinuous. It would prevent physics from evolving locally, with each piece only looking at its immediate neighbors. Your 'collapse' would be the only fundamental phenomenon in all of physics with a preferred basis and a preferred space of simultaneity. Collapse would be the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates CPT symmetry, Liouville's Theorem, and Special Relativity. In your original version, collapse would also have been the only phenomenon in all of physics that was inherently mental. Have I left anything out? Jason On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:06 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: read Aixiv.org:0905.0624v1 (quant-ph) and see if you agree with it Ronald --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: No MWI
David Deutsch gives this convincing argument against a single world: that one can't explain how quantum computers work without postulating other universes. The evidence for the multiverse, according to Deutsch, is equally overwhelming. Admittedly, it's indirect, he says. But then, we can detect pterodactyls and quarks only indirectly too. The evidence that other universes exist is at least as strong as the evidence for pterodactyls or quarks. Perhaps the sceptics will be convinced by a practical demonstration of the multiverse. And Deutsch thinks he knows how. By building a quantum computer, he says, we can reach out and mould the multiverse. One day, a quantum computer will be built which does more simultaneous calculations than there are particles in the Universe, says Deutsch. Since the Universe as we see it lacks the computational resources to do the calculations, where are they being done? It can only be in other universes, he says. Quantum computers share information with huge numbers of versions of themselves throughout the multiverse. Imagine that you have a quantum PC and you set it a problem. What happens is that a huge number of versions of your PC split off from this Universe into their own separate, local universes, and work on parallel strands of the problem. A split second later, the pocket universes recombine into one, and those strands are pulled together to provide the answer that pops up on your screen. Quantum computers are the first machines humans have ever built to exploit the multiverse directly, says Deutsch. At the moment, even the biggest quantum computers can only work their magic on about 6 bits of information, which in Deutsch's view means they exploit copies of themselves in 26 universes-that's just 64 of them. Because the computational feats of such computers are puny, people can choose to ignore the multiverse. But something will happen when the number of parallel calculations becomes very large, says Deutsch. If the number is 64, people can shut their eyes but if it's 1064, they will no longer be able to pretend. Jason On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 May 2009, at 14:27, ronaldheld wrote: I still do not see any arguments against what I read, that one Universe fits observations better than the MWI. Just comp predicts many worlds/histories and the fact they play a key role in the statistics of experiences. But with QM, many worlds seems to me to be a direct consequence of a) linearity of evolution b) linearity of the tensor product c) superposition of states d) and nothing else (that is only quantum physical histories, no Bohm potential, no classical isolated computations, etc.) In this, comp is a problem for d: the comp supervenience asks for *all* histories, and to solve the mind body problem (or just the body problem) we have to either justify completely a, b, c, and d, from a measure extracted from classical computer science, or to reject comp or QM. But nature, both the observable one, and the one which proceeds by the richness of the structure of the integers, suggests that Many is much simpler than One. The Mandelbrot set illustrates this too: a very simple iteration leads to incredibly complex; self-similar, repetitive (and probably universal) structure. Even without QM and/or mechanism, the unicity of anything is rather doubtful. This is the starting idea of the everything list. I also disagree a bit technically on some points in Kent's paper, and generally I disagree even with MWI partisan. I have never understood the Copenhagian Wave collapse. Even when you give a special dualist role of consciousness: it does not work. Once you abandon the wave collapse, or better, once you agree that physicist obeys to QM, it seems to me that the many world cannot be avoided at all. Kent criticizes it on the fact that we don't yet recover the Born rules, but in my opinion this follows from Gleason Theorem + comp indeterminacy. A very old book by Paulette Fevrier (a pioneer in quantum logic) already suggests this (without really going through Gleason-like theorem). It is the equivalent of such a Gleason's theorem that comp is still lacking, and that is why I hope the Z1* and X1* logic(s) gives the right quantum logics capable of realizing von Neumann's dream to extract the quantum proba from the quantum logic. Z1* and X1* are quite promising with that respect, but a lot of work still remains to be done. Now, I don't understand why Wallace introduces a notion of fuzzyness, and some passage of Kent's paper remains a bit obscur. Perhaps you could tell us what precisely makes you feel (in Kent's paper, or by other way) that QM is still consistent with the idea of one world without introducing a non (quantum) mechanical selection principle. Kent is the author of many paper against Everett, and none have ever convinced me. Give me time I read it less diagonally though
Re: No MWI
Right, I copied and pasted it and it must have lost the superscript. Thanks for catching that. Jason On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:48 PM, russell standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 05:40:09PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: Deutsch. If the number is 64, people can shut their eyes but if it's 1064, they will no longer be able to pretend. Jason Hopefully you meant 10^64, not 1064, which is not all that startling. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe
I think these interviews provide a nice summary of his views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY I remember seeing an interview with him on TV about a decade ago and being very interested in his claim to be able to mathematically prove the existence of god, souls, and life after death, but I don't know if he's ever revealed those proofs. It seems with Bruno's testable comp hypothesis we can do the same, depending on your definitions of god, souls, and life after death. Jason On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 2:20 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Russell, I second (if it is of any worth). I 'tried' to read the diatribes on the html page and my perseverence ws not sufficient to stay in he lines. Some concepts seem to be mixed (I did not say up) e.g. to identify 'reality' one should get a hold of it and I found 'physical' sketchy (maybe I blurred-up where it was more sorrowly identified). . . It was funny to read about ONE universe in all, spacetime etc. as universal foundations, and so on, I think this list is past such level. About the Ph.D.: I agree, it is a harsh schooling to compose/order ideas an regulate one's thinking (if the tutor is any good). My 2nd one was a lot easier than the 1st one. I don't care too much for titles, but in terms as a mental training I appreciate your position. I don't care too much for high IQs either (was measured once for a job interview and they disclosed upon my threat only that it was 200) - but I assigned it to the metric system I grew into: saved lots of time in the math problems by converting the US units into metric, play with the decimal point and reformed the US units. Which is not much of an intelligence. Other topics in those tests are cultural background related, plus a snobbish preference for certain domains in the cognitive inventory by the organizers of the particular test. People with other background may fail. John M On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:16 PM, russell standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: I looked into him about a month or so ago, after he'd posted an unflattering remark about my work. He might have an IQ of 200, but to put it bluntly, what he writes is drivel. It may well have a kernel of truth, and there may well even be original thought in there, but it is so voluminous and so badly organised it is impossible to tell. Basically, my advice to him would be to get a PhD. It doesn't teach you creativity, but does teach you how to organise and express your ideas so that others can possibly understand it. But I suspect Chris Langan is too proud to do this. At least Bruno has done his PhD, and his work is so much the better off for him having gone through that process, painful though it was. Cheers On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 02:08:44PM -0700, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone on this list ever heard of this? A theory of reality formulated by Christopher Michael Langan? http://www.ctmu.org/Articles/IntroCTMU.htm It sounds a little sketchy at first, though not entirely different than some of what Bruno Marchal says. Obviously the main reason to pay much attention to it is that Langan has an IQ of between 190 and 210. Which kept me going past the first paragraph, which is when I would otherwise have stopped. But, after further reading it sounds somewhat more plausible. I'd be very interested in hearing Bruno's opinion. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical universe that it could be made conscious, But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your question is ambiguous. It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious. My brain appears to make it possible for my consciousness to manifest itself relatively to you. Remember that we are supposed to no more count on the physical supervenience thesis. It remains locally correct to attribute a consciousness through a brain or a body to a person we judged succesfully implemented locally in some piece of matter (like when we say yes to a doctor). But the piece of matter is not the subject of the consciousness. It is only the abstract person or program who is the subject of consciousness. To say a brain is conscious consists in doing Searle's'mistake when he confused levels of computations in the Chinese room, as well seen already by Hofstadter and Dennett in Mind's I. Thanks for your response, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that if we run a simulation of a mind, we are not creating consciousness, only adding an additional instantiation to a mind which already has an infinity of indeterminable instantiations. Is that right? Does this imply that it is impossible to create a simulation of a mind that finds it lives in an environment without uncertainty? If so is it because even if the physical laws in one instantiation may be certain, where some of the infinite number of computations that all instantiate that mind may diverge and in particular which one that mind will find itself in is not knowable? The consequence being that all observers everywhere live in QM-like environments? Thanks, I look forward to your reply. Jason or do you count all appearance of matter to be only a description of a computation and not capable of true computation? appearance of matter is a qualia. It does not describe anything but is a subjective experience, which may correspond to something stable and reflecting the existence of a computation (in Platonia) capable to manifest itself relatively to you. Do you believe that the only real computation exists platonically and this is the only source of conscious experience? Computations and their relative implementations exist only in platonia, yes. But even in Platonia, they exist in multiple relative version, all defined eventually through many multiple relations between numbers. If so I find this confusing, as could there not be multiple levels? But they are multiple levels of computations in Platonia or Arithmetic. Even a huge number of them. That is why we have to take into account the first person indeterminacies. For example would a platonic turing machine simulating another turing machine, simulating a mind be consicous? A 3-machine is never conscious. A 3-entity is never conscious. Only a person is. First person can only be associated with the infinities of computations computing them in Platonia. If so, how does that differ from a platonic turing machine simulating a physical reality with matter, simulating a mind? You will have to introduce a magical (assuming comp) selection principle for attaching, in a persistent way, a mind to that physical reality simulation. The mind can only be attached to an infinity of such relative simulations, and this is why if that mind look at itself below its substitution level he will find a trace of those computations. Comp says you have to make the statistic on all the computations. So the Physical has to be a sum on all those computations. That such computations statistically interfere is not so difficult to show. That the comp interference gives the apparent quantum one is not yet discarded. I think you are not taking sufficiently into account the first person (hopefully plural) indeterminacy in front of the universal dovetailer, (or arithmetic) which defined the space of all computations. Does this help a bit? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Jun 2009, at 20:11, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical universe that it could be made conscious, But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your question is ambiguous. It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious. My brain appears to make it possible for my consciousness to manifest itself relatively to you. Remember that we are supposed to no more count on the physical supervenience thesis. It remains locally correct to attribute a consciousness through a brain or a body to a person we judged succesfully implemented locally in some piece of matter (like when we say yes to a doctor). But the piece of matter is not the subject of the consciousness. It is only the abstract person or program who is the subject of consciousness. To say a brain is conscious consists in doing Searle's'mistake when he confused levels of computations in the Chinese room, as well seen already by Hofstadter and Dennett in Mind's I. Thanks for your response, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that if we run a simulation of a mind, we are not creating consciousness, only adding an additional instantiation to a mind which already has an infinity of indeterminable instantiations. Is that right? Yes, you are right. When you implement an emulation of a mind, you are just adding such an instanciation relatively to you. Of course you are not adding anything in Platonia. But is the computer emulating the mind not also a platonic object? If the computer simulation does not count toward anything then what is the point of saying yes to the doctor, or to pursue mind uploading technology as a method to obtain immortality and escape eternal aging as QM-immortality would predict? Does this imply that it is impossible to create a simulation of a mind that finds it lives in an environment without uncertainty? That is correct. If so is it because even if the physical laws in one instantiation may be certain, where some of the infinite number of computations that all instantiate that mind may diverge and in particular which one that mind will find itself in is not knowable? Yes. I will come back on this in the seven step thread. The consequence being that all observers everywhere live in QM-like environments? Absolutely. We can consider that we live in an infinity of computations, but we cannot distinguish them ... until they differentiate sufficiently so that they are in principle distinguishable (like being in Washington or being in Moscow). This entails that below our substitution level what can be observed depends directly on some average on an infinity of computations. The quantum-like aspect of nature is, in that sense, a consequence of digitalism in the cognitive science. The classical, and computational, aspect of physics remains the hard things to derive. Interesting, I am curious is there some relationship between ones substitution level and where one will find the QM uncertainty? If all observers live in uncertain environments, and it took us this long to discover QM behavior, I imagine for some observers it could be much harder or much easier to find this uncertainty level. What do you think controls how deep one must look to see the QM behavior first hand? I suppose it might also be related to the complexity of one's observer moment; the more information one takes in from the environment and has in memory the lower the level the uncertainty should be. A God like mind that knew the position of every particle in the universe in which it lived might not have any uncertainty, but of course the mind couldn't encode everything about itself... Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The seven step-Mathematical preliminaries 2
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:28 AM, kimjo...@ozemail.com.au
kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
On Thu Jun 4 1:15 , Bruno Marchal sent:
Very good answer, Kim,
Just a few comments. and then the sequel.
Exercice 4: does the real number square-root(2) belongs to {0, 1, 2,
3, ...}?
No idea what square-root(2) means. When I said I was innumerate I wasn't
kidding! I
could of course look
it up or ask my mathematics teacher friends but I just know your explanation
will make
theirs seem trite.
Well thanks. The square root of 2 is a number x, such that x*x (x times x, x
multiplied by
itself) gives 2.For example, the square root of 4 is 2, because 2*2 is 4. The
square root of
9 is 3, because 3*3 is 9. Her by square root I mean the positive square
root, because we
will see (more later that soon) that numbers can have negative square root,
but please
forget this. At this stage, with this definition, you can guess that the
square root of 2
cannot be a natural number. 1*1 = 1, and 2*2 = 4, and it would be astonishing
that x
could be bigger than 2. So if there is number x such that x*x is 2, we can
guess that such
a x cannot be a natural number, that is an element of {0, 1, 2, 3 ...}, and
the answer of
exercise 4 is no. The square root of two will reappear recurrently, but
more in examples,
than in the sequence of notions which are strictly needed for UDA-7.
OK - I find this quite mind-blowing; probably because I now understand it for
the first
time in my life. So how did it get this rather ridiculous name of square
root? What's it
called in French?
I don't know what it is called in French, but I can answer the first
part. I remember the day I first figured out where the term came
from.
When you have a number multiplied by itself, the result is called a
square. 3*3 = 9, so 9 is a square. Imagine arranging a set of peas,
if you can arrange them in a square (the four cornered kind) with the
same number of rows as columns, then that number is a square. Some
examples of squares are: 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, see the
pattern? And the roots of those squares are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
and 9. The square root is equal to the number of items in a row, or
column when you arrange them in a square.
This is a completely extraneous fact, but one I consider to be very
interesting: Multiply any 4 consecutive positive whole numbers and the
result will always be 1 less than a square number. For example,
5*6*7*8 = 1680, which is 1 less than 1681, which is 41*41. Isn't that
neat?
Jason
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Re: The seven step-Mathematical preliminaries
Torngy, How many numbers do you think exist between 0 and 1? Certainly not only the ones we define, for then there would be a different quantity of numbers between 1 and 2, or 2 and 3. Jason On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Torgny Tholerus tor...@dsv.su.se wrote: Brian Tenneson skrev: Torgny Tholerus wrote: It is impossible to create a set where the successor of every element is inside the set, there must always be an element where the successor of that element is outside the set. I disagree. Can you prove this? Once again, I think the debate ultimately is about whether or not to adopt the axiom of infinity. I think everyone can agree without that axiom, you cannot build or construct an infinite set. There's nothing right or wrong with adopting any axioms. What results is either interesting or not, relevant or not. How do you handle the Russell paradox with the set of all sets that does not contain itself? Does that set contain itself or not? My answer is that that set does not contain itself, because no set can contain itself. So the set of all sets that does not contain itself, is the same as the set of all sets. And that set does not contain itself. This set is a set, but it does not contain itself. It is exactly the same with the natural numbers, BIGGEST+1 is a natural number, but it does not belong to the set of all natural numbers. The set of all sets is a set, but it does not belong to the set of all sets. What the largest number is depends on how you define natural number. One possible definition is that N contains all explicit numbers expressed by a human being, or will be expressed by a human being in the future. Amongst all those explicit numbers there will be one that is the largest. But this largest number is not an explicit number. This raises a deeper question which is this: is mathematics dependent on humanity or is mathematics independent of humanity? I wonder what would happen to that human being who finally expresses the largest number in the future. What happens to him when he wakes up the next day and considers adding one to yesterday's number? This is no problem. If he adds one to the explicit number he expressed yesterday, then this new number is an explicit number, and the number expressed yesterday was not the largest number. Both 17 and 17+1 are explicit numbers. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Ants are not conscious
Dr Nick, I think part of what the mirror test attempts to establish is that the animal recognizes the reflection as itself, therefore showing the animal has a sense of itself as an independent actor within an environment as opposed to simply an ego-less series of experiences. If an irritant were used instead of paint and the animal responded, it would certainly show the animal was aware of the irritation, but it wouldn't necessary prove the animal is aware of itself being an independent entity. I think there are lots of problems with the mirror test, at least insofar as it being used as a means of separating self-aware animals from non-self aware ones. I think it can be used to prove self-awareness but not disprove it. For instance, there are many dogs and cats that look at their reflection and don't react as if it were another animal, is this evidence they recognize their own reflection? I came up with a modified mirror test, which I call a surprise test. Have an animal set such that it can see itself in a mirror. Then using a probe that is silent, orderless, etc, have it slowly approach from behind (so as to be visible in the mirror but not directly) and touch the animal. If its level of surprise is greater than when repeated without the mirror, then one might conclude the animal anticipated being poked by the probe as it saw its reflection about to be touched. Jason On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Dr Nick m...@dtech.fsnet.co.uk wrote: Russell I notice in your book the theory of nothing that there is a test for self awareness (Gordon Gallup) called the mirror test. Not many animals are known to have passed this test. However I wonder whether many more would if the spot painted on them actually was not odourless or indeed was an irritant. My point is that why should self awareness be measured by a response from signals from the eye to the brain rather than any other of the senses to indicate that the spot is present and therefore prompt the spotted one to look into the mirror to see what's what? russell standish-2 wrote: I have just submitted my ants are not conscious argument to a journal, and to arXiv. If you're interested, the arXiv identifier is arXiv:0802.4121. Please wait a few hours before trying arXiv, though, until the paper is made public by the system. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Ants-are-not-conscious-tp15738939p25418478.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why I am I?
On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 1:35 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: Are you physicalist? I just don't know. All my everyday experience points towards physicalism: I'm a brain, embodied in a physical body, embedded in a physical environment and evolved via several billion year selection process. All the constituents of my mind could be explained in the evolutionary terms as devices that promoted the survival of my ancestor's genes. From the other hand, all the scientific knowledge imo points towards some kind of digital physics. For example, it's much much easier to just accept modern high-energy physics as a elaborate pure mathematical theory than try to understand it in the everyday terms of material world. Have you read Everett? There are already physicists who describe reality as a flux of information which differentiate in many histories, sometimes recombining by amnesia, etc. You may read the book by Russell Standish theory of Nothing. The book Mind's I, ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett is a good introduction to computationalism. Stathis mentioned Parfit's reasons and persons recently on the FOR list, where we discuss on similar many-reality conception of reality. I would recommend it too. In particular you may read David Deutsch's book the fabric of Reality. Gunther Greindl has put some more advanced references on the web page of the list. Are you aware of computer science and mathematical logic? You could be interested by my own contribution, which I explain on this list, see http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html I didn't read Everett and Deutsch but I'm aware of MWI. I skimmed over Theory of Nothing some time ago and, to be honest, I didn't like to, partially due to Quantum Immortality thing - it was my first encounter with the subject and it seemed like a worst kind of unscientific wishful thinking. But maybe I should give it another, this time more serious try. I'll make an attempt to follow your UDA steps and can accept comp as a _hypothesis_, but now I'm highly skeptical about computationalism as a valid theory of consciousness. Every time I think about it I come to the simulated thunderstorm is NOT a real thunderstorm argument (I don't know the other name, for the first time I read about in some interview with Searle). It's easy for me to accept the possibility of conscious robot (I'm such a robot) but it's hard to accept the possibility of conscious pure (as in CS i.e. without side effects) computer program, as computationalism implies (if I understand it right). If you can accept the possibility of a conscious robot, whose senses are hooked up to video cameras, microphones, etc. would you say the robot would still be conscious if one were too hook up the video and audio inputs of the robot to the output of a virtual environment (think video game)? Now what if both the robot's software and environment rendering software ran within the same computer? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 4:17 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But if numbers can just exist, and matter can just exist, then why can't conscious experiences just exist? Numbers can just exist, and this is the last unsolvable mystery. Yet we can explain (assuming comp) why this mystery is absolutely unsolvable. It is not possible to explain numbers without assuming numbers (or combinators, etc.) Matter cannot exists primitively, but can exist as appearance for some numbers, and those appearance obeys laws, reducible to the math of universal numbers. Consciousness also, but is more fundamental than matter: NUMBER = CONSCIOUSNESS = MATTER, is the probable causal (in some precise number theoretical sense) relation. (probably even NUMBER = CONSCIOUSNESS = MATTER = HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS = HUMAN NUMBERS). Here the last two steps would explain why we don't accept easily (intuitively) the origin). That is interesting, why would you say NUMBER = CONCIOUSNESS = MATTER is more probable than NUMBER = MATTER = CONSCIOUSNESS? Is it related to Boltzmann's theory of independent brains being more probable than whole universes? To your second point, about NUMBER = CONSCIOUSNESS = MATTER = HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS = HUMAN NUMBERS, what is the purpose/role of the consciousness step prior to matter? How does consciousness support matter that supports human consciousness? Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they do? Again, here we can explain why we cannot explain this. Like we can explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite close to the unique one) That is very interesting, what do you mean by those close to the unique one? Would these be observers which appear early on in the Dovetailer Algorithm? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything a theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to everything, since the more you trascend a theory the bigger the possibilities get): The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or incomplete (we have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already made the quest for the complete theory meaningless. Gödel showed that all theories on *numbers* are contradictory of incomplete. And it is a direct consequence of Church thesis. Once you grasp the concept of universal number or machine, you understand that truth, even on just machines and numbers, is not completely axiomatisable. But that is a reason to be humble in front of arithmetical truth. Not a reason to dismiss it. It kicks back a lot. Also, if you mention Gödel, it means you accept elementary arithmetic. My logical point is that if you believe you (can) surivive with a digital *body*, then elementary arithmetic has to be enough. WE have too extract the SWE, and other appearances from that. It is a point in (applied) logic, if you want. Bruno, I have had some difficulty in seeing how to get from the numbers and arithmetic to universal machines and programs such as the universal dovetailer. For example, the existence of the Java language doesn't directly imply all possible Java programs are being executed somewhere. Is there some example you can provide of how to get from numbers to the execution of programs? I've been thinking about it myself for a while and this is the closest I have gotten, is it along the right track? 1. If all natural numbers exist, then relations between those numbers exist (e.g. 5 is 3 more than 2) 2. There are an infinite number of ways to get from some number x to number y (e.g. if x is 2, and y is 5: y = x^2+1, y = x + 3, y = x * 3 - 1) are all valid relations between 2 and 5. 3. Every relation, may be applied recursively to generate an infinite sequence of numbers, the simplest relation: y=x+1, when applied recursively gives all the successors, others more complex ones might give the Fibonacci sequence, or run through states of the Game of Life. Is this enough? It seems like something is being added on top of the numbers, the relations themselves must be treated as independent entities, as well as recursively applied relations for every number. Is there a simpler or more obvious way the existence of numbers yields the dovetailer? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
New Paper by Thomas Hertog and Stephen Hawking
Described in this article: http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2617 This summation of all paths, proposed in the 1960s by physicist Richard Feynman and others, is the only way to explain some of the bizarre properties of quantum particles, such as their apparent ability to be in two places at once. The key point is that not all paths contribute equally to the photon's behaviour: the straight-line trajectory dominates over the indirect ones. Hertog argues that the same must be true of the path through time that took the Universe into its current state. We must regard it as a sum over all possible histories. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: 2010/1/14 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com: Given the ways ASSA has been defined, I think there are two possible camps within ASSA. One that believes there is a next moment for you to experience, chosen randomly from among all, and another which believes there is no next moment, the observer is the observer moment, an eternal thought. In that respect, ASSA would be more likely to tie the informational state to the consciousness rather than the computational process itself. In the fixed, no next OM model, which one you find yourself is sampled from among all OMs, just who you start is is selected within RSSA. One might think it is absurd to believe they will never observer the next moment, that they might be stuck forever never having finished this sentence, and that 5 seconds from now will prove this idea wrong. But perhaps the you who waited 5 seconds is simply the OM you will be forever. Problems defining personal identity only creep in between the extremes of believing every OM is a unique observer and believing all OMs belong to the same observer. The latter idea is more interesting to me, as it yields reasons for why we should plan and work for the future, and why it is good to treat others as they would like to be treated, while the former offers no reason, or even ability to try or do anything. You can't deny that it *seems* there is a next OM and it *seems* that there is a set of OM's constituting your life. This would happen even if in fact all the OM's were completely separate, disconnected entities. In other words, the question of whether the OM's are separate or belong to the one observer is meaningless, since there is no subjective difference. I agree, there is no subjective difference. But I think there is a logical difference, if you are only your current OM why go to work when some other OM will enjoy the fruits of that labor? But by attaching every OM to the same observer then there is a reason to make sacrifices such as work to the benefit and hopefully overall improvement of the collection of OMs. While one might believe all OM's exist so it doesn't matter what anyone does it is possible to escape this in believing the number or measure of OMs matters. This has also been a matter of contention on this list. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Everything List Survey
All, I've created a basic survey regarding common topics of discussion on the everything list. I think the results would be quite interesting. It is available here: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=n32533346wr4fp0694426 If others come forward with a lot of suggestions for other questions, I could consolidate them into a more in-depth survey. Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Everything List Survey
There have been 9 responses so far, I've attached a preview of the results to this e-mail. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to make the results publicly viewable. With this free service, the survey will remain live until 10 days pass or until there are 50 responses. Jason On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: All, I've created a basic survey regarding common topics of discussion on the everything list. I think the results would be quite interesting. It is available here: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=n32533346wr4fp0694426 If others come forward with a lot of suggestions for other questions, I could consolidate them into a more in-depth survey. Thanks, Jason Title: FreeOnlineSurveys.com View Results Results for: Everything List Survey 1) I believe that everything exists.PercentageResponsesTrue 88.9%8False 11.1%1Total responses:92) I believe in mathematical realism. (All self-consistent mathematical objects are real)PercentageResponsesTrue 77.8%7False 22.2%2Total responses:93) I believe in arithmatical realism (At a minimum, the integers have their own objective reality)PercentageResponsesTrue 66.7%6False 33.3%3Total responses:94) I believe the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is preferable to the copenhagen interpretation.PercentageResponsesTrue 77.8%7False 22.2%2Total responses:95) I believe in quantum (or some other) form of immortality.PercentageResponsesTrue 55.6%5False 44.4%4Total responses:96) I believe reality includes:PercentageResponsesMathematical, Material, or Physical structures11.11Consciousness and thought11.11Some combination of both55.65Other22.22Total responses:97) I believe that with the right software a digital computer can be consciousPercentageResponsesTrue 55.6%5False 44.4%4Total responses:98) I believe my next observer moment PercentageResponsesis a meaningless concept, I am an eternal thought22.22is a meaningless concept, I am all observer moments22.22is randomly selected from all extensions from my current one22.22is randomly selected from all observer moments0.00Other33.33Total responses:99) I believe the number of duplicate observer moments, or their measure, is meaningful to what I am experiencing nowPercentageResponsesTrue 44.4%4False 55.6%5Total responses:910) I believe the universe we find ourselves in currently PercentageResponsesis continuous and uncomputable12.51is digital and computable37.53is made up of an infinity of computations, and uncomputable50.04Total responses:811) I believe the following objects posess consciousness:PercentageResponsesMyself9.48Other human beings9.48Aliens of sufficient intelligence9.48Apes9.48Dolphins9.48Dogs8.27Cats9.48Mice7.16Shrimp5.95Spiders5.95Ants5.95Ant colonies3.53Thermostats3.53Web browsers2.42Rocks1.2112) Regarding time, I believe PercentageResponsesthat only the present is real22.22that only the past and present are real11.11that the past, present and future are real66.76Total responses:9 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 3:22 PM, russell standish li...@hpcoders.com.auwrote: On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 10:21:34AM -0600, Jason Resch wrote: If you don't believe they are you, that would imply when you put a pot of coffee on the stove, you do so out of altruism. Since it only benefits those future observers who have memory of being you but are not. It's not a useful philosophy for building anything on top of such as decision making as according to that theory, observers cannot make changes affecting what they will experience (since they only are that one moment). Perhaps things really are that way, but evolution has created a useful illusion of continuity which leads to the overall betterment of OM's on average. Rather than sit around never making coffee because it will be someone else who experiences it, you decide to make it knowing someone else will be better off for it. As you said, there would be no observational distinction between whether you are one OM, one track of OMs, or all OMs, but they lead to different philosophies, the first being perhaps something like nihilism, nothing you do matters to your. The second leads to egocentrism and selfishness. The last leads to a golden rule, sacrifice for others type of ethic. I think the middle one is the most complex, because it has the hardest definition as to what OMs to group together. Of the first and last, the last is perhaps simpler too, since it could be thought to attach one observer to all OMs rather than an observer for each OM. Jason The last viewpoint leads to a kind of fatalism - all these other OMs exist/happen anyway, nothing I can do will change that. If a person or society evolves to become more altruistic it would affect the distribution and measure of future OMs, hopefully to the positive, where there would be fewer suffering OMs. This does enter into the whole pre-destination/free-will question, but so long as the measure of OMs is of importance I don't think the last viewpoint leads to fatalism. To get the golden rule evolving, you need a complex system of rewards and punishments, and perhaps a fair amount of shared DNA (see the usual evolutionary explanations for altruism). But it still evolves under the second option above. I have some familiarity with theories concerning how altrusim evolved, but the type of altruism evolution has left us with is far from optimal if the goal is to optimize the overall quality of OMs. Evolved altruism teaches us to favor ourselves, our family, and our tribe in that order and above strangers or less familiar people, but does this lead to optimal behavior? In terms of gene propagation, perhaps, not the overall quality of OMs. For example, most people would agree donating an organ to save a life is a good thing, and many do to save a family member. Far fewer would consider donating an organ to a complete stranger, but isn't net benefit and cost the same, regardless of who receives it? Objectively yes, but not for the genes of the donor. Evolution can only take us so far, and it also leads to occasional defectors a'la the prisoner dilemma, where a sociopath benefits from taking advantage of other's good will. This last viewpoint, if fully embraced, provides a framework where even a sociopath could decide it in his or her interest to act altruistically. Not entirely selflessly, but with an equal balance between one's self and any other conscious entities. If someone would benefit more from having something you possessed, this view would suggest you should offer it to them. It naturally yields utilitarianism, the golden rule, giving away a spare coat if you have two, etc. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Everything List Survey
There have now been 26 responses. This will be the final time I collect the results to send out, so for now the poll can be considered closed. In summary: 65% of people believe who took the survey believe everything exists, with an equal percentage accepting mathematical realism. Slightly more, 73% believe in arithmetical realism, and 69% believe a digital computer can be conscious. 52% apparently believe Bruno's description of the physical word as an infinity of computations, while 32% believe it digital and computable, and 16% believing it to be continuous. 60% believe that the measure of OMs plays a role in what they experience. Regarding OMs, no one thought their next is randomly selected from among all OMs, as ASSA does, while 23% chose RSSA. 37% thought it was meaningless to consider a next OM, with 19% believing they are but a single OM without a next, and 15% believing they are all OMs. On this question 42% did not choose any of these options and chose other, making it the most popular choice. Regarding reality, 8% take a materialist view, not believing in the reality of consciousness, while 23% take the opposite approach and believing consciousness is all that reality is. 50% believe it is some combination and 19% believe it is something else (one saying he doesn't know, another sating combinations of tronnies, and another logico-mathematics). The question that had the highest level of agreement was the preference of the MWI to CI, at 81%, with 73% believing in some form of immortality. On consciousness: 96% believe they are conscious 88% believe other humans and intelligent enough aliens are conscious 80% believe dolphins, apes, and cats are conscious 77% believe dogs are conscious (who is the cat lover who thinks dogs are zombies?) 73% believe mice are conscious 61% believe shrimp, spiders, and ants are conscious 42% believe ant coolonies are conscious 38% believe thermostats are conscious 34% believe web-browsers are conscious (Is reading bits from a web server different from reading the temperature?) 30% believe rocks are conscious On time, 73% take a block time perspective, while 19% believe in presentism, and 8% in possibilism (past and present only exist). Was there anyone who believed everything exists, but not in block time? Thanks to everyone for your participation. Jason On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Torgny Tholerus tor...@dsv.su.se wrote: Stathis Papaioannou skrev: 2010/1/14 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: Interesting so far: - people are about evenly divided on the question of whether computers can be conscious - no-one really knows what to make of OM's - more people believe cats are conscious than dogs Oh, and one person does not believe that they are conscious! Come on, who's the zombie? It's me. (The question on whether computers can be conscious, should have three alternatives: 1) Both computers and humans can be conscious. 2) Humans, but not computers can be conscious. 3) Neither humans nor computers can be conscious. (The alternative: Computers, but not humans can be conscious, is not needed...)) -- Torgny Tholerus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. Title: FreeOnlineSurveys.com View Results Results for: Everything List Survey 1) I believe that everything exists.PercentageResponsesTrue 65.4%17False 34.6%9Total responses:262) I believe in mathematical realism. (All self-consistent mathematical objects are real)PercentageResponsesTrue 65.4%17False 34.6%9Total responses:263) I believe in arithmatical realism (At a minimum, the integers have their own objective reality)PercentageResponsesTrue 73.1%19False 26.9%7Total responses:264) I believe the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is preferable to the copenhagen interpretation.PercentageResponsesTrue 80.8%21False 19.2%5Total responses:265) I believe in quantum (or some other) form of immortality.PercentageResponsesTrue 73.1%19False 26.9%7Total responses:266) I believe reality includes:PercentageResponsesMathematical, Material, or Physical structures7.72Consciousness and thought23.16Some combination of both50.013Other19.25Total responses:267) I believe that with the right software a digital computer can be consciousPercentageResponsesTrue 69.2%18False 30.8%8Total responses:268) I believe my next observer moment PercentageResponsesis a meaningless concept, I am an eternal thought19.25is a meaningless concept,
Re: R/ASSA query
On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: What caused it to exist? Who said it needs a cause? Why this reality as opposed to nothing? Given the principle of sufficient reason, wouldn't nothingness be the expected state of things? Imagine you and I are at two ends of a computer terminal, and you know I am about to send you a message. The message encoding is such that there are two parts, where the first part indicates the message length, and the second the message. Notice that before I send any information, the possibility for the message I might send is unlimited. You know neither the size nor the content. As you begin to receive my message, information I send you isn't giving you anything new, or creating any new possibility, instead it is restricting that possibility, telling you what the message is not from among all the infinite possibilities it might have been. It might be clearer to see how this works considering the multi-verse. If I tell you I have a cup on my desk, but not what color it is, you can safely assume copies of you exist in various branches where it could be any color, blue, red, yellow, etc. But if I then tell you it is indeed red, then that just restricted possibility. Now apply this concept to the question of why the universe exists, why something rather than nothing. What is simpler, nothing existing, or no restrictions on what exists? Using that message transfer example, to send you an empty message requires I send you 1 bit, it would be the bit '0', indicating the message is zero-length, followed by empty 0-bit long message. However, what if I sent no message at all? That would take 0 bits, and all possibilities remain open. Think of it as: is it easier for God to command that nothing exists, or easier for him to say nothing at all? This idea is explained in greater detail in Russel Standish's Theory of Nothing. But, given that reality exists, why are things this way as opposed to some other way? If we follow from the assumption we were led to above, that everything existing is simpler than nothing existing then the laws of physics are determined by virtue of your ability to observe the universe around you. Other observers exist in other universes, with different physical laws, and also rightly ask why these laws? The Anthropic principle holds that all observers find themselves in environments compatible with their existence, so these laws are what they are because they allowed conscious observers to evolve to become aware. St. Augustine observed that if someone were to stand barefoot on the beach for all eternity, then his footmark on the sand would be eternal too, but nonetheless it would still have its cause – the foot making it. - M. Heller, Ultimate Explanations of the Universe Concepts such as time, and cause and effect only exist to those inside the universe. Outside of the universe it would be possible to have a 4-d view of the the entire evolution of the universe. In this view it would be a static block. Think of characters in a movie, with things changing frame by frame, but if the characters could jump outside the movie they are in they would see they exist on a fixed DVD, with all frames simultaneously existing. They would then see that a question such as what started the movie playing from the beginning makes no sense, however it would still a legitimate question to ask where did this DVD come from? Further, to quote Roger Scruton on the same topic: “Suppose we were to accept the big bang hypothesis concerning the origin of the universe. Only a short-sighted person would think that we have then answered the question of how the world began. For what caused the bang? Any answer will suppose that something already existed. So the hypothesis cannot explain the origin of things. The quest for an origin leads us forever backwards into the past. But either it is unsatisfiable- in which case, how does cosmology explain the existence of the world? - or it comes to rest in the postulation of a causa sui - in which case, we have left the scientific question unanswered and taking refuge in theology. Science itself pushes us towards the antinomy, by forcing us always to the limits of nature.” This question is more akin to asking why does the DVD exist? The best answer I have found comes from extending arithmetical realism, the idea that things such as numbers exist, without cause, timelessly. One school of thought believes that numbers are simply ideas and human inventions, but I disagree. There are an infinite number of facts one could state about the number 3, yet of course no single mind in this universe could hold all those facts. Should that imply that facts which haven't been in someone's head are not true, or that numbers too big for anyone to have thought of don't exist?
Re: R/ASSA query
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 12:50 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: What caused it to exist? Who said it needs a cause? Why this reality as opposed to nothing? Given the principle of sufficient reason, wouldn't nothingness be the expected state of things? Imagine you and I are at two ends of a computer terminal, and you know I am about to send you a message. The message encoding is such that there are two parts, where the first part indicates the message length, and the second the message. Notice that before I send any information, the possibility for the message I might send is unlimited. You know neither the size nor the content. As you begin to receive my message, information I send you isn't giving you anything new, or creating any new possibility, instead it is restricting that possibility, telling you what the message is not from among all the infinite possibilities it might have been. It might be clearer to see how this works considering the multi-verse. If I tell you I have a cup on my desk, but not what color it is, you can safely assume copies of you exist in various branches where it could be any color, blue, red, yellow, etc. But if I then tell you it is indeed red, then that just restricted possibility. Now apply this concept to the question of why the universe exists, why something rather than nothing. What is simpler, nothing existing, or no restrictions on what exists? Using that message transfer example, to send you an empty message requires I send you 1 bit, it would be the bit '0', indicating the message is zero-length, followed by empty 0-bit long message. However, what if I sent no message at all? That would take 0 bits, and all possibilities remain open. Think of it as: is it easier for God to command that nothing exists, or easier for him to say nothing at all? This idea is explained in greater detail in Russel Standish's Theory of Nothing. So in this view conscious exists as a fundamental entity? Or conscious experience is caused by something more fundamental? Or it supervenes on something more fundamental? That of course is my core question...how does something unconscious (matter, numbers, etc.) give rise to conscious experience? When I was younger I used to be dualist. I thought: a person could be happy, a person is made out of atoms, but how can atoms be happy? But it is easy to get lost in a subject if you analyze it from the wrong level. Consider how hard topics in biology such as cell division, or digestion would be to understand if one attempted to analyze it at the atomic level. Rather than asking how matter, or numbers give rise to conscious experience, I think it is better to ask what kinds of systems are conscious, and what properties of those systems is it that makes them conscious. Complicating the matter, is human experience is extraordinarily rich, your eyes take in gigabits of data every second, and it is processed by trillions of neurons and connections between them. Therefore I think it helps to simplify consciousness as much as possible. Close your eyes in a quiet place, and pinch yourself, concentrating on the experience of that pain and how it really feels. Is the feeling of pain anything more than simple knowledge coupled with a distracting compulsion to try to stop it? What does pain really feel like and how is the feeling different from a lighter pinch which does not cause pain? Imagine an intelligent being with a really simple eye, it can only tell if it is in the presence of light or not. When it is one group of neurons fires and this knowledge is transfered to other parts of the brain so the being knows and can talk about whether or not it is in light. What would it say if you asked it about its experience, what it is like to see light vs. seeing dark. Likely it wouldn't be able to communicate the difference, or what it feels like, any more than you can describe to me how red is different from green, it just knows they are different. Now give this being a million such eyes, each one representing light or darkness in a 1000x1000 grid, you could now ask the being about the status of any of the million pixels it can see, as to the status, is it black or white? But with this ability the being still wouldn't be able to see as we see, another layer of processing is needed to apply these states to a field which could allow the being to talk about patches of lightness or darkness in their field of vision, again this is simply knowledge, but summarized to a simpler form to talk about. Some people with brain damage are at this level ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_agnosia ) so
Re: measure again '10
Jack, What you mentioned ending the existence of a suffering copy can be positive. I am curious, would you consider ending any observer whose quality of life was less than the average weighted (by number of copies) quality of life of all observers everywhere? Consider this example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#Average_v_total Total utilitarianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_utilitarianism advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the total utility of its members. According to Derek Parfithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit, this type of utilitarianism falls victim to the Repugnant Conclusionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_Conclusion, whereby large numbers of people with very low but non-negative utility values can be seen as a better goal than a population of a less extreme size living in comfort. In other words, according to the theory, it is a moral good to breed more people on the world for as long as total happiness rises. [13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#cite_note-12 Average utilitarianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_utilitarianism, on the other hand, advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the average utility of that population. It avoids Parfit's repugnant conclusion, but causes other problems like the Mere Addition Paradox. For example, bringing a moderately happy person in a very happy world would be seen as an immoral act; aside from this, the theory implies that it would be a moral good to eliminate all people whose happiness is below average, as this would raise the average happiness[14]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#cite_note-13. This could however be circumvented by assigning a low utility score to dead people, and taking them into account in the average. I think applying one of these philosophies could shed some light on the inherent goodness or badness when it comes to ending a copy. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main measure again '10 thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my absolute measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. What about if half of your neurons were 1/2 their normal size, and the other half were twice their normal size? How would this be predicted to effect your measure? What about beings who have higher resolution senses, and thus a greater possibility for variation in senses due to the higher number of possible states? This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. It is an interesting question I hadn't considered. Given the relative state interpretation, how large is the system really? Is it bounded by one's skull, one's nerve cells, one's light cone? My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of classical water waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. But the mice are mice, and would admit as much if you asked one and it could respond. We're also not whales. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro-electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the Doomsday argument - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. Maybe we are already in that era. Also given we would be effectively immortal, in the long run, the experiences of uploaded minds should greatly outweigh organic ones, if they engage in game-worlds for leisure. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: I see a red rose. You see a red rose. Is your experience of redness the same as mine? 1. Yes, they are identical. 2. They are different as long as neural organization of our brains is slightly different, but you are potentially capable of experiencing my redness with some help from neurosurgeon who can shape your brain in the way as mine is. 3. They are different as long as some 'code' of our brains is slightly different but you (and every machine) is potentially capable of experiencing my redness if they somehow achieve the same 'code'. 5. They are different and absolutely private - you (and anybody else, be it a human or machine) don't and can't experience my redness. 6. The question doesn't have any sense because ... (please elaborate) 7. ... What is your opinion? My (naive) answer is (3). Our experiences are identical (would a correct term be 'ontologically identical'?) as long as they have the same symbolic representation and the symbols have the same grounding in the physical world. The part about grounding is just an un-educated guess, I don't understand the subject and have only an intuitive feeling that semantics (what computation is about) is important and somehow determined by the physical world out there. Let me explain with example. Suppose, that you: 1. simulate my brain in a computer program, so we can say that this program represents my brain in your symbols. 2. simulate a red rose 3. feed rose data into my simulated brain. I think (more believe than think) that this simulated brain won't see my redness - in fact, it won't see nothing at all cause it isn't conscious. But if you: 1. make a robot that simulates my brain in my symbols i.e. behaves (relative to the physical world) in the same ways as I do 2. show a rose to the robot I think that robot will experience the same redness as me. Would be glad if somebody suggests something to read about 'symbols grounding', semantics, etc., I have a lot of confusion here, I've always thought that logic is a formal language for a 'syntactic' manipulation with 'strings' that acquire meaning only in our minds. I have to disagree with your intuition that grounding in the physical world is required. What would you say about the possibility that our whole universe is running in some computer? According to your intuition: Physical Universe-Your Brain = Conscious Physical Universe-Robot Brain = Conscious Physical Universe-Computer Simulation-Software Brain = Not Conscious What would you say about this setup: Computer Simulation-Physical Universe-Your Brain That is to say, what if our physical universe were simulated in some alien's computer instead of being some primitive physical world? Also, what would the non-conscious software brain say if someone asked it what it saw? Would the software simulation of your brain ever feel bewilderment over its sensations or wonder about consciousness? Would it ever compose an e-mail on topics such as the redness of red or would that activity be impossible for the software brain fed simulated input? If you expect different behavior in any conceivable situation between the robot brain fed input from a camera, and the software brain fed input from the simulation, assuming the programming and input are identical, I think this leads to a contradiction. Equivalent Turing machines should evolve identically given the same input. Therefore there should be no case in which the robot would write an e-mail questioning the redness of red, but the software simulation would not. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: I see a red rose. You see a red rose. Is your experience of redness the same as mine? 1. Yes, they are identical. 2. They are different as long as neural organization of our brains is slightly different, but you are potentially capable of experiencing my redness with some help from neurosurgeon who can shape your brain in the way as mine is. 3. They are different as long as some 'code' of our brains is slightly different but you (and every machine) is potentially capable of experiencing my redness if they somehow achieve the same 'code'. 5. They are different and absolutely private - you (and anybody else, be it a human or machine) don't and can't experience my redness. 6. The question doesn't have any sense because ... (please elaborate) 7. ... What is your opinion? My (naive) answer is (3). Our experiences are identical (would a correct term be 'ontologically identical'?) as long as they have the same symbolic representation and the symbols have the same grounding in the physical world. The part about grounding is just an un-educated guess, I don't understand the subject and have only an intuitive feeling that semantics (what computation is about) is important and somehow determined by the physical world out there. Let me explain with example. Suppose, that you: 1. simulate my brain in a computer program, so we can say that this program represents my brain in your symbols. 2. simulate a red rose 3. feed rose data into my simulated brain. I think (more believe than think) that this simulated brain won't see my redness - in fact, it won't see nothing at all cause it isn't conscious. But if you: 1. make a robot that simulates my brain in my symbols i.e. behaves (relative to the physical world) in the same ways as I do 2. show a rose to the robot I think that robot will experience the same redness as me. Would be glad if somebody suggests something to read about 'symbols grounding', semantics, etc., I have a lot of confusion here, I've always thought that logic is a formal language for a 'syntactic' manipulation with 'strings' that acquire meaning only in our minds. I have to disagree with your intuition that grounding in the physical world is required. What would you say about the possibility that our whole universe is running in some computer? According to your intuition: Physical Universe-Your Brain = Conscious Physical Universe-Robot Brain = Conscious Physical Universe-Computer Simulation-Software Brain = Not Conscious What would you say about this setup: Computer Simulation-Physical Universe-Your Brain That is to say, what if our physical universe were simulated in some alien's computer instead of being some primitive physical world? Also, what would the non-conscious software brain say if someone asked it what it saw? Would the software simulation of your brain ever feel bewilderment over its sensations or wonder about consciousness? Would it ever compose an e-mail on topics such as the redness of red or would that activity be impossible for the software brain fed simulated input? If you expect different behavior in any conceivable situation between the robot brain fed input from a camera, and the software brain fed input from the simulation, assuming the programming and input are identical, I think this leads to a contradiction. Equivalent Turing machines should evolve identically given the same input. Therefore there should be no case in which the robot would write an e-mail questioning the redness of red, but the software simulation would not. Jason And another interesting thought experiment to think about: What if a baby from birth was never allowed to see the real world, but instead were given VR goggles providing a realistic interactive environment, entirely generated from a computer simulation. Would that infant be unconscious of the things it saw? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: I see a red rose. You see a red rose. Is your experience of redness the same as mine? 1. Yes, they are identical. 2. They are different as long as neural organization of our brains is slightly different, but you are potentially capable of experiencing my redness with some help from neurosurgeon who can shape your brain in the way as mine is. 3. They are different as long as some 'code' of our brains is slightly different but you (and every machine) is potentially capable of experiencing my redness if they somehow achieve the same 'code'. 5. They are different and absolutely private - you (and anybody else, be it a human or machine) don't and can't experience my redness. 6. The question doesn't have any sense because ... (please elaborate) 7. ... What is your opinion? I think our brains are wired similarly enough that most people experience colors similarly, excepting the tetrachromats and color blind. Consider the following other sensations, and how similar you think they might be between people: a needle prick, coldness, a high-pitched sound, hunger, complete darkness. Is complete darkness between two people more or less the same, what about the sound of an 8 KHz tone? To answer this question, I would say somewhere between 1 and 2, they are probably very close between any two random normal humans but perhaps not identical. This is not to say that an alien with a differently evolved and structured brain could not have a completely different experience when looking at a rose; I just think our brains are wired similarly enough that red to you could be as much red to me as coldness to you is coldness to me. The higher the information content of the experience, however, the more room there is for possible difference. Jason My (naive) answer is (3). Our experiences are identical (would a correct term be 'ontologically identical'?) as long as they have the same symbolic representation and the symbols have the same grounding in the physical world. The part about grounding is just an un-educated guess, I don't understand the subject and have only an intuitive feeling that semantics (what computation is about) is important and somehow determined by the physical world out there. Let me explain with example. Suppose, that you: 1. simulate my brain in a computer program, so we can say that this program represents my brain in your symbols. 2. simulate a red rose 3. feed rose data into my simulated brain. I think (more believe than think) that this simulated brain won't see my redness - in fact, it won't see nothing at all cause it isn't conscious. But if you: 1. make a robot that simulates my brain in my symbols i.e. behaves (relative to the physical world) in the same ways as I do 2. show a rose to the robot I think that robot will experience the same redness as me. Would be glad if somebody suggests something to read about 'symbols grounding', semantics, etc., I have a lot of confusion here, I've always thought that logic is a formal language for a 'syntactic' manipulation with 'strings' that acquire meaning only in our minds. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 8:05 AM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: What would you say about this setup: Computer Simulation-Physical Universe-Your Brain That is to say, what if our physical universe were simulated in some alien's computer instead of being some primitive physical world? This setup doesn't sound very convincing to me: - I believe that simulated objects (agents) can't be conscious - I believe that I am consious = I'm not simulated and all the universe is not simulated. And another interesting thought experiment to think about: What if a baby from birth was never allowed to see the real world, but instead were given VR goggles providing a realistic interactive environment, entirely generated from a computer simulation. Would that infant be unconscious of the things it saw? This argument sound better, but still: 1. Goggles are not enough - baby learns via active interaction with the outside world, i.e. motor function matters and you should provide baby with a full-body armor that completely simulates the environment and makes interaction consistent (so haptic, proprioceptive and visual experiences don't contradict each other). But that's hard and maybe impossible - you can't (or can?) completely prevent the contaminating influence of the world - for example, you should feed the baby. 2. The most important is that baby has nervous system that evolved for a very long time and already somehow encodes external symbols. You just substituting real input with virtual input but that virtual input is already properly encoded and speaks the symbolic language that is grounded in real world and comprehensible by baby's brain. 3. Baby, itself, is real and made from matter and, maybe, real baby in VR != virtual baby in VR. In the other words, there is a special class of real Turing machine implementations that posses the meaning grounded in the environment. Maybe we have definitions for what is meant by simulation. I say this because of your last comment about meaning needing to be grounded in an environment. Within realistic computer simulations there is an environment which encodes many of the same relations we are used to. Concreteness of objects, Newtonian mechanics ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae6ovaDBiDE ), light effects ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvI1l0nAd1c ) etc. are all embedded within the code that informs the simulation how to evolve, just as the laws of physics would in a physical world. Do you see the meaning of physical laws being somehow different from the programmed laws that simulate an environment? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:27 AM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: Do you see the meaning of physical laws being somehow different from the programmed laws that simulate an environment? Yes, I feel that simulated mind is not identical to the real one. Simulation is only the extension of the mind - just a tool, a mental crutch, a pluggable module that gives you additional abilities. For example, if I had the computation power of my brain sufficient enough, I could simulate other minds entirely in my mind (in imagination, whatever) - but these imaginary minds won't be conscious, will they? I think that depends on the level of resolution to which you are simulating them. The people you see in your dreams aren't conscious, but if a super intelligence could simulate another's mind to the resolution of their neurons, I think those simulated persons would be conscious. In the other words: 1. I accept that computation is a description (the impretaive one) of reality, like math (declarative) or human language. There is a difference between computation as a description (say a print out or CD containing a program's source code) and the computation as an action or process. The CD wouldn't be conscious, but if you loaded it into a computer and executed it, I think it would be. 2. I don't believe (for now) that it has any meaning (and consciousness) per se. So you think the software mind in a software environment would never question the redness of red, when the robot brain would? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: I think those simulated persons would be conscious. The possibility of superintelligence that creates worlds in its dreams kinda freaks me out :) Carl Sagan in Cosmos said that in the Hindu religion, there are an infinite number of Gods, each dreaming their own universe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E-_DdX8Ke0 So you think the software mind in a software environment would never question the redness of red, when the robot brain would? No, I think that good enough simulation of me must question the redness of the red simply by definition - because I'm questioning and it simulates my behavior. Nevertheless, I think that this simulation won't be conscious and has only descriptive power, like a reflection in the mirror (bad example but confers the idea). But I can't tell what exactly is the difference, what is that obscure physicalist principle that I meant speaking about symbol grounding in the real world and that makes me (and not my simulation) conscious. ok, suppose we'll record a day in the life of my simulation and then replay it - will it still be conscious? I don't think your recording will be conscious. It lacks the causal relations that give meaning to its symbols. I believe the symbols are grounded and related to each other through their interactions in the processing by the CPU/Turing machine/physical laws. Do you think the redness of red is a physical property of red light or an internal property of you (the organization of neurons in your brain)? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: the redness of the red
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ soulcatche...@gmail.comwrote: Let me explain with example. Suppose, that you: 1. simulate my brain in a computer program, so we can say that this program represents my brain in your symbols. 2. simulate a red rose 3. feed rose data into my simulated brain. I think (more believe than think) that this simulated brain won't see my redness - in fact, it won't see nothing at all cause it isn't conscious. But if you: 1. make a robot that simulates my brain in my symbols i.e. behaves (relative to the physical world) in the same ways as I do 2. show a rose to the robot I think that robot will experience the same redness as me. Would be glad if somebody suggests something to read about 'symbols grounding', semantics, etc., I have a lot of confusion here, I've always thought that logic is a formal language for a 'syntactic' manipulation with 'strings' that acquire meaning only in our minds. When I play a video game I am conscious. Presumably I would still be conscious even using a fully immersive system like the vertebrain system described on this page ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard8.htm ). If that is true, and you agree with me so far, do you think a brain in a vat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat ) would be conscious? Would it be conscious whether its optic nerve were connected to a webcam or connected to the TV/OUT port of a video game? What about a human brain that spent its whole life as a brain in a vat from the time it was born (assuming it were given a robot body for input, or assuming it was given a computer game realistic reality)? I am curious at what point you think the consciousness would cease. If you agree that the brain in the vat would be conscious in all cases (even when given input from a video game) and you agree that a robot body with a software brain would be conscious, why would it stop working when you put a software brain in the same position as the brain in a vat? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Definition of universe
On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: UDA = Universal Dovetailer Argument. It is an argument which is supposed to show that if we take seriously the idea that we are digitally emulable, then we have to take seriously the idea that physics is a branch of number theory. Intensional number theory (number can serves as code for other numbers and functions: it is theoretical computer science, also). Bruno, when you say code here, you are referring to code as in programming code, correct? I understand how a number can function as code for a function or a machine, but how can a number be code for another number? You've said many times that all it takes for everything we see to exist are the natural numbers, addition and multiplication, but where/how do functions and machines enter in to the picture? It is clear to me how once we get to the objective existence of functions, we get the UDA, but I think I am missing some step. Is your point that with addition, multiplication, and an infinite number of successive symbols, any computable function can be constructed? Or do the relations imposed by addition and multiplication somehow create functions/machines? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Definition of universe
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Feb 2010, at 15:49, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Feb 2010, at 03:00, Jason Resch wrote: Is your point that with addition, multiplication, and an infinite number of successive symbols, any computable function can be constructed? You can say so. You could also have said that with addition + multiplication *axioms* + * logic*, any computable function can be proved to exist. So I suppose that is what I was wondering, given at minimum, those, how is the existence of a computable function proved to exist? Could you provide an example of how a simple function, like f(x) = x*2 exists, or is it a very tedious proof? I guess you ask: how is the existence of a computable function proved to exist in a theory T. Usually logicians use the notion of representability. The one variable function f(x) is said to be representable in the theory T, if there is a formula F(x, y) such that when f(n) = m, the theory T proves F(n, m), and usually (although not needed) that T proves Ax (F(n,x) - x = m). Here you will represent the function f(x) = x*2 by the formula F(x, y) : y = x*2. Depending on your theory the proof of the true formula F(n, m) will be tedious or not. For example F(2, 1) is s(s(0)) = s(0) * s(s(0), and you need a theory having at least logic + equality rules, and the axioms 1) x * 0 = 0 2) x* s(y) = x * y + x 3) x + 0 = 0 4) x + s(y) = s(x + y) I let you prove that s(s(0)) = s(0) * s(s(0) from those axioms (using the usual axiom for egality). s(0) * s(s(0)) = s(0) *s(0) + s(0)By axiom 2 with x = s(0) and y = s(0) s(0) *s(0) + s(0) = s(s(0) + 0)By axiom 4 with x = s(0) *s(0) and y = 0 s(s(0) + 0) = s(s(0)) By substitution of identical (logic + equality rules) s(0) * s(s(0)) = s(s(0)) Transitivity of equality (logic + equality rules) s(s(0)) = s(0) * s(s(0)) equality rule (x = y - y = x) And this is F(2, 1), together with its proof. Not very tedious, but F(2010, 1005) would be much more tedious! Note that from this we can also deduce the existential sentence ExF(x, 1), a typical sigma_1 sentence. Or do the relations imposed by addition and multiplication somehow create functions/machines? You can say so but you need logic. Not just in the (meta) background, but made explicit in the axiom of the theory, or the program of the machine (theorem prover). Thanks, You are welcome. Such questions help to see where the difficulties remain. Keep asking if anything is unclear. Thanks again, things are becoming a little more clear for me. My background is in computer science, in case that applies and helps in writing an explanation for my question above. The nice thing is that a function is partial recursive (programmable) if an only if it is representable in a Sigma_1 complete theory. A sigma_1 complete theory is a theory capable of proving all the true sentences equivalent with ExP(x) with P decidable. In particular the theory above (with some more axioms like s(x) = s(y) - x = y, ..) is Sigma_1 complete, and thus Turing universal. All computable functions can be represented in that theory, and all computations can be represented as a proof of a Sigma_1 sentence like above. To show that such a weak theory is Sigma_1 complete is actually long and not so easy. But then, to prove that the game of life is turing universal is rather long also. For weak system, such proof asks for some machine language programming, and the meticulous verification that everything works well. Always tedious, and there are some subtle points. It is well done in the book by Epstein and Carnielli, or Boolos, Burgess and Jeffrey. Here is another very short Turing universal theory (a purely equational logic-free theory!) : ((K x) y) = x (((S x) y) z) = ((x z)(y z)) (x = x) (x = y) == (y = x) (x = y) ; (y = z) === (x = z) (x = y) === ((x z) = (y z)) (x = y) === ((z x) = (z y)) === is informal deduction, and ; is the informal and. You may look at my paper Theoretical computer science and the natural sciences for more on this theory, and its probable importance in deriving the shape of physics from numbers. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B75DC-4GX6J45-1_user=532047_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2005_rdoc=1_fmt=_orig=search_sort=dview=c_acct=C26678_version=1_urlVersion=0_userid=532047md5=e087a268f1a31acd7cd9ef629e6dc543 Hmm... It is 32 $ ... You may look at my older posts on the combinators (Smullyan's birds!). It is not important, I wanted just to show you another example. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ So then it seems the integers, addition, and multiplication (plus some logic) are the minimum axioms needed to represent and prove
Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On the many-worlds FAQ: http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html It states that many-worlds implies that worlds split rather than multiple, identical, pre-existing worlds differentiate: Q19 Do worlds differentiate or split? - Can we regard the separate worlds that result from a measurement-like interaction (See What is a measurement?) as having previous existed distinctly and merely differentiated, rather than the interaction as having split one world into many? This is definitely not permissable in many-worlds or any theory of quantum theory consistent with experiment. Worlds do not exist in a quantum superposition independently of each other before they decohere or split. The splitting is a physical process, grounded in the dynamical evolution of the wave vector, not a matter of philosophical, linguistic or mental convenience (see Why do worlds split? and When do worlds split?) If you try to treat the worlds as pre-existing and separate then the maths and probabilistic behaviour all comes out wrong. However, just below, in the Many-minds question: Q20 What is many-minds? -- Many-minds proposes, as an extra fundamental axiom, that an infinity of separate minds or mental states be associated with each single brain state. When the single physical brain state is split into a quantum superposition by a measurement (See What is a measurement?) the associated infinity of minds are thought of as differentiating rather than splitting. The motivation for this brain-mind dichotomy seems purely to avoid talk of minds splitting and talk instead about the differentiation of pre-existing separate mental states. Based on the answers provided in this FAQ, it sounds as though many-minds permits differentiation of pre-existing observers whereas many-worlds does not permit differentiation. The many-minds interpretation also sounds much more similar to computationalism as described by Bruno. Computationalism + arithmetical realism supposes that all possible computations exist, and yield all possible observers. Therefore, the consciousness of these observers would differentiate, rather than split, since they all existed beforehand. What are others thoughts on this FAQ or reasoning? Is there something many-minds offers over many-worlds? How exactly does differentiation conflict with experimental evidence and the predicted probabilities? How does many-minds lead to interference patterns, or only allow a photon one exit path from an interferometer? Is this the primary question for computationalism to answer? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:07 PM, rmiller rmil...@legis.com wrote: To me, the Many-Minds interpretation requires significant changes in frames of reference. Suppose you view a particular world out of many as a 2-dimensional surface. Layers of surfaces comprise the local environment of a particular section of Many Worlds. Now think of a behavior pattern as a set of elements and interactions between elements. Each of the many-worlds is associated with a “snapshot” of your individual behavior pattern unique to that world. But suppose there are similarities between your behavior patterns in worlds A B and C—that set of similar configurations forms what can be described as a fibre bundle through multiple surfaces. If so, this may suggest that at some level consciousness experiences more than one world “surface” at a time. If the ratio of interactions to elements decreases (you enter a darkened room) then the similarities in the behavior system config should result in an increase in the “depth” of the many world surfaces. Increase the ratio of interactions to elements and the complexity of your behavior set increases—linking you to a particular world “surface.” It would seem that, like relativity, the frame of reference is not absolute—and in fact changes as rapidly as perception changes. From others inhabiting the single world surface, it would appear that the behavior system is changing without cause; but if we could somehow view the entire group of world surfaces associated with the core group of a particular behavioral system configuration, then we would be more likely to understand the “reasons” for the behavior. Unfortunately, any single nervous system has any number of configurations associated with multiple world layers---and anyone attempting to perceive it has their own particular sets of configurations (and world layers.) The best we can do is arrive at a general consensus of what is perceived and agree to label that the local shared reality. The Copenhagen theorists infamously suggested that nothing exists unless it is perceived (measured)—and as far as it goes, that would be absolutely true. One cannot perceive what doesn’t exist in that world layer. But if the perception process naturally involved multiple world layers, then the Copenhagen Interpretation would be true, but trivially so (as Hawking said about Many Worlds.) David Deutsch claims we all inhabit multiple worlds, but can’t communicate between the worlds. I think Many Minds, Fibre Bundle topology, and Neodissociationist (Hilgardian) psychology will prove him wrong. RM I am nearly done reading the Fabric of Reality. One thing which isn't clear to me after reading it is how computation or consciousness work if we are all simply unconnected snapshots, without any implicit ordering or connections between any two snapshots, or without the flow of information or causal relationships between such snapshots. The concept of objective snapshots of universes also seems to conflict with the spacetime concept in relativity, which he says is only useful as an approximation. Has this been established or is it a theory of Deutsch's? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 25, 2010, at 1:56 AM, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 23, 8:42 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I think it's an example of the radiation arrow of time making a time-reversed process impossible - or maybe just vanishingly improbable. Bruce Kellet has written a paper about these problems, see pp 35. http://members.optusnet.com.au/bhkellett/radasymmetry.pdf I am reading this, and have just come across this passage: One possibility that is sometimes raised is that the overall expansion of the universe provides the local arrow for the direction of time. While cosmology, particularly the cosmological initial conditions, might be relevant to any final understanding of the arrow of time, particularly the thermodynamic arrow, it is difficult to see the expansion of the universe as being sufficient to explain the local asymmetry of every single independent radiation event. The basic reason is that the expansion of the universe is a cosmological phenomenon; the usual understanding of the Friedmann-Roberston-Walker solution to Einstein’s equations of Gener al Relativity that governs the overall evolution of the universe is that, although the fabric of spacetime expands on the large scale, individual galaxies do not expand, they merely move apart. The expansion actually takes place only on the scale at which the universe can be seen as homogeneous and isotropic. This is the scale of galaxies and galactic clusters—only there is the ‘Friedmann dus t’ model applicable. The model that describes the expansion of the universe simply does not apply within galaxies, much less within the solar system or on the surface of the earth. So the universal expansion is simply unable to provide an effective arrow of time that is locally available for every independent radiation event. This seems to me to miss a fundamental point, namely that emission and absorption events are only local if you ignore what happens to the photon beforehand or afterwards. If you trace the trajectory of the photon, you will arrive at some other event, and this event in turn is linked to a previous / future one. Ultimately all chains of trajectories of photons, electrons, quarks and so on connect to either the Big Bang or the distant future (timelike infinity, say). If the trajectories (or, presumably, waves) are constrained by whatever is at either end of their trajectory, as time-symmetry implies, then this stops them being local. They are part of a universe-filling web, which is anchored to whatever boundary conditions obtain on the universe as a whole. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 25, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 26, 6:38 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. This is all true. All biological processes are driven by the entropy gradient. However this doesn't explain the AOT; it's a consequence of it. Charles Isn't the AOT explained in terms of probability? E.g. There are far more combinations for a system to be disordered rather than ordered, as such the universe overall will tend to fall into these more likely configurations. You are right things on earth are very different but we benefit from the sun's creation of far more combinations in the distribution of photons and neutrinos vs the number of ways hydrogen atoms might be arranged in the core. So our perspective is fairly atypical. Another consideration: we experience time backwards, the universe is actually collapsing from equilibrium to a sinularity and will end in about 13.7 billion years. Could we explain why most photons seem to only travel on intercepting paths which coincidentally strike and split helium atoms? Of course on a particle by partical interaction everything makes sense, but in terms of all the coincidences in the universe as a whole, things would not. This effect appears even if you only considered a few particles, how often would they all come together if left on their own to bounce around? We also live in a gravity well which helps hold things together and further distorts our perspective (but even then our atmosphere is slowly leaking away, as mar's did.) Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: [Fwd: The Brain's Dark Energy Scien amer]
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.comwrote: On Feb 23, 9:02 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all. The best way to come up with an idea or solve a problem is often to sleep on it, or to at least to take a break, maybe go for a walk and let your mind idle. I used to find that cigarette breaks were very useful in my work as a software developer before I gave up smoking (now I have to enforce breaks), and in my attempts at writing a novel I often find that the way forward - resolving a scene, say - often comes to me if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night. Charles There was a study on this a few years ago, which proves there is something to the phenomenon: http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/sleep_on_it_debunked_unconscious_thought_no_better_than_thinking_through_tough_problems http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8732 I think it is a little sensationalist, however, for new scientist to take the fact that there is some base level of neural activity and assume that it unlocks the key to Alzheimer's or consciousness, however. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: everything-list and the Singularity
Hello Skeletori, Welcome to the list. I enjoy your comments and rationalization regarding personal identity and of why we should consider I to be the universe / multiverse / or the everything. I have some comments regarding the technological singularity below. On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Skeletori sami.per...@gmail.com wrote: Hello! I have some tentative arguments on TS and wanted to put them somewhere where knowledgeable people could comment. This seemed like a good place. I also believe in an ultimate ensemble but that's a different story. Let's start with intelligence explosion. This part is essentially the same as Hawkins' argument against it (it can be found on the Wikipedia page on TS). When we're talking about self-improving intelligence, making improved copies of oneself, we're talking about a very, very complex optimization problem. So complex that our only tool is heuristic search, making guesses and trying to create better rules for taking stabs in the dark. The recursive optimization process improves by making better heuristics. However, an instinctual misassumption behind IE is that intelligence is somehow a simple concept and could be recursively leveraged not only descriptively but also algorithmically. If the things we want a machine to do have no simple description then it's unlikely they can be captured by simple heuristics. And if heuristics can't be simple then the metasearch space is vast. I think some people don't fully appreciate the huge complexity of self-improving search. The notion that an intelligent machine could accelerate its optimization exponentially is just as implausible as the notion that a genetic algorithm equipped with open-ended metaevolution rules would be able to do so. It just doesn't happen in practice, and we haven't even attempted to solve any problems that are anywhere near the magnitude of this one. So I think that the flaw in IE reasoning is that there should, at some higher level of intelligence, emerge a magic process that is able to achieve miraculous things. If you accept that, it precludes the possibility of TS happening (solely) through an IE. What then about Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns? Well, technological innovation is similarly a complex optimization problem, just in a different setting. We can regard the scientific community as the optimizing algorithm here and come to the same conclusions as with IE. That is, unless humans possess some kind of higher intelligence that can defeat heuristic search. I don't think there's any reason to believe that. Complex optimization problems exhibit the law of diminished returns and the law of fits and starts, where the optimization process gets stuck in a plateau for a long time, then breaks out of it and makes quick progress for a while. But I've never seen anything exhibiting a law of accelerating returns. This would imply that, e.g., Moore's law is just an accident, a random product of exceedingly complex interactions. It would take more than some plots of a few data points to convince me to believe in a law of accelerating returns. If not the plots what would it take to convince you? I think one should accept the law of accelerating returns until someone can describe what accident caused the plot. Kurzweil's page describes a model and assumptions which re-create the real-world data plot: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 It is a rather long page, Ctrl+F for The Model considers the following variables: to find where he describes the reasoning behind the law of accelerated returns. It also depends on how one defines exponential growth, as one can always take X as exp(X) - I suppose we want the exponential growth of some variable that is needed for TS and whose linear growth corresponds to linear increase in technological ability (that's very vague, can anybody help here?). In conclusion, I haven't yet found a credible lawlike explanation of anything that could cause a runaway TS where things become very unpredictable. All comments are welcome. I think intelligence optimization is composed of several different, but interrelated components, and that it makes sense to clearly define these components of intelligence rather than talk about intelligence as a single entity. I think intelligence embodies. 1. knowledge - information that is useful for something 2. memory - the capacity to store, index and organize information 3. processing rate - the rate at which information can be processed The faster the processing rate, the faster knowledge can be applied and the faster new knowledge may be acquired. There are several methods in which new knowledge can be be generated: Searching for patterns and relations within the existing store of knowledge (data mining). Proposing and investigating currently unknown areas (research). Applying creativity to find more useful forms of knowledge
Re: everything-list and the Singularity
On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 4:41 AM, Skeletori sami.per...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think anyone would argue that the amount knowledge possessed by our civilization is not increasing. If the physical laws of this universe are deterministic then there is some algorithm describing the process for an ever increasing growth in knowledge. Some of this knowledge may be applied toward creating improved versions of memory or processing hardware. Thus creating a feed-back loop where increased knowledge leads to better processing, and better processing leads to an accelerated application and generation of knowledge. There are already formulations of optimal predictive algorithms and even optimal intelligent agents but they are completely impractical even with nanotech and computers the size of the Sun. From this perspective humans are intelligent not because of some general component (I'm now thinking of singinst with their AGI program) but lots of specialized components that allow us to take shortcuts, kind of similarly to how humans play chess vs. how machines play chess. As you say, it's a critical question how much beneficial feedback there would be. Exponential increases in computing power for unit of cost has been increasing at an exponetial rate for roughly 100 years. It certainly won't continue forever as we will hit physical limits, but we are still a far way from even catching up to biology. The fastest super computer built today, at about 3 petaflops and composed of about a millions of CPUs is still a fraction of the processing ability of the human brain, which gets by on the equivalent of 10 watts. There is little doubt that technology could greatly exceed the speed and efficiency of the brain, given that a large part of the brain's size and energy consumption are related to keeping the cells alive. At the current exponential pace, we are about 20-30 years from a $1000 computer which could simulate a brain. If we get to the point, where human-level intelligences can be embedded in a machine, I think it is clear how things would take off from there. Borrowing from your more recent e-mail, imagine Intel cloning the minds of its 1,000 brightest engineers, and duplicating each of them 100 times. (Therefore possessing an equivalent work force of 100,000 brilliant minds). Unlike humans, knowledge between machines can be instantly duplicated and shared, no need to spend many years for college and work experience. The only cost involved would be for the electricity to run these minds, each might work out to 5-10 cents of electricity per hour (far cheaper than their human counterparts). The company's innovation rate would at that point, certainly explode. (This story is a good illustration: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ ) There are less extreme examples of this augmentation even today. The more people using the internet, creating content, updating wikipedia, writing posts or product reviews, the more valuable and useful a resource the Internet becomes. Not only is the amount, quality, and speed of access to information increasing, but with mobile devices more people spend more time in their Internet-augmented state, being able to respond to e-mails, or look up any information they desire at any time. I have a device which fits in my hand that contains the full English version of Wikipedia, it is as if some people walk around carrying the entire Library of Congress in their pocket. The Internet and its massive store of information is slowly making its way into each of us. It is not far off that we will have glasses or small ear buds containing a computer which could be controlled by mere thought. Communication would be instantaneous to anyone in the world, and one great idea could almost immediately improve the lives of billions, especially with the advent of 3-d printers, which can assemble physical objects from their downloadable blueprints. I think these innovations will become real in the next 5-10 years, well before mind uploading, but it shows why the pace of technology will continue to accelerate from now up to that point. Simply put, we're augmenting our ability to make intelligent decisions and make them at a faster pace. Lets take a different example, a genetic algorithm which optimizes computer chip design, forever searching for more efficient and faster hardware designs. After running for some number of generations, the most fit design is taken, assembled, and the the software is copied to run on that new hardware. Would the rate of evolution on this new, faster chip not exceed the previous rate? Yes. Then it would get stuck and the next 1% speedup would take 10^10 years :). I think for the hardware design to be so great it took a 10 billion years to find the next speedup, the design would have to be close to the best possible hardware that could be built given the physical laws. After-all, evolution went from
Re: everything-list and the Singularity
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Skeletori sami.per...@gmail.com wrote: I think for the hardware design to be so great it took a 10 billion years to find the next speedup, the design would have to be close to the best possible hardware that could be built given the physical laws. After-all, evolution went from Lemurs to humans in millions of years, which was only a couple million generations, and that was without specifically trying to optimize for the computing power of the brain. Russell Standish has argued that human creativity is itself nothing more than a genetic algorithm at its core. Do you think there is something else to it, what capabilities would need to be added to this program to make it more effective in its search? (Presume it is programmed with all the information it needs to effectively simulate and rate any design it comes up with) No, I also think that's pretty much all there is to it. Due to the anthropic principle we can't draw very many conclusions from the way intelligence has developed on our planet - we can't know what the probability of intelligent life is. I admit the chip design example is a poor one. Let's try this instead: How would you program an AI to achieve higher intelligence? How would it evaluate intelligence? You would need to design a very general fitness test for measuring intelligence, for example the shortness and speed at which it can find proofs for randomly generated statements in math, for example. Or the accuracy and efficiency at which it can predict the next element given sequenced pattern, the level of compression it can achieve (shortest description) given well ordered information, etc. With this fitness test you could evolve better intelligences with genetic programming or a genetic algorithm. My hope and wish is that by this time, wealth and the economy as we know it will be obsolete. In a virtual world, where anyone can do or experience anything, and everyone is immortal and perfectly healthy, the only commodity would be the creativity to generate new ideas and experiences. (I highly recommend reading page this to see what such an existence could be: http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.htmlthis one is also interestinghttp:// www.marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm). If anyone can in the comfort of their own virtual house experience drinking a soda, what need would there be for Pepsi or Coke to exist as companies? That is also my wish. I'd like to see scenarios where this will happen. But I believe it's imperative to understand the mindset of the ruling elites. To them it's all about power and control. The biological layer will want to maintain control of the digital layer as long as possible, even at the expense of everything else. A politician might reply to you, Whoa, pardner! That looks like socialism. No, we need free markets to allocate resources efficiently, strong property rights to prevent theft, and sufficient means to enforce them. And so on. Once a strategy has been formulated, the creation of an ideology to advance it is a simple matter. That kind of reminds me of the proposals in many countries to tax virtual property, like items in online multiplayer games. It is rather absurd, it is nothing but computations going on inside some computer which lead to different visual output on people's monitors. Then there are also things such as network neutrality, which threaten the control of the Internet. I agree with you that there are dangers from the established interests fearing loss of control as things go forward, and it is something to watch out for, however I am hopeful for a few reasons. One thing in technology's favour is that for the most part it changes faster than legislatures can keep up with it. When Napster was shut down new peer-to-peer protocols were developed to replace it. When China tries to censor what its citizens see its populace can turn to technologies such as Tor, or secure proxies. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Was:Singularity - Re: Intelligence
On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 8:40 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Skeletori sami.per...@gmail.com wrote: My hope and wish is that by this time, wealth and the economy as we know it will be obsolete. In a virtual world, where anyone can do or experience anything, and everyone is immortal and perfectly healthy, the only commodity would be the creativity to generate new ideas and experiences. (I highly recommend reading page this to see what such an existence could be: http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.htmlthis one is also interestinghttp:// www.marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm). If anyone can in the comfort of their own virtual house experience drinking a soda, what need would there be for Pepsi or Coke to exist as companies? Before bankrupting big companies, we may take a look at ourselves (humanity?) in the situation of being immortal, healthy with unlimited creativity (in facto). Does it include sex? Sure I think so. The Marshall Brain piece address that topic in a few of his chapters. You need not worry about disease or unwanted pregnancy and you could look however you like. should we include 'having babies' (the ultimate happiness)? in which case humanity would proliferated even at a higher level than now, all of them enjoying sex and proliferation? The problem with reproduction, as mentioned in the frombob.to website above, is that even at an extremely slow rate of producing new minds, it is still an exponential rate. And exponential growth means all resources in the universe would be quickly exhausted in a very short period of time (perhaps as little as a million years if intelligent life arises in every galaxy), precluding new life elsewhere from evolving. It would be almost as selfish and as unjust for one civilization to take all the resources (before life could evolve somewhere) as it would be to come and take those resources after it had evolved, therefore I disagree with Kurzweil that intelligent matter will spread at the speed of light in all directions consuming everything in its wake. Consider how many eons all humans on Earth could live powering our computations using Jupiter as a fuel source. However, reproduction and child raising could still be experienced in game worlds, where all the participants are consenting individuals who have uploaded. During the experience there would be both parents and children, and after the game ends you would have some new very close bonds with some of the minds you met and knew within that game. Spending 70 years on a game would be nothing when you could live for trillions of years. Or should we include a 'mind-only' restriction and shrink away the sex-related part of life and eliminate the sex-related organs? Would it be worth the survival? similarly: if our mentality can produce 'everything', how about food to enjoy? are we eliminating as well our metabolism - not to get unlimitedly fat? In an uploaded state you could spend all day eating from an unlimited buffet of any food you could think of (and more) and get neither full nor fat. In the end it is just firings of your neurons (artificial or otherwise) and if uploaded, that would be all there is to you, there would be no metabolism, and no additional resources would be sacrificed to provide the experience of eating that food. thinking in wider domains of the suggested utopy brings up points beyond nixing the Pepsi or Coke stocks. I rather limit my unlimited capabilities and have a beer. Not a bad choice :-) Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Was:Singularity - Re: Intelligence
On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 5:13 PM, silky michaelsli...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 5:50 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: [...] In an uploaded state you could spend all day eating from an unlimited buffet of any food you could think of (and more) and get neither full nor fat. In the end it is just firings of your neurons (artificial or otherwise) and if uploaded, that would be all there is to you, there would be no metabolism, and no additional resources would be sacrificed to provide the experience of eating that food. Potentially an interesting question, though, is would it still mean anything, if there were no consequences? I think there are still consequences of your actions, I don't imagine uploading would be an entirely solitary experience, you would still interact with others and create new relationships. There would be few external consequences seen from outside the computer, but I don't think that diminishes the goings on within. Much like someone could point to a dreaming person and say it doesn't matter if he is having a nice dream or a terrible nightmare, I think it still matters (to person who is dreaming). Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 10:01 PM, rexallen...@gmail.com rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Let's assume that our best scientific theories tell us something true about the way the world *really* is, in an ontological sense. And further, for simplicity, let's assume a deterministic interpretation of those theories. In this view, the universe as we know it began ~13.7 billion years ago. We'll set aside any questions about what, if anything, preceded the first instant and just draw a line there and call that our initial state. Given the specifics of that initial state, plus the particular causal laws of physics that we have, the universe can only evolve along one path. The state of the universe at this moment is entirely determined by two, and only two, things: its initial state and its casual laws. But this means that the development of our scientific theories *about* the universe was also entirely determined by the initial state of the universe and it's causal laws. Our discovery of the true nature of the universe has to have been baked into the structure of the universe in its first instant. By comparison, how many sets of *possible* initial states plus causal laws are there that would give rise to conscious entities who develop *false* scientific theories about their universe? It seems to me that this set of deceptive universes is likely much larger than the set of honest universes. What would make universes with honest initial conditions + causal laws more probable than deceptive ones? For every honest universe it would seem possible to have an infinite number of deceptive universes that are the equivalent of The Matrix - they give rise to conscious entities who have convincing but incorrect beliefs about how their universe really is. These entities' beliefs are based on perceptions that are only illusions, or simulations (naturally occurring or intelligently designed), or hallucinations, or dreams. One reason might be that for life to evolve, and therefore lead to conscious observers, the process of life must be able to learn true or approximately true laws of physics. While true there are more possible ways to imagine yourself being in some simulated or dream-like environment, consider the possibilities that get you there. In a universe without evolution the initial condition must be that sophisticated reality generating environment, of which there are very few. However in a universe with evolution, the initial condition can be a more or less random arrangement of particles, for which there are far more possibilities. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: PSYCHE Vol 16 #1 ... essay
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:08 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You have added the UTM and its variants to the pile. Any of these could be just as right as you think COMP is. I have no idea about the truth status of Digital Mechanism, except nothing in nature suggest it to be false. On the contrary, the main startling consequence of digital mechanism (non locality, first person indeterminacy, symmetry at the bottom, etc.) are confirmed by the empirical study of nature. But I am open to the idea that comp may be false. That is why I study it: to show it falsifiable and thus scientific in Popper sense. Bruno, The part about symmetry at the bottom being a consequence of mechanism intrigued me. How is symmetry at the bottom related to mechanism? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Rabbi Rabbit, Forgive me if I missed this elsewhere in your posts, but is there the assumption somewhere that the name of God is 22 Hebrew letters long? If that is the case and some letters may be missing and others repeated, then you are correct about there being 22^22 combinations. If every letter must be used exactly once and the name is 22 characters long then there would be 22! (factorial operator) combinations (300 million times fewer, but still an infeasible size to iterate over all the combinations). Jason On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Rabbi Rabbit rabbi.rabb...@googlemail.comwrote: Oh, bad, bad computer. In my previous post where it is written please read 22 raised to the 22th power (base 22, exponent 22). No HTML posting here, I'll need to take it into account! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Does time exist?
The conventional view of time is that only one point in time is real, the present, and that that time flows at a certain rate. People believe that in order to experience the flow of time, the past moment must disappear, and a new moment must become real, but this can be logically shown to be unnecessary to experience the flow of time. If the past moment ceases to exist, then it must have no bearing on or be otherwise necessary for you to be conscious in this moment. Therefore the existence or non existence of the past can't be responsible for what you perceive in the present, including one's perception of flowing through time. Furthermore, evidence from relativity has shown there is no such thing as an objective, or absolute present. Every observer with a different velocity has their own conception of what the present includes. Since no reference frame is more valid than any other, and every observer could have their own view, there can be no absolute present, no laser beam reifying a point in time for all beings in the DVD. The appearence of different presents for different reference frames can be explained as a side effect of observers embedded in a four-dimensional universe, with each observer's present being a slice at a certain angle through those four dimensions. Jason On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Brian Tenneson tenn...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering if you could help me flesh out an idea. It's related to the questions is reality dynamic or static, and of determinism versus non-determinism. Also another question that plagues me is What breathes dynamism into static principalities? I view our world as being on a static or dynamic (to be decided later) storage device of some sort. This stored set of scenarios is read by a temporal mechanism, aka transition and change, to give us the impression that things really are dynamic. The reading of the film exposes something that time changes. But if you look at the sum of all instantiations of the film being read, this sum is a fixed set of scenarios. The DVD metaphor. There is a DVD (ie, recording), let's call it DVD#1, which is the film and it is read by a laser and that laser transitions by some temporal mechanism. DVD#1 doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This change implies the existence of time relative to DVD#1. In my metaphor, the film, which is DVD#1, is the totality of all observations an any observer could have. Now say someone films me watching DVD#1 and call this a new DVD, DVD#2. DVD#2 doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This change implies the existence of time relative to DVD#2, yet DVD#2 is actually static. Continue indefinitely. Let n denote an arbitrary number. We've got DVD#n for all n=1. DVD#n is the DVD created by filming an observer that is observing DVD#(n-1). What significance does the union of all these DVD#n have, if any? It would appear that dynamism and stasis are juxtaposed in an unending hierarchy and saying time exists (ie, reality is dynamic) and saying time does not exist (ie, reality is static), is equivalent to saying the light is on if it is flipped once per second forever. In essence, this hierarchy is like a divergent series (by which I roughly mean union). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Implications of Tononi's IIT?
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Allen Kallenbach allenkallenb...@yahoo.cawrote: Considering this, can consciousness be Turing emulable? That is, can a Turing machine integrate information? I want to expand my question here, but I don't have the knowledge to do so without distracting from the main question I'm asking. So, all I can say is, details greatly appreciated! - Allen A Turing machine can essentially do anything with information that can be done with information. They are universal machines in the same sense that a pair of headphones is a universal instrument, though practical implementations have limits (a Turing machine has limited available memory, a pair of headphones will have a limited frequency and amplitude range), theoretically, each has an infinite repertoire. There is no conceivable instrument whose sound could not be reproduced by an ideal pair of headphones, just as there is no conceivable physical machine whose behavior could not be reproduced by an ideal Turing machine. This implies that given enough memory, and the right programming a Turing machine can perfectly reproduce the behavior of a person's Brain. Does this make the Turing machine conscious? If not it implies that someone you know could have their brain replaced by Turing machine, and that person would in every way act as the original person, yet it wouldn't be conscious. It would still claim to be conscious, still claim to feel pain, still be capable of writing a philosophy paper about the mysteriousness of consciousness. If a non-conscious entity could in every way act as a conscious entity does, then what is the point of consciousness? There would be no reason for it to evolve if it served no purpose. Also, what sense would it make for non-conscious entities to contemplate and write e-mails about something they presumably don't have access to? (As Turing machines running brain software necessarily would). There is a concept in which any Turing machine can emulate any other. This is what allows for such technology as virtual machines, and game system emulators. An old Atari game running on an emulator has no way to tell whether it is running on a physical Atari game console or within an emulator program running on a modern desktop computer. In fact there is no way any program can determine the ultimate, or actual physical substrate on which it is running. Extending this principle, if a brain's behavior can be reproduced by software, such software will have no way of knowing whether it is running on a real brain or on a bunch of computer chips. If a person did feel different, for example by not experiencing anything, or experiencing consciousness differently, this would violate the idea that software can never know for certain what its hardware is. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Implications of Tononi's IIT?
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Allen allenkallenb...@yahoo.ca wrote: Thank you both for replying! On 7/22/2010 8:47 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: Sure. Consider a Mars Rover. It has a camera with many pixels. The voltage of the photodetector of each pixel is digitized and sent to a computer. The computer processes the data and recognizes there is a rock in its path. The computer actuates some controller and steers the Rover around the rock. So information has been integrated and used. Note that if the information had not been used (i.e. resulted in action in the environment) it would be difficult to say whether it had been integrated or merely transformed and stored. Brent Isn't this the same as the digital camera sensor chip? Aren't the functions you're describing built on this foundation of independent, minimal repertoires, all working independently of each other? I can see how, from our external point of view, it seems like one entity, but when we look at the hardware, isn't it functionally the same as the sensor chip in the quote from Tononi? That is, even the CPU that is fed the information from the camera works in a similar way. Tononi, in *Qualia: The Geometry of Integrated Information*, says: Integrated information is measured by comparing the actual repertoire generated by the system as a whole with the combined actual repertoires generated independently by the parts. So, what I mean is, the parts account for all the information in the system, there is no additional information generated as integrated information (Which Tononi refers to as phi Φ.) In the case of a digital camera, you could say the photodectors each map directly to memory locations and so they can be completely separated and their behavior remains the same. That isn't true with the Mar's rover, whose software must evaluate the pattern across the memory locations to identify and avoid objects. You cannot separate the mar's rover into components which that behave identically in isolation. On 7/23/2010 12:15 AM, Jason Resch wrote: A Turing machine can essentially do anything with information that can be done with information. They are universal machines in the same sense that a pair of headphones is a universal instrument, though practical implementations have limits (a Turing machine has limited available memory, a pair of headphones will have a limited frequency and amplitude range), theoretically, each has an infinite repertoire. I hope no one will be offended if I borrow a quote I found on Wikipedia: At any moment there is one symbol in the machine; it is called the scanned symbol. The machine can alter the scanned symbol and its behavior is in part determined by that symbol, but the symbols on the tape elsewhere do not affect the behavior of the machine. (Turing 1948, p. 61) I'm sure none of you needed the reminder, it's only so that I may point directly to what I mean. Now, doesn't this - the nature of a Turing machine - fundamentally exclude the ability to integrate information? The computers we have today do not integrate information to any significant extent, as Tononi explained with his digital camera example. Is this a fundamental limit of the Turing machine, or just our current technology? That quote reminds me of the Chinese Room thought experiment, in which a person is used as the machine to do the sequential processing by blindly following a large set of rules. I think a certain pattern of thinking about computers leads to this confusion. It is common to think of the CPU reading and acting upon one symbol at a time as the brains of the machine, at any one time we only see that CPU acting upon one symbol, so it seems like the it is performing operations on the data, but in reality the past data has in no small part led to this current state and position, in this sense the data is defining and controlling the operations performed upon itself. For example, create a chain of cells in a spread sheet. Define B1 = A1*A1, C1 = B1 - A1, and D1 = B1+2*C1. Now when you put data in cell A1, the computation is performed and carried through a range of different memory locations (positions on the tape), the CPU at no one time performs the computation to get from the input (A1) to the output (D1), instead it performs a chain of intermediate computations and goes through a chain of states, with intermediate states determining the final state. To determine the future evolution of the of the system (The Machine and the Tape) the entire system has to be considered. Just as in the Chinese room thought experiment, it is not the human following the rulebook which creates the conscious, but the system as a whole (all the rules of processing together with the one who follows the rules). There is no conceivable instrument whose sound could not be reproduced by an ideal pair of headphones, just as there is no conceivable
Re: Implications of Tononi's IIT?
2010/7/23 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com I am very familiar with Tononi's definition of information integration, but if it is something that neurons do it is certainly something computers can do as well. Sorry, I meant to say that I am *not *very familiar... Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Implications of Tononi's IIT?
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Allen allenkallenb...@yahoo.ca wrote: On 7/24/2010 12:55 AM, Jason Resch wrote: In the case of a digital camera, you could say the photodectors each map directly to memory locations and so they can be completely separated and their behavior remains the same. That isn't true with the Mar's rover, whose software must evaluate the pattern across the memory locations to identify and avoid objects. You cannot separate the mar's rover into components which that behave identically in isolation. Thank you for replying. Doesn't the rover's software run on hardware that is functionally similar to the photodetectors, in that the memory locations could be separated yet still behave the same? I agree with Quentin's answer below. When information is processed recursively, iteratively, or hierarchically used to build upon results it can no longer be viewed as conveying the same meaning. An analogy is the meaning of a Book, which is built of chapters, which is build of paragraphs, sentences, words and letters. There is little to no meaning in individual letters, but when organized appropriately and combined in certain ways the meaning appears. Looking at individual operations performed by a machine is like focusing on individual letters in a book. That quote reminds me of the Chinese Room thought experiment, in which a person is used as the machine to do the sequential processing by blindly following a large set of rules. I think a certain pattern of thinking about computers leads to this confusion. It is common to think of the CPU reading and acting upon one symbol at a time as the brains of the machine, at any one time we only see that CPU acting upon one symbol, so it seems like the it is performing operations on the data, but in reality the past data has in no small part led to this current state and position, in this sense the data is defining and controlling the operations performed upon itself. For example, create a chain of cells in a spread sheet. Define B1 = A1*A1, C1 = B1 - A1, and D1 = B1+2*C1. Now when you put data in cell A1, the computation is performed and carried through a range of different memory locations (positions on the tape), the CPU at no one time performs the computation to get from the input (A1) to the output (D1), instead it performs a chain of intermediate computations and goes through a chain of states, with intermediate states determining the final state. To determine the future evolution of the of the system (The Machine and the Tape) the entire system has to be considered. Just as in the Chinese room thought experiment, it is not the human following the rulebook which creates the conscious, but the system as a whole (all the rules of processing together with the one who follows the rules). I'm sure I have confused patterns of thinking where computers are concerned. I haven't spent very much time with the Chinese Room thought experiment, either. I followed your instructions, with the spread sheet. Still, I don't understand how this can explain consciousness. I was trying to show how multiple memory locations can be processed to generate a result. Extending this, multiple results can then be taken together and processed to make a more meaningful result, and so on. At the highest levels of these layers of processing are where conscious as we know it would appear. Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in the subject, but what is it that neurons in the corticothalamic area of the brain that is different from what other neurons do or can do? I apologize, I really should have explained this in post you've quoted from. Reading it back to myself now, it seems out of context. The mention of it again comes from my understanding of Tononi's work. I have a very brief overview of the thalamocortical region, which I believe applies just as well (For illustrative purposes) to the corticothalamic system. (I think the term thalamo-cortico-thalamic system refers to both as a single entity.) There are hundreds of functionally specialized thalamocortical areas, each containing tens of thousands of neuronal groups, some dealing with responses to stimuli and others with planning and execution of action, some dealing with visual and others with acoustic stimuli, some dealing with details of the input and others with its invariant or abstract properties. These millions of neuronal groups are linked by a huge set of convergent or divergent, reciprocally organized connections that make them all hang together in a single, tight meshwork while they still maintain their local functional specificity. The result is a three-dimensional tangle that appears to warrant at least the following statement: Any perturbation in one part of the meshwork may be felt rapidly everywhere else. Altogether, the organization of the thalamocortical meshwork seems remarkably
Re: numbers?
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: Numbers exist not in any physical sense but in the same sense that any idea exists - they exist in the sense that minds exist that believe logical propositions about them. They exist because minds believe logical propositions about them. They are defined and distinguished by the logical propositions that minds believe about them. There are three worlds: the physical world of elementary particles, the mental world of minds, and the imaginary world of ideas. They are linked, somehow, by logical relationships, and the apparent flow of time in the mental world causes/is caused by changes in these relationships. I wouldn't be surprised if the laws of physics are changing, slowly, incrementally, right under our noses. In fact, I would be delighted, because it would explain many things. The existence of numbers can explain the existence of the physical universe but the converse is not true, the existence of the physical world can't explain the existence of numbers. Belief in the existence of numbers also helps explain the unreasonable effectiveness of math, and the fine tuning of the universe to support life. I think it is a smaller leap to believe properties of mathematical objects exist than to believe this large and complex universe exists (when the former implies the latter). Even small numbers are bigger than our physical universe. There are an infinite number of statements one could make about the number 3, some true and some false, but more statements exist than could ever be enumerated by any machine or mind in this universe. Each of these properties of 3 shapes its essence, but if some of them are not accessible or knowable to us in this universe it implies if 3 must exist outside and beyond this universe. Can 3 really be considered a human invention or idea when it has never been fully comprehended by any person? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: numbers?
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: On 7/29/2010 10:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Mark Buda her...@acm.org wrote: Numbers exist not in any physical sense but in the same sense that any idea exists - they exist in the sense that minds exist that believe logical propositions about them. They exist because minds believe logical propositions about them. They are defined and distinguished by the logical propositions that minds believe about them. There are three worlds: the physical world of elementary particles, the mental world of minds, and the imaginary world of ideas. They are linked, somehow, by logical relationships, and the apparent flow of time in the mental world causes/is caused by changes in these relationships. I wouldn't be surprised if the laws of physics are changing, slowly, incrementally, right under our noses. In fact, I would be delighted, because it would explain many things. The existence of numbers can explain the existence of the physical universe but the converse is not true, the existence of the physical world can't explain the existence of numbers. William S. Cooper wrote a book to show the contrary. Why should I credence your bald assertion? I should have elaborated more. The existence of mathematical objects (not just numbers, but all self-consistent structures in math) would imply the existence of the universe (if you believe the universe is not in itself a contradiction). It would also clearly lead to Bruno's universal dovetailer, as all possible Turing machines would exist. Regarding the book you mentioned, I found a few books by William S. Cooper on amazon. What is the title of the book you are referring to? Does it show that math doesn't imply the existence of the physical universe, or that the physical universe is what makes math real? Most mathematicians believe math is something explored and discovered than something invented, if true, and both math and the physical universe have objective existence, it is a better theory, by Ockham's razor, that math exists and the physical universe is a consequence. I do understand that the existence of the physical universe leads to minds, and the minds lead to the existence of ideas of math, but consider that both are objectively real, how does the universe's existence lead to the objective existence of math, when math is infinite and the physical universe is finite? (at least the observable universe). Belief in the existence of numbers also helps explain the unreasonable effectiveness of math, and the fine tuning of the universe to support life. If numbers are derived from biology and physics that also explains their effectiveness. Whether the universe if fine-tuned is very doubtful (see Vic Stengers new book on the subject) but even if it is I don't see how the existence of numbers explains it. Vic Stenger's argument is that fine-tuning is flawed because it assumes life such as ours. But even assuming a much more general definition of life, which requires minimally reproduction, competition over finite resources, and a relatively stable environment for many billions of generations what percentage of universes would support this? Does Stenger show that life is common across the set of possible mathematical structures? The existence of all mathematical structures + the anthropic principal implies observers finding themselves in an apparently fine-tuned universe. Whereas if one only believes in the physical universe it is a mystery, best answered by the idea that all possible universes exist, and going that far, you might simply say you believe in the objective reality of math (the science of all possible structures). I think it is a smaller leap to believe properties of mathematical objects exist than to believe this large and complex universe exists (when the former implies the latter). Even small numbers are bigger than our physical universe. There are an infinite number of statements one could make about the number 3, Actually not on any nomological reading of could. If 3 exists, but we don't know everything about it, how can 3 be a human idea? There are things left to be discovered about that number and things no mind in this physical universe will ever know about it, do you think our knowledge or lack of knowledge about it somehow affects 3's identity? What if in a different branch of the multiverse a different set of facts about 3 is learned, would you say there are different types of 3's which exist in different branches? I think this would lead to the idea that there is a different 3 in every persons mind, which changes constantly, and only exists when a person is thinking about it. However the fact that different minds, or different civilizations can come to know the same things about it implies otherwise. some true and some false, but more statements exist than could
Re: What's wrong with this?
David, Your question reminds me of the phrase (I wish I could recall the source) Who pushes who around inside the brain? Is it the lowest level reductionist view of microscopic particles or do the macroscopic brain states end up causally affecting microscopic states of individual neurons and ions? I think in a certain sense both viewpoints are valid, though the brain is all the more incomprehensible if the view is restricted to the microscopic states. It is like attempting to understand how your e-mail application works in terms of electrons and their arrangement in your computer. Does this mean consciousness plays no role in the evolution of particles? On the contrary, if your consciousness did not exist, one could not explain how how atoms in your brain and body move around as they do. (Short of accepting some of dualism or a belief in zombies) While a particular universe might have deterministic laws, how it unfolds cannot be calculated without instantiating the consciousness of observers contained within that deterministic universe. The hierarchy of physics building up chemistry, biology, neurology, psychology, loops back on itself, with psychology ultimately having effects on physics. So rather than a fully reductionist view, something like the snake eating its own tail might be more appropriate. The book G.E.B. spends a lot of time on the topic of reductionism vs. holism. Jason On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 6:04 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Stephen Thanks for the quote and the link - and your own thoughts, of course. Yes, I've always had the queasy feeling that most of what is generally accepted to be manifest from God's perspective is actually acquired by bare-faced, if mostly unconscious, metaphysical larceny. But this theft has been so regularly and blithely perpetrated by so many people, with such impeccable credentials, that I am still inclined at times to suspect some residual misunderstanding or naivety on my own part. I suppose that evolution has equipped us with such an instinctive commitment to naturalism that it has become like one of those insidious computer viruses that resists attempts to eliminate it by immediately re-creating itself. In some ways, the notorious hard problem might be less controversially recast in the form of the question: Given the metaphysical posit of some pole of maximal fragmentation, what is the genesis and metaphysical status of its composite counter-poles? After all, nobody, even the most ardently committed eliminativist, seeks to controvert the manifest relevance of the counter-poles, even whilst being quite blind to the questions begged by their uncritical assumption. And in the absence of any intelligible possibility of an outside view, the answer, as you correctly state, must be inextricably bound up with what it is like to be an observer in our world. Under such constraint, it can hardly remain controversial that all observational evidence must somehow be obtained from the inside - after all, where else is there? Rather, what seems to require explication is how micro- and macro-scopic poles interweave in the synthesis of an apparently stable, shared composite world. David On 26 August 2010 21:37, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Dear David, Very well said! Let me add a quote from Carlo Rovelli (in the context of discussions of the notion of observation in QM) found in Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics? (ed. Elitzur, Dolev and Kolenda): My main suggestion is to forbid ourselves to use the point of view of God. Do not compare two different observers, unless you are, for instance, a third observer who interacts with the two. In order to make this comparison you have a quantum mechanical interaction. So, very simply, the answer is like that of special relativity: I am telling you that, with respect to this observer, this comes first and this comes second. Intuitively one might think that this cannot be. But really there is no contradiction. It seems to me that the assumption of the *observer at infinity* in modern physics (and its intersections with mathematics and philosophy) and/or the ansatz of context-free and/or coordinate-free plays essentially the same role as God did in classical era thought. I claim that it is the failure to critically examine the logical consequences of this tacit assumption or postulate that is a source of problems and paradox in our attempts to move understanding of our Universe forward. Like it or not, there is a reality to *what it is like to be an observer* in our world and any denial of its reality, however illusory or epiphenomenal that might be, does not help our understanding. Failure to confront the Hard Problem with eliminatist propositions is thus argued to be at best intellectual timidity. http://www.drfrenzo.com/2007/09/intellectual-timidity.html Kindest regards,
Re: Compatibilism
Rex, Your post reminded me of the quote (of which I cannot recall the source) where someone asked Who pushes who around inside the brain?, meaning is it the matter that causes thought to move around a certain way, or is it the opposite? The looped hierarchies described by Hofstadter, if present, make this a difficult question to answer. If the highest levels of thought and reason are required in your decision making, does it still make sense to say we are slaves of deterministic motions of particles or is that missing a few steps? I could not perfectly predict your behavior without creating a full simulation of your brain. Doing so would instantiate your consciousness. Therefore I cannot determine what you will do without invoking your consciousness, thought, reason, etc. I do not disagree with your assertion that something must be either caused or random, but does _what_ caused you to do something have any bearing? If your mind is the cause, does that count as free will? Jason On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:31 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Nov 2010, at 04:51, Rex Allen wrote: On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: ? Are you saying that it is obvious that compatibilism is false? Compatibilism is false. Unless you do something sneaky like change the meaning of the term free will to make it true. Which is like changing the definition of unicorn to mean a horse with a horn glued to it's forehead. I agree with the critics of compatilism in this passage: Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definition of free will: Incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something ought not to be called 'free will'. Compatibilists are sometimes accused (by Incompatibilists) of actually being Hard Determinists who are motivated by a lack of a coherent, consonant moral belief system. Compatibilists are sometimes called 'soft determinists' pejoratively (William James's term). James accused them of creating a 'quagmire of evasion' by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism. Immanuel Kant called it a 'wretched subterfuge' and 'word jugglery.' What is your position? And what is your definition of free-will? My position is: So either there is a reason for what I choose to do, or there isn't. If there is a reason, then the reason determined the choice. No free will. If there is no reason, then the choice was random. No free will. I don't see a third option. =*=*=*= As for my definition of free will: The ability to make choices that are neither random nor caused. Obviously there is no such ability, since random and caused exhaust the possibilities. But some people believe in the existence of such an ability anyway. Why? Well...either there's a reason that they do, or there isn't... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ronald, Right, I think that is what he implied and it is something I agree with. There is only so much that can be learned about this universe, and physical exploration by locomotion or even observation is limited in many ways. Rather than moving around to other places to see what can be, with an appropriate understanding of the physical laws one could create any configuration of matter they wanted. Simulate biology and evolution to find out what kinds of life might be out there; if the universe is infinitely large, then simulation is more than just imagination, one would be discovering things which are actually real, somewhere. The physical laws and the possible configurations of matter are also a small part of what is possible. Mathematics and simulation are two tools which provide a window into what exists in other universes. If all possible universes exist then imagination is the ultimate form of exploration. Ultimately, the limits of consciousness itself, will be explored. What is it that can be perceived, felt, experienced, by conscious minds. This inward exploration may be every bit as rich as the outward exploration of simulating/modeling/analyzing possible structures. Jason On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 2:39 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: Do you want to add more? I know Q meant that mental exploration was more important than the physical .Ronald On Nov 18, 1:53 pm, Jason jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Ronald, Hope it isn't too late. I think the last line from Q in the last episode of the next generation is relevant: Q: That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence. Jason On Nov 5, 3:42 pm, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Several years ago, I gave a talk mostly based on Tegmark's work. I would like to give an updated talk with other POVs within 40 minutes. Any suggestions, considering the Trek fan audience, would be appreciated. Ronald- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Compatibilism
On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). Rex, I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism. Assume there is were an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. The behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts. However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious experience. If you were to ask this mind if it is conscious it would have to say yes, but since it is not conscious, this would be a lie. However, the mechanical mind would not believe itself to be lying. It's neural activity would match the activity of a biological brain telling the truth. It not only is lying about it's claim of consciousness, but would be wrong in its belief that it is conscious. It would be wrong in believing it sees red when you hold a ripe tomato in front of it. My question is what could possibly make the mechanical mind wrong in these beliefs when the biological mind is right? The mechanical mind contains all the same information as the biological one; the information received from the red-sensitive cones in its eyes can be physically traced as it moves through the mechanical mind and leads to it uttering that it sees a tomato. How could this identical informational content be invalid, wrong, false in one representation of a mind, but true in another? Information can take many physical forms. The same digital photograph can be stored as differently reflective areas in a CD or DVD, as charges of electrons in Flash memory, as a magnetic encoding on a hard drive, as holes in a punch card, and yet the file will look the same regardless of how it is physically stored. Likewise the file can be sent in an e-mail which may transmit as fields over an electrical wire, laser pulses in an glass fiber, radio waves in the air, the physical implementation is irrelevant. Is the same not true for information contained within a conscious mind? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do not know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. Ronald Which message in particular do you think is difficult to present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or the suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for exploration? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ron, I think the most convincing approach is to start with how unlikely a universe with life is. I like how Loenard Susskind explains it here: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Is-the-Universe-Fine-Tuned-for-Life-and-Mind-Leonard-Susskind-/431 There are a few other approaches, such as how mathematical the universes is. The unreasonable effectiveness of math, as well as the many 10^500 or perhaps infinite number of solutions to string theory, and also the informational simplicity of all possible structures existing. You can liken that simplicity it to a block of stone before it is sculpted. All possible sculptures exist within that block of stone, but only by adding information through chiseling, can one restrict from the infinite possibilities down to one structure. Therefore if the lack of any information leaves open all possibility. (as in Russell Standish's theory of nothing) If there is no force or entity that comes along to carve from all possible existence a single existence, then all possible structures continue to exist. I think the fine tuning argument is the strongest, if you can demonstrate that the chances of a universe having the right laws to support evolving life is less than 1 in a billion for example, then the likelihood of a huge or infinite number of universes existing is overwhelming. Jason On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:05 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason(and any others) Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's reality is equally hard to convincing present. Ronald On Nov 26, 12:02 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do not know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. Ronald Which message in particular do you think is difficult to present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or the suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for exploration? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). Rex, I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism. Assume there is were an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that representation will do all that you're asking it to do. For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my experience changes over time. However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or anger or what it's like to see red. The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information. What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per se, but rather what is represented by the bits. Information is just a catch-all term for what is being represented. But, as you say, the same information can be represented in *many* different ways, and by many different bit-patterns. And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any information. You just need the right one-time pad to XOR with the bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter. I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. Would you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more like the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought? SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the thing they represent. Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience, doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you manipulate the bits in a way as to represent me seeing a pink elephant doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant. All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and then had the experience of thinking to yourself: hee hee hee, I just caused Rex to see a pink elephant... Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink elephant (Boy does he look surprised!), this interpretation all happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my conscious experience. Isn't this just idealism? To me, the main problem with idealism is it doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable under a framework of physical laws. If you see a ball go up, you can be rather confident in your future experience of seeing it come back down. It seems there is an underlying system, more fundamental than consciousness, which drives where it can go. In one of your earlier e-mails you explained your belief as accidental idealism, can you elaborate on this accidental part? Thinking that the bit representation captures my conscious experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul. Though, obviously this is as true of biological brains as of computers. But so be it. This is the line of thought that brought me to the idea that conscious experience is fundamental and uncaused. The behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts. However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious experience. I agree that if you assume that representation invokes conscious experience, then the brain and the computer would both have to be equally conscious. But I don't make that assumption. Okay. So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the multiple realizability of representations then we can never know anything about our substrate. This sounds a lot like Bruno. I believe
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ronald, There is also a thread with some other good justifications for the belief in everything: https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/6c77322d47582932/16f35cf51ed74d1c?lnk=gstq=wei+dai#16f35cf51ed74d1c Jason On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Ron, I think the most convincing approach is to start with how unlikely a universe with life is. I like how Loenard Susskind explains it here: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Is-the-Universe-Fine-Tuned-for-Life-and-Mind-Leonard-Susskind-/431 There are a few other approaches, such as how mathematical the universes is. The unreasonable effectiveness of math, as well as the many 10^500 or perhaps infinite number of solutions to string theory, and also the informational simplicity of all possible structures existing. You can liken that simplicity it to a block of stone before it is sculpted. All possible sculptures exist within that block of stone, but only by adding information through chiseling, can one restrict from the infinite possibilities down to one structure. Therefore if the lack of any information leaves open all possibility. (as in Russell Standish's theory of nothing) If there is no force or entity that comes along to carve from all possible existence a single existence, then all possible structures continue to exist. I think the fine tuning argument is the strongest, if you can demonstrate that the chances of a universe having the right laws to support evolving life is less than 1 in a billion for example, then the likelihood of a huge or infinite number of universes existing is overwhelming. Jason On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:05 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason(and any others) Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's reality is equally hard to convincing present. Ronald On Nov 26, 12:02 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do not know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. Ronald Which message in particular do you think is difficult to present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or the suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for exploration? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Compatibilism
Rex, You're mention of whose definition was closer to that of the common person intrigued me. I decided to look up what some dictionaries said on the matter: From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/free+will dictionary.com –noun 1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision: You took on the responsibility of your own free will. 2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces. world english dictionary —n 3. a. the apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined b. Compare determinism the doctrine that such human freedom of choice is not illusory c. (as modifier): a free-will decision 4. the ability to make a choice without coercion: he left of his own free will: I did not influence him cultural dictionary: 5. The ability to choose, think, and act voluntarily. For many philosophers, to believe in free will is to believe that human beings can be the authors of their own actions and to reject the idea that human actions are determined by external conditions or fate. (See determinism, fatalism, and predestination.) Brittanica: 6. in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. Free will is denied by those who espouse any of various forms of determinism. Arguments for free will are based on the subjective experience of freedom, on sentiments of guilt, on revealed religion, and on the universal supposition of responsibility for personal actions that underlies the concepts of law, reward, punishment, and incentive. In theology, the existence of free will must be reconciled with God's omniscience and goodness (in allowing man to choose badly), and with divine grace, which allegedly is necessary for any meritorious act. A prominent feature of modern Existentialism is the concept of a radical, perpetual, and frequently agonizing freedom of choice. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, speaks of the individual condemned to be free even though his situation may be wholly determined. -- I personally find many of the above definitions to be inconsistent, but do you agree that definitions 1 and 4 refer to something that is real? I think most on this list would agree that definition 2 is inconsistent, since it seems to posit will contains an unpredictable element outside of physics or arithmetical truth. None of the definitions above seem to explicitly mention compatibilism, but neither definition 1 nor 4 is incompatible with determinism in my opinion. The idea of predestination and predetermination is in itself interesting, because it implies it is possible to know what you would do before you ever did it, but how could any entity determine what you would do without actually seeing what you in fact do? If it is not possible to have such foreknowledge, it rescues free will since what you ultimately decide cannot be predicted, determined, or known without invoking you to make the decision. It is unknowable to any entity how some equation or formula unfolds without actually unfolding it. It is like knowing what the 16th number in the Fibonacci sequence is without first having to determine what the 15th and 14th were. By the same extension, one can't know what you will do without stepping through the process of your brain and seeing what your brain decides to do (according to its will). Also, when you asked: If no conscious experiences are ruled out by arithmetical truth...then what good does it do to posit it as a factor in producing conscious experience? It reminded me of something David Deutsch said in Fabric of Reality about impossible experiences. An example he gave was the conscious experience of factoring a prime number. To use your example, you could say: seeing a square circle. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Information is just a catch-all term for what is being represented. But, as you say, the same information can be represented in *many* different ways, and by many different bit-patterns. And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any information. You just need the right one-time pad to XOR with the bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter. I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. Would you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more like the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought? Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought. Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are helping bring new thoughts into existence? If I understood the other threads you cited on accidentalism, it seems as though you do not believe anything is caused. Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that responding to these threads is pointless? Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can just exist, then the experience of the rock can just exist too - entirely independent of the rock. Believing thought alone exists doesn't give any explanation for why I see a relatively ordered screen with text and icons I understand, compared to something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tux_secure.jpg There are far more possible thoughts that consist of a visual field that looks random, do you find it surprising you happen to be a thought which is so compressible? Accepting that rocks exist allows the understanding that some of these rocks have the right conditions for live to develop on them, and evolve brains to use to understand the worlds they appear on. The thoughts of those life forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful for their survival. If I start with thought as primitive, and try to explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further. While it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an intellectual dead end. Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose does the brain serve? It's superfluous. If the brain can just exist, then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can just exist also. If not, why not? Rather than say the brain causes conscious experience to exist, I think it is more accurate to say the brain is conscious, or the brain experiences. Stated this way, it isn't superfluous. SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the thing they represent. Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience, doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you manipulate the bits in a way as to represent me seeing a pink elephant doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant. All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and then had the experience of thinking to yourself: hee hee hee, I just caused Rex to see a pink elephant... Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink elephant (Boy does he look surprised!), this interpretation all happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my conscious experience. Isn't this just idealism? To me, the main problem with idealism is it doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable under a framework of physical laws. But then you have to explain the existence, consistency, and predictability of this framework of physical laws. I see no reason we should abandon this goal, there is no evidence that the progress of human understanding has reached an impasse. You still have the exact same questions, but now your asking them of this framework instead of about your conscious experiences. You just pushed the questions back a level by introducing a layer of unexplained entities. Your explanation needs an explanation. Mathematical or arithmetical realism seems like a good place to stop. It is easy to accept that mathematical truths simply are. If it can be demonstrated
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ronald, Have you given this talk in the past to a similar audience? What kind of objections did people raise? Perhaps that would help us formulate a line of reasoning which would be more effective. Jason On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 8:15 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Jason. Not certain how all of that helps. I will have think more before I answer Bruno. Ronald On Nov 28, 5:52 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 27 Nov 2010, at 19:05, ronaldheld wrote: Jason(and any others) Both. Level IV Universe is hard to explain even if real. Bruno's reality is equally hard to convincing present. Ronald Do you agree/understand that if we are machine then we are in principle duplicable? This entails subjective indeterminacy. All the rest follows from that, and few people have problems to understand UDA 1-7. UDA-8, which justifies immateriality, is slightly more subtle, but if you have followed the last conversation on it on the list (with Jacques Mallah, Stathis, ..) you could understand than to block the movie graph argument you have to attribute a computational role to the physical activity of something having non physical activity, and I don't see how we could still accept a digital brain in this case. With just UDA 1-7 you could already understand that most of quantum weirdness (indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability) is a qualitative almost direct consequence of digital mechanism (even in presence of a primitively material universe). AUDA, the Löbian interview, is another matter because you need familiarity with mathematical logic and recursion theory. Tell me please what you don't understand in the first steps of UDA. I am always interested to have an idea of what is it that people don't grasp. I am writing some official papers now, and that could help. Up to now the results are more ignored than criticized, or is considered as crap by religious atheist/materialist, without rational arguments. Tell me if you have a problem with the subjective (first person) indeterminacy. Thanks. Bruno On Nov 26, 12:02 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I see what you are saying up at our level of understanding, I do not know how to present that in a technically convincing matter. Ronald Which message in particular do you think is difficult to present convincingly? Tegmark's ideas that everything is real, or the suggestion that computer simulation might be a legitimate tool for exploration? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group athttp:// groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/-http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/-Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Brain as quantum computer
Tegmark published a paper which largely refutes the idea that neurons use quantum interference to perform any useful computation: http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009 In short, the brain is far to hot and uncontrolled to maintain decoherence for the time periods involved in neural processes. The appeal for this idea comes from the belief that the brain is too complex to just be a machine, and must be something much more, but the brain is far more complex than any other machine we are familiar with, with 100 billion neurons and 10^15 synapses. It is, however, interesting that while quantum mechanics doesn't explain consciousness, Bruno's UDA shows how consciousness might explain quantum mechanics. Jason On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:35 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0205/0205092v8.pdf Bruno(and anyone else) Ronald -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ron, I think the path to seeing the mind as a program is easier in this way: 1. It's not what the parts of the brain are made of its how they function which determines behavior 2. This leads to the idea of multiple realizability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_realizability (Brains can be made in different ways so long as the parts function the same) 3. Accordingly, one could replace each neuron, or each atom, (or whatever) with a device that behaved like what it was replacing (A man made out of antimatter and antiparticles would still be a man) 4. Philosophical zombies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) are not possible, their brain/mind would have all the same beliefs, and all the same information as the equivalently organized and behaving brain it replaced, but in what sense could one say this one's beliefs are wrong but this one's beliefs are right? There would be no way to ever prove that one is conscious and one is not, it would be wrong for no reason at all. This is what it takes for the idea of zombies to be consistent. Further, the real brain and zombie brain could never even report feeling any different, since both brains contain the same information and same knowledge, how is it possible for one to report differences in experience? This addresses your question of whether or not there would be an impact to one's consciousness if their brain were swapped by a device with equivalent processing of information. 5. If zombies are impossible, then any device containing the same information and processing it in the same way as another mind should have the same consciousness. 6. By Church-Turing thesis, a Turing machine (computer) can process information in any way that information can be processed. Note that to say the mind is emulable by a computer says very little about a mind, it essentally says only that that the mind is a process. The analogy is that a computer can process information in any possible way given the appropriate programming, just as a record player can produce any possible sound given the appropriate record. Saying the mind is emulable by a computer is like saying voice is emulable by a record player. (It is not a very big leap, conceptually) It doesn't matter if the process is like parallel programs, networked computers, etc. a single computer can process information in the same way as a whole bunch of computers running in parallel without any difficulty. The thing computers have difficulty with are infinities. Questions which take an infinite amount of processing or infinite amount of information to answer can't realistically be simulated. On this Bruno has said, if you don't believe the neuron requires an infinite amount of information to decide whether or not to fire, then you are a mechanist. Jason On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 6:13 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno: Thanks for the weekend wishes. I believe the Brain runs programs, in parallel, but are they the Mind, and are they able to be run as Turing emulable programs with no impact to one's consciousness? Ronald On Dec 11, 7:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 11 Dec 2010, at 01:01, ronaldheld wrote: Bruno: I stand corrected on steps 6 and 7. I believe I understand your UDA diagrams. OK. Thanks for saying. Before I can comment, I need to decide waht progrmas are and are not Turing emulatable, All programs are Turing-emulable. That is a consequence of Church thesis. Many computer scientists tend to consider that Church Thesis is trivially true, but, when you study it you might realize that CT is on the contrary quite miraculous. Like Gödel saw, it is a miracle that the Cantor-like diagonalization procedure does not lead outside the class of partial recursive functions. The gift is a very robust notion of universality. The price to pay for that is also very big: the abandon of any complete TOE (unless ultrafinitism, ...). But psycholically that price is a relief: it prevents computer science to be reductionist. and if the brain runs a program, parallel programs, or something else. Brains and other biological organs and organisms, run parallel programs. But all digitalizable parallel programs can be made equivalent with dovetailing on non parallel programs. The UD does run an infinity of programs in parallel, for example. So the brain parallelism does not change anything unless the brain is not a digitalizable physical process (but then we go outside the scope of Digital Mechanism, the theory I am working in). Theoretical Computer Science is, amazingly enough, something non dimensional. This of course forces us to explain why dimensionality seems so important in the physical sciences, or in the observable sharable (first person plural) realities. Don't hesitate to ask for precisions. Good week-end, Bruno
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 7:57 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I do not think a neutron take more trhan a finite amount of voltage to be able to fire. I do wonder if merely replacing the bio parts by processing hardware, do you lose the part of the complexity of the mind? Np problem with an antimatter man and mind. If the mechanical replacements have the same repertoire and behavior as the biological parts I don't see how the complexity would be lessened. Many people feel lessened to be thought of as a machine, but they probably don't fully appreciate just how complex of a machine the brain is. It has 100 billion neurons (about 1 for each stars in this galaxy) and close to 1 quintillion connections or 1,000,000,000,000,000 (about 1 connection for every cent of US debt). People aren't familiar with man-made machines anywhere near this level of complexity and so it is understandable that one could doubt a machine acting like a human. However, I think this is mainly a prejudice instilled by the types of (comparatively simple) machines we deal with on a daily basis. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Ronald, I remember that episode. I thought it was quite a departure from the atheistic slant that was usual to star trek. ( For those not familiar with the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihdI8U9eS4c#t=2m30s ) They seemed to suggest in the episode that the operation failed not because of a defect in the artificial brain but because there was something more to the mind that the machine didn't capture, some soul or some essence that couldn't be copied. This is contrary to the frequent use of transporters throughout the series, unless you accept something like biological naturalism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism ), the idea that only biochemistry has the right stuff or can do the right things to create consciousness. I don't think the writers of that episode were well versed in philosophy of mind, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the ideas they promote. For that episode to make sense you either have to accept dualism or biological naturalism (which is almost like a form of dualism). Do you think that Commander Data, whose entire brain is positronic, lacks consciousness? I like the argument Picard gave for Data's sentience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWNPeNEvMN4 You mentioned that you had no problem with the idea of a person made from anti-matter particles. What if scientists invented tiny machines that were not atoms but operated all the same, would you accept that you could build a person using these? Taking the idea slightly further, lets say these little faux-atoms were expensive, so scientists decided to model the machines in a computer rather than make them. Simulating a small number of them together they could predict how nano-machines behaved. If the scientists modeled a much larger collection of these atoms, organized in the same way as in a person, do you think any of the complexity is lost? Jason On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 8:05 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno and Jason The complexity issue concerns me, perhaps because of the Deep space 9 episode:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Life_Support_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine) Ronald On Dec 16, 11:39 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 7:57 AM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Jason: I do not think a neutron take more trhan a finite amount of voltage to be able to fire. I do wonder if merely replacing the bio parts by processing hardware, do you lose the part of the complexity of the mind? Np problem with an antimatter man and mind. If the mechanical replacements have the same repertoire and behavior as the biological parts I don't see how the complexity would be lessened. Many people feel lessened to be thought of as a machine, but they probably don't fully appreciate just how complex of a machine the brain is. It has 100 billion neurons (about 1 for each stars in this galaxy) and close to 1 quintillion connections or 1,000,000,000,000,000 (about 1 connection for every cent of US debt). People aren't familiar with man-made machines anywhere near this level of complexity and so it is understandable that one could doubt a machine acting like a human. However, I think this is mainly a prejudice instilled by the types of (comparatively simple) machines we deal with on a daily basis. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But then a digital machine cannot see the difference between its brain emulated by a physical device, of by the true existence of the proof of the Sigma_1 relation which exists independently of us in arithmetic. Some will argue that a physical universe is needed, but either they add a magic, non comp-emulable, relation between mind and matter, or if that relation is emulable, they just pick up a special universal number (the physical universe) or introduce an ad hoc physical supervenience thesis. I think multiple realizability applies to mathematical objects as well. Arithmetic may be simple enough to support minds and explain what we see, but should we discount the possibility that more complex mathematical objects exist, or that they are valid substrates for consciousness? I think a computer existing in a mathematical universe performing computations is ultimately still representing mathematical relations. If this is true, does it makes the UDA less testable or formally definable? I agree. But the consequence seems to be a big leap for many. Seems because the results are more ignored than criticized. The problem (for many) is that mechanism is used by materialists, but in fine mechanism is not compatible with materialism. Mechanism makes matter an emerging pattern from the elementary arithmetical truth seen from inside. That makes mechanism a testable hypothesis, and that can already explain many qualitative features of the observable worlds, like indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability of matter, and some more quantitative quantum tautologies. I thought non-locality is solved with Everett's interpretation, or do you mean the appearance of non-locality? Also, I am curious how mechanism accounts for the non-clonability of matter. A key idea not well understood is the difference between proof/belief and computation/emulation. I will send a post on this. I look forward to this post. No. The running of a program does NOT create a mind. It just makes it possible for a mind to manifest itself relatively to you. The mind is already related to the platonic relations between the numbers which exist in an infinity of exemplars in Platonia. If a single program does not create a mind, how does an infinite number of programs in the UDA create one? Perhaps I am unclear what you mean by mind. Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:07 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Dec 2010, at 03:15, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But then a digital machine cannot see the difference between its brain emulated by a physical device, of by the true existence of the proof of the Sigma_1 relation which exists independently of us in arithmetic. Some will argue that a physical universe is needed, but either they add a magic, non comp-emulable, relation between mind and matter, or if that relation is emulable, they just pick up a special universal number (the physical universe) or introduce an ad hoc physical supervenience thesis. I think multiple realizability applies to mathematical objects as well. Arithmetic may be simple enough to support minds and explain what we see, but should we discount the possibility that more complex mathematical objects exist, or that they are valid substrates for consciousness? I think a computer existing in a mathematical universe performing computations is ultimately still representing mathematical relations. If this is true, does it makes the UDA less testable or formally definable? Once a computer exists in any mathematical structure, it will exist in the UD* (the UD deployment). But only the UD deployment can be defined in a way which does not depend on any choice of mathematical theory to describe it. Now, the measure of consciousness will depend on all mathematical structure, even if the measure bears only on the UD*, given that the measure pertains of first person experiences which are necessarily non computational. That is why the distinction between 3-ontology is 1-epistemology is very important. The true metamathematics of numbers is beyond numbers. The true theology of persons is beyond persons. But doesn't this change the relative proportions that exist for programs contributing to a mind, and therefore change the likelihood of what one might experience? For example, do you see any reason for a civilization to upload their minds onto computers? Would this not increase the likelihood that their future experiences extend into this new reality of their choosing? Why should we bother to do anything at all if our actions don't change the relative measures of different conscious experiences? I agree. But the consequence seems to be a big leap for many. Seems because the results are more ignored than criticized. The problem (for many) is that mechanism is used by materialists, but in fine mechanism is not compatible with materialism. Mechanism makes matter an emerging pattern from the elementary arithmetical truth seen from inside. That makes mechanism a testable hypothesis, and that can already explain many qualitative features of the observable worlds, like indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability of matter, and some more quantitative quantum tautologies. I thought non-locality is solved with Everett's interpretation, or do you mean the appearance of non-locality? *Quantum* non locality is solved in Everett, and made into an appearance, indeed. But here I was saying that such an appearance of non-locality is already a theorem of (classical) digital mechanism. I think I see what you are saying now. Consciousness can leap through space or time when instantiated elsewhere. Also, I am curious how mechanism accounts for the non-clonability of matter. By UDA, any piece of observable matter is determined in totality only by an infinity of computations. That is why the physical reality is NOT Turing emulable, and not describable by anything finite. To copy exactly any piece of matter, you would need to copy the results of the entire running of the UD (and extract the first person plural perception from it). Only your first person experience can interact with such piece of matter, but your digital mind always makes a digital truncation of that reality. That truncation leads to copiable things, but there are always approximation of the real physical reality, which is really an infinite sum of computations. That's the rough idea. Russell is correct, it is better to attach the mind to all the instantiation in the UD, and then consciousness is a differentiating flux emerging from the number relations. Observation = selection of infinities of universes/computations among an infinity of universes/computations. Okay. I had thought you meant conservation of mass/energy, rather than the infinite complexity of matter. A key idea not well understood is the difference between proof/belief and computation/emulation. I will send a post on this. I look forward to this post. Searle can emulate (compute) the brain of a chinese. But Searle will not understand and live the conscious experience of that chinese (Searle category error, already well analysed by Dennett and Hofstadter in Mind's I). I think Searle's mistake
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Saturday, September 29, 2012 1:41:25 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 1:49 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: But leaving that obvious fact aside, the other obvious fact is that evolution has used organic chemistry to make self-replicators because that was the easiest way to do it. Do you imagine that if it were easy to evolve steel claws which helped predators catch prey that steel claws would not have evolved? What would have prevented their evolution, divine intervention? You are assuming that there are other options though. Maybe there are, but we don't know that for sure yet. If there were, it seems like there would be either multiple kinds of biology in the history of the world, or individual species which have mutated to exploit the variety of inorganic compounds in the universe available. What prevented their evolution is the same thing that creates thermodynamic irreversibility out of reversible quantum wave functions. The universe is an event, not a machine. When something happens, the whole universe is changed, and maybe that change becomes the active arrow of qualitative progress. Organic chemistry got there first, therefore that door may be closed - unless we, as biological agents, open a new one. Iron is already present in haemoglobin and myoglobin. For that matter, silicon may also be an essential micronutrient for bone health (http://www.spritzer.com.my/**WebLITE/Applications/news/** uploaded/docs/Dietary%**20Silicon%202004.pdfhttp://www.spritzer.com.my/WebLITE/Applications/news/uploaded/docs/Dietary%20Silicon%202004.pdf). What prevents these elements from being utilised in a different way? Would it disprove your entire theory if we found an animal living in some forgotten hole that had steel claws? Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but that it is the antithesis of life. Craig, you have judged the whole universe (and all the possibilities it entails) based on a sample size of one (life on earth). You might appreciate this short story: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 8:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. This strikes me as disingenously stretching meaning to fit an argument. Yes, random variation and recombination of ideas and selection according to some values is probably how creativity works. But do you really think that shows Evolution outshines reason? I was only making the point that reason may itself use the same techniques evolution does. Aren't you overlooking the fact that reason does all this in imagination, symbolically, not by reproducing and competing for resources and suffering and dying? Before there were minds to experience all the suffering and dying, you might say that evolution was equally symbolic. That is, the molecular interactions in the biosphere held a similar role to the flurry of ideas in a reasoning mind. Being able to develop ideas quickly and without whole generations having to suffer and die is a great improvement to the process, but it is an improvement natural selection (not we) made. Biological evolution is now largely inconsequential compared to the evolution of technology and ideas. But the trends in technology and ideas are still evolutionary. Reason may be able to make longer strides than was possible with mutation of DNA molecules, but the products of reason are still very much subject to the same evolutionary forces: ideas must reproduce (spread), and compete to survive, or risk extinction. I don't see that reason can be said to outshine evolution since they seem to be inseparable. Reason is a product and tool of evolution (just as DNA is). Reason itself may even use evolutionary processes. And in the end, everything, including the ideas and inventions created by reason are still bound
Re: Epiphenomenalism
On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/29/2012 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Indeed. I think 17 is intrinsically a prime number in all possible realities. It is not a reality in a world that only has 16 objects in it. I can come up with several other counter-examples in terms of finite field, but that is overly belaboring a point. This can clearly be shown to be false. For me to be responding to this post (using a a secure connection to my mail server) requires the use of prime numbers of 153 decimal digits in length. There are on the order of 10^90 particles in the observable universe. This is far smaller than the prime numbers which are larger than 10^152. So would you say these numbers are not prime, merely because we don't have 10^153 things we can point to? If a number P can be prime in a universe with fewer than P objects in it, might P be prime in a universe with 0 objects? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Epiphenomenalism
On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 12:14 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 10/6/2012 1:02 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/29/2012 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Indeed. I think 17 is intrinsically a prime number in all possible realities. It is not a reality in a world that only has 16 objects in it. I can come up with several other counter-examples in terms of finite field, but that is overly belaboring a point. This can clearly be shown to be false. For me to be responding to this post (using a a secure connection to my mail server) requires the use of prime numbers of 153 decimal digits in length. There are on the order of 10^90 particles in the observable universe. This is far smaller than the prime numbers which are larger than 10^152. So would you say these numbers are not prime, merely because we don't have 10^153 things we can point to? If a number P can be prime in a universe with fewer than P objects in it, might P be prime in a universe with 0 objects? Jason LOL Jason, Did you completely miss the point of reality? When is it even possible to have a universe with 0 objects? Nice oxymoron! Say there is a universe that exists only an infinitely extended 3-manifold. Is this not a universe with 0 objects? In any case, did my example change your opinion regarding the primality of 17 in a universe with 16 objects? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On Zuckerman's paper
On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 10/7/2012 4:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Oct 2012, at 21:27, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/6/2012 2:51 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Oct 2012, at 17:40, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/6/2012 4:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Oct 2012, at 09:35, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, You wrote: As the cow-boy guessed right this is assuming too much, both for the formalism used (which is OK), and the ontology, so it uses implicitly non-comp hypothesis, which is less OK, as comp is also assumed implicitly. IT is not uninteresting for possible progress, but it is unaware that matter as to be explained by statistics on computations seen from inside. The role of Russell operator is played by the Kleene second recursion theorem, which encapsulates the non foundation well enough. I disagree. His operators are looking from the outside at A (the physical universe). What do you mean here by physical universe? What do you think it means? The common subject of observation by a collection of observers. What are observers? Where do they come from? Hi Bruno, It depends on what feature you wish to find an explanatory model of. My point is that what is an observer depends on the features that one wishes to explain. The context is the search of a TOE, which does not avoid the problem of explaining consciousness and matter, and the relation between, or put in another way the relation between first person views and third person views. You mentioned the physical universe, but this is something that we cannot take for granted in such a context. You defined it by using the notion of observer, that's OK ... if you define the notion of observer without mentioning physical universe (or if you do it, you have to solve the recursion, with the second recursion theorem, or, if you want, with Set Theory + non foundation, à la Barwise, but this must be eliminable in comp, or put in the machine's epistemology). In my thinking, a physical world = a reality = that which is incontrovertible (free of contradictions = Boolean Satisfiable) for some finite collection of observers, where observers are defined as bundles of computations. Physical worlds are not actual in the absence of observers. I also stipulate that there are an infinite (uncountable) number of physical worlds. This demands that there exists an uncountable infinity of observers = an infinite number of bundles of computations. Please recall how I define exist; it is *necessary possibility*. You like the modal logical explanatory model, This is not correct. I just model belief by the instantional manner, à-la Dennet. One day I might be able to recall your terminology exactly. ;-) A machine believes p if the machine assert p, which makes sense as I limit myself to machine talking first order language, ideally arithmetically sound, and being able to believe the logical consequences of its beliefs in arithmetic. Then modal logic just happens to describe completely, at the propositional level, the logic of provability of such machine, thanks to the work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and others). I have never choose to use modal logic, I use only machine self-reference, where a very special modality imposes itself (G). Sure, you use that is necessitated by non-contradiction principle. ;-) so there we might think of observers as bundles of computations. OK. That's nice, but what is a computation? A computation is **any transformation of information**. Information = any difference between two that makes a difference to a third. It is interesting that this definition demand that there exists at least three entities or processes or whatever for information and thus computation to exist. I have not considered the further consequences of this idea so far. It might be completely fallacious. Your preceding post were using a notion of physical computation, which would not cut the regress. I disagree. I am arguing that only if we retain a connection between computation as a platonic abstraction and the requirement of physical resources we will have a viable cut off for the regress. A computer that can only process a finite number of recursions or iterations of self-modeling will not have an infinite regress for obvious reasons. What I am trying to do to make this a more formal statement is to tie together the Kolmogorov complexity of a description a systemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity, abstract or physical, with the physical degrees of freedom of a physical system (for example the dimensions of its Hilbert space or Hamiltonian). In this way we have a way to define a physical system as a bounded bundle of computations. This would be a lower bound on the necessary physical resources required to implement an arbitrary computations.
Re: On Zuckerman's paper
On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Stephen, Bruno, and Jason, Do I understand correctly that comp requires a relative measure on the set of all partial computable functions and that for Steven Both abstractions, such as numbers and their truths, and physical worlds must emerge together from a primitive ground which is neutral in that it has no innate properties at all other that necessary possibility. It merely exists. If so, naively I ask then: Why is beauty, in the imho non-chimeric sense posed by Plotinus in Ennead I.6 On Beauty, not a candidate for approximating that set, or for describing that which has no innate properties? Here the translation from Steven MacKenna: http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/beauty.htm Because, what drew me to Zuckerman was just a chance find on youtube... and seeing Infinite descending chains, decorations, self-reference etc. all tied together in a set theory context, I didn't think Wow, that's true but simply hmm, that's nice, maybe they'll elaborate a more precise frame. I know, people want to keep separate art and science. But I am agnostic on this as composing and playing music just bled into engineering and mathematical problems and solutions, as well as programming and the computer on their own. I apologize in advance, if this is off-topic as I find the discussion here fascinating and hate interrupting it. Mark Mark, To what extent does beauty exist in the mind of the beholder? As Dennet points out ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjgt=3m29s ) what we find sweet, beautiful, or cute, we do so because our brains are wired in a particular way. Some find certain properties of scientific theories or mathematical proofs to be particularly beautiful. When they are short, surprising, elegant, deep, etc. These may or not be attributes of the true TOE. If they are, then we some might say that which is the ground for all existence is beautiful, and some others might take it further and say beauty is is the ground of existence. Whether or not we could ever take it beyond that metaphor, I am less certain. It may require a rigorous and objective definition of beauty first. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Continuous Game of Life
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/10/smoothlifel/ Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: My First Televised Interview
Craig, Congratulations. I think the episode is very good. To me, your ideas come though a lot more clearly in this media than in text. Jason On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: Well, local community TV anyways. Jose is a great host, producer, and editor though. Consciousness, Materialist Zombies and Multisense Realism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8KrsRnx44 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/2VDnZUxeRUsJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Are we part of a vast, living and 3D holographic simulation
On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 12:56 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/15/2012 7:33 AM, John Clark wrote: Nick Bostrum, a philosopher at Oxford University wrote an interesting paper on this subject: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html The following is from the abstract: This paper argues that *at least one* of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. I'd guess they are in order of decreasing probability. I think there is an analogous heaven argument. If there is a thing as heaven, where you live forever and can remember moments of your previous life with perfect clarity, then you almost certainly are already in heaven and right now is one of your numerous recollections rather than the original experience. Regardless of what the probabilities for the simulation hypothesis is, its possibility means these other extensions/continuations exist, and it they may become probable in certain situations (e.g., near certain death). Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Doubt
This must be what the Heisenberg compensators do in star trek. :-) Jason On 10/18/12, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: Dan, I think the implication for MWI is that such weak measurements do not cause the universe to split into a different version for each possible quantum state. I also think that most of us are aware of these results. Richard On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 2:16 PM, freqflyer07281972 thismindisbud...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone here aware of the following? http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/66654-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-in-doubt Does it have implications for MW interpretations of quantum physics? I'd love to see comments about this. Cheers, Dan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/4BAboNjZ7DoJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote: Bruno, especially in my identification as responding to relations. Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course). My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video. But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to different scalings. The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason (the main one is that it is Turing Universal): x + 0 = x x + s(y) = s(x + y) x *0 = 0 x*s(y) = x*y + x But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms: (F(0) Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x), with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus defined with 0, s, +, *), Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable neighborhoods. Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold. Bruno, Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at least do not use) that could lead to even higher states of consciousness than we presently have? Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to Turing universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if all consciousness is the result of computation. Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Oct 2012, at 19:29, John Clark wrote: Well I don't know about you but I don't think my consciousness was there before Evolution figured out how to make brains, I believe this because I can't seem to remember events that were going on during the Precambrian. I've always been a little hazy about what exactly comp meant but I had the general feeling that I sorta agreed with it, but apparently not. You keep defending comp, in your dialog with Craig, but you don't follow its logical consequences, I guess, this is by not wanting to take seriously the first person and third person distinction, which is the key of the UD argument. You can attach consciousness to the owner of a brain, but the owner itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic (or in a physical universe if that exists) and realizing that brain state. John, I would also suggest that you read this link, it shows how an infinitely large cosmos leads directly to quantum mechanics due to the observer's inability to self-locate. For someone who believes in both mechanism and platonism, it is the exact scenario platonic programs should find themselves in: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3pg/aguirre_tegmark_layzer_cosmological/ http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1066 Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there was no point in reading about things built on top of that From your error you have been obliged to say that in the WM duplication, you will live both at W and at W Yes. yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place Yes. so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first person and third person. Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we are identical then my first person experience of looking at you is identical to your first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are identical for a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're identical it's meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of how many bodies or brains have been duplicated. Your confusion stems from saying you have been duplicated but then not thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun (like a brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has not been as long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if they were nouns and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused by the fact that if 2 identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as by forming different memories, then they are no longer identical. And finally you are confused by the fact that although they are not each other any more after those changes both still have a equal right to call themselves Bruno Marchal. After reading these multiple confusions in one step of your proof I saw no point in reading more, and I still don't. John, I think you are missing something. It is a problem that I noticed after watching the movie The Prestige and it eventually led me to join this list. Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of thought, you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that you identify with. You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced by some activity of your brain. Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again. Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are functionally equivalent. We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it left off (from before you were obliterated). It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed it. From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your physical incarnation and location has changed. Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges: what happens to your consciousness when duplicated? Either an atom for atom replica of yourself is created in two places or your VM image which contains your brain emulation is copied to two different computers while paused, and then both are resumed. Initially, the sensory input to the two duplicates could be the same, and in a sense they are still the same mind, just with two instances, but then something interesting happens once different input is fed to the two instances: they split. You could say they split in the same sense as when someone opens the steel box to see whether the cat is alive or dead. All the splitting in quantum mechanics may be the result of our infinite instances discovering/learning different things about our infinite environments. Jason By the way, it is irrational to stop in the middle of a proof. If one of the steps in a proof contains a blunder then it would be irrational to keep reading it. By assuming a physical reality at the start That seems like a pretty damn good place to make an assumption. But the physical reality can emerge or appear without a physical reality at the start Maybe maybe not, but even if you're right that wouldn't make it any less real; and maybe physical reality didn't even need to emerge because there was no start. If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a physical object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption. But this is easily shown to be false when we assume comp. It's not false and I don't need to assume it and I
Re: One more nail in comp's coffin.
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno, My own subjectivity is 1p. I don't believe a computer can have consciousness, but suppose we let the computer have consciousness as well. Let a descriptor be 3p. Let my consciousness = 1p But the computer's consciousness would be different, say 1p' -- because, let's say, it's less intelligent than I am. Or it's not travelled around the world as I have. Or it is only 3 years old. I've only used it for 3 years. Or it is Christian while I am a pagan. Or it is a materialist while I follow Leibniz. Or I am drunk and it is sober. Then the meaning of the 3p to me = 1p(3p). The meaning of the 3p to the computer = 1p'(3p). These obviously aren't going to be the same. So comp can't work or work with any reliability. You could use this same argument to disprove the consciousness of every other person on earth. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: One more nail in comp's coffin.
On Oct 24, 2012, at 6:33 AM, Roger Cloughrclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Jason Resch No, have proven solipsism. What? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-23, 10:30:37 Subject: Re: One more nail in comp's coffin. On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno, My own subjectivity is 1p. I don't believe a computer can have consciousness, but suppose we let the computer have consciousness as well. Let a descriptor be 3p. Let my consciousness = 1p But the computer's consciousness would be different, say 1p' -- because, let's say, it's less intelligent than I am. Or it's not travelled around the world as I have. Or it is only 3 years old. I've only used it for 3 years. Or it is Christian while I am a pagan. Or it is a materialist while I follow Leibniz. Or I am drunk and it is sober. Then the meaning of the 3p to me = 1p(3p). The meaning of the 3p to the computer = 1p'(3p). These obviously aren't ?oing to be the same. So comp can't work or work with any reliability. You could use this same argument to disprove the consciousness of every other person on earth. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:21:23 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote: On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch jason...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen rexall...@gmail.com wrote: But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). Rex, I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism. Assume there is were an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. I started out as a functionalist/**computationalist/mechanist but abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that representation will do all that you're asking it to do. For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my experience changes over time. However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or anger or what it's like to see red. I think that's a failure of imagination. From what I know about quarks and electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain circumstances on the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some of these can be molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex reproducing organisms these will evolve ways of interacting It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking. with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will experience emotions like anger. Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the environment come to have an experience of any kind, let alone something totally unprecedented and explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like saying that if you begin counting to infinity at some point the number is bound to turn purple. This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties? The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information. What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per se, but rather what is represented by the bits. Information is just a catch-all term for what is being represented. But, as you say, the same information can be represented in *many* different ways, and by many different bit-patterns. And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any information. You just need the right one-time pad to XOR with the bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter. SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the thing they represent. Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience, doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you manipulate the bits in a way as to represent me seeing a pink elephant doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant. All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and then had the experience of thinking to yourself: hee hee hee, I just caused Rex to see a pink elephant... Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink elephant (Boy does he look surprised!), this interpretation all happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my conscious experience. Thinking that the bit representation captures my conscious experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul. That's right. The meaning, the what is represented, is given by interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others). So only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have human
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Oct 2012, at 18:42, Jason Resch wrote: On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, On 20 Oct 2012, at 23:16, John Mikes wrote: Bruno, especially in my identification as responding to relations. Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course). My feeling was first that all homeotherm animals have self-consciousness, as they have the ability to dream, easily realted to the ability to build a representation of one self. Then I have enlarged the spectrum up to some spiders and the octopi, just by reading a lot about them, looking video. But this is just a personal appreciation. For the plant, let us say I know nothing, although I supect possible consciousness, related to different scalings. The following theory seems to have consciousness, for different reason (the main one is that it is Turing Universal): x + 0 = x x + s(y) = s(x + y) x *0 = 0 x*s(y) = x*y + x But once you add the very powerful induction axioms: which say that if a property F is true for zero, and preserved by the successor operation, then it is true for all natural numbers. That is the infinity of axioms: (F(0) Ax(F(x) - F(s(x))) - AxF(x), with F(x) being any formula in the arithmetical language (and thus defined with 0, s, +, *), Then you get Löbianity, and this makes it as much conscious as you and me. Indeed, they got a rich theology about which they can develop maximal awareness, and even test it by comparing the physics retrievable by that theology, and the observation and inference on their most probable neighborhoods. Löbianity is the treshold at which any new axiom added will create and enlarge the machine ignorance. It is the utimate modesty treshold. Bruno, Might there be still other axioms (which we are not aware of, or at least do not use) that could lead to even higher states of consciousness than we presently have? Yes, there are interesting transfinities below and beyond omega_1^CK (the Kleene Church first non constructive ordinal). This has plausibly, with comp, some relation with possible consciousness states (but that is not obvious and depends on definitions). Also, it isn't quite clear to me how something needs to be added to Turing universality to expand the capabilities of consciousness, if all consciousness is the result of computation. Gosh! It is only recent, for me, that I even think that universal machines are already conscious. I thought Lôbianity was needed. But then it is basically the same as the consciousness--self-consciousness type of consciousness enrichment/delusion. In a sense, abstract universality is maximally conscious, maximally undeluded, or awake, somehow. This is not quite what I meant (I remain undecided on your proposition that all Turing machines are conscious). What I meant is that any Turing machine could perform any computation, so if all conscious states are the result of computation, then all that is needed to produce that conscious state is any Turing machine (running the appropriate computation). Therefore, if computation is all that is needed, why do different axioms have to come into it? Why is an induction axiom needed for human consciousness? But Turing universality is cheap and concerns an ability to imitate other machine, not to understand them, so for provability and beliefs, and knowledge there are transfinite improvement and enlargement possible. We are not just conscious, we differentiate in developing beliefs, and get greater and greater view on truth. I can see how different axioms are needed to justify different beliefs, but it isn't so clear to me how they are needed for different conscious states. Unless we are talking about conscious states like of believing 7 is prime because of some other axioms. It is like you might be near doing a kind of Searle error perhaps. A computation can emulate consciousness, but the computation is not conscious, only the person emulated by that computations, she can always progress infinitely (even if restricted on the search of arithmetical truth), develop more and more beliefs and knowledge. Particular universal machines will develop particular parts (even if transfinite) of arithmetical truth. But G and G*, that is the modal logic of the provability of the Löbian machines, is a treshold. Despite growing transfinitely on her knowledge(s) of the arithmetical truth, as long as they remain self-referentially correct, they will obey to G and G*, for their theory of provability. If consistent, they will for ever
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote I think you are missing something. It is a problem that I noticed after watching the movie The Prestige In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years, and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar themes, this is part of it: About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It could find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all the latest tools from Sears. I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled This is monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard. Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had some pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT, then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all about it? Nice story. It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it): You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a gun. If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine. Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000. What do you do? If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone. you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that you identify with. I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that. You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced by some activity of your brain. Yes. Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again. Yes. Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are functionally equivalent. Yes. We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it left off (from before you were obliterated). Yes. It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed it. From your perspective inside, there was no interruption, yet your physical incarnation and location has changed. Yes. what happens to your consciousness when duplicated? When what is duplicated? Adjectives, like
Re: Against Mechanism
On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:58 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/24/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote: That's right. The meaning, the what is represented, is given by interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others). So only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have human-like intelligence that we can infer from behavior. It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a computer whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the computer has no experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia is not an inevitable result of interaction. I agree with what Max said (two years ago!): Information requires interpretation. The magic isn't in the bits. The magic is in the interpreter. It's 'magic' because you aren't trying to explain it, you're just accepting a ghost in the machine to produce meaning. You are responding to something Rex Allen wrote two years ago, not anything I wrote. Max's post was 23 hours ago. It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago that you and Brent are quoting and responding to. Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning. But that's just a semantic explanation since interpreter and how we would know whether or not something is an interpreter is left unexplained. It is a process acting on the information. With enough analysis, we could determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information means or (does) to the process. We could perhaps predict how that interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different information, etc. Thus there can be an objective understanding of the meaning of that information. To use Craig's favorite example, we can see how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain vibrational patterns in the air. An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information. And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning. So are you agreeing with what I said? It seemed previously that you were disagreeing. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Oct 24, 2012, at 9:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/24/2012 6:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote I think you are missing something. It is a problem that I noticed after watching the movie The Prestige In my opinion The Prestige is the best movie made in the last 10 years, and this is one of those rare instances where the movie was better than the book. Before the movie back in 1996 I wrote a short scenario that had somewhat similar themes, this is part of it: About a year ago I started building a matter duplicating machine. It could find the position and velocity of every atom in a human being to the limit imposed by Heisenberg's law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it does it all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in any way. You may be surprised that I was able to build such a complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good I am with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all the latest tools from Sears. I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by duplicating myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the chamber, it filled with smoke (damn those radio shack transformers) there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my left was a man who looked exactly like me. It was at that instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit me. I yelled This is monstrous, there can only be one of me, my copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I wonder why people think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I noted with alarm that the double also had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I shouted you don't have the guts to pull the trigger, but I do. Again he mimicked my words and did so in perfect synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the trigger, he did too. My gun went off but due to a random quantum fluctuation his gun jammed. I buried him in my back yard. Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had some pangs of guilt about killing a living creature, but that's not what really torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy? I feel exactly the same as before, but would a copy feel different? Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of the entire experiment. My memory is that the copy first appeared 3 feet to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front of me face to face things would have been more symmetrical, like looking in a mirror), if the tape shows the original walking into the chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT, then I would know that I am the copy. But I'm afraid to look at the tape, should I be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do? I suppose I should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I have no real past and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn the tape and forget all about it? Nice story. It reminds me of this little puzzle (I forgot where I heard it): You will be placed into a room with an exact clone of yourself and you will be given a gun. If you shoot your clone you can leave that room and everything will be fine. Or, if you shoot yourself your clone will be allowed to leave the room and will be given $1,000,000. What do you do? If you value the money and ascribe to certain philosophical schools, the logical decision would be to shoot yourself rather than shooting the clone. you probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/ consciousness that you identify with. I can't conceive of anyone disagreeing with that. You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are produced by some activity of your brain. Yes. Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever horrible injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from every other atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put back just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again. Yes. Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same atoms or not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are functionally equivalent. Yes. We could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with atoms from a different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it left off (from before you were obliterated). Yes. It would be as if a simulation of your brain were running on a VM, we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical computer and then resumed
