subject:"\"Re\\\: COMP theology\""



On 04 Apr 2012, at 21:52, meekerdb wrote:


On 4/4/2012 10:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


snip


> By comp we can simulate Moscow and Washington precisely enough  
so that you cannot see the difference for some non null interval.  
The question is "do you agree that this does not change the  
evaluation of the indeterminacy?


Yes I agree it does not change, this "1-view indeterminacy" of  
yours is nonsense if the cities are real


You have not shown that. It is non sense for you because you keep  
avoiding the difference between the 3-view-on-1-view,  and  
the 1-view themselves (or 1-view on 1-view). You oscillate between  
trivial, non sense, and 100%. I can't figure out what is your  
objection.




and its nonsense if the cities are virtual.


The question is asked. If you believe in comp, you know that after  
the duplication you will not feel to be in two places at once, so  
it makes sense to evaluate (or to try to evaluate) the chance that  
you will be in this or that city. If you say 100% for Washington,  
by definition of the 1-views, the you-in-Moscow will have to admit  
having been wrong, and vice versa.


Likewise, in the multiplication movie experience, the white-noise  
movie is far more probable that seeing any particular movie,  
because the majority of the John K Clark will see such random movie.


Just keep in mind that the question is asked always before the  
duplication experience and that the answer you give before   
the experience is verified by interviewing all the resulting person  
about their personal experiences, not about the experience of their  
doppelgangers.


So I ask you again what is the probability that you will actually  
live the experience "seeing the movie flying circus" in the  
multiplication movie experience. remember that by definition, to  
verify your answer, I will ask to each John K Clark which movie  
they have actually seen and ask them if that confirms their  
prediction. the answer "all movie" is already no more possible,  
because you already know, by comp, that you, any of your "yous",  
will feel to see only one movie.


I notice that it seems clear enough if you just duplicate the diary.


Right. It is the point of approximating the first person experience by  
the memory or the diary. So it reduces the 1/3 distinction into going  
through the teletransportation or just looking at it from outside.
And for the probability, you can replace the human observer by an  
inference inductive machine. The whole UDA can be done in the third  
person way.





You write "This diary will be in Washtington." and then when there  
are two diaries, the one in Washington is right and the one is  
Moscow in wrong.  The diaries don't need to experience anything.  As  
macroscopic objects they have definite spacetime locations and don't  
exist in a M+W superposition.  The use of indicial pronouns only  
produces a little semantic confusion.  I think John's presentation  
of his thought experiment is wrong - although it's logically  
possible, it's nomologically impossible and not just  
technologically.  Creating two copies of a person must be two  
distinguishable copies just by position and "instantaneously  
swapping their positions" is not nomologically possible.  Somewhat  
the same problem affects the transporter thought experiment.  There  
will necessarily be a discontinuity between the copies and the  
original - both in body and in consciousness.


But such a discontinuity is relative to the implementation, and  
accepted as part of accepting that the brain is digital. So it is not  
clear if consciousness can see that discontinuity, except by the bare  
fact of being in a place and then in another one. More realistic real  
duplication would need encoding time, reconstitution time, but those  
becomes non relevant at the step seven.




I don't think that's fatal to Bruno's argument, but we need to get  
through the argument to see what aspects of the thought experiment  
it actually relies on and which are otiose.


Excellent point. A scientist rarely stops when he does not get a  
point, he always continue, because the next steps can indeed clarify  
what is or not missing, or important, in previous points. The fact  
that John talks like he found a fatal flaw let me suspect he want to  
dismiss the reasoning at the start.

And his tone is ad hominem, which can be a bit boring at time.

I don't want to dream about the number of posts needed to explain the  
step 8 to him ...


And I am afraid he will not appreciate the abstract theory of  
intelligence which profiles on the comp horizon, and which almost  
equates intelligence with modesty ...


Hmm ...







If any one else can help John K Clark to make his point, please  
help him. If some people believe, like I begin to believe, that  
John Clark only fake to not understand, a

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)



On 04 Apr 2012, at 21:04, David Nyman wrote:


On 4 April 2012 18:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

If any one else can help John K Clark to make his point, please  
help him. If
some people believe, like I begin to believe, that John Clark only  
fake to
not understand, and that I should abandon to try, please give your  
opinion,
because I begin to feel like we are going in circle, always coming  
back with
what I see as a confusion between the 3-views on the many 1-views  
of all
doppelgangers, and the 1-views as lived individually by each  
doppelgangers,
and which is on what the probability, asked before the experience  
begins, is
asked. How can John not seen that difference? Is he only joking or  
what? Any

idea?


It's not entirely clear to me that John is more committed to
clarifying the issues than to trying to make a fool of you.  I'm
beginning to suspect the latter might be the case, though I would
prefer to be charitable in my assessment of the motives of anyone who
commits so much time to posting on this list.


I try to be charitable, but then I am afraid that people will get  
bored, especially when we get into circle.





As for "helping", I
notice that he hasn't commented on any of the points I raised in my
recent post in this regard, though others have done so.


Yes. I should perhaps wait that he answers your posts.




As someone
once remarked, the obvious can be elusive,


Well said.



so disagreement is no
problem,


On the contrary. It is the reason of the discussion.





but there must be an underlying commitment to seriousness and
respect for the dialogue to be fruitful.


And this is the hard part to judge. That's why I was asking. I will  
try to be a bit charitable, but I am also trying to understand why  
people can stuck themselves so much, despite showing that they can  
reason.


Thanks for the help,

Bruno




On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with  
"consciousness

would be here and now".



How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as  
crystal

clearly as you just did ?


You can be conscious of being here and now. That expression is  
traditional,
and used in many place, and we have already used it to illustrate  
the fact
that the cnscious feeling "here and now" is undoubtable, as opposed  
to the
idea that being conscious five minutes ago and five minutes from  
now is

already doubtable, and you did agree.

I was just saying that consciousness of a localization does not  
entail the

localization of consciousness. You argument was confusing those two
different thing. We agree that consciousness is not something  
localisable,
but this does not entail that we cannot have a conscious experience  
of being
localised somewhere, like when we say "I visited Bombay last week- 
end".








  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial
application of the anthropic principle, "I will become the  
Moscow man if
events transpire so that I meet the definition of the Moscow  
man, namely

that I see Moscow".




Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.



The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man  
and the
reason I'm the Washington man is that I saw Washington and the  
probability
the Helsinki man will see Moscow and Washington is 100%. What more  
is there

to say on this rather dull subject?


That you give the probability that the guy will be in W and M from  
a third
person point of view, when we ask the probability on his future  
first person
point of view. the criteria of confirmation is given, by  
definition, from
the result of the self-localization provided by the persons after  
their

duplication.
In that case, it cannot be 100%, because the guy in M does not feel  
himself

to be in W, and vice versa.
You still confuse the 3-view on the 1-views (an outsider can  
ascribe the

consciousness of John K Clark to both persons in each city), with the
1-views on the 1-views ("Ah, I see I am the one in W" and "Ah, I  
see I am
the one in M"). In Helsinki, he could not know in advance which one  
he can

happen to be. If you think he could, give me the algorithm.








   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two  
things
being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views  
themselves" and you

will have won this argument






I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.

or
I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and  
seeing

W),



Right.


But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.



WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno  
Washington
is different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has memories, that  
is to
say physical changes in the brain, of the sights and sounds of  
Washington

while the other has brain changes signifying t

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 04 Apr 2012, at 20:45, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2012/4/4 Bruno Marchal

If any one else can help John K Clark to make his point, please help
him. If some people believe, like I begin to believe, that John
Clark only fake to not understand, and that I should abandon to try,
please give your opinion, because I begin to feel like we are going
in circle,

I think you should abandon. John Clark does not want to discuss, he
suffers the "I am the best mind in the world, you moron" when in
fact he has just shut down his own brain, it's pathetic.

It looks like that. Now, in my experience I have rarely met someone
stopping at step 3, and arguing for that. Those who stop at step three
usually consider that any text containing the word "consciousness" is
crackpot and rarely try to argue. This makes John Clark rather
exceptional. But then he does not succeed in explaining what he fails
to understand, and its dismissive tone make me suspect that he might
be psychologically stuck somehow. I still think he might get the
"haha" at the seven step. I might still try a little bit. Feel free to
comment his answer. I appreciate your short notes which are very often
quite clear.

There has been another exception. A friend of mine took 4 years to get
the point, and that he told me he would have prefer not to know! That
reaction might suggest psychological difficulties, and looks similar
to the reaction of many people after smoking Salvia. Fundamental
science needs more courage than smartness, I think.

Bruno

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

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-04 Thread meekerdb

On 4/4/2012 10:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:

> You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with "consciousness 
would be
here and now".

How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as crystal clearly as you 
just did ?

You can be conscious of being here and now. That expression is traditional, and used in 
many place, and we have already used it to illustrate the fact that the cnscious feeling 
"here and now" is undoubtable, as opposed to the idea that being conscious five minutes 
ago and five minutes from now is already doubtable, and you did agree.

I was just saying that consciousness of a localization does not entail the localization 
of consciousness. You argument was confusing those two different thing. We agree that 
consciousness is not something localisable, but this does not entail that we cannot have 
a conscious experience of being localised somewhere, like when we say "I visited Bombay 
last week-end".

>>  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial 
application of
the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow man if events transpire 
so that
I meet the definition of the Moscow man, namely that I see Moscow".

> Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.

The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man and the reason I'm the 
Washington man is that I saw Washington and the probability the Helsinki man will see 
Moscow and Washington is 100%. What more is there to say on this rather dull subject?

That you give the probability that the guy will be in W and M from a third person point 
of view, when we ask the probability on his future first person point of view. the 
criteria of confirmation is given, by definition, from the result of the 
self-localization provided by the persons after their duplication.
In that case, it cannot be 100%, because the guy in M does not feel himself to be in W, 
and vice versa.
You still confuse the 3-view on the 1-views (an outsider can ascribe the consciousness 
of John K Clark to both persons in each city), with the 1-views on the 1-views ("Ah, I 
see I am the one in W" and "Ah, I see I am the one in M"). In Helsinki, he could not 
know in advance which one he can happen to be. If you think he could, give me the 
algorithm.

>>   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two 
things being
identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you 
will have
won this argument

> I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.
or
I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and seeing W),

Right.

> But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.

WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno Washington is different 
from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has memories, that is to say physical changes in 
the brain, of the sights and sounds of Washington while the other has brain changes 
signifying the sights and sounds of Moscow; because of the changes in physical 
structure the two brains operate differently, or to say the same thing with different 
words, I the third party can see that the mind of Bruno Washington is different from 
the mind of Bruno Moscow.  Provided that Washington is different from Moscow (I've 
never been to Moscow but I imagine that it is) then the brain of Bruno Washington is 
physically different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, and I the third party observer can 
see those physical differences, and if the construction of those two objects are 
different then the way they operate, the mind, is different too.

But this contradict the fact that you agree both person are the Helsinki guy. You are 
again transforming "I cannot know for sure I will feel myself in W or M" with I can be 
sure that the guy in M will see M and the guy in W will see W, which is does not answer 
the question in asked to him in Helsinki.

Try again. Give me a single concrete example of two things being identical by the 
"3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you will have won this argument.

>>  Who cares? How is it relevant to the copies if the original is cut 
or not
cut as long as he's read?

> If the original is cut, the probability to wake up at Helsinki is 0.

But the Helsinki man is not a copy, it's irrelevant to the copies in Moscow and 
Washington what happens to the original.

Of course, but the question is asked before the reading is done. The question is asked 
to the guy in Helsinki before the experiment is done. So the probability is 1/3, instead 
of 1/2 in the preceding WM duplication with annihilation of the original.

It is equivalent to a multiplication by three, with a null delay of reconstitu

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 April 2012 18:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> If any one else can help John K Clark to make his point, please help him. If
> some people believe, like I begin to believe, that John Clark only fake to
> not understand, and that I should abandon to try, please give your opinion,
> because I begin to feel like we are going in circle, always coming back with
> what I see as a confusion between the 3-views on the many 1-views of all
> doppelgangers, and the 1-views as lived individually by each doppelgangers,
> and which is on what the probability, asked before the experience begins, is
> asked. How can John not seen that difference? Is he only joking or what? Any
> idea?

It's not entirely clear to me that John is more committed to
clarifying the issues than to trying to make a fool of you.  I'm
beginning to suspect the latter might be the case, though I would
prefer to be charitable in my assessment of the motives of anyone who
commits so much time to posting on this list.  As for "helping", I
notice that he hasn't commented on any of the points I raised in my
recent post in this regard, though others have done so.  As someone
once remarked, the obvious can be elusive, so disagreement is no
problem, but there must be an underlying commitment to seriousness and
respect for the dialogue to be fruitful.

David

>
> On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>> > You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with "consciousness
>> > would be here and now".
>
>
> How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as crystal
> clearly as you just did ?
>
>
> You can be conscious of being here and now. That expression is traditional,
> and used in many place, and we have already used it to illustrate the fact
> that the cnscious feeling "here and now" is undoubtable, as opposed to the
> idea that being conscious five minutes ago and five minutes from now is
> already doubtable, and you did agree.
>
> I was just saying that consciousness of a localization does not entail the
> localization of consciousness. You argument was confusing those two
> different thing. We agree that consciousness is not something localisable,
> but this does not entail that we cannot have a conscious experience of being
> localised somewhere, like when we say "I visited Bombay last week-end".
>
>
>
>
>>>
>>> >>  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial
>>> >> application of the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow man if
>>> >> events transpire so that I meet the definition of the Moscow man, namely
>>> >> that I see Moscow".
>>
>>
>> > Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.
>
>
> The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man and the
> reason I'm the Washington man is that I saw Washington and the probability
> the Helsinki man will see Moscow and Washington is 100%. What more is there
> to say on this rather dull subject?
>
>
> That you give the probability that the guy will be in W and M from a third
> person point of view, when we ask the probability on his future first person
> point of view. the criteria of confirmation is given, by definition, from
> the result of the self-localization provided by the persons after their
> duplication.
> In that case, it cannot be 100%, because the guy in M does not feel himself
> to be in W, and vice versa.
> You still confuse the 3-view on the 1-views (an outsider can ascribe the
> consciousness of John K Clark to both persons in each city), with the
> 1-views on the 1-views ("Ah, I see I am the one in W" and "Ah, I see I am
> the one in M"). In Helsinki, he could not know in advance which one he can
> happen to be. If you think he could, give me the algorithm.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>>
>>> >>   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two things
>>> >> being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and 
>>> >> you
>>> >> will have won this argument
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.
>> or
>> I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
>> Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and seeing
>> W),
>
>
> Right.
>
>> > But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.
>
>
> WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno Washington
> is different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has memories, that is to
> say physical changes in the brain, of the sights and sounds of Washington
> while the other has brain changes signifying the sights and sounds of
> Moscow; because of the changes in physical structure the two brains operate
> differently, or to say the same thing with different words, I the third
> party can see that the mind of Bruno Washington is different from the mind
> of Bruno Moscow.  Provided that Washington is different from Moscow (I've
> never been to Moscow but I imagine that it is) then the brain of Bruno
> Washington is physical

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-04 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/4/4 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> > You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with "consciousness
>> would be here and now".
>>
>
> How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as crystal
> clearly as you just did ?
>
>
> You can be conscious of being here and now. That expression is
> traditional, and used in many place, and we have already used it to
> illustrate the fact that the cnscious feeling "here and now" is
> undoubtable, as opposed to the idea that being conscious five minutes ago
> and five minutes from now is already doubtable, and you did agree.
>
> I was just saying that consciousness of a localization does not entail the
> localization of consciousness. You argument was confusing those two
> different thing. We agree that consciousness is not something localisable,
> but this does not entail that we cannot have a conscious experience of
> being localised somewhere, like when we say "I visited Bombay last
> week-end".
>
>
>
>
>>
>>  >>  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial
>>> application of the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow man if
>>> events transpire so that I meet the definition of the Moscow man, namely
>>> that I see Moscow".
>>>
>>
>> > Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.
>>
>
> The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man and the
> reason I'm the Washington man is that I saw Washington and the probability
> the Helsinki man will see Moscow and Washington is 100%. What more is there
> to say on this rather dull subject?
>
>
> That you give the probability that the guy will be in W and M from a third
> person point of view, when we ask the probability on his future first
> person point of view. the criteria of confirmation is given, by definition,
> from the result of the self-localization provided by the persons after
> their duplication.
> In that case, it cannot be 100%, because the guy in M does not feel
> himself to be in W, and vice versa.
> You still confuse the 3-view on the 1-views (an outsider can ascribe the
> consciousness of John K Clark to both persons in each city), with the
> 1-views on the 1-views ("Ah, I see I am the one in W" and "Ah, I see I am
> the one in M"). In Helsinki, he could not know in advance which one he can
> happen to be. If you think he could, give me the algorithm.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>  >>   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two things
>>> being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you
>>> will have won this argument
>>>
>>
>>
>>
> > I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.
>> or
>> I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
>> Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and seeing
>> W),
>>
>
> Right.
>
> > But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.
>
>
> WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno Washington
> is different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has memories, that is to
> say physical changes in the brain, of the sights and sounds of Washington
> while the other has brain changes signifying the sights and sounds of
> Moscow; because of the changes in physical structure the two brains operate
> differently, or to say the same thing with different words, I the third
> party can see that the mind of Bruno Washington is different from the mind
> of Bruno Moscow.  Provided that Washington is different from Moscow (I've
> never been to Moscow but I imagine that it is) then the brain of Bruno
> Washington is physically different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, and I
> the third party observer can see those physical differences, and if the
> construction of those two objects are different then the way they operate,
> the mind, is different too.
>
>
> But this contradict the fact that you agree both person are the Helsinki
> guy. You are again transforming "I cannot know for sure I will feel myself
> in W or M" with I can be sure that the guy in M will see M and the guy in W
> will see W, which is does not answer the question in asked to him in
> Helsinki.
>
>
>
>
> Try again. Give me a single concrete example of two things being identical
> by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you will have won
> this argument.
>
> >>  Who cares? How is it relevant to the copies if the original is cut or
>>> not cut as long as he's read?
>>>
>>
>>
> > If the original is cut, the probability to wake up at Helsinki is 0.
>>
>
> But the Helsinki man is not a copy, it's irrelevant to the copies in
> Moscow and Washington what happens to the original.
>
>
> Of course, but the question is asked before the reading is done. The
> question is asked to the guy in Helsinki before the experiment is done. So
> the probability is 1/3, instead of 1/2 in the preceding WM duplication with
> annihilation of the original.
>
> It is equi

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 04 Apr 2012, at 18:26, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with  
"consciousness would be here and now".

How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as  
crystal clearly as you just did ?

You can be conscious of being here and now. That expression is  
traditional, and used in many place, and we have already used it to  
illustrate the fact that the cnscious feeling "here and now" is  
undoubtable, as opposed to the idea that being conscious five minutes  
ago and five minutes from now is already doubtable, and you did agree.

I was just saying that consciousness of a localization does not entail  
the localization of consciousness. You argument was confusing those  
two different thing. We agree that consciousness is not something  
localisable, but this does not entail that we cannot have a conscious  
experience of being localised somewhere, like when we say "I visited  
Bombay last week-end".

>>  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial  
application of the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow  
man if events transpire so that I meet the definition of the Moscow  
man, namely that I see Moscow".

> Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.

The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man and  
the reason I'm the Washington man is that I saw Washington and the  
probability the Helsinki man will see Moscow and Washington is 100%.  
What more is there to say on this rather dull subject?

That you give the probability that the guy will be in W and M from a  
third person point of view, when we ask the probability on his future  
first person point of view. the criteria of confirmation is given, by  
definition, from the result of the self-localization provided by the  
persons after their duplication.
In that case, it cannot be 100%, because the guy in M does not feel  
himself to be in W, and vice versa.
You still confuse the 3-view on the 1-views (an outsider can ascribe  
the consciousness of John K Clark to both persons in each city), with  
the 1-views on the 1-views ("Ah, I see I am the one in W" and "Ah, I  
see I am the one in M"). In Helsinki, he could not know in advance  
which one he can happen to be. If you think he could, give me the  
algorithm.

>>   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two  
things being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views  
themselves" and you will have won this argument

> I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.
or
I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and  
seeing W),

Right.

> But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.

WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno  
Washington is different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has  
memories, that is to say physical changes in the brain, of the  
sights and sounds of Washington while the other has brain changes  
signifying the sights and sounds of Moscow; because of the changes  
in physical structure the two brains operate differently, or to say  
the same thing with different words, I the third party can see that  
the mind of Bruno Washington is different from the mind of Bruno  
Moscow.  Provided that Washington is different from Moscow (I've  
never been to Moscow but I imagine that it is) then the brain of  
Bruno Washington is physically different from the brain of Bruno  
Moscow, and I the third party observer can see those physical  
differences, and if the construction of those two objects are  
different then the way they operate, the mind, is different too.

But this contradict the fact that you agree both person are the  
Helsinki guy. You are again transforming "I cannot know for sure I  
will feel myself in W or M" with I can be sure that the guy in M will  
see M and the guy in W will see W, which is does not answer the  
question in asked to him in Helsinki.

Try again. Give me a single concrete example of two things being  
identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and  
you will have won this argument.

>>  Who cares? How is it relevant to the copies if the original is  
cut or not cut as long as he's read?

> If the original is cut, the probability to wake up at Helsinki is 0.

But the Helsinki man is not a copy, it's irrelevant to the copies in  
Moscow and Washington what happens to the original.

Of course, but the question is asked before the reading is done. The  
question is asked to the guy in Helsinki before the experiment is  
done. So the probability is 1/3, instead of 1/2 in the preceding WM  
duplication with annihilation of the original.

It is equivalent to a multiplication by three, with a null delay of  
reconstitution on one branch. Isn't it?

> By comp we can simulate Moscow and Washington prec

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-04 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with "consciousness
> would be here and now".
>

How in the world could anybody be confused by a idea stated as crystal
clearly as you just did ?

>
> >>  And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial
>> application of the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow man if
>> events transpire so that I meet the definition of the Moscow man, namely
>> that I see Moscow".
>>
>
> > Which avoids again to answer to the question asked.
>

The reason I'm not the Moscow man is that I'm the Washington man and the
reason I'm the Washington man is that I saw Washington and the probability
the Helsinki man will see Moscow and Washington is 100%. What more is there
to say on this rather dull subject?

> >>   I repeat yet again, give me a single concrete example of two things
>> being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you
>> will have won this argument
>>
>
>
>
> I have been duplicated in W and M and I feel myself in W.
> or
> I have been duplicated in W and M and i feel myself in M.
> Those are different in the 1-views (as different as seeing M and seeing W),
>

Right.

> But are equal in the 3-view, where I am in both cities.

WRONG! From my 3-view I can clearly see that the brain of Bruno Washington
is different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, one has memories, that is to
say physical changes in the brain, of the sights and sounds of Washington
while the other has brain changes signifying the sights and sounds of
Moscow; because of the changes in physical structure the two brains operate
differently, or to say the same thing with different words, I the third
party can see that the mind of Bruno Washington is different from the mind
of Bruno Moscow.  Provided that Washington is different from Moscow (I've
never been to Moscow but I imagine that it is) then the brain of Bruno
Washington is physically different from the brain of Bruno Moscow, and I
the third party observer can see those physical differences, and if the
construction of those two objects are different then the way they operate,
the mind, is different too.

Try again. Give me a single concrete example of two things being identical
by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views themselves" and you will have won
this argument.

>>  Who cares? How is it relevant to the copies if the original is cut or
>> not cut as long as he's read?
>>
>
>
> If the original is cut, the probability to wake up at Helsinki is 0.
>

But the Helsinki man is not a copy, it's irrelevant to the copies in Moscow
and Washington what happens to the original.

> By comp we can simulate Moscow and Washington precisely enough so that
> you cannot see the difference for some non null interval. The question is
> "do you agree that this does not change the evaluation of the
> indeterminacy?
>

Yes I agree it does not change, this "1-view indeterminacy" of yours is
nonsense if the cities are real and its nonsense if the cities are
virtual.

 John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-03 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 04 Apr 2012, at 06:05, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

> The point is that comp predicts white noise. That something else  
predicts white noise too is not relevant in the proof.

So in the setup the screen changes at RANDOM and comp predicts white  
noise will be the most likely result, and you think that is  
significant?

The WM setup and the Universal waves are deterministic.

Everything predicts that. OK, then I have a marvelous new thought  
experiment, let X = Y. I maintain that comp predicts that X= Y and I  
have made a wonderful new discovery too.

>>>   you should expect the WM duplication as equivalent with the  
throw of a random coin, etc. But you don't need to agree with that  
analysis. You need only to agree that there is an indeterminacy

>>  Of course there is a indeterminacy!

> Don't say of course. That is not so obvious as your posts  
illustrates.

it's not obvious that the outcome of a RANDOM coin flip is  
uncertain? I thought it was.

I was clearly talking about the duplication.

> In the 3-view there is no randomness at all. In the protocol, we  
don't change the pixels randomly, neither in the comp multiplication- 
movie experience, nor in the quantum wave which evolves  
deterministically. The point is that the randomness bears on the  
first person experiences. We get this directly with comp, without  
assuming QM.

Nothing new. People have only known about Quantum Mechanics for  
about a century but they've known about randomness for many  
thousands of years. And you've made randomness a measure of  
ignorance rather than a property of the thing itself and that's how  
it should be, and what people have always done. This is demonstrated  
by the Monty Hall problem, a new car is behind one door and a goat  
behind the other two, you pick a door at random and Monty opens a  
door you didn't pick and shows you a goat and gives you the  
opportunity to change your choice of a door if you wish. Monty knows  
what door the prize is behind and you do not, so Monty could pick  
the correct door with a probability of 100% but the best you can do  
at first is 33.3%, after he lest you change your choice and pick  
another door you know a little more and your probability increases  
to 66.6%, Monty's probability stays at 100% and the thing itself,  
the new car, has no probability at all.

Incidentally the great mathematician Paul Erdos admitted he could  
never get his head around the Monty Hall problem and it always  
seemed paradoxical to him, this despite him having no trouble  
whatsoever in understanding many other things of staggering  
complexity and of far greater abstraction. It's weird.

He got it eventually, when asked the same question with a bigger  
number of boxes. But there is nothing relevant to the question I am  
asking you.

>> so if I told you before the duplication that you would see  
Washington AND Moscow I would be correct, Bruno Marshal will indeed  
see both cities.

> That the 3-view on the 1-view.

And that should be more than good enough thank you very much!

Why did you change "Marchal" into "Marshal" in the quote?

> But the probabilities bears on the 1-views themselves.

As I've said many many times before, give me a single concrete  
example of two things being identical by the "3-view" but not by  
"the 1-views themselves" and you will have won this argument, do  
that and I will publicly declare you've made a major philosophical  
discovery. Just one example is all I ask. I think this is the key to  
our disagreement.

The duplication. After the duplication
In the 3 view I am in both cities
In the 1-view I feel oneself in only one city.
Another example is in the step 2.
In fact you ask me what I give in each step, and you don't see it  
because you persistently confuse them.

> You can ascribe the consciousness of Bruno Marshal to both, but  
each one will ascribe their present "here and now" type of  
consciousness only to themselves subjectively.

Why did you change "Marchal" into "Marshal" again in the quote?

I don't know what "here and now type of consciousness" is. We both  
agree that speaking of consciousness occupying a place in space has  
little meaning and I would argue a absolute time for a consciousness  
is not a productive idea either. You could freeze a mind for a  
billion years and then start it up again and it wouldn't notice it  
unless it has senses that can detect the outside world, and even  
then the mind couldn't tell if it had stopped for a billion years or  
what it was looking at had jumped ahead a billion years.

You confuse "consciousness of being here and now" with "consciousness  
would be here and now".

>> Asking why you are the Moscow man not the Washington man is  
exactly like asking why you are Bruno Marshal and not John K Clark.

> Possible. I do agree with this. But there is a difference. John  
and Bruno have alrea

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-03 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> The point is that comp predicts white noise. That something else predicts
> white noise too is not relevant in the proof.
>

So in the setup the screen changes at RANDOM and comp predicts white noise
will be the most likely result, and you think that is significant?
Everything predicts that. OK, then I have a marvelous new thought
experiment, let X = Y. I maintain that comp predicts that X= Y and I have
made a wonderful new discovery too.

>>>   you should expect the WM duplication as equivalent with the throw of
>>> a random coin, etc. But you don't need to agree with that analysis. You
>>> need only to agree that there is an indeterminacy
>>>
>>
>> >>  Of course there is a indeterminacy!
>>
>
> > Don't say of course. That is not so obvious as your posts illustrates.
>

it's not obvious that the outcome of a RANDOM coin flip is uncertain? I
thought it was.

> In the 3-view there is no randomness at all. In the protocol, we don't
> change the pixels randomly, neither in the comp multiplication-movie
> experience, nor in the quantum wave which evolves deterministically. The
> point is that the randomness bears on the first person experiences. We get
> this directly with comp, without assuming QM.
>

Nothing new. People have only known about Quantum Mechanics for about a
century but they've known about randomness for many thousands of years. And
you've made randomness a measure of ignorance rather than a property of the
thing itself and that's how it should be, and what people have always done.
This is demonstrated by the Monty Hall problem, a new car is behind one
door and a goat behind the other two, you pick a door at random and Monty
opens a door you didn't pick and shows you a goat and gives you the
opportunity to change your choice of a door if you wish. Monty knows what
door the prize is behind and you do not, so Monty could pick the correct
door with a probability of 100% but the best you can do at first is 33.3%,
after he lest you change your choice and pick another door you know a
little more and your probability increases to 66.6%, Monty's probability
stays at 100% and the thing itself, the new car, has no probability at all.

Incidentally the great mathematician Paul Erdos admitted he could never get
his head around the Monty Hall problem and it always seemed paradoxical to
him, this despite him having no trouble whatsoever in understanding many
other things of staggering complexity and of far greater abstraction. It's
weird.

>> so if I told you before the duplication that you would see Washington
>> AND Moscow I would be correct, Bruno Marshal will indeed see both cities.
>>
>
> > That the 3-view on the 1-view.
>

And that should be more than good enough thank you very much!

> But the probabilities bears on the 1-views themselves.
>

As I've said many many times before, give me a single concrete example of
two things being identical by the "3-view" but not by "the 1-views
themselves" and you will have won this argument, do that and I will
publicly declare you've made a major philosophical discovery. Just one
example is all I ask. I think this is the key to our disagreement.

> You can ascribe the consciousness of Bruno Marshal to both, but each one
> will ascribe their present "here and now" type of consciousness only to
> themselves subjectively.
>

I don't know what "here and now type of consciousness" is. We both agree
that speaking of consciousness occupying a place in space has little
meaning and I would argue a absolute time for a consciousness is not a
productive idea either. You could freeze a mind for a billion years and
then start it up again and it wouldn't notice it unless it has senses that
can detect the outside world, and even then the mind couldn't tell if it
had stopped for a billion years or what it was looking at had jumped ahead
a billion years.

>> Asking why you are the Moscow man not the Washington man is exactly like
>> asking why you are Bruno Marshal and not John K Clark.
>>
>
> > Possible. I do agree with this. But there is a difference. John and
> Bruno have already differentiated. But in the WM duplication experience, we
> duplicate instantaneous computational state by a special duplicator
> machine, so that we can ask the question to the guy before the duplication.
>

And the only answer you can receive will come from a trivial application of
the anthropic principle, "I will become the Moscow man if events transpire
so that I meet the definition of the Moscow man, namely that I see Moscow".

>> you can give no examples where according to the 3-view things are
>> identical but according to the 1-view they are not, although it's easy to
>> find examples where according to the 1-view things are identical but by the
>> 3-view they are not.
>>
>
> >That's my point.
>

I really wish it was.

> So you grasp very well the difference between 1-view and 3-view.
>

Yes.

> so I have no clue what difficulties you seem

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Apr 2012, at 18:40, meekerdb wrote:


On 4/2/2012 9:14 AM, John Clark wrote:



> If Everett is right the probability must be derived from the  
statistics of measurements *as described by the wave evolution*.


If Everett is right then you can use the square of the absolute  
value of the Schrodinger Wave Equation to help you guess which  
branch you are in, he says it's the best guess you can make with  
the limited information you have at your disposal, it's not perfect  
but it's the best we can do. However if Everett is right everything  
that can happen to you will happen to you somewhere in some branch  
of the multiverse.


Except there is the same equivocation on "you" as in Bruno's  
transporter.


Exactly. Quentin has already done that remark, and it is a bit of a  
mystery that John seems to have no problem for the QM indeterminacy in  
Everett QM, and seems to have a problem in the comp classical frame.


As David points out, John Clark did understand step 3, at some point.   
I think this too. Then he seems unable to acknowledge it, and he comes  
back with his confusion between 3-view on 1-views and the 1-views  
themselves.


Bruno

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



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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-03 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 02 Apr 2012, at 18:14, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> you've added tons of bells and whistles but for all the complex  
convolutions you have not added one single bit of additional  
information about what is likely to happen.

> On the contrary, comp entails that you should expect white noice  
for the multiplication movie experience

But non-comp predicts exactly the same thing simply because the  
number of states the screen can be in that we would put in the  
category "white noise" is far greater than the number of states we  
would put in the "Monty Python movie" category; and this would be  
true even if the Bible thumpers were right about the soul and  
consciousness, which means your thought experiment and all the  
numerous copies of you are a useless complication in investigating  
these questions.

The point is that comp predicts white noise.
That something else predicts white noise too is not relevant in the  
proof.

> that you should expect the WM duplication as equivalent with the  
throw of a random coin, etc. But you don't need to agree with that  
analysis. You need only to agree that there is an indeterminacy

Of course there is a indeterminacy!

Don't say of course. That is not so obvious as your posts illustrates.  
After all, "officially" the thesis has been rejected (in Brussels,  
before it being accepted in Lille) at step 3. This might be enough to  
say that it is new, and not understood so quickly by many.

A key part of your thought experiment is that a million pixels on a  
screen change at RANDOM 60 times a second from black to white for 2  
hours,

In the 3-view there is no randomness at all. In the protocol, we don't  
change the pixels randomly, neither in the comp multiplication-movie  
experience, nor in the quantum wave which evolves deterministically.  
The point is that the randomness bears on the first person  
experiences. We get this directly with comp, without assuming QM.

being RANDOM you can't (or at least should not) be certain what  
you'll see on the screen. If Everett is right the indeterminacy is  
purely a measure of lack of information on your part and that  
information exists you just don't have it. If you knew what branch  
of the multiverse you were in, what particular universe you were in,  
you'd know for certain what you were going to see on that screen; if  
you are in a Monty Python branch you will see a Monty Python movie  
and if you're in a white noise branch you'll see white noise. Once  
again your "1-view indeterminacy" brings nothing new to the mix.

What is new is that we get it without postulating quantum physics. It  
is not so new, I publish it in the 80 (and make it public before in  
many conferences).

But the question is not if it is new or not. The question is do you  
get the point of step 3, which shows that comp entails that objective  
indeterminacy on the subjective experiences.

(Note also that "objective" is used temporarily. later we will see  
that "physically objective" is not a 1-view, but a 1-plural view. yet,  
at this stage, we can use "objective", because it refers only to the  
content of a diary of an outsider looking at the experience without  
doing it himself).

I can hear you say, but that's the point, you don't know what branch  
you are in until you see white noise or Monty Python on that screen.  
But according to Everett until you see something unique on that  
screen that nobody else in any universe sees you are not in that  
branch because that branch does not exist, seeing Monty Python is  
exactly what makes it the Monty Python branch.

There is a little nuance, the one between duplication of worlds or  
differentiation of worlds. But it is not really relevant at this  
stage. So indeed, that's the point. But note that comp does not assume  
QM, yet explains the existence of a phenomenologically similar  
indeterminacy.

> So I think we could move on step 4. You cannot stop in a middle on  
a proof on the pretext that you have learn nothing.

I can understand your desire to gloss over this major difficulty

?
I thought you just grasped it. What major difficulty? The only one you  
have ever mentionned as been shown to be a confusion of 1-view and 3- 
view (or on the 3-view on the 1-views, and the 1-views themselves.  
Reread perhaps the preceding posts).

and move on, but I feel that if a proof has made a blunder it's  
pointless to read more.

Which blunder?

 > There is a difference between anything can happen in the  
"reality", and anything can happen in the next moment.

And what difference is that?

The conditional probabilities. Everett, and also comp (as you will see  
later) predict that everything (consistent) happens, but with  
different relative probability. If I put water on the gas, there are  
worlds where it freeze, and there are worlds where it boils hot. To  
take a decision I need to have trust tha

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-02 Thread meekerdb


On 4/2/2012 9:14 AM, John Clark wrote:


> If Everett is right the probability must be derived from the statistics of
measurements *as described by the wave evolution*.


If Everett is right then you can use the square of the absolute value of the Schrodinger 
Wave Equation to help you guess which branch you are in, he says it's the best guess you 
can make with the limited information you have at your disposal, it's not perfect but 
it's the best we can do. However if Everett is right everything that can happen to you 
will happen to you somewhere in some branch of the multiverse.


Except there is the same equivocation on "you" as in Bruno's transporter.

Brent

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-02 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >> you've added tons of bells and whistles but for all the complex
>> convolutions you have not added one single bit of additional information
>> about what is likely to happen.
>>
>
> > On the contrary, comp entails that you should expect white noice for the
> multiplication movie experience
>

But non-comp predicts exactly the same thing simply because the number of
states the screen can be in that we would put in the category "white noise"
is far greater than the number of states we would put in the "Monty Python
movie" category; and this would be true even if the Bible thumpers were
right about the soul and consciousness, which means your thought experiment
and all the numerous copies of you are a useless complication in
investigating these questions.

> that you should expect the WM duplication as equivalent with the throw of
> a random coin, etc. But you don't need to agree with that analysis. You
> need only to agree that there is an indeterminacy
>

Of course there is a indeterminacy! A key part of your thought experiment
is that a million pixels on a screen change at RANDOM 60 times a second
from black to white for 2 hours, being RANDOM you can't (or at least should
not) be certain what you'll see on the screen. If Everett is right the
indeterminacy is purely a measure of lack of information on your part and
that information exists you just don't have it. If you knew what branch of
the multiverse you were in, what particular universe you were in, you'd
know for certain what you were going to see on that screen; if you are in a
Monty Python branch you will see a Monty Python movie and if you're in a
white noise branch you'll see white noise. Once again your "1-view
indeterminacy" brings nothing new to the mix.

I can hear you say, but that's the point, you don't know what branch you
are in until you see white noise or Monty Python on that screen. But
according to Everett until you see something unique on that screen that
nobody else in any universe sees you are not in that branch because that
branch does not exist, seeing Monty Python is exactly what makes it the
Monty Python branch.

> So I think we could move on step 4. You cannot stop in a middle on a
> proof on the pretext that you have learn nothing.
>

I can understand your desire to gloss over this major difficulty and move
on, but I feel that if a proof has made a blunder it's pointless to read
more.

 > There is a difference between anything can happen in the "reality", and
> anything can happen in the next moment.
>

And what difference is that?

> If Everett is right the probability must be derived from the statistics
> of measurements *as described by the wave evolution*.
>

If Everett is right then you can use the square of the absolute value of
the Schrodinger Wave Equation to help you guess which branch you are in, he
says it's the best guess you can make with the limited information you have
at your disposal, it's not perfect but it's the best we can do. However if
Everett is right everything that can happen to you will happen to you
somewhere in some branch of the multiverse.

> The distinction you are introducing concerns what the outsider can write
> in his diary (the 3-view), it does not bear on the individual diary
> contents (the 1-views).
>

I see, the contents of the diary are 3-view but the diary contents are
1-view. No I take that back, I don't see.

> After the experience, both "concedes" that they feel in one city, as they
> describe in their respective diary, and both recognize that they don't feel
> to be in both city, and that they don't feel any possible sensation of
> their respective doppelganger.
>

And both will record in their diary that they are Bruno Marchal, in fact
they both insist on this point very very strongly, and I the outside
observer can find absolutely no reason to say that one is more Bruno
Marchal-like than the other, so if I told you before the duplication that
you would see Washington AND Moscow I would be correct, Bruno Marchal will
indeed see both cities.

> But n Helsinki you cannot know for sure in which city you will wake up.
>

Asking why you are the Moscow man not the Washington man is exactly like
asking why you are Bruno Marchal and not John K Clark.

>>  But exactly what does your 50% really mean? You're treating it not as a
>> measure of ignorance
>>
>
> > Well, you can treat it as a measure on ignorance, by using the PUP
> principle.
>

 I wish you'd stop expecting people to remember what all your homemade
acronyms mean.

> > Basically the 1-view is the subjective(*) experience, and the 3-view is
> what an outsider can "objectively" described.
>

Then you can give no examples where according to the 3-view things are
identical but according to the 1-view they are not, although it's easy to
find examples where according to the 1-view things are identical but by the
3-view they are not. So when you complain that I'm just looking at things

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread meekerdb


On 4/1/2012 1:28 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 1 April 2012 21:02, meekerdb  wrote:


I'm all in favor of epistemology first.  But that means point-of-view comes
first, and only some things happen comes second.  The primitive,
micro-physical ensemble is an ontological assumption way down the line.

No argument from me on that!  But, in the light of "epistemology
first", can you make any sense of the notion of consciousness as an
epiphenomenon of its own constructions?


No sure.  But if I do succeed in that, starting from being conscious of stuff, I can 
follow the chain back to consciousness.  I don't need to forget where I came from.


Brent
Hence a Reality, yes. But not necessarily a physical reality. Here is the
logical dependence:
NUMBERS -> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS -> NUMBERS.
  --- Bruno Marchal



David


On 4/1/2012 4:55 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 31 March 2012 01:09, meekerdbwrote:


That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why
is
my observational perspective associated with my brain?

It's only "a mystery out of nothing" if you have already accepted as
unproblematic the primitive existence of "my brain".  Even given the
assumption of a primitive micro-physicality, we lack any purely
PHYSICAL principle capable of making a fundamental ontological
distinction between the generalised ensemble in its entirety, and any
specifically-isolated "composite object". The ascription of composite
brain-hood to some domain of the micro-physical ensemble is an a
posteriori ascription from an already-established observational
perspective.  Hence to attribute said perspective to an epiphenomenon
of such an ascription amounts to putting the ontological cart before
the epistemological horse.

David


I'm all in favor of epistemology first.  But that means point-of-view comes
first, and only some things happen comes second.  The primitive,
micro-physical ensemble is an ontological assumption way down the line.

Brent


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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread David Nyman

On 1 April 2012 21:02, meekerdb  wrote:

> I'm all in favor of epistemology first.  But that means point-of-view comes
> first, and only some things happen comes second.  The primitive,
> micro-physical ensemble is an ontological assumption way down the line.

No argument from me on that!  But, in the light of "epistemology
first", can you make any sense of the notion of consciousness as an
epiphenomenon of its own constructions?

David

> On 4/1/2012 4:55 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 31 March 2012 01:09, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why
>>> is
>>> my observational perspective associated with my brain?
>>
>> It's only "a mystery out of nothing" if you have already accepted as
>> unproblematic the primitive existence of "my brain".  Even given the
>> assumption of a primitive micro-physicality, we lack any purely
>> PHYSICAL principle capable of making a fundamental ontological
>> distinction between the generalised ensemble in its entirety, and any
>> specifically-isolated "composite object". The ascription of composite
>> brain-hood to some domain of the micro-physical ensemble is an a
>> posteriori ascription from an already-established observational
>> perspective.  Hence to attribute said perspective to an epiphenomenon
>> of such an ascription amounts to putting the ontological cart before
>> the epistemological horse.
>>
>> David
>
>
> I'm all in favor of epistemology first.  But that means point-of-view comes
> first, and only some things happen comes second.  The primitive,
> micro-physical ensemble is an ontological assumption way down the line.
>
> Brent
>
>
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread meekerdb


On 4/1/2012 4:55 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 31 March 2012 01:09, meekerdb  wrote:


That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why is
my observational perspective associated with my brain?

It's only "a mystery out of nothing" if you have already accepted as
unproblematic the primitive existence of "my brain".  Even given the
assumption of a primitive micro-physicality, we lack any purely
PHYSICAL principle capable of making a fundamental ontological
distinction between the generalised ensemble in its entirety, and any
specifically-isolated "composite object". The ascription of composite
brain-hood to some domain of the micro-physical ensemble is an a
posteriori ascription from an already-established observational
perspective.  Hence to attribute said perspective to an epiphenomenon
of such an ascription amounts to putting the ontological cart before
the epistemological horse.

David


I'm all in favor of epistemology first.  But that means point-of-view comes first, and 
only some things happen comes second.  The primitive, micro-physical ensemble is an 
ontological assumption way down the line.


Brent

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hello Stephen,


On 31 Mar 2012, at 18:29, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 3/31/2012 3:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Comp is just the assumption that we are machine, to said it  
shortly. Then it is shown as a consequence that not only we cannot  
neglect the physical reality, but that we have to retrieve it from  
arithmetic, without using any probabilistic *selection*. Comp is  
the problem, not the solution. Only the materialist believe wrongly  
that comp solves the mind problem, and *they* take matter for  
granted. Pretending that comp neglects problem is contrary to the  
facts, because comp just shows precisely where the problems come  
from (the taking granted of the physical reality).


Bruno



Dear Bruno,

   I wish I could feel comfortable with such a focused area so that  
we can neglect all other considerations. I agree with your judgement  
about materialists, but am not so sanguine about the idealist as  
having all the answers.



Nobody said that the idealist has all answers. If comp is true, he has  
only all questions, really, so to speak.


What is said is that IF comp is true, then we are necessarily lead to  
arithmetical (or equivalent) idealism. That's the result.


Idealism is not part of the comp assumption. It is part of the  
theorem. Comp has to be idealist.


If you belief, for whatever reason, that idealism is false, then COMP  
is false. You can't survive with a digital, even material, brain, by  
virtue of a physical computer emulating your brain at some level.






My motivations are different from yours. I am wrestling with the  
ontological implications of physics and so our interests cross in  
many places.


Only if comp is part of your theory. I have not yet seen any real,  
precise, non comp theory, so I cannot judge them.



I have proposed an alternative ontology theory that appears to solve  
the mind-body problem without having to resort to epiphenomena,  
which by your own admission infects both materialism and idealism.


You forget many of our discussions. Comp, + the usual Occam, leads to  
the disappearance of matter. Matter does not become an epiphenomenon,  
for its observation becomes a psychological or biological or (better  
imo) theological phenomenon. There are no epiphenomena.


Materialists which are not eliminating consciousness makes often it  
into an epiphenomenon, because they admit it exists. But comp makes  
primitive matter into pure and simple non existence. You can  
reintroduce it logically, and that would make it into an  
"epinoumenon", like invisible horses driving car, or ether, or  
phlogistic. That's different.


Bruno



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



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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 31 Mar 2012, at 18:24, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You should care to be able to answer the simple question: "what do  
you expect to feel in the multiplication-movie experience"

I would expect to feel exactly the same as if duplicating chambers  
and multiple copies of myself were not involved.

Exactly. So you will feel to see one specific movie. That's the point.  
Then combinatorial analysis suggest that betting on white noise is the  
best choice, equivalent to betting a beam splitter splits in half  
sheaves of photons prepared in the relative oblique state.

If you perform whatever calculations you think are needed to produce  
your patented "1-view indeterminacy" I would not be one bit wiser  
than if I calculated probabilities using regular old conventional  
probability methods,

That's the point. But it works in the deterministic duplication  
setting *because* the probabilities appears here to be "objective"  
probability on different subjective experiences. The 1-view  
indeterminacy is only the indeterminacy, even the "Pascalian one",  
bearing on subjective experience. The term subjective probability  
would be nice if it was not already used in a context of non objective  
probability, like with the Bayesian approach to probability.

you've added tons of bells and whistles but for all the complex  
convolutions you have not added one single bit of additional  
information about what is likely to happen.

?
On the contrary, comp entails that you should expect white noice for  
the multiplication movie experience, that you should expect the WM  
duplication as equivalent with the throw of a random coin, etc.

But you don't need to agree with that analysis. You need only to agree  
that there is an indeterminacy on the {W, M}, or the movie, in those  
experiences. To reduce physics to arithmetic, will consist in reducing  
physics to a probability calculus bearing on a more complex domain,  
and we will have to leave intuition for the study of self-reference.

So I think we could move on step 4. You cannot stop in a middle on a  
proof on the pretext that you have learn nothing. Proofs are  
constructed in such a way that each step should seem easy and  
tautological.

> You said you favor Everett's QM.

Yes, but the universe will be the way is and doesn't care if I favor  
it or not, so it may or may not be true. And if Everett is right  
then there is a 100% probability that anything that can happen will  
happen, but using statistics in this way would not produce anything  
we could use, just as the "1-view probability" of something can not  
tell me anything I didn't already know.

There is a difference between anything can happen in the "reality",  
and anything can happen in the next moment. If Everett is right the  
probability must be derived from the statistics of measurements *as  
described by the wave evolution*.
It is another debate to see if that work, as Everett claimed, and how  
far it relies on the 1-comp indeterminacy. At this stage of the UDA it  
would distract us, and we don't need the answer to proceed.

> You did not answer Quentin when he commented that with Everett the  
Universe is a "duplicating chamber", so that your charge again the  
coimp-1-indeterminacy applies to Everett QM too.

In the first place I like Many Worlds for esthetic reasons but I'm  
far from certain it's true.

We can never know public truth.
nevertheless I tend to believe that QM without collapse = many-worlds.  
That's provable if you define a world by a set of events closed for  
interaction. A (QM) world is a "sphere" of contagion of superpositions.

More important, in the thought experiment about the cities we have  
access to all the branches and can see what all the copies are  
doing, but that is not the case with Everett. If Everett is correct  
then probability is not inherent in the event itself but is just a  
measure of our ignorance. As you point out Many Worlds is a  
deterministic theory so if we had a bird's eye view of everything  
probability would be a useless tool because everything would have a  
probability of 100% or 0%.

OK, but for the probabilities, it remains the same. In the  
multiplication movie experience, you don't have really any practical  
access the other copies. The distinction you are introducing concerns  
what the outsider can write in his diary  (the 3-view), it does not  
bear on the individual diary contents (the 1-views).

But I can hear you scream "but you still wouldn't know for certain  
if "you" will see Washington".

Why screaming? No. I am cool and ask you this in a friendly, yet firm,  
cool tone :)

But that was the question indeed.

I say the probability is 100% you say it is 50%, how can we tell who  
is correct? I say that after the experiment if I find "you" and you  
says that he is in Washington and only Washington then my prediction  
was proven correc

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread David Nyman

On 31 March 2012 01:09, meekerdb  wrote:

> That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why is
> my observational perspective associated with my brain?

It's only "a mystery out of nothing" if you have already accepted as
unproblematic the primitive existence of "my brain".  Even given the
assumption of a primitive micro-physicality, we lack any purely
PHYSICAL principle capable of making a fundamental ontological
distinction between the generalised ensemble in its entirety, and any
specifically-isolated "composite object". The ascription of composite
brain-hood to some domain of the micro-physical ensemble is an a
posteriori ascription from an already-established observational
perspective.  Hence to attribute said perspective to an epiphenomenon
of such an ascription amounts to putting the ontological cart before
the epistemological horse.

David

> On 3/30/2012 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 30 March 2012 19:54, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
 >>  The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
 >>  nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
 >>  this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
 >>  Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
 >>  problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
 >>  situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the
 >> other
 >>  doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
 >>  experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent
>>>
>>> >
>>> >  It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.  Brent
>>> > and
>>> >  David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the
>>> > system.
>>
>> Sure, but even if one believes that to be the case, it is still taken
>> entirely for granted that there is some natural principle for the
>> selection of THIS physical system from the class of all such systems.
>
>
> ?? I guess I don't understand the question.  If my experience is a process
> in my brain then what more selection is required?
>
>
>> To appeal, a posteriori, to the fact that one's observational
>> perspective is apparently associated with this particular system and
>> not any other is merely to argue in a circle; since that is what we
>> are trying to explain we cannot adduce it as the explanation.
>
>
> That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why is
> my observational perspective associated with my brain?
>
> Brent
>
>
>>
>> As I said before, the requirement for some principle of selection, in
>> this sense, is rarely made explicit, but nonetheless implicitly relied
>> on.  More often than not our particular localisation in space and time
>> has been consigned to the realm of "psychology" or "illusion", as in
>> Einstein's reputed remark, as though it were somehow possible to
>> disarm this inconvenient observational fact with scare quotes.  So
>> what intrigued me about Hoyle's idea (and according to Gribbin it was
>> rather more than a fictional conceit for him) was precisely that his
>> making it explicit exposed an "elephant in the room" that few others
>> were prepared to acknowledge.
>>
>> David
>>
>
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-04-01 Thread David Nyman

On 1 April 2012 07:04, meekerdb  wrote:

> I think he just proposes pruning the density matrix cross-terms by some
> mechanism.  Once they are gone then the realized branch is just 'selected'
>  stochasitcally per the Born rule.  I've often contemplated such a move
> based on the idea that there be a smallest non-zero quantum of probability;
> but I've not seen a way to make that work.

Thanks for that clarification.  That being said, he is nevertheless
explicit that the crucial distinction between what he wants to suggest
and MWI is that only one branch can be considered as having been
actualised. Given his scepticism about Wallace's analysis of the
probable subjective consequences of duplication, this is what he feels
he needs for his scheme to be plausible in the face of the empirical
facts.

By the way, the reasons he gives for that scepticism seem to me to
imply some sort of individuated crypto-dualism.  For example, he says
that Wallace doesn't address the possibility that "future copies"
might be subjectively discontinuous with the "you" that exists
presently; consequently that particular "you" could be consigned to
subjective oblivion.  He concedes that, whether considered physically
or informationally, the copies possess every feature that presently
determines your empirical self-identification.  The conjunction of
these two stipulations suggests that, despite everything, some
"personal essence" is not copied; rather, each doppelganger acquires
its own freshly minted personal self-hood, and "yours" is annihilated.

I've attempted to conceive how one might put this to the test, even in
imagination, but I've not come up with anything.  This kind of rampant
confusion over pronouns is the chief reason I favour the universal
mind heuristic as a way of conceiving the subjective state of affairs.
 In terms of this heuristic, "I" always denotes the unique but
discontinuous subjectivity of an infinity of self-ordering personal
histories.  Since the subjective locus is not itself subject to
change, every perspective is "mine", but not all perspectives are
associated with David Nyman.  It may seem strange at first, but it
unravels surprisingly many of the conceptual puzzles.

David

> On 3/31/2012 11:11 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> The alternative to this analysis is to abandon MWI (or comp) as
>> inconsistent with the empirical facts.  This is the tack Kent in fact
>> adopts, proposing a mechanism for the pruning of all but one of the
>> alternative branches,
>
>
> I think he just proposes pruning the density matrix cross-terms by some
> mechanism.  Once they are gone then the realized branch is just 'selected'
>  stochasitcally per the Born rule.  I've often contemplated such a move
> based on the idea that there be a smallest non-zero quantum of probability;
> but I've not seen a way to make that work.
>
> Brent
>
>
>
>> in the absence of which he clearly feels the
>> empirical facts cannot be justified.  I don't happen to agree with his
>> reasons, but such a proposal is consistent with his view of the likely
>> subjective consequences of duplication.
>
>
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread meekerdb


On 3/31/2012 11:11 AM, David Nyman wrote:

The alternative to this analysis is to abandon MWI (or comp) as
inconsistent with the empirical facts.  This is the tack Kent in fact
adopts, proposing a mechanism for the pruning of all but one of the
alternative branches,


I think he just proposes pruning the density matrix cross-terms by some mechanism.  Once 
they are gone then the realized branch is just 'selected'  stochasitcally per the Born 
rule.  I've often contemplated such a move based on the idea that there be a smallest 
non-zero quantum of probability; but I've not seen a way to make that work.


Brent



in the absence of which he clearly feels the
empirical facts cannot be justified.  I don't happen to agree with his
reasons, but such a proposal is consistent with his view of the likely
subjective consequences of duplication.


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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread David Nyman

On 31 March 2012 17:24, John Clark  wrote:

>> > You should care to be able to answer the simple question: "what do you
>> > expect to feel in the multiplication-movie experience"
>
> I would expect to feel exactly the same as if duplicating chambers and
> multiple copies of myself were not involved.

Q.E.D.  This is the entire point of step 3.  To repeat, in your own
words above "I would expect to feel exactly the same as if duplicating
chambers and multiple copies of myself were not involved".  Indeed, if
you had reason to expect to feel anything else, that alone would force
you to abandon both MWI or comp, as Adrian Kent argues forcefully in
the papers Brent referenced.

Kent quotes David Wallace's three logical options for the subjective
consequences of MWI branching, of which the first (separately located
simultaneous consciousnesses) and third (oblivion) clearly are at odds
with your expectation to "feel exactly the same as if...multiple
copies of myself were not involved".  Wallace agrees with you - as he
puts it, the remaining option is "I should expect to become one or the
other future self."  This implies, he goes on to say, that "in the
absence of some strong criterion as to which copy to regard as
“really” me, I will have to treat the question of which future self I
become as (subjectively) indeterministic.”

The alternative to this analysis is to abandon MWI (or comp) as
inconsistent with the empirical facts.  This is the tack Kent in fact
adopts, proposing a mechanism for the pruning of all but one of the
alternative branches, in the absence of which he clearly feels the
empirical facts cannot be justified.  I don't happen to agree with his
reasons, but such a proposal is consistent with his view of the likely
subjective consequences of duplication.

I hope you can now see that Kent and Wallace both formulate the issue
of duplication equivalently to step 3 of the UDA.  Assuming that,
unlike Kent, you don't wish on this basis to rule out the MWI or comp
hypotheses, the "first-person indeterminacy" with respect to
duplication is equivalent to what Wallace describes as "treat(ing) the
question of which future self I become as (subjectively)
indeterministic.”

David

>
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>> > You should care to be able to answer the simple question: "what do you
>> > expect to feel in the multiplication-movie experience"
>
>
> I would expect to feel exactly the same as if duplicating chambers and
> multiple copies of myself were not involved. If you perform whatever
> calculations you think are needed to produce your patented "1-view
> indeterminacy" I would not be one bit wiser than if I calculated
> probabilities using regular old conventional probability methods, you've
> added tons of bells and whistles but for all the complex convolutions you
> have not added one single bit of additional information about what is likely
> to happen.
>
>> > You said you favor Everett's QM.
>
>
> Yes, but the universe will be the way is and doesn't care if I favor it or
> not, so it may or may not be true. And if Everett is right then there is a
> 100% probability that anything that can happen will happen, but using
> statistics in this way would not produce anything we could use, just as the
> "1-view probability" of something can not tell me anything I didn't already
> know.
>
>> > You did not answer Quentin when he commented that with Everett the
>> > Universe is a "duplicating chamber", so that your charge again the
>> > coimp-1-indeterminacy applies to Everett QM too.
>
>
> In the first place I like Many Worlds for esthetic reasons but I'm far from
> certain it's true. More important, in the thought experiment about the
> cities we have access to all the branches and can see what all the copies
> are doing, but that is not the case with Everett. If Everett is correct then
> probability is not inherent in the event itself but is just a measure of our
> ignorance. As you point out Many Worlds is a deterministic theory so if we
> had a bird's eye view of everything probability would be a useless tool
> because everything would have a probability of 100% or 0%.
>
> But I can hear you scream "but you still wouldn't know for certain if "you"
> will see Washington". I say the probability is 100% you say it is 50%, how
> can we tell who is correct? I say that after the experiment if I find "you"
> and you says that he is in Washington and only Washington then my prediction
> was proven correct, and I can do exactly that. If after the experiment if
> you find "you" and he says that he is 50% in Washington then your prediction
> was proven correct, but you can't find anybody like that.
>
> You concede that you will indeed say you are in Washington and only
> Washington, but you correctly point out that you will also say you are in
> Moscow and only Moscow. I agree and say that means the probability you will
> see Moscow and only Moscow is also 100%, but you disagree and say it is 50

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/31/2012 3:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Comp is just the assumption that we are machine, to said it shortly. 
Then it is shown as a consequence that not only we cannot neglect the 
physical reality, but that we have to retrieve it from arithmetic, 
without using any probabilistic *selection*. Comp is the problem, not 
the solution. Only the materialist believe wrongly that comp solves 
the mind problem, and *they* take matter for granted. Pretending that 
comp neglects problem is contrary to the facts, because comp just 
shows precisely where the problems come from (the taking granted of 
the physical reality).


Bruno



Dear Bruno,

I wish I could feel comfortable with such a focused area so that we 
can neglect all other considerations. I agree with your judgement about 
materialists, but am not so sanguine about the idealist as having all 
the answers. My motivations are different from yours. I am wrestling 
with the ontological implications of physics and so our interests cross 
in many places. I have proposed an alternative ontology theory that 
appears to solve the mind-body problem without having to resort to 
epiphenomena, which by your own admission infects both materialism and 
idealism.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You should care to be able to answer the simple question: "what do you
> expect to feel in the multiplication-movie experience"
>

I would expect to feel exactly the same as if duplicating chambers and
multiple copies of myself were not involved. If you perform whatever
calculations you think are needed to produce your patented "1-view
indeterminacy" I would not be one bit wiser than if I calculated
probabilities using regular old conventional probability methods, you've
added tons of bells and whistles but for all the complex convolutions you
have not added one single bit of additional information about what is
likely to happen.

> You said you favor Everett's QM.
>

Yes, but the universe will be the way is and doesn't care if I favor it or
not, so it may or may not be true. And if Everett is right then there is a
100% probability that anything that can happen will happen, but using
statistics in this way would not produce anything we could use, just as the
"1-view probability" of something can not tell me anything I didn't already
know.

> You did not answer Quentin when he commented that with Everett the
> Universe is a "duplicating chamber", so that your charge again the
> coimp-1-indeterminacy applies to Everett QM too.
>

In the first place I like Many Worlds for esthetic reasons but I'm far from
certain it's true. More important, in the thought experiment about the
cities we have access to all the branches and can see what all the copies
are doing, but that is not the case with Everett. If Everett is correct
then probability is not inherent in the event itself but is just a measure
of our ignorance. As you point out Many Worlds is a deterministic theory so
if we had a bird's eye view of everything probability would be a useless
tool because everything would have a probability of 100% or 0%.

But I can hear you scream "but you still wouldn't know for certain if "you"
will see Washington". I say the probability is 100% you say it is 50%, how
can we tell who is correct? I say that after the experiment if I find "you"
and you says that he is in Washington and only Washington then my
prediction was proven correct, and I can do exactly that. If after the
experiment if you find "you" and he says that he is 50% in Washington then
your prediction was proven correct, but you can't find anybody like that.

You concede that you will indeed say you are in Washington and only
Washington, but you correctly point out that you will also say you are in
Moscow and only Moscow. I agree and say that means the probability you will
see Moscow and only Moscow is also 100%, but you disagree and say it is
50%. I say the fact that you say you are in Washington and only Washington
in no way weakens the claim that you are in Moscow and only Moscow.

I predict there is a 100% chance there is a 100% chance you will feel like
you are in one city and one city only, and it's not a problem for me to
have two yous with 100% because YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED. But exactly what
does your 50% really mean? You're treating it not as a measure of ignorance
but as if it's part of the thing itself even though it's a deterministic
process, as if there is a 100% chance you will feel like you are 50% in
Moscow and a 100% chance you will feel like you are 50% in Washington. And
that does not correspond to the experimental results.

>>  My complaint is that the diaries add nothing, it's obvious that if the
>> diaries the people remember writing are identical then the people are too,
>> and if they aren't then the people aren't either.
>>
>
> > But the you contradict your statement
>

Did I? I hate it when that happens.

> that both the guy in W and in M have the right to say that they are the
> guy who was at Helsinki, which makes indeed sense with comp.
>

True it does make sense, the Washington guy is the Helsinki guy and the
Moscow guy is the Helsinki guy and the Moscow guy is not the Washington guy
and the Washington guy is not the Moscow guy. It's all very clear, but
where did I contradict myself?

>> And to add to the confusion sometimes you admit that they would feel the
>> same, but then in your next breath you start talking about how it's
>> identical in the "3-view" but not the "1-view".
>>
>
> > Could you quote me and be more precise.
>

Bruno, "3-view" and "1-view" are your terms, you invented them not me, if
you did not think things could be the same in one view but not the other,
if you thought the two things were identical then why the hell did you go
to all the trouble to give them different names?

> In the step three experience we are talking about, they will give quite
> different answer.
>

Then obviously they become different people and the thought experiment
becomes rather dull.

>> The third party does not know which one is you and you don't know either.
>>
>
> > The W guy know that he is a the guy in Helsinki, now instantiated in W.
> The M guy know that he is a the guy in Helsin

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 31 Mar 2012, at 01:23, David Nyman wrote:

On 30 March 2012 19:54, meekerdb wrote:

The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the
other

doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent

It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.
Brent and
David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the
system.

Sure, but even if one believes that to be the case, it is still taken
entirely for granted that there is some natural principle for the
selection of THIS physical system from the class of all such systems.
To appeal, a posteriori, to the fact that one's observational
perspective is apparently associated with this particular system and
not any other is merely to argue in a circle; since that is what we
are trying to explain we cannot adduce it as the explanation.

As I said before, the requirement for some principle of selection, in
this sense, is rarely made explicit, but nonetheless implicitly relied
on. More often than not our particular localisation in space and time
has been consigned to the realm of "psychology" or "illusion", as in
Einstein's reputed remark, as though it were somehow possible to
disarm this inconvenient observational fact with scare quotes. So
what intrigued me about Hoyle's idea (and according to Gribbin it was
rather more than a fictional conceit for him) was precisely that his
making it explicit exposed an "elephant in the room" that few others
were prepared to acknowledge.

Exactly. What comp shows is that each time a physicist use a physical
law to make a physical prediction, he is using an identity principle,
a selection principle, and an induction principle, which is
incompatible with comp. He assumes his mind is attached to one brain
and that there is no other equivalent brain existing in reality, to be
able to transfer his 3p reasoning on its future 1-view. Comp makes the
mind-body problem *more* difficult, by showing that those principles
are not applicable.

Reality is more subtle than the physicist want us to believe.

Bruno

David

On 3/30/2012 4:38 AM, David Nyman wrote:

doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent

It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.
Brent and
David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the
system.

Brent

, or
indeed here rather than there, or now rather than then. Subjective
localisation is simply assumed, or trivialised, as in Einstein's
remark “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion”.

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-31 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 30 Mar 2012, at 23:29, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 2:48 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/30/2012 4:08 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 3:08 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Take my favorite thought experiment. Suppose I design two Mars
Rovers and I want them to coordinate their movements in order
to round up Martian sheep. I can easily distribute the
artificial intelligence between the two of them, using data
links so whatever one sees the other sees (incidentally this,
minus the AI, is what combat aircraft software does now) and so
there is a single top level decision routine on top of local
decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles and
managing internal states.

OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination
of the two pieces of hardware, this is no different than how
Watson runs on a much of connected servers. But think about it,
does not the data correlated to the sensors on one of the Rovers
have to be synchronized with the data from the other Rover so
that their manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the
internal model of this system built so that it can 'consider
itself' as being both exploring some pile of rocks east of Mt.
Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in some
crater 500 kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed
points to exist on one compact and closed manifold. You can only
have one at a time. What you describe is more like a Rover with
a multiple personality disorder.

You're suffering from a failure of imagination. It can make a
model in which it considers itself has having to bodies at two
different places. It wouldn't even be hard to
program. If you can experience two different places
and you can act in two different places you ARE in two different
places.

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Could you give us a brief explanation of how this would work?
I will readily admit to a failure of imagination here.

Just as you have two eyes providing two 2D views of the world which
your brain merges into one 3D model, one can merge the data streams
from many different sensors located in disparate places to create a
single unified model. Military systems do this for battlefield
awareness. And this model can include a 'self'. The self is
usually located where the hardware is because evolution requires
that the hardware/self be protected.

Brent

Hi Brent,

Interesting. " ... merge ... streams ... to create a single
unified model...". How is this not consistent with my original claim
above? My claim is that a single unified model must obtain and that
the notion of 1-p identity follows directly from this and thus if no
unification can obtain neither does a 1-p. What did you imagine
that I was claiming? What I have been trying to point out is that
the "single unified model" must be such that there are no logical or
resource conflicts. I go further to claim that this is an example of
the SAT problem in applied logic. It is known that SAT is an NP-
Complete problem and thus the computational complexity issues must
be addressed.
I have been arguing that COMP neglects these complexity issues
completely and seemingly does so by eliminating the necessity to
consider the actual physical implementations of the computations,
preferring instead to postulate some "Platonic" realm where
computations have particular properties merely on the basis, it is
argued, that the truth valuations of Sigma_1 sentences is completely
independent of our knowledge of their content. I see this as
equivalent to saying that "since there exist strings of numbers that
are solutions to NP-Complete problems then we don't need to worry
about actually having to find them" and thus bypass problems like
SAT. Instead we are offered an interesting form of Occasionalism or
Accidentalism to explain how it is that we actually do experience a
physical world.

Comp is just the assumption that we are machine, to said it shortly.
Then it is shown as a consequence that not only we cannot neglect the
physical reality, but that we have to retrieve it from arithmetic,
without using any probabilistic *selection*. Comp is the problem, not
the solution. Only the materialist believe wrongly that comp solves
the mind problem, and *they* take matter for granted. Pretending that
comp neglects problem is contrary to the facts, because comp just
shows precisely where the problems come from (the taking granted of
the physical reality).

Bruno

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/30/2012 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 30 March 2012 19:54, meekerdb  wrote:

>>  The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
>>  nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
>>  this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
>>  Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
>>  problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
>>  situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the other
>>  doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
>>  experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent

>
>  It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.  Brent and
>  David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the system.

Sure, but even if one believes that to be the case, it is still taken
entirely for granted that there is some natural principle for the
selection of THIS physical system from the class of all such systems.

?? I guess I don't understand the question.  If my experience is a process in my brain 
then what more selection is required?

To appeal, a posteriori, to the fact that one's observational
perspective is apparently associated with this particular system and
not any other is merely to argue in a circle; since that is what we
are trying to explain we cannot adduce it as the explanation.

That seems like conjuring a mystery out of nothing. Is your question why is my 
observational perspective associated with my brain?

Brent

As I said before, the requirement for some principle of selection, in
this sense, is rarely made explicit, but nonetheless implicitly relied
on.  More often than not our particular localisation in space and time
has been consigned to the realm of "psychology" or "illusion", as in
Einstein's reputed remark, as though it were somehow possible to
disarm this inconvenient observational fact with scare quotes.  So
what intrigued me about Hoyle's idea (and according to Gribbin it was
rather more than a fictional conceit for him) was precisely that his
making it explicit exposed an "elephant in the room" that few others
were prepared to acknowledge.

David

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread David Nyman

On 30 March 2012 19:54, meekerdb  wrote:

>> The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
>> nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
>> this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
>> Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
>> problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
>> situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the other
>> doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
>> experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent
>
> It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.  Brent and
> David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the system.

Sure, but even if one believes that to be the case, it is still taken
entirely for granted that there is some natural principle for the
selection of THIS physical system from the class of all such systems.
To appeal, a posteriori, to the fact that one's observational
perspective is apparently associated with this particular system and
not any other is merely to argue in a circle; since that is what we
are trying to explain we cannot adduce it as the explanation.

As I said before, the requirement for some principle of selection, in
this sense, is rarely made explicit, but nonetheless implicitly relied
on.  More often than not our particular localisation in space and time
has been consigned to the realm of "psychology" or "illusion", as in
Einstein's reputed remark, as though it were somehow possible to
disarm this inconvenient observational fact with scare quotes.  So
what intrigued me about Hoyle's idea (and according to Gribbin it was
rather more than a fictional conceit for him) was precisely that his
making it explicit exposed an "elephant in the room" that few others
were prepared to acknowledge.

David

> On 3/30/2012 4:38 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
>> nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
>> this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
>> Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
>> problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
>> situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the other
>> doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
>> experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent
>
>
> It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.  Brent and
> David are different physical systems and only one is looking at the system.
>
> Brent
>
>
>> , or
>> indeed here rather than there, or now rather than then.  Subjective
>> localisation is simply assumed, or trivialised, as in Einstein's
>> remark “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a
>> stubbornly persistent illusion”.
>
>
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)


On 3/30/2012 2:29 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 2:48 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/30/2012 4:08 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 3:08 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Take my favorite thought experiment.  Suppose I design two Mars Rovers and I want 
them to coordinate their movements in order to round up Martian sheep.  I can 
easily distribute the artificial intelligence between the two of them, using data 
links so whatever one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what 
combat aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top level decision 
routine on top of local decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles and 
managing internal states.


OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of the two pieces 
of hardware, this is no different than how Watson 
 runs on a much of 
connected servers. But think about it, does not the data correlated to the sensors 
on one of the Rovers have to be synchronized with the data from the other Rover so 
that their manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of this 
system built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both exploring some pile of 
rocks east of Mt. Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in some 
crater 500 kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one 
compact and closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe is 
more like a Rover with a multiple personality disorder.


You're suffering from a failure of imagination.  It can make a model in which it 
considers itself has having to bodies at two different places.  It wouldn't even be 
hard to program.  If you can experience two different places and you can act in two 
different places you ARE in two different places.


Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Could you give us a brief explanation of how this would work? I will readily admit 
to a failure of imagination here.


Just as you have two eyes providing two 2D views of the world which your brain merges 
into one 3D model, one can merge the data streams from many different sensors located 
in disparate places to create a single unified model.  Military systems do this for 
battlefield awareness. And this model can include a 'self'.  The self is usually 
located where the hardware is because evolution requires that the hardware/self be 
protected.


Brent

Hi Brent,

Interesting. " ... merge ... streams ... to create a single unified model...". How 
is this not consistent with my original claim above? My claim is that a single unified 
model must obtain and that the notion of 1-p identity follows directly from this and 
thus if no unification can obtain neither does a 1-p.  What did you imagine that I was 
claiming? 


That having different points of view implied different consciousnesses.

What I have been trying to point out is that the "single unified model" must be such 
that there are no logical or resource conflicts. 


Of course if there is a single actor, he doesn't want to act against himself and so 
conflicts must be resolved.  But that's no different that a pilot and copilot having to 
agree on navigation.  The model only needs to be unified at the top level of action.  So 
there can be differences at lower levels, as there seem to be in the human brain.



I go further to claim that this is an example of the SAT problem in applied logic. It is 
known that SAT is an NP-Complete problem and thus the computational complexity issues 
must be addressed.


Real problems are usually different from SAT in that they admit of degrees of 
satisfaction.

I have been arguing that COMP neglects these complexity issues completely 


I'd say Bruno consciously rejects them because he sees a Platonic answer as *more 
fundamental* and hence preferable.


Brent

and seemingly does so by eliminating the necessity to consider the actual physical 
implementations of the computations, preferring instead to postulate some "Platonic" 
realm where computations have particular properties merely on the basis, it is argued, 
that the truth valuations of Sigma_1 sentences is completely independent of our 
knowledge of their content. I see this as equivalent to saying that "since there exist 
strings of numbers that are solutions to NP-Complete problems then we don't need to 
worry about actually having to find them" and thus bypass problems like SAT. Instead we 
are offered an interesting form of Occasionalism or Accidentalism to explain how it is 
that we actually do experience a physical world.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/30/2012 2:48 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/30/2012 4:08 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 3:08 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Take my favorite thought experiment.  Suppose I design two Mars 
Rovers and I want them to coordinate their movements in order to 
round up Martian sheep.  I can easily distribute the artificial 
intelligence between the two of them, using data links so whatever 
one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what 
combat aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top 
level decision routine on top of local decision routines about 
maneuvering around obstacles and managing internal states.


OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of 
the two pieces of hardware, this is no different than how Watson 
 
runs on a much of connected servers. But think about it, does not 
the data correlated to the sensors on one of the Rovers have to be 
synchronized with the data from the other Rover so that their 
manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of 
this system built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both 
exploring some pile of rocks east of Mt. Olympus while the other 
Rover is taking a dirt sample in some crater 500 kilometers away. 
It is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one compact and 
closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe 
is more like a Rover with a multiple personality disorder.


You're suffering from a failure of imagination.  It can make a model 
in which it considers itself has having to bodies at two different 
places.  It wouldn't even be hard to program.  If you can experience 
two different places and you can act in two different places you ARE 
in two different places.


Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Could you give us a brief explanation of how this would work? I 
will readily admit to a failure of imagination here.


Just as you have two eyes providing two 2D views of the world which 
your brain merges into one 3D model, one can merge the data streams 
from many different sensors located in disparate places to create a 
single unified model.  Military systems do this for battlefield 
awareness. And this model can include a 'self'.  The self is usually 
located where the hardware is because evolution requires that the 
hardware/self be protected.


Brent

Hi Brent,

Interesting. " ... merge ... streams ... to create a single unified 
model...". How is this not consistent with my original claim above? My 
claim is that a single unified model must obtain and that the notion of 
1-p identity follows directly from this and thus if no unification can 
obtain neither does a 1-p.  What did you imagine that I was claiming? 
What I have been trying to point out is that the "single unified model" 
must be such that there are no logical or resource conflicts. I go 
further to claim that this is an example of the SAT problem in applied 
logic. It is known that SAT is an NP-Complete problem and thus the 
computational complexity issues must be addressed.
I have been arguing that COMP neglects these complexity issues 
completely and seemingly does so by eliminating the necessity to 
consider the actual physical implementations of the computations, 
preferring instead to postulate some "Platonic" realm where computations 
have particular properties merely on the basis, it is argued, that the 
truth valuations of Sigma_1 sentences is completely independent of our 
knowledge of their content. I see this as equivalent to saying that 
"since there exist strings of numbers that are solutions to NP-Complete 
problems then we don't need to worry about actually having to find them" 
and thus bypass problems like SAT. Instead we are offered an interesting 
form of Occasionalism or Accidentalism to explain how it is that we 
actually do experience a physical world.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)


On 3/30/2012 4:38 AM, David Nyman wrote:

The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the other
doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent


It does if you think experience is an epiphenomena of physics.  Brent and David are 
different physical systems and only one is looking at the system.


Brent


, or
indeed here rather than there, or now rather than then.  Subjective
localisation is simply assumed, or trivialised, as in Einstein's
remark “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion”.


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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/30/2012 4:08 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/30/2012 3:08 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Take my favorite thought experiment. Suppose I design two Mars Rovers and I want
them to coordinate their movements in order to round up Martian sheep. I can easily
distribute the artificial intelligence between the two of them, using data links so
whatever one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what combat
aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top level decision routine on
top of local decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles and managing
internal states.

OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of the two pieces of
hardware, this is no different than how Watson
runs on a much of
connected servers. But think about it, does not the data correlated to the sensors on
one of the Rovers have to be synchronized with the data from the other Rover so that
their manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of this system
built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both exploring some pile of rocks east
of Mt. Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in some crater 500
kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one compact and
closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe is more like a
Rover with a multiple personality disorder.

You're suffering from a failure of imagination. It can make a model in which it
considers itself has having to bodies at two different places. It wouldn't even be
hard to program. If you can experience two different places and you can act in two
different places you ARE in two different places.

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Could you give us a brief explanation of how this would work? I will readily admit
to a failure of imagination here.

Just as you have two eyes providing two 2D views of the world which your brain merges into
one 3D model, one can merge the data streams from many different sensors located in
disparate places to create a single unified model. Military systems do this for
battlefield awareness. And this model can include a 'self'. The self is usually located
where the hardware is because evolution requires that the hardware/self be protected.

Brent

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread David Nyman

On 30 March 2012 10:11, Richard Ruquist  wrote:

> David,
> Selection was even earlier proposed by Leibniz in his Monadology philosophy
> along with many other principles about half of which have been confirmed by
> scientific theory and experimentation.
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/leibniz.htm
> Richard David Ruquist

Thanks for reminding me of this - I hadn't read Leibniz for a long
while.  However, on a rapid re-perusal I can only discover one
instance of his referring to selection:

"53. Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas
of God, and but one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient
reason for the choice of God which determines him to select one rather
than another."

This could perhaps be interpreted as being consistent with Kent's
proposal of an objective selection "at infinity" pruning out the
superfluous branches.  But if so, it is still vulnerable to my
criticism that it fails to account for subjective localisation, or in
Leibniz's terminology, why the subjective perspective of one monad is
selected at a "given moment" rather than another.  Can you direct me
to any other reference to this in the Monadology?

David

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:20 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
>>
>> On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>> > You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that
>> > conscious
>> > experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
>> > conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to
>> > create a
>> > process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
>> > time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or
>> > The
>> > Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we
>> > would
>> > tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the
>> > question
>> > becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
>> > tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?
>>
>> Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
>> possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
>> grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
>> the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
>> with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
>> such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
>> lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".
>>
>> AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
>> process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
>> that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
>> duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
>> mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
>> (however exotic) or not.
>>
>> Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
>> objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
>> possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
>> ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.  But the
>> latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
>> empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
>> of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
>> be 100%!
>>
>> "Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
>> theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.  Kent's proposal is a
>> process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
>> different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
>> in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
>> manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
>> selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
>> reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
>> novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
>> Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
>> (apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
>> Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
>> implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
>> them acknowledge it explicitly.
>>
>> David
>>
>> > On 3/29/2012 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> >
>> > And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.
>> 
>> 
>>  I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you
>>  are
>>  using here, so as to convince me and others that it refutes indeed
>>  the
>>  indeterminacy about the first person experience displayed in the WM
>>  duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).
>> 
>>  Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and
>>

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread David Nyman

On 30 March 2012 03:14, meekerdb  wrote:

> My reading of Kent is that he rejects MWI.  I don't think he believes there
> is a single conscious copy and the rest are zombies; he believes there's
> just one world and it is 'selected' probabilistically.

Yes, I understand that.  My point is that Kent disbelieves (as his
arguments contra Wallace show) that a single conscious perspective is
either logically or naturally consistent with the objective existence
of multiple copies, and it is this disbelief that motivates his
suggestion of an objective selection process to dispose of all but one
of them.  By contrast, the "heuristic" I suggest (i.e. an informal way
of thinking about the situation) is subjective (albeit "impersonally"
so) rather than objective, in the sense that it doesn't involve
eliminating the "unselected" branches.  It is curious to me that
others have seemingly dismissed this possibility because of the
apparent threat of zombies, or what David Albert somewhat gothically
refers to as "mindless hulks".  But there is another way to conceive
this.  In essence, it's the perspective of a "universal consciousness"
with amnesia for states other than those associated with the momentary
selection of a "current history".

>From this perspective, "other people" with whom we interact (including
our own bodies) stand in approximately the role of avatars in a video
game.  It is highly relevant in this regard that the
empirically-discoverable "game physics" never requires the presumption
of conscious states (or indeed anything else outside its own closed
system of transformation rules) in order to explain their behaviour.
The selection of mutually-exclusive moments by the universal mind
might imply that only one of these avatars is "conscious at one time",
but on reflection this corresponds rather precisely to what we are
trying to explain.  Subjectivity is never "simultaneous" as
experienced (which is equivalent to the claim that it can't be
duplicated); the ability to synchronise clock times between different
(objectively characterised) "subjects" is a different matter.

The problem with all this (as Kent makes explicit) is that there is
nothing in the mathematics of the "game physics" that corresponds to
this kind of momentary selection of subjective localisation.
Unfortunately, his own proposal doesn't really solve the underlying
problem, because although it can account, given the experimental
situation, for my seeing spin-up and not spin-down (because the other
doesn't objectively exist any longer) it cannot account for why the
experience is of David making this observation rather than Brent, or
indeed here rather than there, or now rather than then.  Subjective
localisation is simply assumed, or trivialised, as in Einstein's
remark “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion”.

>> Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
>> objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
>> possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
>> ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.
>
>
> But in Bruno's transporter experiment there isn't *a* singular perspective,
> there are two different ones.

Now you're "doing a John"!  Sure, there are two different ones
objectively, but there's only one subjectively.  Unless you want to
take the tack of rejecting comp or MWI on that basis (which is a
possibility) this forces you to accept that the existence of two
copies must indeed (somehow) be compatible with your experiencing a
single perspective.  The heuristic I propose makes this unproblematic
AFAICS, though it does indeed force re-consideration of exactly who
"you" are, and invokes the "measure" problem with particular
vengeance.  But that is unavoidable, ISTM, with any proposal in this
domain, as indeed is the determination of subjective localisation as
an ancillary assumption.

>> "Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
>> theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.
>
> But then Everett's QM doesn't explain the facts - because there is no
> selection.  That's part of Kent's criticism.

I agree.  It can't explain the facts without selection, on which it
relies implicitly (and I don't understand why this doesn't strike more
people as problematic).  But I also don't believe that Kent's proposal
on its own goes all the way to dealing with the deficiency he exposes,
as I explain above.

David

> On 3/29/2012 6:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
>>> experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
>>> conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create
>>> a
>>> process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
>>> time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or
>>> The

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/30/2012 3:08 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


Take my favorite thought experiment.  Suppose I design two Mars 
Rovers and I want them to coordinate their movements in order to 
round up Martian sheep.  I can easily distribute the artificial 
intelligence between the two of them, using data links so whatever 
one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what 
combat aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top 
level decision routine on top of local decision routines about 
maneuvering around obstacles and managing internal states.


OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of 
the two pieces of hardware, this is no different than how Watson 
 
runs on a much of connected servers. But think about it, does not the 
data correlated to the sensors on one of the Rovers have to be 
synchronized with the data from the other Rover so that their 
manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of 
this system built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both 
exploring some pile of rocks east of Mt. Olympus while the other 
Rover is taking a dirt sample in some crater 500 kilometers away. It 
is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one compact and 
closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe 
is more like a Rover with a multiple personality disorder.


You're suffering from a failure of imagination.  It can make a model 
in which it considers itself has having to bodies at two different 
places.  It wouldn't even be hard to program.  If you can experience 
two different places and you can act in two different places you ARE 
in two different places.


Brent
--

Hi Brent,

Could you give us a brief explanation of how this would work? I 
will readily admit to a failure of imagination here.


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread Richard Ruquist

David,
Selection was even earlier proposed by Leibniz in his Monadology philosophy
along with many other principles about half of which have been confirmed by
scientific theory and experimentation.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/leibniz.htm
Richard David Ruquist

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:20 PM, David Nyman  wrote:

> On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:
>
> > You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
> > experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
> > conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to
> create a
> > process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
> > time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or
> The
> > Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we
> would
> > tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the
> question
> > becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
> > tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?
>
> Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
> possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
> grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
> the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
> with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
> such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
> lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".
>
> AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
> process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
> that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
> duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
> mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
> (however exotic) or not.
>
> Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
> objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
> possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
> ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.  But the
> latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
> empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
> of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
> be 100%!
>
> "Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
> theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.  Kent's proposal is a
> process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
> different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
> in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
> manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
> selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
> reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
> novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
> Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
> (apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
> Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
> implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
> them acknowledge it explicitly.
>
> David
>
> > On 3/29/2012 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.
> 
> 
>  I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you
> are
>  using here, so as to convince me and others that it refutes indeed the
>  indeterminacy about the first person experience displayed in the WM
>  duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).
> 
>  Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and
> given
>  that you are the one claiming that there is no indeterminate outcome,
> I will
>  ask to give us an algorithm predicting the result of the future
>  self-localization experience.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is deterministic.
> >>>  And it has the same problems being given a probabilistic
> interpretation as
> >>> EQM.  If you duplicated a coin in the transporter experiment the
> question,
> >>> "Where will you expect to find the coin." has the same problems as
> "Where do
> >>> you expect to find yourself".  The implication is that "self" is not a
> >>> unique 'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to be) but is process
> that
> >>> can be realized in different media.
> >>
> >>
> >> I agree. But the experience is lived as unique, so we can follow
> Plotinus
> >> in using the term soul for the owner of the 1-view, that is, the knower.
> >> From its pov, it is not duplicable, in the trivial sense that the
> >> duplication is never part of his experien

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Mar 2012, at 21:47, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/29/2012 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.


I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that  
you are using here, so as to convince me and others that it  
refutes indeed the indeterminacy about the first person  
experience displayed in the WM duplication thought experience  
(UDA step 3).


Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience,  
and given that you are the one claiming that there is no  
indeterminate outcome, I will ask to give us an algorithm  
predicting the result of the future self-localization experience.


The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is  
deterministic.  And it has the same problems being given a  
probabilistic interpretation as EQM.  If you duplicated a coin in  
the transporter experiment the question, "Where will you expect to  
find the coin." has the same problems as "Where do you expect to  
find yourself".  The implication is that "self" is not a unique  
'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to be) but is process  
that can be realized in different media.


I agree. But the experience is lived as unique, so we can follow  
Plotinus in using the term soul for the owner of the 1-view, that  
is, the knower. From its pov, it is not duplicable, in the trivial  
sense that the duplication is never part of his experience.


You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that  
conscious experience is something a certain physical body, a brain,  
does.  But if conscious experience is a process then it is certainly  
possible to create a process that is aware of being in both  
Washington and Moscow at the same time.


Or you are just a giant with one foot in W and one foot in M. But  
that's not relevant for the issue I was talking about, where complete  
brain are reconstituted separately in the two places.




Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The  
Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and  
we would tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So  
then the question becomes what do you mean by not experiencing  
duplication?  Is it a mere tautology based on how you define  
'consciousness'?


I do not define consciousness, and for the reasoning I am using an  
approximate notion of first person (the content of the diary which is  
transported in the teleportation or duplication device. And yes, it  
makes the "non experiencing of duplication", and the "non experiencing  
of reconstitution delays" obvious. That was the goal.








He would not know if we did not give him the protocol.
mathematically, this is related to the fact that no machine can  
know which machine she is, already seen clearly by Post and  
(re)intuited by Benacerraf, and "intuited" by the machine itself,  
accepting the Theaetetus' definition of knowledge.


I am not sure the problem of probability is identical in QM and  
COMP. In QM, Everett showed that the P = A^2 principle does not  
depend on the choice of the base,


I don't think that's correct.  'A' is the amplitude of the  
projection on certain basis determined by what is measured.  Yes the  
Born rule can be applied whatever basis is chosen, but the  
projection produces different A's.


No problem with this.




so that A can be considered as measuring the relative proportion of  
possible accessible relative realities. This does not work with  
finite multiverse, but it works with infinite multiverse,


But infinite multiple worlds create a measure problem.  That's one  
of Adrian Kent's points.


In all case of multiplication, be it through comp or QM, there is a  
measure problem. With comp, the mind-body problem is transformed into  
a justification of the physical laws through a measure problem.







and Gleason theorem justifies the unicity of the measure,


I'm not sure what you mean by that?



<<
Gleason’s theorem, formulated and proved by Andrew M. Gleason in  
1957, is a state-
ment about measures on Hilbert spaces of dimension at least three. The  
theorem states
that the only possible probability measures on such spaces are  
measures µ of the form
µ(a) = Tr(ρPa ), where ρ is a positive semi-deﬁnite self-adjoint  
operator of unit trace, and

where Pa is a pro jection operator for pro jection onto the subspace a.
Postulating that any orthogonal basis in some Hilbert space  
corresponds to a measure-
ment and that quantum systems can be represented by such spaces, we  
can understand
the pro jection operators as representing yes-no observables a1 ,  
commuting pro jectors cor-
responding to yes-no questions that can be simultaneously answered (or  
asked). Any
(measurable) property a of the system is then uniquely associated with  
a subspace (which
could be one-dimensional i.e. a vector) of the system’s Hilbert space  
- within this f

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Take my favorite thought experiment. Suppose I design two Mars Rovers and I want them
to coordinate their movements in order to round up Martian sheep. I can easily
distribute the artificial intelligence between the two of them, using data links so
whatever one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what combat
aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top level decision routine on top
of local decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles and managing internal states.

OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of the two pieces of
hardware, this is no different than how Watson
runs on a much of
connected servers. But think about it, does not the data correlated to the sensors on
one of the Rovers have to be synchronized with the data from the other Rover so that
their manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of this system
built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both exploring some pile of rocks east
of Mt. Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in some crater 500
kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one compact and
closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe is more like a Rover
with a multiple personality disorder.

You're suffering from a failure of imagination. It can make a model in which it considers
itself has having to bodies at two different places. It wouldn't even be hard to
program. If you can experience two different places and you can act in two different
places you ARE in two different places.

Brent

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-29 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/29/2012 11:46 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 7:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/29/2012 9:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:


You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The
Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we would
tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the question
becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?

Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".

AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.

Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.  But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!

"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.  Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.

David


Hi David and Brent,

I have a question. Could it be that the "sense of self as 
being-in-the-world" (ala Nagel's bat) is a phenomenon not at all 
unlike the uniqueness of a fixed point 
 on a 
manifold? 


Under what mapping?

Hi Brent,

The moment to moment passage of time. Think about it, our bodies 
are constantly in flux and we are never in the same place, and yet we 
have this strange sense of "I am what I remember myself to be" that 
persists. How is that? Sure, we can think of moments individually in 
terms of infinite computations, but what is dovetailing them? We can 
postulate a "universal dovetailer", but how does it work for multiple 
and distinct 1-p? I am not you and we are not the Man in Washington nor 
the Man in Moscow, but those ideas are considerations of individual 
snapshots and we have a movie to explain. We are many disjoint 
observers, each in our very own version of a universe and yet have the 
illusion that we are all "in" the same space-time... Maybe our universes 
just are similar enough that we happen to be able to agree on "facts" 
... Nevertheless, even taking Bruno's COMP seriously, we cannot all be 
one and the same computation for it can only have one and only one 
"inside" view.





It seems to me that one of the key aspects of the sense of self or 
"I" that it is unique in its association with its location and its 
memories. 


Location is just part of one's model of their body.  If you had two 
bodies, one in Moscow and one in Washington, you'd have two viewpoints 
in 3-space and you'd develop a model of having bodies in both places.


And what exactly is the point of view that has these two in its 
frame? This entire conversation tacitly assumes that somehow we can step 
into a frame of reference that makes us a voyeur looking down from above 
and being able to see and know some 3-p and simultaneously have the 1-p 
tha

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/29/2012 7:37 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/29/2012 9:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb wrote:

You don't know that. It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does. But if
conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
time. Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W. Or The
Borg of Star Trek. Of course that experience would be strange and we would
tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness." So then the question
becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication? Is it a mere
tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?

Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp? IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp. Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".

AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness. Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.

Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective. But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs. Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!

"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts. Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen. Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner. BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late". I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour. This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.

David

Hi David and Brent,

I have a question. Could it be that the "sense of self as being-in-the-world" (ala
Nagel's bat) is a phenomenon not at all unlike the uniqueness of a fixed point
on a manifold?

Under what mapping?

It seems to me that one of the key aspects of the sense of self or "I" that it is unique
in its association with its location and its memories.

Location is just part of one's model of their body. If you had two bodies, one in Moscow
and one in Washington, you'd have two viewpoints in 3-space and you'd develop a model of
having bodies in both places.

Being in two places at the same time would at least be confusing, Try navigating with a
combination of two maps - overlay the maps of Washington and Moscow and try to figure
out where you are.

Ask someone who flies radio control planes. They become able to 'place themselves' in the
plane.

I offer the movie "12 Monkeys " as a
fictional narrative exploring what happens when one's localization is split in the time
sense. In my studies, I have considered how the various pathologies of consciousness
sketch for us some of the fundamental aspects of consciousness in a 3-p'ish way. For
example, the various dissassociative disorders ranging from phantom limb to multiple
personality disorders and schizophrenia tell us that an individual's sense of self is
strongly correlated with the synchronization of both temporal and spatial queues both
internal to the brain and of a person's location. Thus "being in two places at the same
time" is not that much different from "having two sets of sense data that are disjoint"
(in the being in Moscow and Washington) such that unless a single reconciliation of the
two is possible, there will be inevitably a splitting of the "I"'s or 1-p.

Not at all. I take the opposite lesson. Your brain invents your sense of self. The
difference betwee

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-29 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/29/2012 9:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:


You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The
Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we would
tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the question
becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?

Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".

AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.

Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.  But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!

"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.  Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.

David


Hi David and Brent,

I have a question. Could it be that the "sense of self as 
being-in-the-world" (ala Nagel's bat) is a phenomenon not at all unlike 
the uniqueness of a fixed point 
 on a 
manifold? It seems to me that one of the key aspects of the sense of 
self or "I" that it is unique in its association with its location and 
its memories. Being in two places at the same time would at least be 
confusing, Try navigating with a combination of two maps - overlay the 
maps of Washington and Moscow and try to figure out where you are.


I offer the movie "12 Monkeys 
" as a fictional narrative 
exploring what happens when one's localization is split in the time 
sense. In my studies, I have considered how the various pathologies of 
consciousness sketch for us some of the fundamental aspects of 
consciousness in a 3-p'ish way. For example, the various dissassociative 
disorders ranging from phantom limb to multiple personality disorders 
and schizophrenia tell us that an individual's sense of self is strongly 
correlated with the synchronization of both temporal and spatial queues 
both internal to the brain and of a person's location. Thus "being in 
two places at the same time" is not that much different from "having two 
sets of sense data that are disjoint" (in the being in Moscow and 
Washington) such that unless a single reconciliation of the two is 
possible, there will be inevitably a splitting of the "I"'s or 1-p.
BTW, this line of reasoning argues strongly against the "Borg" 
group-mind idea as possibly yielding a consciousness of the same kind as 
the one that we have because of the inability to define a single "point 
of view" given the wide and even disjoint nature of the panorama of 
sense data that would be involved. Consciousness is, I argue, fixed to a 
single point and cannot be distributed. Distributed behavior would more 
correlate to what the psychologist like to call "the unco

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)


On 3/29/2012 6:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:


You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The
Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we would
tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the question
becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?

Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".


My reading of Kent is that he rejects MWI.  I don't think he believes there is a single 
conscious copy and the rest are zombies; he believes there's just one world and it is 
'selected' probabilistically.





AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.

Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.


But in Bruno's transporter experiment there isn't *a* singular perspective, there are two 
different ones.




But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!

"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.


But then Everett's QM doesn't explain the facts - because there is no selection.  That's 
part of Kent's criticism.


Brent


Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.

David


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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-29 Thread David Nyman

On 29 March 2012 20:47, meekerdb  wrote:

> You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
> experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
> conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
> process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
> time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The
> Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we would
> tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the question
> becomes what do you mean by not experiencing duplication?  Is it a mere
> tautology based on how you define 'consciousness'?

Surely it's just a necessary prerequisite for accepting the
possibility of either MWI or comp?  IOW, if one rejects, on whatever
grounds, that a unique subjective perspective could be consistent with
the objective existence of multiple copies (as I think is the case
with Kent) then one is forced also to reject both MWI and comp.  Given
such a view, neither theory could be a viable explanation for one's
lived experience of observing "one universe at a time".

AFAICS, the more exotic examples you give above, e.g. a distributed
process, or a Borg-type group-mind, present no difficulties beyond
that for "ordinary" consciousness.  Again, either one accepts that
duplication of these states of affairs would be compatible, mutatis
mutandis, with the corresponding "single universe" perspective
(however exotic) or not.

Given the above, what makes it difficult to make sense of John's
objections to Bruno's argument is precisely that he accepts the
possibility of multiple copies in a comp or MWI scenario, whilst
ignoring the necessity of recovering a singular perspective.  But the
latter step is a prerequisite, in any scenario, for reproducing the
empirically uncertain state of affairs.  Without it, the "probability"
of every outcome - as John has continually reiterated - can only ever
be 100%!

"Selection", even if only implicit, is an ineliminable feature of any
theory seeking to explain the empirical facts.  Kent's proposal is a
process that eliminates all branches but one, albeit on a somewhat
different basis than Copenhagen.  Similarly, the heuristic I suggested
in an earlier post entails "selection", but in a non-destructive
manner.  BTW, I had long retained a dim recollection of a similar
selection metaphor involving "pigeon holes" from my youthful SF
reading, which I recently re-discovered to be Fred Hoyle's 1960's
novella "October the First is Too Late".  I also found that John
Gribbin refers to this very notion in his recent Multiverse book
(apparently he was a student of Hoyle's), relating it to the ideas of
Deutsch and Barbour.  This reinforced my suspicion that they do rely
implicitly on such a selection principle, though AFAICS neither of
them acknowledge it explicitly.

David

> On 3/29/2012 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

 I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you are
 using here, so as to convince me and others that it refutes indeed the
 indeterminacy about the first person experience displayed in the WM
 duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).

 Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and given
 that you are the one claiming that there is no indeterminate outcome, I 
 will
 ask to give us an algorithm predicting the result of the future
 self-localization experience.
>>>
>>>
>>> The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is deterministic.
>>>  And it has the same problems being given a probabilistic interpretation as
>>> EQM.  If you duplicated a coin in the transporter experiment the question,
>>> "Where will you expect to find the coin." has the same problems as "Where do
>>> you expect to find yourself".  The implication is that "self" is not a
>>> unique 'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to be) but is process that
>>> can be realized in different media.
>>
>>
>> I agree. But the experience is lived as unique, so we can follow Plotinus
>> in using the term soul for the owner of the 1-view, that is, the knower.
>> From its pov, it is not duplicable, in the trivial sense that the
>> duplication is never part of his experience.
>
>
> You don't know that.  It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious
> experience is something a certain physical body, a brain, does.  But if
> conscious experience is a process then it is certainly possible to create a
> process that is aware of being in both Washington and Moscow at the same
> time.  Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs in M and W.   Or The
> Borg of Star Trek.  Of course that experience would be strange and we would
> tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness."  So then the

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/29/2012 12:02 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you are using here, so
as to convince me and others that it refutes indeed the indeterminacy about the first
person experience displayed in the WM duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).

Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and given that you are
the one claiming that there is no indeterminate outcome, I will ask to give us an
algorithm predicting the result of the future self-localization experience.

The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is deterministic. And it has the
same problems being given a probabilistic interpretation as EQM. If you duplicated a
coin in the transporter experiment the question, "Where will you expect to find the
coin." has the same problems as "Where do you expect to find yourself". The
implication is that "self" is not a unique 'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to
be) but is process that can be realized in different media.

I agree. But the experience is lived as unique, so we can follow Plotinus in using the
term soul for the owner of the 1-view, that is, the knower. From its pov, it is not
duplicable, in the trivial sense that the duplication is never part of his experience.

You don't know that. It's an assumption based on the idea that conscious experience is
something a certain physical body, a brain, does. But if conscious experience is a
process then it is certainly possible to create a process that is aware of being in both
Washington and Moscow at the same time. Think of a brain wired via RF links to eyeballs
in M and W. Or The Borg of Star Trek. Of course that experience would be strange and we
would tend to say, "Yes but it's still one consciousness." So then the question becomes
what do you mean by not experiencing duplication? Is it a mere tautology based on how you
define 'consciousness'?

He would not know if we did not give him the protocol.
mathematically, this is related to the fact that no machine can know which machine she
is, already seen clearly by Post and (re)intuited by Benacerraf, and "intuited" by the
machine itself, accepting the Theaetetus' definition of knowledge.

I am not sure the problem of probability is identical in QM and COMP. In QM, Everett
showed that the P = A^2 principle does not depend on the choice of the base,

I don't think that's correct. 'A' is the amplitude of the projection on certain basis
determined by what is measured. Yes the Born rule can be applied whatever basis is
chosen, but the projection produces different A's.

so that A can be considered as measuring the relative proportion of possible accessible
relative realities. This does not work with finite multiverse, but it works with
infinite multiverse,

But infinite multiple worlds create a measure problem. That's one of Adrian
Kent's points.

and Gleason theorem justifies the unicity of the measure,

I'm not sure what you mean by that?

for sufficiently complex physical reality (meaning the Hilbert space have to be of
dimension bigger than 2. So in my opinion, the Born rule is already explained.

With COMP, as I argue, we have to justify the wave itself (assuming QM is correct) from
the relative number relations and personal points of view (as done in AUDA, for the
logic of "measure one").

Yes, that would be a signal accomplishment.

Brent

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)



On 29 Mar 2012, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.


I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you  
are using here, so as to convince me and others that it refutes  
indeed the indeterminacy about the first person experience  
displayed in the WM duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).


Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and  
given that you are the one claiming that there is no indeterminate  
outcome, I will ask to give us an algorithm predicting the result  
of the future self-localization experience.


The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is  
deterministic.  And it has the same problems being given a  
probabilistic interpretation as EQM.  If you duplicated a coin in  
the transporter experiment the question, "Where will you expect to  
find the coin." has the same problems as "Where do you expect to  
find yourself".  The implication is that "self" is not a unique  
'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to be) but is process that  
can be realized in different media.


I agree. But the experience is lived as unique, so we can follow  
Plotinus in using the term soul for the owner of the 1-view, that is,  
the knower. From its pov, it is not duplicable, in the trivial sense  
that the duplication is never part of his experience. He would not  
know if we did not give him the protocol.
mathematically, this is related to the fact that no machine can know  
which machine she is, already seen clearly by Post and (re)intuited by  
Benacerraf, and "intuited" by the machine itself, accepting the  
Theaetetus' definition of knowledge.


I am not sure the problem of probability is identical in QM and COMP.  
In QM, Everett showed that the P = A^2 principle does not depend on  
the choice of the base, so that A can be considered as measuring the  
relative proportion of possible accessible relative realities. This  
does not work with finite multiverse, but it works with infinite  
multiverse, and Gleason theorem justifies the unicity of the measure,  
for sufficiently complex physical reality (meaning the Hilbert space  
have to be of dimension bigger than 2. So in my opinion, the Born rule  
is already explained.


With COMP, as I argue, we have to justify the wave itself (assuming QM  
is correct) from the relative number relations and personal points of  
view (as done in AUDA, for the logic of "measure one").


Bruno

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



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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 29 Mar 2012, at 18:46, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012  Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

> Comp (and MWI) is a deterministic theory.

Many Worlds is deterministic but I don't know about "comp" because  
"comp" is a homemade term never completely defined and used on this  
list

Comp is "just" a modern version of Descartes Mechanist assumption. I  
called it also "digital mechanism". I make it more precise by  
introducing the notion of substitution level, and in making explicit  
it is a statement about consciousness. Up to now, you have used  
correctly "comp" (you just mess the notion of 1 and 3 person).
Comp is the hypothesis that we have a body and that we can survive a  
digital substitution of that body. There is no limit on what that body  
needs to be except for being Turing emulable. I sum up by a "yes  
doctor" scenario, which gives an operational notion of "comp  
practitioner", and which is handy for the thought experiment.
To be completely clear on the notion of "digital", I make explicit the  
Turing-Post-Church's thesis, and the minimal amount of arithmetical  
realism needed to give sense to that thesis.

and nowhere else.

That few people are aware of the consequence of comp is not  
invalidating the reasoning.

I don't even know if I agree with "comp".

So you go back at step zero now?
You were saying that everyone believe in comp sometimes ago.

I will say that I know of no law of logic that demands that every  
event have a cause.

Sure. This is even exemplified by the WM duplication. For the guy in  
W, it really looks like he is chosen between {W, M} without a cause.  
Same for the guy in M.

Logic per se does not even concern events and cause, just valid or  
invalid reasoning, whatever the matter subject.

> 3 POV could be called the bird view, the totality view (the view  
in which comp and MWI are deterministic), 1 POV the frog view

Then from the  "1 POV", the important point of view because that's  
the one we live our lives, things are not deterministic.

Nice to hear that. So you do see the difference between the 1-POV and  
the 3-POV.

To be sure I would not follow Quentin in calling them frog and bird,  
because it gives an impression that it is a question of scaling, when  
it is more a question of personal points of view (which are modeled by  
modal logic through the self-reference in AUDA). Tegmark used frog and  
bird in the sense of:  described by a term (the frog) of a quantum  
wave superposition, and the whole wave itself (the bird). Comp  
suggests that the quantum indeterminacy might be a particular case of  
the classical comp-1-indeterminacy, but this is not yet proved, and  
besides the whole UDA will show that if QM is correct, then it has to  
be that case, with the price of having to derive QM from the global  
computationalist indeterminacy, that is the one bearing on the  
universal dovetailing or elementary arithmetic. But this needs step 7.

Bruno

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

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/29/2012 10:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

The outcome is deterministic just like Everett's QM is deterministic. And it has the same
problems being given a probabilistic interpretation as EQM. If you duplicated a coin in
the transporter experiment the question, "Where will you expect to find the coin." has the
same problems as "Where do you expect to find yourself". The implication is that "self"
is not a unique 'thing' (as for example a soul is assumed to be) but is process that can
be realized in different media.

Brent

Please, don't answer me again "W and M", because we already know that a machine cannot
perceive a distant environment, and that she will describe, as a result of
self-localization, after the duplication and when opening the box, a precise city.

Bruno

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 29 Mar 2012, at 18:31, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> Identical bodies have identical minds,

Yes.

>but identical minds can have different bodies.

Who cares? It's consciousness I'm interested in.

We discuss only on the consequence of the comp hypothesis in cognitive  
science. It concerns the mind body problem, which involves  
consciousness and bodies.

> The universe does not know you are John Clark. You do.

In my symmetrical room example I know who John Clark is but I don't  
know which body is John Clark nor do I need to know because if even  
the universe does not know or care then I don't see why I should.

You should care to be able to answer the simple question: "what do you  
expect to feel in the multiplication-movie experience", which can help  
you to get the point of step 3.

> I gave you the precise definition, with the diaries and their  
owners. But you are the one saying that this was hairsplitting and  
ask me to not come back with the diary stuff.

My complaint was not that you were doing too much hairsplitting but  
that you were doing too little,

Then do it.
Technically, you are the one throwing out the nuances I made precise.

hairsplitting is vital if you're using duplicating chambers.

You said you favor Everett's QM. You did not answer Quentin when he  
commented that with Everett the Universe is a "duplicating chamber",  
so that your charge again the coimp-1-indeterminacy applies to Everett  
QM too.

My complaint is that the diaries add nothing, it's obvious that if  
the diaries the people remember writing are identical then the  
people are too, and if they aren't then the people aren't either.

But the you contradict your statement that both the guy in W and in M  
have the right to say that they are the guy who was at Helsinki, which  
makes indeed sense with comp.

> You seem unable to put yourself at the place of any of the  
resulting copies.

I believe it's you that can't imagine yourself as a copy, even if  
you were identical you think you would somehow feel different.

You keep attributing to me something I have never said.

I don't.

Me neither? I challenge you to quote me having said the contrary. You  
probably misunderstood a paragraph.

And to add to the confusion sometimes you admit that they would feel  
the same, but then in your next breath you start talking about how  
it's identical in the "3-view" but not the "1-view".

Could you quote me and be more precise.

> The 1-I of those copies is the usual 1-I, like in "can you touch  
your nose". A third person can ask them where they are, or which  
movies they saw, and get definite answers.

And both will give synchronized Identical answers.

In the step three experience we are talking about, they will give  
quite different answer. You are mixing different thought experiences.

The third party does not know which one is you and you don't know  
either.

The W guy know that he is a the guy in Helsinki, now instantiated in W.
The M guy know that he is a the guy in Helsinki, now instantiated in M.
They both know that they are not the guy in the other city.
They can both acknowledge the first person indeterminacy: they could  
not know in advance the city in which they feel now having been  
reconstituted.
If the guy in Helsinki has enough cognitive ability todo the thought  
experience (like AUDA suggests that all Löbian can do, and like they  
can do in somemore technical term), he will conclude without doing the  
experience that would that experience be done, he would not be able to  
predict that he will end up in M, (resp in W), although he can predict  
that he will end up with certainty in M or W.
This shows also that when you duplicate yourself you get one bit of  
information. That bit of information is part of both first person  
experience 1p. On the contrary the 3p view does not create, or  
receive, one bit of information.

> No one can *feel* to be in two places at once

True, no "ONE" can feel to be in TWO places at once, but  TWO can  
feel to be in TWO places at once.

And 7 billions human beings can feel to be at 7 billions different  
places.

Why not, except that usually a collection of person is not perceive as  
a person, especially when isolated and distant.

And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

I will ask you to do the "hairsplitting" about that "YOU", that you  
are using here, so as to convince me and others that it refutes indeed  
the indeterminacy about the first person experience displayed in the  
WM duplication thought experience (UDA step 3).

Given that we both agree that we don't die in that experience, and  
given that you are the one claiming that there is no indeterminate  
outcome, I will ask to give us an algorithm predicting the result of  
the future self-localization experience.

Please, don't answer me again "W and M", because we already know that  
a machine cannot

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-29 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012  Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

> Comp (and MWI) is a deterministic theory.
>

Many Worlds is deterministic but I don't know about "comp" because "comp"
is a homemade term never completely defined and used on this list and
nowhere else. I don't even know if I agree with "comp". I will say that I
know of no law of logic that demands that every event have a cause.

> 3 POV could be called the bird view, the totality view (the view in which
> comp and MWI are deterministic), 1 POV the frog view
>

Then from the  "1 POV", the important point of view because that's the one
we live our lives, things are not deterministic.

  John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-29 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> Identical bodies have identical minds,
>

Yes.

>but identical minds can have different bodies.
>

Who cares? It's consciousness I'm interested in.

> The universe does not know you are John Clark. You do.
>

In my symmetrical room example I know who John Clark is but I don't know
which body is John Clark nor do I need to know because if even the universe
does not know or care then I don't see why I should.

> I begin to think your problem is not with comp, but with the general
> issue of the mind-body problem.  Your acknowledged difficulties to see
> Nagel points on the bat corroborates this.
>

To foolish people nonsense makes perfect sense, and to fail to understand
incorrect ideas is a virtue not a vice. Nagel demands to know not what it
would be like if he was a bat but what it is like for a bat to be a bat;
the reason the "mind-body problem" has made so little progress is that to a
disturbingly large number of people Nagel's question, and ones like it,
makes perfect sense.  I'm proud to say it does not make one particle of
sense to me.

> I gave you the precise definition, with the diaries and their owners. But
> you are the one saying that this was hairsplitting and ask me to not come
> back with the diary stuff.
>

My complaint was not that you were doing too much hairsplitting but that
you were doing too little, hairsplitting is vital if you're using
duplicating chambers. My complaint is that the diaries add nothing, it's
obvious that if the diaries the people remember writing are identical then
the people are too, and if they aren't then the people aren't either.

> You seem unable to put yourself at the place of any of the resulting
> copies.
>

I believe it's you that can't imagine yourself as a copy, even if you were
identical you think you would somehow feel different. I don't. And to add
to the confusion sometimes you admit that they would feel the same, but
then in your next breath you start talking about how it's identical in the
"3-view" but not the "1-view".

> The 1-I of those copies is the usual 1-I, like in "can you touch your
> nose". A third person can ask them where they are, or which movies they
> saw, and get definite answers.
>

And both will give synchronized Identical answers. The third party does not
know which one is you and you don't know either.

> And if there is any mystery and indeterminacy in this thing you call
>> "first person indeterminacy" it quickly reduces out to types of
>> indeterminacy we've already known about, some for many thousands of years
>> and others for only about 80.
>>
>
> You keep saying this, but don't reply to the many debunking of that idea
> that I have provided
>

Here we go again. Even after dozens of messages and I don't know how many
thousands of words in reply to your posts there is supposed to be a killer
point that you made in some post long ago in a galaxy far far away (that
you don't bother to repeat) that would prove you right and me wrong and is
so absolutely brilliant that my only possible strategy to deal with it is
to simply ignore it. BULLSHIT!

>You believe in some form of telepathy.
>

BULLSHIT!

> No one can *feel* to be in two places at once
>

True, no "ONE" can feel to be in TWO places at once, but  TWO can feel to
be in TWO places at once. And YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

 John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 28 Mar 2012, at 19:29, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
>>  If 2 different consciousnesses can not be distinguished in my  
symmetrical room from the first person point of view or from the  
third person point of view then it seems pointless to insist that  
there are really 2 and not just one mind involved.

> We agree on this since the beginning.

Then why why why do you keep talking about things being the same  
from the "3-view" but not from the "1-view".

You confuse F(x) = F(y) => x = y, with
F(x) = x.
Identical bodies have identical minds, but identical minds can have  
different bodies.

> It seems to me that you are playing with words.

Words are the only means we have to communicate with and I need to  
know what they mean and that is not always obvious in very extreme  
and unusual (but not illogical) situations.

>> But you can see there are 2 bodies of Bruno Marchal just as well  
as the outside observer, and you can not tell which one is you any  
better than the outside observer can!

> No. The outsider can see both necks for example. The insider  
cannot be sure that he is not in front of some mirror, according to  
your own analysis.

No, you can touch the other fellow and he does not feel like a glass  
mirror, you can shake his hand, punch him in the jaw, do whatever 2  
people can do when they meet each other, but if I instantly  
exchanged the position of the 2 bodies you would not notice the  
slightest difference, not from the 1-view or 2-view or 3-view or any  
view, the very universe itself would notice no difference. If  
subjectively it makes no difference and objectively it makes no  
difference then call me crazy but I say it makes no difference.

> So you fail to distinguish the 1-view and the 3-view.

Yes, the universe itself can't distinguish between them and I'm not  
better than the universe.

The universe does not know you are John Clark. You do.

It seems you are eliminating the 1-view, which contradicts your  
agreement on the existence of consciousness. Consciousness is not part  
of any 3p description of the universe, yet it exists. I begin to think  
your problem is not with comp, but with the general issue of the mind- 
body problem. Your acknowledged difficulties to see Nagel points on  
the bat corroborates this.
The difference between the 1-view and the 3-view is as big as the  
difference between the diary of the W-man, and the diary of the M-man.

> OK. So what is new with comp is a form of indeterminacy which even  
in theory we cannot predict, and which does not rely on physical  
experimentation and extrapolation, nor on the same anti- 
diagonalization used by Gödel or Turing.

So in this hypothetical non quantum mechanical non Godel-Turing  
universe I could know at least in theory with 100% certainty that I  
will see Washington provided the universe was also simple enough for  
me to know the initial conditions and simple enough for me to  
calculate with them to obtain a outcome.  And because I'd know I  
would see Washington I would know with 100% certainty that I will be  
the Washington man. I ask again what is new or deep here?

You are just wrong. If you predict that you will feel to see  
Washington with 100% chance, the guy in Moscow will have all the  
memories of that prediction, and will have to admit he was wrong.

> Never say "cannot be proven" without adding "by a specific machine  
M"

There are true statements that cannot be proven by a machine that is  
both consistent and complete, and any machine powerful enough to do  
arithmetic can not be complete.

>> You want to know what is the probability you will become the  
Moscow man, but the only way that can happen is if you see images of  
Moscow, that's what being the Moscow man means.

> You can apply that argument to the throwing of a coin. That  
contradicts the statement above that you can use probability for the  
coin, so why can't you use it for the probability of feeling to be  
the Moscow man?

In common usage when you say "what is the probability I will see  
heads when I flip this coin?" there is not a 100% chance I will see  
heads as there is in the thought experiment with the cities, but  
even more important in everyday use it is not needed to make what  
might seem like hairsplitting distinctions on who "I" is,  but such  
exactitude is needed if duplicating chambers are thrown into the mix.

I gave you the precise definition, with the diaries and their owners.  
But you are the one saying that this was hairsplitting and ask me to  
not come back with the diary stuff.

You seem unable to put yourself at the place of any of the resulting  
copies. The 1-I of those copies is the usual 1-I, like in "can you  
touch your nose". A third person can ask them where they are, or which  
movies they saw, and get definite answers. If you make a definite  
specific prediction of which movie you will see in th

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-28 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/3/28 John Clark 

> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>> >>  If 2 different consciousnesses can not be distinguished in my
>> symmetrical room from the first person point of view or from the third
>> person point of view then it seems pointless to insist that there are
>> really 2 and not just one mind involved.
>>
>> > We agree on this since the beginning.
>>
>
> Then why why why do you keep talking about things being the same from the
> "3-view" but not from the "1-view".
>

Comp (and MWI) is a deterministic theory... 3 POV could be called the bird
view, the totality view (the view in which comp and MWI are deterministic),
1 POV the frog view (and many frogs having all there 1 POV, have 1 POV
plural/shared)

>
> > It seems to me that you are playing with words.
>>
>
> Words are the only means we have to communicate with and I need to know
> what they mean and that is not always obvious in very extreme and unusual
> (but not illogical) situations.
>
> >> But you can see there are 2 bodies of Bruno Marchal just as well as the
>>> outside observer, and you can not tell which one is you any better than the
>>> outside observer can!
>>>
>>
>> > No. The outsider can see both necks for example. The insider cannot be
>> sure that he is not in front of some mirror, according to your own
>> analysis.
>
>
> No, you can touch the other fellow and he does not feel like a glass
> mirror, you can shake his hand, punch him in the jaw, do whatever 2 people
> can do when they meet each other, but if I instantly exchanged the position
> of the 2 bodies you would not notice the slightest difference, not from the
> 1-view or 2-view or 3-view or any view, the very universe itself would
> notice no difference. If subjectively it makes no difference and
> objectively it makes no difference then call me crazy but I say it makes no
> difference.
>
> > So you fail to distinguish the 1-view and the 3-view.
>>
>
> Yes, the universe itself can't distinguish between them and I'm not better
> than the universe.
>
> > OK. So what is new with comp is a form of indeterminacy which even in
>> theory we cannot predict, and which does not rely on physical
>> experimentation and extrapolation, nor on the same anti-diagonalization
>> used by Gödel or Turing.
>>
>
> So in this hypothetical non quantum mechanical non Godel-Turing universe I
> could know at least in theory with 100% certainty that I will see
> Washington provided the universe was also simple enough for me to know the
> initial conditions and simple enough for me to calculate with them to
> obtain a outcome.  And because I'd know I would see Washington I would know
> with 100% certainty that I will be the Washington man. I ask again what is
> new or deep here?
>

Your bad faith ?

>
> > Never say "cannot be proven" without adding "by a specific machine M"
>>
>
> There are true statements that cannot be proven by a machine that is both
> consistent and complete, and any machine powerful enough to do arithmetic
> can not be complete.
>
> >> You want to know what is the probability you will become the Moscow
>>> man, but the only way that can happen is if you see images of Moscow,
>>> that's what being the Moscow man means.
>>>
>>
>>>
>> > You can apply that argument to the throwing of a coin. That contradicts
>> the statement above that you can use probability for the coin, so why can't
>> you use it for the probability of feeling to be the Moscow man?
>>
>
> In common usage when you say "what is the probability I will see heads
> when I flip this coin?" there is not a 100% chance I will see heads as
> there is in the thought experiment with the cities, but even more important
> in everyday use it is not needed to make what might seem like hairsplitting
> distinctions on who "I" is,  but such exactitude is needed if duplicating
> chambers are thrown into the mix.
>

We are talking about comp (it would also be the same if we were talking
about MWI)... the *usual everyday universe* in these settings is a
duplicating chamber. So either we can *never* talk about 'I' (but as I use
'I', this proves you're wrong), or your argument is a proof that comp (and
MWI) is false.

Quentin


> And if there is any mystery and indeterminacy in this thing you call
> "first person indeterminacy" it quickly reduces out to types of
> indeterminacy we've already known about, some for many thousands of years
> and others for only about 80.
>
> > Given that the probability concerns the 1-views (that is the 1-view from
>> the 1-person Pov), saying 100% for Moscow and 100% for Washington entails
>> that you predict that you will *feel* to be in the two places at once.
>>
>
> "You" would feel to be in two places at once except for one thing, "you"
> has been duplicated.
>

We know, that's not the question.

>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>  --
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-28 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >>  If 2 different consciousnesses can not be distinguished in my
> symmetrical room from the first person point of view or from the third
> person point of view then it seems pointless to insist that there are
> really 2 and not just one mind involved.
>
> > We agree on this since the beginning.
>

Then why why why do you keep talking about things being the same from the
"3-view" but not from the "1-view".

> It seems to me that you are playing with words.
>

Words are the only means we have to communicate with and I need to know
what they mean and that is not always obvious in very extreme and unusual
(but not illogical) situations.

>> But you can see there are 2 bodies of Bruno Marchal just as well as the
>> outside observer, and you can not tell which one is you any better than the
>> outside observer can!
>>
>
> > No. The outsider can see both necks for example. The insider cannot be
> sure that he is not in front of some mirror, according to your own
> analysis.

No, you can touch the other fellow and he does not feel like a glass
mirror, you can shake his hand, punch him in the jaw, do whatever 2 people
can do when they meet each other, but if I instantly exchanged the position
of the 2 bodies you would not notice the slightest difference, not from the
1-view or 2-view or 3-view or any view, the very universe itself would
notice no difference. If subjectively it makes no difference and
objectively it makes no difference then call me crazy but I say it makes no
difference.

> So you fail to distinguish the 1-view and the 3-view.
>

Yes, the universe itself can't distinguish between them and I'm not better
than the universe.

> OK. So what is new with comp is a form of indeterminacy which even in
> theory we cannot predict, and which does not rely on physical
> experimentation and extrapolation, nor on the same anti-diagonalization
> used by Gödel or Turing.
>

So in this hypothetical non quantum mechanical non Godel-Turing universe I
could know at least in theory with 100% certainty that I will see
Washington provided the universe was also simple enough for me to know the
initial conditions and simple enough for me to calculate with them to
obtain a outcome.  And because I'd know I would see Washington I would know
with 100% certainty that I will be the Washington man. I ask again what is
new or deep here?

> Never say "cannot be proven" without adding "by a specific machine M"
>

There are true statements that cannot be proven by a machine that is both
consistent and complete, and any machine powerful enough to do arithmetic
can not be complete.

>> You want to know what is the probability you will become the Moscow man,
>> but the only way that can happen is if you see images of Moscow, that's
>> what being the Moscow man means.
>>
>
>>
> > You can apply that argument to the throwing of a coin. That contradicts
> the statement above that you can use probability for the coin, so why can't
> you use it for the probability of feeling to be the Moscow man?
>

In common usage when you say "what is the probability I will see heads when
I flip this coin?" there is not a 100% chance I will see heads as there is
in the thought experiment with the cities, but even more important in
everyday use it is not needed to make what might seem like hairsplitting
distinctions on who "I" is,  but such exactitude is needed if duplicating
chambers are thrown into the mix. And if there is any mystery and
indeterminacy in this thing you call "first person indeterminacy" it
quickly reduces out to types of indeterminacy we've already known about,
some for many thousands of years and others for only about 80.

> Given that the probability concerns the 1-views (that is the 1-view from
> the 1-person Pov), saying 100% for Moscow and 100% for Washington entails
> that you predict that you will *feel* to be in the two places at once.
>

"You" would feel to be in two places at once except for one thing, "you"
has been duplicated.

  John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-28 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 27 Mar 2012, at 02:42, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Mar 26, 11:41 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 25 Mar 2012, at 22:59, Craig Weinberg wrote:



What is it you think my theory wants you not to ask?


Where does matter come from?


Matter comes from sense, as does 'where' and 'come from'.


I can agree with that, because it is the comp answer, except that this  
is not done in your non-comp "theory".






Where does sense come from?


Everywhere


This does not help.

Bruno



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



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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-28 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 28 Mar 2012, at 06:07, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> so you do get the point of the difference of the 3-view and the 1- 
view,

Truer words were never spoken. If 2 different consciousnesses can  
not be distinguished in my symmetrical room from the first person  
point of view or from the third person point of view then it seems  
pointless to insist that there are really 2 and not just one mind  
involved.

We agree on this since the beginning. You are unclear if this means or  
not if you get the difference between the 1-view and the 3-view, given  
that I was commenting a paragraph were you were disagreeing with that  
difference.

>> If this thing you call "1-comp indeterminacy" were untrue then we  
would always know what the environment was going to throw at us next  
and we could always predict our actions,

> This does not follow logically.
Of course it follows logically! All "1-comp indeterminacy" means is  
you never know what's coming next, a fact that is as true as it is  
trivial.

?

>> very obviously this is untrue so of course "1-comp indeterminacy"  
is not controversial. It's not new or deep either.

> You fail to give me the reference,

Reference? How can I give a reference when the term "1-comp  
indeterminacy" is your own invention? The only reference I can give  
you is Forest Gump, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never  
know what you're going to get".

?

It seems to me that you are playing with words.

> he usual coin is indeterminate by classical ignorance, but not for  
the Laplacean God.

It's irrelevant if the coin is deterministic or not because either  
way I don't know what the coin is going to do so the best I can do  
is use probabilities.

Different theories explains probabilities differently.

>> but so does the copy (or maybe he really is the original and you  
are the copy), you raise your right hand and you see on the video  
monitor the both images do too, you jump up and down but you see  
both images jump up and down. Not only can't you tell if you are the  
copy or the original you can't even tell which image on that video  
screen is you and which is the other fellow. If subjectively there  
is no difference and objectively there is no difference then there  
is no difference between "3-you" and "1-you".

> OK. Here you are clearly wrong, and this by your own argument. An  
outside observer can see that there are two bodies

Yes two bodies, but we're not talking about bodies, we were talking  
about points of view and consciousness.

On the contrary, we are talking on both. Indeed we are interested in  
the relation between the two.

> where the 1-view is unique, as you insist (and are right). So,  
there are two "3-you", and only one "1-you", and this makes them  
obviously different notion.

But you can see there are 2 bodies of Bruno Marchal just as well as  
the outside observer, and you can not tell which one is you any  
better than the outside observer can!

No. The outsider can see both necks for example. The insider cannot be  
sure that he is not in front of some mirror, according to your own  
analysis.

The third party sees the 2 bodies behave and answer questions in  
exactly the same way, the third party can not distinguish between  
the 2 consciousness, so it would make it meaningless to say there  
are two; the observer sees 2 chunks of matter but they are both  
behaving in a Brunomarchalian way. And you Bruno Marchal can not  
determine which of the 2 bodies is you either, if I instantly  
exchanged the position of the 2 bodies you would not notice the  
slightest change, nor could the very universe itself. None of this  
should be surprising if we understand that Bruno Marchal is not a  
noun but a adjective.

Words play. Have you read step 2? It is the step which explains more  
easily the difference between the 1-view and the 3-view, already  
without duplication.

> The difference between the 1-view and the 3-view is the difference  
between a body and the private experience of the owner of that body,  
or bodies in case of identical bodies.

The outside observer can not distinguish 2 conscious beings inside  
that cylindrical symmetrical room but only one, and the exact same  
thing is true of you Bruno Marchal, looking at the live video from  
the camera in the center of the ceiling of that room you can not  
distinguish which body is you nor could you be expected to as both  
chunks of matter are behaving in a Brunomarchalian way.

So you fail to distinguish the 1-view and the 3-view. (Re)read step 2,  
and tell me if you agree or not.

>> This thing you call "first person indeterminacy" just means a  
person doesn’t always know what they will see or what they will do  
next, that's it; and people had discovered this fact of life many  
thousands of years before Heisenberg or Godel or Turing or you were  
born.

> You betray yourself here. Yo

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-27 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> so you do get the point of the difference of the 3-view and the 1-view,
>

Truer words were never spoken. If 2 different consciousnesses can not be
distinguished in my symmetrical room from the first person point of view or
from the third person point of view then it seems pointless to insist that
there are really 2 and not just one mind involved.

>> If this thing you call "1-comp indeterminacy" were untrue then we would
>> always know what the environment was going to throw at us next and we could
>> always predict our actions,
>>
> > This does not follow logically.
>
> Of course it follows logically! All "1-comp indeterminacy" means is you
never know what's coming next, a fact that is as true as it is trivial.

>> very obviously this is untrue so of course "1-comp indeterminacy" is not
>> controversial. It's not new or deep either.
>>
>
> > You fail to give me the reference,
>

Reference? How can I give a reference when the term "1-comp indeterminacy"
is your own invention? The only reference I can give you is Forest Gump,
"life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get".

> he usual coin is indeterminate by classical ignorance, but not for the
Laplacean God.

It's irrelevant if the coin is deterministic or not because either way I
don't know what the coin is going to do so the best I can do is use
probabilities.

>> but so does the copy (or maybe he really is the original and you are the
>> copy), you raise your right hand and you see on the video monitor the both
>> images do too, you jump up and down but you see both images jump up and
>> down. Not only can't you tell if you are the copy or the original you can't
>> even tell which image on that video screen is you and which is the other
>> fellow. If subjectively there is no difference and objectively there is no
>> difference then there is no difference between "3-you" and "1-you".
>>
>
> > OK. Here you are clearly wrong, and this by your own argument. An
> outside observer can see that there are two bodies
>

Yes two bodies, but we're not talking about bodies, we were talking about
points of view and consciousness.

> where the 1-view is unique, as you insist (and are right). So, there are
> two "3-you", and only one "1-you", and this makes them obviously different
> notion.
>

But you can see there are 2 bodies of Bruno Marchal just as well as the
outside observer, and you can not tell which one is you any better than the
outside observer can! The third party sees the 2 bodies behave and answer
questions in exactly the same way, the third party can not distinguish
between the 2 consciousness, so it would make it meaningless to say there
are two; the observer sees 2 chunks of matter but they are both behaving in
a Brunomarchalian way. And you Bruno Marchal can not determine which of the
2 bodies is you either, if I instantly exchanged the position of the 2
bodies you would not notice the slightest change, nor could the very
universe itself. None of this should be surprising if we understand that
Bruno Marchal is not a noun but a adjective.

> The difference between the 1-view and the 3-view is the difference
> between a body and the private experience of the owner of that body, or
> bodies in case of identical bodies.
>

The outside observer can not distinguish 2 conscious beings inside that
cylindrical symmetrical room but only one, and the exact same thing is true
of you Bruno Marchal, looking at the live video from the camera in the
center of the ceiling of that room you can not distinguish which body is
you nor could you be expected to as both chunks of matter are behaving in a
Brunomarchalian way.

>> This thing you call "first person indeterminacy" just means a person
>> doesn’t always know what they will see or what they will do next, that's
>> it; and people had discovered this fact of life many thousands of years
>> before Heisenberg or Godel or Turing or you were born.
>>
>
> > You betray yourself here. You are telling me that you would have
> rejected the work of Gödel and Turing by telling them that we know
> indeterminacy before so that they have discovered nothing.
>

The fact that human beings don't know everything and cannot infallibly
predict the future is simply not a new discovery, even ignoring Quantum
Mechanics they generally don't know the initial conditions of things well
enough and even if they did humans don't have access to enough
computational resources to make good predictions about what will happen
next. What was discovered in the 20'th century was that we can't even in
theory know the position and momentum or the energy and time of something
to arbitrary precision. The discovery that there are things that are true
but can not be proven is also new. This thing you call "first person
indeterminacy" tells us nothing new.

>> If they are in a different sensory environments then they have different
>> memories and are no longer identical,
>>
>
> > H

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-27 Thread Joseph Knight

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

>  On 3/23/2012 3:44 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:40 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
>>  On 3/21/2012 8:16 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Stephen P. King 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  Dear Joseph,
>>>
>>> How do numbers implement that necessary capacity to define each
>>> other and themselves? What kind of relational structure is necessary? From
>>> what I can tell, it looks like a "net of Indra" where every jewel, here a
>>> number, reflects all others. This is a non-well founded structure.
>>>
>>
>>  You'll have to be more explicit than this if I am to make any sense of
>> it.
>>
>>
>>  Dear Joseph,
>>
>> I first must say that I appreciate very much this exchange as it
>> forces me to better refine my wordings and explanations. In the passage
>> above I was trying to get at something that I see in the implied structure
>> of numbers, given Bruno's amazing ideas. Remember, I "think in pictures",
>> so the relations between numbers - with their Goedelizations and Loeb
>> references - is to me a network where any one entity - here an integer - is
>> defined by and related to all others. It looks like the structure of an
>> infinite Webster Dictionary!  What I also see is that the "links" are not
>> of a constant length - some connections between numbers are tiny - like the
>> link between prime pairs - while others are infinitely long. What I am
>> trying to point out is that this structure, is very much* unlike* the
>> structure that we think of when we just consider the "number line" where
>> such a line is made up only of integers - 0, 1, 2, 3, ...
>>
>
>  This is all nice, but I can't understand it unless you give make this
> more formal/precise.
>
>
> Do you only think in words? I'm just curious... I will try harder to
> sketch the idea in words for you.
>

I do tend to think more in words or symbols than in pictures, but my intent
here is really just to get a precise understanding of what you are saying.
I hope you agree that this is necessary!


>
> Think of how Goedelizations and Goedel numbers work as a visual
> picture, perhaps as a poitrait by Matisse or Dali. We have a string of
> numbers that "represents" another set of numbers *and* some arithmetic
> operation on those numbers. Any such Goedel number is thus the equivalent
> to a "handle" on the "space" of numbers (which is, by definition, a one
> dimensional manifold , also
> see 1  and 
> 2),
> therefore if it is possible to have an infinity of goedel numbers in the
> integers then the resulting manifold would an infinity of handles (disjoint
> manifolds) on it. How many unique paths would exist on such a manifold?
> What is the "average" length of a path? (Please recall the fact that a
> handle can have any size iff it is simply connected and analytic) There is
> no such an average for the only faithful sample of the set of possible
> lengths of paths is the set itself (infinite sets are isomorphic to any of
> their proper subsets).
> Remember that we can also have goedel numbers operating on (mapping
> into) dovetailed strings of goedel numbers and goedel numbers can have
> arbitrarily long number string lengths.. This makes the dimension of
> this manifold to be infinite because of the disjointness of the "handles"
> that are induced by the Goedelizing, thus making it (modulo the
> requirements of spaces to exist) an infinite space. It is only if the
> requirements of a 
> spacenot being met that 
> this would not occur. Given that a geodelization
> introduces arithmetic into the set of numbers then is automatically
> qualifies a goedelized number line to be the dual of a space (via the Stone
> representation 
> theorem
> ).
>

Thanks for being explicit. But as I have said before, you fail to convince
me of the relevance of these mathematical gymnastics. I can see what you
are saying, but it does not seem insightful to me.


>
> QED.
>
> The visual mode and the symbol mode of languages seem to have a
> strange conjugacy
>
>
>
>
>
>>  Numbers as Bruno is considering them, I contend, has a structure
>> that mathematicians denote as "non-well founded" in the sense that there is
>> no "basic" building block out of which this structure is constructed unless
>> we force it into a very tight straight jacket. One example of just a
>> constraint occurs when we think of numbers as von Neumann 
>> numeralsor something like: 
>> s, s(), s(()), s((())), ... - where s is the null set
>> which we can define in terms of Spencer-Brown's laws of form as the Double
>> Cross (see
>> http

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-27 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 27 Mar 2012, at 06:14, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

>> Give me a example of 2 conscious beings that are identical by  
what you call "3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view",  
show they deserve different names, do that and I might get a idea  
what you're talking about; but don't give me that diaries business,  
if the diaries are different a third party can see that just as well  
as the individuals who wrote them. Just one clear non mystical  
example where objectively 2 things are identical but subjectively  
they are not, that's all I ask and I don't think it's a unreasonable  
request as your proof depends on there being such a difference.

> You ask me something impossible

I agree it is impossible, so this distinction between "3-view" and  
"1-view" that is so important in your proof turns out to be rather  
silly.

How does this follows?

What you say amounts to the following fact on which we both agree:

3-Body(A) is sufficiently similar to 3-Body(B) entails that  (1-view-A  
= 1-view-B)

And we also agree that the reverse is false:  (1-view-A = 1-view-B)  
does not make (3-Body(A) similar to 3-Body(B)).

Many posts you sent illustrates that you agree with this, and so you  
do get the point of the difference of the 3-view and the 1-view, so I  
fail to see any problem in the use of those notions.

> They are different because one live in W and the other live in W.

I previously said that it is probably meaningless to talk about the  
position of a consciousness and you agreed with me, so all the above  
means is that one consciousness forms memories caused by images of  
Moscow the other forms memories caused by images of Washington, the  
images are different so the memories are different, so the  
consciousness of the two is different so they become different people.

Yes.

The thing that differentiates the minds is not position but  
different memories, if Washington and Moscow were identical cities  
then there would still be just one consciousness, but the cities are  
very different so the two minds are two. Everybody agrees that if 2  
minds are different then there are 2 different minds, but I insist  
that if 2 minds are identical then there is really only one mind  
(not to be confused with brains)

Yes. Note that later we might still say one mind, but put different  
weight on them. This will lead to open questions, and they are  
premature here. So I agree with you, but warn that we can add some  
nuances which might play a role in the comp 1-indeterminacy measure  
problem. But I agree with all what you have said up to here, except  
the wrong attribution.

while your proof is built on the assumption that if 2 minds are  
identical they are still distinguishable at least to themselves,

Like this for example. That's non sense. I have never said that, nor  
does that play any role in the 1-indeterminacy. The 1-indeterminacy  
bears explicitly on the future different experiences. That should be  
obvious: if the experiences reains the same, the probability question  
cannot even be asked.

and that is the reason I don't think its productive to study your  
proof after that point.

... because you attribute me an idea I have never asserted, and which  
would already contradict the definition I gave for comp.

> No 1-view can be duplicated.

Why the hell not?

Exactly for the reason you insist yourself so much on. The 1-view is  
always one mind, which is identical with itself from his 1-pov.

> Both people in the two cities feel one and entire.

Both people will feel IDENTICALLY until differences between Moscow  
and Washington cause them to form different memories.

Exactly, and that is what gives sense to the question in Helsinki:  
"where will I feel to be tomorrow?". The question makes sense because  
comp makes you surviving the duplication, one and entire, somewhere.

All what you say entails that in Helsinki the guy can understand that  
there is some certainties, like "I will feel to be in M or in W",  and  
"I will not feel to be in the two places simultaneously", "If I say  
that I will feel in W, then the "me" in M will rightly consider that I  
was wrong", etc. Then, with this precise protocol, or its iteration,  
you can deduce that the guy is maximally ignorant on "W or M", and can  
put a uniform measure of probability on the set {W, M}. That is P = 1/2.

>>> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been  
annihilated in Helsinki and reconstituted in W.

>> Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from  
point A to point B. Do you really want to say that?

> That will be indeed a consequence of comp. It can be said that  
quantum mechanics, which I do not assume, *confirms* that aspect of  
comp. Good point.

So you have redefined the word "annihilated" so that it now means  
pretty much nothing at all, and thus  we will need to inv

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-26 Thread meekerdb

On 3/26/2012 9:14 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:

>> Give me a example of 2 conscious beings that are identical by what 
you call
"3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view", show they deserve
different names, do that and I might get a idea what you're talking 
about; but
don't give me that diaries business, if the diaries are different a 
third party
can see that just as well as the individuals who wrote them. Just one 
clear non
mystical example where objectively 2 things are identical but 
subjectively they
are not, that's all I ask and I don't think it's a unreasonable request 
as your
proof depends on there being such a difference.

> You ask me something impossible

I agree it is impossible, so this distinction between "3-view" and "1-view" that is so 
important in your proof turns out to be rather silly.

> They are different because one live in W and the other live in W.

I previously said that it is probably meaningless to talk about the position of a 
consciousness and you agreed with me, so all the above means is that one consciousness 
forms memories caused by images of Moscow the other forms memories caused by images of 
Washington, the images are different so the memories are different, so the consciousness 
of the two is different so they become different people. The thing that differentiates 
the minds is not position but different memories, if Washington and Moscow were 
identical cities then there would still be just one consciousness, but the cities are 
very different so the two minds are two. Everybody agrees that if 2 minds are different 
then there are 2 different minds, but I insist that if 2 minds are identical then there 
is really only one mind (not to be confused with brains) while your proof is built on 
the assumption that if 2 minds are identical they are still distinguishable at least to 
themselves,

I don't see that Bruno has argued that.  He has only argued that the two minds become 
different when they have different experiences (in M and W) and they are both the same 
person (in the usual sense) as the one in Helsinki.

and that is the reason I don't think its productive to study your proof after 
that point.

> No 1-view can be duplicated.

Why the hell not?

Because a 1-view=mind; they can only be two if they are different (c.f. your own 
explication above).

> Both people in the two cities feel one and entire.

Both people will feel IDENTICALLY until differences between Moscow and Washington cause 
them to form different memories.

>>> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been 
annihilated in
Helsinki and reconstituted in W.

>> Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from 
point A to
point B. Do you really want to say that?

> That will be indeed a consequence of comp. It can be said that quantum 
mechanics,
which I do not assume, *confirms* that aspect of comp. Good point.

So you have redefined the word "annihilated" so that it now means pretty much nothing at 
all, and thus  we will need to invent a new word if we wish to communicate the old 
meaning of "annihilated".

You seem to recognize that things are different when SOMEONE IS DUPLICATED!  So you should 
recognize that words like "annihilated" may take a different meaning when you can 
duplicate a person and destroy one copy.

> The 1-comp indeterminacy is not controversial

If this thing you call "1-comp indeterminacy" were untrue then we would always know what 
the environment was going to throw at us next and we could always predict our actions, 
very obviously this is untrue so of course "1-comp indeterminacy" is not controversial. 
It's not new or deep either.

> The quantum indeterminacy is controversial,

The explanation for quantum indeterminacy is controversial but the fact that we observe 
quantum indeterminacy is not.

Did you read Adrian Kent's paper?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0624v1.pdf
He raises some of the same problems you do, except he is pointing out they occur in 
quantum mechanics and Everett's interpretation has the same problems as Bruno's 
transporter thought experiment.

> Indeed in most textbooks that indeterminacy is still explained by the 
collapse of
the wave, etc.

The Copenhagen theory does explain it. And the non-local hidden variable pilot wave 
theory explains it. And the Many Worlds theory explains it. We have too many 
explanations, and although they are very different at least so far they all predict the 
same experimental results. I admit to having a personal preference for Many Worlds but 
that's not how truth is determined, the Universe doesn't care if I approve of it or not.

>> "you" have been duplicated

> The "3-you" has been duplicated. Not the 1-you.

Right the

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-26 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> Give me a example of 2 conscious beings that are identical by what you
>> call "3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view", show they
>> deserve different names, do that and I might get a idea what you're talking
>> about; but don't give me that diaries business, if the diaries are
>> different a third party can see that just as well as the individuals who
>> wrote them. Just one clear non mystical example where objectively 2 things
>> are identical but subjectively they are not, that's all I ask and I don't
>> think it's a unreasonable request as your proof depends on there being such
>> a difference.
>>
>
> > You ask me something impossible
>

I agree it is impossible, so this distinction between "3-view" and "1-view"
that is so important in your proof turns out to be rather silly.

> They are different because one live in W and the other live in W.
>

I previously said that it is probably meaningless to talk about the
position of a consciousness and you agreed with me, so all the above means
is that one consciousness forms memories caused by images of Moscow the
other forms memories caused by images of Washington, the images are
different so the memories are different, so the consciousness of the two is
different so they become different people. The thing that differentiates
the minds is not position but different memories, if Washington and Moscow
were identical cities then there would still be just one consciousness, but
the cities are very different so the two minds are two. Everybody agrees
that if 2 minds are different then there are 2 different minds, but I
insist that if 2 minds are identical then there is really only one mind
(not to be confused with brains) while your proof is built on the
assumption that if 2 minds are identical they are still distinguishable at
least to themselves, and that is the reason I don't think its productive to
study your proof after that point.

> No 1-view can be duplicated.
>

Why the hell not?

> Both people in the two cities feel one and entire.
>

Both people will feel IDENTICALLY until differences between Moscow and
Washington cause them to form different memories.

>>> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been annihilated
>>> in Helsinki and reconstituted in W.
>>>
>>
>> >> Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from point
>> A to point B. Do you really want to say that?
>>
>
> > That will be indeed a consequence of comp. It can be said that quantum
> mechanics, which I do not assume, *confirms* that aspect of comp. Good
> point.
>

So you have redefined the word "annihilated" so that it now means pretty
much nothing at all, and thus  we will need to invent a new word if we wish
to communicate the old meaning of "annihilated".

> The 1-comp indeterminacy is not controversial
>

If this thing you call "1-comp indeterminacy" were untrue then we would
always know what the environment was going to throw at us next and we could
always predict our actions, very obviously this is untrue so of course
"1-comp indeterminacy" is not controversial. It's not new or deep either.

> The quantum indeterminacy is controversial,
>

The explanation for quantum indeterminacy is controversial but the fact
that we observe quantum indeterminacy is not.

> Indeed in most textbooks that indeterminacy is still explained by the
> collapse of the wave, etc.
>

The Copenhagen theory does explain it. And the non-local hidden variable
pilot wave theory explains it. And the Many Worlds theory explains it. We
have too many explanations, and although they are very different at least
so far they all predict the same experimental results. I admit to having a
personal preference for Many Worlds but that's not how truth is determined,
the Universe doesn't care if I approve of it or not.

>> "you" have been duplicated
>>
>
> > The "3-you" has been duplicated. Not the 1-you.
>

Right there is the key to our disagreement. In my symmetrical duplicating
room thought experiment even the "1-you" can not tell the difference
between the "3-you" and the "1-you"! The copy appears back to back with the
original a equal distance from the center of the room, both are watching a
video display from a camera in the center of the ceiling of the cylindrical
room. You insist that you are the original but so does the copy (or maybe
he really is the original and you are the copy), you raise your right hand
and you see on the video monitor the both images do too, you jump up and
down but you see both images jump up and down. Not only can't you tell if
you are the copy or the original you can't even tell which image on that
video screen is you and which is the other fellow. If subjectively there is
no difference and objectively there is no difference then there is no
difference between "3-you" and "1-you".

> you just show that you miss or avoid the difference between the 1-view
> and the 3-view.
>

Between IDENTICAL

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-26 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Mar 26, 11:41 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> On 25 Mar 2012, at 22:59, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> > What is it you think my theory wants you not to ask?
>
> Where does matter come from?

Matter comes from sense, as does 'where' and 'come from'.

> Where does sense come from?

Everywhere

Craig

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 24 Mar 2012, at 21:10, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/24/2012 12:37 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

> You keep asking who is this "you"

Yes.

> it is the usual you, as the one you use in your everyday

The word "you" works fine in the usual everyday world,

No, please answer the last part of the message. The everyday world
if MWI is true, is a duplicating chamber.

Yes, and I think Bruno's argument is to show that if consciousness
is a kind of computation

It is not exactly that, but OK. Comp is really just "yes doctor". A
belief in a sort of possible reincarnation. It is better to see it
that way, so that we don't need to decide, in the attempt to figure
out what matter and consciousness is, between what is Turing
computable and what is Turing recoverable through the first person
indeterminacies. I currently tend to think that consciousness is not
Turing computable, but 100% Turing recoverable. Consciousness is the
quintessence of the 1-view.

then diverging computations would produce the same kind of
uncertainty that QM does in the MW interpretation. However, that
doesn't solve the problem it just makes two problems the same.

Well, assuming both COMP, *and* QM.

So we don't know that yet.

COMP makes the problem more complex, because the SWE itself has to be
explained phenomenologically or epistemologically. If both COMP and QM
are correct, then UDA proves the existence of a deduction of QM from
COMP, that is from the comp TOE of your choice, like the tiny sigma_1
complete fragment of arithmetic.

The advantage of comp is that if you accept the knowledge notion given
by Theaetetus then COMP explains both the quanta and the qualia (by
the "divine hypostases", the intensional variant of G* minus G).
Technically the quanta seem to appear there, and this makes the quanta
into first person (plural) notion, which is confirmed by Everett's
multiplication of populations of persons, the contagiousness of the
linear superposition. At the bottom of what is observable, the linear
rules, comp-apparently.

Unfortunately, the arithmetical quantization []<> p is written in Z1*,
that is precisely that [] p is Bp & Dp, that <>p is, dually, Bp v Dp,
so that []<>p is [](Bp v Dp) = B(Bp v Dp) & D(Bp v Dp), and then to
translate some Bell inequality, you need to evaluate formula nesting
the quantization ([]<> ([] <> # ...), which makes most quantum logical
assertion of that complexity still untractable today, despite the
decidability of Z1*).

Bruno

In Everett's MWI there is a problem saying what probabilities mean,
which is just the same as the one in the transporter thought
experiment(c.f. arXiv:0905.0624v1 by Ardian Kent).

Brent

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)



On 24 Mar 2012, at 21:21, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/24/2012 12:58 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Google on "theaetetus".
Socrates asked to Theaetetus to define "knowledge". Theatetus gives  
many definitions that Socrates critizes/refutes, each of them. One  
of them consists in defining knowledge by belief, in "modern time"  
the mental state, or the computational state of the belief and the  
knowledge is the same, and a belief becomes a knowledge only when  
it is (whatever the reason or absence of reason) true. Another one  
is the justified true belief, which is the one which you can  
translate in arithmetic with Gödel's predicate. You can read "Bp &  
p" by I can justify p from my previous beliefs AND it is the case  
that p. To give you an example, if the snow was blue, a machine  
asserting "snow is blue" can be said to know that snow is blue.  
Indeed, the machine asserts "the snow is blue", and it is the case  
that snow is blue (given the assumption).


The "problem" (for some) with that theory is that it entails that,  
when awake, we cannot know if we are dreaming or not, although in  
dream we can know that we are dreaming, the same for "being not  
correct". It is not a problem for comp which makes that ignorance  
unavoidable.


For a machine that "we" know to be arithmetically correct, we know  
that Bp and Bp & p are equivalent. Yet, the machine cannot know  
that about herself, and the logic of Bp and of "Bp & p" are  
different. They obeys to the modal logics G and S4Grz, but I guess  
you need to read some book or some web pages to see what I mean here.


I find your explications of knowledge to be confusing.  You refer to  
Theaetetus who said knowledge = true belief.  But in your modal  
logic formulation B stands for either provable or proven  
(Beweisbar).  "Provable" and "believed" are too very different things.


Hmm... I am just using Dennett's intentional stance toward machine. A  
machine believes p, really means only that the machine assert p.
I limit myself to machine having their beliefs closed from the modus  
ponens rule, and obeying classical logic, and applying classical logic  
on their description etc. I limit myself on classically self- 
referentially correct machine with respect to some other possible  
machines or oracles.





I think that knowledge consists of a belief that is both true and  
causally connected to the thing believed (c.f. Gettier's paradox).


That is not incompatible with the Theaetetus' idea. Somehow the whole  
problem is there.




  Of course belief that is held because the proposition is proven  
from some axioms does have a causal connection to the axioms.


Yes. And the axioms can be any successful "memes" in the way to  
unravel a difficulty. Axioms which solves many problems and many class  
of problems can win local games.


I identify partially a person with the set of its beliefs. More  
concrete person can revised beliefs (normally), which is not used  
here, given that I restrict myself of the math of the correct machine.




But that is more than just "believed".


Because you talk from the point of view of a much more complex  
consistent (let us hope) extension, viewed at some level.
For the interview I limit myself to an apparently simple machine with  
beliefs, that we all believe in (I hope).






The problem then arises when you say things like, "We know there are  
true but unprovable facts about arithmetic."


No. About the machine. Sometimes that machine is Peano Arithmetic,  
because it is the better known Löbian theory. It is an axiomatizable  
theory, which means, by a theorem of Craig, a recursively enumerable  
set of beliefs.



We only 'know' those things in different meta-system where they do  
have a causal connection to  other axioms we hypothesize as true.


Of course. The points is that the Löbian machine does that too, and  
can even do it for themselves. This gives them ability to climb the  
constructive transfinite, and to develop talks and mind tools from  
beyond the constructive.



But ultimately we cannot 'know' that axioms are true - as you say we  
just bet on them.


I think so. Even unconsciously, when our brain conceptualizes that  
there is a reality behind the back of the computer screen. We  
extrapolate all the times, and we have partial controls and partial  
responsibilities and those kinds of things.


The nice happening here is that by the incompleteness, Bp can't be  
confused with Bp & p. By incompleteness Bf does not imply f, so Bf is  
not the same as Bf & f. (Beliefs can be wrong. Knowledge can't, by  
definition).


This shows that the same set of believed arithmetical sentences can be  
seen from many points of views. They provide an arithmetical  
interpretation of Plotinus, through what happens when a universal  
machine looks inward.


It applies to us, tangentially, as far as we are self-referentially  
correct ourselves, tangentially.


Bruno


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

Re: First person indeterminacy (Re: COMP theology)


Hi John,

On 24 Mar 2012, at 21:05, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno, I did not branch out into the 1st line of my 1st quote of  
your sentence.
Not that 2^16 is 'a' number, but "parallel" gives the idea of  
identicity (at least in main qualia) which are (both) human talk.  
(Of course that's what we can do).


Parallel world means only quantum superposition. It emphasizes the  
fact that superposition is contagious through interaction.





I am glad that you agreed with my (generalized!) remark.
Now: to your question:
  - Which logics? Classical logic? -
Any one you may call 'logic(s?)' in today's HUMAN thinking.


Why humans? Why not mammals, or machines, or divine entities? Humans  
are not the only one entities suffering from limitations.




It is beyond our capabilities to even imagine (more sophisticated)  
ways of thinking, which does not mean an exclusion of such.


But this is too vague. It seems to apply to all theories.



I did not visualize a "change" in logic, simply assumed the  
possibility of "thinking differently (not necessarily using OUR math  
terms). (Cf: Cohen-Stewart's "Zarathustrans" - a fictional reference).


But may be it is a human limitation to believe that their logic is  
human.
By the way we define machine, they are machine when viewed by human or  
by non-human, so with comp we can grasp better the human limitations  
by studying the machine's limitations.






 "- we have to take our theories seriously, -"
Not in my agnosticism.


You know it is hard to be more agnostic than me :)
But it is because I am agnostic that I remind that theories are  
temporary belief, and that we can progress only by taking them  
seriously (which does NOT mean true!!!), so we can at least one day  
change our mind on them.




In conventional sciences a 'theory' is taken seriously upon  
assumptions based on other (accepted?) theories (calculations?). To  
let your ideas wander and look for yes/no consequences (within  
today's knowledge) is a game of creativity, not established science.


What do you mean by "established science"? I don't believe that make  
sense. Actually I don't believe in "Science", only in "scientific  
attitude", which, basically is only "modesty".



This is how I ended up with many of my patents. For the same reason  
do I NOT call my 'Plenitude-story' of generating universes a  
NARRATIVE, not a theory.


I don't see the problem with the word "theory", but you can call that  
a "narrative" if you prefer. You are right that the popular media  
confuse "theory" and knowledge, but for me it is a reason to use the  
right word in the correct way. If not, it is like with the religious  
notion, you encourage the use of the word by those who missed the  
idea. I think.


Bruno



On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:12 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 23 Mar 2012, at 17:34, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno:
thanks for the considerate reply. Let me pick some of your sentences:

  2^16 parallel universes needed to implement  the   
quantum  superposition  -  used in Shor's quantum algorithm  
to find the prime factors of numbers.


I would not limit the numbers and fix the quality of future  
development.


Me neither.


Nor do I take it for granted that today's logic in math  
(arithmetics) will hold.


Which logics? Classical logic?
In which logic will you describe the change of logics.
Not sure that I can give meaning to your sentence here, John. You  
seem to believe in some absolute logic to make sense of change in  
logic.






I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am  
quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next  
millennium.


Ihave more faith in 'the new': maybe that will be something better  
than today's uncertainty-riding "quantum" idea.


We can only *assume* theories, and then we can hope we will see them  
to be refuted. That's how we learn. But this means we have to take  
our theories seriously, which does not mean "true".


Bruno




 John M
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 14 Mar 2012, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:


Brent and Bruno:
you both have statements in this endless discussion about  
processing ideas of quantum computers.
I would be happy to read about ONE that works, not a s a  
potentiality, but as a real tool, the function of which is  
understood and APPLIED. (Here, on Earth).


It is an *immense* technical challenge. Up to now, a quantum  
circuit has only succeeded in showing that 15 is equal to 3*5,  
which might seems ridiculous for todays applied computing domains,  
but which is still an extraordinary technical prowess as it  
involves handling of the 2^16 parallel universes needed to  
implement the quantum superposition used in Shor's quantum  
algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers.


The amazing thing is that all the arguments of unfeasibility of  
quantum computers have been overcome by quantum software, like the  
quantum error corre

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 25 Mar 2012, at 06:09, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >Then what the hell IS the point you are making?

> That comp entails 1-indeterminacy.

Comp entails indeterminacy PERIOD.

Comp is widely known as a 3-deterministic theory.

Give me a example of 2 conscious beings that are identical by what  
you call "3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view", show  
they deserve different names, do that and I might get a idea what  
you're talking about; but don't give me that diaries business, if  
the diaries are different a third party can see that just as well as  
the individuals who wrote them. Just one clear non mystical example  
where objectively 2 things are identical but subjectively they are  
not, that's all I ask and I don't think it's a unreasonable request  
as your proof depends on there being such a difference.

You ask me something impossible, and provably impossible once we  
assume comp. It is not related to the 1-indeterminacy.

> I mean that's the pont of the step 3

And that's why I think it's a waste of time to even read step 4,  
it's built on a distinction without a difference.

Where is such a thing? The 1-difference does not come from the 3- 
difference between the copies, but between their reconstitution in  
different places.

> The point of the whole UDA is to understand that physics is a  
branch of arithmetic/computer science.

As I said before, although I'm not certain I think you could very  
well be right about that, but you have not proven it because in your  
proof you make a assumption that is not only far from obvious but  
one that I believe is downright false, the assumption that 2  
identical consciousness are not identical and thus need different  
names, like view-1 and view-3.

I don't do that assumption. Tell me where. You have introduce that  
idea, in a different thought experiences, and I said that I agree with  
you. It is just non relevant.

>> when the diaries diverge the person will too and become 2, both  
are the original person and neither is each other.

> Correct. That is part of the explanation of the comp indeterminacy.

I'm glad you agree that the one becomes 2 during the duplicating  
process, then obviously you cannot predict a single unique  
occurrence that those 2 things will experience because no such thing  
exists to predict,

Of course those things exist, because the copies, by comp, are not  
zombie, and, by comp, have both the same right to claim to be the  
original. They are different because one live in W and the other live  
in W.

two things can not be unique. All you're really saying in this 1- 
indeterminism stuff is that 2 is not equal to one, you can not put 2  
things (like you) into a one to one correspondence with one thing  
(like Moscow or like Washington).

I might say that indeed. I just make it more precise. And explain the  
consequences.

All your confusion stems from the fact that you say "I have been  
duplicated" but don't really mean it and still assume there is only  
one "I". You say Bruno Marchal will feel he is in Washington only  
and Bruno Marchal will feel he is in Moscow only but "I" will feel  
like he is in one city and one city only, and that would be true if  
there were only one "I", but there is not because *YOU* HAVE BEEN  
DUPLICATED.

This does not make sense. No 1-view can be duplicated. Both people in  
the two cities feel one and entire. So they can say "I have been 3- 
duplicated (like my body in Helsinki has been duplicated), but they  
will add "but now I feel one and entire in W, and I could not have  
predicted that".
The same, but more strikingly, with the movie-multiplication. Each  
resulting copies will say I have been 3-multiplied every 1/24 second  
for 90 minutes, but my personal experience is that I have seen one  
definite and precise movie, and I have no clue how I could predict  
which one I was about to see personally.

> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been  
annihilated in Helsinki and reconstituted in W.

Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from  
point A to point B. Do you really want to say that?

That will be indeed a consequence of comp. It can be said that quantum  
mechanics, which I do not assume, *confirms* that aspect of comp. Good  
point.

> if you grasp the 1-indeterminacy, you grasp step 3,

I grasped indeterminacy long before I started talking with you, but  
you claim that "1-indeterminacy" is different from "3-indeterminacy"  
and from physical indeterminacy and from mathematical indeterminacy  
and your claim is based on nothing more than the fact that the  
number 1 is not the same as the number 2.

Like you were thinking that there is only one kind of random string,  
you seems to believe that all indeterminacy are equivalent. But  
phenomenologically identical indeterminacy does not need to have the  
same 3-explanation.
Jus

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-25 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Mar 24, 3:58 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> OK, nice. Many confuse comp (I am a machine) and digital physics
> (reality is a machine), but comp makes reality, whatever it can be,
> being NOT a machine, nor the output of a machine. It is more a
> perspective effect on infinities of computations.

A computer's 1p reality would be digital physics though. If I am Super
Mario, my universe is a digital reality. It seems that you say comp
says that Super Mario will doubt his reality is digital, which I would
agree with if I believed comp. Super Mario's reality could be a
machine or not a machine but his 1p of it is digital because I, as
programmer, have 3p views of its digits.

Of course, I say there is more to it than that: In fact Super Mario
has no 1p at all, and is only a 3p avatar simulating our own 1p world
semiotics. Our own 1p actually permeates 3p because sensemaking is
grounded in the unity of singularity as a natural self dividing into
multiplicity rather than aggregates of data imitating the 3p functions
of a self.

>
>
>
>  UDA explains
>  why the contrary occurs, through the first person indeterminacy
>  bearing on a very huge and complex arithmetical reality.
>
> >>> Why does hugeness, complexity, first person, or indeterminacy affect
> >>> whether something is digital or not?
>
> >> Because there is a continuum of computational histories
> >> (computations)
> >> going through your state in arithmetic, or in the UD.
>
> > There are histories. OK. Why does that make them digital or not?
>
> I assume "I am a machine". Then the first person notion are NOT
> machine, they are NOT digitalisable for the first person point of view.

Does that mean that the only justification for saying they are not
digital is because our experience is not digital and you assume that
machines are like us?

>
>
>
> >> The rest follows
> >> from the 1-indeterminacy and its invariance for the huge delays in
> >> the
> >> UD virtual reconstitutions. Ask more if this is unclear, but you are
> >> supposed to have study the UDA.
>
> > Yes, I don't really get where 'delays' come from.
>
> This is explained already in step 2, and then in the fact that the
> Universal Dovetailer dovetails. It run all computations, but some are
> infinite, so it runs them little pieces by little pieces, and
> introduce vast and many delays in all computations.

I have a similar view but don't limit it to computation. The cosmos is
a process of nesting frames of experience, creating a concrete
interior semiotic medium of nested frequencies ('time') and an
abstract exterior semiotic medium of nested scales ('space'). The
process is computational, but what is being computed is sense and
motive.

>
> > Does the UDA exist
> > in 'time'? Is time an inevitable epi- of +, *, and n?
>
> I guess you mean the UD. UDA is for the 8 step UD *Argument*.
> Yes, comp makes all notions of time phenomenological, except the UD
> time steps, which are based on the successor relation s(x) = s(x) + 1.
> But physical time and subjective duration needs longer explanations,
> and are mainly indexical first person (plural, singular) notions.

Time then exists as a consequence of UD, not a primitive within which
UD computes and wouldn't have any 'delays'.

>
> > Still not seeing
> > a connection with whether something is digital or not.
>
> If we are digital, our experience bears on an infinite set of
> computations, and the result is not digital. I let you study a bit
> more the UDA.
>
>

Yeah, I don't understand. Does Super Mario's experience bear on an
infinite set of computations?

>
>  Second, the first person impression of the machine might be (and is
>  necessarily, once you accept Theaetetus' insight) a non
>  digitalizable
>  truth, from the machine point of view.
>
> >>> Which of Theaetetus' insight do you mean?
>
> >> The definition of knowledge by "true belief". Kp = Bp & p.
>
> > I think I know what that is, but since Google shows nothing at all for
> > it, please spell it out for me one more time.
>
> Google on "theaetetus".
> Socrates asked to Theaetetus to define "knowledge". Theatetus gives
> many definitions that Socrates critizes/refutes, each of them. One of
> them consists in defining knowledge by belief, in "modern time" the
> mental state, or the computational state of the belief and the
> knowledge is the same, and a belief becomes a knowledge only when it
> is (whatever the reason or absence of reason) true. Another one is the
> justified true belief, which is the one which you can translate in
> arithmetic with Gödel's predicate. You can read "Bp & p" by I can
> justify p from my previous beliefs AND it is the case that p. To give
> you an example, if the snow was blue, a machine asserting "snow is
> blue" can be said to know that snow is blue. Indeed, the machine
> asserts "the snow is blue", and it is the case that snow is blue
> (given the assumption).
>
> The "problem" (for some) with that theory is that it entails th

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> In the WM experience(s), what causes the first person difference is the
> first person differentiation, into living in W and living in M.
>

Yes, but then the 2 will have different experiences and have different
memories and their brain would be physically different, but that's not the
assumption you made in your proof. To win this argument all you have to do
us give me a non-mystical example of  2 conscious beings that are identical
by what you call "3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view", in
other words identical objectively but not subjectively. Show me why they
are so different they deserve different names.

 John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >Then what the hell IS the point you are making?
>>
>
> > That comp entails 1-indeterminacy.
>

Comp entails indeterminacy PERIOD. Give me a example of 2 conscious beings
that are identical by what you call "3-view" but NOT identical by what you
call "1-view", show they deserve different names, do that and I might get a
idea what you're talking about; but don't give me that diaries business, if
the diaries are different a third party can see that just as well as the
individuals who wrote them. Just one clear non mystical example where
objectively 2 things are identical but subjectively they are not, that's
all I ask and I don't think it's a unreasonable request as your proof
depends on there being such a difference.

> I mean that's the pont of the step 3
>

And that's why I think it's a waste of time to even read step 4, it's built
on a distinction without a difference.

> The point of the whole UDA is to understand that physics is a branch of
> arithmetic/computer science.
>

As I said before, although I'm not certain I think you could very well be
right about that, but you have not proven it because in your proof you make
a assumption that is not only far from obvious but one that I believe is
downright false, the assumption that 2 identical consciousness are not
identical and thus need different names, like view-1 and view-3.

>> when the diaries diverge the person will too and become 2, both are the
>> original person and neither is each other.
>>
>
> > Correct. That is part of the explanation of the comp indeterminacy.
>

I'm glad you agree that the one becomes 2 during the duplicating process,
then obviously you cannot predict a single unique occurrence that those 2
things will experience because no such thing exists to predict, two things
can not be unique. All you're really saying in this 1-indeterminism stuff
is that 2 is not equal to one, you can not put 2 things (like you) into a
one to one correspondence with one thing (like Moscow or like Washington).
All your confusion stems from the fact that you say "I have been
duplicated" but don't really mean it and still assume there is only one
"I". You say Bruno Marchal will feel he is in Washington only and Bruno
Marchal will feel he is in Moscow only but "I" will feel like he is in one
city and one city only, and that would be true if there were only one "I",
but there is not because *YOU* HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.

> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been annihilated in
> Helsinki and reconstituted in W.
>

Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from point A to
point B. Do you really want to say that?

> See below, you have fail to answer more than four posts.
>

I've responded to dozens of your posts! What the hell are you talking
about? Last time you said you wrote a wonderful post that I somehow missed
that explained everything. I asked you to resend it. You did not. Now you
tell me there are 4 wonderful posts of yours that I somehow missed that
explained everything. I now ask you to resend the 4. And I've looked below
and I see nothing that clarifies things.

> if you grasp the 1-indeterminacy, you grasp step 3,
>

I grasped indeterminacy long before I started talking with you, but you
claim that "1-indeterminacy" is different from "3-indeterminacy" and from
physical indeterminacy and from mathematical indeterminacy and your claim
is based on nothing more than the fact that the number 1 is not the same as
the number 2.

> and so tell me what you think about step 4 .
>

I don't see the point in going to step 4 if step 3 is silly.

> It is enough to interview each copies, they understand automatically what
> we mean by "you".
>

Fine, "you" have been duplicated so now there are 2 "you", ONE "you" will
say Moscow and ONE "you" will say Washington so "you" will be in Moscow AND
Washington because 1+1 = 2.

> You are the only one having a problem with this.
>

Great, then I can claim priority in finding the error in your proof, or at
least that particular error; and I've got to tell you, holding a minority
opinion is not a new experience for me.

> It might be phenomenologically identical with other indeterminacy, but it
> has a simpler explanation
>

It can't explain why you can't know the momentum and position of a particle
with arbitrary precision and it can't explain why the only way to know if a
Turing Machine will stop or not is to watch it and see what it does and the
only thing it does say is that life is like a box of chocolates you never
know what you're going to get, and I already knew that.

John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread meekerdb

On 3/24/2012 12:58 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Google on "theaetetus".
Socrates asked to Theaetetus to define "knowledge". Theatetus gives many definitions
that Socrates critizes/refutes, each of them. One of them consists in defining knowledge
by belief, in "modern time" the mental state, or the computational state of the belief
and the knowledge is the same, and a belief becomes a knowledge only when it is
(whatever the reason or absence of reason) true. Another one is the justified true
belief, which is the one which you can translate in arithmetic with Gödel's predicate.
You can read "Bp & p" by I can justify p from my previous beliefs AND it is the case
that p. To give you an example, if the snow was blue, a machine asserting "snow is blue"
can be said to know that snow is blue. Indeed, the machine asserts "the snow is blue",
and it is the case that snow is blue (given the assumption).

The "problem" (for some) with that theory is that it entails that, when awake, we cannot
know if we are dreaming or not, although in dream we can know that we are dreaming, the
same for "being not correct". It is not a problem for comp which makes that ignorance
unavoidable.

For a machine that "we" know to be arithmetically correct, we know that Bp and Bp & p
are equivalent. Yet, the machine cannot know that about herself, and the logic of Bp and
of "Bp & p" are different. They obeys to the modal logics G and S4Grz, but I guess you
need to read some book or some web pages to see what I mean here.

I find your explications of knowledge to be confusing. You refer to Theaetetus who said
knowledge = true belief. But in your modal logic formulation B stands for either provable
or proven (Beweisbar). "Provable" and "believed" are too very different things. I think
that knowledge consists of a belief that is both true and causally connected to the thing
believed (c.f. Gettier's paradox). Of course belief that is held because the proposition
is proven from some axioms does have a causal connection to the axioms. But that is more
than just "believed". The problem then arises when you say things like, "We know there
are true but unprovable facts about arithmetic." We only 'know' those things in different
meta-system where they do have a causal connection to other axioms we hypothesize as
true. But ultimately we cannot 'know' that axioms are true - as you say we just bet on them.

Brent

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread meekerdb

On 3/24/2012 12:37 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

> You keep asking who is this "you"

Yes.

>  it is the usual you, as the one you use in your everyday

The word "you" works fine in the usual everyday world,

No, please answer the last part of the message. The everyday world if MWI is true, is a 
duplicating chamber.

Yes, and I think Bruno's argument is to show that if consciousness is a kind of 
computation then diverging computations would produce the same kind of uncertainty that QM 
does in the MW interpretation.  However, that doesn't /solve/ the problem it just makes 
two problems the same.  In Everett's MWI there is a problem saying what probabilities 
mean, which is just the same as the one in the transporter thought experiment(c.f. 
arXiv:0905.0624v1 by Ardian Kent).

Brent

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Re: First person indeterminacy (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread John Mikes

Bruno, I did not branch out into the 1st line of my 1st quote of your
sentence.
Not that 2^16 is 'a' number, but "parallel" gives the idea of identicity
(at least in main qualia) which are (both) human talk. (Of course that's
what we can do).
I am glad that you agreed with my (generalized!) remark.
Now: to your question:
 *  - Which logics? Classical logic? -*
Any one you may call 'logic(s?)' in today's HUMAN thinking.* *It is beyond
our capabilities to even imagine (more sophisticated) ways of thinking,
which does not mean an exclusion of such. I did not visualize a "change" in
logic, simply assumed the possibility of "thinking differently (not
necessarily using OUR math terms). (Cf: Cohen-Stewart's "Zarathustrans" - a
fictional reference).

 "*- we have to take our theories seriously, -"*
Not in my agnosticism. In conventional sciences a 'theory' is taken
seriously upon assumptions based on other (accepted?) theories
(calculations?). To let your ideas wander and look for yes/no consequences
(within today's knowledge) is a game of creativity, not established
science. This is how I ended up with many of my patents. For the same
reason do I NOT call my 'Plenitude-story' of generating universes a *
NARRATIVE*, not a theory.

JohnM


On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:12 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
>  On 23 Mar 2012, at 17:34, John Mikes wrote:
>
>  Bruno:
> thanks for the considerate reply. Let me pick some of your sentences:
>
>   *2^16 parallel universes needed
> to implement  the  quantum  superposition**  -  used in Shor's
> quantum algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers*.
>
> I would not limit the numbers and fix the quality of future development.
>
>
> Me neither.
>
>
>  Nor do I take it for granted that today's logic in math (arithmetics)
> will hold.
>
>
> Which logics? Classical logic?
> In which logic will you describe the change of logics.
> Not sure that I can give meaning to your sentence here, John. You seem to
> believe in some absolute logic to make sense of change in logic.
>
>
>
>
> *I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am
> quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next millennium
> *.
>
> Ihave more faith in 'the new': maybe that will be something better than
> today's uncertainty-riding "quantum" idea.
>
>
> We can only *assume* theories, and then we can hope we will see them to be
> refuted. That's how we learn. But this means we have to take our theories
> seriously, which does not mean "true".
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>  John M
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>>  On 14 Mar 2012, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:
>>
>>  Brent and Bruno:
>> you both have statements in this endless discussion about processing
>> ideas of quantum computers.
>> I would be happy to read about ONE that works, not a s a potentiality,
>> but as a real tool, the function of which is understood and APPLIED. (Here,
>> on Earth).
>>
>>
>> It is an *immense* technical challenge. Up to now, a quantum circuit has
>> only succeeded in showing that 15 is equal to 3*5, which might seems
>> ridiculous for todays applied computing domains, but which is still an
>> extraordinary technical prowess as it involves handling of the 2^16
>> parallel universes needed to implement the quantum superposition used in
>> Shor's quantum algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers.
>>
>> The amazing thing is that all the arguments of unfeasibility of quantum
>> computers have been overcome by quantum software, like the quantum error
>> corrections, and the topological fault tolerant quantum machinery.
>>
>> I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am quite
>> uncertain if it is for this century of for the next millennium. But bigger
>> quantum circuits will emerge this century, and quantum cryptographic
>> technic might already exist, but that's a military secret, and a banker
>> secret :).
>>
>> There is also some prospect to discover quantum machinery operating in
>> nature. I read some times ago, that a super-heavy object has been
>> discovered which structure seemed to have to be unstable for much
>> physicists and some have elaborated models in which quarks are exploiting a
>> quantum-computational game to attain stability.
>>
>> And then, to make happy Stephen, the "not very plausible yet not entirely
>> excluded despite what Tegmark argues" possibility that life exploits
>> quantum algorithm. See for example the two following papers referred to in
>> my today's mail:
>>
>>  1) Clark, K.B. (2010). Bose-Einstein condensates form in heuristics
>> learned by ciliates deciding to signal 'social' commitments. BioSystems,
>> 99(3), 167-178. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883726
>>
>> 2) Clark, K.B. (2010). Arrhenius-kinetics evidence for quantum tunneling
>> in microbial "social" decision rates. Communicative & Integtrative Biology,
>> 3(6), 540-544. http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cib/article/12842
>>
>>

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 24 Mar 2012, at 18:44, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Quentin Anciaux
wrote:

> From a 3rd POV, there is no indeterminacy,

From a "3rd POV" there is ALWAYS indeterminacy, we don't know for
sure what the thing we're looking at will do. From a "1 POV" there
is ALWAYS indeterminacy, we don't know for sure what we will do
until we do it. Bruno says there is a vast difference between these
two things and his entire proof hinges on that, and this despite him
conceding that this difference does not involve atoms or
information. If someone can clearly explain exactly what is
remaining that causes this difference without resorting to mystical
BULLSHIT I will concede the argument and publicly thank them for
eliminating a small part of my ignorance.

In the WM experience(s), what causes the first person difference is
the first person differentiation, into living in W and living in M.

Bruno

> you'll (both you) still feel singular,

Yes.

> and the you who was asked before the experience

Is now 2 because HE HAS BEEN DUPLICATED.

> what he expect to feel after the duplication

If he is logical he will expect to feel he is in Moscow and
Washington, if he is not I can not say what he will predict because
there are many ways to be wrong and only one way to be right.

was unable to predict which one of the WM guy it will be, yet each
one is only one.

But each one is you. Your premise is that object X has been exactly
duplicated but then you ask what one and only one SINGULAR event
will happen to it. The question makes no sense.

> You keep asking who is this "you"

Yes.

> it is the usual you, as the one you use in your everyday

The word "you" works fine in the usual everyday world, but when you
bring duplicating chambers into the mix concepts that you never
needed to give a second thought to become vitally important.

John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/3/24 John Clark 

> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> > From a 3rd POV, there is no indeterminacy,
>
>
> From a "3rd POV" there is ALWAYS indeterminacy,
>

No in the f***ing though experiment you always want to change as you see
fit.


> we don't know for sure what the thing we're looking at will do. From a "1
> POV" there is ALWAYS indeterminacy, we don't know for sure what we will do
> until we do it. Bruno says there is a vast difference between these two
> things and his entire proof hinges on that, and this despite him conceding
> that this difference does not involve atoms or information. If someone can
> clearly explain exactly what is remaining that causes this difference
> without resorting to mystical BULLSHIT I will concede the argument and
> publicly thank them for eliminating a small part of my ignorance.
>
> > you'll (both you) still feel singular,
>
>
> Yes.
>
> > and the you who was asked before the experience
>
>
> Is now 2 because HE HAS BEEN DUPLICATED.
>
>
>
>> > what he expect to feel after the duplication
>
>
> If he is logical he will expect to feel he is in Moscow and Washington, if
> he is not I can not say what he will predict because there are many ways to
> be wrong and only one way to be right.
>
>
>> was unable to predict which one of the WM guy it will be, yet each one is
>> only one.
>>
>
> But each one is you. Your premise is that object X has been exactly
> duplicated but then you ask what one and only one SINGULAR event will
> happen to it. The question makes no sense.
>
>
>
>> > You keep asking who is this "you"
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> >  it is the usual you, as the one you use in your everyday
>
>
> The word "you" works fine in the usual everyday world,
>

No, please answer the last part of the message. The everyday world if MWI
is true, is a duplicating chamber.


> but when you bring duplicating chambers into the mix concepts that you
> never needed to give a second thought to become vitally important.
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

> From a 3rd POV, there is no indeterminacy,

>From a "3rd POV" there is ALWAYS indeterminacy, we don't know for sure what
the thing we're looking at will do. From a "1 POV" there is ALWAYS
indeterminacy, we don't know for sure what we will do until we do it. Bruno
says there is a vast difference between these two things and his entire
proof hinges on that, and this despite him conceding that this difference
does not involve atoms or information. If someone can clearly explain
exactly what is remaining that causes this difference without resorting to
mystical BULLSHIT I will concede the argument and publicly thank them for
eliminating a small part of my ignorance.

> you'll (both you) still feel singular,

Yes.

> and the you who was asked before the experience

Is now 2 because HE HAS BEEN DUPLICATED.

> > what he expect to feel after the duplication

If he is logical he will expect to feel he is in Moscow and Washington, if
he is not I can not say what he will predict because there are many ways to
be wrong and only one way to be right.

> was unable to predict which one of the WM guy it will be, yet each one is
> only one.
>

But each one is you. Your premise is that object X has been exactly
duplicated but then you ask what one and only one SINGULAR event will
happen to it. The question makes no sense.

> > You keep asking who is this "you"

Yes.

> >  it is the usual you, as the one you use in your everyday

The word "you" works fine in the usual everyday world, but when you bring
duplicating chambers into the mix concepts that you never needed to give a
second thought to become vitally important.

  John K Clark

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Mar 24, 4:32 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> On 23 Mar 2012, at 00:06, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> >>> How does a digital artificial intelligence make sense of it's world
> >>> without converting or sampling every truth about that world
> >>> available
> >>> to it into digital?
>
> >> First, the fact that the digital machine converts "truth about the
> >> world" into digital, does not make that world digital.
>
> > Which world, the one being converted or the one that has been
> > converted?
>
> The one being converted.

Then yes, of course. I am not claiming that the entire universe
becomes digital because I turn a computer on.

>
>
>
> >> UDA explains
> >> why the contrary occurs, through the first person indeterminacy
> >> bearing on a very huge and complex arithmetical reality.
>
> > Why does hugeness, complexity, first person, or indeterminacy affect
> > whether something is digital or not?
>
> Because there is a continuum of computational histories (computations)
> going through your state in arithmetic, or in the UD.

There are histories. OK. Why does that make them digital or not?

>The rest follows
> from the 1-indeterminacy and its invariance for the huge delays in the
> UD virtual reconstitutions. Ask more if this is unclear, but you are
> supposed to have study the UDA.

Yes, I don't really get where 'delays' come from. Does the UDA exist
in 'time'? Is time an inevitable epi- of +, *, and n? Still not seeing
a connection with whether something is digital or not.

>
>
>
> >> Second, the first person impression of the machine might be (and is
> >> necessarily, once you accept Theaetetus' insight) a non digitalizable
> >> truth, from the machine point of view.
>
> > Which of Theaetetus' insight do you mean?
>
> The definition of knowledge by "true belief". Kp = Bp & p.

I think I know what that is, but since Google shows nothing at all for
it, please spell it out for me one more time.

>
>
>
> > To me speculating that a machine has a first person impression is just
> > a way to plug the problem.
>
> With the Theaetetus definition, modeling the first person by the
> knower, and modeling belief by provability (as the incompleteness can
> justify), the machine has a first person experience.

To me all that says is that since knowledge, 'belief', and provability
have a relation, then abracadabra: first person experience.

>It is a theorem,
> not a speculation.

If it is impossible to test the theorem, then what is the difference?

> Non comp makes the machine into a mechanical
> variant of a zombie.

Non-comp is the atheism of computationalism. it does not make a
machine anything, it lets machines be the inanimate puppets that they
have always been. It is comp which introduces the expectation of
sentience in machines and then balks at the idea of their absence.

>
> > Since subjectivity doesn't make sense
> > mechanically or digitally,
>
> This is what we ask an argument for. You beg the question.

I understand, I'm just offering insight into the psychology behind the
formulation of the idea of first person machine states.

>
> > we'll say it's non digital and hang a
> > Mission Accomplished sign. It takes advantage of the privacy and
> > ineffability of subjectivity to misrepresent its absence as possible
> > presence, even though our experience with machines thus far has not
> > supported any presence at all.
>
> >> That is actually the case,
> >> because the impression of the machine is a conjunct of both a
> >> digitalizable belief and (some) truth, with the greek's suggested
> >> notion of knowledge.
>
> > beliefs, truths, knowledge...these are abstractions to me. Tertiary
> > level commentaries on experience which barely exist. Important, sure,
> > but lacking in any power to initiate direct action. Which is maybe why
> > a machine has no such power.
>
> >> If you negate this, it means that
> >> you assume the level to be "infinitely low",
>
> > No, it means I understand that your assumption that description
> > can be
> > quantified is simplistic and inaccurate.
>
>  Description of my (generalized) brain. With your theory we have
>  zombie.
>
> >>> Never zombie, only puppet. Zombie is like calling water 'wet fire'.
>
> >> I don't think so. With the Heisenberg Matrix of the Milky way, no-one
> >> would be able to distinguish me or you from the behavior of the
> >> entity
> >> simulated. If comp is false, those entity who behaves "exactly" like
> >> you or me, are not conscious, and so they are by definition p-zombie.
>
> > The word zombie privileges the expectation of consciousness, while the
> > word puppet does not.
>
> So you beg the question here too. By definiion a zombie has no
> consciousness, but behaves like a conscious being.

A puppet does the same thing. Why not use puppet instead? There must
be some reason why you resist this change.

>
> > The fact that the Heisenberg Matrix of the Milky
> > way fails completely in detecting consciousness
>
> I said that we f

Re: First person indeterminacy (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 23 Mar 2012, at 17:34, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:
thanks for the considerate reply. Let me pick some of your sentences:

2^16 parallel universes needed to implement the
quantum superposition - used in Shor's quantum algorithm
to find the prime factors of numbers.

I would not limit the numbers and fix the quality of future
development.

Me neither.

Nor do I take it for granted that today's logic in math
(arithmetics) will hold.

Which logics? Classical logic?
In which logic will you describe the change of logics.
Not sure that I can give meaning to your sentence here, John. You seem
to believe in some absolute logic to make sense of change in logic.

I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am
quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next
millennium.

Ihave more faith in 'the new': maybe that will be something better
than today's uncertainty-riding "quantum" idea.

We can only *assume* theories, and then we can hope we will see them
to be refuted. That's how we learn. But this means we have to take our
theories seriously, which does not mean "true".

Bruno

John M
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal
wrote:

On 14 Mar 2012, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:

Brent and Bruno:
you both have statements in this endless discussion about
processing ideas of quantum computers.
I would be happy to read about ONE that works, not a s a
potentiality, but as a real tool, the function of which is
understood and APPLIED. (Here, on Earth).

It is an *immense* technical challenge. Up to now, a quantum circuit
has only succeeded in showing that 15 is equal to 3*5, which might
seems ridiculous for todays applied computing domains, but which is
still an extraordinary technical prowess as it involves handling of
the 2^16 parallel universes needed to implement the quantum
superposition used in Shor's quantum algorithm to find the prime
factors of numbers.

The amazing thing is that all the arguments of unfeasibility of
quantum computers have been overcome by quantum software, like the
quantum error corrections, and the topological fault tolerant
quantum machinery.

I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am quite
uncertain if it is for this century of for the next millennium. But
bigger quantum circuits will emerge this century, and quantum
cryptographic technic might already exist, but that's a military
secret, and a banker secret :).

There is also some prospect to discover quantum machinery operating
in nature. I read some times ago, that a super-heavy object has been
discovered which structure seemed to have to be unstable for much
physicists and some have elaborated models in which quarks are
exploiting a quantum-computational game to attain stability.

And then, to make happy Stephen, the "not very plausible yet not
entirely excluded despite what Tegmark argues" possibility that life
exploits quantum algorithm. See for example the two following papers
referred to in my today's mail:

1) Clark, K.B. (2010). Bose-Einstein condensates form in heuristics
learned by ciliates deciding to signal 'social' commitments.
BioSystems, 99(3), 167-178. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883726

2) Clark, K.B. (2010). Arrhenius-kinetics evidence for quantum
tunneling in microbial "social" decision rates. Communicative &
Integtrative Biology, 3(6), 540-544. http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cib/article/12842

I am skeptical to be franc. Not too much time to dig on this for
now. The second is freely available. if someone want to comment on
it, please do.

Bruno

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM, meekerdb
wrote:

On 3/12/2012 7:16 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/12/2012 10:00 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/11/2012 11:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

An Evil Wizard could pop into my vicinity and banish me to
the Nether plane! A "magical act", if real and just part of a
story, is an event that violates some conservation law. I don't
see what else would constitute magic... My point is that Harry
Potterisms would introduce cul-de-sacs that would totally screw
up the statistics and measures, so they have to be banished.

Because otherwise things would be screwed up?

Chain-wise consistency and concurrency rules would prevent these
pathologies, but to get them we have to consider multiple and
disjoint observers and not just "shared" 1p as such implicitly
assume an absolute frame of reference. Basically we need both
conservation laws and general covariance. Do we obtain that
naturally from COMP? That's an open question.

You seem to be begging the question: We need regularity,
otherwise things wouldn't be regular.

No, you are dodging the real question: How is the measure
defined?

The obvious way is that all non-self-contradictory events are
equally likely. But that's hypothesized, not defin

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-24 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 23 Mar 2012, at 22:14, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You are still avoiding the WM duplication.

There is no spliting in Many Worlds unless something is different,   
if 2 universes are identical  then they have merged and there is now  
only one universe.

I can accept that, and that is why I often said "splitting/ 
differentiation". I use in comp, to make the notion of the comp- 
measure more intuitive, the Y = II rule, which means that a  
bifurcation in the future backtrack on the past.

>> the copy and the original agree on what occurred, so according to  
you the first person perspective, the one that both you and I  
believe is most important, is identical; so there is only one  
perspective, one consciousness.

> Sure. This does not invalidate the point I am making. It does not  
address the point at all.

Then what the hell IS the point you are making?

That comp entails 1-indeterminacy. 5 I mean that's the pont of the  
step 3). The point of the whole UDA is to understand that physics is a  
branch of arithmetic/computer science.

> In the thought experiment I am using, the content of the diaries  
are equal up to some pages, and then they diverge.

And when the diaries diverge the person will too and become 2, both  
are the original person and neither is each other.

Correct. That is part of the explanation of the comp indeterminacy.

> The experiencer tries to predict which branch they will live.

If the experiencer believes that when something is duplicated it  
remains singular then any prediction made regarding it will be  
gibberish.

Others and myself have answered this many times.

> You continue to avoid the points.

It's rather easy to avoid your points as you have NOT mentioned a  
single one, you just tell me to follow these wonderful but phantom  
points.

Each step in the UDA has a precise point. You fail to say what is your  
problem with them.

>Like Brent said, the difference is between annihilation and no  
reconstitution (= dying), and annihilation + reconstitution (=  
teleportation, or duplication, etc.).

The fact of the matter is that the Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday  
has not been duplicated or teleported or reconstituted, the Bruno  
Marchal of right now remembers being him but he is different and has  
memories that other version did not have; so if you insist that the  
Helsinki man is dead

Not only I don't insist on that, but I have never asserted it.

then to be consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of noon  
yesterday is dead, and if you insist that the Helsinki man has been  
annihilated then to be consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of  
noon yesterday has been annihilated. Are you certain you really want  
to do this?

There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been annihilated  
in Helsinki and reconstituted in W.

> Please, answer my post of the 19 mars,

I don't know what 19 mars is and I thought I'd responded to all your  
posts but if I missed one where you made everything clear (I'm not  
holding my breath) then please resend it.

See below, you have fail to answer more than four posts.

>Things are rather simple.

Yes, but not simple in a good way.

> You pretend that there is no 1-indeterminacy.

I insist that indeterminacy exists in every one of the many thought  
experiments proposed by members of this list during the last month,  
but you pretend to have discovered a brand new form of it never  
known before. I see no evidence you have done anything of the sort.

As you said yourself the 1-indeterminacy which accompanies the  
classical self-duplication is the building block of the whole UDA. You  
said it was nonsense. It looks you grasp it now, although it is not  
clear that you have seen how different it is from all other form of  
indeterminacy known before. But if you grasp the 1-indeterminacy, you  
grasp step 3, and so tell me what you think about step 4 (in sane04).

> Then you have to explain to us how you predict the movie that you  
will remember having seen when the movie-multiplication experience  
is completed.

Bruno Marchal has asked this many times but despite many requests  
for clarification of who "you" is  such a explanation, that would  
establish a new sort indeterminacy, has not been received.

It is enough to interview each copies, they understand automatically  
what we mean by "you". You are the only one having a problem with  
this. You seem to be negative and dismissive for no reason.

> and you seem to accept that 1-indeterminacy in some post, and then  
just dismiss it as trivial.

I accept "1-indeterminacy" because as described by you it is  
identical to the indeterminacy in physics and mathematics that we've  
known about for a very long time,

It might be phenomenologically identical with other indeterminacy, but  
it has a simpler explanation which does not involve neither QM, nor  
Gödel or

Re: Fwd: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Stephen P. King

On 3/23/2012 6:47 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:

-- Forwarded message --
From: *Joseph Knight* <mailto:joseph.9...@gmail.com>>

Date: Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)
To: Joseph Knight mailto:joseph.9...@gmail.com>>

Sorry Stephen, I had not finished my reply to your message when I 
accidently hit "Send" (and then got swept away to do other things). 
Here's the rest of my response.

On Mar 23, 2012, at 2:44 PM, Joseph Knight <mailto:joseph.9...@gmail.com>> wrote:

A pre-ordained harmony is, by definition, a global regime. I
am quite happy with the fact that you point out here, that
"arithmetical truth is independent of a particular
instantiation". I am arguing against independence _of all
instantiations_,

I know. But I think that the fact that arithmetical truth is
independent of _particular instantiations_ already implies that
the truth "1+1=2", say, exists independently of _all
instantiations_ (here "instantiation" means "physical
instantiation", as I'm sure you mean as well.) In other words,
it exists "Platonically".

OK, but it seems to me that making this jump from
"independent of any particular" to "independent of all
particulars" is a leap too far as it is, as the religious would
say, an act of blind faith.

I think the opposite is true: it's a bizarre and unjustified belief to 
think that there is nothing more than particulars.

Dear Joseph,

Let us reason a bit about this belief. I think that it is very much 
justified simply because if one cannot name an object then statements 
about its truth or existence cannot be communicated. If a true statement 
about something cannot be communicated, is it really a truth? I assume, 
perhaps wrongly, that if an object can be named than it is, by 
definition, a "particular". Therefore, by Bp&p -> p,  believing in a 
statement and that statement is true obliges me to only believe in 
particulars. Now your comment might be restated as "it is bizarre and 
unjustified to think that existence (or there is nothing more) is 
nothing more than that which can be named". Would you still believe the 
statement? I am merely trying to be consistent with Bruno's thesis.

snip

You refer to Pratt's work. It seems like an interesting
metaphor, but I don't see how it solves the problem. Could
you be more explicit? The "rational mechanics" paper takes,
IMO, some odd and unjustified leaps when it comes to his
definitions. (An example: he says that the categories SET
and SET^OP "represent respectively the physical and the
mental." How???)

Did you read the entire paper? He does explain this on
page 4 for example using functions and antifunctions... The
key is to not think of bodies and minds as "things" but as
processes. Pratt is considering a "process dualism", not a
"substance dualism" as he points out that the notion of
substance is the fatal flaw of Descartes' program. I was
originally looking at Leibniz' Monadology in my study of the
mind body problem and found a similar solution, but such
required a rehabilitation of Leibniz' "pre-established
harmony" concept. (Basically, we would replace his idea of a
global fiat regime of synchronizations between the monads
with a "ongoing process" idea using concepts from quantum
game theory. I have found similar ideas in the work of Lee
Smolin, Stuart Kaufmann

<http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Universe-Self-Organization-Complexity/dp/0195111303/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332256837&sr=1-1>
and David Deutsch. But that is not sufficient to make it
"true". It is just a "crazy idea" at this point.)

Yes, I understand what the constructs are, and I see how Pratt
is making an interesting analogy, but I don't see the
justification for his conclusions about the mind-body problem.
But I haven't finished grokking the article.

It took me close to 6 years of autodidactic study to make
sense of Pratt's work and I must say that reading the other
papers on theChu Guide <http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html>
helped a lot. I know that it is too much to ask for you to invest
this much effort into an idea that is by my admission "crazy" but
I invite you to anyway.

Thanks for the link; I'll continue looking into it.

Awesome! I hope that it is at least mildly entertaining.

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/23/2012 3:44 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:



On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:40 AM, Stephen P. King 
mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:


On 3/21/2012 8:16 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:



On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Stephen P. King
mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:


Dear Joseph,

How do numbers implement that necessary capacity to
define each other and themselves? What kind of relational
structure is necessary? From what I can tell, it looks like a
"net of Indra" where every jewel, here a number, reflects all
others. This is a non-well founded structure.


You'll have to be more explicit than this if I am to make any
sense of it.


Dear Joseph,

I first must say that I appreciate very much this exchange as
it forces me to better refine my wordings and explanations. In the
passage above I was trying to get at something that I see in the
implied structure of numbers, given Bruno's amazing ideas.
Remember, I "think in pictures", so the relations between numbers
- with their Goedelizations and Loeb references - is to me a
network where any one entity - here an integer - is defined by and
related to all others. It looks like the structure of an infinite
Webster Dictionary!  What I also see is that the "links" are not
of a constant length - some connections between numbers are tiny -
like the link between prime pairs - while others are infinitely
long. What I am trying to point out is that this structure, is
very much_unlike_ the structure that we think of when we just
consider the "number line" where such a line is made up only of
integers - 0, 1, 2, 3, ...


This is all nice, but I can't understand it unless you give make this 
more formal/precise.


Do you only think in words? I'm just curious... I will try harder 
to sketch the idea in words for you.


Think of how Goedelizations and Goedel numbers work as a visual 
picture, perhaps as a poitrait by Matisse or Dali. We have a string of 
numbers that "represents" another set of numbers *and* some arithmetic 
operation on those numbers. Any such Goedel number is thus the 
equivalent to a "handle" on the "space" of numbers (which is, by 
definition, a one dimensional manifold 
, also see 1 
 and 2 
), therefore 
if it is possible to have an infinity of goedel numbers in the integers 
then the resulting manifold would an infinity of handles (disjoint 
manifolds) on it. How many unique paths would exist on such a manifold? 
What is the "average" length of a path? (Please recall the fact that a 
handle can have any size iff it is simply connected and analytic) There 
is no such an average for the only faithful sample of the set of 
possible lengths of paths is the set itself (infinite sets are 
isomorphic to any of their proper subsets).
Remember that we can also have goedel numbers operating on (mapping 
into) dovetailed strings of goedel numbers and goedel numbers can have 
arbitrarily long number string lengths.. This makes the dimension of 
this manifold to be infinite because of the disjointness of the 
"handles" that are induced by the Goedelizing, thus making it (modulo 
the requirements of spaces to exist) an infinite space. It is only if 
the requirements of a space 
 not being met 
that this would not occur. Given that a geodelization introduces 
arithmetic into the set of numbers then is automatically qualifies a 
goedelized number line to be the dual of a space (via the Stone 
representation theorem 
).


QED.

The visual mode and the symbol mode of languages seem to have a 
strange conjugacy




Numbers as Bruno is considering them, I contend, has a
structure that mathematicians denote as "non-well founded" in the
sense that there is no "basic" building block out of which this
structure is constructed unless we force it into a very tight
straight jacket. One example of just a constraint occurs when we
think of numbers as von Neumann numerals
 or something
like: s, s(), s(()), s((())), ... - where s is the null set which
we can define in terms of Spencer-Brown's laws of form as the
Double Cross (see

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Laws_of_Form_-_double_cross.gif),
my point being that we only obtain a 'well-founded' version when
we impose a constraint of the "natural' structure.


Well, of course. To talk about well-foundedness you need a class and a 
relation, not just a class. It doesn't make sense to say "numbers are 
non-wellfounded".


They are non-well founded if they are identifie

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Quentin Anciaux

>From a 3rd POV, there is no indeterminacy, we know there will be two you
after the duplication.

>From your 1st POV, even if you know it, you'll (both you) still feel
singular, and the you who was asked before the experience what he expect to
feel after the duplication was unable to predict which one of the WM guy it
will be, yet each one is only one.

If MWI is true, that happens every time the you/environment differentiates.
So while you insist it is gibberish to ask the guy before the experience
what he will feel, then in that condition every time you ask a question
about a future event about yourself, it is gibberish.

You keep asking who is this "you"... it is the usual you, as the one you
use in your everyday "gibberish" question about yourself if MWI is true.
(youhou \o/)

Quentin

2012/3/23 John Clark 

> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> > You are still avoiding the WM duplication.
>>
>
> There is no spliting in Many Worlds unless something is different,  if 2
> universes are identical  then they have merged and there is now only one
> universe.
>
>
> >> the copy and the original agree on what occurred, so according to you
>>> the first person perspective, the one that both you and I believe is most
>>> important, is identical; so there is only one perspective, one
>>> consciousness.
>>>
>>
>> > Sure. This does not invalidate the point I am making. It does not
>> address the point at all.
>>
>
> Then what the hell IS the point you are making?
>
> > Please come back to the reasoning. [...] Come back to the reasoning.
>> [...] Come back to the reasoning.
>>
>
> Is that the best retort you could come up with? Show me some reasoning and
> I'll come back to it.
>
>
> > In the thought experiment I am using, the content of the diaries are
>> equal up to some pages, and then they diverge.
>>
>
> And when the diaries diverge the person will too and become 2, both are
> the original person and neither is each other.
>
>
> > The experiencer tries to predict which branch they will live.
>>
>
> If the experiencer believes that when something is duplicated it remains
> singular then any prediction made regarding it will be gibberish.
>
> > You continue to avoid the points.
>>
>
> It's rather easy to avoid your points as you have NOT mentioned a single
> one, you just tell me to follow these wonderful but phantom points.
>
>
> > Follow the reasoning and you will see the purpose.
>>
>
> Dear god we're back to that again!
>
>
> >>First of all you seem to make a distinction between dying and being
>>> annihilated that I do not understand, and second, if either of those things
>>> had happened to you you wouldn't be making any predictions, you wouldn't be
>>> saying anything at all.
>>>
>>
>> >Like Brent said, the difference is between annihilation and no
>> reconstitution (= dying), and annihilation + reconstitution (=
>> teleportation, or duplication, etc.).
>>
>
> The fact of the matter is that the Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday has not
> been duplicated or teleported or reconstituted, the Bruno Marchal of right
> now remembers being him but he is different and has memories that other
> version did not have; so if you insist that the Helsinki man is dead then
> to be consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday is dead,
> and if you insist that the Helsinki man has been annihilated then to be
> consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday has been
> annihilated. Are you certain you really want to do this?
>
>
>
> > Please, answer my post of the 19 mars,
>>
>
> I don't know what 19 mars is and I thought I'd responded to all your posts
> but if I missed one where you made everything clear (I'm not holding my
> breath) then please resend it.
>
> >Things are rather simple.
>>
>
> Yes, but not simple in a good way.
>
>
> > You pretend that there is no 1-indeterminacy.
>>
>
> I insist that indeterminacy exists in every one of the many thought
> experiments proposed by members of this list during the last month, but you
> pretend to have discovered a brand new form of it never known before. I see
> no evidence you have done anything of the sort.
>
>
> > Then you have to explain to us how you predict the movie that you will
>> remember having seen when the movie-multiplication experience is completed.
>>
>
> Bruno Marchal has asked this many times but despite many requests for
> clarification of who "you" is  such a explanation, that would establish a
> new sort indeterminacy, has not been received.
>
> > and you seem to accept that 1-indeterminacy in some post, and then just
>> dismiss it as trivial.
>>
>
> I accept "1-indeterminacy" because as described by you it is identical to
> the indeterminacy in physics and mathematics that we've known about for a
> very long time, and I dismiss it as trivial for exactly the same reason. I
> want something new.
>
> > Are you under influence?
>>
>
> Yes, of logic.
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>  --
> You received this message because you a

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> You are still avoiding the WM duplication.
>

There is no spliting in Many Worlds unless something is different,  if 2
universes are identical  then they have merged and there is now only one
universe.

>> the copy and the original agree on what occurred, so according to you
>> the first person perspective, the one that both you and I believe is most
>> important, is identical; so there is only one perspective, one
>> consciousness.
>>
>
> > Sure. This does not invalidate the point I am making. It does not
> address the point at all.
>

Then what the hell IS the point you are making?

> Please come back to the reasoning. [...] Come back to the reasoning.
> [...] Come back to the reasoning.
>

Is that the best retort you could come up with? Show me some reasoning and
I'll come back to it.

> In the thought experiment I am using, the content of the diaries are
> equal up to some pages, and then they diverge.
>

And when the diaries diverge the person will too and become 2, both are the
original person and neither is each other.

> The experiencer tries to predict which branch they will live.
>

If the experiencer believes that when something is duplicated it remains
singular then any prediction made regarding it will be gibberish.

> You continue to avoid the points.
>

It's rather easy to avoid your points as you have NOT mentioned a single
one, you just tell me to follow these wonderful but phantom points.

> Follow the reasoning and you will see the purpose.
>

Dear god we're back to that again!

>>First of all you seem to make a distinction between dying and being
>> annihilated that I do not understand, and second, if either of those things
>> had happened to you you wouldn't be making any predictions, you wouldn't be
>> saying anything at all.
>>
>
> >Like Brent said, the difference is between annihilation and no
> reconstitution (= dying), and annihilation + reconstitution (=
> teleportation, or duplication, etc.).
>

The fact of the matter is that the Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday has not
been duplicated or teleported or reconstituted, the Bruno Marchal of right
now remembers being him but he is different and has memories that other
version did not have; so if you insist that the Helsinki man is dead then
to be consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday is dead,
and if you insist that the Helsinki man has been annihilated then to be
consistent you must say that Bruno Marchal of noon yesterday has been
annihilated. Are you certain you really want to do this?

> Please, answer my post of the 19 mars,
>

I don't know what 19 mars is and I thought I'd responded to all your posts
but if I missed one where you made everything clear (I'm not holding my
breath) then please resend it.

>Things are rather simple.
>

Yes, but not simple in a good way.

> You pretend that there is no 1-indeterminacy.
>

I insist that indeterminacy exists in every one of the many thought
experiments proposed by members of this list during the last month, but you
pretend to have discovered a brand new form of it never known before. I see
no evidence you have done anything of the sort.

> Then you have to explain to us how you predict the movie that you will
> remember having seen when the movie-multiplication experience is completed.
>

Bruno Marchal has asked this many times but despite many requests for
clarification of who "you" is  such a explanation, that would establish a
new sort indeterminacy, has not been received.

> and you seem to accept that 1-indeterminacy in some post, and then just
> dismiss it as trivial.
>

I accept "1-indeterminacy" because as described by you it is identical to
the indeterminacy in physics and mathematics that we've known about for a
very long time, and I dismiss it as trivial for exactly the same reason. I
want something new.

> Are you under influence?
>

Yes, of logic.

  John K Clark

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Re: First person indeterminacy (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Stephen P. King


On 3/23/2012 12:34 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:
thanks for the considerate reply. Let me pick some of your sentences:
/2^16 parallel universes needed 
to implement  the  quantum  superposition//  -  used in Shor's 
quantum algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers/.
I would not limit the numbers and fix the quality of future 
development. Nor do I take it for granted that today's logic in math 
(arithmetics) will hold.


Hi John,

Did you note that nowhere was it mentioned in Bruno's comment that 
the 2^16 unverses had an upper limit of the time that it would take to 
perform the implementation! This is the "escape clause" for his claim. 
What is interesting about this multiple parallel universe idea is that 
it seems to me that we could make the time and qubit limit of any _one_ 
"typical universe" could be made arbitrarily small by putting a large 
quantum computer on a very fast star-ship and travelling at velocities 
that approach c. Since the Q-computer on the Enterprise would have an 
arbitrarily long time to implement its "side" of the Qubit's unitary 
evolution as some from an observer that is watchign the Enterprise on 
its long range scanners. The neat thing is that for Spock the 
computation would output its answer in no time at all IF and Only IF it 
was able to remain coupled to all those other "parallel" universes.
This scenario, set on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, seems 
likely until you look into what acceleration does to quantum 
entanglement.it is well known that any acceleration spoils entanglement 
in an interesting way.


I apologize for my wandering off topic but I strange idea occurred 
to me as I was reading your post...


Onward!

Stephen


/I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am 
quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next 
millennium/.
Ihave more faith in 'the new': maybe that will be something better 
than today's uncertainty-riding "quantum" idea.

 John M
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:



On 14 Mar 2012, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:


Brent and Bruno:
you both have statements in this endless discussion about
processing ideas of quantum computers.
I would be happy to read about ONE that works, not a s a
potentiality, but as a real tool, the function of which is
understood and APPLIED. (Here, on Earth).


It is an *immense* technical challenge. Up to now, a quantum
circuit has only succeeded in showing that 15 is equal to 3*5,
which might seems ridiculous for todays applied computing domains,
but which is still an extraordinary technical prowess as it
involves handling of the 2^16 parallel universes needed to
implement the quantum superposition used in Shor's quantum
algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers.

The amazing thing is that all the arguments of unfeasibility of
quantum computers have been overcome by quantum software, like the
quantum error corrections, and the topological fault tolerant
quantum machinery.

I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am
quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next
millennium. But bigger quantum circuits will emerge this century,
and quantum cryptographic technic might already exist, but that's
a military secret, and a banker secret :).

There is also some prospect to discover quantum machinery
operating in nature. I read some times ago, that a super-heavy
object has been discovered which structure seemed to have to be
unstable for much physicists and some have elaborated models in
which quarks are exploiting a quantum-computational game to attain
stability.

And then, to make happy Stephen, the "not very plausible yet not
entirely excluded despite what Tegmark argues" possibility that
life exploits quantum algorithm. See for example the two following
papers referred to in my today's mail:

1) Clark, K.B. (2010). Bose-Einstein condensates form in
heuristics learned by ciliates deciding to signal 'social'
commitments. BioSystems, 99(3), 167-178.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883726
2) Clark, K.B. (2010). Arrhenius-kinetics evidence for quantum
tunneling in microbial "social" decision rates. Communicative &
Integtrative Biology, 3(6), 540-544.
http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cib/article/12842

I am skeptical to be franc. Not too much time to dig on this for
now. The second is freely available. if someone want to comment on
it, please do.

Bruno





On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 3/12/2012 7:16 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 3/12/2012 10:00 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/11/2012 11:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

An Evil Wizard could pop into my vicinity and banish
me to the Nether p

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Mar 23, 1:08 am, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 3/22/2012 9:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 22, 8:28 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> >> On 3/22/2012 4:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> On Mar 22, 6:09 pm, meekerdb    wrote:
>  On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> > On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb      wrote:
> >>> Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
> >>> converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
> >>> is lost.
> >> Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the 
> >> EM spectrum.  Of
> >> course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the 
> >> digits and cannot
> >> capture more than a measure zero.
> > Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
> > that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
> > modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
> > within it.
>  I'm not sure that's so.  All of our physical models of the world are 
>  based on continua.
>  Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and 
>  continuous models can
>  be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do 
>  in science and
>  engineering).
> >>> That's because the world that they are modeling is actually not
> >>> digital,
> >> Unsupported assertion.
> > If the world is digital already, then why would you need to model it?
> > Does a digital computer need a continua to open a digital file?
>
> >>> but the model itself still is.
> >> No. So far as I know, no one has come up with a digital model of physics 
> >> that isn't
> >> empirically falsified - and it isn't for want of trying.  All the models 
> >> are continuous
> >> and based on real numbers.  It is just that all the calculations and 
> >> measurements are
> >> digital, i.e. based on integers.
> > That's what I'm saying. A model = calculations and measurements.
> > That's what I mean by the modelling itself. If I write a book about
> > physics, the book can be written in English but not speculating that
> > physics itself is an English phenomenon.
>
> >>> If there is a machine
> >>> intelligence in there, we know that it must live in the world that we
> >>> give it to sample digitally, whether or not it can produce output
> >>> which we interpret non-digitally. It's back to symbol grounding again.
> >> What difference does it make to symbolic grounding whether the symbol 
> >> refers to a
> >> continuum or an integer field?
> > I never said that those were the two choices, you are the one who
> > introduced continuity. Both analog and digital are methods of
> > abstracting. I'm not talking about one kind of model versus another,
> > I'm talking about concrete presentation versus abstract
> > representation. My position is that our experience in the world is no
> > model at all (although modeling is certainly part of it). Our
> > experience is not a total experience of THE universe, but it is a
> > total experience of OUR world (perceptual inertial framework), which
> > includes the understanding that there is a difference and the tools to
> > actually extend our world further into rest of the universe.
>
> > The machine's world is not similarly open to expansion. It does not
> > have the tools to extend its sense. You could connect a camera to Deep
> > Blue through a printer port in it would never in a trillion years
> > figure out how to use it.
>
> >>> I have a digital CD playing on a digital receiver. The acoustic
> >>> drivers are digital too. The music is not digital.
> >> Another unsupported assertion. How would you know?
> > If music were digital you wouldn't need to hear it. You could look at
> > a picture of the data and get the same experience.
>
> >> Some people claimed that digital audio
> >> sounded different - but double blind tests showed they were mistaken.
> > That may be true, and that's not what I was talking about, but also I
> > don't think that any kind of objective test like that prove that
> > anyone is 'mistaken' about how something feels. It may be that doing a
> > double blind test creates a placebo effect when subjectivity is being
> > tested.
>
> And it might be you're blowing smoke because you don't like the facts.

Possible, but it's also because in my understanding, subjectivity
works in exactly that way.

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Just as the double slit test does unexpected things to light,
> > we cannot assume that our subtle awareness can be manipulated on
> > demand. That assumption itself is a cognitive bias which may very well
> > contaminate the data.
>
> > It seems to me that digital audio is colder, clearer, with more
> > brittle and shallow percussion and more sibilance than analog. It's
> > hard to say because I'm not comparing apples to apples, but I'm not
> > sure that the experiment you are talking about did either. I d

Re: First person indeterminacy (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread John Mikes

Bruno:
thanks for the considerate reply. Let me pick some of your sentences:

  *2^16 parallel universes needed
to implement  the  quantum  superposition**  -  used in Shor's
quantum algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers*.

I would not limit the numbers and fix the quality of future development.
Nor do I take it for granted that today's logic in math (arithmetics) will
hold.

*I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am
quite uncertain if it is for this century of for the next millennium
*.

Ihave more faith in 'the new': maybe that will be something better than
today's uncertainty-riding "quantum" idea.

 John M
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
>  On 14 Mar 2012, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:
>
>  Brent and Bruno:
> you both have statements in this endless discussion about processing ideas
> of quantum computers.
> I would be happy to read about ONE that works, not a s a potentiality, but
> as a real tool, the function of which is understood and APPLIED. (Here, on
> Earth).
>
>
> It is an *immense* technical challenge. Up to now, a quantum circuit has
> only succeeded in showing that 15 is equal to 3*5, which might seems
> ridiculous for todays applied computing domains, but which is still an
> extraordinary technical prowess as it involves handling of the 2^16
> parallel universes needed to implement the quantum superposition used in
> Shor's quantum algorithm to find the prime factors of numbers.
>
> The amazing thing is that all the arguments of unfeasibility of quantum
> computers have been overcome by quantum software, like the quantum error
> corrections, and the topological fault tolerant quantum machinery.
>
> I have few doubts that quantum computers will appear, but I am quite
> uncertain if it is for this century of for the next millennium. But bigger
> quantum circuits will emerge this century, and quantum cryptographic
> technic might already exist, but that's a military secret, and a banker
> secret :).
>
> There is also some prospect to discover quantum machinery operating in
> nature. I read some times ago, that a super-heavy object has been
> discovered which structure seemed to have to be unstable for much
> physicists and some have elaborated models in which quarks are exploiting a
> quantum-computational game to attain stability.
>
> And then, to make happy Stephen, the "not very plausible yet not entirely
> excluded despite what Tegmark argues" possibility that life exploits
> quantum algorithm. See for example the two following papers referred to in
> my today's mail:
>
>  1) Clark, K.B. (2010). Bose-Einstein condensates form in heuristics
> learned by ciliates deciding to signal 'social' commitments. BioSystems,
> 99(3), 167-178. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883726
>
> 2) Clark, K.B. (2010). Arrhenius-kinetics evidence for quantum tunneling
> in microbial "social" decision rates. Communicative & Integtrative Biology,
> 3(6), 540-544. http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cib/article/12842
>
> I am skeptical to be franc. Not too much time to dig on this for now. The
> second is freely available. if someone want to comment on it, please do.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 3/12/2012 7:16 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>>
>> On 3/12/2012 10:00 PM, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>> On 3/11/2012 11:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>>
>> An Evil Wizard could pop into my vicinity and banish me to the Nether
>> plane! A "magical act", if real and just part of a story, is an event that
>> violates some conservation law. I don't see what else would constitute
>> magic... My point is that Harry Potterisms would introduce cul-de-sacs that
>> would totally screw up the statistics and measures, so they have to be
>> banished.
>>
>>
>> Because otherwise things would be screwed up?
>>
>> Chain-wise consistency and concurrency rules would prevent these
>> pathologies, but to get them we have to consider multiple and disjoint
>> observers and not just "shared" 1p as such implicitly assume an absolute
>> frame of reference. Basically we need both conservation laws and general
>> covariance. Do we obtain that naturally from COMP? That's an open question.
>>
>>
>> You seem to be begging the question: We need regularity, otherwise things
>> wouldn't be regular.
>>
>>
>> No, you are dodging the real question: How is the measure defined?
>>
>>
>> The obvious way is that all non-self-contradictory events are equally
>> likely. But that's hypothesized, not defined.  I'm not sure why you are
>> asking how it's defined.  The usual definition is an assignment of a number
>> in [0,1] to every member of a Borel set such that they satisfies
>> Kolmogorov's axioms.
>>
>>
>> If it is imposed by fiat, say so and defend the claim. Why is it so hard
>> to get you to consider multiple observers and consider the question as to
>> how exactly do they interact? Al of the discussion that I have se

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

2012-03-23 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 22 Mar 2012, at 21:31, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> This illustrates the problem I have with your ideas, it's not  
your mathematics it's the assumption you make right at the start  
which is the foundation for everything else.

> Which assumption?

Your assumption that if a identical copy of you is made everything  
may seen identical to a third party but to itself, to the copy and  
the original, they would somehow have different viewpoints even if  
everything they saw was the same and they remained identical.

I don't make that assumption.

I think that is just plain wrong.

Like Brent told you, I agree with you.

Lately you seem to be equivocating somewhat on this point and  
everybody has a right to change their mind, but if you do then  
you'll have to rewrite your proof from page 1 because that  
assumption was important.

I never made that assumption. It is in your imagination. You really  
look like you want to see something invalid in the reasoning, and then  
you imagine assertion which does not exist (or show me where).

> Those admit precise and simple definition, related to the  
duplication and multiplication thought experience.

First person = content of a diary bring in the duplication devices.

OK, but the original and the copy will both write in their diaries  
"I walked into the duplicating chamber, the machine was turned on  
and a copy of me appeared right in front of me face to face",

You are still avoiding the WM duplication. You cannot invalidate an  
argument by changing the premise.

the copy and the original agree on what occurred, so according to  
you the first person perspective, the one that both you and I  
believe is most important, is identical; so there is only one  
perspective, one consciousness.

Sure. This does not invalidate the point I am making. It does not  
address the point at all.

> Third person = content of a diary of an external observers.

OK, but the third person observer will write in his diary "the  
original walked into the duplicating chamber, the machine was turned  
on and a copy of him appeared right in front of him face to face",  
the third person agrees on what happened with the first person, he  
agrees with both the copy and the original.

Please come back to the reasoning.

> First person plural = content of the diaries of a collection of  
person duplicated together.

I don't see the point of this one because according to you (and me  
too) if the viewpoint is identical then the consciousness of all of  
them is identical, so the word "plural" serves no purpose and just  
creates confusion.

Come back to the reasoning.

>>but you can't give a scrap of evidence that such differences  
actually exist,

>Just look at the content of the diaries.

I did, if they say the same thing then their consciousness is  
identical from their viewpoint and my viewpoint and your viewpoint  
and the Easter Bunny's viewpoint and ANY viewpoint; and if the  
diaries are different then they are different people from ANY  
viewpoint.

Come back to the reasoning. In the thought experiment I am using, the  
content of the diaries are equal up to some pages, and then they  
diverge. The experiencer tries to predict which branch they will live.

> It contains statements like "I predict that I will feel to be in W  
or in M, I am in M, so I win", pr "I predict that I will see Flying  
circus, but I see nothing recognizable, so I fail", etc.

If the purpose of all this "predict" stuff is to find a clear  
continuous path that establishes what is meant by "I"

You come back again on this !?!
No, the point is not to establish what is meant by "I". David, Quentin  
and others (including myself) have already explain this to you.
You continue to avoid the points. Follow the reasoning and you will  
see the purpose.

then it's like pushing on a string, you're doing it backwards,  
you've got to do it from the present to the past not from the  
present to the future. Looking back the Washington man remembers  
being the Helsinki man so they both are part of the same I, and the  
Moscow man remembers being the Helsinki man so they both are part of  
the same I, but the Moscow man does not remember being the  
Washington man so they are not part of the same I.

Which is part of the explanation of the first person indeterminacy.  
Good.

> If the guy annihilated die, then he would say that P(M) = P(W) =  
1/2, and there would be no 1-indeterminacy.

Of course here I made a typo mistake (which you missed). Read P(W) =  
P(M) = 0, in case the guy dies. But as we both agree on comp, the guy  
does not die in that process.

First of all you seem to make a distinction between dying and being  
annihilated that I do not understand, and second, if either of those  
things had happened to you you wouldn't be making any predictions,  
you wouldn't be saying anything at all.

Like Brent

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)


On 3/22/2012 9:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 8:28 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

On 3/22/2012 4:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:










On Mar 22, 6:09 pm, meekerdbwrote:

On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
is lost.

Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM 
spectrum.  Of
course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the digits and 
cannot
capture more than a measure zero.

Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
within it.

I'm not sure that's so.  All of our physical models of the world are based on 
continua.
Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and continuous 
models can
be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do in 
science and
engineering).

That's because the world that they are modeling is actually not
digital,

Unsupported assertion.

If the world is digital already, then why would you need to model it?
Does a digital computer need a continua to open a digital file?


but the model itself still is.

No. So far as I know, no one has come up with a digital model of physics that 
isn't
empirically falsified - and it isn't for want of trying.  All the models are 
continuous
and based on real numbers.  It is just that all the calculations and 
measurements are
digital, i.e. based on integers.

That's what I'm saying. A model = calculations and measurements.
That's what I mean by the modelling itself. If I write a book about
physics, the book can be written in English but not speculating that
physics itself is an English phenomenon.


If there is a machine
intelligence in there, we know that it must live in the world that we
give it to sample digitally, whether or not it can produce output
which we interpret non-digitally. It's back to symbol grounding again.

What difference does it make to symbolic grounding whether the symbol refers to 
a
continuum or an integer field?

I never said that those were the two choices, you are the one who
introduced continuity. Both analog and digital are methods of
abstracting. I'm not talking about one kind of model versus another,
I'm talking about concrete presentation versus abstract
representation. My position is that our experience in the world is no
model at all (although modeling is certainly part of it). Our
experience is not a total experience of THE universe, but it is a
total experience of OUR world (perceptual inertial framework), which
includes the understanding that there is a difference and the tools to
actually extend our world further into rest of the universe.

The machine's world is not similarly open to expansion. It does not
have the tools to extend its sense. You could connect a camera to Deep
Blue through a printer port in it would never in a trillion years
figure out how to use it.


I have a digital CD playing on a digital receiver. The acoustic
drivers are digital too. The music is not digital.

Another unsupported assertion. How would you know?

If music were digital you wouldn't need to hear it. You could look at
a picture of the data and get the same experience.


Some people claimed that digital audio
sounded different - but double blind tests showed they were mistaken.

That may be true, and that's not what I was talking about, but also I
don't think that any kind of objective test like that prove that
anyone is 'mistaken' about how something feels. It may be that doing a
double blind test creates a placebo effect when subjectivity is being
tested.


And it might be you're blowing smoke because you don't like the facts.


Just as the double slit test does unexpected things to light,
we cannot assume that our subtle awareness can be manipulated on
demand. That assumption itself is a cognitive bias which may very well
contaminate the data.

It seems to me that digital audio is colder, clearer, with more
brittle and shallow percussion and more sibilance than analog. It's
hard to say because I'm not comparing apples to apples, but I'm not
sure that the experiment you are talking about did either. I don't
know what assumptions they made. Also why does everyone seem to make
the same exact mistake about how digital sounds to them? Why no people
who insist that digital is more expressive and poetic?












The CD, the
receiver, and the speakers cannot hear the music. We can safely reason
that they probably do not hear the music, yes? We can assume though
that they must sample the CD digitally though. That we know for a
fact. That's all we know for a fact. If the same were true of us, we
would have no real reason to listen to a sequence of digital codes,
but if we did there would be

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On Mar 22, 8:28 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 3/22/2012 4:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 22, 6:09 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> >> On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb    wrote:
> > Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
> > converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
> > is lost.
>  Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM 
>  spectrum.  Of
>  course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the 
>  digits and cannot
>  capture more than a measure zero.
> >>> Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
> >>> that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
> >>> modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
> >>> within it.
> >> I'm not sure that's so.  All of our physical models of the world are based 
> >> on continua.
> >> Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and 
> >> continuous models can
> >> be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do in 
> >> science and
> >> engineering).
> > That's because the world that they are modeling is actually not
> > digital,
>
> Unsupported assertion.

If the world is digital already, then why would you need to model it?
Does a digital computer need a continua to open a digital file?

>
> > but the model itself still is.
>
> No. So far as I know, no one has come up with a digital model of physics that 
> isn't
> empirically falsified - and it isn't for want of trying.  All the models are 
> continuous
> and based on real numbers.  It is just that all the calculations and 
> measurements are
> digital, i.e. based on integers.

That's what I'm saying. A model = calculations and measurements.
That's what I mean by the modelling itself. If I write a book about
physics, the book can be written in English but not speculating that
physics itself is an English phenomenon.

>
> > If there is a machine
> > intelligence in there, we know that it must live in the world that we
> > give it to sample digitally, whether or not it can produce output
> > which we interpret non-digitally. It's back to symbol grounding again.
>
> What difference does it make to symbolic grounding whether the symbol refers 
> to a
> continuum or an integer field?

I never said that those were the two choices, you are the one who
introduced continuity. Both analog and digital are methods of
abstracting. I'm not talking about one kind of model versus another,
I'm talking about concrete presentation versus abstract
representation. My position is that our experience in the world is no
model at all (although modeling is certainly part of it). Our
experience is not a total experience of THE universe, but it is a
total experience of OUR world (perceptual inertial framework), which
includes the understanding that there is a difference and the tools to
actually extend our world further into rest of the universe.

The machine's world is not similarly open to expansion. It does not
have the tools to extend its sense. You could connect a camera to Deep
Blue through a printer port in it would never in a trillion years
figure out how to use it.

>
> > I have a digital CD playing on a digital receiver. The acoustic
> > drivers are digital too. The music is not digital.
>
> Another unsupported assertion. How would you know?

If music were digital you wouldn't need to hear it. You could look at
a picture of the data and get the same experience.

> Some people claimed that digital audio
> sounded different - but double blind tests showed they were mistaken.

That may be true, and that's not what I was talking about, but also I
don't think that any kind of objective test like that prove that
anyone is 'mistaken' about how something feels. It may be that doing a
double blind test creates a placebo effect when subjectivity is being
tested. Just as the double slit test does unexpected things to light,
we cannot assume that our subtle awareness can be manipulated on
demand. That assumption itself is a cognitive bias which may very well
contaminate the data.

It seems to me that digital audio is colder, clearer, with more
brittle and shallow percussion and more sibilance than analog. It's
hard to say because I'm not comparing apples to apples, but I'm not
sure that the experiment you are talking about did either. I don't
know what assumptions they made. Also why does everyone seem to make
the same exact mistake about how digital sounds to them? Why no people
who insist that digital is more expressive and poetic?

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > The CD, the
> > receiver, and the speakers cannot hear the music. We can safely reason
> > that they probably do not hear the music, yes? We can assume though
> > that they must sample the CD digitally though. That we know for a
> > fact. That's all we know for a fact. If the same were tr

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/22/2012 4:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 6:09 pm, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdbwrote:

Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
is lost.

Sure. What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM
spectrum. Of
course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the digits and
cannot
capture more than a measure zero.

Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
within it.

I'm not sure that's so. All of our physical models of the world are based on
continua.
Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and continuous
models can
be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do in
science and
engineering).

That's because the world that they are modeling is actually not
digital,

Unsupported assertion.

but the model itself still is.

No. So far as I know, no one has come up with a digital model of physics that isn't
empirically falsified - and it isn't for want of trying. All the models are continuous
and based on real numbers. It is just that all the calculations and measurements are
digital, i.e. based on integers.

If there is a machine
intelligence in there, we know that it must live in the world that we
give it to sample digitally, whether or not it can produce output
which we interpret non-digitally. It's back to symbol grounding again.

What difference does it make to symbolic grounding whether the symbol refers to a
continuum or an integer field?

I have a digital CD playing on a digital receiver. The acoustic
drivers are digital too. The music is not digital.

Another unsupported assertion. How would you know? Some people claimed that digital audio
sounded different - but double blind tests showed they were mistaken.

The CD, the
receiver, and the speakers cannot hear the music. We can safely reason
that they probably do not hear the music, yes? We can assume though
that they must sample the CD digitally though. That we know for a
fact. That's all we know for a fact. If the same were true of us, we
would have no real reason to listen to a sequence of digital codes,
but if we did there would be no reason for it to sound like anything
other than a sequence of digital codes. It should sound just like it
tastes.

Just because our ability to sense the world is not
unlimited doesn't mean that our sense is digital or a model. Our
experience of the world may not be a model at all, but a direct
presentation at the anthropomorphic level (which includes, but is not
limited to a mixture of lower level analog and digital
representations).
Even if our own world were nothing but a digital simulation, the
experience of it is not digital,

You don't know that. How would continua experience differ from digital
experience?

It's not about being able to tell the difference, it's the fact that
there is any sensory experience at all. Any kind of sensory experience
is redundant if you have a digital information transfer. It would be
functionally useless and physically implausible to the extreme.

LOL!! That's pretty funny coming from a guy reading pixels off a screen that looks
continuous to him.

which wouldn't make sense in a
digital world. Why create

Are you asking why God did something?

God, Chief Engineer, evolution, logic, whatever. Why does it make
sense that sense exists if you don't functionally need it?

That would be a good question IF I had created it for me.

a floridly rich abstraction layer of sense
experience if you already have the data you need to function
optimally, or, if you have the sense experience already, why would you
need any digital data to function?
Your comment brings up another related point. As you say, we only see
a small sliver of the EM spectrum. What that means is that we
(figuratively) 'see' that we don't literally 'see' all that there is.
We can make inferences that extend beyond the literal capacities of
our direct sensation. Can machines do that?

Sure. Machines have extended sensory ability so, for example, they can navigate
by GPS
signals which we can't even detect.

Ugh. Not extended beyond *our* sensory abiility... extended beyond
*their own* sensory ability. We can't see gamma rays, but we figured
out that they (sort of) exist. Do Geiger counters ever figure out that
they are missing the visible spectrum?

Similarly, migratory birds can navigate by sensing
the Earth's magnetic field - something we do via prosthetics like compasses.

Yes. I know.

Can machines figure out
that they lack emotion on their own?

If they were sufficiently intelligent.

That is the assumption I'm challenging.

Your "challenges" consist of nothing but

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On Mar 22, 6:09 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
>
> >>> Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
> >>> converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
> >>> is lost.
> >> Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM 
> >> spectrum.  Of
> >> course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the 
> >> digits and cannot
> >> capture more than a measure zero.
>
> > Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
> > that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
> > modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
> > within it.
>
> I'm not sure that's so.  All of our physical models of the world are based on 
> continua.
> Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and 
> continuous models can
> be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do in 
> science and
> engineering).

That's because the world that they are modeling is actually not
digital, but the model itself still is. If there is a machine
intelligence in there, we know that it must live in the world that we
give it to sample digitally, whether or not it can produce output
which we interpret non-digitally. It's back to symbol grounding again.
I have a digital CD playing on a digital receiver. The acoustic
drivers are digital too. The music is not digital. The CD, the
receiver, and the speakers cannot hear the music. We can safely reason
that they probably do not hear the music, yes? We can assume though
that they must sample the CD digitally though. That we know for a
fact. That's all we know for a fact. If the same were true of us, we
would have no real reason to listen to a sequence of digital codes,
but if we did there would be no reason for it to sound like anything
other than a sequence of digital codes. It should sound just like it
tastes.

>
> > Just because our ability to sense the world is not
> > unlimited doesn't mean that our sense is digital or a model. Our
> > experience of the world may not be a model at all, but a direct
> > presentation at the anthropomorphic level (which includes, but is not
> > limited to a mixture of lower level analog and digital
> > representations).
>
> > Even if our own world were nothing but a digital simulation, the
> > experience of it is not digital,
>
> You don't know that.  How would continua experience differ from digital 
> experience?

It's not about being able to tell the difference, it's the fact that
there is any sensory experience at all. Any kind of sensory experience
is redundant if you have a digital information transfer. It would be
functionally useless and physically implausible to the extreme.

>
> >   which wouldn't make sense in a
> > digital world. Why create
>
> Are you asking why God did something?

God, Chief Engineer, evolution, logic, whatever.  Why does it make
sense that sense exists if you don't functionally need it?

>
> > a floridly rich abstraction layer of sense
> > experience if you already have the data you need to function
> > optimally, or, if you have the sense experience already, why would you
> > need any digital data to function?
>
> > Your comment brings up another related point. As you say, we only see
> > a small sliver of the EM spectrum. What that means is that we
> > (figuratively) 'see' that we don't literally 'see' all that there is.
> > We can make inferences that extend beyond the literal capacities of
> > our direct sensation. Can machines do that?
>
> Sure. Machines have extended sensory ability so, for example, they can 
> navigate by GPS
> signals which we can't even detect.

Ugh. Not extended beyond *our* sensory abiility... extended beyond
*their own* sensory ability. We can't see gamma rays, but we figured
out that they (sort of) exist. Do Geiger counters ever figure out that
they are missing the visible spectrum?

> Similarly, migratory birds can navigate by sensing
> the Earth's magnetic field - something we do via prosthetics like compasses.

Yes. I know.

>
> > Can machines figure out
> > that they lack emotion on their own?
>
> If they were sufficiently intelligent.

That is the assumption I'm challenging.

> Are there emotions that you have figured out you
> lack, e.g. mother love?

Of course.

Craig

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On Mar 22, 11:47 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> On 22 Mar 2012, at 03:00, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Mar 21, 3:23 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
> >> On 21 Mar 2012, at 17:40, Craig Weinberg wrote (partially).
>
> > It's not just 'we' but our entire participation in the world
> > that is
> > assumed to be digitally interchangeable. A digitizable body can
> > only
> > exist within a digitizable universe.
>
>  False. The exact contrary has been proved.
>
> >>> How has it been proved? How can we be ourselves without a world to
> >>> exist in?
>
> >> Sure. What has been proved is that if comp is true we can only be
> >> in a
> >> non digitizable world.
> >> Digital physics is non sense, except as tool for building approximate
> >> theory.
> >> Comp is not digital physics.
>
> > How does a digital artificial intelligence make sense of it's world
> > without converting or sampling every truth about that world available
> > to it into digital?
>
> First, the fact that the digital machine converts "truth about the
> world" into digital, does not make that world digital.

Which world, the one being converted or the one that has been
converted?

> UDA explains
> why the contrary occurs, through the first person indeterminacy
> bearing on a very huge and complex arithmetical reality.

Why does hugeness, complexity, first person, or indeterminacy affect
whether something is digital or not?

> Second, the first person impression of the machine might be (and is
> necessarily, once you accept Theaetetus' insight) a non digitalizable
> truth, from the machine point of view.

Which of Theaetetus' insight do you mean?

To me speculating that a machine has a first person impression is just
a way to plug the problem. Since subjectivity doesn't make sense
mechanically or digitally, we'll say it's non digital and hang a
Mission Accomplished sign. It takes advantage of the privacy and
ineffability of subjectivity to misrepresent its absence as possible
presence, even though our experience with machines thus far has not
supported any presence at all.

> That is actually the case,
> because the impression of the machine is a conjunct of both a
> digitalizable belief and (some) truth, with the greek's suggested
> notion of knowledge.

beliefs, truths, knowledge...these are abstractions to me. Tertiary
level commentaries on experience which barely exist. Important, sure,
but lacking in any power to initiate direct action. Which is maybe why
a machine has no such power.

>
>
>
>  If you negate this, it means that
>  you assume the level to be "infinitely low",
>
> >>> No, it means I understand that your assumption that description
> >>> can be
> >>> quantified is simplistic and inaccurate.
>
> >> Description of my (generalized) brain. With your theory we have
> >> zombie.
>
> > Never zombie, only puppet. Zombie is like calling water 'wet fire'.
>
> I don't think so. With the Heisenberg Matrix of the Milky way, no-one
> would be able to distinguish me or you from the behavior of the entity
> simulated. If comp is false, those entity who behaves "exactly" like
> you or me, are not conscious, and so they are by definition p-zombie.

The word zombie privileges the expectation of consciousness, while the
word puppet does not. The fact that the Heisenberg Matrix of the Milky
way fails completely in detecting consciousness does not mean that the
simulations it takes for genuine are missing something that they
should have.

That they are simulations in the first place means that we intend them
to resemble something that they are not. I make a witch's head out of
a shrunken apple - that is a simulation of a witch; a puppet of a
witch. It isn't an actual witch that has been rendered a zombie. It
freaks me out that I keep having to explain this, it seems stunningly
obvious to me. I draw a dog on a paper bag, is it now a dog zombie?

The deeper insight here of course is that simulation relates only to
the intended audience. It looks like a witch or a dog only to us. It's
a text. It's symbols are not grounded in the firmament of the cosmos
like matter or biology, they are only suggestions that help 'us'
fabricate a fictional association for ourselves.

>
>
>
> >> Study the sane04 paper.  Or search in the archive. It is a
> >> consequence
> >> of comp that physics emerge from the way numbers can bet on
> >> arithmetical relations. It is not entirely obvious.
>
> > I don't have a problem with physics emerging from comp, I have a
> > problem with consciousness emerging from either one.
>
> I understand.
> This is related with the fact that we can explain why consciousness is
> not entirely explainable by the machine.
> The machine also find hard to believe that consciousness "emerge" from
> arithmetical truth. But she cannot accept this because she can
> understand the necessary transcendent aspect of any notion of truth
> encompassing the truth about herself.

It sounds like you mean that machines can tell what is true a

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On 3/22/2012 2:53 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb wrote:

Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
is lost.

I'm not sure that's so. All of our physical models of the world are based on continua.
Continua can be described and reasoned about by a digital system and continuous models can
be computed to arbitrarily high precision (which is what we actually do in science and
engineering).

Even if our own world were nothing but a digital simulation, the
experience of it is not digital,

You don't know that. How would continua experience differ from digital
experience?

which wouldn't make sense in a
digital world. Why create

Are you asking why God did something?

Your comment brings up another related point. As you say, we only see
a small sliver of the EM spectrum. What that means is that we
(figuratively) 'see' that we don't literally 'see' all that there is.
We can make inferences that extend beyond the literal capacities of
our direct sensation. Can machines do that?

Sure. Machines have extended sensory ability so, for example, they can navigate by GPS
signals which we can't even detect. Similarly, migratory birds can navigate by sensing
the Earth's magnetic field - something we do via prosthetics like compasses.

Can machines figure out
that they lack emotion on their own?

If they were sufficiently intelligent. Are there emotions that you have figured out you
lack, e.g. mother love?

Brent

Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)

On Mar 22, 4:58 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

> > Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
> > converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
> > is lost.
>
> Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM 
> spectrum.  Of
> course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the digits 
> and cannot
> capture more than a measure zero.
>

Yes, human beings can't detect everything either, but my point was
that we know for certain that everything in an AI's world has to be
modeled digitally, therefore a digital brain creates a digital world
within it. Just because our ability to sense the world is not
unlimited doesn't mean that our sense is digital or a model. Our
experience of the world may not be a model at all, but a direct
presentation at the anthropomorphic level (which includes, but is not
limited to a mixture of lower level analog and digital
representations).

Even if our own world were nothing but a digital simulation, the
experience of it is not digital, which wouldn't make sense in a
digital world. Why create a floridly rich abstraction layer of sense
experience if you already have the data you need to function
optimally, or, if you have the sense experience already, why would you
need any digital data to function?

Your comment brings up another related point. As you say, we only see
a small sliver of the EM spectrum. What that means is that we
(figuratively) 'see' that we don't literally 'see' all that there is.
We can make inferences that extend beyond the literal capacities of
our direct sensation. Can machines do that? Can machines figure out
that they lack emotion on their own?

Craig

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)


On 3/22/2012 1:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Mar 22, 10:46 am, John Clark  wrote:

>  On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:00 PM, Craig Weinbergwrote:
>

>  >  How does a digital artificial intelligence make sense of it's world

>
>  Superbly! A digital AI can make sense of it's world far better than you
>  can; if you doubt that statement just try competing against even a modest
>  chess playing computer.

My question was not 'How can AI make sense of its world?' but 'How can
AI make sense of its world without converting or sampling digitally?'


>

>  >  >  without converting or sampling every truth about that world available 
to

>  >  it into digital?

>
>  It does convert much of its world to digital, if its world is large it may
>  not be able to convert all of it with the result that it won't be able to
>  make sense of all of it,

Then you agree with me: AI cannot make sense out of its world without
converting or sampling it digitally. That which it fails to digitize
is lost.



Sure.  What you don't see you don't see - which is almost all of the EM spectrum.  Of 
course Bruno's theory is that it's all digital, but we're within the digits and cannot 
capture more than a measure zero.


Brent

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Re: Theology or not theology (Re: COMP theology)