Stathis writes
I understand [Saibal's] point, but I think you are making an invalid
assumption
about the relationship between a random sampling of all the OM's available
to an individual and that individual's experience of living his life.
Suppose a trillion trillion copies of my mind
I continue to describe a different way of talking than that
used by Stathis, who writes
[Saibal writes]
The same is true here. It must follow from the laws of physics (which
include the effects of simulations) that there are indeed many more copies
of you at t2.
Yes, we can say that
Bruno writes
Le 02-juin-05, à 15:23, Lee Corbin a écrit :
[Stathis wrote]
So if I am told that tomorrow I will be copied ten times and
one of these copies will be tortured, I am worried, because
that means there is a 1/10 chance I will be tortured.
Good example, but I would say
Stathis writes
...I think we may basically agree, but there are some differences. If you
look at it from a third person perspective, continuity of personal identity
over time is not only a delusion but a rather strange and inconsistent
delusion.
I'm not quite sure I understand why you say
Sorry, but I don't have much of an idea of what is being discussed
in this thread. Could you try to enlighten me?
Rmiller originally wrote
Equivalence
If the individual exists simultaneously across a many-world manifold, then
how can one even define a copy?
Well, I would say this (i.e.,
R. Miller writes
Lee Corbin wrote:
Stephen writes
I really do not want to be a stick-in-the-mud here,
but what do we base the idea that copies could
exist upon?
It is a conjecture called functionalism (or one of its close variants).
Functionalism, at least, in the social
Stephen writes
Stephen writes
I really do not want to be a stick-in-the-mud here, but
what do we base the idea that copies could exist upon?
Don't worry about not going along with someone's program ;-)
I think that you're just being polite by calling yourself
a stick-in-the-mud. Why,
Brent wrote
-Original Message-
From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 8:39 AM
To: Everything-List
Subject: RE: Functionalism and People as Programs
I think there is considerable evidence to support the view that human level
intelligence could be
be ignored.
Some time back Lee Corbin posed the question of which was more
fundamental: observer-moments or universes? I would say, with more
thought, that observer-moments are more fundamental in terms of explaining
the subjective appearance of what we see, and what we can expect
Hal Finney writes
Lee Corbin writes:
But in general, what do observer-moments explain? Or what does the
hypothesis concerning them explain? I just don't get a good feel
that there are any higher level phenomena which might be reduced
to observer-moments (I am still very skeptical
Bruno writes
All right. So you both (Hal Finney and Lee Corbin) with the first axiom
Arghh! My new revelation says that axioms are fine if
you are doing math. But some of us are doing something
here that is entirely separate: philosophy. I love math;
it is my hobby. But axioms and all
Bruno provides the exercise
I notice that many people seek refuge in the no-copying theorem of
QM.
Exercise: 1) Show by a qualitative informal reasoning that if we are
Turing emulable then a no-cloning theorem is a necessity.
My best guess right now? Your challenge would be a futile
Stathis writes
I believe that tomorrow I will become one of the people in the multiverse
who believe they are me and share my memories.
What if you have just taken Midazolam, and so won't remember
any of this tomorrow? (I contend that you'll be them anyway.)
When I think about this, I
Rich writes
Another hypothetical. In 1939, let's say, a writer comes up with a sci-fi
story, which is published the next year. It involves (let's say) a uranium
bomb and a beryllium target in the Arizona desert that might blow up and
cause problems for everyone. His main character is a
Stathis wrote
I got here this way: to be consistent,
I must use all my knowledge
to arrive at a class of events and
processes that I approve of, and
classes that I disapprove of. I
decided that it was bad for me to
suffer. Then since by physics, I
seem to be any sufficiently
It's perfectly clear to me which of the two is more important: prediction
or explanation?
Now that I have been self-liberated from fear of circularity,
it's clear that: each is more important than the other!
Lee
P.S. Someone pointed out to me off-list that I was far from the
first to have had
Hi everyone,
I've been in heated discussions about duplicates for 39 years now,
and so I just don't have much patience with it any more.
I have not read many of the recent posts, but I have always gone
along with the viewpoint that more runtime is good, and that
it linearly bestows benefit on
Bruno wrote
Le 23-juin-05, ? 05:38, Lee Corbin a ?crit :
you *can* be in two places at the same time.
From a third person pov: OK.
From a first person pov: how?
Right. From a first person... you cannot be. This further
illustrates the limitations of the first person account, its
in,
there will be a new, liberated instance that gets more life for
Lee Corbin!
Here is yet another delightful Stathis experiment that I fished up from
about ten days ago:
Hal wrote
Stathis Papaioannou writes:
You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how
you
got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper,
and
Jesse writes
Lee Corbin wrote:
If I, on the other hand, knew that this wonderful room was going to
be available to me on a specific date,... I would enthusiastically
pay a good fraction of my net worth for this opportunity.
Why? Why would I do it? Because logic grabs me
Jesse writes
First, I think that it's important to remove the qualifier identical
here. Would two copies cease to be identical if one atom were out of
place?
I meant something more like running the same program
Okay, that's fine.
On another tack, you are the same person, etc., that
Jesse writes
It's *not* aesthetic whether, say, George Bush is you or not. He's
definitely not! He doesn't have your memories, for the first thing.
It's simply objectively true that some programs---or some clumps
of biological matter---are Jesse Mazur and others are not. (Even
though
Stathis writes
same here; if you are interested in knowing what the
case is, and not merely what the appearances are, then you
have to understand that you are a physical process, and it
may so happen that you execute in different places, and in
different times, and that overlaps are
Eugen writes
A program can run in two different places at the same time, and
the program (treated as the pattern) is perfectly capable of
receiving input X in one location at the same time that it
No, program is the wrong model. You can have identical pieces of a bit
pattern (CD-ROM,
Stathis writes
This brings up an interesting conundrum that I raised three or four torture
experiments ago. Given 10 instantiations of a person having an unpleasant
experience E ... for example 10 sentient programs running in parallel, is
it better, if we aim to reduce suffering, to (a)
Eugen writes
I am postulating that it *is* the same sequence
of code bytes, the *same* program. Do you know what I mean when
I say that program A is the same program as program B?
An instantiated program is much more than a sequence of
bytes -- it also has state. Most programs do not
Stephen writes
[LC]
I'm skeptical of continuity requirements. Now I do not believe in
Greg Egan's equations in Permutation City: according to a premise
of the story, it order to obtain the you of tomorrow, there is a
short-cut alternative to just letting you run. And that is to
Stathis writes
[Lee wrote]
Here is the dreadful closest continuer method of Nozick and
others. I claim it gives the wrong answer. Look, the continuation
happens anyway, whether you die here or not! Especially if the
events are outside each other's light cones, how can what happens
Stathis writes
How about this? For ten million dollars, would
you agree to have the last ten minutes of your
memory erased, where you are now?
These are all interesting questions that have bothered me for a long time. I
think the most useful suggestion I can make about how to decide
Johnathan writes
Lee Corbin wrote:
When I was in high school, I read that dentists were considering
use of a new anesthetic with this property. I was revolted, and
even more revolted when none of my friends could see anything
wrong with it.
Experiences are real, whether you
Stathis writes
I have not undergone conscious sedation myself, but I have administered the
anaesthetic (midazolam, diazepam, propofol, fentanyl) for hundreds of
gastroscopies and colonoscopies...
The dose of the anaesthetic agent in conscious
sedation is titrated according to how the
Stephen writes
Hi Norman,
Who gave this guy a Doctorate? That webpage appears to be merely an
advertisement for a book.
I think that your question is more important that the ramblings of Dr.
Raj!
I read the page and was pretty dubious myself, although I don't
have the balls to
Stathis writes
Well, you've already admitted that a
little memory loss does not threaten your identity! Recall the Aussies
you wrote about who customarily lose an entire evening's inebriation :-)
Yes, and I also admitted that there is an inconsistency in my position.
Well, if you
Stathis writes
It's interesting that during an operation, while the patient is well and
truly unconscious, the same physiological response to a painful stimulus is
seen as in an awake person: when the surgeon makes the first incision, heart
rate and blood pressure immediately rise. If you
Hal writes
I have been on vacation so I have a large backlog of messages to read!
But they are very interesting and full of challenging ideas. I find this
list to be one of the best I have ever been on in terms both of fearlessly
exploring difficult areas and also remaining cordial and
Pete writes
David Hume Quote
In other words -- no matter what you think about your
degree of identity to a person, or how many facts you
know about the situation you're in, those facts alone
can't tell you how you should act.
Okay. I agree. I too believe in the is/ought barrier,
if
Stathis writes
[Lee wrote]
I'm glad that even the appearance of pain in an unconscious patient
is disturbing to physicians. That's very good. For the body to be
experiencing pain---and presumably sending pain signals to the brain
---too closely resembles pain being experienced but with
, Lee Corbin a écrit :
Yes, but I contend that while there are two organisms present,
there is only one person. It's much as though some space
aliens kidnapped you and tried to say that Pete at spacetime
coordinates (X1,T1) could not possibly be the same person as
Pete at coordinates (X1
Russell writes
I find it amazing
that you claim I deny the existence of time. Au contraire, it is
something I explicitly assume. My reading of Bruno's work is that time
is implicitly assumed as part of computationalism (I know Bruno
sometimes does not quite agree, but there you have it).
Pete writes
But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary
(or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice?
I've wrote to the list before about a Game of Life simulation in
which, instead of running the states of the automaton forward in
time, erasing the
that they are Lee Corbin
it will be found that half of them saw a 1 and half saw a zero.
It is preposterous to finger *any* of them and accuse them of
not being me.
They will each believe that they are me (i.e., the me here in the
past). That is, for each Lee', they will assert Lee' = Lee.
So also
Stathis writes
Lee Corbin writes:
But it is *precisely* that I cannot imagine how this stack of
Life gels could possibly be thinking or be conscious that forces
me to admit that something like time must play a role.
Here is why: let's suppose that your stack of Life boards does
Bruno writes
You are asked to bet on your immediate and less immediate
future feeling. Precisely: we ask you to choose among the
following bets:
Immediate:
A. I will see 0 on the wall.
B. I will see 1 on the wall.
C. I will see 0 on the wall and I will see 1 on the wall.
D. I
Stathis writes
But if you answer I will see 0 on the wall OR I will see 1 on the wall
then it makes it sound as though one of those cases will obtain but
not the other. (This is usually how we talk when Bruno admits, for
example, that tonight he either will watch TV *or* he will not
Hal Finney writes
Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the
same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some
sense), where there is no actual causality?
You yourself have already provided the key example in imagining
a two dimensional CA where the second
Stathis writes
I wasn't very clear in my last post. What I meant was this:
(a) A conscious program written in C is compiled on a computer. The C
instructions are converted into binary code, and when this code is run, the
program is self-aware.
(b) The same conscious program is written
Jesse writes
So again, is it enough to look at the natural laws of our universe in
order to decide whether the consciousnesses within it are real? Or do we
need more? Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the
same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in
Hal Finney writes
Lee Corbin writes:
Hal Finney writes
Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the
same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some
sense), where there is no actual causality?
You yourself have already provided the key example
Aditya writes
Although it is of course debatable, I hold that what we call reality is
our minds' understanding of our sensory perceptions.
It's just amazing on this list. Does no one speak up for
realism? The *default* belief among *all* people up until
they take their first fatal dive into
Hal writes
I'd say they are *less* than models of reality. They are just consistency
conditions on our models of reality. They are attempts to avoid talking
nonsense. But note that not too long ago all the weirdness of quantum
mechanics and relativity would have been regarded as
We all admit that it's easy to become confused. I myself
regularly do so every day. In fact, you can't even learn
anything until you first become confused.
But there is *no* reason to become more confused than is
necessary.
The KEY DISTINCTION is between reality and perception of
reality. This
Russell writes
Sadly, your wish for the common sense understanding of reality to hold
will be thwarted - the more one thinks about such things, the less
coherent a concept it becomes.
Well, all that I ask is that the *basics* be kept firmly in mind
while we gingerly probe forward.
The basics
Colin writes
Hi Lee, Beat around the 'bush', why don't you!
You're right. I must be more direct. Okay, here it is:
Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.
Academically, it has become an almost completely worthless
cult. (I am *not* exaggerating one bit.)
'Reality',
Stathis writes
When 99% of the human race use the word reality, they mean
the world outside their skins.
If you sacrifice our common understanding of reality, then
you'll find yourself in a hole out of which you'll never climb.
Yes, but what *is* this 3D world we can all stub our toe
Bruno writes
Look, it's VERY simple: take as a first baby-step the notion
that the 19th century idea of a cosmos is basically true, and
then add just the Big Bang. What we then have is a universe
that operates under physical laws. So far---you'll readily
agree---this is *very* simple
Chris writes
Samuel Johnson did refute Berkeley.
The main thrust of Berkley's argument is to show that sensory perception is
indirect, and therefore the existence of a material cause for those
perceptions is an unjustified inference in contravention of Occam's razor.
The argument that
Recipe for becoming a non-realist.
1. Study your perceptions *introspectively*.
This has several advantages. First, you are an authority
(in fact, the ultimate authority) on your own perceptions,
and so little in the way of humility will ever be needed.
You can start out, as it were,
Hal wrote
Brent Meeker wrote:
In practice we use coherence with other theories to guide out choice. With
that kind of constraint we may have trouble finding even one candidate
theory.
Well, in principle there still should be an infinite number of theories,
starting with the data is
Charles writes
[col]
I aologise in advance for my crap spelling. My fingers
don;t type what I think. That's the relaity of it! :-)
Do you have a spell-checker?
Warning... I am also adopting Lee-style bombast because
I feel like venting. Don't be too precious about it! :-)
Blast away!
Jesse writes
Lee Corbin wrote:
Chris writes
Samuel Johnson did refute Berkeley.
The main thrust of Berkley's argument is to show
that sensory perception is
indirect, and therefore the existence of a
material cause for those perceptions is an
unjustified inference
Does everyone who is following the latest chapter of the book that
Hal is evidently writing agree that there is no necessary conflict
between it and more-or-less traditional realism? That is, I don't
find anything too outre here; it seems to be an interesting but
speculative theory about things
Jesse writes
I meant that your perceptions have physiological causes
because your brain is a part of an obviously successful
survival machine designed by evolution.
Sure, but all of this is compatible with an idealist philosophy where
reality is made up of nothing but observer-moments
Aditya writes
At the risk of barging in once again,
Oh, please forget about all that! No one should apologize for it. Ever.
I (Lee) had written
When in the laboratory we examine the concepts mice
have of the world, we can easily see their limitations.
What would we think of mice who
Saibal writes
I agree with the notion of OMs as events in some suitably chosen space.
Observers are defined by the programs that generate them. If we identify
universes with programs then observers are just embedded universes. An
observer moment is just a qualia experienced by the observer,
Russell submits the following as clarifications:
An event is a particular set of coordinates (t,x,y,z) in 4D
spacetime. This is how it is used in GR, anyway.
An observer moment is a set of constraints, or equivalently
information known about the world (obviously at a moment of time).
It
Brent writes
[Lee writes]
[Jesse wrote]
Sure, but all of this is compatible with an idealist philosophy where
reality is made up of nothing but observer-moments at the most
fundamental level--something like the naturalistic panpsychism
discussed on that webpage I mentioned.
Russell writes
John M. wrote
I believe if we are up to identifying concepts with
common sense content as well, we should not restrict
ourselves into the model-distinctions of (any) physics
but generalize the meanings beyond such restrictions.
I agree: that is, so long as we can
Aditya writes
[LC]:
Well, Russell did also say that OMs and events seemed to him about as
alike as chalk and cheese. It's starting to look that way:
So, alas, it seems that the firmly established meanings of
event and observer moment can't really be said to be at
all the same thing.
Hal writes
I did mention the question of whether a given calculation
instantiated a given OM. Maybe instantiate is not the
right word there. I meant to consider the question of whether
the first calculation added to the measure of the information
structure corresponding to the OM.
I think
Brent writes
Lee Corbin wrote:
Hal writes
I did mention the question of whether a given calculation
instantiated a given OM. Maybe instantiate is not the
right word there. I meant to consider the question of whether
the first calculation added to the measure of the information
Hal asks
How about the case of mathematical proofs? Could an entire proof
exist Platonically? A proof has a sort of time-like flow to it, causal
dependency of later steps on earlier ones. It seems to be an interesting
intermediate case.
My tentative opinion is that it does make sense to
Jesse and Norman gave excellent reasons for us not to abandon the
objective stance.
About Norm's post, I agree with
I realize that different observers must see different versions of events,
but so what? In our 3+1 dimensional universe, couldn't objective reality
be defined as the state of
Bruno writes
Le 07-août-05, à 21:24, John M a écrit :
Reality is supposed to be something independent from
our personal manipulations
Srtictly speaking I do not agree. Some satellites of Earth are human
made, and local physical reality can depends, at least locally, on
us.
Sure, but
Y. X might be, for example, a
calculation that proves 1,000,000,000,061 is prime. And Y might be
Lee Corbin. As it takes a much, much shorter program to give rise to
X than to Y (I say not with just a trace of pride), the measure of X
is greater than that of Y (unfortunately for me).
What
Russell said (Hal's paraphrase)
I guess that you would say that if the unused
counterfactual machinery would actually work if tested, then she is
conscious; but if the counterfactual machines were broken or blocked
such that they wouldn't work (even though they are not used) then she
I wrote
P.S. Platonists != UDist-ers != computationalists != COMP
and meant != to have the programming meaning of not equal.
For example, I am a (math) Platonist and also a computationalist,
but don't know enough about (Bruno's) COMP to say anything, and
am skeptical of UDist.
Surely
Bruno writes
Le 08-août-05, à 17:49, Lee Corbin a écrit :
(True, we can also extend sympathy by believing it to be utterly
true that he is experiencing pain, but I think that John and I
(and many) are simply not comfortable with introducing a reality,
namely, subjective reality to cover
Bruno writes
You just seems to want those [1st person] experiences to be just an
unnecessary
epiphenomenon, and you would like that science never address what they
really are and where they came from.
For you it looks like consciousness is just a sort of subjective
mirror partially
Godfrey writes
Hi Everythingers,
Though I am new to the list I have been reading your fascinating posts
on this troubling issue of reality and subjectivity
so please pardon if I skip the protocol and delve into the discussion
right away. I have a background in computer
and cognitive
Chris writes
Well, maybe some of the above helped to explain it. Basing stuff
on 1st person has a long history. That's what everyone, it seems
to me, did before the scientific era (about 1600?). So far as I know,
nothing has ever come of it.
Its been the cornerstone of modern philosophy
Chris writes
The point is that given the certainty of 'I exist' subjective experience can
not just be dismissed by the realist. Given its certainty, it demands some
kind of explanation,
Of course it does. But I imagine that you are looking at the phenonmenon
from inside the system. I warn
I wish to emphasize that according to a traditional realist's
beliefs, observer moments are objective and real, and hence
do exist, so that there is nothing objectionable about speculations
concerning them.
Suppose that a mouse during some small time delta t is in
a particular state (or set of
Stephen writes
I would like for you to consider that we should not take OMs as
objective processes but the result of objective processes.
Of course, I will bow to whatever word usage is favored by most of
the people, or by those who have the longest experience with the
term. I merely want
Colin writes
Lee Corbin [wrote]
The final word: OMs can be viewed as objective processes, and
efforts to find the simplest explanation considering Everything
seem quite appropriate.
It sounds like a final word but I'd urge caution. It may be _your_
final word but not the natural
Bruno writes
Lee Corbin a écrit :
Stephen writes
I would like for you to consider that we should not take OMs as
objective processes but the result of objective processes.
Of course, I will bow to whatever word usage is favored by most of
the people, or by those who have
Chris writes
Russell's (wasnt it Bernard Williams'?) criticism of the cogito is just to
say that Descartes added non certainties to his certainty. The assumption of
an 'I' to recieve the 'Thoughts'. Nevertheless, with regards to the hardcore
'realist', this isnt going to be much comfort.
Stephen writes
Just one point while I have some time and mental clarity. Can a Realist
accept that a wholly independent world out there exists and existed
before he did and yet can admit that the particular properties of this
independent world are not *definite* prior to the
John writes
Lee and Stephen:
since we have only our subjective access to out
there does it make any difference if it is REALLY?
like we interpret it, or in an untraceable manner:
different?
You write we have only our subjective access to
[what is out there]. Yes, and from that we have
two
Stephen writes
I would like to refute your [Lee's] common sense Realism and
show that it is missing the most salient point of Realism: that
it not have any cracks through which anything unreal might
slip.
An interestingly stated goal: it *sounds* as though you've written
as preamble to the
Chris writes
I admire Descartes as a man [I would have said scientist and mathematician],
not so much as a philosopher. I admire his method more than his results,
he looked inwards.
He also did a tremendous amount of good work in science and math.
Like Hume, Berkley , Locke and countless
Colin writes
ACCURACY
Extent to which a measurement matches and international standard.
REPEATABILITY
Extent to which a measurement matches its own prior measurement.
For example the SICK DME 200 laser distance measurement instrument
has an accuracy of about 10mm over 150m but a
Godfrey writes
As much as I sympathise with your call for preservation of naive
realism
Good heavens! How many times must it be said? What is going on
with people? There is a *clear* definition of naive realism.
Try the almost always extremely reliable wikipedia:
Colin writes
So, for subjective experience: Yes it can be an illusion,
but a systematically erroneous, relentlessly repeatable
illusion driven by measurement of the natural world where
its errors are not important - .ie. not mission fatal to the
observer. Experiential qualities, in
Russel writes
why *probabilities* emerge from squared amplitudes, I couldn't
tell you. I'm not sure that anyone knows---as I recall, many
this is related to the basis problem of the MWI (though
Deutsch and others say that decoherence takes care of
everything, though).
This is
Godfrey writes
Yes we cannot explain QM by classical physics
but NEITHER can we explain from QM the classical
world we know and love with its well defined and
assigned elements of (naive) physical reality
that you so much cherish, I am afraid! If we did
there would not be
Quentin writes
I think I've waited long enough... Kurt, you are just a guy who like read
himself You'll never make your point, because you don't have one... you
just like insulting other people and show your big neck...
By now, your messages goes directly to the trash bin... Ciao and
Bruno writes
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I find an assumption of COMP far more tenuous than an assumption of a
natural world
I respect this.
I think that there has been a good deal of confusion between
(I) computationalism: the doctrine that robots running classical
programs can be
Bruno writes
Well, even at step 0 (Yes doctor), if the doctor is honest it will
warn you that the artificial brain is a digital device, and I cannot
imagine him explaining what that really means in all generality
without invoking Church thesis.
That's funny. My doctor never explains
Hal writes
That simple mathematical objects have a sort of existence is probably
unobjectionable, but most people probably don't give it too much thought.
For most, it's a question analogous to whether a falling tree makes a
noise when there's no one there to hear it. Whether the number 3
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