Re: Gravity treats matter and antimatter the same way
> It remains a mystery why there's so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. Time for a trite, unthought-out, and already-considered-by-everyone idea: Analogous to how the quantum foam produces particle pairs, some of which occasionally get split by asymmetric background stuff before they would have re-merged and evaporated, what if the universe is mostly unbiased but sometimes bubbles form and split off with matter/anti-matter weightings? These would be the big-bang-universes-within-a-multiverse type of thing. If we need yet more statistical massaging, it could get anthropic with only these kind of universes supporting complexity and life.... Michael -- Dammit babies, you've got to be kind. On Thu, 28 Sept 2023 at 13:02, John Clark wrote: > I don't think anybody was surprised but yesterday the journal Nature > reported that for the first time it has been experimentally demonstrated > that antimatter particles fall down and not up just like particles made of > normal matter. It took an amazing amount of skill for experimenters to do > this. It remains a mystery why there's so much more matter than antimatter > in the universe. > > Observation of the effect of gravity on the motion of antimatter > <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06527-1> > > John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > 9hq > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0h4rG_1NjnSaNcy4hGJCn12pkCE4isjwOP5GyazvqgdQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0h4rG_1NjnSaNcy4hGJCn12pkCE4isjwOP5GyazvqgdQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CACNo72Jyfsy-U-%2BRZq4ZUYZ1b%3DUagb8U1ciuUr-F9mbbMyM2CA%40mail.gmail.com.
Re: Quantum Immortality considering Passing Out
The branching is occurring at every moment, so if even one set of said parents got it on, there would be umpteen trillons(TM) of copies of said individual. It has nothing to do really with the parents at all. Once you exist, there's umpteen trillions of copies that stem from the state of the individual at each moment in time. On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 5:59 AM, m.a. marty...@bellsouth.net wrote: - Original Message - *From:* Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Thursday, May 20, 2010 4:35 PM *Subject:* Re: Quantum Immortality considering Passing Out On 20/05/2010, at 4:12 PM, m.a. marty...@bellsouth.net wrote: I may have this all wrong, but it seems to me that for there to be umpteen trillion copies of a person there had to be umpteen trillion (UT) copies of his parents. And only a relatively small sub-group of those met and cohabited at the exact moment of his/her conception. But the same must have been true for their parents and their parents' parents and so forth back to the primoridal slime. And this staggering foliation of universes only covers one specific zygote of two specific gametes. What of all the other UT^UT combinations leading to the creation of other individuals just on this family tree? And what of all the other combinations and histories of every human, animal, insect and bacterium on this planet? Does it really make sense to assume numbers of universes so far beyond our ability to conceive of?marty a. You may as well claim that an infinite single universe should not exist because it boggles the human mind. Stathis Papaioannou I don't know, Stathis. Somehow it seems easier for me to conceive of ONE infinite universe than to conceive of umpteen trillion trillion trillion^umpteen trillion trillion trillion^umpteen...universes. My mind is obviously more limited than yours. m.a. -- 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.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.
A summary I just wrote for my blog
I wrote it for my friends, but feel free to criticise! http://rosyatrandom.livejournal.com/35445.html _ Perhaps it's time I had another go at explaining all that weird stuff I believe in and why. Well, for those few that don't know, I reckon that all possible universes exist and that everyone's immortal. I admit, this does sound rather odd. It would have sounded odd to me about 10 years ago, too. Since about the age of 8 I was a pretty hardcore rational scientific naturalist: everything is simply matter and energy, and we but its dreams. What was *real*? Well, a chair. An atom. Something you can * touch*. After all, when you think of reality, you think of something... there. Something that sits there, quietly existing to itself. But what does that mean, really? Everyone knows that matter is almost entirely empty space, anyway - the solidity is just the feather-touch of far-extended electromagnetic fields. Electrons popping in and out of existence as the energy fields knot so charge can be transferred in quantised lumps. Particles do not behave as billiard balls - they are ghosts, obeying strange equations, lacking hard and fast surfaces or reliable locations. Matter, energy, space, time... they all begin to seem a bit ethereal when you look at them. Time. There's another one. I don't really believe in that, either. Spacetime is just a barely distinguishable fabric woven by the universe. Events do not occur at a time or a place - most of the observables we see arise kaleidoscope like out of an intricate web of possibilities, their form imposed by our own consciousness. And by that, I mean that our minds are embedded within the universe, constructed in such a way that the metaphysical structure of the cosmos is implied by our design - the word without reflects the world within. This has an aspect of the anthropic principle to it - that we observe a world capable of supporting our existence because if it didn't, we wouldn't. But this still has no bearing on how I started thinking things like this, so I shall get that out of the way. The short story is that I read some stories by a science-fiction author called Greg Egan. Before you laugh too much, a lot of sci-fi is essentially just window-dressing to convey an idea - the implications of some item of technology, turn of events or scientific/philosophical argument. And Greg Egan is a 'hard' science-fiction author, an ideas merchant. Well, you get the drift. The first story I read was called Wang's Carpets (later included as a chapter of the book Diaspora), in which some spacefarers (themselves software) find a planet whose major life-form are floating mats that take the form of Wang Tiles - tesselating objects whose patterns can implement a universal turing machine. But that's just the set-up for the *idea*: when someone analyses the Carpets, by taking various abstract variables (appearance of certain tiles and features, etc) and putting them through frequency transforms, it turns out that the computations the Carpets encode as part of their reproductive habits give rise to a fully realised n-dimensional space containing self-aware creatures. The thought-provoking part here was not that consciousness could be digitalised and run as software - I had already pretty much accepted that - but that the mathematical transformations necessary to do this could be pretty strange, and come from processes that were essentially plucked arbitrarily from the environment. That, largely, consciousness could be a matter of perspective. The second story was the book, Permutation City. A great deal of this book concerns one of the protagonists who wakes up one day and finds he is simply a downloaded copy - and that the 'real' him is running experiments. After being run at different speeds, and distributed in space and time, backwards, in chunks of different sizes, etc., the argument becomes that it doesn't matter what or how the program is run - it is all the same from the perspective of the consciousness being implemented, and that this is so abstract that one can find the relevant computational processes within *any*physical substrate. That *all* consciousnesses can be found within a grain of sand. That there is not even any physical bedrock to fall back upon - there is no way ever to verify, even in principle, that one is on the 'fundamental' metapysical level. At the end of the book, the characters have escaped into their own computational world, completely divorced from any physical hardware. Their universe contains a simulation of another world, whose very alien inhabitants find their own physical principles for the cosmos they observe - principles radically different from the computational ones 'running' it, and so compelling they start to take over the character's world, too. So when you get down to it, I no longer believe in the physical world - or rather, I believe in all of them. While I used to require reasons to
Re: A summary I just wrote for my blog
I did think about what word to use there - and while I don't _believe_ believe it, I would be _very_ surprised to be proved wrong :D . And besides, any other word seems like a bit of a fudge. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2009/2/10 Pete Carlton pmcarl...@mac.com Not too much here that would raise hackles on the everything-list, but (IMHO) for the first sentence-- Perhaps it's time I had another go at explaining all that weird stuff I believe in and why. The word believe can mean many things but in my parlance it means to attach a very high confidence to a proposition. I believe that eating satiates my hunger, that the Pacific Ocean lies a few miles to my west, that if I sit in a chair I will not fall through it to the ground, etc. I also from time to time *entertain* notions similar to the ones you've written about, and admit the possibility of some, but I don't believe any of it with anything like the confidence with which I believe that water will freeze at -10°C. I suspect the same is true for you too. Or is it really the case that in the few years since you've read those stories you have really thought things through to the point where you believe it? -Pete --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: adult vs. child
I agree. They are both pointers to the same abstract computation. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2009/2/10 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Feb 2009, at 18:44, Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2009/2/10 Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com: This sort of talk about random sampling and luck is misleading and is exactly why I broke down the roles of effective probability into the four categories I did in the paper. If you are considering future versions of yourself, in the MWI sense, there is no randomness involved. Depending on how you define you, you will either be all of them, or you are just an observer-moment and can consider them to be other people. Regardless of definitions, this case calls for the use of Caring Measure for decision making. It seems that the disagreement may be one about personal identity. It is not clear to me from your paper whether you accept what Derek Parfit calls the reductionist theory of personal identity. Consider the following experiment: There are two consecutive periods of consciousness, A and B, in which you are an observer in a virtual reality program. A is your experiences between 5:00 PM and 5:01 PM while B is your experiences between 5:01 PM and 5:02 PM, subjective time. A is being implemented in parallel on two computers MA1 and MA2, so that there are actually two qualitatively identical streams of consciousness which we can call A1 and A2. At the end of the subjective minute, data is saved to disk and both MA1 and MA2 are switched off. An external operator picks up a copy of the saved data, walks over to a third computer MB, loads the data and starts up the program. After another subjective minute MB is switched off and the experiment ends. As the observer you know all this information, and you look at the clock and see that it is 5:00 PM. What can you conclude from this and what should you expect? To me, it seems that you must conclude that you are currently either A1 or A2, and that in one minute you will be B, with 100% certainty. Would you say something else? I might say that while there are two computations, there is only one stream of consciousness. You are right, but I think that Stathis is right too. When Stathis talks about two identical stream of consciousness, he make perhaps just a little abuse of language, which seems to me quite justifiable. Just give a mirror to the observer so that A *can* (but does not) look in the mirror to see if he is implemented by MA1 or by MA2. Knowing the protocol the observer can predict that IF he look at the mirror the stream of consciousness will bifurcate into A1 and A2. I don't follow that. If A1 looks in the mirror and sees A2, then, ex hypothesi, A2 looks in the mirror and sees A1 and the two streams of consciousness remain identical. If consciousness is computation, independent of physical implementation, then computations that differ only in their physical realizations are identical and cannot be counted as more than one. Brent Accepting the Y = II rule, that is bifurcation of future = differentiation of the whole story) makes the Stathis abuse of language an acceptable way to describe the picture. So Stathis get the correct expectation, despite the first person ambiguity in two identical stream of consciousness. If two infinitely computations *never* differentiate, should we count them as one? I am not sure but I think we should still differentiate them. UD generates infinitely often such infinitely similar streams. That should play a role for the relative (to observer-moment) measure pertaining on the computations. OK? 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-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: UDA and interference of histories
In a sense, I don't see how a computation could be cancelled by another one. About a year ago I asked Deutsch about cancellation. My idea was that universes could annihilate each other if a particle was out of phase with its counterpart in another otherwise consistent universe. He said that universes don't annihilate but didn't elaborate. I think it must be that when out-of-phase counterparts meet, they repel each other to more probable locations. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Newbie Questions
Getting back to the original question: Are ALL quantum variations explored? So let me ask some more basic questions: How many distinct choices of new state does a particle, say an electron, have at each time quanta? Let's call that number X. In an admittedly over-simplified universe of two particles, the number of new universe states at the next time quanta is X^2, right? In a universe with Y particles, the number of new states that arise from a given previous state at each time quanta is X^Y, right? And due to quantum interference, certain states are less common, and other states are more common. I realize that these are very elementary questions. I'm just trying to get my bearings here. The thing that is simply inconceivable to me is that this bizarre explosive growth is an explosion of *information.* The multiverse seems to have an unlimited capacity to generate and store these new universe states, and also an unlimited capacity to compare all of these universe states to each other in order to produce the quantum interference we observe. The thing I like about the theory is that it certainly takes the dice out of God's hands. Since all states are exhaustively explored, there is no randomness at all. We just happen to exist in some portions of the immense tree of states, and not in other portions. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Newbie Questions
I understand. I was trying ask about whether or not, if there were say 10^10^10 slits, would the electron go through all of them. Do we know for sure? Also, I want the inside of time answer. Right now, in the multiverse, it seems like the number of differentiated states may be a very large number, but is it infinite? I expect the answer to be no, but I'm no expert. On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Abram Demski abramdem...@gmail.comwrote: Fragamus, That depends on definitions! What counts as a history, and when do we count them? In order for the number of histories to be merely a fantastically large and growing number, we need to be inside of time when we count the number of histories-- otherwise it could not be growing. Personally I would prefer to count the *eventual* number of histories, rather than the number of histories at any given moment. This number will be infinite, but *which* infinity? The answer gives us some information. (I don't know if you are familiar with the different infinities, but there *are* smaller and larger infinities.) For example, if all universes end in finite time the number of histories may be smaller than if there are some that go on forever. -Abram On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:10 PM, fragamus innovative.engin...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to ask the board: Are ALL possible quantum histories realized in the multiverse? Is the number of possible histories infinite, or merely a fantastically large and growing number? I don't like infinity so I'm hoping you say no. THANKS! -- Abram Demski Public address: abram-dem...@googlegroups.com Public archive: http://groups.google.com/group/abram-demski Private address: abramdem...@gmail.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-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: Newbie Questions
Thank you. However, I don't understand your objection to an infinite number of states. The universe in which we live appears by current measurements to be infinite in size (because it is geometrically flat), and will last forever (because its expansion is hastening). Yes, but space may be simply the coordinate system in which matter and energy move. Even if the coordinate system is infinite, it doesn't matter because the particles' occupy a finite (but growing) part of it. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Newbie Questions
So you are saying the mass of the universe is infinite. On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 4:40 PM, A. Wolf a.lup...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, but space may be simply the coordinate system in which matter and energy move. Even if the coordinate system is infinite, it doesn't matter because the particles' occupy a finite (but growing) part of it. I don't think your conceptualization of an expanding universe is correct. No currently accepted model of the universe consists of a bunch of centrally-located matter with empty space surrounding it, and it's easy to see why: we can see the big bang (or at least, the moment when light decoupled from matter) from every direction in the sky. This means that there is no center to the universe. Matter is fairly uniformly distributed throughout the universe, and the universe is either finite but unbounded, or (as measurement of the CBR supports) infinite in both size /and/ content. So there is no center to the universe from which things are expanding into empty space. Rather, everything is moving away from everything else. Evidence suggests there's an infinite amount of stuff out there, either way, because careful measurements of the visible universe show zero curvature as far back as is possible to see. Anna --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
This distinction between physicalism and materialism, with materialism allowing for features to emerge, it sounds to me like a join-the-dots puzzle - the physical substrate provides the dots, but the supervening system also contains lines - abstract structures implied by but not contained within the system implementing it. But does that not mean that this also implies further possible layers to the underlying reality? That no matter how many turtles you go down, there's always more turtles to come? -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/12/7 Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 03:32:53PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness and free will
This business of histories not interacting... does the Bell Inequality have some bearing here? My intuition is that the universe behaves classically while it's linked to consciousness - quantum interference is fine as long as it leaves no 'split-states' hanging around to be observed/otherwise-directly-affecting-consciousness. (Or, rephrasing, quantum behaviour can be observed after-the-fact, but interacting with split-states splits consciousness and maybe also produces nonconscious split-minds.) The short version: the universe is fully quantum whenever we aren't looking at it. 2008/12/1 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 30 Nov 2008, at 20:21, M.A. wrote: *Bruno,* * Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the detailed explanations. I'll post my responses in an interlinear manner using color to differentiate (if that's ok). M.A.* - Original Message - *From:* Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Saturday, November 29, 2008 3:49 PM *Subject:* Re: Consciousness and free will On 29 Nov 2008, at 16:45, M.A. wrote: *(Assuming MEC/Comp.and MWI) If the computational universe which I experience* Assuming MEC I would say *you* experience an infinity of computational histories. The term universe is far too ambiguous (now). *But isn't each history separated from all others by impermeable walls? Do you mean that the word universe is ambiguous or just my use of it?* The word universe is ambiguous. And yes, each history is separated from all others, despite all histories are mixed in some other histories. But *you* (third person, your bodies) belongs to a continuum of histories, and although they does not interact, it changes your probabilities on your possible consistent extensions. *is a single instance of a vast array of similar universes playing out every possible variation of the initial axioms, then no one universe could depart from its predetermined program since in so doing it would alter its program and duplicate that of another universe thus spoiling the overall mission of implementing every possible variation.* Histories can bifurcate in a way that you will find yourself in both histories (you seen from some third person point of view). Each histories is deterministic but, your future is uncertain. *But what about the first person me? I am only conscious of one history.* Perahps. It could be a question of language. If you look at an electronic orbital you could see a cloud of possible positions, accessible by position-measurement. In a sense you look (indirectly) at the many histories you are simultaneously in, a bit like you computes in many histories you are in when you are using a quantum computer. When we will accept, not only digital brain, but quantum digital brain change of language will occur. To use the correct language now could be like learning quantum field theory for doing a pizza. *It follows that each program-universe is completely detirministic* All right. *and that consciousness is merely an observing passenger inside the program;* At some point I could defined consciousness as the state of (instinctively at first) betting on a history. This will speed up yourself relatively to your current stories, and make greater the set of your possible continuation. As an exemple you become aware an asteroïd is coming nearby make it possible for you to envisage a set of possible decisions, which can themselves augment your probability of survival. *It seems like the present copy of me can envisage these decisions, but be unable to carry them out unless they are part of his deterministic history.* Yes. In some case, perhaps not your's, this can be helped by doctor, shaman, yoga, regime, drugs, sports, music, etc. It is difficult. *the conscious observer, refusing to give up the notion of free will, explains the lapse by rationalizations such as: God, luck, destiny, possession, halluciation etc.* As far as I understand, the program here acknowledge its ignorance. If, by being too much proud, he doesn't, then he make higher some catastrophe probabilities. *But isn't his problem of pride determined in some history, namely the one I experience?* Sure. It depends of our parents, education, etc. You can abstract such problems away, but this need works. It depend on the short and long pasts. We have inherited of million years of family trifles, we have kept some of our reptile instincts. But we can learn, for the better or the worse. *accept the intercession of supernatural powers (theology),* it could just accept it belongs to a collection of deep unknown histories, and many other unknown things, some even not nameable (and deadly if named). It can consolate itself by pointing on its *partial* control. *Not very consoling when entangled with the intense immediacy and sensitivity of one's ego.*
Re: MGA 3
There's a quote you might like, by Korzybski: That which makes no difference _is_ no difference. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/26 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go on, for some range of activity, then you can remove it, for that range of activity. OK? Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. No more than it is needed that someone is look at your reconstitution in Moscow for you to be conscious in Moscow after a teleportation. All right? (with MEC assumed of course). Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. Does Alice's dream supervene (in real time and space) on the projection of the empty movie? Remark. 1° Of course, this argument can be sum up by saying that the movie lacks causality between its parts so that it cannot really be said that it computes any thing, at least physically. The movie is just an ordered record of computational states. This is neither a physical computation, nor an (immaterial) computation where the steps follows relatively to some universal machine. It is just a description of a computation, already existing in the Universal Deployment. 2° Note this: If we take into consideration the relative destiny of Alice, and supposing one day her brain broke
MGA in a nutshell
I don't know about anyone else, but with the volume of mail we're getting lately, I've been skimming things and have started to lose the plot completely. So, perhaps it's time for a fresh start. My idea of where we are is this: Physical causality is just a 'linkage' between states - it's nothing more than a rule for going from one place to another (be it a discrete jump or a continuous trajectory), and taking a block view of time it can be represented not as a distinction between states and links but just as states. Hence any phenomena relying on a causal process is also encapsulated by a static snapshot. Thence, consciousness is not created by the universe, but merely implies/creates its own universe/causal context around it. Damn, I try and make something make more sense and end up typing confusing babble like that! -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA in a nutshell
Well, I think I'm OK with that! Consciousness exists in the Everything as an implied causal process - and that implication embeds it within causal frameworks. In cases where causality is broken but its representation exists, I would say that maybe the gaps are filled in by the 'full' consciousnesses as expressed elsewhere in the Everything. It seems a little odd, but what the hell. Say you're split in two (doesn't matter if it's in the same universe or in different ones), and having a conversation with someone. In one case, it's a normal person, and in another a non-consciousness simulacrum with identical responses etc.. If you don't know which one you're dealing with, then perhaps the consciousness of the real person is in some kind of dominant superposition over the fake. Of course, this would imply that everything that could possibly, even in concept, have some hidden consciousness behind it does so. 2008/11/25 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Rosefield wrote: I don't know about anyone else, but with the volume of mail we're getting lately, I've been skimming things and have started to lose the plot completely. So, perhaps it's time for a fresh start. My idea of where we are is this: Physical causality is just a 'linkage' between states - it's nothing more than a rule for going from one place to another (be it a discrete jump or a continuous trajectory), and taking a block view of time it can be represented not as a distinction between states and links but just as states. But that's what creates the antinomy when you suppose the sequence of states is created by a random number generator or replaying a recording. If there's nothing to causal linkage except order of states then there's no distinction between the randomly generated sequence and the causal sequence except the former is extremely improbable. Brent Hence any phenomena relying on a causal process is also encapsulated by a static snapshot. Thence, consciousness is not created by the universe, but merely implies/creates its own universe/causal context around it. Damn, I try and make something make more sense and end up typing confusing babble like that! -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
This is one of those questions were I'm not sure if I'm being relevant or missing the point entirely, but here goes: There are multiple universes which implement/contain/whatever Alice's consciousness. During the period of the experiment, that universe may no longer be amongst them but shadows along with them closely enough that it certainly rejoins them upon its termination. So, was Alice conscious during the experiment? Well, from Alice's perspective she certainly has the memory of consciousness, and due to the presence of the implementing universes there was certainly a conscious Alice out there somewhere. Since consciousness has no intrinsic spatio-temporal quality, there's no reason for that consciousness not to count. 2008/11/21 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 21, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. The same argument can be used to show that Empty-Headed Alice must also be conscious. (Empty-Headed Alice is the version where only Alice's motor neurons are stimulated by cosmic rays, while all of the other neurons in Alice's head do nothing. Alice's body continues to act indistinguishably from the way it would have acted, but there's nothing going on in the rest of Alice's brain, random or otherwise. Telmo and Bruno have both indicated that they don't think this Alice is conscious. Or at least, that a mechanist-materialist shouldn't believe that this Alice is conscious.) Let's assume that Lucky Alice is conscious. Every neuron in her head (they're all artificial) has become causally disconnected from all the others, but they (very improbably) continue to do exactly what they would have done when they were connected, due to cosmic rays. Let's say that we remove one of the neurons from Alice's head. This has no effect on her outward behavior, or on the behavior of any of her other neurons (since they're already causally disconnected). Of course, we can remove two neurons, and then three, etc. We can remove her entire visual cortex. This can't have any noticeable effect on her consciousness, because the neurons that do remain go right on acting the way they would have acted if the cortex was there. Eventually, we can remove every neuron that isn't a motor neuron, so that we have an empty-headed Alice whose body takes the exam, ducks when I throw the ball at her head, etc. If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But I also can't make any sense of the idea that Empty-Headed Alice is conscious. Therefore, I don't think this argument shows that Empty-Headed Alice (and by extension, Lucky Alice) must be conscious. I think it shows that there's a deeper problem - probably with one of our assumptions. Even though I actually think that mechanist-materialists should view both Lucky Alice and Empty-Headed Alice as not conscious, I still think they have to deal with this problem. They have to deal with the spectrum of intermediate states between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice. (Or between Fully-Functional Alice and Empty-Headed Alice.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
If there is a split, does it create differentiated consciousnesses? I doubt it. Perhaps there are two main causes of splitting: where an event would cause different 'observables', or where an event by necessity breaks the mechanism of consciousness into different streams. In the latter case, there could be a 'connective-tissue' of undecohered universes containing weird brains-in-superposition; these aren't consciousness, but perhaps we get a bit of bleed-through from the edges. Or is that just too darned uninformed and ridiculous...? 2008/11/16 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] For instance, you don't have to perform a QM-experiment with explicit setup, looking around is enough - photons hit your eyes with different polarizations; why should no splitting occur here? Why only in the case where you perform an up/down-amplification experiment? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Surely the split is from a single history to multiple histories consistent with the original? Sure, you could say we move from identity to identity at random, but that is unlikely under QM and should be similarly improbable from any other metatheory. 2008/11/17 m.a. [EMAIL PROTECTED] *I wonder whether my selves, after a split, retain their memories from the world before the split or now have all the memories appropriate to the self in the new universe. Theoretically of course, they wouldn't know the difference, but it seems strange to think that we might perceive entirely new sets of lifetime memories from Planck-second to Planck-second as we move through the cloud of possible universes. (Or do I have it completely wrong?) marty a. * Michael Rosefield wrote: If there is a split, does it create differentiated consciousnesses? I doubt it. Perhaps there are two main causes of splitting: where an event would cause different 'observables', or where an event by necessity breaks the mechanism of consciousness into different streams. In the latter case, there could be a 'connective-tissue' of undecohered universes containing weird brains-in-superposition; these aren't consciousness, but perhaps we get a bit of bleed-through from the edges. Or is that just too darned uninformed and ridiculous...? 2008/11/16 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] For instance, you don't have to perform a QM-experiment with explicit setup, looking around is enough - photons hit your eyes with different polarizations; why should no splitting occur here? Why only in the case where you perform an up/down-amplification experiment? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
Yeah, I think that was meat to be either short-sightedness, racketeering, or just an attempt to push his own reality in a certain direction on the character's part. For me, though, the thing about a stone implementing all possible computations is that you end up with no possible way of knowing whether you're in the 'stone reality' or some abstraction from it - you start off with physicalism and end up with some kind of neoplatonism. Of course, you could still argue that you need some kind of physical seed, but again what I take from this is that since you can perform as much abstraction on the substrate as you like, it doesn't matter how small it is - it can even be completely nothing. My simplistic version works like this: 'Nothing' := 'Something' - 'Everything' 2008/11/15 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 14, 2008, at 5:09 PM, Michael Rosefield wrote: Take this level of abstraction much further and what you have essentially is the 'dust theory' from Greg Egan's Permutation City. Actually, I think my formulation already goes further than the theory outlined in PC. Although it's a subtle point, I get the feeling that reality in PC is still materialist, in the sense that at the root there still is material stuff which is different than bare mathematical fact. I think the idea is more like the idea that a physical stone implements all possible computations. As long as there's some physical stuff to work with (implies the novel), that stuff is enough to represent all possible computations. And the computations representing conscious beings are scattered like dust throughout those computations. Another way to look at it would be to say that, if the physical universe is infinite, then at the moment of my death, there is some pattern of molecules somewhere which is enough like me to count as a continuer. It doesn't matter that it's causally disconnected from me. Those states may be scattered like dust through space and time, but as long as they're there, I'll continue to exist. One can believe all of this, yet still retain the standard (in my opinion ill-formed) materialist conception of physical existence. One can still believe that some kind of physical universe has to exist in order for the dust to exist. It's different (and more extreme) to suggest that mathematical facts-of-the-matter by themselves play the role that physical existence is supposed to play. Maybe Egan did mean to imply that more extreme version, but it's hard to know, because he wrote a novel rather than a concise essay. For instance, I don't understand why the main character of the novel felt the need to jump start the universe he wanted by performing the initial computations. If the dust theory is true, nothing needs to be jump-started. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
2008/11/15 Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2008/11/15 Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 'Nothing' := 'Something' - 'Everything' Just what I was saying! I was about to say that... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
If you look at the structure and relationships of maths, it's all rather an incestuous family tree anyway. You can get from any one point to another if you try hard enough. It's like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Now think of any physical system embedded in the maths. It's easy enough to get to other physical systems, or to other mathematical objects, and eventually to any physicality you want. Just consider that it's completely irrelevant whether you start off with the platonic maths world or the physical world. If this seems unclear or silly, well, I am very drunk -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/16 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But if any computation can be mapped onto any physical state, then every computation can be mapped onto one physical state; and why not the null state? I guess I don't really have a clear picture of why the fact that any computation can be mapped onto a physical state should lead to the belief that (say) those mappings somehow support consciousnesses. I'm not very comfortable with the idea that a stone implements all computations. It may in fact be the case that those views are functionally equivalent to my suggestion that mathematical facts of the matter play the role that physical existence is supposed to play for the materialist, but I'm sticking with the latter formulation, because that's the one I actually understand. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
I've always thought - and this might just be betraying my lack of understanding - that these are simply two sides of the same coin: we can't distinguish between these quantum events, so we can consider ourselves as either being a classical being 'above' a sea of quantum noise, or as being a bundle of identical consciousnesses generated in many different interacting universes. In the 1st interpretation, we don't split. In the second we do, but the split doesn't change us. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/14 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kory Heath wrote: Sorry for the long delay on this reply. On Nov 2, 2008, at 7:04 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: Kory Heath wrote: In this mundane sense, it's perfectly sensible for me to say, as I'm sitting here typing this email, I expect to still be sitting in this room one second from now. If I'm about to step into a teleporter that's going to obliterate me and make a perfect copy of me in a distant blue room, how can it not be sensible to ask - in that mundane, everyday sense - What do I expect to be experiencing one second from now? It's sensible to ask because in fact there is no teleporter or duplicator or simulator that can provide the continuity of experiences that is Kory. So the model in which your consciousness is a single unified thing works. But there are hypothetical cases in which it doesn't make sense, or at least its sense is somewhat arbitrary. If something like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is correct, then this kind of duplication is actually happening to me all the time. But I should still be able to ask a question like, What do I expect to be experiencing one second from now?, and the answer should still be I expect to still be sitting at this computer, typing this email. If the many-worlds theory simply disallows me from making statements like that, then there's something wrong with the many- worlds theory. But if the many-worlds theory *allows* me to make statements like that, then in that same sense, I should be able to ask What am I about to experience? when I step into a duplicating machine. I think there is a misunderstanding of the MWI. Although the details haven't been worked out (and maybe they won't be, c.f. Dowker and Kent) it is generally thought that you, as a big hot macroscopic body, do not split into significantly different Korys because your interaction with the environment keeps the Kory part of the wave function continuously decohered. So in a Feynman path-integral picture, you are a very tight bundle of paths centered around the classical path. Only if some microscopic split gets amplified and affects you do you split. I doubt that it will ever be possible to build a teleporter. Lawrence Krauss wrote about the problem in The Physics of Star Trek. I'm not sure what it would mean for Bruno's argument if a teleporter were shown to be strictly impossible; after all it's just a thought experiment. On the other hand, I think it's probably not that hard to duplicate a lot of your brain function, enough to instantiate a consciousness that at least thinks it's Kory and fools Kory's friends. But would such an approximate Kory create the ambiguity in the history of Korys that is inherent in Bruno's argument? Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
Take this level of abstraction much further and what you have essentially is the 'dust theory' from Greg Egan's Permutation City. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/15 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 14, 2008, at 9:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Now a computationalist cannot say I believe that persons represented by unimplemented computations are conscious for the reason that all computations have to be implemented. Ok, I see your point. Computations are actions that people (or computers or whatever) perform in our world. So it's still not quite right to refer to persons represented by unperformed computations. But I still want some concise way of correctly saying what I'm trying to say. Imagine an infinite two-dimensional lattice filled with the binary digits of PI. (Start with any cell and fill in the digits of PI in an outwardly-expanding square spiral.) Imagine the rules of Conway's Life. We can point to any cell in this infinite lattice, and ask, At time T, is this cell on or off? For any cell at any time T, there's a mathematical fact-of-the-matter about whether or not that cell is on or off. My essential position is that these mathematical facts-of-the-matter play the role that physical existence is supposed to play for materialists. If, within that mathematical description of Conway's Life applied to the binary digits of PI, there are patterns of bits (i.e. patterns of mathematical facts) that describe conscious persons, I claim that those persons are in fact conscious (and necessarily so), because those mathematical facts are as real as anything gets. They're all you need for consciousness, and they're all you need for what materialists call physical reality. We can perform acts of computation in our world in order to view some of those mathematical facts, but those acts of computation don't create consciousness. That's not an argument. It's just a position statement. All I'm looking for at the moment is a good one-sentence summary of this position. For instance: Mathematical facts play the role that physical existence is supposed to play for materialists. Or All persons described by mathematical facts are necessarily conscious. Or even just Collections of mathematical facts can be conscious. Incidentally, I'd also like a name for this position. My top pick is Mathematical Physicalism. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
I think the most compelling arguments against a fundamental physical reality go along the lines of starting with one, and showing you can abstract away from it until it becomes just another arbitrary perspective. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/12 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 11, 2008, at 9:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The problem with Dennett is that he takes physical reality for granted. I agree. But from his perspective, the burden is on us to explain why we can't take physical reality for granted. I've never seen the arguments laid out quite clearly enough for my tastes. (And I'll admit, I've been too lazy to try it myself.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re:
Look at it this way, you probably did unsubscribe. Just not in this universe. Sorry. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/10 Joao Leao [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re:
Hmm. / checks Yeah, I just tossed a coin 5 times and it came up 'edge' each darned one. Expect lions, tigers and bears in smart suits and copies of The Watchtower to be paying visits. 2008/11/11 Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] first laugh on this list :) or maybe on this list and this universe only /o\ 2008/11/11 Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Look at it this way, you probably did unsubscribe. Just not in this universe. Sorry. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/10 Joao Leao [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Contradiction. Was: Probability
If I may, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_theory The basic concept is that every model is composed of a set of elements, a set of n-ary relations between them, a set of constants and symbols, plus a set of axiomatic sentences to define it. It's been a few years since my mathematical logic MSc though -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/8 John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anna, I wanted to write positively to your posts, procrastinated it though and others took it up. Now I want to reflect to one word, I use differently: *MODEL* There are several 'models', the mathematical (or simple physical) metaphor of a different subject is one, not to mention the pretty women in fashion-shows. I use *model* in the sense of a reductionist cut from the totality aspect for a topical view: the epitom of which is Occams razor. Observing (studying) a topic within chosen boundaries - limitations of our selection by our interest. Of course Bruno's all encompassing arithmetic system can cover for this, too, but I am not for restricting our discussions to the limitations of the present human mind's potential (even if only in an allowance for what we cannot comprehend or imagine). Beyond Brent's yam-y extension. What we don't know or understand or even find possible is not impossible. It is part of 'everything'. I chose to be vague and scientifically agnostic. Have fun in science John Mikes ** On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: A. Wolf wrote: So universes that consisted just of lists of (state_i)(state_i+1)... would exist, where a state might or might not have an implicate time value. Of course, but would something that arbitrary be capable of supporting the kind of self-referential behavior necessary for sapience? Anna Capable of supporting implies some physical laws that connect an environment and sapient beings. In an arbitrary list universe, the occurrence of sapience might be just another arbitrary entry in the list (like Boltzman brains). And what about the rules of inference? Do we consider universes with different rules of inference? Are universes considered contradictory, and hence non-existent, if you can prove X and not-X for some X, or only if you can prove Y for all Y? You see, that's what I like about Bruno's scheme, he assumes a definite mathematical structure (arithmetic) and proposes that everything comes out of it. I think there is still problem avoiding wonderland, but in Tegmark's broader approach the problem is much bigger and all the work has to be done by some anthropic principle (which in it's full generality might be called the Popeye principle - I yam what I yam.). Once you start with all non-contradictory mathematics, you might as well let in the contradictory ones too. The Popeye principle can eliminate them as well. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia (brouillon)
Isn't a zombie equivalent to, say, a spreadsheet that doesn't really perform the proper calculations, but produces all the right answers for all the data and functions you happen to put in? It seems like such an elaborate con-job is far more inefficient and intensive (and pointlessly so) once you put it in a rich enough environment. As someone probably once said, the quickest way to simulate the universe accurately is to be the universe. For me, consciousness is all about the simplification and unification of experience/assessment/action into higher and higher abstractions - to deal with a complicated world we have to make stories about it, and to deal with other people doing the same thing we have to make extremely complicated and self-referential stories. Consciousness is just the top layer, and sometimes done after-the-fact, simply because the machinery doesn't know not to. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/6 Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello Bruno, More exactly: I can conceive fake policemen in paper are not conscious, and that is all I need to accept I can be fail by some zombie. Thus I can conceive zombies. Ok, but conceivability does not entail possibilty. I think philosophical zombies are impossible (=not able to exist in the real world), not inconceivable. Developing this argument makes zombies logically conceivable, even, if I would refute the claim that a zombie acting exactly like I would act in any situation can exist. Accidental zombie can exist. It could depend what we put exactly in the term zombie. Ok, I agree with that. and here you clarify: If this were true, then the movie graph (step 8 without occam) would not been needed. Arithmetical truth is provably full of philosophical zombies if comp is true and step 8 false. Hmm - in step 8 you eliminate the physical universe, which is ok *grin* - but why would arithmetical truth be full of zombies with comp true and step 8 false - physicalism true? do you mean because we could than program AIs which would behave correctly but would not be conscious? So it is just a theorem in computer science: computations are encodable (and thus encoded) in the (additive+multiplicative) relations existing between numbers. Ok, I'm with you. So, someone who does not believe in philosophical zombies, does not need the step 8 (the Movie Graph Argument MGA), because arithmetical truth does contains the computation describing, well, for example this very discussion we have here and now. Ok, so I guess that would be my position *grin* - I think that all states have a form of mentality - maybe not full consciousness, but mentality. For me the MGA is needed because I don't want to rely on the non existence of zombie. Ok. What I still don't get is why you associate mental states only with _true_ statements. Why not with false ones? Would that not be more in line with a plenitude-like theory? False states could encode very weird psychic experiences (dreams for instance or whatever...) I follow you that 1st person is recoverable by a 3rd person number theoretic description - or better, OMs are - but how would a zombie come about? Can you give an example? Just consider the computation which correspond to your actual real life. That computation is encoded (indeed an infinity of times) in the Universal Deploiement, which is itself encoded (indeed an infinity of times) in the set of all arithmetical truth. All right? Agreed in principle (with my question of why only true sentences thrown in) such a computation would define an arithmetical version of you, and would constitute a phisophical (indeed arithmetical) zombies. Ok, I think it would not be a zombie - already once we accept _comp_ - maudlin notwithstanding; I think Maudlin saw his argument rather as causing a problem for _comp_ If you define the zombies as having a material body, then it is I would say a zombie is a creature which behaves exactly like X but does not have mental states, but X has mental states. Best Wishes, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
But I do think the nature of conscious qualia, as an abstract system, is interesting and non-trivial. Each person is their own universe - there is something more to feelings than just a neuron lighting up, they are part of an integrated dynamic. 2008/11/2 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Rosefield wrote: I think there's so many different questions involved in this topic it's going to be hard to sort them out. There's 'what produces our sense of self', 'how can continuity of identity be quantified', 'at what point do differentiated substrates produce different consciousnesses', 'can the nature of consciousness be captured through snapshots of mental activity, or only through a dynamic interpretation taken over a period of time?'... and it's far too late for me to attempt to unravel all that! My feeling, though, is that once you've managed to assign some informational entity as being a conscious mind, then you could track it through time. But notice that everything you say about paths and variables and measure, apply to any system. Saying it is a conscious process doesn't change anything. My guess is that eventually we'll be able to create AI/robots that seem as intelligent and conscious as, for example, dogs seem. We'll also be able to partially map brains so that we can say that when these neurons do this the person is thinking thus and so. Once we have this degree of understanding and control, questions about consciousness will no longer seem relevant. They'll be like the questions that philosophers asked about life before we understood the molecular functions of living systems. They would ask:Where is the life? Is a virus alive? How does life get passed from parent to child? The questions won't get answered; they'll just be seen as the wrong questions. Brent One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it. --- Carl Ludwig Siegel If you tweaked some physical variables, then much like a monte carlo simulation you could see potential paths it could follow. Given enough variables and tweaking, you might be able to fully populate the state-space according to what question we're asking, and it would seem to me to be all about measure theory. Of course, this doesn't say anything yet about any characteristics of the conscious mind itself, which is undoubtedly of importance. 2008/11/2 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] What are you calling the process when you've made two copies of it? Bretn Michael Rosefield wrote: But, given that they are processes, then by definition they are characterised by changing states. If we have some uncertainty regarding the exact mechanics of that process, or the external input, then we can draw an extradimensional state-space in which the degrees of uncertainty correspond to new variables. If we can try and place bounds on the uncertainty then we can certainly produce a kind of probability mapping as to future states of the process. 2008/11/2 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Kory Heath wrote: On Oct 31, 2008, at 1:58 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: I think this problem is misconceived as being about probability of survival. In the case of simple teleportation, I agree. If I step into a teleporter, am obliterated at one end, and come out the other end changed - missing a bunch of memories, personality traits, etc., it doesn't seem quite correct to ask the question, what's the probability that that person is me? It seems more correct to ask something like what percentage of 'me' is that person? And in fact, this is the point I've been trying to make all along - that we have to accept some spectrum of cases between the collection of molecules that came out is 100% me and the collection of molecules that came out is 0% me. The idea of probability enters the picture (or seems to) when we start talking about multiple copies. If I step into a teleporter, am obliterated, and out of teleporter A steps a copy that's 100% me and out of teleporter B steps a copy that's 10% me, what's the best way to view this situation? Subjectively, what should I believe that I'm about to experience as I step into that teleporter? It's hard for me not to think about this situation in terms of probability - to think that I'm more
Re: QTI euthanasia
This is very close to the starting premise of Greg Egan's Permutation City, which suggests that since computation take place in increasingly arbitrary ways, the digital basis of consciousness can be derived from pretty much any physical substrate and hence all minds are generated by all things. 2008/11/1 Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED] I've thought of an interesting modification to the original UDA argument which would suggest that one's consciousness is at both locations simultaneously. Since the UDA accepts digital mechanism as its first premise, then it is possible to instantiate a consciousness within a computer. Therefore instead of a physical teleportation from Brussels to Washington and Moscow instead we will have a digital transfer. This will allow the experimenter to have complete control over the input each mind receives and guarantee identical content of experience. A volunteer in Brussels has her brain frozen and scanned at the necessary substitution level and the results are loaded into a computer with the appropriate simulation software that can accurately model her brain's functions, therefore from her perspective, her consciousness continues onward from the time her brain was frozen. To implement the teleportation, the simulation in the computer in Brussels is paused, and a snapshot of the current state is sent over the Internet to two computers, one in Washington and the other in Moscow, each of these computers has the same simulation software and upon receipt, resume the simulation of the brain where it left off in Brussels. The question is: if the sensory input is pre-fabricated and identical in both computers, are there two minds, or simply two implementations of the same mind? If you believe there are two minds, consider the following additional steps. Since it was established that the experimenter can teleport minds by pausing a simulation, sending their content over the network, and resuming it elsewhere, then what happens if the experimenter wants to teleport the Washington mind to Moscow, and the Moscow mind to Washington? Assume that both computers were preset to run the simulation for X number of CPU instructions before pausing the simulation and transferring the state, such that the states are exactly the same when each is sent. Further assume that the harddrive space on the computers is limited, so as they receive the brain state, they overwrite their original save. During this procedure, the computers in Washington and Moscow each receive the other's brain state, however, it is exactly the same as the one they already had. Therefore the overwriting is a no-op. After the transfer is complete, each computer resumes the simulation. Now is Moscow's mind on the Washington computer? If so how did a no-op (overwriting the file with the same bits) accomplish the teleportation, if not, what makes the teleportation fail? What happens in the case where the Washington and Moscow computer shutdown for some period of time (5 minutes for example) and then ONLY the Moscow computer is turned back on. Did a virtual teleportation occur between Washington and Moscow to allow the consciousness that was in Washington to continue? If not, then would a physical transfer of the data from Washington to Moscow have saved its consciousness, and if so, what happened to the Moscow consciousness? The above thought experiments led me to conclude that both computers implement the same mind and are the same mind, despite having different explanations. Turning off one of the computers in either Washington or Moscow, therefore, does not end the consciousness. Per the conclusions put forth in the UDA, the volunteer in Brussels would say she has a 1/2 chance of ending up in the Washington computer and 1/2 chance of ending up in the Moscow computer. Therefore, if you told her 15 minutes after the teleportation the computer in Washington will be shut off forever she should expect a 1/2 chance of dying. This seems to be a contradiction, as there is a virtual teleportation from Washington to Moscow which saves the consciousness in Washington from oblivion. So her chances of death are 0, not 1/2, which is only explainable if we assume that her mind is subjectively in both places after the first teleport from Brussels, and so long as a simulation of her mind exists somewhere she will never die. Jason On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 30 Oct 2008, at 23:58, Brent Meeker wrote: Kory Heath wrote: On Oct 30, 2008, at 10:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But ok, perhaps I have make some progress lately, and I will answer that the probability remains invariant for that too. The probability remains equal to 1/2 in the imperfect duplication (assuming 1/2 is the perfect one). But of course you have to accept that if a simple teleportation is done imperfectly (without
Re: QTI euthanasia
I think there's so many different questions involved in this topic it's going to be hard to sort them out. There's 'what produces our sense of self', 'how can continuity of identity be quantified', 'at what point do differentiated substrates produce different consciousnesses', 'can the nature of consciousness be captured through snapshots of mental activity, or only through a dynamic interpretation taken over a period of time?'... and it's far too late for me to attempt to unravel all that! My feeling, though, is that once you've managed to assign some informational entity as being a conscious mind, then you could track it through time. If you tweaked some physical variables, then much like a monte carlo simulation you could see potential paths it could follow. Given enough variables and tweaking, you might be able to fully populate the state-space according to what question we're asking, and it would seem to me to be all about measure theory. Of course, this doesn't say anything yet about any characteristics of the conscious mind itself, which is undoubtedly of importance. 2008/11/2 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] What are you calling the process when you've made two copies of it? Bretn Michael Rosefield wrote: But, given that they are processes, then by definition they are characterised by changing states. If we have some uncertainty regarding the exact mechanics of that process, or the external input, then we can draw an extradimensional state-space in which the degrees of uncertainty correspond to new variables. If we can try and place bounds on the uncertainty then we can certainly produce a kind of probability mapping as to future states of the process. 2008/11/2 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Kory Heath wrote: On Oct 31, 2008, at 1:58 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: I think this problem is misconceived as being about probability of survival. In the case of simple teleportation, I agree. If I step into a teleporter, am obliterated at one end, and come out the other end changed - missing a bunch of memories, personality traits, etc., it doesn't seem quite correct to ask the question, what's the probability that that person is me? It seems more correct to ask something like what percentage of 'me' is that person? And in fact, this is the point I've been trying to make all along - that we have to accept some spectrum of cases between the collection of molecules that came out is 100% me and the collection of molecules that came out is 0% me. The idea of probability enters the picture (or seems to) when we start talking about multiple copies. If I step into a teleporter, am obliterated, and out of teleporter A steps a copy that's 100% me and out of teleporter B steps a copy that's 10% me, what's the best way to view this situation? Subjectively, what should I believe that I'm about to experience as I step into that teleporter? It's hard for me not to think about this situation in terms of probability - to think that I'm more likely to find myself at A than B. It's especially hard for me not to think in these terms when I consider that, in the case when the thing that ends up in teleporter A is 100% me and the thing that ends up in teleporter B is 0% me, the answer is unambiguous: I should simply believe that I'm going to subjectively experience ending up in teleporter A. I'm sympathetic to the argument that it's still not correct to frame this problem in terms of probability. But I don't understand how else to frame it. How do you (Brent) frame the problem? Subjectively, what should I expect to experience (or feel that I'm most likely to experience) when I step into a teleporter, and I know that the thing that's going to come out Receiver A will be 100% me and the thing that's going to come out of Receiver B will be 10% me? -- Kory The way I look at it, there is no I. Kory-A and Kory-B are just two different processes. We can ask how similar each one is to the Kory that stepped into the teleporter, but there's no fact of the matter about which one is *really* Kory. And there's no sense to the question of what I should expect to experience because I is nothing but a process of experiencing anyway. We could make up some legal rule (which we would need if there really were teleporters) but it would have to be based on it's social utility, not ontology. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group
Re: QTI euthanasia
I'd love to make a serious comment at this point, but every one I can think of involves I am Spartacus jokes. Sorry. 2008/11/1 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2008/10/31 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Quentin Anciaux wrote: Hi, 2008/10/31 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Oct 30, 2008, at 3:58 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: Of course the point is that you're not the same you from moment to moment in the sense of strict identity of information down to the molecular level, or even the neuron level. I agree, but that doesn't change the point I was trying to make. If the collection of molecules that comes out the other end of the teleporter is not identical to me, but it's as much like me as any normal future collection of molecules that I change into moment-by- moment, then I believe that my identity completely survived the teleportation. (In the same sense that I completely survive an average day of my normal life.) If the collection of molecules that comes out the other end of the teleporter is a puddle of goo, I believe that my identity completely failed to survive the teleportation. My point is that completely survived and completely failed to survive cannot be the only two possible cases. If it was, we'd be left with the absurd conclusion that there's a single molecule of difference between cases in which I completely survive and cases in which I completely fail to survive. Why is this absurd ? You are composed of a finite number of molecule... it seems therefore logical that between you still feel as yourself and there is no more you... there is only one bit of difference. Regards, Quentin Anciaux Why is feeling yourself dichotomous? What if you feel and act as usual but you think your name is Kory instead of Quentin. What if you remember the childhood of Bruno as yours and you are very knowledgeable about modal logic. Brent Meeker Well if I'm Kory or Bruno, I'm not me... You distorted my hypothetical. Could you not still be you and simply have the mistaken notion that your name is Kory? If your earliest childhood memories were replaced by Bruno's, would you cease to exist? And if my grandma had b... her name would be grandpa. If consciousness is information and feeling being an 'I' (and also a particular 'I') I think that is a false intuition. I don't believe that you directly feel being Quentin Anciaux, it is a memory and an inference made up of many bits of information. You are not feeling it at every moment, but only when you think about Who I am. at which time an appropriate name and life history comes to mind. Brent is information and indeed a finite length information... then one bit of difference and I'm not me... anything else but me. Regards, Quentin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
At some point, doesn't it just become far more likely that the teleporter just doesn't work? I know that might seem like dodging the question, but it might be fundamentally impossible to ignore all possibilities. 2008/10/30 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2008/10/30 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The seven first steps of the UD Argument show this already indeed, if you accept some Occam Razor. The movie graph is a much subtle argument showing you don't need occam razor: not only a machine cannot distinguish real from virtual, but cannot distinguish real from arithmetical either. Many people does not know enough in philosophy of mind to understand why the movie graph argument is necessary to complete the proof, so I rarely insist. Maudlin's 1989 paper can be said answering to the counterfactual- objection against the MGA (Movie-Graph Argument). Bruno, I'm not sure why you de-emphasise step 8 of the UDA. The other steps are relatively straightforward and uncontroversial compared to step 8. People who encounter the argument will naturally ask, how can you have a computation without a computer or a mind without a brain? I think I understand your reasoning (and Maudlin's) here, but it needs to be spelled out if the UDA is not to be dismissed on the grounds that it proves nothing about reality, assumed to be at the bottom level comprised of hard physical objects. Stathis, you see I cannot doubt about consciousness, so I can doubt only matter, and my research is in big part motivated by explaining what is matter without taking granted it exists or what it can be, i.e. my goal consists in explaining matter from non material entities which I can understand; like numbers and simple sets (of numbers). It took some time for me to realize that most people really take the existence of matter for granted. But then what is it? Despite appearance, physics never relies on the materialist assumption, except in the background, as an excuse for not dwelving into what they take, with Aristotle, as metaphysics. Physical theories are mathematical theories, with conventional and relative unities. To invoke matter as an explanation for actuality or reality seems to me as erroneous as using the notion of God for justifying the creation. At the origin, the Movie Graph Argument (MGA) was an attempt to explain the mind body problem once we assume comp, and to show the difficulties of the notion of matter to the materialists. But your remark is fair enough, and eventually we have to spelled out all the details for having a proof or completely convincing argument. I will try to build an argument developed through little steps; like I have done for the UDA, but note that even for UDA it is rare people tells the step where they stop to understand. We will see. I guess sometimes that people are a bit anxious with those matter and I don't want to push them too much. yet I am very glad you understand it, so perhaps you will be able to help. I will send, in a new MGA thread, a first step. OK. I will go slowly (if only because I am a bit busy). You wrote also: 2008/10/30 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]: To make a prediction on the future from the past you have to remember the past (or at least some relevant part of the past). If you allow (partial) amnesia, it could depend on many things including the type of computations allowing the amnesia: it makes almost no sense a priori. It would be like asking what is probability to get six (subjectively or as first person experience, like we have to do assuming comp) when throwing a dice knowing in advance that once you have thrown the dice you will forget that you have thrown the dice! So I am not sure the question can even make sense. I said to George Levy a long time ago (in this list) that all first person probabilities in self-multiplication experiments presuppose that the level of substitution (of brain material) has been chosen correctly, and thus serendipitously given that we cannot known for sure our own substitution level. Your teleportation thought experiments seem quite straightforward and intuitive to me: if I am copied to two separate locations, then I should have a 1/2 first person probability of finding myself in one or other location. We can assume for the sake of the experiment that the copying is close enough to perfect, and dismiss the possibility that the copies will be zombies. So, will the probability of finding myself in each location still be 1/2 if one of the copies is perfect but the other is 99% or 50% or 1% faithful, by whatever criterion you care to define these percentages? Hmmm... Sometime ago I would have refuse to answer this question. I know that for the exact and precise derivation of physics from computer (mathematical) science, we need to be able to answer this, but my point has never been to derive physics from comp, it
Re: Emotions
Absolutely, I don't think anyone could question this. Sensations are so filtered and processed that the sensorium we experience is pretty much just an elaborate fabrication of the brain... and no perception, memory-association or thought comes naked into our qualia - they all have some emotional dressing. Plus, I'm guessing that all the background subconsciousnesses (I mean that literally - all the potential Identities that don't quite make all the way to full conscousness) have their own emotional baggage that surely has a significant affect upon us. 2008/10/24 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] I do think that perception is more than just receiving/recording data. It includes an emotion or feeling that this is worth noticing, i.e. paying attention. You don't perceive everything that impinges on your nervous system. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
I don't think I follow you. This is the exact feeling I get when I try to read Pynchon... OK, I think what you're saying is that when it comes to reconstructing the body with only knowledge of the mind itself, much of the exact physical characteristics are ambiguous, in that they don't contribute directly and are at best simply part of a set of possible underlying forms, and that this even goes for many low-level brain functions. If that's the case, I entirely agree. 2008/10/23 John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Stathis, Who told YOU (and the other honored discutants in this thread) that *THIS* ONE of our existence is the one-and-only basic/original appearance? We, here and now, may be #37 for you and #49 for me etc., -- B U T -- could you please tell me if 'anyone' of this nightmare-topic remembers, or has knowledge of any other appearance of his SAME person (anywhere?) by QTI? If not, what else is the entire thread based on except for Everett's ingenious idea and the continuation of his line? (No matter how many matching equations could be drawn in the topic). Do we abide by a 'physical world' (Bruno?) in which a QTI transfers *material* with diseases, brain-damages, limbic pain and love-connections? Have fun in science (but with reason?) John Mikes On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: 2008/10/22 razihassan [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2) I'd like to propose a thought experiment. A subject has his brain cells removed one at a time by a patient assistant using a very fine pair of tweezers. The brain cell is then destroyed in an incinerator. Is there a base level of consciousness beyond which, from the pov of the subject, the assistant will be unable to remove any more cells, since conscious experience will be lost? ie is there a minimum level of 'experience' beyond which nature will appear to act to always maintain the physical brain? If there is, does the second law of thermodynamics not suggest that all brains inexorably head towards this quantum of consciousness, for as long as our brains are physical? The problem you raise is one of personal identity, and can be illustrated without invoking QTI. If I am copied 100 times so that copy #1 has 1% of my present memories, copy #2 has 2% of my present memories, and so on to copy #100 which has 100% of my present memories, which copy should I expect to end up as, and with what probability? What about if there are a million instantiations of copy #1 and one instantiation of the rest? What if there are 10^100^100 instantiations of copies with 1/10^100 of my present memories - as there well might be? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Hi, 1) My thoughts are that an act of euthanasia would be more likely to 'push' the consciousness of the patient to some hitherto unlikely scenario - any situation where death is probable requires an improbable get-out clause. The patient may well find themselves in a world where their suffering is curable/has been cured. Might even be brains-in-jars time. 2) I think that neural systems possess a quality called something like 'graceful decline;' the brain can undergo a lot of random damage before its function is significantly affected. But once it does start to go down the toilet, I'm not sure what the conscious experience of that would be. Presumably it would be something like Alzheimers or a pretty bad case of the mornings, and everything would appear to be rather scattershot and disconnected. From the perspective of the victim (I would say 'patient' again, but let's face it - this is one mean scenario!) I wonder if this weakens the connection to this particular context, and they'd find it more likely to move in the direction of universes in which the process is reversed or nullified. 2008/10/22 razihassan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi all First post! I'm happy to have found this list as much of it coincides with what I've been thinking about in the past few years, esp. after reading about quantum roulette and realising, as many others have done, that this leads to quantum immortality. 1) Lately, I've been thinking about euthanasia and the QTI. Previously, being somewhat of a liberal in these matters, I've always held that, assuming proper checks and balances (BIG assumption), euthanasia was ok, as it relieved the suffering of the patient as well as their loved ones. If QTI holds then killing the patient won't work (from the patient's frame of reference), so you're not actually alleviating their suffering. You may of course be relieving the suffering of the patient's loved ones (from THEIR pov) but I think we're on dangerous ground when you consider whether or not you should kill someone solely for their' families' sake. So, should QTI-ists be campaigning against euthanasia, not because of the traditional 'life is sacred' objection, but because it simply doesn't work? Can anyone see an alternative - based perhaps on anaethetising the patient indefinitely? 2) I'd like to propose a thought experiment. A subject has his brain cells removed one at a time by a patient assistant using a very fine pair of tweezers. The brain cell is then destroyed in an incinerator. Is there a base level of consciousness beyond which, from the pov of the subject, the assistant will be unable to remove any more cells, since conscious experience will be lost? ie is there a minimum level of 'experience' beyond which nature will appear to act to always maintain the physical brain? If there is, does the second law of thermodynamics not suggest that all brains inexorably head towards this quantum of consciousness, for as long as our brains are physical? Razi --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Dualism, Schmualism I think I'm an 'abstract perspectivist', or something. Everything is made of the same substance, but the nature of the thing and the nature of the substance depend on how you look at it, and as long as you can find an equivalence between two functional models, then they're both equally valid (if not equally useful). As to the difference between 'consciousness moving' and 'moving between consciousnesses,' I suppose that's a good example - they are both acceptable, as we can't differentiate the two from our perspective, and the definitions we're working with are somewhat on the hazy side 2008/10/22 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Rosefield wrote: Oh, no, more that we can probably define 'mind-space' or 'consciousness-space', in which every point represents a possible (conscious!) mind-state and has an associated spectrum of possible physical substrata, and that there is a probability function defined across the space such that for any two points there is a probability of experiencing one after the other. So you're a dualist. The mind-states are one kind of thing (possibly physical or mathematical) and consciousness is something else that occupies them or realizes them. In other words, if I drop a ball I am likely to observe the ball dropping and hitting the ground - a set of highly probable trajectories along mind-space. It's not so much consciousness moving from one state to the other, as to which conscious state I shall find myself in next. How is that different from moving? You never find yourself in more than one state at a time - even though there are many possible states. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: QTI euthanasia
Interesting idea. But obviously 'memories' is quite unquantative when you get down to it: all memories are not equal, some are stored in longer/shorter-term memories and have differing levels of cross-association with each other and emotional states, some are being accessed right now, and personal behavioural tendencies habits might not all be encapsulable simply as 'memories' but more as a function of ingrained neural circuit configurations. I think perhaps one of the problems here is that no-one yet knows how to 'construct' consciousness - what informational dynamics need to look like, what's necessary and sufficient, and how to categorise all the processes. We're in the same sort of position as early biologists - they knew there was a method of carrying heredity information, but no idea about what it was or how it worked. We need to discover our version of DNA... and, of course, as with biology that might only be the beginning. But to get back to the point: once we can do this, then hypothetically speaking we can parameterise any particular conscious state, and quantify divergences from this in any regard. Exactly what the probability distribution would look like if this experiment would be performed by taking distances from the original (according to whatever metric is used) as your set of alternatives is anybody's guess, but I imagine that 'core' personality aspects would be reflected by which dimensions (possibly using principle component analysis) show the steepest drop-off. I get the feeling I've just used a whole lot of words to restate the obvious 2008/10/22 Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2008/10/22 razihassan [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2) I'd like to propose a thought experiment. A subject has his brain cells removed one at a time by a patient assistant using a very fine pair of tweezers. The brain cell is then destroyed in an incinerator. Is there a base level of consciousness beyond which, from the pov of the subject, the assistant will be unable to remove any more cells, since conscious experience will be lost? ie is there a minimum level of 'experience' beyond which nature will appear to act to always maintain the physical brain? If there is, does the second law of thermodynamics not suggest that all brains inexorably head towards this quantum of consciousness, for as long as our brains are physical? The problem you raise is one of personal identity, and can be illustrated without invoking QTI. If I am copied 100 times so that copy #1 has 1% of my present memories, copy #2 has 2% of my present memories, and so on to copy #100 which has 100% of my present memories, which copy should I expect to end up as, and with what probability? What about if there are a million instantiations of copy #1 and one instantiation of the rest? What if there are 10^100^100 instantiations of copies with 1/10^100 of my present memories - as there well might be? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: What the B***P do quantum physicists know?
I'm of the all-things-that-can-exist-do-so stripe; it might seem unnecessary and indulgent to posit all these extra possible realities, but for me existence is the easy part and stripping away the chaff is hard. You have this big set of Things What Exist; it's atemporal and eternal, and nothing changes. There's no reason why there should be just one overarching set of rules for constructing it, or one criteria for things to be in it. I'd imagine that there's lots of equivalent principles that can all be used to describe it, with no way of assigning fundamentality to any of them. Abstraction and equivalence are really the most important concepts here - without a basis of physicality, all interpretations and transformations are valid, and what you see is - as you stress - mostly a function of how you look. Our consciousnesses are embedded throughout this uber-reality in an infinite number of ways. There is no particular universe(s) to which we are attached - we're in all of them. All we can do is make observations and winnow away those that were impossible to begin with or decohere and shift the possibilities of the rest. As to consciousness (this p-consciousness thing is a new one on me)... I'd consider that a highly abstract thing anyway; it's not reliant on the specifics of underlying ontologies, but whether they can at some point higher up give rise to processes than can be abstracted in a certain way. There's lots of ways to build a computer, but they all rely on some way create processes that are the equivalent of logic gates. I'll stop aimlessly rambling now :D 2008/10/14 Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Rosefield wrote: And of course you could always add ASPECT 0 - all possible instances of ASPECT 1 Yeah.. a new 'science of universe construction'? I wonder if there's a name for something like that? unigenesis? As I said in my post to Jesse: - - -- - - - - - aspect 1 is NOT underling reality, but a description of it. There may be 100 complete, consistent sets, all of which work as well as each other. We must live with that potential ambiguity. There's no fundamental reason why we are ever entitled to a unique solution to aspect 1. But it may turn out that there can only be one. We'll never know unless we let ourselves look, will we?? aspect 2 is NOT underling reality, but a description of its appearances to an observer inside a reality described structurally as aspect 1. 100 different life-forms, as scientists/observers all over the universe, may all concoct 100 totally different sets of 'laws of nature', each one just as predictive of the natural world, none of which are 'right' , but all are 'predictive' to each life-form. They all are empirically verified by 100 very different P-consciousnesses of each species of scientistbut they *all predict the same outcome for a given experiment*. Human-centric 'laws of nature' are an illusion. aspect 2 'Laws of Nature' are filtered through the P-consciousness of the observer and verified on that basis. - - -- - - - - - Aspect 0 is not relevant just now, to me...Being hell bent on really engineering a real artificial general intelligence based on a human as a working prototype...The only relevant aspect 1s are those that create an observer consistent with aspect 2, both of which are consistent with empirical evidence. i.e. aspect 1 is justified only if/because the first thing it has to do is create/predict an observer that sees reality behaving aspect 2'ly. The mere existence of other sets that do qualify does not entail that all of them are reified. It merely entails that we, at the current level of ability, cannot refine aspect 1 enough. IMHO there is only 1 actual aspect 1, but that is merely an opinion... I am quite happy to accept a whole class of aspect 1 consistent with the evidence - and that predict an observer...Predictability is the main necessary outcome, not absolute/final refined truth. I'm not entirely sure if your remark was intended to support some kind of belief in the reality of multiverses... in the dual aspect science (DAS) system belief in such things would be unnecessary meta-belief. aspect 0 might correspond to a theoretical science that examined completely different universes fun, but a theoretical frolic only. Maybe one day we'll be able to make universes. Then it'd be useful. :-) cheers colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: What the B***P do quantum physicists know?
And of course you could always add ASPECT 0 - all possible instances of
ASPECT 1
- 3-line Narnia -
C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a Utopia ruled by children and populated by talking
animals.
THE WITCH: Hello, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.
C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus!
- McSweeney's -
2008/10/13 Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From the everything list FYI
Brent Meeker wrote:
Why would you take Stapp as exemplifying the state of QM? ISTM that the
decoherence program plus Everett and various collapse theories
represents the current state of QM.
Brent Meeker
Jesse Maser wrote:
The copenhagen interpretation is just one of several ways of thinking about
QM, though. Other interpretations, like the many-worlds interpretation or the
Bohm interpretation, do try to come up with a model of an underlying reality
that gives rise to the events we observe empirically. Of course, as long as
these different models of different underlying realities don't lead to any
new predictions they can't be considered scientific theories, but physicists
often discuss them nevertheless.
-
There are so many ways in which the point has been missed it's hard to know
where to start. You are both inside 'the matrix' :-) Allow me to give you
the red pill.
Name any collection of QM physicist you likename any XYZ
interpretation, ABC interpretationsBlah interpretations... So what? You
say these things as if they actually resolve something? Did you not see that
I have literally had a work in review for 2 years labelled 'taboo' ? Did you
not see that my supervisor uttered forbidden? Read Stapp's book: BOHR
makes the same kind of utterance. Look at how Lisi is programmed to think by
the training a physicist gets...It's like there's some sort of retreat into
a safety-zone whereby if I make noises like this then I'll get listened
to
*and I'm not talking about some minor nuance of scientific fashion.* This
is a serious cultural problem in physics. I am talking about that fact that
science itself is fundamentally configured as a religion or a club and the
players don't even know it. I'll try and spell it out even plainer with set
theory:
ASPECT 1 = {descriptive laws of an underlying reality}
ASPECT 2 = { every empirical law of nature ever concocted bar NONE,
including QM, multiverses, relativity, neuroscience, psychology, social
science, cognitive science, anthropology EVERYTHING}
FACT
ASPECT 1: = {Null}
FACT
ASPECT 2 = {has NO law that predicts or explains P-consciousness, nor do
they have causality in them. They never will. Anyone and everyone who has a
clue about it agrees that this is the case}
In other words, scientists have added special laws to ASPECT 2 that
masquerade as constitutive and explanatory. They are metabeliefs. Beliefs
about Belief. They ascribe actual physical reification of quantum mechanical
descriptions. EG: Stapp's cloud-like depiction. I put it to you that
reality ASPECT 1 could have every single particle in an exquisitely
defined position simultaneously with just as exquisitely well defined
momentum. There are no 'clouds'. No actual or physical 'fuzziness'. I quite
well defined particle operating in a dimensionality slightly higher than our
own could easily appear fuzzy.There is merely *lack of knowledge* and
the reality of us as observers altering those very things when we
observestandard measurement phenomenon... This reality I describe is
COMPLETELY consistent with so called QM 'laws'. To believe that electrons
are 'fuzzy', rather than our knowledge of them, in an aspect 1 reality
that merely behaves 'as-if' that is the case, is a meta-belief. To believe
that there are multiple universes just because a bunch of maths seems to be
consistent with that...utter delusion...
Physics has also added a special law to ASPECT 2, a 'law of nature' which
reads as follows: Physicists do not and shall not populate set ASPECT 1
because, well just because.
Yet, ASPECT 1 is ACTUAL REALITY. It, and nothing else, is responsible for
everything, INCLUDING P-consciousness and physicists with a capacity to
populate ASPECT 2. Abstractions of reality derived through
P-consciousness, never 'explained' ANYTHING, in the sense of causal
necessity, and if incorporated in ASPECT 2 as an explanation of
P-consciousness, become meta-beliefI belief that this other aspect 2
law has explained P-consciousness when it clearly does not because NONE
of aspect 2 PREDICTS the possibility of P-CONSCIOUSNESS. As to
'evidence'...Jesse... in what way does an ASPECT 1 reality - responsible
for the faculty that provides all observation, any less witnessed than
anything is ASPECT 2? You are implicltly denying P-cosnciousness ITSELF
and positing it as having been already explained in some way by CONTENTS of
P-consciousness (that is
Re: Regarding Aesthetics
Why should there be only one correct TOE? Can't we simultaneously inhabit alternative universes that are currently indistinguishable to us yet differ on a fundamental level? - 3-line Narnia - C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a Utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals. THE WITCH: Hello, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence. C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus! - McSweeney's - 2008/9/15 [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sep 15, 6:08 pm, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But the question is whether there would be any *functional* difference. Brent Meeker Sure, if reductionism were true, half of physics wouldn't work. Yudkowsky claims: It is not that reality itself has an Einstein equation that governs at high speeds, a Newton equation that governs at low speeds, and a bridging law that smooths the interface. Reality itself has only a single level, Einsteinian gravity. Ref: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/excluding-the-s.html#more But this another non-sequitur in a long long of misconceptions, superficial analysis and non-sequiturs from him. In his example, of course it's true there's only one correct equation (the Einstein one), but this mathematical *equation'* references *physics concepts* on several different levels of abstraction. It's the *concepts* that are non-reducible, not the *equations*. The physics of forces (Newtonian mechanics is not reducible to the physics of simple geometric solids (Greek physics) , nor is the physics of space-time fields (Relativity) reducible to the physics of forces. Each of these (greek physics, newtonian mechanics, relativistic physics) introduced new physical concepts which weren't reducible to the earlier ones. It's not so much that new physics concepts *replaced* the older ones, rather that the new concepts were at * a higher-level of abstraction* than the old. I Also note that modern String Theory says that the fabric of theory itself is composed of concepts of Category Theory, which are high- level mathematical representations of lower-level ones. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Simplicity, the infinite and the everything (42x)
You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts That would be the case if we were trying to reconstruct an arbitrary universe, but you were talking about 'the totality'. My take is that the whole caboodle is not arbitrary - it's totally specified by its requirement to be complete. You could take a little bit of it* and 'grow' it out like a crystal in some kind of fractal kaleidoscopic space; eventually its exploration would completely fill it. This makes a kind of holy trinity of equivalence of (Whole | Parts | Process) which I like. * That little bit could even be unitary or empty in nature, solving for me the issue as to why something rather than nothing, and why anything in particular. 2008/8/20 John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brent wrote: ...But if one can reconstruct the rest of the world from these simpler domains, so much the better that they are simple Paraphrased (facetiously): you have a painting of a landscape with mountains, river, people, animals, sky and plants. Call that 'the totality' and *select the animals as your model* (disregarding the rest) even you continue by Occam - reject the non-4-legged ones, to make it (even) simpler. ((All you have is some beasts in a frame)) Now try to *reconstruct* the 'rest of the total' ONLY from those remnant 'model-elements' dreaming up (?) mountains, sunshine, river etc. *from nowhere*, not even from your nonexisting fantasy, or even(2!) as you say: from the *Occam-simple*, i.e. as you say: from those few 4-legged animals, - to make it even simpler. Good luck. You must be a 'creator', or a 'cheater', having at least seen the *total *to do so. You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts - you are restricted to the (reduced?) inventory you have - in a synthesis, (while in the analysis you can restrict yourself to a choice of it. ) John On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: John Mikes wrote: Isn't logical inconsistency = insanity? (Depends how we formulate the state of being sane.) As Bertrand Russell pointed out, if you are perfectly consistent you are either 100% right or 100% wrong. Human fallibility being what it is, don't bet on being 100% right. :-) In classical logic, an inconsistency allows you to prove every propositon. In a para-consistent logic the rules of inference are changed (e.g. by restoring the excluded middle) so that an inconsistency doesn't allow you to prove everything. Graham Priest has written a couple of interesting books arguing that all logic beyond the narrow mathematical domain leads to inconsistencies and so we need to have ways to deal with them. Simplicity in my vocabulary of the 'totality-view' means mainly to cut our model of observation narrower and narrower to eliminate more and more from the rest of the world (which only would complicate things) from our chosen topic of the actual interest in our observational field (our topical model). Occam's razor is a classic in such simplification. And so is mathematical logic and arithmetic. But if one can reconstruct the rest of the world from these simpler domains, so much the better that they are simple. Brent Meeker John M On 8/18/08, *Bruno Marchal* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 18 Aug 2008, at 03:45, Brent Meeker wrote: Sorry. I quite agree with you. I regard logic and mathematics as our inventions - not restrictions on the world, but restrictions we place on how we think and talk about the world. We can change them as in para- consistent logics. I think it depends of the domain of inquiry or application. Para-consistent logic can be interesting for the laws and in natural language mind processing, but hardly in elementary computer science or number theory. Then recall that any universal machine, enough good in the art of remaining correct during introspection, discovers eventually at least 8 non classical logics (the arithmetical hypostases) most of them being near paraconsistency (by Godel's consistency of inconsistency) making the most sane machine always very near insanity. And so easily falling down. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Simplicity, the infinite and the everything (42x)
The trouble with this whole area is that it's so incredibly easy to not-quite understand each other without quite realising it. It's like that Wilde quote: England and America are two countries separated by a common language. I think I understand you, though As regards the crystal, I think the best way to put it is that I'm thinking in terms of 'possible contexts'; for every selected object, it could belong in a number of supporting universes. My mind, for example, could be in a physical body, a brain in a jar, or an abstract software emulation, etc... and each of these possibilities has an infinite variety of instances. As far as I'm concerned, I always exist in all the possible universes that can generate my consiousness. And each universe can have its own set of metaphysical contexts, etc. I think I'm departing from my point rapidly, so I'll try another way. It's like an inverted form of Kaufmann's 'adjacent possible', which is all the possible ways a system may evolve next, and what features they may have. Rather, this takes a feature of a system and asks what its immediate possible surroudings/precursors are. Oh, and the holy trinity thing was a term I just thought of -- but what I mean to convey is that I think of reality as a bit like a fractal; you can take a little bit of it and it will generate the complete form. In this way the whole is equivalent to any bit plus the generational principle (growth algorithm). Actually, I suppose the generational principle by itself should be able to form the whole from scratch. Perhaps there are a number of different principles you could have; they will 'grow out' in different ways, but ultimately lead to the same whole. Excuse me if I make absolutely no sense. I find language to be a real problem when it comes to communicating this sort of thing 2008/8/21 John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Redface - ME! Michael, you picked my careless statement and I want to correct it: ...You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts... should refer to THOSE parts we know of, observe, include, select, handle, - not ALL of the (unlimited, incl. potential) parts (simple or not). From such ALL parts together (a topical oxymoron) you can(?) build anything, although it does not make sense. What I had in mind was a cut, a structural, functional, ideational select model (system organization) FROM which you have no way to expand into the application of originally not included items. I agree with your 'whole caboodle' as a deterministic product (complexity), as far as its entailment is concerned. I don't understand holy trinities - yours included. Growing out your -it*- requires IMO the substrates it* grows by, - by addition - I dislike miraculous creations. A crystal grows by absorbing the ingredients already present. Cf (my) entail-determinism (- no goal or aim). John On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts That would be the case if we were trying to reconstruct an arbitrary universe, but you were talking about 'the totality'. My take is that the whole caboodle is not arbitrary - it's totally specified by its requirement to be complete. You could take a little bit of it* and 'grow' it out like a crystal in some kind of fractal kaleidoscopic space; eventually its exploration would completely fill it. This makes a kind of holy trinity of equivalence of (Whole | Parts | Process) which I like. * That little bit could even be unitary or empty in nature, solving for me the issue as to why something rather than nothing, and why anything in particular. 2008/8/20 John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brent wrote: ...But if one can reconstruct the rest of the world from these simpler domains, so much the better that they are simple Paraphrased (facetiously): you have a painting of a landscape with mountains, river, people, animals, sky and plants. Call that 'the totality' and *select the animals as your model* (disregarding the rest) even you continue by Occam - reject the non-4-legged ones, to make it (even) simpler. ((All you have is some beasts in a frame)) Now try to *reconstruct* the 'rest of the total' ONLY from those remnant 'model-elements' dreaming up (?) mountains, sunshine, river etc. *from nowhere*, not even from your nonexisting fantasy, or even(2!) as you say: from the *Occam-simple*, i.e. as you say: from those few 4-legged animals, - to make it even simpler. Good luck. You must be a 'creator', or a 'cheater', having at least seen the *total *to do so. You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts - you are restricted to the (reduced?) inventory you have - in a synthesis, (while in the analysis you can restrict yourself to a choice of it. ) John On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: John Mikes wrote: Isn't logical inconsistency
Re: Intelligence, Aesthetics and Bayesianism: Game over!
Even if the Koch Snowflake is restricted to those 3 angles, you don't have to be restricted to the Snowflake itself -- by expanding, contracting or transforming the space of interest, you can get somewhere more interesting (anywhere you want, maybe?). For example, if you take the natural numbers, you can expand to the naturals, rationals, reals, etc., contract to the primes, transform to... err... something else. My feeling being that basically you can always abstract away through some kind of equivalence principle whenever the information available to you doesn't explicitly forbid it. I think it's time for someone to tear my ideas apart; after all, they're all really just based on consideration of some themes from Greg Egan's books I read about 8 years ago 2008/8/21 Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] I see that fractals also came up in the other current thread. I can see the believableness of your conjecture (Turing-completeness of the Mandelbrot set), but I see this (if true) as intuitive (heuristic, circumstantial) evidence that reality is more than what can be computed. (My belief in the intuition's base outside of computation is an example of where I'm coming from.) There are undecidable properties of fractals (iterative function systems, IFS), and it has been conjectured that all non-trivial properties of IFS's are undecidable. With the Mandelbrot set it is so geometrically complex (the pun here is appropriate since this set involves the complex numbers) that it is easy to believe that you could find your mother-in-law of even a super-model in there somewhere. But take another fractal like the Koch Snowflake, which also has undecidable properties. Yet is it entirely made of line segments which are at only three angles. I can't believe that reality could be restricted to this kind of complexity. Have you heard of fractal Turing machines, which incorporate real numbers? Perhaps this is something to be explored in the Everything discussion. Tom On Aug 13, 2:23 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Tom, Nice. I see beauty in the Mandelbrot set. However, there seems to be a lot of deja vu, similar repetition on a theme. Right. But full of subtle variations. It is all normal to have a lot of deja vu when you make a journey across a multiverse ... I have never been able to find anything resembling a beautiful girl, You are not looking close enough, and also, the zoom movie remains a pure third person description. Consciousness is more related to a internal flux or to some stroboscopic inside views in the Mandelbrot Set (assuming the conjecture). It is a bit like looking to a picture of a galaxy. You will not see beautiful girls, unless you look close enough, and from the right perspective. or even a mother-in- law, or a white rabbit. This seems to go against your conjecture. (remember also that not seeing something is not an argument of not-existence, like seeing something is not an argument for existence). If you want to see a white rabbit (*the* white rabbit), the best consists in looking at http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5XfQWKgf4Mfeature=related As for the mother-in-law, I am not sure about your motivations ... (Holiday jokes :) Bruno Tom On Aug 12, 8:30 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 09 Aug 2008, at 09:44, Tom Caylor wrote: I believe that nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. And this from a theist? Yes! This is actually to the core point of why I am a theist. I don't blame people for not believing in God if they think God is about functionality. If you remember my conjecture that the Mandelbrot Set, (well, its complement in the complex plane), is Turing complete (that is equivalent in some sense to a universal dovetailing), then zooming in it gives a picture of the arithmetical multiverse or of the universal deployment. And I do find most of them wonderfully beautiful. Here is my favorite on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0nmVUU_7IQ Is that not wonderful? Awesome ? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Quantum Immortality = no second law
It's not so much the input of energy, it's the production of more entropy where the energy is taken from. On 17/04/2008, Telmo Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would like to argue that in setting this experiment, energy is being expended to prevent the increase in entropy, albeit not in an obvious way. It is a trivial observation that systems may be devised that prevent increases in entropy by paying energy costs. One example is an ice cube in the freezer. In the case of this experiment, and assuming MWI, we are creating a scenario where the atomic decay is not possible from the experimenter's perspective. However, the experimenter is setting a system that includes the rifle and the geiger counter. Both these devices need energy to operate. Maybe it's just a convoluted version of the ice cube in the freezer? Best regards, Telmo Menezes. On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 12:18 AM, nichomachus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the description of the quantum immortality gedanken experiment, a physicist rigs an automatic rifle to a geiger counter to fire into him upon the detection of an atomic decay event from a bit of radioactive material. If the many worlds hypothesis is true, the self-awareness of the physicist will continue to find himself alive after any length of time in front of his gun, since there exist parallel worlds where the decay does not occur. On a microscopic scale this is analogous to the observing a reality in which the second law of thermodynamics does not hold. for example, since there is a non-zero probability that molecular interactions will result in a decrease in entropy in a particular sealed volume under observation, there exist histories in which this must be observed. This is never observed. Therefore the MWI is shown to be false. -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Quantum Immortality = no second law
To pull a fatuous idea from where the sun doth not shine, what if energy is merely moving 'between universes'; it is conserved just because of statistical balance. On 17/04/2008, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not sure what source of photon creation you have in mind, but QFT doesn't allow violation of energy conservation. -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Quantum Immortality = no second law
Even though I believe in QI, I try not to be too blase with my life due to the guilt I'd feel for all sorrow I'd cause my friends family in the worlds I died in. I also think the mathematical laws underlying the universes we are in are also subject to anthropic multiplicity; we don't just filter universes, but metaphysics too. Ultimately, all possible laws are admissable, and I expect the really interesting part is how much everything is 'equivalentisable' (to make a word up). At root, I suspect we have two kinds of metaphysics; generative (those that create law and structure ab initio), and holistic (those that describe the shape of the entirity) -- and that they are both correct and equivalent. You'd think with a master's in mathematical logic I'd be able to do better than that, but... :) Michael On 16/04/2008, nichomachus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 16, 4:54 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 16-avr.-08, à 03:24, Russell Standish a écrit : On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 02:22:23AM +0200, Saibal Mitra wrote: First off, how is it that the MWI does not imply quantum immortality? MWI is just quantum mechanics without the wavefunction collapse postulate. This then implies that after a measurement your wavefuntion will be in a superposition of the states corresponding to definite outcomes. But we cannot just consider suicide experiments and then say that just because branches of the wavefuntion exist in which I survive, I'll find myself there with 100% probability. The fact that probabilities are conserved follows from unitary time evolution. If a state evolves into a linear combination of states in which I'm dead and alive then the probabilities of all these states add up to 1. The probability of finding myself to be alive at all after the experiment is then less than the probability of me finding myself about to perform the suicide experiment. The probability of me finding myself to be alive after n suicide experiments decays exponentially with n. Therefore I should not expect to find myself having survived many suicide experiments. Note that contrary to what you often read in the popular accounts of the multiverse, the multiverse does not split when we make observations. The most natural state for the entire multiverse is just an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian. The energy can be taken to be zero, therefore the wavefunction of the multiverse satisfies the equation: One should also note that this is the ASSA position. The ASSA was introduced by Jacques Mallah in his argument against quantum immortality, and a number of participants in this list adhere to the ASSA position. Its counterpart if the RSSA, which does imply quantum immortality (provided that the no cul-de-sac conjecture holds), and other list participants adhere to the RSSA. To date, no argument has convincingly demonstrated which of the ASSA or RSSA should be preferred, so it has become somewhat a matter of taste. There is some discussion of this in my book Theory of Nothing. Actually, I am not sure the ASSA makes sense once we take into account the distinction between first and third person point of view. Comp immortality is an almost trivial consequence that personal death cannot be a first person experience at all. Quantum immortality is most plausibly equivalent with comp immortality if the quantum level describes our correct comp substitution level. But this does not mean that we can know what shape the comp immortality can have, given that comp forbids us to know which machine we are or which computations bear us. Why is this the case? Whether Comp is true or not, it would seem that the direction of physical research and investigation is in the direction of discovering the presumed foundational TOE that accounts for everything we observe. Say, for example, that it were possible to create in a computer simulation an artificial universe that would evolve intelligent life forms by virtue of the physics of the artificial universe alone. Why, in principle, is it not possible for those intelligent beings to discover the fundamental rules that underlie their existence? They will not be able to discover any details of the architecture of the particular turing machine that is simulating their universe (even whether or not they are in fact being computed), but I don't see any a priori reason why they would not be able to discover their own basic physical laws. Max Tegmark has indicated that it may be possible to get some idea of which mathematical structure bears our own existence by approaching from the opposite direction. Though we may never know which one contains ourselves, it may be possible to derive a probability distribution describing the likelihood of our location in the ensemble. To go back to the comments you were making about
Re: Quantum Immortality = no second law
No, it just means no-one's put enough stress on the 2nd Law yet :) Besides, it's not so much a law as a guideline. Well, a strong statistical tendency On 15/04/2008, nichomachus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the description of the quantum immortality gedanken experiment, a physicist rigs an automatic rifle to a geiger counter to fire into him upon the detection of an atomic decay event from a bit of radioactive material. If the many worlds hypothesis is true, the self-awareness of the physicist will continue to find himself alive after any length of time in front of his gun, since there exist parallel worlds where the decay does not occur. On a microscopic scale this is analogous to the observing a reality in which the second law of thermodynamics does not hold. for example, since there is a non-zero probability that molecular interactions will result in a decrease in entropy in a particular sealed volume under observation, there exist histories in which this must be observed. This is never observed. Therefore the MWI is shown to be false. -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Neuroquantology
There was that... but the submission date was a while back. It's funny either way On 02/04/2008, Lennart Nilsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If it had not been first of april that is… -- *Från:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *För *Michael Rosefield *Skickat:* den 1 april 2008 21:30 *Till:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Ämne:* Re: Neuroquantology http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/01/poltergeists-and-qua.html I think that answers that question On 28/03/2008, *Russell Standish* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just had a cold call from an editor of a fairly new journal called NeuroQuantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/), which has its focus area on the intersection of cognitive science and quantum physics. The nature of this topic, of cause, gives rise to no end of kookiness, but this doesn't mean there isn't a serious subject here waiting to be explored (indeed this is a major theme of my book Theory of Nothing). I was wondering if anyone has had experience of this journal, and whether its publishing standards are as rigorous as they claim. They claim to be indexed by ISI (they're not in the 2006 JCR, but since they only claimed to have just received ISI indexing, that is not suprising). Some of the paper titles look intriguing, but you have to register in order to download abstracts, so I haven't done that yet. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~--- -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Neuroquantology
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/01/poltergeists-and-qua.html I think that answers that question On 28/03/2008, Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just had a cold call from an editor of a fairly new journal called NeuroQuantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/), which has its focus area on the intersection of cognitive science and quantum physics. The nature of this topic, of cause, gives rise to no end of kookiness, but this doesn't mean there isn't a serious subject here waiting to be explored (indeed this is a major theme of my book Theory of Nothing). I was wondering if anyone has had experience of this journal, and whether its publishing standards are as rigorous as they claim. They claim to be indexed by ISI (they're not in the 2006 JCR, but since they only claimed to have just received ISI indexing, that is not suprising). Some of the paper titles look intriguing, but you have to register in order to download abstracts, so I haven't done that yet. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA Step 7
Surely consciousness is both granular (much of what we are conscious of is pre-processed by the brain and body, and not part of our direct experience. This gives a huge amount of leeway for underlying ambiguity) and limiting (two people holding hands or talking do not become one conscious entity). If we say this is a strict equality then we dilute the meaning of consciousness beyond usefulness. Conscious-space being a subset of computational-space seems more reasonable. On 28/03/2008, Jason [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To expand on Günther's question: If we equate computational states with mind states as COMP assumes, and if this universe is computable, would that imply the universe itself can be considered a singular mind? I think this is a consistent viewpoint not contradicted by experience. Of course I don't know what you, or anyone else is experiencing right now but that is only due to a lack of communication and accessibility. If you take a normal brain and cut the link between hemispheres you create two separate minds, but are they not the same mind only limited in transfer of information? What if we grafted nerve fibers between two individual's brains so they could share thoughts and experiences, two minds can become one via communication. Since all particles in this universe are interacting, the computational history of a mind must include the whole universe, or at least what is in its light cone for a given extent of time. If this universe is one mind, then the universal dovetailer would be a maximally conscious omega point, conscious of everything that can be perceived. Jason On Mar 25, 7:35 am, Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear Bruno, I have used the Easter holidays to read again through your SANE 2004 paper, and I have a question regarding step 7. (I am fine with step 1-6, step 8 seems OK but I will withhold judgment until I understand step 7 ;-) The things I am unclear about are: 1) maximally complete computational histories going through a state - what are these? 2) Why do they correspond to _consistent_ extensions, and how do you define these consistent extensions (in a normal logical way - no contradiction; or differently?)- 3) And how do you treat the Boltmann brain issue which crops up in modern cosmology but also in a UD generating _all_ computational histories? Cheers, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] .athttp://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog:http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site:http://www.complexitystudies.org -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: The infinite list of random numbers
Yes, but think how many Tom Clancy books it would write in the mean-time. Also, think of all the mystery books with the last page re-arranged to be the first, or all those many ones with typos. -Original Message- From: Norman Samish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 11 November 2001 05:32 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The infinite list of random numbers Thanks to all who replied. Thanks to your instruction, it now is clear to me that, in an infinite series of random characters, every conceivable sequence MUST occur. These sequences must, of course, obey the requirement that all random characters in an infinite sequence must appear an equal number of times. This requirement rules out sequences of only one character. Therefore, in infinite time, the long-lived monkey at the durable typewriter HAS to eventually write the works of Shakespeare, as well as anything else conceivable. More generally, everything that can happen MUST happen, not only once but an infinite number of times. Norm Samish
Re: on formally indescribable merde
From: James Higgo [EMAIL PROTECTED] So what is it, this mystical soul, that 'transits' OMs? The more I think about this, the more I end up running around in circles I think the transit is just a hypothetical one; _if_ OMa iterated to OMb, it would be consistent. However, I cannot help but feel that consciousness isn't an instantaneous thing. Vague, I know, but it does seem to be a process. Only when OM's are linked together do they make sense. I think perhaps we don't need to throw out time; a Many Worlds type static universe is, perhaps, simpler to implement than the minds it contains. Damn, I wish _I_ made sense
Re: excuse the triple (!) posting
this is what's called cosmic irony, isn't it? - Original Message - From: Saibal Mitra To: Michael Rosefield ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 4:16 PM Subject: Re: excuse the triple (!) posting Maybe Jürgen can explain why the particular bitstring defining your previous post has such a large probability - Original Message - From: Michael Rosefield To: Michael Rosefield ; Saibal Mitra ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 1:33 AM Subject: excuse the triple (!) posting these things just happen, eh?
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
From: James Higgo Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. Hey, I'm still counting it as original! I _did_ come up with it independently And I still can't see anything wrong with it. Thanks for the web-site, though. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. So? This is trivial. We still percieve ourselves as continuous beings, and the qualia is what I'm talking about here. The point is that one will _always_ have observer moments to go to. The illusion of self is maintained. I'm pretty sure at least one of us is misunderstanding the other. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms,how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? Oh Please don't do that. You don't know how I think, and I really don't see why you jumped to this conclusion. The wayI see it now, the observer moment is all we have. I think I may have picked up the followingmetaphor here, but I'll use it nonetheless: did Jack and Jill go up the hill in August? Does it matter? The rhyme leaves it undefined, so it's a meaningless question; they did and they didn't. We belong to all universes that generate this observer moment, and only a sort of statistical Ockham's Razor says which ones we'll perceive ourselves to be in next. What's the problem here? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then. What type of thinking? Please, I don't want to get into a catfight here. I'm on this list, presumably, for the same reasonyou are: to try and see the whole picture.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
*Phew!*; this afternoon I finally got round to reading the 190-odd messages I have received from this list From: Saibal Mitra Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test variousversions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travelto different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will diewithin a year. If you could delete the information that you have thisparticular disease (and also the information that information hasbeen deleted), branches in which you don't have the diseasemerge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So withvery high probability you have travelled to a different branch. I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that I'm not the only person to think of this ;D. http://pub45.ezboard.com/fwastelandofwondersfrm1.showMessage?topicID=353.topicindex=5 I'm guessing this is quite a common idea? Rats, I thought I was so great I_did_ thinkof the following today, though: If you take this sort of thing one step further, an afterlife is inevitable; there will always be systems - however improbable - where the mind lives on. For instance, you could just be the victim of an hallucination, your mind could be downloaded, you could be miraculously cured, and other _much_ more bizzare ones. Since you won't be around to notice the worlds where you did die, they don't count, and you are effectively immortal. Or at least you will perceive yourself to live on, which is the same thing. When I thought of it, it seemed startlingly original and clever. Looking at the posts I have from this list, I'm beginning to suspect it's neither Anyhow, while this sort of wild thinking iswonderfully pure andcathartic, itnever seems to lead anywhere with testable or useful implications. So far, anyway What's the opinion here on which are more fundamental - minds or universes? I'd say they're both definable and hence exist de facto, and that each implies the other. Well,I'm new here. Is there anything I should know about this list? Apart from the fact that everyone's so terribly educated Feel free to go a bit OT ;). Michael Rosefield, Sheffield, England "I'm a Solipsist, and I must say I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- letter to Bertrand Russell
