Before I disappear back into the eeeeeeeuw enteric neuroscience PhD life….again…
Firstly: In http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf is: Definition: “Fundamental Physics: I define it by the correct-by-definition discourse about observable and verifiable anticipation of possible relatively evolving quantities and/or qualities.” Do you see the assumption here? It assumes that models derived from experiential qualities (=empiricism) necessarily capture those processes of the natural world that generate the experiential qualities used to be empirical. This is simply a belief. Yes the universe may behave in the way characterised –as you say – by ‘definition’. They are tautologous. To assume that these are ‘fundamental’ is to make the whole definition an oxymoron! The ‘fundamental laws’ that responsible for experiential qualities and the laws obtained by USING those experiential qualities to do observation cannot logically be claimed to be the same set! No useful outcome can be acquired from this thinking. Secondly: To make any sense at all of the words ‘first-person’ you have to have some sort of definition of what that is. I don’t think there is any real definition of that anywhere in QM or UD or YD or any of the other models discussed here. There is an assumption that the idea of a ‘third person’ perspective and ‘third person experience’. These I think are both an oxymoron like military intelligence. J This is another assumption deriving from the idea that first person perspective is an any way captured by QM or a COMP machine. Not shown, not justified… Third and finally COMP can be found to be false as follows: In http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf there is, on page 10, the following statement: “It can be seen as a manner to emulate digital parallelism in a linear sequential way.” According to your own document the UD is an enormous serial proof machine. It _assumes_ that the very act of being such a machine somehow preserves all the characteristics of what it is describing. This is simply untrue. Proof: Two turing machines A and B working in lockstep actually do 3 ‘computations’ or ‘proofs’: machine A proof Ta, machine B proof Tb and C) the ‘relative’ proof Tab (and Tba) between machines A and B....Equally true, but not literally proven by the two machines. These are virtual theorems that precisely fit the classification of Gödellian ‘unprovable truths’ (which, I hereby claim priority as discoverer). Russel has my paper on them. The UD has Ta in it. The UD has Tb in it. The UD does not have Tab or Tba Furthermore: In order that Tba/Tab be excluded in the UD you have to assume they are not relevant to subjective experience. If Tba and Tab are recognised at all they are certinly not included in the UD by defintion of the serial execution. Nor are they proven eliminable from the UD (=unimportant). Tba and Tab are IMPLICIT proofs = virtual theorems that are only present in inherently parallel systems. Ergo it is simply an erroneous basis to start any model of the natural world and especially erroneous if it has anything to say about subjective experience, which, if it is anything at all is NOT about what a thing IS, but is about what a thing IS NOT. When you explicitly define any ‘thing’ you implicitly define NOT THING! Any computationalist approach formulates seriality and disposes of all the virtual theorems! No amount of wishful computing will reinstate them! You have to BE PARALLEL to get them. Alternatively you can prove conclusively prove that they are not in the universe….woops…you will then prove all Feynman diagrams to be false…(virtual theorems = virtual matter) …and….I can find a mechanism whereby the human brain makes very good use of virtual theorems. So “what is it like to be a UD?” It’s like being a whopping great fat Turing machine = like being a tape reader and tape: probably nothing at all, but certainly different from whatever the UD thinks it is emulating! What’s it like to be a computer based on silicon? Like being a hot rock? What’s it like to be a quantum computer? Like being a cryogenically cold rock. :) Finally: This is development of Progoginian thinking. The two people on this list who seem to be getting nearest to it are Stephen Paul King and Hal Ruhl. Can we please move on? The universe is absolutely bristling with virtual theorems. There are no theories of everything here… but merely ‘theories of not much at all’! Experiential qualities are not in the UD. All human knowledge is symbolically grounded in experiential qualities (a la Harnad). ergo... Bye bye COMP. Cheers, Colin Hales ________________________________________ From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2005 1:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: Kaboom On 24 Aug 2005, at 02:45, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't even get past the axioms of COMP. They just don’t hold unless I delude myself that the universe is driven by some mechanism implementing the underlying 'ruleness' we observe. I don't think so at all. If comp is true then there is no primitive Universe at all, and observable reality is, a priori, not computable (I mean turing-emulable). This is obvious if you follow the Universal Dovetailer Argument, so I will not explain, and I will just refer you to my URL). Understanding consciousness is my goal and playing around with human generated symbols symbols seems to be diverting good thinking away from the thing that is actually responsible for consciousness - the natural world. Only if comp is false, but that is coherent with what you say above. Indeed with comp you need to explain the belief in a "natural world" from an average of machine first person point of view. Good for me because I am searching what the "natural world" is and where it comes from. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
