subject:"Observers and Church\/Turing"

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 05 Feb 2011, at 12:08, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 05/02/11 01:11, David Nyman wrote:

Bruno's argument is that if we nail our colours to computation for
an explanation of mind, then we should expect any physics extracted
from it to have just such counter-intuitive characteristics.

Hi David

Thanks, this too is very helpful.

'Looking at' Father Dougal I now always see Ardall O'Hanlon, whom I  
consider one of the great comic geniuses of all time. An excellent  
choice of front!


Ah! Father Ted is one of my favorite TV series. And, BTW, here is a  
good father Ted introduction to the difference between dreams and  
reality:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AB7IDw3PNI

:)

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 06 Feb 2011, at 23:15, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi Bruno

I will attempt to define the terms in a manner satisfactory to both  
of us, and maybe we will understand each other this way.


CTM Computational Theory of Mind is the concept that the mind  
literally is a digital computer ... and that thought literally is a  
kind of computation.

from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/



So you can see that comp, as defined in sane04, is a weaker version of  
CTM. (And thus all consequences of comp are inherit by CTM).


Expression like mind is a digital computer are category error, and  
is also ambiguous. It relates also on the identity thesis in the  
philosophy of mind, which is actually incompatible with comp (and thus  
with CTM). I think that it is also incompatible with QM, but that is  
out of topic.
With comp you can associate a mind to the execution of a computer, but  
you cannot attach a computer to a mind. You might attach an infinity  
of computer executions to a mind. The relation is not one-one. That is  
among other things a consequence of UDA.
To say that thought literally is a kind of computation is ambiguous.  
That might be enough in some context, but the more precise comp is  
needed to understand the comp (and thus CTM) necessary reduction of  
body to mind, or of physics to arithmetic (or computer science).







I understand your steps one to seven to be making this point.
I have no difficulty with this point.



Which point? The first seven steps of UDA makes the following points:

1) that comp entails the existence of first person indeterminacy in a  
deterministic context. Step 1-3. This is an original result that I  
published in 1988 (although I made a dozen of conference on this in  
the seventies). Many academics have criticize this, but their argument  
have been debunked. Chalmers did criticize it at the ASSC4.


2) that any measure of uncertainty of the comp first person  
indeterminacy is independent of the reconstitution delays (step four).


3) that comp entails first person non locality (step this has been  
more developed in my thesis, long and short version are in my web  
page). This has been retrieved from sane04 (for reason of place), but  
is developed in the original 1994 thesis (and in the 1998 short  
version, recently published).


4) That first person experience does not distinguish real from virtual  
implementation (this is not original, it is in Galouye, and it is a  
comp version of the old dream argument in the greek chinese and indian  
antic literature). Step six. In particular indeterminacy and non  
locality does not depend on the real or virtual nature of the  
computation.


Step seven itself shows the reversal between physics and arithmetic  
(or any first order theory of any universal system in post Church  
Turing sense) in case the physical universe exists primitively and is  
sufficiently big.


So UDA1-7 is the one of the main result of the thesis. A theory which  
want to explain and unify quanta and qualia, and respect comp, has to  
derive quanta and qualia without postulating them.
You have also that comp + ~solipsisme entails first person plural MW.  
Normally comp should imply ~solipsisme, but as I explain this part is  
not yet solved in the concrete.


Now most people (among interested) understand UDA1-7, that is, that  
comp + *very big* universe entails the reversal. If you have no  
problem with the first person indeterminacy, with the invariance for  
reconstitution delays, with the inability of first persons to  
distinguish (in short time) real and virtual, I don't see what you  
miss in the step seven. 7 is a direct consequence of 4,5,6.


Step 8 extends the invariance: it shows that we cannot distinguish  
virtual reality with arithmetical reality, so we don't need to run  
physically (and BTW, what would that mean?) a universal dovetailer to  
get the global first indeterminacy (the one based on a running UD).  
So step 8 just shows that we don't need the assumption of a big  
universe to get the reversal.


I told the list that a scientist thought having find a refutation of  
UDA. I got it, and it was that: I would have forget that we might live  
in a little physical universe. My answer is just a reference to step  
8. So later he replied with the idea that the movie-graph can think.  
That's a progress. Now, I have debunked more than once on this list  
the idea that a movie can think. (It is an error akin to the confusion  
between a number and a gödel number of a number, a confusion between a  
description of a computation and a computation, it is a confusion of  
the type finger and moon (ultrafrequent in the field).


Of course, even without step 8, UDA1-7 is already very nice given that  
it shows the reversal in the case of 'big universe', and in passing  
shows that digital mechanism (comp) entails indeterminacy, non  
locality, and non cloning of matter. Of course the white rabbits  
remains

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-07 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi Bruno

So you can see that comp, as defined in sane04, is a weaker version of 
CTM. (And thus all consequences of comp are inherit by CTM).




Certainly it is clear that your /yes doctor/ hypothesis subsumes CTM.
But since it is a broader proposition, I fail to see why all 
consequences of comp are inherit by CTM. One could adopt CTM and yet 
still debate comp - though I have no interest in doing so. Above all, 
why should CTM inherit the second of your three comp sub-hypotheses: 
Church Thesis and Arithmetical Realism?




Expression like mind is a digital computer are category error, and 
is also ambiguous.


I am happy to settle with something much more abstract, such as mind is 
an algorithm of some kind if that helps.
It relates also on the identity thesis in the philosophy of mind, 
which is actually incompatible with comp (and thus with CTM). 


I wonder what you consider to be the identity thesis in the philosophy 
of mind

I think that it is also incompatible with QM, but that is out of topic.

No. Chalmers state categorically this concept is compatible with physics.
With comp you can associate a mind to the execution of a computer, but 
you cannot attach a computer to a mind. 
I am not sure of the point you are making here. What do you mean by 
'attach'?


You might attach an infinity of computer executions to a mind. The 
relation is not one-one. 


Assuming 'attach' means instantiated, yes, the mind is multiply 
instantiated. No problem there. This is the basis of my concept 
multisolipsism - described shortly.

That is among other things a consequence of UDA.
Now I'm really not sure what you mean by 'attach'. Associate with? 
Consider instantiated in? Consider supervenient on? Causally dependent on?
To say that thought literally is a kind of computation is ambiguous. 
That might be enough in some context, but the more precise comp is 
needed to understand the comp (and thus CTM) necessary reduction of 
body to mind, or of physics to arithmetic (or computer science).




And rather than saying that thought literally is a kind of 
computation, comp says that ...?


Indicating the necessary reduction of body to mind, or of physics to 
arithmetic (or computer science) because ...?






I am separating my responses to various parts of your email so I can 
stay focused on one issue at a time as we exchange our views.


My compartmentalised response is continued in email subject: CTM and ALG

Andrew

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi Andrew,


On 07 Feb 2011, at 19:13, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi Bruno

So you can see that comp, as defined in sane04, is a weaker version  
of CTM. (And thus all consequences of comp are inherit by CTM).




Certainly it is clear that your yes doctor hypothesis subsumes CTM.


Not after step seven. The UD, or UD*, makes the reasoning independent  
of the level. The yes doctor *image* is an help for the first six  
steps (indeterminacy, non locality, delays invariance). I let open the  
question of identity between the biological brain and the generalized  
brain.



But since it is a broader proposition, I fail to see why all  
consequences of comp are inherit by CTM.


Because if you can deduce a proposition independently of the choice of  
a level, all what is proved will get on for all theories narrowing the  
level.





One could adopt CTM and yet still debate comp -


I doubt so, frankly.



though I have no interest in doing so. Above all, why should CTM  
inherit the second of your three comp sub-hypotheses: Church Thesis  
and Arithmetical Realism?



Ah! OK. If you want Church thesis out, I am OK. If this is the  
difference with CTM?
Church thesis is really the key and the pointer on theoretical  
computer science (and diagonalizations) for the fundamental thing.
And you can drop out Arithmetical Realism, and replace it by the  
assumption of believing in enough arithmetical relations to provide a  
sense to Church thesis. By which I mean the original classical logical  
thesis by Church, and proposed with different form but provably  
equivalent meaning, by Post, Markov, Kleene (actually the one who  
creates the Church thesis. For Church it was a definition).


But then that is why I define what I mean by comp: it is Church thesis  
and the yes doctor, but where yes doctor is a memo for It exist a  
level such that my consciousness is invariant for digital functional  
substitutions. At step seven, the level don't depend on the high  
level, CTM like, chosen for the ease of the first six steps.








Expression like mind is a digital computer are category error,  
and is also ambiguous.


I am happy to settle with something much more abstract, such as  
mind is an algorithm of some kind if that helps.


But you mind still be guilty of a forbidden identity ! A guilty of  
fuzziness which might prevent you to understand the nuance in the  
movie graph reasoning, or in Olympia.


Many would agree that mind might be related to the execution of an  
algorithm on some physical machine, as I like to explore that idea,  
but this is at the starting point of the reasoning, and is not, then,  
related to the fact that physical machines appears as relatively  
stable products of some unknown number of algorithm too, and that this  
is already not just described in arithmetic, but emulated in  
arithmetical truth.


It is hard for me to believe in any of this, but I just follow a  
theory toward its logical consequences.




It relates also on the identity thesis in the philosophy of mind,  
which is actually incompatible with comp (and thus with CTM).


I wonder what you consider to be the identity thesis in the  
philosophy of mind


It is long to describe, especially that its foprmulatiosn might depend  
on the choice of basic ontology. But simply said, the identity mind id  
the mind-brain identity. It goes from the trivial (and in my opinion  
incorrect) literal identification, that the mind is the brain, or is  
the brain activity, to some epiphenomenal one-one association. With  
DM, I argue that if you can reasonably ascribe a mind to a machine,  
the machine's mind itself cannot ascribe its mind to its body and is  
indeed something else. The first person views depend on non formal  
truth, which change the logic of the  p arithmetical nuances.






I think that it is also incompatible with QM, but that is out of  
topic.
No. Chalmers state categorically this concept is compatible with  
physics.


I read that defense of dualism in the context of Everett, which I see  
as a progress in monism. Also X state categoricallly is never  
convincing.
Now the mind-body problem is not solved, neither in DM, nor in QM. Nor  
is the problem of what is matter, in both DM, and QM, especially QM +  
gravitation. So I doubt any X can be categorical on this, and serious  
at the same time.


Chalmers stopped at step 3, if you have the slides. He did not accept  
the first step indeterminacy and leaves the place.


But you seem more ... courageous? Taking comp seriously is like taking  
the quantum seriously, it leads to shocking possibilities.




With comp you can associate a mind to the execution of a computer,  
but you cannot attach a computer to a mind.
I am not sure of the point you are making here. What do you mean by  
'attach'?


Imagine a robot working in some fields, and imagine it equipped with a  
complex computer, so that it makes a lot of decision including many   
constrained by an amount

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:




On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this pov.


I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
than
physical multiverses.


Prove this.
Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the  
machines, by using the self-reference logic for example) this is  
already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 06/02/11 08:51, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:




On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this pov.


I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
than
physical multiverses.


Prove this.
Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the 
machines, by using the self-reference logic for example) this is 
already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




Hi Bruno

How do you define the relative point of view?

Andrew

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread 1Z



On Feb 6, 8:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:



  On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:

  That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this pov.

  I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
  than
  physical multiverses.

 Prove this.

It's already stated by Tegmark. Further proof is given by the
fact that physics uses only a subset of mathematics.

 Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the  
 machines, by using the self-reference logic for example

Prove that.

) this is  
 already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.

 Bruno

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 06 Feb 2011, at 12:26, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 06/02/11 08:51, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:




On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this  
pov.


I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
than
physical multiverses.


Prove this.
Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the  
machines, by using the self-reference logic for example) this is  
already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




Hi Bruno

How do you define the relative point of view?


Do you know Gödel's provability predicate? The points of view are  
defined by intensional variants of the current provability predicate  
of the machine with or without some oracle. There are 8 basic points  
of view p (truth), Bp (provability/believability), Bp  p  
(knowability), Bp  Dp (observability), Bp  Dp  p (sensibility/ 
feelability). Three of them inherits the G/G* splitting, making a  
total of 8. It is really 4 + 4*infinity, because the 'material points  
of view' (with Dp) admits themselves graded variants.


But this is in AUDA, and we have not finished the UDA (+MGA)  
discussion. Have you understand the step 7? Did my last explanations  
helped?


Take your time, my next week will be rather busy.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 06 Feb 2011, at 16:30, 1Z wrote:

On Feb 6, 8:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:

On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:

That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this
pov.

I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
than
physical multiverses.

Prove this.

It's already stated by Tegmark. Further proof is given by the
fact that physics uses only a subset of mathematics.

Tegmark is right on third person mathematicalism. I did show before
that if you assume comp you don't need more than arithmeticalism. A
good thing because mathematical is harder to define than
arithmeticalism. Note that mathematicalism subsumes the ontology of
arithmeticalism. But Tegmark doesn't take into account neither the
first person indeterminacy (local or global), nor a theory of mind
(which in case of comp it is easy, given that it is computer science
and computer's computer science, ...)

Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the
machines, by using the self-reference logic for example

Prove that.

Sorry. I don't have to do that. I am the one translating a problem
(the mind-body problem) into a body problem in computer science or in
arithmetic.
If you believe that comp leads to WR, show them to me, and justify
your measure choice. Which is truly an open problem at the least.
And then I show that by taking the points of view of the self-
referentially correct machine into account (which is perhaps just an
elementary politesse) we have to take into account a catalog of points
of views to just formulate the problem.

Bruno

) this is
already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread 1Z



On Feb 6, 5:30 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 06 Feb 2011, at 16:30, 1Z wrote:





  On Feb 6, 8:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 06 Feb 2011, at 01:02, 1Z wrote:

  On Feb 5, 8:44 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:

  That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this  
  pov.

  I dare say. But the Mathematical Multiverses do add a lot more WRs
  than
  physical multiverses.

  Prove this.

  It's already stated by Tegmark. Further proof is given by the
  fact that physics uses only a subset of mathematics.

 Tegmark is right on third person mathematicalism. I did show before  
 that if you assume comp you don't need more than arithmeticalism.



 good thing because mathematical is harder to define than  
 arithmeticalism. Note that mathematicalism subsumes the ontology of  
 arithmeticalism. But Tegmark doesn't take into account neither the  
 first person indeterminacy (local or global), nor a theory of mind  
 (which in case of comp it is easy, given that it is computer science  
 and computer's computer science, ...)



  Once you take into account the relative points of view (of the
  machines, by using the self-reference logic for example

  Prove that.

 Sorry. I don't have to do that. I am the one translating a problem  
 (the mind-body problem) into a body problem in computer science or in  
 arithmetic.
 If you believe that comp leads to WR, show them to me,

I  believe that a level IV multiverse leads to WRs and you haven't
explained
how comp solves the problem.

 and justify  
 your measure choice.

I already have

There are more physically incoherent universes than coherent ones.
and there are many more that are mostly incoherent than those
that are coherent, and there are many more that contain a little
coherent
me in a see of incoherence than there are that are wholly coherent.

Beyond that, I don;t need any special measure: that's a hoop
that those who are seeking to solve the WR problem need to jump
through

 Which is truly an open problem at the least.
 And then I show that by taking the points of view of the self-
 referentially correct machine into account (which is perhaps just an  
 elementary politesse) we have to take into account a catalog of points  
 of views to just formulate the problem.

 Bruno





  ) this is
  already refuted. Mathematical reality kicks back.

  Bruno

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-06 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi Bruno

I will attempt to define the terms in a manner satisfactory to both of 
us, and maybe we will understand each other this way.


CTM Computational Theory of Mind is the concept that the mind literally 
is a digital computer ... and that thought literally is a kind of 
computation.

from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/
I understand your steps one to seven to be making this point.

I have no difficulty with this point.

This is what seems straightforward to me.

Thought is a computation. OK.

Experiential reality is a computation. OK.


New Point


Chalmers defines a 'Computational Hypothesis'
The Computational Hypothesis says that physics as we know it is not the 
fundamental

level of reality.
and
Just as chemical processes underlie biological processes, and microphysical
processes underlie chemical processes, something underlies microphysical 
processes.
Underneath the level of quarks, electrons, and photons is a further 
level: the level of bits.
These bits are governed by a computational algorithm, which at a higher 
level produces the

processes that we think of as fundamental particles, forces, and so on.

This is what you claim to have established around point 7 in your paper. 
I do not follow the step from CTM to a Computational Hypothesis. (no, 
your last explanation did not help)


Andrew


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Feb 2011, at 20:34, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 04/02/11 19:22, David Nyman wrote:
On 4 February 2011 18:44, Andrew  
Soltauandrewsol...@googlemail.com  wrote:


From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in  
language

problems.

Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do  
you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential  
reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day  
observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to  
date.

Forgive me butting in, but occasionally I find it helps to reconsider
the problem using less technical language (since I'm not very
technical).  I tend to think about this from a One-Many perspective.
Essentially, in talking about consciousness or observation, the  
comp

assumption implies that our perspective is always from the point of
view of the One.  The infinity of computation, in this analogy the
Many, is somehow seen from the point of view of the One.  So then
the question is - how can any particular set of experiences emerge,  
or

be filtered, from the totality of the Many, from such a perspective?
Simple ideas of measure may indeed seem to give the wrong answer,
very quickly.  It seems that we have to think combinatorially, in
terms of higher orders of filtration - perhaps an infinity of them.
The Goldilocks enigma of cosmology may be suggestive here - the
20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite degree of
adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence, seems to imply a
pitiless winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential
realities with the observed characteristics can survive.  Hence the
remainder subside into non-experiential oblivion.

I suppose that was as clear as mud.  But it may give a flavour.

David


From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in  
language

problems.

Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do  
you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential  
reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day  
observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to  
date.


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Thank you David, 'butting in' very welcome!

It seems quite inevitable that any ordinary concept of measure must  
give the wrong answer. And it seems to me that since what is  
proposed is at least radically counter-intuitive, it requires some  
powerful rationale to support it. I am not clear what possible basis  
is provided for this rationale.


Yes indeed, 'the 20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite  
degree of adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence' does  
indeed imply, surely to all of us, that there is 'a pitiless  
winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential  
realities with the observed characteristics can survive' but surely  
this implies, or tends to imply, a physical basis, a relativistic  
and quantum mechanical basis, to reality - it is the physical  
parameters, and their place in physics, which provides this brutal  
filtering. Or is there a point here with respect to computational  
mind that I am missing?



If the primitively physical universe does the filtering, then it  
cannot contain an omega point, given that it will reproduce, as you  
said, a universal dovetailing, and so the indeterminacy on my  
computational continuations will bear on that dovetailing, and again  
physics has to be emerging on the arithmetical dovetailing. That's the  
point seven. You did miss this in a previews post, and I hope you have  
well understood this now (tell me please).


So, a primitively physical reality can do the 'brutal filtering' only  
by being 'little'. But then you are facing the movie graph problem,  
you will have to make consciousness dependent on the primitively  
physical nature of the running machine and this means you can no more  
say yes to the doctor for any *digital* substitution which conserves  
the functionality of your brain: in other word comp is false. That's  
the point 8. We cannot distinguish an arithmetical emulation from a  
real, or primitively physical one. The arithmetical creatures are  
not zombies.


So if comp is true, we are led to that radically counter-intuitive  
conclusion that the laws of physics *have to* emerge from the laws of  
computation, that is on addition and multiplication. We might believe  
at this stage that we have just refuted comp,

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 05/02/11 01:11, David Nyman wrote:

Bruno's argument is that if we nail our colours to computation for
an explanation of mind, then we should expect any physics extracted
from it to have just such counter-intuitive characteristics.

Hi David

Thanks, this too is very helpful.

'Looking at' Father Dougal I now always see Ardall O'Hanlon, whom I 
consider one of the great comic geniuses of all time. An excellent 
choice of front!


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 05/02/11 09:55, Bruno Marchal wrote:
If the primitively physical universe does the filtering, then it 
cannot contain an omega point, given that it will reproduce, as you 
said, a universal dovetailing, and so the indeterminacy on my 
computational continuations will bear on that dovetailing, and again 
physics has to be emerging on the arithmetical dovetailing. That's the 
point seven. You did miss this in a previews post, and I hope you have 
well understood this now (tell me please). 
No, I do not follow this. I have carefully re read your section seven 
and I still do not follow it. A very simple explanation would be welcome.


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 05 Feb 2011, at 12:12, Andrew Soltau wrote:

On 05/02/11 09:55, Bruno Marchal wrote:
If the primitively physical universe does the filtering, then it
cannot contain an omega point, given that it will reproduce, as you
said, a universal dovetailing, and so the indeterminacy on my
computational continuations will bear on that dovetailing, and
again physics has to be emerging on the arithmetical dovetailing.
That's the point seven. You did miss this in a previews post, and I
hope you have well understood this now (tell me please).
No, I do not follow this. I have carefully re read your section
seven and I still do not follow it. A very simple explanation would
be welcome.

Normally steps 1-6 constitute the simple explanation for swallowing
step 7. My feeling is that you fail to understand the importance of
the comp first person indeterminacy.

You might download the pdf slides:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf

In step 3, you see that you cannot predict in advance where you will
be reconstituted after a scanning/annihilation and duplication. In
step four you see that the introduction of delays of reconstitution
does not change the measure on the uncertainties (in case such a
measure exists). In step 5, the absence of the black spot means that
there is no annihilation, and you see that an absence of annihilation
can be seen as an instantaneous annihilation and reconstitution at the
same place, without delay, so that staying at the same place appears
as just another possible outcome (this is counter-intuitive).
In step 6, you see that the virtual nature of the reconstitution
changes again nothing.
Then step seven is the case where where the universe contains a
virtual reconstitution of all your computational continuations (an
omega point, or a universal dovetailing).
So if you do any experiments in the physical worlds, your next
subjective experience is determined by the reconstitution of your
actual state in the omega point. So, if there is an omega point, the
probability/credibility that you are already there is about one,
and if this does not change the physical laws, it means that the
physical laws emerge from the omega point, alias the (sigma_1)
arithmetical truth.

I am busy right now. If this did not help, we can go more slowly. Just
tell me. I sincerely fail to see what you miss. Usually people have
more problem with step 8, which is admittedly more involved on the
mind-body issue. Step 7 is or should be rather easy once you get the
3, 4, 5, 6 steps which pave the way. Be sure you get them. Sometimes,
people understand step 5, but fail to take it into account in step 7.
In the drawing for the steps 5, 6, 7 (and 8), you should supply the
delays / D / on the arrows. This might help.

Have a good week-end,

Bruno

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread 1Z



On Feb 4, 12:45 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:
 2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

 I did answer to that... the answer is because you are in that environment...

That's not answer. There are physical constraints on which enviroment
a complex entity could find itself in, but not mathematical ones.
Mathematically
you stitch an ordered structure to a random  one.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Quentin Anciaux

in MWI (and QM) you have WR, so in the multiverse there exists at every
moments splitting or differentiation to random universe, so the question of
what filter it out remains (if MWI is true)...

What I want to say is the answer is because *you* are in that environment,
you the consciousness, the constraint come from being conscious, and I don't
think you can be conscious where you're not and obviously, for *your* person
to be conscious like you are now you must be here (in this universe ?)
because that's what you observe, your next moment should be a moment where
you are *you* and not someone else, hence all the someone else moments have
a zero measure to be your next moments, but it is sure that there are hugely
more moments of not you than there are moments which are you... so the
filtering is you.

Regards,
Quentin

2011/2/5 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com

On Feb 4, 12:45 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:
2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

I did answer to that... the answer is because you are in that
environment...

That's not answer. There are physical constraints on which enviroment
a complex entity could find itself in, but not mathematical ones.
Mathematically
you stitch an ordered structure to a random one.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread 1Z

On Feb 5, 1:08 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:
in MWI (and QM) you have WR, so in the multiverse there exists at every
moments splitting or differentiation to random universe, so the question of
what filter it out remains (if MWI is true)...

But I am not defined by having exactly the same experience at
all times. I am defined by a having a coherent set of memories,
but (in a mathematical multiverse) a coherent set of memories up until
time T can be stitched
onto surreal experiences at time T+1. (which sort of happens
in dreams anyway). I can think to myself Why am I, a person
who was born in such-and-such a place and went to school in such-and-
such a place
and who has every reason to believe there are no talking giant white
rabbits now suddenly seeing a WR.

hence all the someone else moments have
a zero measure to be your next moments, but it is sure that there are hugely
more moments of not you than there are moments which are you... so the
filtering is you.

In a MMV, there have to be many more me's with incoherent future
experiences
following on from my current memories, that there are me's with
coherent
future experiences.
Regards,
Quentin

2011/2/5 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com

On Feb 4, 12:45 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:
2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

I did answer to that... the answer is because you are in that
environment...

That's not answer. There are physical constraints on which enviroment
a complex entity could find itself in, but not mathematical ones.
Mathematically
you stitch an ordered structure to a random one.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 05 Feb 2011, at 12:08, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 05/02/11 01:11, David Nyman wrote:

Bruno's argument is that if we nail our colours to computation for
an explanation of mind, then we should expect any physics extracted
from it to have just such counter-intuitive characteristics.

Hi David

Thanks, this too is very helpful.

'Looking at' Father Dougal I now always see Ardall O'Hanlon, whom I  
consider one of the great comic geniuses of all time. An excellent  
choice of front!


Ah! Father Ted is one of my favorite TV series. And, BTW, here is a  
good father Ted introduction to the difference between dreams and  
reality:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AB7IDw3PNI

:)

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-05 Thread 1Z



On Feb 5, 10:07 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 On 2/5/2011 12:44 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:





  2011/2/5 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com mailto:peterdjo...@yahoo.com

  On Feb 5, 1:08 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
  mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote:
   in MWI (and QM) you have WR, so in the multiverse there exists
  at every
   moments splitting or differentiation to random universe, so the
  question of
   what filter it out remains (if MWI is true)...

   What I want to say is the answer is because *you* are in that
  environment,
   you the consciousness, the constraint come from being conscious,
  and I don't
   think you can be conscious where you're not and obviously, for
  *your* person
   to be conscious like you are now you must be here (in this
  universe ?)
   because that's what you observe, your next moment should be a
  moment where
   you are *you* and not someone else,

  But I am not defined  by having exactly the same experience at
  all times. I am defined by a having a coherent set of memories,
  but (in a mathematical multiverse) a coherent set of memories up until
  time T can be stitched
  onto surreal experiences at time T+1. (which sort of happens
  in dreams anyway). I can think to myself Why am I, a person
  who was born in such-and-such a place and went to school in such-and-
  such a place
  and who has every reason to believe there are no talking giant white
  rabbits now suddenly seeing  a WR.

  You can up until you are not you anymore... ie: until you can say I'm
  am Peter Jones and you know it.

  So all *your* experiences are filtered amongs only the Peter Jones
  experiences.

   hence all the someone else moments have
   a zero measure to be your next moments, but it is sure that
  there are hugely
   more moments of not you than there are moments which are
  you... so the
   filtering is you.

  In a MMV, there have to be many more me's with incoherent future
  experiences
  following on from my current memories, that there are me's with
  coherent
  future experiences.

  That's my point, COMP does not add more white rabbits from this pov.

  My point is ***when you are asking why am I in this *coherent* moments
  is because you are effectively in that coherent moments... you
  would'nt ask that if you were in incoherent moments, so that question
  filters out any incoherent moments. This restrict the observer class
  to the only observers able to ask it.***

 He couldn't ask it in a world where the physics was incoherent.  But he
 could certainly see apparitions of white rabbits etc as in a dream and
 still ask.

There's no reason the MMV should consist only of entirely coherent
worlds and
entirely incoherent worlds. It must contain every intermediate
gradation,
and, more importantly every combination of coherent and incoherent
regions.
Just as you can have some digits of pi buried in an otherwise random
string.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi Bruno


In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe'  entails that physic is a branch of computer 
science.

Do you see that?


I have no problem with the concept that psychology is a branch of 
computer science.
Step 5 plays the big role there. You don't need to be annihilated for 
having your continuations determined by the first person comp 
indeterminacy on UD*, once a UD, a fortiori an omega point, is in the 
physical universe.


In step eight, the assumption of the existence of a big universe is 
eliminated. Roughly because no universal machine at all can 
distinguish arithmetical reality from anything else. This throws away 
the need of any universe. Physics has to be justified by number 
relations only (numbers or any elementary terms of a Sigma_1 complete 
theory).


OK?
OK in that 'no universal machine at all can distinguish arithmetical 
reality from anything else.' We cannot tell if we are in a simulation, 
obviously.

This leaves us with the white rabbit problem.


With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has been 
done, by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body problem to a 
body problem in computer science.

This seems straightforward.


At first sight we might think that we are just very close to a 
refutation of comp, because, as I think you have intuited, there might 
be an avalanche of first person 'white rabbits' that is aberrant, or 
just white noisy experiences.


To find a proper measure on the consistent continuations is very 
difficult, and that is why I have restricted myself to the search of 
the logic of the certainties, for Löbian machines. Löban machines are 
chosen because they have enough introspection power and cognitive 
abilities to describe what they can prove about their certainties, and 
what they can infer interrogatively. That is not entirely trivial and 
relies mainly on the work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and Post, Turing, 
Kleene, etc.)
Perhaps you can explain the principle on which there is a restriction of 
white rabbits.
Our experience, apparently of the phsyical world, is entirely devoid of 
white rabbits.
Thus, at each moment, the range of possible next observations is always 
observed to be constrained precisely according to the quantum formalism.
Given that the only definition of the history of the observer is the 
record of observations, I am greatly intrigued to know how one can, at 
each moment, even in principle, derive the sensory specific next moment, 
according to quantum rules, from this structure of information.




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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Quentin Anciaux

Hi,

2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

Hi Bruno

In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe' entails that physic is a branch of computer science.
Do you see that?

I have no problem with the concept that psychology is a branch of computer
science.

Step 5 plays the big role there. You don't need to be annihilated for
having your continuations determined by the first person comp indeterminacy
on UD*, once a UD, a fortiori an omega point, is in the physical universe.

In step eight, the assumption of the existence of a big universe is
eliminated. Roughly because no universal machine at all can distinguish
arithmetical reality from anything else. This throws away the need of any
universe. Physics has to be justified by number relations only (numbers or
any elementary terms of a Sigma_1 complete theory).

OK?

OK in that 'no universal machine at all can distinguish arithmetical
reality from anything else.' We cannot tell if we are in a simulation,
obviously.
This leaves us with the white rabbit problem.

With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has been done,
by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body problem to a body problem
in computer science.

This seems straightforward.

At first sight we might think that we are just very close to a refutation
of comp, because, as I think you have intuited, there might be an avalanche
of first person 'white rabbits' that is aberrant, or just white noisy
experiences.

To find a proper measure on the consistent continuations is very
difficult, and that is why I have restricted myself to the search of the
logic of the certainties, for Löbian machines. Löban machines are chosen
because they have enough introspection power and cognitive abilities to
describe what they can prove about their certainties, and what they can
infer interrogatively. That is not entirely trivial and relies mainly on the
work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and Post, Turing, Kleene, etc.)

Perhaps you can explain the principle on which there is a restriction of
white rabbits.
Our experience, apparently of the phsyical world, is entirely devoid of
white rabbits.

You can't infer that because you do not observe white rabbits that there is
none ;)

Quite like the anthropic principle, if at each moments there are
overwelmingly more moments where you are just turned into gaz dust... there
exists a continuation of you (at least one) that is consistent with a world
devoid of WR. The WR problem seems the same question as ... Why am I in that
particular universe ? You are because that is consistent with you... As you
can't feel all the other you who have not your luck you can't say that
because you do not observe it, it is not like that after all...

If tomorrow you observe a WR (a magical one ;) ) well... You'll know at
least you're no more in a physical world devoid of white rabbits... and you
can begin to be really scared ;)

Also I think you will agree that all continuation where you're not... have a
zero measure (from your POV). So you can't be where you can't be, nothing to
be astonished here ;)

Regards,
Quentin

Thus, at each moment, the range of possible next observations is always
observed to be constrained precisely according to the quantum formalism.
Given that the only definition of the history of the observer is the record
of observations, I am greatly intrigued to know how one can, at each moment,
even in principle, derive the sensory specific next moment, according to
quantum rules, from this structure of information.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 04/02/11 09:44, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com 
mailto:andrewsol...@googlemail.com


Hi Bruno


In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe'  entails that physic is a branch of
computer science.
Do you see that?


I have no problem with the concept that psychology is a branch of
computer science.

Step 5 plays the big role there. You don't need to be
annihilated for having your continuations determined by the
first person comp indeterminacy on UD*, once a UD, a fortiori
an omega point, is in the physical universe.

In step eight, the assumption of the existence of a big
universe is eliminated. Roughly because no universal machine
at all can distinguish arithmetical reality from anything
else. This throws away the need of any universe. Physics has
to be justified by number relations only (numbers or any
elementary terms of a Sigma_1 complete theory).

OK?

OK in that 'no universal machine at all can distinguish
arithmetical reality from anything else.' We cannot tell if we are
in a simulation, obviously.
This leaves us with the white rabbit problem.


With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has
been done, by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body
problem to a body problem in computer science.

This seems straightforward.


At first sight we might think that we are just very close to a
refutation of comp, because, as I think you have intuited,
there might be an avalanche of first person 'white rabbits'
that is aberrant, or just white noisy experiences.

To find a proper measure on the consistent continuations is
very difficult, and that is why I have restricted myself to
the search of the logic of the certainties, for Löbian
machines. Löban machines are chosen because they have enough
introspection power and cognitive abilities to describe what
they can prove about their certainties, and what they can
infer interrogatively. That is not entirely trivial and relies
mainly on the work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and Post,
Turing, Kleene, etc.)

Perhaps you can explain the principle on which there is a
restriction of white rabbits.
Our experience, apparently of the phsyical world, is entirely
devoid of white rabbits.


You can't infer that because you do not observe white rabbits that 
there is none ;)


Quite like the anthropic principle, if at each moments there are 
overwelmingly more moments where you are just turned into gaz dust... 
there exists a continuation of you (at least one) that is consistent 
with a world devoid of WR. The WR problem seems the same question as 
... Why am I in that particular universe ? You are because that is 
consistent with you... As you can't feel all the other you who have 
not your luck you can't say that because you do not observe it, it is 
not like that after all...


If tomorrow you observe a WR (a magical one ;) ) well... You'll know 
at least you're no more in a physical world devoid of white rabbits... 
and you can begin to be really scared ;)


Also I think you will agree that all continuation where you're not... 
have a zero measure (from your POV). So you can't be where you can't 
be, nothing to be astonished here ;)


Regards,
Quentin

Thus, at each moment, the range of possible next observations is
always observed to be constrained precisely according to the
quantum formalism.
Given that the only definition of the history of the observer is
the record of observations, I am greatly intrigued to know how one
can, at each moment, even in principle, derive the sensory
specific next moment, according to quantum rules, from this
structure of information.




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Hi

'White Rabbits' is Bruno's shorthand for physically impossible 
observations. At least,

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

On 04/02/11 09:44, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2011/2/4 Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com

Hi Bruno

In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe' entails that physic is a branch of computer
science.
Do you see that?

I have no problem with the concept that psychology is a branch of
computer science.

OK?

OK in that 'no universal machine at all can distinguish arithmetical
reality from anything else.' We cannot tell if we are in a simulation,
obviously.
This leaves us with the white rabbit problem.

With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has been done,
by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body problem to a body problem
in computer science.

This seems straightforward.

Perhaps you can explain the principle on which there is a restriction of
white rabbits.
Our experience, apparently of the phsyical world, is entirely devoid of
white rabbits.

You can't infer that because you do not observe white rabbits that there is
none ;)

If tomorrow you observe a WR (a magical one ;) ) well... You'll know at
least you're no more in a physical world devoid of white rabbits... and you
can begin to be really scared ;)

Also I think you will agree that all continuation where you're not... have
a zero measure (from your POV). So you can't be where you can't be, nothing
to be astonished here ;)

Regards,
Quentin

Thus, at each moment, the range of possible next observations is always
observed to be constrained precisely according to the quantum formalism.
Given that the only definition of the history of the observer is the
record of observations, I am greatly intrigued to know how one can, at each
moment, even in principle, derive the sensory specific next moment,
according to quantum rules, from this structure of information.

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'White Rabbits' is Bruno's shorthand for physically impossible
observations. At least, as I understand it.

Yes, that's waht I meant to.

My query is that, since we only ever observe the environment to be in
accord with physical quantum law, how can a purely arithmetical environment,
which necessarily includes all possible computations, give rise to only
observations which are self evidently observations of a

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Feb 2011, at 10:29, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi Bruno


In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe'  entails that physic is a branch of computer  
science.

Do you see that?


I have no problem with the concept that psychology is a branch of  
computer science.


?

The point was that MEC + big universe' entails that PHYSICS (not  
psychology) is a branch of computer science.





Step 5 plays the big role there. You don't need to be annihilated  
for having your continuations determined by the first person comp  
indeterminacy on UD*, once a UD, a fortiori an omega point, is in  
the physical universe.


In step eight, the assumption of the existence of a big universe is  
eliminated. Roughly because no universal machine at all can  
distinguish arithmetical reality from anything else. This throws  
away the need of any universe. Physics has to be justified by  
number relations only (numbers or any elementary terms of a Sigma_1  
complete theory).


OK?
OK in that 'no universal machine at all can distinguish arithmetical  
reality from anything else.' We cannot tell if we are in a  
simulation, obviously.


It is more subtle than that. I actually said the contrary somehow: we  
can tell if we are in a simulation. We cannot tell if we are in a  
simulation for some finite time, but if we have the time to  
contemplate and the freedom to explore, we can see if we are in the  
natural emulation provides by the sum on all UD's fictions. That is  
why mechanism is testable, and the test (QM) confirms that we are in a  
simulation. The quantum weirdness can be seen as the trace of the  
infinitely many digital simulations occurring in arithmetic. If that  
simulations gives a different physics, it means that
- either we are in a secondary simulation (like in some alien made  
matrix or simulacron, but the first person probability of this  
happening is of the type white rabbit, by comp indeterminacy),

- or, much more probable in *that* case, that comp is not correct.






This leaves us with the white rabbit problem.


OK. Then. We have to solve it.





With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has been  
done, by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body problem to  
a body problem in computer science.

This seems straightforward.


So, you do agree UDA1-8 does reduce the mind-body problem to the  
problem of deriving the quantum equation (well the real physics, to be  
exact) from elementary arithmetic/computer science/machine theology?


I am not sure it is that  straightforward, although certainly simpler  
for quantum many-worlders. Even the few people who get it took a long  
time to understand this.


Many academic people still reject the first person indeterminacy (like  
some reject the notion of consciousness, or even of MW).
Straightforwardness is not straightforward in the inter or trans- 
disciplinary fields. What is obvious for some is not for others and  
vice versa!


If you understand this, you know that no fundamental theory (even on  
just matter) can still rely on anything inferred from observation. The  
TOE is already numbers + addition and multiplication (or anything  
recursively equivalent and of similar complexity).







At first sight we might think that we are just very close to a  
refutation of comp, because, as I think you have intuited, there  
might be an avalanche of first person 'white rabbits' that is  
aberrant, or just white noisy experiences.


To find a proper measure on the consistent continuations is very  
difficult, and that is why I have restricted myself to the search  
of the logic of the certainties, for Löbian machines. Löban  
machines are chosen because they have enough introspection power  
and cognitive abilities to describe what they can prove about their  
certainties, and what they can infer interrogatively. That is not  
entirely trivial and relies mainly on the work of Gödel, Löb and  
Solovay (and Post, Turing, Kleene, etc.)
Perhaps you can explain the principle on which there is a  
restriction of white rabbits.


The possibility of such a restriction is provided by the non  
triviality of computer science, and of any notion of machine's point  
of view, and thus of Gödel, Löb solovay provability logic and their  
intensional variants. In practice computer science should augment the  
domain of indeterminacy allowing enough relative computation for  
stabilizing deep linear (self-multiplying computations). The quantum  
does it by linearity (mainly thanks to Gleason theorem, as Everett  
understood), but comp lacks his 'Gleason theorem. For this the  
arithmetical quantum logics (related to the Bp  Dt hypostases) have  
not been studied enough. To be sure other intensional variants could  
be at play, and when asked, I explain that all the B^n p  D^m p, with  
m  n, and with A^np meaning ...Ap (iterated modal operator) are  
playing some role. We do have graded quantum logics there.




Our

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Feb 2011, at 13:43, Andrew Soltau wrote:




'White Rabbits' is Bruno's shorthand for physically impossible  
observations. At least, as I understand it.



Not really. Just subjective aberrance. Like seeing a white rabbit with  
clothes and looking at his clock and saying too late, too late. It  
is physically and computationally possible, but occurs empirically  
only in dreams. That is what remains to be explained if we bet on comp.





My query is that, since we only ever observe the environment to be  
in accord with physical quantum law, how can a purely arithmetical  
environment, which necessarily includes all possible computations,  
give rise to only observations which are self evidently observations  
of a physical environment, and a quantum environment at that.


Yes, that's my point. That is the question which we have to solve if  
we take comp seriously into account.

QM solves the problem by phase randomization (Feynman).
Comp should solve the problem by the quantum logics related to self- 
reference, and their non trivial semantics.
And if just one comp white rabbit remains and is located on the dark  
side of the moon, we have to take a look there. If the white rabbit is  
there, comp is confirmed, and if it is not there comp is refuted.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Andrew Soltau

From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in 
language problems.


Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all* 
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do you 
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential 
reality that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day 
observations of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum 
experiments to date.


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 February 2011 18:44, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com wrote:

 From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in language
 problems.

 Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
 experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do you
 account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential reality
 that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day observations
 of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to date.

Forgive me butting in, but occasionally I find it helps to reconsider
the problem using less technical language (since I'm not very
technical).  I tend to think about this from a One-Many perspective.
Essentially, in talking about consciousness or observation, the comp
assumption implies that our perspective is always from the point of
view of the One.  The infinity of computation, in this analogy the
Many, is somehow seen from the point of view of the One.  So then
the question is - how can any particular set of experiences emerge, or
be filtered, from the totality of the Many, from such a perspective?
Simple ideas of measure may indeed seem to give the wrong answer,
very quickly.  It seems that we have to think combinatorially, in
terms of higher orders of filtration - perhaps an infinity of them.
The Goldilocks enigma of cosmology may be suggestive here - the
20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite degree of
adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence, seems to imply a
pitiless winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential
realities with the observed characteristics can survive.  Hence the
remainder subside into non-experiential oblivion.

I suppose that was as clear as mud.  But it may give a flavour.

David


 From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in language
 problems.

 Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
 experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do you
 account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential reality
 that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day observations
 of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to date.

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 04/02/11 19:22, David Nyman wrote:

On 4 February 2011 18:44, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@googlemail.com  wrote:


 From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in language
problems.

Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to date.

Forgive me butting in, but occasionally I find it helps to reconsider
the problem using less technical language (since I'm not very
technical).  I tend to think about this from a One-Many perspective.
Essentially, in talking about consciousness or observation, the comp
assumption implies that our perspective is always from the point of
view of the One.  The infinity of computation, in this analogy the
Many, is somehow seen from the point of view of the One.  So then
the question is - how can any particular set of experiences emerge, or
be filtered, from the totality of the Many, from such a perspective?
Simple ideas of measure may indeed seem to give the wrong answer,
very quickly.  It seems that we have to think combinatorially, in
terms of higher orders of filtration - perhaps an infinity of them.
The Goldilocks enigma of cosmology may be suggestive here - the
20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite degree of
adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence, seems to imply a
pitiless winnowing of the Many such that vanishingly few experiential
realities with the observed characteristics can survive.  Hence the
remainder subside into non-experiential oblivion.

I suppose that was as clear as mud.  But it may give a flavour.

David



 From my perspective this debate / clarification is getting lost in language
problems.

Given that a universal dovetailer must necessarily produce *all*
experiential realities, all possible experiencable moments, how do you
account for our endlessly repeated observations of an experiential reality
that corresponds *precisely* not only with ordinary every day observations
of a physical quantum reality, but also all quantum experiments to date.

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Thank you David, 'butting in' very welcome!

It seems quite inevitable that any ordinary concept of measure must give 
the wrong answer. And it seems to me that since what is proposed is at 
least radically counter-intuitive, it requires some powerful rationale 
to support it. I am not clear what possible basis is provided for this 
rationale.


Yes indeed, 'the 20-or-so free parameters, their sometimes exquisite 
degree of adjustment, and their possible inter-dependence' does indeed 
imply, surely to all of us, that there is 'a pitiless winnowing of the 
Many such that vanishingly few experiential realities with the observed 
characteristics can survive' but surely this implies, or tends to imply, 
a physical basis, a relativistic and quantum mechanical basis, to 
reality - it is the physical parameters, and their place in physics, 
which provides this brutal filtering. Or is there a point here with 
respect to computational mind that I am missing?


Andrew



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi David

I have just been trawling the list, and found your wonderfully clear 
summary:


As I've understood Bruno over the years, he has
never asserted that comp(utational science) necessarily is the
fundamental science of body and mind.  Rather, he is saying that IF
computational science is assumed (e.g. by proponents of CTM) to be the
correct mind-body theory, THEN the appearance of the body (and
consequently the rest of matter/energy) must emerge as part of the
same theory.  In other words, EITHER the correctness of comp as a
mind-body theory directly implies the emptiness of any fundamental
theory of matter; OR alternatively (i.e. accepting a fundamental
theory of matter) comp can't be the correct mind-body theory.

This helps enormously, thanks.

Your next paragraph is likewise wonderfully clear:

The establishment of this disjunction depends on a number of logical
steps, culminating in a class of reductio thought experiments
including Maudlin's Olympia/Klara and Bruno's MGA, the burden of which
is to reveal contradictions inherent in any such conjunction of
computationalism and materialism.  As it happens, Maudlin uses this
result to reject CTM, and Bruno follows the opposite tack of rejecting
materialism.  There is some controversy over these results from
supporters of CTM who continue to find ways to dispute them with
auxiliary assumptions.  Personally, these auxiliaries strike me as
being rather in the nature of epicycles, but then I'm hardly an
authority.

I have no problem with the basic concept of CTM, as I understand it. The way I 
understand it is as presented in the paper The Computational Theory of Mind at 
SEP (that Always makes me think of Douglas Adams' Somebody Else's Problem 
field, which is such a powerful human emotive force that it can make even a 
massive spaceship decending into the middle of a cup final, invisible!)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

Your revelation that ' Maudlin uses this result to reject CTM, and Bruno 
follows the opposite tack of rejecting materialism. ' makes things very much 
clearer for me, I had got seriously bogged down in all this.

My problem at present with either position is that I cannot see why the fact 
that an experiential sequence supervenes on more than one physical situation 
demonstrates anything about anything. (In my view, the entity having such an 
experience simply exists simultaneously in both physical situations) If anyone 
can cast some light on this I would be grateful.

Andrew



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 February 2011 19:59, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@googlemail.com wrote:

 Your revelation that ' Maudlin uses this result to reject CTM, and Bruno
 follows the opposite tack of rejecting materialism. ' makes things very much
 clearer for me, I had got seriously bogged down in all this.

 My problem at present with either position is that I cannot see why the fact
 that an experiential sequence supervenes on more than one physical situation
 demonstrates anything about anything. (In my view, the entity having such an
 experience simply exists simultaneously in both physical situations) If
 anyone can cast some light on this I would be grateful.

Andrew, thank you for your (excessively) kind comments, but to quote
Father Dougal, when requested to elaborate, on the (to the best of my
recollection) sole occasion Father Ted praised him for his
perspicacity: On no Ted, I want out - I can't take the pressure.

That out of the way, I'll say what I can, since that's why we're here.
 I've always had the intuition that Bruno is pointing to some really
important ideas, in problem areas that have worried me these many
years, but which I haven't got the technical equipment to get my head
around.  From time to time I try to formulate these in simpler terms
suitable, as it were, to explain the thing to grandma (grandma of
course being me).  The thing he emphasises most with respect to your
question above, it seems to me, is the additive or totalising aspect
of an infinity of computational classes, as opposed to their
individualisation.  That is, the material content of experience is
conceived as emerging from a single perspective, as if filtered by a
unique consciousness through a sieve of computation.

The UD functions, in one sense, to create the structure, but
consciousness isn't conceived as operating by differentiating uniquely
along each computational path, but rather by integrating certain
classes of computational structure.  Consequently, neither
consciousness, nor the appearance of matter within it, is finitely
computable; both are artefacts of the integration of an infinity of
computation.  That's my understanding, more or less.  Of course any of
this may turn out to be unintelligible, inconsistent, or just wrong,
but Bruno's argument is that if we nail our colours to computation for
an explanation of mind, then we should expect any physics extracted
from it to have just such counter-intuitive characteristics.

Anyway, I really must stop taking his name in vain in this shameless
manner, and leave the field to the man himself.

David


 Hi David

 I have just been trawling the list, and found your wonderfully clear
 summary:

 As I've understood Bruno over the years, he has
 never asserted that comp(utational science) necessarily is the
 fundamental science of body and mind.  Rather, he is saying that IF
 computational science is assumed (e.g. by proponents of CTM) to be the
 correct mind-body theory, THEN the appearance of the body (and
 consequently the rest of matter/energy) must emerge as part of the
 same theory.  In other words, EITHER the correctness of comp as a
 mind-body theory directly implies the emptiness of any fundamental
 theory of matter; OR alternatively (i.e. accepting a fundamental
 theory of matter) comp can't be the correct mind-body theory.

 This helps enormously, thanks.

 Your next paragraph is likewise wonderfully clear:

 The establishment of this disjunction depends on a number of logical
 steps, culminating in a class of reductio thought experiments
 including Maudlin's Olympia/Klara and Bruno's MGA, the burden of which
 is to reveal contradictions inherent in any such conjunction of
 computationalism and materialism.  As it happens, Maudlin uses this
 result to reject CTM, and Bruno follows the opposite tack of rejecting
 materialism.  There is some controversy over these results from
 supporters of CTM who continue to find ways to dispute them with
 auxiliary assumptions.  Personally, these auxiliaries strike me as
 being rather in the nature of epicycles, but then I'm hardly an
 authority.

 I have no problem with the basic concept of CTM, as I understand it. The way
 I understand it is as presented in the paper The Computational Theory of
 Mind at SEP (that Always makes me think of Douglas Adams' Somebody Else's
 Problem field, which is such a powerful human emotive force that it can make
 even a massive spaceship decending into the middle of a cup final,
 invisible!)

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

 Your revelation that ' Maudlin uses this result to reject CTM, and Bruno
 follows the opposite tack of rejecting materialism. ' makes things very much
 clearer for me, I had got seriously bogged down in all this.

 My problem at present with either position is that I cannot see why the fact
 that an experiential sequence supervenes on more than one physical situation
 demonstrates anything about anything. (In my view, the entity having such an
 experience

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-03 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 01/02/11 20:07, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But it gives only all possible experiential realities, and even if 
these are by chance consistent with a physical quantum environment up 
to a certain point, it is tremendously unlikely that at each moment 
they will continue to be so.


If you prove that, and if my reasoning is correct, then you refute 
comp (and a fortiori CTM).



Not that I particularly wish to refute comp, simply to understand the 
rationale:


Taking a very oversimplified example. Lets say the human visual 
experiential reality is million pixel (quick google suggests 576 
million). A universal dovetailer must produce all possible variations of 
the visual field, 10^12 variations. Clearly, the majority of these will 
not correspond to physically possible environments.


Best

Andrew

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-03 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 01/02/11 20:07, Bruno Marchal wrote:
In step 8 you state that 'a “physical universe” really “exists” and 
is too little in the sense of not being able to generate the entire 
UD*, nor any reasonable portions of it,'. However, if we adopt 
Tipler's Omega point scenario, we get infinite computational power as 
the universe collapses into the big crunch. Tipler specifically 
states that all possible computations will be carried out in such a 
scenario, including all possible experiential realities.


Any UD does that, indeed. No need of physical omega point. arithmetic 
gives you alpha points for any alpha constructive ordinal, and even 
quasi names for above the constructive ordinals. Machine's theologies 
are rich. If the rational Mandelbrot is Turing universal (Sigma_1 
complete) then it represents already an Omega points.


Yes, but your point in step 8 is that a physical universe is *too 
little*, but with omega point it is not too little, it is as rich as 
arithmetically possible.


Yes, 'If the rational Mandelbrot is Turing universal (Sigma_1 complete) 
then it represents already an Omega points.', but, also, Omega point 
represents already the Turing universal rational Mandelbrot. Neither is 
necessarily richer than or prior to the other.


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Feb 2011, at 11:28, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 01/02/11 20:07, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But it gives only all possible experiential realities, and even if  
these are by chance consistent with a physical quantum environment  
up to a certain point, it is tremendously unlikely that at each  
moment they will continue to be so.


If you prove that, and if my reasoning is correct, then you refute  
comp (and a fortiori CTM).



Not that I particularly wish to refute comp, simply to understand  
the rationale:


Taking a very oversimplified example. Lets say the human visual  
experiential reality is million pixel (quick google suggests 576  
million). A universal dovetailer must produce all possible  
variations of the visual field, 10^12 variations. Clearly, the  
majority of these will not correspond to physically possible  
environments.



I typically agree. Now, the point is that by the reasoning I gave, you  
just cannot postulate physical environments to justify the low  
probability of aberrant visual experiences. You have to explain why  
the seemingly 'physically possible' from computer science.


Or there is something wrong in the reasoning, 'course. But what?

Best,

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Feb 2011, at 12:05, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 01/02/11 20:07, Bruno Marchal wrote:
In step 8 you state that 'a “physical universe” really “exists”  
and is too little in the sense of not being able to generate the  
entire UD*, nor any reasonable portions of it,'. However, if we  
adopt Tipler's Omega point scenario, we get infinite computational  
power as the universe collapses into the big crunch. Tipler  
specifically states that all possible computations will be carried  
out in such a scenario, including all possible experiential  
realities.


Any UD does that, indeed. No need of physical omega point.  
arithmetic gives you alpha points for any alpha constructive  
ordinal, and even quasi names for above the constructive ordinals.  
Machine's theologies are rich. If the rational Mandelbrot is Turing  
universal (Sigma_1 complete) then it represents already an Omega  
points.


Yes, but your point in step 8 is that a physical universe is *too  
little*, but with omega point it is not too little, it is as rich as  
arithmetically possible.


Not at all. the point is that in step seven, you can still argue for  
comp + mat, by postulating that the material universe is too little.  
If you believe at the start that the (apparent) universe is enough big  
to contain the UD*, then the reversal is done, and we are already in  
the omega point of arithmetic, and you should then see that physics  
is a branch of number theory (indeed the branch of the first person  
sharable number's belief, say).


Step 8 is needed only for those willing to save MAT by advocating a  
little finite physical reality.






Yes, 'If the rational Mandelbrot is Turing universal (Sigma_1  
complete) then it represents already an Omega points.', but, also,  
Omega point represents already the Turing universal rational  
Mandelbrot. Neither is necessarily richer than or prior to the other.


So by conceptual OCCAM let us choose the simplest one. Tipler uses  
arithmetic + QM. But the argument shows that arithmetic is enough, and  
that we can, or more aptly: we have too, explain QM (or the real  
physics, in case QM is false) from it.


And, as I said, the advantage of doing that (beyond the fact that we  
have to do it), is that it gives both the quanta and the qualia. QM  
typically gives only the collapse, not the wave which is presupposed.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-03 Thread Bruno Marchal


Andrew,

Let me try to be a little more precise or helpful.

I just said,

On 03 Feb 2011, at 15:15, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Yes, but your point in step 8 is that a physical universe is *too  
little*, but with omega point it is not too little, it is as rich  
as arithmetically possible.


Not at all. the point is that in step seven, you can still argue for  
comp + mat, by postulating that the material universe is too little.  
If you believe at the start that the (apparent) universe is enough  
big to contain the UD*, then the reversal is done, and we are  
already in the omega point of arithmetic, and you should then see  
that physics is a branch of number theory (indeed the branch of the  
first person sharable number's belief, say).


++

In step seven what is proved is that

MEC + 'big universe'  entails that physic is a branch of computer  
science.

Do you see that?
Step 5 plays the big role there. You don't need to be annihilated for  
having your continuations determined by the first person comp  
indeterminacy on UD*, once a UD, a fortiori an omega point, is in the  
physical universe.


In step eight, the assumption of the existence of a big universe is  
eliminated. Roughly because no universal machine at all can  
distinguish arithmetical reality from anything else. This throws away  
the need of any universe. Physics has to be justified by number  
relations only (numbers or any elementary terms of a Sigma_1 complete  
theory).


OK?

With the whole UDA1-8, you should understand that all what has been  
done, by the use of MEC, is a reduction of the mind body problem to a  
body problem in computer science.


At first sight we might think that we are just very close to a  
refutation of comp, because, as I think you have intuited, there might  
be an avalanche of first person 'white rabbits' that is aberrant, or  
just white noisy experiences.


To find a proper measure on the consistent continuations is very  
difficult, and that is why I have restricted myself to the search of  
the logic of the certainties, for Löbian machines. Löban machines are  
chosen because they have enough introspection power and cognitive  
abilities to describe what they can prove about their certainties, and  
what they can infer interrogatively. That is not entirely trivial and  
relies mainly on the work of Gödel, Löb and Solovay (and Post, Turing,  
Kleene, etc.)


Don't hesitate to ask any question if anything seems insufficiently  
clear.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-02-02 Thread Russell Standish

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 03:29:52PM -0800, Travis Garrett wrote:
 Hi Russell,
 
No problem at all - I myself confess to having skimmed papers in
 the past, perhaps even in the last 5 minutes...  That I took a bit of
 umbrage just shows that I haven't yet transcended into a being of pure
 thought :-)
 
   Let me address your 3rd paragraph first.  Consider the statements:
 3 is a prime number and 4 is a prime number.  Both of these are
 well formed (as opposed to, say, =3==prime4!=!), but the first is
 true and the second is false.  To be slightly pedantic, I would count
 over the first statement (that is, in the process of counting all
 information structures) and not the second.  Note that the first
 statement can be rephrased in an infinite number of different ways,
 2+1 is a prime number, the square root of 9 is not composite and
 so forth.  However, we should not count over all of these
 individually, but rather just the invariant information that is
 preserved from translation to translation (This is the meta-lesson
 borrowed from Faddeev and Popov).
 
   Consider then 4 is a prime number - which we can perhaps rephrase
 as the square root of 16 is a prime number.  In this case we are now
 carefully translating a false statement - but as it is false there is
 no longer any invariant core that must be preserved - it would be fine
 to also say the square root of 17 is a prime number or any other
 random nonsense...  There is no there there, so to speak.  The same
 goes for all of the completely random sequences - there seems to be a
 huge number of them at first, but none of them actually encode
 anything nontrivial.  When I choose to only count over the nontrivial
 structures - that which is invariant upon translation - they all
 disappear in a puff of smoke.  Or rather (being a bit more careful),
 there really never was anything there in the first place: the
 appearance that the random structures carry a lot of information (due
 to their incompressibility) was always an illusion.
 
Thus, when I propose only counting over the gauge invariant stuff,
 it is not that I am skipping over a bunch of other stuff because I
 don't want to deal with it right now - I really am only counting over
 the real stuff.  Let me give an example that I thought about including
 in the paper.  Say ETs show up one day - the solution to the Fermi
 paradox is just that they like to take long naps.  As a present they
 offer us the choice of 2 USB drives.  USB A) contains a large number
 of mathematical theorems - some that we have derived, others that we
 haven't (perhaps including an amazing solution of the Collatz
 conjecture).  For concreteness say that all the thereoms are less than
 N bits long as the USB drive has some finite capacity.  In contrast,
 USB B) contains all possible statements that are N bits long or less.
 One should therefore choose B) because it has everything on A), plus a
 lot more stuff!  But of course by filling in the gaps we have not
 only not added any more information, but have also erased the
 information that was on A): the entire content of B) can be
 compactified to the program: print all sequences N bits long or
 less.
 
   The nontrivial information thus forms a sparse subset of all
 sequences.  The sparseness can be seen through combinatorics.  Take
 some very complex nontrivial structure which is composed of many
 interacting parts: say, a long mathematical theorem, or a biological
 creature like a frog.  Go in and corrupt one of the many interacting
 parts - now the whole thing doesn't work.  Go and randomly change
 something else instead, and again the structure no longer works: there
 are many more ways to be wrong than to be right (with complete
 randomness emerging in the limit of everything being scrambled).
 
   Note that it is a bit more subtle than this however - for instance
 in the case of the frog, small changes in its genotype (and thus in
 its phenotype) can slightly improve or decrease its fitness (depending
 on the environment).  There is thus still a degree of randomness
 remaining, as there must be for entities created through iterative
 trial and error: the boundary between the sparse subset of nontrivial
 structures and the rest of sequence space is therefore somewhat
 blurry.  However, even if we add a very fat blurry buffer zone the
 nontrivial structures still comprise a tiny subset of statement space
 - although they dominate the counting after a gauge choice is made
 (which removes the redundant and random).
 
   Does that make sense?
 

This is, by and large, Tegmark's proposal, which he calls MUH
(Mathematical Universe Hypothesis).

Note that this proposal is somewhat ill-defined. What mathematical
statements are in or out of your proposal? Any of the bizzare zoo of
mathematical objects that might take a mathematician's fancy, including any
arbitrary finite set of axioms I might dream up and their enumerable
theorems. Or are the whole numbers somehow

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-31 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 27/01/11 17:44, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 25 Jan 2011, at 18:24, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 24/01/11 21:35, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Thanks for all this. I will do some reading and then go through the 
points again. And get back to you.


You are welcome. Ask any question.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/






I have been trying to decipher your response to

 However, structures of information are instantiated in the physical.

OK, but this cannot work if DM is correct, by MGA. That's the whole 
point. There is no physical reality available. It is not obvious to 
understand this. The UDA+MGA explains this, and the AUDA (the Löbian 
interview, or Abstract Universal Dovetailer Argument) provides a path to 
extract physics, and the logic explains why the theory splits into 
quanta and qualia. Quanta appear as sharable qualia.



I have read your paper The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations, but 
am still at a loss. I confess I find the blizzard of acronyms difficult 
to follow. (In particular it would help me greatly if we referred to the 
Computationalist Theory of Mind as CTM, as do wikipedia and Standford 
philosophy website, rather than COMP)


eg Is DU the same as UD? Or is DU the infinte trace of the universal 
dovetailer, as seems to be suggested by diagram 7?


Obviously it is trivial to show that the physical universe is redundant, 
but the move to show that it is disproven I do not follow.


Essentially, I do not follow your argument that I. The Universal 
Dovetailer Argument shows why comp necessarily *forces* a reversal 
between physics and machine psychology


You quote Maudlin's “Computation and Consciousness,” The Journal of 
Philosophy, pp 407-432, as having more complete arguments. However, on 
page 25 he states Olympia has shown us at least that some other level 
beside the computational must be sought.

and
Our Olympia demonstrates that running a particular program cannot be a 
sufficient condition for having any form of mentality


The main point of his complex examples seems to be that the same output 
supervenes on two very different mechanisms, but this does not force a 
reversal.



Could you tell me the central piece of the logic as you see it in simple 
terms.


Andrew




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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-31 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 31 Jan 2011, at 12:44, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 27/01/11 17:44, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 25 Jan 2011, at 18:24, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 24/01/11 21:35, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Thanks for all this. I will do some reading and then go through  
the points again. And get back to you.


You are welcome. Ask any question.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/






I have been trying to decipher your response to

 However, structures of information are instantiated in the physical.

OK, but this cannot work if DM is correct, by MGA. That's the whole  
point. There is no physical reality available. It is not obvious  
to understand this. The UDA+MGA explains this, and the AUDA (the  
Löbian interview, or Abstract Universal Dovetailer Argument)  
provides a path to extract physics, and the logic explains why the  
theory splits into quanta and qualia. Quanta appear as sharable  
qualia.



I have read your paper The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations,  
but am still at a loss. I confess I find the blizzard of acronyms  
difficult to follow. (In particular it would help me greatly if we  
referred to the Computationalist Theory of Mind as CTM, as do  
wikipedia and Standford philosophy website, rather than COMP)



Comp is just an abbreviation of computationalism. It is synonymous  
with CTM, DM (digital mechanism), or simply here Mechanism, MEC, ...)  
etc. I change the wording when people add special meaning to the term.  
Sometimes comp means the precise theory yes doctor + Church thesis,  
but it can indeed be shown equivalent with CTM. Some people use CTM  
having in mind the idea that the computation has to be physically  
instantiated, but then it is the point of the paper to show this does  
not work.
Also yes doctor is really the assertion of the existence of a level  
where I am Turing emulable. Quickly we can understand that such a  
level cannot be found by any machine, but they can bet on them. It  
does not matter that you need to emulate the entire galactic quantum  
field to get your experience. In that sense comp is much weaker than  
the implicit intent of most version of CTM, closer to high level and  
neurophilosophy.






eg Is DU the same as UD? Or is DU the infinte trace of the universal  
dovetailer, as seems to be suggested by diagram 7?


UD is the english for the french DU. Sorry for that typo.
I use UD* for the infinite trace of the UD.
MGA is the movie graph argument (same consequences as Maudlin's  
argument).
UDA = Universal Dovetailer Argument. In sane04 I add the MGA as a last  
step of UDA. But in all other publications I put the MGA, before UDA.
UDA and MGA were originally introduced to remind people that science  
has not yet decided between Plato and Aristotle, and to provide  
motivation for mathematical definition of belief, knowledge,  
observation and feeling in the case of ideally correct universal  
(Löbian) machine. A Löbian machine is a universal machine with proving  
abilities, and knowing in a technical sense that she is universal.
My work is a work on Gödel's theorem (and Löb, Solovay, Kleene, etc.)  
in relation with physics, reality, dreams, etc.
By Aristotle, I mean (to simplify) the idea that physical reality is  
primary, or that physics is the fundamental science.
By Plato, I mean (to simplify again) the idea that physical reality is  
the border, or the shadow, or the projection, or the creation, of a  
non physical vaster reality (be it mathematical, theological, computer  
science theoretical, arithmetical ...).
MEC makes it arithmetical, because it becomes absolutely undecidable.  
It makes it also theological when listening to what the machine say  
and stay mute about, or say with interrogation mark.






Obviously it is trivial to show that the physical universe is  
redundant,


It is not trivial. It took me 30 years to make about ten person  
understanding the entire thing.
It is the whole point of the proof. It shows the falsity of  
physicalism. I have come on this list to explain that Tegmark's idea  
that the physical universe is a mathematical object among others  
cannot work, assuming CTM,  due to the first person indeterminacy.
I think that you are still using the identity thesis in the philosophy  
of mind. Tegmark is still guilty, if you want, of a form of  
physicalism, by assuming that the physical universe might be a  
mathematical structure among another. Physical is undefined, and  
mechanism, when taken enough seriously, leads to the idea that the  
coupling consciousness/realities is a purely arithmetical phenomenon.
The only way to show that the physical universe is redundant consists  
in showing how the physical laws appear to be believed in absence of  
physical universe(s). This makes physics no more a fundamental  
science, but a science which has to be explained from another science.  
With MEC it can be shown that the other science is arithmetic, or any  
first order logical specification of a universal (in

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-31 Thread Travis Garrett

Hi Russell,

   No problem at all - I myself confess to having skimmed papers in
the past, perhaps even in the last 5 minutes...  That I took a bit of
umbrage just shows that I haven't yet transcended into a being of pure
thought :-)

  Let me address your 3rd paragraph first.  Consider the statements:
3 is a prime number and 4 is a prime number.  Both of these are
well formed (as opposed to, say, =3==prime4!=!), but the first is
true and the second is false.  To be slightly pedantic, I would count
over the first statement (that is, in the process of counting all
information structures) and not the second.  Note that the first
statement can be rephrased in an infinite number of different ways,
2+1 is a prime number, the square root of 9 is not composite and
so forth.  However, we should not count over all of these
individually, but rather just the invariant information that is
preserved from translation to translation (This is the meta-lesson
borrowed from Faddeev and Popov).

  Consider then 4 is a prime number - which we can perhaps rephrase
as the square root of 16 is a prime number.  In this case we are now
carefully translating a false statement - but as it is false there is
no longer any invariant core that must be preserved - it would be fine
to also say the square root of 17 is a prime number or any other
random nonsense...  There is no there there, so to speak.  The same
goes for all of the completely random sequences - there seems to be a
huge number of them at first, but none of them actually encode
anything nontrivial.  When I choose to only count over the nontrivial
structures - that which is invariant upon translation - they all
disappear in a puff of smoke.  Or rather (being a bit more careful),
there really never was anything there in the first place: the
appearance that the random structures carry a lot of information (due
to their incompressibility) was always an illusion.

   Thus, when I propose only counting over the gauge invariant stuff,
it is not that I am skipping over a bunch of other stuff because I
don't want to deal with it right now - I really am only counting over
the real stuff.  Let me give an example that I thought about including
in the paper.  Say ETs show up one day - the solution to the Fermi
paradox is just that they like to take long naps.  As a present they
offer us the choice of 2 USB drives.  USB A) contains a large number
of mathematical theorems - some that we have derived, others that we
haven't (perhaps including an amazing solution of the Collatz
conjecture).  For concreteness say that all the thereoms are less than
N bits long as the USB drive has some finite capacity.  In contrast,
USB B) contains all possible statements that are N bits long or less.
One should therefore choose B) because it has everything on A), plus a
lot more stuff!  But of course by filling in the gaps we have not
only not added any more information, but have also erased the
information that was on A): the entire content of B) can be
compactified to the program: print all sequences N bits long or
less.

  The nontrivial information thus forms a sparse subset of all
sequences.  The sparseness can be seen through combinatorics.  Take
some very complex nontrivial structure which is composed of many
interacting parts: say, a long mathematical theorem, or a biological
creature like a frog.  Go in and corrupt one of the many interacting
parts - now the whole thing doesn't work.  Go and randomly change
something else instead, and again the structure no longer works: there
are many more ways to be wrong than to be right (with complete
randomness emerging in the limit of everything being scrambled).

  Note that it is a bit more subtle than this however - for instance
in the case of the frog, small changes in its genotype (and thus in
its phenotype) can slightly improve or decrease its fitness (depending
on the environment).  There is thus still a degree of randomness
remaining, as there must be for entities created through iterative
trial and error: the boundary between the sparse subset of nontrivial
structures and the rest of sequence space is therefore somewhat
blurry.  However, even if we add a very fat blurry buffer zone the
nontrivial structures still comprise a tiny subset of statement space
- although they dominate the counting after a gauge choice is made
(which removes the redundant and random).

  Does that make sense?



 Sorry about that, but its a sad fact of life that if I don't get the
 general gist of a paper by the time the introduction is over, or get
 it wrong, I am unlikely to delve into the technical details unless a)
 I'm especially interested (as in I need the results for something I'm
 doing), or b) I'm reviewing the paper.

 I guess I don't see why there's a problem to solve in why we observe
 ourselves as being observers. It kind of follows as a truism. However,
 there is a problem of why we observe ourselves at all, as opposed to
 disorganised random information

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-28 Thread Russell Standish

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 02:32:15PM -0800, Travis Garrett wrote:
 I am somewhat flabbergasted by Russell's response.  He says that he is
 completely unimpressed - uh, ok, fine - but then he completely
 ignores entire sections of the paper where I precisely address the
 issues he raises.  Going back to the abstract I say:

Sorry about that, but its a sad fact of life that if I don't get the
general gist of a paper by the time the introduction is over, or get
it wrong, I am unlikely to delve into the technical details unless a)
I'm especially interested (as in I need the results for something I'm
doing), or b) I'm reviewing the paper.

I guess I don't see why there's a problem to solve in why we observe
ourselves as being observers. It kind of follows as a truism. However,
there is a problem of why we observe ourselves at all, as opposed to
disorganised random information (the white rabbit problem) or simple
uninteresting information (the occam catastrophe problem).

I'm not sure you really address either of the latter two issues - you
seem to be assuming away white rabbits in restricting yourself to
gauge invariant information (which I assume can be formalised as the
set of programs of a universal machine). I would be interested to know
if your proposal could address the occam catastrophe issue though.

Cheers.


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-27 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 25 Jan 2011, at 18:24, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 24/01/11 21:35, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Thanks for all this. I will do some reading and then go through the  
points again. And get back to you.


You are welcome. Ask any question.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-27 Thread Travis Garrett

I am somewhat flabbergasted by Russell's response.  He says that he is
completely unimpressed - uh, ok, fine - but then he completely
ignores entire sections of the paper where I precisely address the
issues he raises.  Going back to the abstract I say:

We then argue that the observers
collectively form the largest class of information
(where, in analogy with the Faddeev Popov procedure,
we only count over ``gauge invariant forms of
information).

The stipulation that one only counts over gauge-invariant (i.e.
nontrivial) information structures is absolutely critical!  This is a
well known idea in physics (which I am adapting to a new problem) but
it probably isn't well known in general.  One can see the core idea
embedded in the wikipedia article: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faddeev–Popov_ghost
- or in say Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by A. Zee, or
Quantum Field Theory by L. Ryder which is where I first learned
about it.  In general a number of very interesting ideas have been
developed in quantum field theory (also including regularization and
renormalization) to deal with thorny issues involving infinity, and I
think they can be adapted to other problems.  In short, all of the
uncountable number of uncomputable reals are just infinitely long
random sequences, and they are all eliminated (along with the
redundant descriptions) by the selection of some gauge.  Note also in
the abstract that I am equating the observers with the *nontrivial*
power set of the set of all information - which is absolutely distinct
from the standard power set!  I am only counting over nontrivial forms
of information - i.e. that which, say, you'd be interested in paying
for (at least in pre-internet days!).

I am also perfectly well aware that observers are more than just
passive information absorbers.  As I say in the paper:

Observers are included among these complex structures,
and we will grant them the special name $y_j$
(although they are also
another variety of information structure $x_i$).
For instance a young child $y_{c1}$ may know about
$x_{3p}$ and $x_{gh}$:
$x_{3p}, x_{gh} \in y_{c1}$, while having not yet
learned about $x_{eul}$ or $x_{cm}$.
This is the key feature of the observers that we will utilize:
the $y_j$ are entities that can absorb various
$x_i$ from different regions of $\mathcal{U}$.

That is: this is the key feature of the observers that we will
utilize

And 4 paragraphs from the 3rd section:

 Consider then the proposed observer $y_{r1}$
 (i.e. a direct element of $\mathcal{P}(\mathcal{U})$):
  $y_{r1} = \{ x_{tang}, x_3, x_{nept} \}$,
 where $x_{tang}$ is a tangerine, $x_{3}$ is the
 number 3, and $x_{nept}$ is the planet Neptune.
 This random collection of various information structures
 from $\mathcal{U}$ is clearly
 not an observer, or any other from of nontrivial information:
 $y_{r1}$ is redundant to its three elements, and would thus
 be cut by the selection of a gauge.
 This is the sense in which most of the direct elements of the
 power set of $\mathcal{U}$ do not add any new real information.

 However, one could have a real observer $y_{\alpha}$
 whose main interests happened to include types of fruit, the
integers, and
 the planets of the solar system and so forth.
 The 3 elements of $y_{r1}$ exist as a simple list,
 with no overarching structure actually uniting them.
 A physically realized computer, with some finite
 amount of memory and a capacity to receive
 input, resolves this by providing a
 unified architecture for the nontrivial
 embedding of various forms of information.
 A physical computer thus provides the glue to combine, say,
 $x_{tang}$, $x_{3}$, and $x_{nept}$ and
 form a new nontrivial structure in $\mathcal{U}$.

It is possible to also consider the existence
 of ``randomly organized computers
 which indiscriminately embed arbitrary
 elements of $\mathcal{U}$ -- these
 too would conform to no real $x_i$.
 This leads to the specification of ``physically realized
 computers, as the restrictions that
 arise from existing within a mathematical
 structure like $\Psi$ results in
 computers that process information in
 nontrivial ways.
 Furthermore, a structure like $\Psi$ allows for
 these physical computers to spontaneously
 arise as it evolves forward from an initial state of
 low entropy.
 Namely it is possible for replicating
 molecular structures to emerge, and
 Darwinian evolution can then drive to them
 to higher levels of complexity as they
 compete for limited resources.
 A fundamental type of evolutionary
 adaptation then becomes possible:
 the ability to extract pertinent information
 from one's environment so that it can
 be acted upon to one's advantage.
 The requirement that one extracts useful
 information
 is thus one of the key constraints that
 has guided the evolution of the
 sensory organs and nervous systems
 of the species in the animal kingdom.

 This evolutionary process has reached its current
 apogee with our species,
 as our brains are

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-27 Thread Stephen Paul King


Hi Travis,

   I have really enjoyed the challenge of your paper. One difficulty that I 
have with it is that the selection of a gauge is a highly non-trivial 
problem (related to the fine tuning problem!) and thus needs a lot more 
attention. More comments soon.


Onward!

Stephen


-Original Message- 
From: Travis Garrett

Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:32 PM
To: Everything List
Subject: Re: Observers and Church/Turing

I am somewhat flabbergasted by Russell's response.  He says that he is
completely unimpressed - uh, ok, fine - but then he completely
ignores entire sections of the paper where I precisely address the
issues he raises.  Going back to the abstract I say:

We then argue that the observers
collectively form the largest class of information
(where, in analogy with the Faddeev Popov procedure,
we only count over ``gauge invariant forms of
information).

The stipulation that one only counts over gauge-invariant (i.e.
nontrivial) information structures is absolutely critical!  This is a
well known idea in physics (which I am adapting to a new problem) but
it probably isn't well known in general.  One can see the core idea
embedded in the wikipedia article: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faddeev–Popov_ghost

- or in say Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by A. Zee, or
Quantum Field Theory by L. Ryder which is where I first learned
about it.  In general a number of very interesting ideas have been
developed in quantum field theory (also including regularization and
renormalization) to deal with thorny issues involving infinity, and I
think they can be adapted to other problems.  In short, all of the
uncountable number of uncomputable reals are just infinitely long
random sequences, and they are all eliminated (along with the
redundant descriptions) by the selection of some gauge.  Note also in
the abstract that I am equating the observers with the *nontrivial*
power set of the set of all information - which is absolutely distinct
from the standard power set!  I am only counting over nontrivial forms
of information - i.e. that which, say, you'd be interested in paying
for (at least in pre-internet days!).

I am also perfectly well aware that observers are more than just
passive information absorbers.  As I say in the paper:

Observers are included among these complex structures,
and we will grant them the special name $y_j$
(although they are also
another variety of information structure $x_i$).
For instance a young child $y_{c1}$ may know about
$x_{3p}$ and $x_{gh}$:
$x_{3p}, x_{gh} \in y_{c1}$, while having not yet
learned about $x_{eul}$ or $x_{cm}$.
This is the key feature of the observers that we will utilize:
the $y_j$ are entities that can absorb various
$x_i$ from different regions of $\mathcal{U}$.

That is: this is the key feature of the observers that we will
utilize

And 4 paragraphs from the 3rd section:

 Consider then the proposed observer $y_{r1}$
(i.e. a direct element of $\mathcal{P}(\mathcal{U})$):
 $y_{r1} = \{ x_{tang}, x_3, x_{nept} \}$,
where $x_{tang}$ is a tangerine, $x_{3}$ is the
number 3, and $x_{nept}$ is the planet Neptune.
This random collection of various information structures
from $\mathcal{U}$ is clearly
not an observer, or any other from of nontrivial information:
$y_{r1}$ is redundant to its three elements, and would thus
be cut by the selection of a gauge.
This is the sense in which most of the direct elements of the
power set of $\mathcal{U}$ do not add any new real information.

snip 


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-25 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 04:56:00AM -0800, ronaldheld wrote:
 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
Any comments?
  Ronald

I finally got around to reading. I am completely unimpressed. Two
points:

1) His use of Physical Church-Turing Thesis is rather
unconventional. Normally, this means that the physical universe is
Turing simulable, but he uses it to mean something like COMP or
Tegmarks MUH. Note that by Bruno's UDA, the physical universe is no
longer simulable if COMP is true!

2) More seriously, I don't buy his Observer Class Hypothesis
(OCH). Observers do not just absorb information, they model
it. In one way, they could be said to search for short algorithms that
predict/reproduce the information at hand. So there will only ever be
a countable number of observers. They cannot be power sets of the set
of information strings. This becomes most absurd when talking about
observers observing themselves. Yet the number of information strings
in the plenitude will be uncountable (2^\aleph_0). There is an analogous
relationship with the concept of computable numbers versus all real
numbers. 

Cheers

-- 


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Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-25 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 24/01/11 21:35, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Thanks for all this. I will do some reading and then go through the 
points again. And get back to you.


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-23 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 22 Jan 2011, at 17:22, Andrew Soltau wrote:





On 22/01/11 08:44, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Hi Andrew,

On 21 Jan 2011, at 16:08, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi

I have an answer to the nature of the relation between the first- 
person and specific third-person phenomena. It is based very  
simply on logical type. Here's the concept as brief as I can make  
it.


As Deutsch, Barbour, Davies, and others hold, the universe is  
clearly static. Relativity shows us a static block universe, since  
the whole of space-time is actual. The linear dynamics similarly  
shows us a static block universe, a four dimensional array of  
probability amplitudes for possible events. As with the  
relativistic universe, progression along the linear time dimension  
of space-time provides a moving picture, a changing reality. As  
Penrose states, in the universe described by special relativity:  
... particles do not even move, being represented by “static”  
curves drawn in space–time’. Thus what we perceive as moving 3D  
objects are really successive cross-sections of immobile 4D  
objects past which our field of observation is sweeping.  (1994,  
p. 389)


The collapse dynamics is the change to the linear dynamics. This  
does not work at a global level, due to observers having different  
simultaneities. In a relational qm, however, this is  
straightforwardly the time evolution of the frame of reference of  
the observer in the collapse dynamics, as described by Everett.
As Tegmark points out, Everett brings us the clear distinction  
between the outside and inside views of a quantum state. On the  
outside view, there is only the linear dynamics. On the inside  
view, there are sporadic collapses as observations are made.
The remaining problem is that there is no viewpoint, in any  
physical frame of reference, from which to view the change in the  
frame of reference as observations are made. This is where logical  
types comes in handy.

Taking the relational view:
The quantum state of the effective physical environment of the  
observer defines a block universe of probability amplitudes. This  
is like one frame of a movie, a four dimensional space-time matter  
and energy movie. The quantum concept of time shows that all  
possible such frames exist. Barbour ... calls each specific state  
a 'Now', and this is what he is emphasising when he says that:  
“Every Now is a complete, self-contained, timeless, unchanging  
universe” (Folger, 2000). Each Now is a moment in the quantum  
concept of time. All the moments exist, complete, 'already', like  
the frames of a movie film. Thus Barbour: “... likens his view of  
reality to a strip of movie film. Each frame captures one possible  
Now” (Folger, 2000)


With regard to a movie, a frame is a member of the set of the  
frames comprising the movie: they are of different logical type.  
With regard to the quantum concept of time, the same principle  
holds. The quantum state of a physical environment at a specific  
moment in the quantum concept of time is of the first, primitive,  
logical type, while the set of all possible frames is of a second  
logical type.


In order to run, the movie requires iteration. This is of a third  
logical type: it is an operation which apples to all possible  
movies, all possible sequences of frames. Similarly, in order for  
there to be a transtemporal reality, even subjectively, there has  
to be an iterator of the frames of reference defined by the  
quantum state - I call them quantum mechanical frames of  
reference. There can be no such physical process, as Deutsch,  
Barbour, Davies, and others hold, and I'm with them. At the same  
time, Everett shows how straightforward it is to explain the  
appearance of collapse: as each observation is made, the frame of  
reference changes to that of the next moment. The observer becomes  
correlated with a different quantum state. as he states  ... it is  
not so much the system which is affected by an observation as the  
observer, who becomes correlated to the system. (1973, p. 116; his  
italics)


But from what perspective does this change take place? According  
to Bitbol (1991, p. 7) this is the conversation out of which  
Everett very much wishes to keep. But the question, of course,  
stands.


My view is that we have experiential evidence of the answer,  
bizarre though it is. I notice the world changing. So I am a  
transtemporal observer. However, I also notice my body changing,  
and my mind. Everything changes. This change is encountered from  
the perspective of phenomenal consciousness. That would be just  
odd, except for the fact that Chalmers that phenomenal  
consciousness must necessarily be a fundamental feature of the  
universe “... alongside mass energy and space-time” (1995). In  
other words, in my view, it is an emergent property of the system  
as a whole. And as such it is of the third logical type.
And the problem is solved. What we have discovered in the

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-22 Thread Andrew Soltau





On 22/01/11 08:44, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Hi Andrew,

On 21 Jan 2011, at 16:08, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi

I have an answer to the nature of the relation between the 
first-person and specific third-person phenomena. It is based very 
simply on logical type. Here's the concept as brief as I can make it.


As Deutsch, Barbour, Davies, and others hold, the universe is clearly 
static. Relativity shows us a static block universe, since the whole 
of space-time is actual. The linear dynamics similarly shows us a 
static block universe, a four dimensional array of probability 
amplitudes for possible events. As with the relativistic universe, 
progression along the linear time dimension of space-time provides a 
moving picture, a changing reality. As Penrose states, in the 
universe described by special relativity: ... particles do not even 
move, being represented by “static” curves drawn in space–time’. Thus 
what we perceive as moving 3D objects are really successive 
cross-sections of immobile 4D objects past which our field of 
observation is sweeping.  (1994, p. 389)


The collapse dynamics is the change to the linear dynamics. This does 
not work at a global level, due to observers having different 
simultaneities. In a relational qm, however, this is 
straightforwardly the time evolution of the frame of reference of the 
observer in the collapse dynamics, as described by Everett.
As Tegmark points out, Everett brings us the clear distinction 
between the outside and inside views of a quantum state. On the 
outside view, there is only the linear dynamics. On the inside view, 
there are sporadic collapses as observations are made.
The remaining problem is that there is no viewpoint, in any physical 
frame of reference, from which to view the change in the frame of 
reference as observations are made. This is where logical types comes 
in handy.

Taking the relational view:
The quantum state of the effective physical environment of the 
observer defines a block universe of probability amplitudes. This is 
like one frame of a movie, a four dimensional space-time matter and 
energy movie. The quantum concept of time shows that all possible 
such frames exist. Barbour... calls each specific state a 'Now', and 
this is what he is emphasising when he says that: “Every Now is a 
complete, self-contained, timeless, unchanging universe”(Folger, 
2000). Each Now is a moment in the quantum concept of time. All the 
moments exist, complete, 'already', like the frames of a movie film. 
Thus Barbour: “... likens his view of reality to a strip of movie 
film. Each frame captures one possible Now”(Folger, 2000)


With regard to a movie, a frame is a member of the set of the frames 
comprising the movie: they are of different logical type. With regard 
to the quantum concept of time, the same principle holds. The quantum 
state of a physical environment at a specific moment in the quantum 
concept of time is of the first, primitive, logical type, while the 
set of all possible frames is of a second logical type.


In order to run, the movie requires iteration. This is of a third 
logical type: it is an operation which apples to all possible movies, 
all possible sequences of frames. Similarly, in order for there to be 
a transtemporal reality, even subjectively, there has to be an 
iterator of the frames of reference defined by the quantum state - I 
call them quantum mechanical frames of reference. There can be no 
such physical process, as Deutsch, Barbour, Davies, and others hold, 
and I'm with them. At the same time, Everett shows how 
straightforward it is to explain the appearance of collapse: as each 
observation is made, the frame of reference changes to that of the 
next moment. The observer becomes correlated with a different quantum 
state. as he states/... it is not so much the system which is 
affected by an observation as the observer, who becomes correlated to 
the system./(1973, p. 116; his italics)


But from what perspective does this change take place? According to 
Bitbol (1991, p. 7) this is the conversation out of which Everett 
very much wishes to keep. But the question, of course, stands.


My view is that we have experiential evidence of the answer, bizarre 
though it is. I notice the world changing. So I am a transtemporal 
observer. However, I also notice my body changing, and my mind. 
Everything changes. This change is encountered from the perspective 
of phenomenal consciousness. That would be just odd, except for the 
fact that Chalmers that phenomenal consciousnessmust necessarily be a 
fundamental feature of the universe “... alongside mass energy and 
space-time”(1995). In other words, in my view, it is an emergent 
property of the system as a whole. And as such it is of the third 
logical type.
And the problem is solved. What we have discovered in the collapse 
dynamics, but completely failed to recognise, is a system process. 
Just as only a computer is in a position to access a

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-21 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi

I have an answer to the nature of the relation between the first-person 
and specific third-person phenomena. It is based very simply on logical 
type. Here's the concept as brief as I can make it.


As Deutsch, Barbour, Davies, and others hold, the universe is clearly 
static. Relativity shows us a static block universe, since the whole of 
space-time is actual. The linear dynamics similarly shows us a static 
block universe, a four dimensional array of probability amplitudes for 
possible events. As with the relativistic universe, progression along 
the linear time dimension of space-time provides a moving picture, a 
changing reality. As Penrose states, in the universe described by 
special relativity: ... particles do not even move, being represented 
by static curves drawn in space--time'. Thus what we perceive as 
moving 3D objects are really successive cross-sections of immobile 4D 
objects past which our field of observation is sweeping.  (1994, p. 389)


The collapse dynamics is the change to the linear dynamics. This does 
not work at a global level, due to observers having different 
simultaneities. In a relational qm, however, this is straightforwardly 
the time evolution of the frame of reference of the observer in the 
collapse dynamics, as described by Everett.
As Tegmark points out, Everett brings us the clear distinction between 
the outside and inside views of a quantum state. On the outside view, 
there is only the linear dynamics. On the inside view, there are 
sporadic collapses as observations are made.
The remaining problem is that there is no viewpoint, in any physical 
frame of reference, from which to view the change in the frame of 
reference as observations are made. This is where logical types comes in 
handy.

Taking the relational view:
The quantum state of the effective physical environment of the observer 
defines a block universe of probability amplitudes. This is like one 
frame of a movie, a four dimensional space-time matter and energy movie. 
The quantum concept of time shows that all possible such frames exist. 
Barbour... calls each specific state a 'Now', and this is what he is 
emphasising when he says that: Every Now is a complete, self-contained, 
timeless, unchanging universe (Folger, 2000). Each Now is a moment in 
the quantum concept of time. All the moments exist, complete, 'already', 
like the frames of a movie film. Thus Barbour: ... likens his view of 
reality to a strip of movie film. Each frame captures one possible Now 
(Folger, 2000)


With regard to a movie, a frame is a member of the set of the frames 
comprising the movie: they are of different logical type. With regard to 
the quantum concept of time, the same principle holds. The quantum state 
of a physical environment at a specific moment in the quantum concept of 
time is of the first, primitive, logical type, while the set of all 
possible frames is of a second logical type.


In order to run, the movie requires iteration. This is of a third 
logical type: it is an operation which apples to all possible movies, 
all possible sequences of frames. Similarly, in order for there to be a 
transtemporal reality, even subjectively, there has to be an iterator of 
the frames of reference defined by the quantum state - I call them 
quantum mechanical frames of reference. There can be no such physical 
process, as Deutsch, Barbour, Davies, and others hold, and I'm with 
them. At the same time, Everett shows how straightforward it is to 
explain the appearance of collapse: as each observation is made, the 
frame of reference changes to that of the next moment. The observer 
becomes correlated with a different quantum state. as he states /... it 
is not so much the system which is affected by an observation as the 
observer, who becomes correlated to the system./(1973, p. 116; his italics)


But from what perspective does this change take place? According to 
Bitbol (1991, p. 7) this is the conversation out of which Everett very 
much wishes to keep. But the question, of course, stands.


My view is that we have experiential evidence of the answer, bizarre 
though it is. I notice the world changing. So I am a transtemporal 
observer. However, I also notice my body changing, and my mind. 
Everything changes. This change is encountered from the perspective of 
phenomenal consciousness. That would be just odd, except for the fact 
that Chalmers that phenomenal consciousnessmust necessarily be a 
fundamental feature of the universe ... alongside mass energy and 
space-time (1995). In other words, in my view, it is an emergent 
property of the system as a whole. And as such it is of the third 
logical type.
And the problem is solved. What we have discovered in the collapse 
dynamics, but completely failed to recognise, is a system process. Just 
as only a computer is in a position to access a sequence of addresses in 
memory, containing a sequence of structures of information defining the 
frames of a

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-17 Thread 1Z



On Jan 12, 10:50 pm, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
 I confess to the usual level of exasperation. Yet again the great
 culturally maintained mental block subverts real progress. And, yet
 again, the participant doesn;t even know they are doing it.  Garrett
 says 

 /The key is that observers are just a particular type of information,
 as is everything else. That is, we assume that the Physical Church
 Turing Thesis (PCTT) ..blah blah blah
 /
 WRONG WRONG WRONG.

 The author has somehow remained completely uninformed by the real
 message in the consciousness material cited in the article.

 *Observers are NOT just a particular type of information*

 The word information _was defined by an observer_,

The word observer was defined by an observer. Cannot observers
describe themselves exactly? Is  a description necessarily inaccurate
because it is a description? Are observers not observers because
they define themselves as observers, and their descriptions
are necessarily wrong?

 a human, USING
 observation. Like every other word it's just a metaphoric description of
 as thing, with meaning to a human.  No matter what logical steps one
 proceeds to enact from this juncture, you are not describing anything
 that can be used to build or explain an observer. You are merely
 describing what an observer will see.

 What does it take to get something so simple across to physics?

 I'll have yet another go at it.

 Consider a SET_X =  {BALL1, BALL2, BALL3, BALL4}
 This is a traditional 3-rd person (3P) view of the set created by a
 scientific act of OBSERVATION of the set of balls.
 BALL SET SCIENCE then proceeds to construct very clever mathematical
 descriptions of set member behaviour.

 BUT

 If you are the observer = BALL1, INSIDE SET X, the very act of
 observation results from the 1ST PERSON (1-P) relationship between [you,
 observer = BALL 1 ] and [the rest of the set, from within SET_X].  This
 description is not the same as the above description of SET_X

Merely being different is  not much of an issue. A 2D perspective is
differerent to a 3D model, but given a 3D model of something you
can derive any 2D perspective you like. You need to explain
why a 1p observation is not similarly derivable from the 3p
perspective

Can't
 anyone see that ?? The ability to observe anything arises from that
 circumstance, not from the 3P-circumstance constructed by having observed

*Why* can't you have 3P descriptions of observers and observations?

 Science has not even begun to characterise SET_X   in the 1P way.

Maybe you could say what the explanatory gap is.

 =

 Every single attempt so far in science has the following generic form.

 I am human scientist FRED. How we humans do observation is a real
 mystery. I like mysteries. And I am really good at maths. I will do the
 very clever maths of observation. Now where do I begin...ASSUMING
 OBSERVATION ... blah blah blah.

 Then off we go into the weeds, YET AGAIN.

 FRED just doesn't get the difference between 1-P and 3-P. It's a
 systemic blindness.

 I'll just crawl off and fume for a while. I'll be OK soon enough! :-)

 Colin Hales
 if you can't formulaically predict/build an observer with what you
 produced, you haven't explained observation and you don't really
 understand it

 ronaldheld wrote:
 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
     Any comments?
                                   Ronald

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-14 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 14 Jan 2011, at 06:55, Colin Hales wrote:


Hi David,

I think feisty/curmudgeon is more apt than fierce... but yeah ... :-)

RE: In other words, what is the relation, in your theory,
between the first-person and specific third-person phenomena?

Right to it eh? Call the two perspective 1-P and 3P

OK. First, there may be a bit of a misdirection in the words first- 
person and specific third-person phenomena?. Phenomena are 100%  
encountered by a scientist's 1-P experience. It's 100% of our access  
to anything. It's 'scientific observation'. There's no such thing as  
3rd person phenomena. 3rd person is a description of the 'contents  
of consciousness as scientific observation'...These descriptions  
have no more reality than that of an abstract set of rules  
prescribing/proscribing regularity between agreed 1st-person  
percepts. Their predictive success entails no claim to any capture  
of ontology or necessity for causal relations.


The 1-P/3-P divide is, in my system, a duality of equivalent  
descriptions pivoting on mutual consistency in the production of an  
observer that acquires the 'what it is like, 1-P experience' as a  
result of the fundamental properties of being within the system thus  
described. This is not a duality of substance. It is a duality of  
knowledge resulting from being in and made of a system's componentry  
and describing it from within.


That's all you have to do.

The usual mistake that's made at this point is to fail to  
discriminate between the 'why/how' of 1-P and the 'what'. It's  
extemely easy to isolate the 'what': ELECTROMAGNETISM (EM). This is  
the beautiful 3-P description of a brain. The list of possible  
'what' is delivering 1-P is of length 1. 'Being' electromagnetism  
results in 1-P.


The real WHY/HOW is in asking 'why is it that EM delivers it?'

Well there you go. You know that the description yuo have of EM and  
the description that says WHY EM does 1-P (when configured like a  
brain) are not the same descriptions. In other words you have to  
start describing the universe in a manner prior to the observer.


How do you empirically justify this new set of descriptions?

Whatever this new descriptive realm is, it should predict an  
observer that sees the world as we do AND that appears to be a brain  
when you look at it 3-P.


Neither description set need be unique.

I hope that's enough!



Not sure. I think David alluded to the 1-3 distinction introduced so  
that people can understand that mechanism leads to 1-indeterminacy, 1- 
non-locality, even 1-non-clonability, which are steps to understand  
that the physical reality emerges in a 1-plural way (assuming I can  
survive with a digital (generalized) brain. The 1 and 3 are just  
the difference between inside a teleportation box, or outside. It is a  
simple transparent 3-definition of a notion of 1-view. It makes also  
the 3-view a sort of relative notion, given that you can duplicate  
population of machines practicing internal teleportation and self- 
multiplication.


But I do agree with your duality view. In the arithmetical translation  
you get it by the difference, for the machine, between Bp and Bp  p.  
G* proves them equivalent, but G does not, and machines lived them  
as different. The machine is modest: she does not always believe that  
Bp - p, but she always believe that (Bp  p) - p, of course. But  
this duality is a part of an octality (the eight hypostases).


 I am never sure what you mean by world, nor what is your ontology,  
and you don't seem aware, or convinced perhaps,  that the physical  
realities does exist as shared dream by universal machines, assuming  
we are *no more* than universal (Löbian) machine (it is easy to show  
that we are all *at least* such machine).


May be the question is: how do you relate your approach with UDA (and  
perhaps AUDA, but that is more technically involved). I took time to  
explain this in this list. You might relate to older posts if you have  
already said something on this which I don't remember. I do remember  
the feisty/curmudgeon style though :)


Regards,

Bruno








cheers
colin


David Nyman wrote:


Gawd, I've missed you Colin, you fierce old thing!  Is it wet where
you are or is the inundation confined to poor old Brisbane?

I suppose you know that Bruno and you agree (at least in my  
estimation

of your lines of argument) that observation is the key phenomenon to
be explained at the outset, instead - as you rightly say - of just
being taken for granted.  If this cardinal error is committed at the
starting gate, the rest of the argument inevitably runs in a circle.
Of course you and Bruno start from different premisses vis-a-vis the
primitives, but on the positive side either theory is (I presume)  
open

to empirical falsification.

One thing I haven't been able to fathom so far about your own ideas  
is

where you stand on what Bruno calls first-person indeterminacy, which
has come up again in a

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-13 Thread Colin Hales


Hi David,

I think feisty/curmudgeon is more apt than fierce... but yeah ... :-)

RE: In other words, what is the relation, in your theory,
between the first-person and specific third-person phenomena?

Right to it eh? Call the two perspective 1-P and 3P

OK. First, there may be a bit of a misdirection in the words 
first-person and specific third-person phenomena?. Phenomena are 100% 
encountered by a scientist's 1-P experience. It's 100% of our access to 
anything. It's 'scientific observation'. There's no such thing as 3rd 
person phenomena. 3rd person is a description of the 'contents of 
consciousness as scientific observation'...These descriptions have no 
more reality than that of an abstract set of rules 
prescribing/proscribing regularity between agreed 1st-person percepts. 
Their predictive success entails no claim to any capture of ontology or 
necessity for causal relations.


The 1-P/3-P divide is, in my system, a duality of equivalent 
descriptions pivoting on mutual consistency in the production of an 
observer that acquires the 'what it is like, 1-P experience' as a result 
of the fundamental properties of being within the system thus described. 
This is not a duality of substance. It is a duality of knowledge 
resulting from being in and made of a system's componentry and 
describing it from within.


That's all you have to do.

The usual mistake that's made at this point is to fail to discriminate 
between the 'why/how' of 1-P and the 'what'. It's extemely easy to 
isolate the 'what': ELECTROMAGNETISM (EM). This is the beautiful 3-P 
description of a brain. The list of possible 'what' is delivering 1-P is 
of length 1. 'Being' electromagnetism results in 1-P.


The real WHY/HOW is in asking 'why is it that EM delivers it?'

Well there you go. You know that the description yuo have of EM and the 
description that says WHY EM does 1-P (when configured like a brain) are 
not the same descriptions. In other words you have to start describing 
the universe in a manner prior to the observer.


How do you empirically justify this new set of descriptions?

Whatever this new descriptive realm is, it should predict an observer 
that sees the world as we do AND that appears to be a brain when you 
look at it 3-P.


Neither description set need be unique.

I hope that's enough!

cheers
colin







David Nyman wrote:

Gawd, I've missed you Colin, you fierce old thing!  Is it wet where
you are or is the inundation confined to poor old Brisbane?

I suppose you know that Bruno and you agree (at least in my estimation
of your lines of argument) that observation is the key phenomenon to
be explained at the outset, instead - as you rightly say - of just
being taken for granted.  If this cardinal error is committed at the
starting gate, the rest of the argument inevitably runs in a circle.
Of course you and Bruno start from different premisses vis-a-vis the
primitives, but on the positive side either theory is (I presume) open
to empirical falsification.

One thing I haven't been able to fathom so far about your own ideas is
where you stand on what Bruno calls first-person indeterminacy, which
has come up again in a recent thread.  You know, the transporter
thought experiment, or just the question in general of why I find
myself to be in this particular observer position (as raised in the
target paper).  In other words, what is the relation, in your theory,
between the first-person and specific third-person phenomena?  In
Bruno's computational approach, the relation seems to emerge via a
kind of filtering process or sieve of consciousness considered as a
whole through the infinity of possible computations.  In this way the
computational everything is conceived as converging on consistent
first-person narratives as a consequence of various kinds of measure
- a very rough analogy would be the emergence of all possible books in
Borges' Library of Babel.   What would be the analogous ideas in
your own approach?

David

On 12 January 2011 22:50, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
  

I confess to the usual level of exasperation. Yet again the great culturally
maintained mental block subverts real progress. And, yet again, the
participant doesn;t even know they are doing it.  Garrett says 

The key is that observers are just a particular type of information, as is
everything else. That is, we assume that the Physical Church Turing Thesis
(PCTT) ..blah blah blah

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

The author has somehow remained completely uninformed by the real message in
the consciousness material cited in the article.

Observers are NOT just a particular type of information

The word information _was defined by an observer_, a human, USING
observation. Like every other word it's just a metaphoric description of as
thing, with meaning to a human.  No matter what logical steps one proceeds
to enact from this juncture, you are not describing anything that can be
used to build or explain an observer.

Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-12 Thread ronaldheld

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
   Any comments?
 Ronald

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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-12 Thread Stephen Paul King

Dear Ronald,


Thank you very much to submitting this paper for comment! I must preface my 
initial comment with the statement that I am a mere amateur so you might choose 
to take my claims and arguments with a measure of sodium chloride.   This paper 
contains a crude material monist facsimile of the idea that I have been 
exploring and exploring for about 10 years now, even down to the use of the 
symbol ~ for the equivalence relation. I am in the process of writing up a 
detailed commentary on it but could not help but to put out this post asap.

Kindest regards,

Stephen Paul King

-Original Message- 
From: ronaldheld 
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 7:56 AM 
To: Everything List 
Subject: Observers and Church/Turing 

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
   Any comments?
 Ronald

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wlEmoticon-winkingsmile[1].png

Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-12 Thread Colin Hales

I confess to the usual level of exasperation. Yet again the great 
culturally maintained mental block subverts real progress. And, yet 
again, the participant doesn;t even know they are doing it.  Garrett 
says 


/The key is that observers are just a particular type of information, 
as is everything else. That is, we assume that the Physical Church 
Turing Thesis (PCTT) ..blah blah blah

/
WRONG WRONG WRONG.

The author has somehow remained completely uninformed by the real 
message in the consciousness material cited in the article.


*Observers are NOT just a particular type of information*

The word information _was defined by an observer_, a human, USING 
observation. Like every other word it's just a metaphoric description of 
as thing, with meaning to a human.  No matter what logical steps one 
proceeds to enact from this juncture, you are not describing anything 
that can be used to build or explain an observer. You are merely 
describing what an observer will see.


What does it take to get something so simple across to physics?

I'll have yet another go at it.

Consider a SET_X =  {BALL1, BALL2, BALL3, BALL4}
This is a traditional 3-rd person (3P) view of the set created by a 
scientific act of OBSERVATION of the set of balls.
BALL SET SCIENCE then proceeds to construct very clever mathematical 
descriptions of set member behaviour.


BUT

If you are the observer = BALL1, INSIDE SET X, the very act of 
observation results from the 1ST PERSON (1-P) relationship between [you, 
observer = BALL 1 ] and [the rest of the set, from within SET_X].  This 
description is not the same as the above description of SET_X Can't 
anyone see that ?? The ability to observe anything arises from that 
circumstance, not from the 3P-circumstance constructed by having observed.


Science has not even begun to characterise SET_X   in the 1P way.
=

Every single attempt so far in science has the following generic form.

I am human scientist FRED. How we humans do observation is a real 
mystery. I like mysteries. And I am really good at maths. I will do the 
very clever maths of observation. Now where do I begin...ASSUMING 
OBSERVATION ... blah blah blah.


Then off we go into the weeds, YET AGAIN.

FRED just doesn't get the difference between 1-P and 3-P. It's a 
systemic blindness.


I'll just crawl off and fume for a while. I'll be OK soon enough! :-)

Colin Hales
if you can't formulaically predict/build an observer with what you 
produced, you haven't explained observation and you don't really 
understand it



ronaldheld wrote:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
   Any comments?
 Ronald

  


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Re: Observers and Church/Turing

2011-01-12 Thread David Nyman

Gawd, I've missed you Colin, you fierce old thing!  Is it wet where
you are or is the inundation confined to poor old Brisbane?

I suppose you know that Bruno and you agree (at least in my estimation
of your lines of argument) that observation is the key phenomenon to
be explained at the outset, instead - as you rightly say - of just
being taken for granted.  If this cardinal error is committed at the
starting gate, the rest of the argument inevitably runs in a circle.
Of course you and Bruno start from different premisses vis-a-vis the
primitives, but on the positive side either theory is (I presume) open
to empirical falsification.

One thing I haven't been able to fathom so far about your own ideas is
where you stand on what Bruno calls first-person indeterminacy, which
has come up again in a recent thread.  You know, the transporter
thought experiment, or just the question in general of why I find
myself to be in this particular observer position (as raised in the
target paper).  In other words, what is the relation, in your theory,
between the first-person and specific third-person phenomena?  In
Bruno's computational approach, the relation seems to emerge via a
kind of filtering process or sieve of consciousness considered as a
whole through the infinity of possible computations.  In this way the
computational everything is conceived as converging on consistent
first-person narratives as a consequence of various kinds of measure
- a very rough analogy would be the emergence of all possible books in
Borges' Library of Babel.   What would be the analogous ideas in
your own approach?

David

On 12 January 2011 22:50, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
 I confess to the usual level of exasperation. Yet again the great culturally
 maintained mental block subverts real progress. And, yet again, the
 participant doesn;t even know they are doing it.  Garrett says 

 The key is that observers are just a particular type of information, as is
 everything else. That is, we assume that the Physical Church Turing Thesis
 (PCTT) ..blah blah blah

 WRONG WRONG WRONG.

 The author has somehow remained completely uninformed by the real message in
 the consciousness material cited in the article.

 Observers are NOT just a particular type of information

 The word information _was defined by an observer_, a human, USING
 observation. Like every other word it's just a metaphoric description of as
 thing, with meaning to a human.  No matter what logical steps one proceeds
 to enact from this juncture, you are not describing anything that can be
 used to build or explain an observer. You are merely describing what an
 observer will see.

 What does it take to get something so simple across to physics?

 I'll have yet another go at it.

 Consider a SET_X =  {BALL1, BALL2, BALL3, BALL4}
 This is a traditional 3-rd person (3P) view of the set created by a
 scientific act of OBSERVATION of the set of balls.
 BALL SET SCIENCE then proceeds to construct very clever mathematical
 descriptions of set member behaviour.

 BUT

 If you are the observer = BALL1, INSIDE SET X, the very act of observation
 results from the 1ST PERSON (1-P) relationship between [you, observer = BALL
 1 ] and [the rest of the set, from within SET_X].  This description is not
 the same as the above description of SET_X Can't anyone see that ?? The
 ability to observe anything arises from that circumstance, not from the
 3P-circumstance constructed by having observed.

 Science has not even begun to characterise SET_X   in the 1P way.
 =

 Every single attempt so far in science has the following generic form.

 I am human scientist FRED. How we humans do observation is a real mystery. I
 like mysteries. And I am really good at maths. I will do the very clever
 maths of observation. Now where do I begin...ASSUMING OBSERVATION
 ... blah blah blah.

 Then off we go into the weeds, YET AGAIN.

 FRED just doesn't get the difference between 1-P and 3-P. It's a systemic
 blindness.

 I'll just crawl off and fume for a while. I'll be OK soon enough! :-)

 Colin Hales
 if you can't formulaically predict/build an observer with what you
 produced, you haven't explained observation and you don't really understand
 it


 ronaldheld wrote:

 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1101/1101.2198v1.pdf
Any comments?
  Ronald



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