Re: Movie cannot think
On 11 Mar 2011, at 03:39, Stephen Paul King wrote: From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think Dear Stephen, On 10 Mar 2011, at 16:27, Stephen Paul King wrote: -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ ** Dear Bruno, I only really have one difficulty with this thought: What choose that particular initial universal 'machine'? [BM] Addition+multiplication? (RA, Robinson Arithmetic) Because it is shown that it is enough to derive mind and matter from it. Because it is shown that, if we accept the comp bet, it *has to* be enough. And adding anything more betrays the solution of the 1-3 person relations. Because it is taught in high school, and with few exception accepted and used by everybody. Because it can be shown to be necessary, in the sense that any weaker theory cannot derive it. *** [SPK] But how does this address my question? I must have misunderstood you but the word “initial” appears three times in the following: “The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system.” Why does the word “initial” appear here, if there is no sense of a sequence of machine of which there is a least machine? So you are saying that the fact that a “weaker theory” cannot derive it determines its minimality in the sequence? Words have to be interpreted in their context. here by initial universal machine I was just meaning that I need to postulate the existence of at least one universal system, or a theory having the sigma_1 completeness property. And elementary arithmetic is enough. Why is it necessary to assume a form of the well founded axiom? Because the phenomenology of non well foundedness is simple to derive. It appears to me that you are otherwise there would not necessarily be a minimal machine! Things like that can be true from some person perspective. So we don't have to assume it, because we can explain it with less assumption. Even then we have no phenomenological interview of the so defined Löbian Machine to at least give us the appearance that we have found a derivation of mind and matter that can be analytically continued to any person’s experience of what it is like to have a mind in a physical world! I concede that within your argument there is something that seems to be like a mind in an abstract 3-p sense, but you have not shown how such a “mind” interacts with other similarly defined minds except in a reasoning that involves taking the plural case, but mere plurality is not sufficient for yield
Re: Movie cannot think
Hi Bruno, I deeply appreciate your corrections to my misunderstandings in your response. I learned many things so far from you. I will re-read sane04. Onward! Stephen From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:24 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 11 Mar 2011, at 03:39, Stephen Paul King wrote: From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think Dear Stephen, On 10 Mar 2011, at 16:27, Stephen Paul King wrote: -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ ** Dear Bruno, I only really have one difficulty with this thought: What choose that particular initial universal 'machine'? [BM] Addition+multiplication? (RA, Robinson Arithmetic) Because it is shown that it is enough to derive mind and matter from it. Because it is shown that, if we accept the comp bet, it *has to* be enough. And adding anything more betrays the solution of the 1-3 person relations. Because it is taught in high school, and with few exception accepted and used by everybody. Because it can be shown to be necessary, in the sense that any weaker theory cannot derive it. *** [SPK] But how does this address my question? I must have misunderstood you but the word “initial” appears three times in the following: “The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system.” Why does the word “initial” appear here, if there is no sense of a sequence of machine of which there is a least machine? So you are saying that the fact that a “weaker theory” cannot derive it determines its minimality in the sequence? Words have to be interpreted in their context. here by initial universal machine I was just meaning that I need to postulate the existence of at least one universal system, or a theory having the sigma_1 completeness property. And elementary arithmetic is enough. Why is it necessary to assume a form of the well founded axiom? Because the phenomenology of non well foundedness is simple to derive. It appears to me that you are otherwise there would not necessarily be a minimal machine! Things like that can be true from some person perspective. So we don't have to assume it, because we can explain it with less assumption. Even then we have no phenomenological interview
Re: Movie cannot think
On 10 Mar 2011, at 16:15, Stephen Paul King wrote: From: Andrew Soltau Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. snip [SPK] One thing must be considered: There are more that one possible sequence of observer states. Not only are we considering all possible frames for a single movie but the frames for every possible movie too, even the ones that are pure noise! I guess you mean 'computation' for 'movie'. The movie idea has been introduced to tackle the more subtle problem of the supervenience thesis. A movie, in that setting, shows that a physical system can mimic perfectly a particular computation without doing a computation, and its use is not related to the more easy selection of actual experience issue. I suggest to come back on this later. All of them will be equally co-present in the heap and there is no a priori bias for one over another. The magic finger is a figure of speech of something that selects one of them: how is the one that is “actually experienced” selected? The comp answer is perhaps terrible, but is quite fitting with the many-worlds or 'everything' philosophy. There is no selection at all. If you prefer: each observer, or even each 'observer-moment' selects himself. This is already in the 3th UDA step. If you are cut and pasted in W and in M. The one in M could ask why am I the one in M, and the one in W could ask why am I the one in W, and we know that there is no answer, by construction, and the comp assumption. In a deeper sense, we can speculate (at this stage) that I am both, but such an I is more general than the usual local and relative I, which is the one needed to understand that physics will be reduced (but not eliminated) into arithmetic. I propose that a mutual constraint methodology such as what has been proposed as a solution the the concurrency problem in computer science may answer this. But this possibility seems to be a bit outside of the light of the lamppost under which we currently are looking for the answer... In the third person global picture, concurrency is managed by dovetailing. In the physics extracted from comp, this is more complex. It would be really nice to get already one qubit. Two qubits needs the tensor product, and for this we need to tackle the first order modal logic of self-reference, find neat semantics for the Z1* and X1* logics ... Difficult. It is not outside the lamppost, but it is neither in the brighter focus of it. Best, 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: Movie cannot think
On 10/03/11 14:10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. Yes, but you still require an explanation of how the machine actually runs. All possible states of the machine exist 'already' in an arithmetical universe. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Naturally. But you still require an explanation of how such arithmetic, or how such computations, are carried out. This is where you need an 'external' time. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. Ok. And you still require an explanation of how something moves along the line. This is what is missing from physics. It is inherently absent in any concept of straightforward existence. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. Provided you can explain how we come to be experiencing change, in other words, how it comes to be that the computation is running, as opposed to simply existing. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. In which case you have to accept that the passage of time is an illusion. In this case, you are not a being which witnesses change. You are simply, at each moment in time, that which exists at that moment in time, and has the illusion, at that moment in time, that you have existed at other moments in time. Objectively this is unassailable. Subjectively I personally, for one, consider that it does not account for my experience. I don't really think that there is a lot more one can say about it. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). How the sequence is defined, and whether it is fundamentally physical or arithmetical, is of no consequence to this - admittedly highly philosophical - point. 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: Movie cannot think
On 11 Mar 2011, at 13:07, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 10/03/11 14:10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. Yes, but you still require an explanation of how the machine actually runs. All possible states of the machine exist 'already' in an arithmetical universe. States alone do not make sense. What makes a state a machine's state is that there is a universal number, or the initial universal system itself (elemantary arithmetic, say), which includes it in a computation. It is a bit similar to Rovelli's relational idea, but in the context of arithmetic. It is standard to define states and (universal) machines, and pieces of computations in arithmetic. What makes a computation emulated in arithmetic is an infinity of true relations between numbers, and in this case most are provable in a tiny part of any formal arithmetic (like RA, that is Robinson arithmetic, which I use to fix the idea). All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Naturally. But you still require an explanation of how such arithmetic, or how such computations, are carried out. This is where you need an 'external' time. Why? The internal time defined by the basic sequence of the natural numbers is enough. It can be used to define the notion of computational steps, and of sequence of computational steps. Assuming comp, you are here and now because it exists a sequence of computational steps leading to your current computational state, at the right level. Of course, there is an infinity of such sequences, and we will have to develop a relative uncertainty calculus on them (or prove that they cannot exist and refute comp). Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. Ok. And you still require an explanation of how something moves along the line. This is what is missing from physics. It is inherently absent in any concept of straightforward existence. Nothing moves in the block-universe, be it arithmetical or primary physical. But we can explain why machines will develop discourse about moving things, and, in the case of comp, we can even explain why a part of that moving will be considered as incommunicable by the machine from its first person point of view. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. Provided you can explain how we come to be experiencing change, in other words, how it comes to be that the computation is running, as opposed to simply existing. Running is defined in term of sequence of steps. For all universal number, there will be a notion of steps associated with it, and a notion of running, which will be defined by reference to the successor relation. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. In which case you have to accept that the passage of time is an illusion. I would not call it an illusion. It is only an illusion from the point of view of God (arithmetical truth, say). I would call it a personal (first person plural or not) subjective reality. Bergson's subjective duration is retrieved in the Bp p hypostase, and physical time is, or should be, retrieved in the material hypostase Bp Dp ( p). Physical time (and physical space) appears as first person plural sharable propositions. All we need is a good theory of self-reference, but this is provided by theoretical computer science/ mathematical logic. (The consequence of UDA are admittedly unbelievable. That is why the original name of the Universal Dovetailer Argument was Universal Dovetailer Paradox. But AUDA explains the paradox. The divine intellect, that is the modal logic G*, proves the equivalence, with
Re: Movie cannot think
On Mar 10, 2:16 am, stephenk stephe...@charter.net wrote: On Mar 9, 11:33 am, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Mar 9, 1:24 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote: On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is themoviefilm Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Movement of or through time is dismissed too easily here. Why don we have to experience our history one moment at a time if it all already exists (albeit with a sequential structure) Physically, this is unassailable. Hmm. The arguments in favour of the block universe are actually rather subtle However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, by saying that the frame of reference is changed, from one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The Frame of Reference being non-physical? The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. If it is a property of the whole system, why are we each only conscious of one small spatio temporal area? Why bring consciousness in at all? Why not have a time-cursor that is responsible for the passage of time? In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of amoviein solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action, we just haven't recognised it as such. Which is why it gives rise to all the puzzles it does. Brent There may be a solution to the question of finiteness, such as in why are we each only conscious of one small spatio temporal area? A possible answer is that our consciousness involves the consumption of free energy (work) that does not have access to infinite power supplies within any finite duration. Action is defined in units of energy and time This also can be related to the Bekenstein bound.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound Onward! Stephen It's easy enough to answer physicalistically...the problem is the mismatch with consciousness is an emergent property of the system as a whole -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/9/2011 5:24 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is the movie film Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Physically, this is unassailable. However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. rom one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of a movie in solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action ??? Collapse is not unitary. By this I simply mean that only something of the logical type of the system itself can perform the magic finger operation. Just as it takes a projector, something outside of the frames of the movie, to operate on the sequence of frames of the movie, to produce a motion picture. Just as it takes a whole working computer system to actually alter the value of a pointer from one address in memory to another. All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. Nothing happens. As Weyl states The world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling up the life-line of my body, does the world fleetingly come to life. (1949, 116) This applies to the static block universe of spacetime, but it also applies to the sequence of moments, each one a static block universe moments, 'snapshots', which Deutsch describes as the quantum concept of time. That static sequence is an unchanging layout, just like the movie film. Everett's formulation describes how one passes from moment to moment, the making of each observation is
Re: Movie cannot think
On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). 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: Movie cannot think
From: Andrew Soltau Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. snip [SPK] One thing must be considered: There are more that one possible sequence of observer states. Not only are we considering all possible frames for a single movie but the frames for every possible movie too, even the ones that are pure noise! All of them will be equally co-present in the heap and there is no a priori bias for one over another. The magic finger is a figure of speech of something that selects one of them: how is the one that is “actually experienced” selected? I propose that a mutual constraint methodology such as what has been proposed as a solution the the concurrency problem in computer science may answer this. But this possibility seems to be a bit outside of the light of the lamppost under which we currently are looking for the answer... Onward! Stephen -- 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: Movie cannot think
-Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ ** Dear Bruno, I only really have one difficulty with this thought: What choose that particular initial universal 'machine'? If it cannot be shown to be unique in contrast to all possible machines, what makes it special? We may be blinded by the sophistication and brilliance of our logics but can we really be sure that there is not a deeper level at which this Löbian machine is just another in a vast infinitude? Consider G. Chiatin's Omega! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant I question the entire premise of a special initial conditions! Why must we believe that there really is a singularity that 'causes' it at all? Why must we recycle that old theological idea? Are there no viable alternatives? Onward! Stephen -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 3/10/2011 7:15 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: *From:* Andrew Soltau mailto:andrewsol...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Movie cannot think On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. snip [SPK] One thing must be considered: There are more that one possible sequence of observer states. Not only are we considering all possible frames for a single movie but the frames for every possible movie too, even the ones that are pure noise! All of them will be equally co-present in the heap and there is no a priori bias for one over another. The magic finger is a figure of speech of something that selects one of them: how is the one that is “actually experienced” selected? I propose that a mutual constraint methodology such as what has been proposed as a solution the the concurrency problem in computer science may answer this. But this possibility seems to be a bit outside of the light of the lamppost under which we currently are looking for the answer... Onward! Stephen Actually I think this picture of observer states as being like frames of a movie is misleading. What we could identify as an observation or an experience, overlaps with preceding and succeeding observer states and this provides an explicit order. Bruno's idea of digital simulation by a Turing machine, which has idealized discreet states, can only work at a much lower level so that a momentary experience corresponds to a very large number of simulation states. 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: Movie cannot think
From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 12:48 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think Dear Stephen, On 10 Mar 2011, at 16:27, Stephen Paul King wrote: -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:10 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 10 Mar 2011, at 13:47, Andrew Soltau wrote: All the moments exist, and as Deutsch points out, as you summarise, 'The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different', but for change to actually happen, the magic finger must move. Otherwise reality would be like a movie film sitting in the can in storage. The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system. So elementary arithmetic does emulate, in the mathematical sense, computations. Arithmetic does not just describe all those computations: it literally emulate them. This is not trivial to show, although computer science gives the insight. Computations in arithmetic are not like movie, they are like a observer line universe in a block universe. To add an external time reintroduces a mystery where it is not needed. That use of time is like the use of God as gap explanation by the pseudo-religious (authoritative) people. You will end up with a primitive time, a primitive matter, and why not a primitive god responsible for all this. That is, in my opinion, the correct insight of Deutsch. Except that he mentions an implicit sequence, which is typically made explicit by the universal machine which emulates, albeit statically or arithmetically-realistically, the computation. All computations in that setting are ultimately based on the explicit sequence 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ... (or the equivalent in the combinators, etc.). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ ** Dear Bruno, I only really have one difficulty with this thought: What choose that particular initial universal 'machine'? [BM] Addition+multiplication? (RA, Robinson Arithmetic) Because it is shown that it is enough to derive mind and matter from it. Because it is shown that, if we accept the comp bet, it *has to* be enough. And adding anything more betrays the solution of the 1-3 person relations. Because it is taught in high school, and with few exception accepted and used by everybody. Because it can be shown to be necessary, in the sense that any weaker theory cannot derive it. *** [SPK] But how does this address my question? I must have misunderstood you but the word “initial” appears three times in the following: “The change in the working program is brought by the universal machine which interprets it. All you need is an initial universal machine. It happens that addition and multiplication, with first order logic is enough to define such an initial universal system, and the UDA+MGA shows that the laws of mind, including the laws of matter, does not depend on the choice of the initial universal system.” Why does the word “initial” appear here, if there is no sense of a sequence of machine of which there is a least machine? So you are saying that the fact that a “weaker theory” cannot derive it determines its minimality in the sequence? Why is it necessary to assume a form of the well founded axiom? It appears to me that you are otherwise there would not necessarily be a minimal machine! Even then we have no phenomenological interview of the so defined Löbian Machine to at least give us the appearance that we have found a derivation of mind and matter that can be analytically continued to any person’s experience of what it is like to have a mind in a physical world! I concede that within your argument there is something that seems to be like a mind in an abstract 3-p sense, but you have not shown how such a “mind” interacts with other similarly defined minds except in a reasoning that involves taking the plural case, but mere plurality is not sufficient for yield a general result for concurrency. *** If it cannot be shown to be unique in contrast to all possible machines, what makes it special? [BM] I insist that any first order logical specification of a universal system will do. I have tried to introduce the combinators instead of numbers, but people were a bit uneasy with it, so I take the numbers, which are equivalent with respect to our goal. What makes it special is Church
Re: Movie cannot think
From: Brent Meeker Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 1:39 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 3/10/2011 7:15 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: From: Andrew Soltau Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Movie cannot think On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. snip [SPK] One thing must be considered: There are more that one possible sequence of observer states. Not only are we considering all possible frames for a single movie but the frames for every possible movie too, even the ones that are pure noise! All of them will be equally co-present in the heap and there is no a priori bias for one over another. The magic finger is a figure of speech of something that selects one of them: how is the one that is “actually experienced” selected? I propose that a mutual constraint methodology such as what has been proposed as a solution the the concurrency problem in computer science may answer this. But this possibility seems to be a bit outside of the light of the lamppost under which we currently are looking for the answer... Onward! Stephen Actually I think this picture of observer states as being like frames of a movie is misleading. What we could identify as an observation or an experience, overlaps with preceding and succeeding observer states and this provides an explicit order. Bruno's idea of digital simulation by a Turing machine, which has idealized discreet states, can only work at a much lower level so that a momentary experience corresponds to a very large number of simulation states. Brent ** [SPK] But exactly how is the overlap (and underlap) determined? We are leaving something out here! We cannot treat objects that have variable information content as just another case of fungible tokens! When we do this we are completely eliminating the notion of meaningfulness. There is a difference between a frame that depicts a deer and fawn feeing in the forest and a frame that shows the screen of a TV set to a non-existing channel, but if all we are considering are the frames as objects we have no means to determine the sequence of frames. Frames alone are fungible. There is at least more than one level of information here! Axioms and assumptions have consequences. Onward! Stephen -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 3/10/2011 6:47 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote: *From:* Brent Meeker mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 10, 2011 1:39 PM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Movie cannot think On 3/10/2011 7:15 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: *From:* Andrew Soltau mailto:andrewsol...@gmail.com *Sent:* Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: Movie cannot think On 09/03/11 16:53, Brent Meeker wrote: The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then Which is what one seems to be experiencing. snip [SPK] One thing must be considered: There are more that one possible sequence of observer states. Not only are we considering all possible frames for a single movie but the frames for every possible movie too, even the ones that are pure noise! All of them will be equally co-present in the heap and there is no a priori bias for one over another. The magic finger is a figure of speech of something that selects one of them: how is the one that is “actually experienced” selected? I propose that a mutual constraint methodology such as what has been proposed as a solution the the concurrency problem in computer science may answer this. But this possibility seems to be a bit outside of the light of the lamppost under which we currently are looking for the answer... Onward! Stephen Actually I think this picture of observer states as being like frames of a movie is misleading. What we could identify as an observation or an experience, overlaps with preceding and succeeding observer states and this provides an explicit order. Bruno's idea of digital simulation by a Turing machine, which has idealized discreet states, can only work at a much lower level so that a momentary experience corresponds to a very large number of simulation states. Brent ** [SPK] But exactly how is the overlap (and underlap) determined? We are leaving something out here! We cannot treat objects that have variable information content as just another case of fungible tokens! When we do this we are completely eliminating the notion of meaningfulness. There is a difference between a frame that depicts a deer and fawn feeing in the forest and a frame that shows the screen of a TV set to a non-existing channel, but if all we are considering are the frames as objects we have no means to determine the sequence of frames. We do if they overlap. Of course if we consider frames at a very low level then they don't overlap - but then they don't depict much of anything we'd recognize either. 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: Movie cannot think
On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is the movie film Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Physically, this is unassailable. However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, by saying that the frame of reference is changed, from one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of a movie in solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action, we just haven't recognised it as such. Which is why it gives rise to all the puzzles it does. 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: Movie cannot think
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. Brent Bruno and others, Do you think that computations performed by a computer or brain within a block universe contribute to the computational histories of a person? I can see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between the frames. However, in a universe ruled by equations, it seems to me that a computer in a universe is leveraging relations in math to perform computations, albeit less directly than a platonic Turing machine running a program. To me it is like running a simulation of a brain on a virtual machine on physical hardware. The VM provides a level of abstraction, but ultimately its computations are still computations. In the same way a mathematical universe is a level of abstraction yet could still provide a platform for genuine computation (not descriptions of computation) to be performed. What do you think? Jason -- 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: Movie cannot think
On Mar 9, 1:24 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote: On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is the movie film Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Movement of or through time is dismissed too easily here. Why don we have to experience our history one moment at a time if it all already exists (albeit with a sequential structure) Physically, this is unassailable. Hmm. The arguments in favour of the block universe are actually rather subtle However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, by saying that the frame of reference is changed, from one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The Frame of Reference being non-physical? The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. If it is a property of the whole system, why are we each only conscious of one small spatio temporal area? Why bring consciousness in at all? Why not have a time-cursor that is responsible for the passage of time? In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of a movie in solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action, we just haven't recognised it as such. Which is why it gives rise to all the puzzles it does. 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: Movie cannot think
On Mar 9, 3:06 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. Brent Bruno and others, Do you think that computations performed by a computer or brain within a block universe contribute to the computational histories of a person? I can see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between the frames. However, in a universe ruled by equations, it seems to me that a computer in a universe is leveraging relations in math to perform computations, albeit less directly than a platonic Turing machine running a program. It seems to me that a physical computer is leveraging causality, which is describable by some maths. Nothing happens because of maths, since maths can also describe the acausal, the uncomputable etc To me it is like running a simulation of a brain on a virtual machine on physical hardware. The VM provides a level of abstraction, but ultimately its computations are still computations. In the same way a mathematical universe is a level of abstraction yet could still provide a platform for genuine computation (not descriptions of computation) to be performed. What do you think? Jason -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 3/9/2011 5:24 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is the movie film Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Physically, this is unassailable. However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, The appearance of change is already explained by the fact that there are different frames that have an implicit sequence and in which the observers state is different. Further explanation is just muddying the picture - at leas that's what Deutsch et al would say. by saying that the frame of reference is changed, f But this is no more than a magic finger pointing to the frames and saying, This one. And then this one. And then rom one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of a movie in solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action ??? Collapse is not unitary. Brent , we just haven't recognised it as such. Which is why it gives rise to all the puzzles it does. 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: Movie cannot think
On 09 Mar 2011, at 16:06, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. Brent Bruno and others, Do you think that computations performed by a computer or brain within a block universe contribute to the computational histories of a person? Let us defined the block multiverse by the (sub)universal dovetailer which wins the measure battle. If, in that structure, we implement a computer or a brain, then it will contribute to the history of the person (and that is why we can say yes to a doctor, because the artificial brain that he build is supposed to respect the measure of the actual history of its patient. Note that although there is a block-universal-dream, it is an open question if this leads to a well defined physical universe. It might be possible that not all machine dreams can glue together, leading to multi-multiverses, ... I can see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between the frames. OK. Nice. However, in a universe ruled by equations, it seems to me that a computer in a universe is leveraging relations in math to perform computations, albeit less directly than a platonic Turing machine running a program. To me it is like running a simulation of a brain on a virtual machine on physical hardware. The VM provides a level of abstraction, but ultimately its computations are still computations. OK. In the same way a mathematical universe is a level of abstraction yet could still provide a platform for genuine computation (not descriptions of computation) to be performed. What do you think? I can only agree. Arithmetical truth, and precisely the sigma_1 arithmetical truth (the true proposition having the shape ExP(x) with P(x) provably decidable) emulate all possible computations (it is a sort of canonical UD living in (emulated by) elementary arithmetic. 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: Movie cannot think
On 3/9/2011 9:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between the frames. OK. Nice. But they do have a relation via the thing that was filmed. 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: Movie cannot think
On 09 Mar 2011, at 20:51, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/9/2011 9:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can see why in a movie they do not, as there is no mathematical relation between the frames. OK. Nice. But they do have a relation via the thing that was filmed. The point consists in showing that the projection of the movie does not generate consciousness. Not that consciousness did not exist in relation with the movie. With the movie, we can upload the boolean plane machine, and make that consciousness again manifested. But the movie itself does not compute anything. It describes a computation and consciousness is in the computation, not in the description of the computation. The relation between the movie and the computation is akin to the relation between a proof and the Gödel number of that proof. They are related, but they are not the same thing. It is a subtle point. It is nicely capture formally with the self- reference logic, where we can show that p - Bp, but only because we know that the machine is correct (by definition or choice). The machine cannot know that. Then I showed that a movie is a relative thing. for an observer, there is a movie in front of a immobile spectator, but for another observer there is an immobile pellicle with a moving observer. But comp makes the observer's presence not needed, so that the consciousness cannot supervene on the running of the movie, given that for another observer there is no running at all. Of course the movie displays the same physical activity as the boolean graph, and this means that consciousness, if we keep comp, has to be related to the abstract computation, not on his implementation is such or such universal system. But then consciousness, pain, qualia are often considered as abstract/ immaterial, so it is not so astonishing that we have to identify it with abstract relation that a person/machine can have with herself. But this means that we have to solve the mind-body problem by explaining the illusion of matter from the consciousness, and not the contrary. 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: Movie cannot think
On Mar 9, 11:33 am, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Mar 9, 1:24 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote: On 08/03/11 16:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. OK. But for any given definition of the thinker, there is a version of the world to which he corresponds. Whether considered as a physical entity, or a mind or a record of observations, I am instantiated in a specific version of the universe. On observation, this state changes. The observer is now in a new and different state, and is instantiated in a new and different version of the universe. If one steps back and looks at all the possible states of the thinker, existing in all the different corresponding states of the universe at each moment, the result is themoviefilm Barbour refers to. This is a timeless situation. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. So then you have a sequence, but still nothing actually happens. This is exactly the scenario Deutsch addresses. /Nothing/ can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist there for ever. (1997, 263; his italics) One seems to pass from moment to moment, experiencing change. Deutsch, however, declares that this can only be an illusion. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time. (1997, 263) Movement of or through time is dismissed too easily here. Why don we have to experience our history one moment at a time if it all already exists (albeit with a sequential structure) Physically, this is unassailable. Hmm. The arguments in favour of the block universe are actually rather subtle However, we can explain the appearance of change very neatly, by saying that the frame of reference is changed, from one moment to the next to the next, with no change in anything physical. The Frame of Reference being non-physical? The only drawback is that this requires something 'outside' of the moments, and there is nothing outside the multiverse. The solution I propose is that phenomenal consciousness is an emergent property of this unitary system as a whole. If it is a property of the whole system, why are we each only conscious of one small spatio temporal area? Why bring consciousness in at all? Why not have a time-cursor that is responsible for the passage of time? In other words, this process is to the moments the way the computational capability of a computer is to the frames of amoviein solid state memory. Based on that, my belief is that, in the collapse dynamics of quantum mechanics, we have discovered evidence for a property of the unitary system in action, we just haven't recognised it as such. Which is why it gives rise to all the puzzles it does. Brent There may be a solution to the question of finiteness, such as in why are we each only conscious of one small spatio temporal area? A possible answer is that our consciousness involves the consumption of free energy (work) that does not have access to infinite power supplies within any finite duration. Action is defined in units of energy and time This also can be related to the Bekenstein bound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound Onward! Stephen -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 06/03/11 19:45, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2011, at 14:18, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 07/02/11 15:22, Bruno Marchal wrote: I have debunked more than once on this list the idea that a movie can think. (It is an error akin to the confusion between a number and a gödel number of a number, a confusion between a description of a computation and a computation, it is a confusion of the type finger and moon (ultrafrequent in the field). However, a movie can of course represent / be a train of thought. A movie (figuring a boolean plane computing device doing a computation) can *represent* a computation and can, as such, *represent* a train of thought, but it cannot *be* a train of thought. There is just no computation in the movie, no more than actual cause in a movie. I have more elaborated argument for showing that a movie cannot think, except in the sense that all piece of matter sum up all computations, due to a non trivial fractal aspect of the universal dovetailing (cf my post to Brent). Then all you need is the thinker. I am most intrigued to understand how your theory gives rise to a thinker. A tiny arithmetical theory, like Robinson Arithmetic (roughly equivalent with Peano Arithmetic without the induction axiom) can already prove the existence of all UD-reachable computational states. So if your current thought is I am hungry, there is a relative computational state corresponding to that thinker's feeling, and Robinson Arithmetic can prove that such state exists. To explain the stability of such feeling is far more demanding, because such a stability will rely not only on *all* proofs of the existence of such states, but also on never terminating proofs (of false proposition for example) (re)proving the existence of your states. Non terminating executions of programs and infinite proofs are the real (with comp) stabilizer of the relative computational states. Roughly speaking, the thinkers or the dreamers are the universal numbers relatively to all other universal numbers. (A universal number is just the (finite) code of a universal (Turing, Post, Church, Kleene, ...) digital machine. Assuming comp, as always. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew -- 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: Movie cannot think
On 3/8/2011 3:14 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote: What I am driving at here is the same question as in the email Comp. Granted that all possible states exist, what changes the point of the present moment from one to another. My referring to 'the thinker' was probably not a helpful metaphor. Given the universal numbers, what carries out the process whereby one is transformed into another? What makes the state of the thinker or the dreamer into the state of that entity at the next moment? Andrew I think the idea is analogous to the block universe. In Platonia all the states of the thinker and his relation to the world are computed in a timeless way. The impression of time for the thinker is recovered by putting the states into a sequence which is implicitly defined by their content. 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: Movie cannot think
On 06 Mar 2011, at 14:18, Andrew Soltau wrote: On 07/02/11 15:22, Bruno Marchal wrote: I have debunked more than once on this list the idea that a movie can think. (It is an error akin to the confusion between a number and a gödel number of a number, a confusion between a description of a computation and a computation, it is a confusion of the type finger and moon (ultrafrequent in the field). However, a movie can of course represent / be a train of thought. A movie (figuring a boolean plane computing device doing a computation) can *represent* a computation and can, as such, *represent* a train of thought, but it cannot *be* a train of thought. There is just no computation in the movie, no more than actual cause in a movie. I have more elaborated argument for showing that a movie cannot think, except in the sense that all piece of matter sum up all computations, due to a non trivial fractal aspect of the universal dovetailing (cf my post to Brent). Then all you need is the thinker. I am most intrigued to understand how your theory gives rise to a thinker. A tiny arithmetical theory, like Robinson Arithmetic (roughly equivalent with Peano Arithmetic without the induction axiom) can already prove the existence of all UD-reachable computational states. So if your current thought is I am hungry, there is a relative computational state corresponding to that thinker's feeling, and Robinson Arithmetic can prove that such state exists. To explain the stability of such feeling is far more demanding, because such a stability will rely not only on *all* proofs of the existence of such states, but also on never terminating proofs (of false proposition for example) (re)proving the existence of your states. Non terminating executions of programs and infinite proofs are the real (with comp) stabilizer of the relative computational states. Roughly speaking, the thinkers or the dreamers are the universal numbers relatively to all other universal numbers. (A universal number is just the (finite) code of a universal (Turing, Post, Church, Kleene, ...) digital machine. Assuming comp, as always. 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.
