Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness - A question
Le 09-mai-05, à 01:38, Russell Standish a écrit : The simplest description can be found in Max Tegamark's paper Is an Ensemble theory the ultimate TOE?. He uses the term frog perspective for 1st person, and bird perspective for 3rd person. I agree more or less. Tegmark, like many physicists forget the uncommunicable (subjective, private, personal) aspects of the 1-person. That's why he missed the hardness (and impossibility) of attaching the experience to one story in one (mathematical) universe. So he missed the emergence of physics from something like ALL mathematical structure (which by the way is too big and unnecessary once we postulate the comp hyp). Bruno Marchal has also written quite a bit about it in Chapter 5 of his (Lille) thesis. This is unfortunately is not as accessible as Tegmark's paper (not only is it written in French, which is not particularly a problem for me, but it is also written in the language of modal logic, which I'm only slowly gaining an appreciation of its power and utility). From what I understand of the chapter, 1st person communicable phenomena is described by a logic G, and incommunicable by G*\G. The square box operator [] represents knowledge, ie []p means one knows p. The interpretation of [] is basically that p is true, and that I can prove it. So this is essentially what we might call mathematical knowledge. How this relates to physical knowledge, which a la Popper is more not proven false, I don't really know. 3rd person phenomena on the other hand is identified with Z, where the box operator corresponds to proving p and not being able to prove p is false, ie basically the collection of self-consistent formal systems. Z seems remarkably similar to Max Tegmark's original proposal... Mmh.. It's a little bit the contrary G and G* will be 3 person. S4Grz will be the first person knower and at the time will be ... subjective time (like in Brouwer consciousness theory). Z1* will be the observer. No hurry. I'm rather buzy now, but of course we will come back on this ... People can read the post on this list which I refere in my url (below). I'm still rereading these chapters, and I'm sure I'll have some more questions on the subject other than Where does Popper fit in? Excellent question. The basic idea is that if physics is derivable from comp, well, let us derive it, and then let us compare with empirical physics. If comp implies F = Ma^2, it would be reasonnable to conclude comp is refuted! Cheers, Bruno On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 02:54:48PM -0400, Jeanne Houston wrote: I am a mere layperson who follows your discussions with great interest, so forgive me if I'm about to ask a question whose answer is apparent to all but me. I am very familiar with the first person and third person concept in everyday life and literature, but I am a little unclear about the specific meaning that it holds in these discussions; I feel like I'm missing something important that is blocking my understanding of how you are applying first and third person to your work in terms of multiverses and MWI. Could someone please direct me to some links that could help me better understand these perspectives as they apply to the discussions. Thank you. Jeanne -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. --- - A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --- - http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness - A question
I am a mere layperson who follows your discussions with great interest, so forgive me if I'm about to ask a question whose answer is apparent to all but me. I am very familiar with the "first person" and "third person" concept in everyday life and literature, but I am a little unclear about the specific meaning that it holds in these discussions; I feel like I'm missing something important that is blocking my understanding of how you are applying first and third person to your work in terms of multiverses and MWI. Could someone please direct me to some links that could help me better understand these perspectives as they apply to the discussions. Thank you. Jeanne - Original Message - From: Stephen Paul King To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 11:35 AM Subject: Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness Dear Norman, You make a very interesting point (the first point) and I think that we could all agree upon it as it isbut I notice that you used two words that put a sizable dent in the COMP idea: "snapshot" and "precisely represented". It seems that we might all agree that we would be hard pressed to find any evidence at all in a single snapshot on an entity to lead us to believe that it somehow has or had some form of 1st person viewpoint, a "subjective" experience. Even if we were presented with many snapshots, portraits of "moments frozen in time" like so many insects in amber,we would dono better; but we have to deal with the same criticism that eventually brought Skinnerian behaviorism down: models that only access a 3rd person view and disallow for a "person" making the 3rd person view will, when examined critically, fail to offer any explanation of even an illusion of a 1st person viewpoint! And we have not even dealt with the Representable by "string-of-zeroes-and-ones" . Bitstring representability only gives us a means to asks questions like: is it possible to recreate a 3rd person view. Examplesthat such are possible are easy to find, go to your nearest Blockbuster and rent a DVD... But again, unless we include the fact that we each, as individuals, have some 1st person view that somehow can not be known by others without also converging the 1st person viewpoints of all involved, we are missing the obvious. A "representation of X" is not necessarily 3rd person identical to X even though it might be 1st person indistinguishable! About the multiverse being infinite in space-time: You seem to be thinking of space-time as some kind of a priori existing container, like a fish bowl, wherein all universes "exists", using the word "exists" as if it denoted "being there" and not "somewhere else". This is inconsistent with accepted GR and QM in so many ways! GR does not allow us to think off space-time as some passive "fishbowl"! Space-time is something that can be changed - by changing the distributions of momentum-energy - and that the alterable metrics of space-time can change the distributions of momentum-energy - otherwise known as "matter" - stuff that makes up planets, people, amoeba, etc. QM, as interpreted by Everrett et altells us that each eigenstate(?) of a QM system is "separate" from all others, considered as representing entirely separate distributions of matter/momentum-energy, and thus have entirely different and unmixed space-times associated. The word "parallel" as used in MWI should really be "orthogonal" since that is a more accurate description of the relationships that the Many Worlds have with each other. Now, what are we to make of these two statements taken together? I don't know yet. ;-) Stephen - Original Message - From: Norman Samish To: everything-list@eskimo.com Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 3:14 AM Subject: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness Gentlemen,I think that we all must be "zombies who behave as if they are conscious," in the sense that a snapshot of any of us could, in principle, be precisely represented by a string of zeroes and ones.If it is true that the multiverse is infinite in space-time, is it not true that anything that can exist must exist? If so, then, in infinite space-time, there are no possible universes that do not exist.Norman Samish~~- Original Message - From: "Stathis Papaioannou" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Cc: everything-list@eskimo.comSent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 10:47 PMSubject: Re: Everything Physical is Based on ConsciousnessDear Stephen,COMP is basically a variant of the familiar "Problem of Other Minds", whichis not just philosophical esoterica but something we have to deal with
Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness - A question
Hi Jeanne: It is much the same thing. More or less the first person is the one standing in Bruno's transporter and the third person is the one operating it. Several years ago I started a FAQ for this list but lacked the necessary time to finish. Hal Ruhl At 02:54 PM 5/8/2005, you wrote: I am a mere layperson who follows your discussions with great interest, so forgive me if I'm about to ask a question whose answer is apparent to all but me. I am very familiar with the first person and third person concept in everyday life and literature, but I am a little unclear about the specific meaning that it holds in these discussions; I feel like I'm missing something important that is blocking my understanding of how you are applying first and third person to your work in terms of multiverses and MWI. Could someone please direct me to some links that could help me better understand these perspectives as they apply to the discussions. Thank you. Jeanne - Original Message - From: Stephen Paul King To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 11:35 AM Subject: Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness Dear Norman, You make a very interesting point (the first point) and I think that we could all agree upon it as it is but I notice that you used two words that put a sizable dent in the COMP idea: snapshot and precisely represented. It seems that we might all agree that we would be hard pressed to find any evidence at all in a single snapshot on an entity to lead us to believe that it somehow has or had some form of 1st person viewpoint, a subjective experience. Even if we were presented with many snapshots, portraits of moments frozen in time like so many insects in amber, we would do no better; but we have to deal with the same criticism that eventually brought Skinnerian behaviorism down: models that only access a 3rd person view and disallow for a person making the 3rd person view will, when examined critically, fail to offer any explanation of even an illusion of a 1st person viewpoint! And we have not even dealt with the Representable by string-of-zeroes-and-ones . Bitstring representability only gives us a means to asks questions like: is it possible to recreate a 3rd person view. Examples that such are possible are easy to find, go to your nearest Blockbuster and rent a DVD... But again, unless we include the fact that we each, as individuals, have some 1st person view that somehow can not be known by others without also converging the 1st person viewpoints of all involved, we are missing the obvious. A representation of X is not necessarily 3rd person identical to X even though it might be 1st person indistinguishable! About the multiverse being infinite in space-time: You seem to be thinking of space-time as some kind of a priori existing container, like a fish bowl, wherein all universes exists, using the word exists as if it denoted being there and not somewhere else. This is inconsistent with accepted GR and QM in so many ways! GR does not allow us to think off space-time as some passive fishbowl! Space-time is something that can be changed - by changing the distributions of momentum-energy - and that the alterable metrics of space-time can change the distributions of momentum-energy - otherwise known as matter - stuff that makes up planets, people, amoeba, etc. QM, as interpreted by Everrett et al tells us that each eigenstate(?) of a QM system is separate from all others, considered as representing entirely separate distributions of matter/momentum-energy, and thus have entirely different and unmixed space-times associated. The word parallel as used in MWI should really be orthogonal since that is a more accurate description of the relationships that the Many Worlds have with each other. Now, what are we to make of these two statements taken together? I don't know yet. ;-) Stephen - Original Message - From: Norman Samish To: everything-list@eskimo.com Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 3:14 AM Subject: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness Gentlemen, I think that we all must be zombies who behave as if they are conscious, in the sense that a snapshot of any of us could, in principle, be precisely represented by a string of zeroes and ones. If it is true that the multiverse is infinite in space-time, is it not true that anything that can exist must exist? If so, then, in infinite space-time, there are no possible universes that do not exist. Norman Samish ~~ - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 10:47 PM Subject: Re: Everything Physical is Based on Consciousness Dear Stephen, COMP is basically a variant of the familiar Problem of Other Minds, which is not just philosophical esoterica but something we have to deal with in everyday life. How
Re: Everything Physical is based on Consciousness - A question
The simplest description can be found in Max Tegamark's paper Is an Ensemble theory the ultimate TOE?. He uses the term frog perspective for 1st person, and bird perspective for 3rd person. Bruno Marchal has also written quite a bit about it in Chapter 5 of his (Lille) thesis. This is unfortunately is not as accessible as Tegmark's paper (not only is it written in French, which is not particularly a problem for me, but it is also written in the language of modal logic, which I'm only slowly gaining an appreciation of its power and utility). From what I understand of the chapter, 1st person communicable phenomena is described by a logic G, and incommunicable by G*\G. The square box operator [] represents knowledge, ie []p means one knows p. The interpretation of [] is basically that p is true, and that I can prove it. So this is essentially what we might call mathematical knowledge. How this relates to physical knowledge, which a la Popper is more not proven false, I don't really know. 3rd person phenomena on the other hand is identified with Z, where the box operator corresponds to proving p and not being able to prove p is false, ie basically the collection of self-consistent formal systems. Z seems remarkably similar to Max Tegmark's original proposal... I'm still rereading these chapters, and I'm sure I'll have some more questions on the subject other than Where does Popper fit in? Cheers On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 02:54:48PM -0400, Jeanne Houston wrote: I am a mere layperson who follows your discussions with great interest, so forgive me if I'm about to ask a question whose answer is apparent to all but me. I am very familiar with the first person and third person concept in everyday life and literature, but I am a little unclear about the specific meaning that it holds in these discussions; I feel like I'm missing something important that is blocking my understanding of how you are applying first and third person to your work in terms of multiverses and MWI. Could someone please direct me to some links that could help me better understand these perspectives as they apply to the discussions. Thank you. Jeanne -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpziNHsqcwRd.pgp Description: PGP signature
