Re: A possible flaw un UDA?
Hi Russell, Hi Stephen, I comment the two (now three!) posts in one mail. On 14 Apr 2011, at 04:12, Stephen Paul King wrote: -Original Message- From: Russell Standish Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 8:07 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A possible flaw un UDA? I confess I got lost too with your presentation. My gut feeling is your discomfort stems from an almost magical insertion of the subjective (ie a knower) into the UDA. Another way of putting it is what runs the UD?. However, the knower is introduced explicitly with the yes, doctor assumption - that I survive with my brain substituted by a digital device. What is this I if it isn't the knower? What possible meaning can survive have, without there being a sense of being? Yes. And for the UDA (UD Argument), the knower is sufficiently defined by his/her personal memory, like the sequence of self-localization in its duplication history written in his diary (WWWMWMMWMWMMWMWWMMMW...). In AUDA, the definition is more subtle, and is due to Theaetetus (or Plato), it is the believer in some truth (by definition), and is handled by the Bp p translation. Remember that, by the second incompleteness theorem, Bf is not equivalent with Bf f, from the point of view of the machine. G* (the 'divine intellect') proves that Bf is equivalent with Bf f, but the machine itself cannot. Externally, a UD just exists as a static program (just a number that exists platonically). However, once you have a knower, you can run the UD, albeit viewed from the inside. In my book I make this explicit with the TIME postulate, but I don't see anything hugely controversial about it. It is not referring to any external time, just that the knower cannot experience all experiences at once. Which makes sense in the block arithmetical universe with TIME given by the UD-steps. The *execution* of the UD is also static in Platonia. It is static not through one static number, but through infinite (and bifurcating/branching) sequence of numbers. Here, physicists accepting even just special relativity have no problem with that. Subjective time (re)appears in the static discourse made by the machine inside that block statical mindscape. I suspect that Stephen, in the manner of Prigogine, wants some basic fundamental time. I suspect him also to be under the charm of some mathematical mermaids! I answer Stephen below. Have I put my finger on it, or is this just wide of the mark? -- ** [SPK] Hi Russell, Yes, that is part of the discomfort. Another is a feeling that the UDA is the semantic equivalent of building a beautiful castle in midair. One first erects is a brilliant scaffolding then inserts the castle high up on top of the scaffolding. We then are invited to think that the castle will stay in place after the scaffolding is removed. Let me be clear, I find Bruno's idea to be work of pure genius. I delight in it and I deeply admire Bruno and his tenacity. I just was to remove these nagging doubts I have about it. I want to be absolutely sure that it can stand up to ferocious and diligent attacks before I will commit to it. Remember: if COMP is true, we will never know it for sure. We will never be sure about it, and we might even be at risk if we take it for granted. And that might happen. If you are using each day a (classical) teleporting device, you might find hard to doubt comp, yet you can't still not be sure. You might suffer an 'agnosologic disease, like that poor first pionneer of teleportation: after being reconstituted, he was blind, deaf, paralysed, and when after years of effort he succeed to communicate something it was great, the experience was successful, I feel healthy, with all my capacities, and I am willing to do it again!. That is one of the reason I insist that COMP belongs to theology, you need an act of faith, and you need to reiterate it all the time. I do think plausible that nature has already bet on it, in some way, and that we do those reiteration bets, all the time, instinctively, but that is a theory, and to believe and to apply a theory to yourself, you need an unavoidable act of faith. Let us consider in detail an idea that emerged here in my post and Bruno's response: *** start cut/paste From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 7:02 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A possible flaw un UDA? Hi Stephen, On 13 Apr 2011, at 02:35, Stephen Paul King wrote: AR must be expressible as some belief in each 1p (modulo coherent and soundness): [BM] Why? It is true, but I don't see the relevance. for AR to exist [BM]What do you mean by AR exists? That is ambiguous. And what you are saying begin to look like archeology is needed for dinosaur to exist. The very idea of AR is that 1+1=2 does not need a human for being true. Of course, a human or some alien is needed
Re: A possible flaw un UDA?
Hi Stephen, On 13 Apr 2011, at 02:35, Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Bruno, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2011 1:03 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Causality = 1p Continuity? On 03 Apr 2011, at 05:15, stephenk wrote: snip [SPK] That logical structures alone are insufficient to model our existence. Correct. But arithmetical structure are enough (or please mention a flaw in UDA). [SPK] I wish to be doubly sure that I am not arguing against a straw man, therefore I will be quoting from and commenting on: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4c995dee307def3b “COMP is the hypothesis that there is a level such that I survive a digital functional substitution of my generalised body/brain made at that level, + Church Thesis (CT: digital = turing) + Arithmetical Platonism (AR: the belief that arithmetical propositions obeys classical logic, and this independently of my own cognitive ability). To sum up: COMP = \exists n SURV-SUBST(n)+ CT + AR “ OK. Since that time I do no more assume AR. The reason I assumed explicitly AR was for reason of clarity, but AR is redundant, given that you need it to make sense of Church thesis. As it is written in sane04, and in the text you quote AR is just the idea that classical logic can be applied to arithmetic. “b) CU: there is a Concrete Universe, whatever it is. This is need for the decor. c) CUD: there is a Concrete running of a UD in the concrete universe. Those are supplementary assumptions to ease the reasoning, and are explicitly eliminated later. d) 3-locality: computations are locally implementable in the concrete universe. That is it is possible to separate two implementations of two computations in such a way that the result of one of these computations will not interfere with the result of the other one. Computations can be independent. More generally the result of a computation is independant of any event occuring a long way (out of the light cone) from that computation.” ... “12) A Universal Dovetailer exists. (Extraordinary consequence of Church thesis and Arithmetical Realism). The UD simulates all possible digital devices in a quasi-parallel manner). (Adding a line in the code of any UD, and you get a quasi- computation of its Chaitin \Omega number). 13) So let us assume CU and CUD, that is let us assume explicitly there is a concrete universe and a concrete running of a UD in it. This need a sort of steady state universe or an infinitely expanding universe to run the complete infinite UD. Suppose you let a pen falls. You want predict what will happen. Let us suppose your brain is in state S at the beginning of the experiment. The concrete UD will go to that state infinitely often and compute all sort of computational continuations. This is equivalent to reconstitutions. It follows from 11 that your expectation are undetermined, and the domain of the indeterminism is given by the (infinite) set of reconstitutions. To predict, with COMP, what will happen you must take into account all possible histories going through the state S of your brain. And here clearly the NEURO hypothesis is not used. Even if your real brain state is the state of the actual concrete universe, with COMP that state will be generated (infinitely often) by the UD. Same reasoning if your brain state is the quantum state of the universe, so the reasoning works even if the brain is a non local quantum object (if that exists). So the physics is determined by the collection of your computational continuations relatively to your first person actual state.” 14) If 'that' physics is different from the traditional empirical physics, then you refute COMP. But with COMP you will not refute COMP, isn't it? So with COMP you will derive the laws of physics, i.e. invariant and similarities in the 'average' continuations of yourself (defining the measure on the computationnal continuations). Exercice: why should we search a measure on the computational continuations and not just the computational states? Hint: with just the computational states only, COMP predicts white noise for all experiences. (ok Chris ?). With the continuations, a priori we must just hunt away the 'white rabbit' continuations. You can also show that Schmidhuber's 'universal prior' solution works only in the case the level of substitution is so low that my generalised brain is the entire multiverse. (see below). 15) Once you explain why arithmetical machines are statistically right to believe in physical laws without any real universe, such a real universe is redundant. By Arithmetical Realism and OCCAM razor, there is no need to run the concrete UD, nor is there any need for a real concrete Universe. (Or you can use the movie graph argument to show that a first person is not able to distinguish
Re: A possible flaw un UDA?
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 07:54:30AM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Bruno, Ummm,, again I completely fail to communicate a basic idea to you. My apologies. Have you read Russell’s book? Onward! Stephen I confess I got lost too with your presentation. My gut feeling is your discomfort stems from an almost magical insertion of the subjective (ie a knower) into the UDA. Another way of putting it is what runs the UD?. However, the knower is introduced explicitly with the yes, doctor assumption - that I survive with my brain substituted by a digital device. What is this I if it isn't the knower? What possible meaning can survive have, without there being a sense of being? Externally, a UD just exists as a static program (just a number that exists platonically). However, once you have a knower, you can run the UD, albeit viewed from the inside. In my book I make this explicit with the TIME postulate, but I don't see anything hugely controversial about it. It is not referring to any external time, just that the knower cannot experience all experiences at once. Have I put my finger on it, or is this just wide of the mark? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to 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: A possible flaw un UDA?
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 8:07 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A possible flaw un UDA? I confess I got lost too with your presentation. My gut feeling is your discomfort stems from an almost magical insertion of the subjective (ie a knower) into the UDA. Another way of putting it is what runs the UD?. However, the knower is introduced explicitly with the yes, doctor assumption - that I survive with my brain substituted by a digital device. What is this I if it isn't the knower? What possible meaning can survive have, without there being a sense of being? Externally, a UD just exists as a static program (just a number that exists platonically). However, once you have a knower, you can run the UD, albeit viewed from the inside. In my book I make this explicit with the TIME postulate, but I don't see anything hugely controversial about it. It is not referring to any external time, just that the knower cannot experience all experiences at once. Have I put my finger on it, or is this just wide of the mark? -- ** [SPK] Hi Russell, Yes, that is part of the discomfort. Another is a feeling that the UDA is the semantic equivalent of building a beautiful castle in midair. One first erects is a brilliant scaffolding then inserts the castle high up on top of the scaffolding. We then are invited to think that the castle will stay in place after the scaffolding is removed. Let me be clear, I find Bruno's idea to be work of pure genius. I delight in it and I deeply admire Bruno and his tenacity. I just was to remove these nagging doubts I have about it. I want to be absolutely sure that it can stand up to ferocious and diligent attacks before I will commit to it. Let us consider in detail an idea that emerged here in my post and Bruno's response: *** start cut/paste From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 7:02 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A possible flaw un UDA? Hi Stephen, On 13 Apr 2011, at 02:35, Stephen Paul King wrote: AR must be expressible as some belief in each 1p (modulo coherent and soundness): [BM] Why? It is true, but I don't see the relevance. for AR to exist [BM]What do you mean by AR exists? That is ambiguous. And what you are saying begin to look like archeology is needed for dinosaur to exist. The very idea of AR is that 1+1=2 does not need a human for being true. Of course, a human or some alien is needed to say that 1+1=2 is believed. then it is necessary that a 1p believe that AR exists and the statement “AR exists” is true. If the belief that AR exists cannot be expressed by a CUD then AR cannot be said to exist since it would be impossible to express the statement “AR exists”. Diagonalizations require some form of CU support or else they all collapse into Nothing. [BM] Why does diagonalization need a CU? ... For AR to exist as distinct from Nothing then there must exist a concrete structure, a CU, [BM] I doubt this. end cut/paste *** Why does diagonalization need a concrete universe? So that it can represent something other than itself to some thing other than itself. Does not more than one 1p exist? If only one 1p can exist then we have a perfect example of a solipsism, no? If the 1p are purely relations between numbers “as seen from the inside” (an idea that I find to be wonderful and useful and expressed in the myth of the Net of Indra), does this not lead to a duality between the numbers and the representations that the multiple 1p have of themselves, a duality exactly like what we see in the representation theorems that I have referenced previously? What I am thinking is that the sum of the inside views of the 1p is a CU that cannot be removed or reduced to just the existence of the numbers themselves so long as the numbers are collection of entities that have some differences between themselves. In other words the numbers are not Nothing. They are “something to something else” and that ‘somethingness’ is concrete and irreducible even if it is the “inside looking out” aspect of the numbers. The fact that there is an ‘inside’ that is different from an ‘outside’ demands the kind of duality that I am proposing. We talk a lot about Gödel's brilliant idea of representing propositions of a theory that includes arithmetic using arithmetic statements so that we can consider the theory to be able to “make statements about itself”. We go on and consider Turing and others that showed how this can be done in wider settings. All well and good. But do these “theories” or “abstract machines” actually have the property that we are ascribing to them absent a “knower”, to use your word and implied definition? What does it means to claim that something has such and such properties when it is in principle impossible to determine if indeed that claim is true? That sounds a bit
Re: A possible flaw un UDA?
Hi Bruno, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2011 1:03 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Causality = 1p Continuity? On 03 Apr 2011, at 05:15, stephenk wrote: snip [SPK] That logical structures alone are insufficient to model our existence. Correct. But arithmetical structure are enough (or please mention a flaw in UDA). [SPK] I wish to be doubly sure that I am not arguing against a straw man, therefore I will be quoting from and commenting on: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4c995dee307def3b “COMP is the hypothesis that there is a level such that I survive a digital functional substitution of my generalised body/brain made at that level, + Church Thesis (CT: digital = turing) + Arithmetical Platonism (AR: the belief that arithmetical propositions obeys classical logic, and this independently of my own cognitive ability). To sum up: COMP = \exists n SURV-SUBST(n)+ CT + AR “ “b) CU: there is a Concrete Universe, whatever it is. This is need for the decor. c) CUD: there is a Concrete running of a UD in the concrete universe. d) 3-locality: computations are locally implementable in the concrete universe. That is it is possible to separate two implementations of two computations in such a way that the result of one of these computations will not interfere with the result of the other one. Computations can be independent. More generally the result of a computation is independant of any event occuring a long way (out of the light cone) from that computation.” ... “12) A Universal Dovetailer exists. (Extraordinary consequence of Church thesis and Arithmetical Realism). The UD simulates all possible digital devices in a quasi-parallel manner). (Adding a line in the code of any UD, and you get a quasi- computation of its Chaitin \Omega number). 13) So let us assume CU and CUD, that is let us assume explicitly there is a concrete universe and a concrete running of a UD in it. This need a sort of steady state universe or an infinitely expanding universe to run the complete infinite UD. Suppose you let a pen falls. You want predict what will happen. Let us suppose your brain is in state S at the beginning of the experiment. The concrete UD will go to that state infinitely often and compute all sort of computational continuations. This is equivalent to reconstitutions. It follows from 11 that your expectation are undetermined, and the domain of the indeterminism is given by the (infinite) set of reconstitutions. To predict, with COMP, what will happen you must take into account all possible histories going through the state S of your brain. And here clearly the NEURO hypothesis is not used. Even if your real brain state is the state of the actual concrete universe, with COMP that state will be generated (infinitely often) by the UD. Same reasoning if your brain state is the quantum state of the universe, so the reasoning works even if the brain is a non local quantum object (if that exists). So the physics is determined by the collection of your computational continuations relatively to your first person actual state.” 14) If 'that' physics is different from the traditional empirical physics, then you refute COMP. But with COMP you will not refute COMP, isn't it? So with COMP you will derive the laws of physics, i.e. invariant and similarities in the 'average' continuations of yourself (defining the measure on the computationnal continuations). Exercice: why should we search a measure on the computational continuations and not just the computational states? Hint: with just the computational states only, COMP predicts white noise for all experiences. (ok Chris ?). With the continuations, a priori we must just hunt away the 'white rabbit' continuations. You can also show that Schmidhuber's 'universal prior' solution works only in the case the level of substitution is so low that my generalised brain is the entire multiverse. (see below). 15) Once you explain why arithmetical machines are statistically right to believe in physical laws without any real universe, such a real universe is redundant. By Arithmetical Realism and OCCAM razor, there is no need to run the concrete UD, nor is there any need for a real concrete Universe. (Or you can use the movie graph argument to show that a first person is not able to distinguish real/virtual/and *Arithmetical* nature of his own implementations, and this eliminates OCCAM.)” OK, my problem is that SURV-SUBST(n) requires that the UD actually run on some form of a CU as a CUD. You account for this by introducing CUD (CUD necessitates the existence of CU). The CU and CUD involve a measure of change that can be identified with “time” that is invariant under parameterizations (by the teleportation
