Re: 1P-causality
No problem John. Thanks for your kind reply. Best, Bruno On 07 Apr 2011, at 21:56, John Mikes wrote: Hello, Bruno, and thanks for your reply. I am sorry for an interjected remark-sentence quite out of context in a topic it does not belong at all. Especially since it was mal- chosen and mal-formulated. I enjoyed your teaching about the UM etc., I could use it. I am presently mentally anchored in my own ignorance (i.e. my agnosticism-based worldview formulation) of a 2011 level stance. Best regards John On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to
Re: 1P-causality
On 08 Apr 2011, at 06:55, meekerdb wrote: On 4/7/2011 9:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. I doubt that it has enough memory. Universality in Turing sense has nothing to do with the amount of memory available. Turing's discovery of the universal machine is the discovery of a *finite* code, a number, capable of (encoding a program capable of) computing all partial computable function, like in Wolfram cellular automata competition. The confusion comes from the fact that Turing modeled his machine with an infinite tape, but this is needed already for computing multiplication. It is more correct to put the infinite tape in the environment. Typically all computers will ask for some more memory during their computation. Humans' universality is witnessed by the fact that at some point they decide to extend their memory with cave's wall, books, ... magnetic tapes, etc. The mathematical (and a fortiori the 'concrete one') universal machine are finite object. That is why I have decided to talk on universal *number*, for emphasizing that such universal 'device' are finite thing: If phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, ... is an enumeration of partial computable functions, u is a universal number if and only if phi_u(x, y) = phi_x(y), with x,y some number code for (x, y). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: 1P-causality
Hi Stephen, On 08 Apr 2011, at 00:25, Stephen Paul King wrote: Thus wisdom is a measure of how much one knows that one does not know. wlEmoticon-smile[1].png Absolutely! Socrates said it, and Jean Gabin too :) Like all sufficiently introspective (and sufficiently correct) universal machine. Have a good day, Bruno Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com
Re: 1P-causality
Hi Bruno, I found what I have been looking for: arxiv.org/pdf/0812.1290 Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 2:39 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi Stephen, On 08 Apr 2011, at 00:25, Stephen Paul King wrote: Thus wisdom is a measure of how much one knows that one does not know. wlEmoticon-smile[1].png Absolutely! Socrates said it, and Jean Gabin too :) Like all sufficiently introspective (and sufficiently correct) universal machine. Have a good day, Bruno Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe
Re: 1P-causality
Hi Stephen, That is the continuation of Isham rather clean analysis of the MWI. Of course you already know my conceptual critics. In the mind body problem setting, we cannot use most of the assumptions used in that physics paper. Nevertheless such work could help for doing the qualia- quanta connection. As I said already, we can dig from both side. I appreciate very much Isham's insight and I am glad that his work progresses. Have a good day. Bruno On 08 Apr 2011, at 10:47, Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Bruno, I found what I have been looking for: arxiv.org/pdf/0812.1290 Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 2:39 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi Stephen, On 08 Apr 2011, at 00:25, Stephen Paul King wrote: Thus wisdom is a measure of how much one knows that one does not know. wlEmoticon-smile[1].png Absolutely! Socrates said it, and Jean Gabin too :) Like all sufficiently introspective (and sufficiently correct) universal machine. Have a good day, Bruno Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident
Re: 1P-causality
Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: *His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. * ** Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: 1P-causality
Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
Re: 1P-causality
Hello, Bruno, and thanks for your reply. I am sorry for an interjected remark-sentence quite out of context in a topic it does not belong at all. Especially since it was mal-chosen and mal-formulated. I enjoyed your teaching about the UM etc., I could use it. I am presently mentally anchored in my own ignorance (i.e. my agnosticism-based worldview formulation) of a 2011 level stance. Best regards John On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: *His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. * ** Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from
Re: 1P-causality
Hi Bruno, Thus wisdom is a measure of how much one knows that one does not know. Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 1P-causality Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno but we indeed have no idea how it works and what it may conclude. Deduced in my common sense of agnostic ignorance. John On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl
Re: 1P-causality
On 4/7/2011 9:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, I indulge myself in a slight correction on a statement, that you were just doing for a second time, despite I thought having already insisted on the point. I am sorry because it is not completely in the topic: On 07 Apr 2011, at 17:42, John Mikes wrote: Thanks, Brent, - however: I did not restrict myself to physics (lest: 'fundamental') and had a shorthand-typo in my text: - - - (=cause) - - - which indeed means: a change, effected by - what we call: a cause. I was referring to our (conventional) system looking only inside the 'model' of already knowable knowledge, even those applied only as needed to identify cause - or effect. The unknown 'rest of the world' also influences those changes we may experience within our model so our consclusions are incomplete. That does not apply to a universal machine which 'knows it all' - Universal machine knows about nothing. They are universal with respect to computability, or emulability, or simulability. Not on provability, believability or knowability. Typically all humans being are universal machines. I can argue that bacteria are already universal machine. The UMs know about nothing, but they can become wise, that is Löbian. This is when they realize that they are universal (in some sense which I can make precise) in that case, they still know about nothing, but they know that they know nothing, and they can know why it is necessary that they know nothing. They also know that if they develop knowledge, their ignorance-space will grow even more, so that by learning, they can only be proportionnally more ignorant. that is why they become extremely modest. In the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus hypostases, the universal machine is the arithmetical correspondent of man. God is arithmetical truth, and for Him/It/Her there is a sense to say that He/It/her knows everything, but It is far beyond what *any* machine can grasp. Machines cannot even give It a name, unless they assume that they are machine, in which case the label Truth can indirectly be applied. Universal machine are more like universal baby than omniscient knower. With the Church-Turing Thesis, your laptop *is* a universal machine. I doubt that it has enough memory. Brent The universal Turing machine is universal. All computer's are. And I can argue that all living cells are universal. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
1P-causality
The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: *His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. * ** Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: 1P-causality
On 4/6/2011 2:06 PM, John Mikes wrote: The exchange between SPK and Bruno is hard to personalize, there is am unmarked paragraph after a par marked ... so I was in doubt whether it is Bruno, or Stephen who wrote: /His use of the word causation is unfortunate but we can forgive him because there is no correct word for the relation that he is considering. / // Both mathematical and philosophical causation is partial: all we can consider as instigating a 'change' (= cause?) may only come from the part of the totality we already know of and include into that partivular model used in our consideration, while the influences of the still unknown factors are included (active?) as well (not to mention those known ones we neglected in our limited thinking). In precise thinking such uncertainty interferes with applying 'correct' vocabulary. John M In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: 1P-causality
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Quoting Bill Vallicella: “Suppose a man dies in a fire while in bed. The salient cause might be determined to be smoking in bed. No one will say that the flammability of the bedsheets and other room furnishings is the cause of the man's incineration. Nevertheless, had the room and its furnishings not been flammable, the fire would not have occurred. The flammability is not merely a logical, but also a causal, condition of the fire. It is part of the total cause, but no one will consider it salient. The word is from the Latin salire to leap, whence our word 'sally' as when one sallies forth to do battle at a chess tournament, say. A salient cause, then, is one that jumps out at you, grabbing you by your epistemic shorthairs as it were, as opposed to being a mere background condition. What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative and (if I may) point-of-view-ish. A wholly objective view of nature, a Nagelian view from nowhere, would not be able to discriminate the salient from the nonsalient in matters causal. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time t determines its state at subsequent times. At this level, a short-circuit and the current's being on are equally causal in respect of the effect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the current's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite.” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
