Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 10:18, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Jun 2015, at 00:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! That does not follow. Dreams can be shared, like with second-life video games, or the MWI. The point was in your suggestion that dreamers might not wake -- nothing to do with shared dreams. Shared dreams refer to a different form of dream -- as in I dream of winning the lottery. The idea that our experience of life is just a dream leads to solipsism. Very often indeed. My point was just that t is a common invalid move, and this can easily be understood in term of multi-user video game (to build the counter-example: not to pretend anything on what is real or not). With computationalism, there is only shared dreaming, and so we never wake, but we can wake relatively to a layer of universality. Yet, empirically, we can be pretty sure that the quantum realities are at the bottom core of the physical reality. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 16:56, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? The crime is intellectual dishonesty. I don't believe anyone this side of a looney bin really believes in solipsism except when arguing on the internet or standing in front of a classroom full of sophomore philosophy students trying to sound provocative. I agree. Solipsism is an ultra-pathetic thought, unless you interpret solipsism in Kim's sense, which is God solipsism, which logically does not only NOT making the other disappearing, but it makes the other like doppelganger à-la Washington/Moscow type, except that the split occurred a much longer time ago. But I would not follow Kim to call that solipsism, which is usually the more naive idea that I am actually dreaming of the others, and that they are sort of zombie images. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 20:34, meekerdb wrote: On 6/10/2015 12:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 19:10, meekerdb wrote: On 6/9/2015 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:27, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. That is not a problem. In arithmetic I will exist in infinities of environments, played by UMs (with and without oracles). Such existence are relative, and phenomenological. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. I can agree with this. What does it change in the reasoning? It undermines the MGA because it shows that whether a physical process instantiates a computation is a wholistic question, one whose answer is relative to the environment and interaction with that environment. This means that isolating the movie graph and then showing that it is absurd to regard it as a computation is not a legitimate move. The boolean graph contained the part of the simulation of the environment. That doesn't solve the problem. The simulation of the environment refers to the environment outside the simulation (that's why it's a simulation). So if someone asks how the computation gets meaning the answer is contagious and extends indefinitely far in time and space. Why. All those environment/brain situations are emulated infinitely often in arithmetic. or you are placing something magical in the environment, or in the use of therm meaning. Then the movie graph does not emulate a computation, and that is what lead to the absurdity. Or you mean that the environment needs primitive matter, but then the boolean graph already does not the relevant computation. I'm confused on that point. I agree it is subtle. I am confused too on this, but the contrary would be astonishing. Consciousness and theology, in the comp frame is easy (as John K said), but not that easy. Comp1 is the proposition that the brain can be replaced by a digital computer at some level of emulation. OK. It can be replaced, in the physical reality, at the substitution level. The brain's function must be Turing emulable. At least those relevant for the relevant computations. OK. But then after going through the argument to show that conscious thoughts, as computations, Careful, you might associate consciousness to cpmputation, but actually, consciousness, like knowledge is associated to computations, but also to God (Truth). exist independent of material processes, you somehow jump to the conclusion that neither conscious thoughts nor physical processes are Turing emulable (which is why I called those conclusions part of comp2). This is because you are indetermined below your substitution level, and matter stabilizes on the FPI on a*all* computation. And consciousness is related to Truth, which is not even definable. I might say more later, if when going again through the step 7. It is not simple, and highly counter-intuitive, but it is important that people understand better the fact that arithmetic emulates the computations, beyond describing them. I have realized lately that this is not obvious for more than one people on this list. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 03:35, Kim Jones wrote: On 10 Jun 2015, at 9:09 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one. Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? I would not call that solipsism, which usually assert simply that the other mind simply does not exist. But OK. (Taking your sense). Sounds to me like we should make AS IF this is true because it seems to be a way to get humans to respect each other more. Solipsism is a useful belief to maintain. It emphasises how alike we all are which leads to love of self and selves rather than emphsises our cosmetic differences which leads to war. OK. Bruno Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 19:10, meekerdb wrote: On 6/9/2015 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:27, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. That is not a problem. In arithmetic I will exist in infinities of environments, played by UMs (with and without oracles). Such existence are relative, and phenomenological. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. I can agree with this. What does it change in the reasoning? It undermines the MGA because it shows that whether a physical process instantiates a computation is a wholistic question, one whose answer is relative to the environment and interaction with that environment. This means that isolating the movie graph and then showing that it is absurd to regard it as a computation is not a legitimate move. The boolean graph contained the part of the simulation of the environment. Then the movie graph does not emulate a computation, and that is what lead to the absurdity. Or you mean that the environment needs primitive matter, but then the boolean graph already does not the relevant computation. Bruno Brent The point is that your generalized brain, as long as it is digital, cannot singularize your soul. If you don't add non Turing emulable magic in matter, the argument shows that matter has to arise from a statistics on all computations going through the current state. If not, could you say precisely when the proof go wrong? Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Jun 2015, at 00:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! That does not follow. Dreams can be shared, like with second-life video games, or the MWI. The point was in your suggestion that dreamers might not wake -- nothing to do with shared dreams. Shared dreams refer to a different form of dream -- as in I dream of winning the lottery. The idea that our experience of life is just a dream leads to solipsism. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 19:15, meekerdb wrote: On 6/9/2015 12:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:31, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. Not at all. There are many non isomorphic approach to set theory and analysis. For the natural numbers, this does not occur. All theories have a clear standard model on which we all agree. As Gödel saw, even intuitionist arithmetic is isomorphic to classical arithmetic: it changes only the vocabulary. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? It is a theory which explain too much. It is interesting for logicians. Nobody use it, really. people refers to it when confronted with possible paradoxes, but mathematicians avoid the paradoxes naturally, and the modern one will use some category or elementary toposes to fix the thing. Read books on the subject. Arithmetic has a solidity status not obtained by analysis, or even geometry.Some use ZF + ~AC, ZF + kappa, or other will use NF (a very different set theory), or intuitionist ZF (quite different from ZF), or NBG, etc. So what? That just makes my point that Platonia implies many different realities. First order predicate logic is also a clear standard model. So it must be as real as arithmetic. And arithmetic isn't so complete as you imply - that's why negative numbers and fractions and reals were invented. The first orrder theory of the real is complete. real numbers are an oversimplification of the natural numbers (integeres and rationals add nothing, with respect to computation). Robinson arithmetic is sigma_1 complete (not complete). Arithmetical truth is trivially complete about arithmetic. No other notion of completeness is used. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 19:25, meekerdb wrote: On 6/9/2015 1:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: ... That can be useful in AI, and for natural language. But not in QED, string theory or theoretical computer science. A rocket using water instead of hydrogen gas will not work. That does not refute that rockets can work. cdfhjhhj.png Brent :) Lol :) Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 00:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! That does not follow. Dreams can be shared, like with second-life video games, or the MWI. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: does a group mind refer to ourself or myselves ? That depends on the speed of light and how far apart the individual brains are. It they're far apart and it takes a long time to send a signal to another brain relative to the time it takes to send internal signals in a individual brain then it would be ourself. If they were closer together and signaling took less time then it would be myself. It's all a question of signal delay. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? The crime is intellectual dishonesty. I don't believe anyone this side of a looney bin really believes in solipsism except when arguing on the internet or standing in front of a classroom full of sophomore philosophy students trying to sound provocative. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 2:20 pm, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 15:23, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Both. I'm exploring the concept of solipsism with a positive attitude. What are the benefits? Your attempts at humour always hit the mark (with me.) Thanks! :) So yes, I don't think hurling 'solopsist!' at someone hurts them much. It's basically abusing yourself, if you'll pardon the expression. So, solipsism is a plural phenomenon. I don't care if I am a solipsist, I'll always have each other. - Mini Me. Contrariwise, does a group mind refer to ourself or myselves ? Interesting question. A corporation or an army or a religious sect or some other hive-mind entity might realistically refer to itself like this. Thing is, corporations want us to think of them as individuals and to have similar rights. Somehow this is enshrined in corporate law. I am very interested in the group mind. I think this is where humanity's problems begin. Solipsism is real only in the sense that the many minds are really the One Mind. But this One Mind exists in an enormous number of versions; duplications. The differing perspectives of each of the versions contributes to the overall consciousness, the Big Picture. Someone gets it. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/10/2015 12:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 19:10, meekerdb wrote: On 6/9/2015 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:27, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. That is not a problem. In arithmetic I will exist in infinities of environments, played by UMs (with and without oracles). Such existence are relative, and phenomenological. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. I can agree with this. What does it change in the reasoning? It undermines the MGA because it shows that whether a physical process instantiates a computation is a wholistic question, one whose answer is relative to the environment and interaction with that environment. This means that isolating the movie graph and then showing that it is absurd to regard it as a computation is not a legitimate move. The boolean graph contained the part of the simulation of the environment. That doesn't solve the problem. The simulation of the environment refers to the environment outside the simulation (that's why it's a /simulation/). So if someone asks how the computation gets meaning the answer is contagious and extends indefinitely far in time and space. Then the movie graph does not emulate a computation, and that is what lead to the absurdity. Or you mean that the environment needs primitive matter, but then the boolean graph already does not the relevant computation. I'm confused on that point. Comp1 is the proposition that the brain can be replaced by a digital computer at some level of emulation. The brain's function must be Turing emulable. But then after going through the argument to show that conscious thoughts, as computations, exist independent of material processes, you somehow jump to the conclusion that neither conscious thoughts nor physical processes are Turing emulable (which is why I called those conclusions part of comp2). Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/10/2015 7:56 AM, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au mailto:kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? The crime is intellectual dishonesty. I don't believe anyone this side of a looney bin really believes in solipsism except when arguing on the internet or standing in front of a classroom full of sophomore philosophy students trying to sound provocative. I'm a solipsist and I'm surprised more philosophers aren't solipsists. --- letter to Bertrand Russell A solipsist is like the man who gave up turning round because whatever he saw was always in front of him. --- Ernst Mach -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 11 June 2015 at 10:50, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm a solipsist and I'm surprised more philosophers aren't solipsists. --- letter to Bertrand Russell Phew, another solipsist! I was afraid I might be the only one. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 01:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? Take RA, PA, PA+con(PA), PA + con(PA + con PA), etc. (con PA = PA is consistent), DA, etc. All those theories leads to the same arithmetical truth. Each theory is just included in the next theory, but if one of them say that a proposition is a theorem, the negation of it will not be a theorem in any of them. So there are many different theories of arithmetic, but they all describes the same structure. That's not the case in set theory, where many different theories leads to different theorems. Of course, by incompleteness, you could take the theory PA + ~con(PA). That theory will lead to new theorem, which are false in the standard model, but arithmetical truth is defined using the standard model. Non standard models have some interest, but not for comp or for number theory; unless when use indirectly, to make some argument non valid. Bruno I recall that RA = Robinson arithmetic: it has the following axioms (on the top of predicate calculus): 0 ≠ s(x) (= 0 is not the successor of a number) s(x) = s(y) - x = y (different numbers have different successors) x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))(except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor) x+0 = x (if you add zero to a number, you get that number) x+s(y) = s(x+y) (if you add a number x to a successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y) x*0=0 (if you multiply a number by 0, you get 0) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x(exercise) PA is RA + the induction axiom (on first order sentence). DA is Dedekind Arithmetic: it is like PA, except you can throw out most axioms, as it has the very powerful second order full induction axioms (on all set of numbers). DA defines categorically the standard model, but is not an effective theory (you can't check all proofs, as the notion of set is too vague). Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:31, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. Not at all. There are many non isomorphic approach to set theory and analysis. For the natural numbers, this does not occur. All theories have a clear standard model on which we all agree. As Gödel saw, even intuitionist arithmetic is isomorphic to classical arithmetic: it changes only the vocabulary. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? It is a theory which explain too much. It is interesting for logicians. Nobody use it, really. people refers to it when confronted with possible paradoxes, but mathematicians avoid the paradoxes naturally, and the modern one will use some category or elementary toposes to fix the thing. Read books on the subject. Arithmetic has a solidity status not obtained by analysis, or even geometry.Some use ZF + ~AC, ZF + kappa, or other will use NF (a very different set theory), or intuitionist ZF (quite different from ZF), or NBG, etc. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 02:37, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? The arguments do apply. The point is that once the axioms are chosen, the results that follow are not a matter of choice. Arithmetical truths appear to take the form if A, then (necessarily) B. However, some of the elementary axioms (or even perhaps axions! :-) do appear to be demonstrated by nature - certain numerical quantities are (apparently) conserved in fundamental particle interactions, quantum fluctuations can only occur in ways that balance energy budgets, etc. So one could say that for anyone of a materialist persuasion, the assumptions of elementary arithmetic aren't unreasonable, at least (Bruno often mentions that comp only assumes some very simple arithmetical axioms - the existence of numbers and the correctness of addition and multiplication, I think) So if you choose Peano arithmetic, then such-and-such follows, while if you choose modular arithmetic, something else follows. The kicking back part is simply the fact that the same result always follows from a given set of assumptions. To put it a bit more dramatically, an alien being in a different galaxy, or even in another universe, would still get the same results. Nature is telling us that given A, we always get B. The difference is that for arithmetic (non modular arithmetic of the natural numbers), although there are many different axioms systems possible, either they have all the same theorems, or they are included in each other (one theory being just more powerful than another), but they all get the same theorems, when they get them. That is not true for set theory, where the theories can overlap, but also have different incompatible theorems. For the comp TOE, we need only to assume a (Turing) universal theory: we get the same physics, the same consciousness, etc. The kicking back is done at the elementary finite combinatorial level. For set theory, you need transfinite induction, which is philosophically much more demanding. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:37, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 06:31, LizR wrote (to Brent) Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. Yes. See my answer to brent. The whole AUDA is made possible because we do have an excellent axiomatisation of justification. It's an excellent axiomatization that relies on inference from axioms. To say it formalizes good reasoning would mean that I would have to axiomatize vision before I could see anything. It formalize any correct deduction that a system (like the guy talking with its digital doctors) can or cannot prove about itself in the 3p way. We want to explain physics, and consciousness. We are not doing artificial intelligence. We try just to formulate the problem, and solve some part of it. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 00:21, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 16:22, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. I may not have phrased it very well, but comp1 is the assumption that consciousness is based on computation, and can't be created by anything else (at least that's comp1 in a simple form - actually, I believe it's the assumption that at some level physics is Turing emulable). At some level, the physics *required* for my consciousness will be. But comp predicts that physics is not Turing emulable. Physics is given by the FPI on the computations, and that is not computable (like the question: will i find up or down when looking at this superposition is also non computable). On that basis, a brain must do computation (at some level), since it's conscious, and an AI could be conscious given the correct programme. Yes, and more importantly, a recording is not conscious, as, if it is, you can no more say yes to a doctor for computation reason. If a recording can be conscious, why not a physical neuron? In thjat cse comp is false. We say yes to the doctor *qua computatio* (if not comp became spurious: we could say yes because we believe in the Virgin Mary power to resurrect us). Bruno (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 01:24, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 4:13 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. But my computer does some computations and not others. So there must be some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't. Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much. I don't see that. Surely the problem is that it doesn't prove enough - assuming all computations exist (in some sense) in arithmetic, which I believe is trivially true to most mathematicians, how does this produce physics? If you're going to use a comp style explanation, your computer isn't defining which computations are real, it's somehow being generated by all those abstract computations. And all those abstract computations are also generating all possible instances of my computer computing all possible computations, plus many others which are not nomologically possible. So when Bruno says we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others my question becomes, Ok, what can we use, because some computations ARE more real than others. Some computations are more real relatively to some computations. But, each computations, like each number relation is as much real than any others. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? The arguments do apply. The point is that once the axioms are chosen, the results that follow are not a matter of choice. Arithmetical truths appear to take the form if A, then (necessarily) B. However, some of the elementary axioms (or even perhaps axions! :-) do appear to be demonstrated by nature - certain numerical quantities are (apparently) conserved in fundamental particle interactions, quantum fluctuations can only occur in ways that balance energy budgets, etc. Yes, exactly. That is why I would say that arithmetic is invented as a codification of our experience of the physical world. If we had chosen a set of axioms that did not reproduce the results of simple addition -- add two pebbles to the two already there, to give four in total -- then we would have abandoned that set of axioms long ago. Axiom systems are evaluated in terms of their utility, nothing else. In more advanced mathematics, utility might be measured in terms of simplicity and fruitfulness for further applications. But in the beginning, as with arithmetic and simple geometry/ trigonometry and so on, utility is measured entirely in terms of the applicability to the experienced physical world, and of the utility of the system in helping us live in that world. But that concerns the way human discovered arithmetic, not its fundamental or not status. Anyway, comp makes no sense if we have doubt about 2+2=4, or about the less trivial fact that there are universal diophantine polynomials, or that all natural numbers can be written as the sum of four squared integers, etc. So one could say that for anyone of a materialist persuasion, the assumptions of elementary arithmetic aren't unreasonable, at least (Bruno often mentions that comp only assumes some very simple arithmetical axioms - the existence of numbers and the correctness of addition and multiplication, I think) So if you choose Peano arithmetic, then such-and-such follows, while if you choose modular arithmetic, something else follows. The kicking back part is simply the fact that the same result always follows from a given set of assumptions. Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. To put it a bit more dramatically, an alien being in a different galaxy, or even in another universe, would still get the same results. Nature is telling us that given A, we always get B. Nature doesn't particularly tell us that. Rigorous application of the rules of inference to certain axioms tells us that. The physics might, after all, be different in a different universe, but using the same rules of inference on the same axioms will give the same result, regardless of the local physical laws. Yes. Then with comp, physics is the same for all universal machine, and this can be proved in all (Turing complete) theories. Physics is made theory independent, except for assuming at least one universal system. Physics is very well grounded in arithmetic or Turing equivalent. It is made more solid that the extraoplation that we can do from observation. Of course comp might be wrong, and that is why it is nice that it becomes testable. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him. I don't define reality at all, but I do show that with comp, arithmetical truth is enough, ontologically. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically. Well, then it is an open problem if physics kick back in any non metaphorical sense. With computationalism, math kick back by leading mathematical entity toi believe in non mathematical kicking back stuff. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization was invented for each of them. I'm not sure what invented differently means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical path? Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is different from ZFC. There is only one standard model of arithmetic. There are no well defined standard models of ZF. The notion is controversial. You said all computations explain too much, which is NOT the case (it leads may be to a too much big problem). But set theory explains too much, and flatten the higher order notion too strongly. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 04:10, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 16:22, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. I may not have phrased it very well, but comp1 is the assumption that consciousness is based on computation, and can't be created by anything else (at least that's comp1 in a simple form - actually, I believe it's the assumption that at some level physics is Turing emulable). On that basis, a brain must do computation (at some level), since it's conscious, and an AI could be conscious given the correct programme. There are two good justifications for computationalism that I can think of. One is the evolutionary one: that consciousness produces no effects of its own, so must be a side-effect of intelligent behaviour. The other is Chalmers' fading qualia argument. Neither of these justifications make a case for computation *exclusively* being responsible for consciousness. That is an added assumption, and at least in the first instance seems unnecessary. In science we use the axiom available, and here, comp loses its meaning if the survival is not supposed to be due to the computation. If not, even step one does no more follow. I might surivive with an artificial brain thanks to the Virgin Mary, but she might dislike the use of classical transportation, and so would not survive it. I sum this by the qua computatio condition. You can see it as linking the survival to only the computation. My definition of comp is already very weak, compared to most of thoise use in the literature. Without qua computatio, comp becomes so weak that it becomes trivial. Bruno (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that snuck may have sneaked into the language: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:21, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 7:30 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 14:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him. If it was then the religious majority throughout history would have been right. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically. Are you claiming an alien in another galaxy wouldn't find that arithmetic works? No. Is that what you mean by kicks back? I'm not making any metaphysical claims about the status of maths, merely saying that most mathematicians would, I think, agree that two people working independently can make the same mathematical discovery by different routes, and that some maths has real-world applications, and that when it does, it works. Arithmetic is a hard example to discuss because it is so simple and probably even hardwired into our thinking by evolution (crows can supposedly add and subtract up to six), but it's not really so inevitable as it seems. In order to count you have to discern distinct objects and group them in imagination into a whole: So you count the players on a college football team (U.S.) and you get 105. Then you count the number on the basketball team of the same school, 35, and you add them to the football team you get 140 - but that may well be wrong. Of course you will say that's just a misapplication; but that's the point, that arithmetic is an abstraction that is invented to apply to certain cases and it is no more out there than other aspects of language. I agree that it's hard to imagine an intelligent species that doesn't perceive discrete countable objects and didn't invent arithmetic to describe them; maybe some plasma being on the surface of the the Sun that thinks only in continua. We need the natural number to just define computationalism, Church thesis, etc. Once you believe in different natural numbers, then you must explain them, and see if the existence of your notion is threatening comp, and how. If not, you can imagine anything to avoid any consequences of any theory. (But I'm not sure how much kicking back you need from something, maybe being independently discoverable and working isn't enough?) Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization was invented for each of them. I'm not sure what invented differently means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical path? Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is different from ZFC. It means that two people starting from the same axioms and using the same system of logic came up with two different results (and neither made a mistake). That would mean either the axiom system was inconsistent or there was a mistake in logic. Note that Graham Priest has written several books on para-consistent logics, ones in which there can be contradictions but don't support ex falso quodlibet. That can be useful in AI, and for natural language. But not in QED, string theory or theoretical computer science. A rocket using water instead of hydrogen gas will not work. That does not refute that rockets can work. Bruno If within a given system A always leads to B, then it's reasonable to say B is discovered - like, for example, a certain endgame in chess leading to a particular set of possible conclusions. ?? At first reading I thought you meant A logically implies B, which means B is implicit in A. And so I thought the example was a chess endgame in which every move is forced (except resignation), A wouldbe the board position and B the sequence of endgame moves. But then you say B is a set of possible conclusions. Since chess is a finite game the starting position already leads to a set of possible conclusions. But if within a system A can lead to B, C, D etc then it's reasonable to say it's invented, So does the fact that Peano arithmetic lead to many different theorems mean it's invented? Does the fact that it's incomplete and can have infinitely many new axioms added to it mean it's invented? I don't think your
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 Jun 2015, at 8:07 pm, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Bruce Often, yes. Dial up a few YouTube clips of people doing embarrassing and, yes, injurious things while under the influence of the “mistaken belief system we call sleep” aka sleepwalking or nocturnal ambulatory syndrome or whatever. Afer that you can watch the clip of the dog running while asleep and taking off into a bloody brick wall after which it “wakes up to the real world”. You only have to believe that you are awake or asleep. You will always believe what you tell yourself. The point of Bruno’s “people can kick stones in dreams too” is to acknowledge that consciousness cannot be extinguished with cheap excuses like being asleep or dead. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 18:40, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION! I can do better. You can't do better than a demonstration! Just make one calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics and you've won and this debate is over. To make it physically is impossible, but I have already explain that it is not relevant. The point is that those computations exist in arithmetic, with the relevant redundancies and quantum quantization. Your argument, if valid, would forbid any notion of block universe. You would ask show me a working clock capable of giveing me the time right now with a block universe. The solution is of course that time and space, here and now, are treated by the self-referential indexical. This has been explained, so you should quote the explanation if you don't grasp them. I can prove their existence in arithmetic. Nobody denies that true statements exist in arithmetic, But the I was not saying that. I was saying that computations exist is a true statement in the language of pure arithmetic, and that such statement are independent of the physical laws. but the trouble is false ones do too, and the only way known to sort one from the other is to use matter that obeys the laws of physics to make a calculation. We don't have to sort them. We have to separate them, and as you agree with the excluded middle problem, this is simple math. You forget to put yourself at the place of each continuators, and analyse their first person discourses. And you forgot that when creating thought experiments designed to illuminate aspects of personal identity I think that you have repeated this lie more than ten times. The personal identity aspect needed is in the definition of the 1p and 3p views given with the diaries. The thought experiements are used to explain that physics becomes a branch of machine theology, not to add anything that we don't know already on personal identity. you can't talk about yourself and use personal pronouns in a casual willy nilly manner as you do in everyday life! That is why I have introduced the key notion of 1p, 3p, 31p, in UDA, and that I tranbslate them with the intensional variants in the translation in arithmetic. That has been done, verified, and it works. Only you are using fuzzy pronouns here, in an argument easily refuted. You deny this, but nobody grasp why. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:29, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. But my computer does some computations and not others. Not just yours. Mine too, and all those existing in arithmetic do - some computations and not others. So there must be some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't. It is the indexical sense, like in a block universe. Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much. This is not proposed as an explanation, but as a mathematical fact that we have to deal with. Then it is welcome as it explains, without using observation, why nature looks like the MWI. This predicts Everett QM, both intuitively (UDA) and formally (AUDA). Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:27, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. That is not a problem. In arithmetic I will exist in infinities of environments, played by UMs (with and without oracles). Such existence are relative, and phenomenological. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. I can agree with this. What does it change in the reasoning? The point is that your generalized brain, as long as it is digital, cannot singularize your soul. If you don't add non Turing emulable magic in matter, the argument shows that matter has to arise from a statistics on all computations going through the current state. If not, could you say precisely when the proof go wrong? Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: What axioms led to arithmetic? The Peano axioms. They were chosen because they are very simple and self evident. You need to be very conservative when picking axioms, for example we could just add the Goldbach Conjecture as an axiom, but then if a computer found a even number that was NOT the sum of 2 primes it would render all mathematical work done after the addition of the Goldbach axiom gibberish. Or take Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZFC) and the Continuum Hypothesis which says that there is no infinite number greater than the number of integers but less than the number of Real Numbers; in 1940 Godel showed that ZFC cannot prove the Continuum Hypothesis to be incorrect, and in 1963 Paul Cohen showed that ZFC cannot prove the Continuum Hypothesis to be correct either. So ZFC has nothing to say about the Continuum Hypothesis one way or the other. You could just add an axiom to ZFC saying the Continuum Hypothesis is true but you could just as easily add the Continuum Hypothesis is NOT true, so which one do you add? The problem is that neither of these axioms are simple and neither are self evident. Could one have chosen different axioms? It's never a good idea to change axioms unless somebody finds a set of axioms that are even simpler and even more self evident. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/9/2015 12:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:31, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. Not at all. There are many non isomorphic approach to set theory and analysis. For the natural numbers, this does not occur. All theories have a clear standard model on which we all agree. As Gödel saw, even intuitionist arithmetic is isomorphic to classical arithmetic: it changes only the vocabulary. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? It is a theory which explain too much. It is interesting for logicians. Nobody use it, really. people refers to it when confronted with possible paradoxes, but mathematicians avoid the paradoxes naturally, and the modern one will use some category or elementary toposes to fix the thing. Read books on the subject. Arithmetic has a solidity status not obtained by analysis, or even geometry.Some use ZF + ~AC, ZF + kappa, or other will use NF (a very different set theory), or intuitionist ZF (quite different from ZF), or NBG, etc. So what? That just makes my point that Platonia implies many different realities. First order predicate logic is also a clear standard model. So it must be as real as arithmetic. And arithmetic isn't so complete as you imply - that's why negative numbers and fractions and reals were invented. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/9/2015 12:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 19:27, meekerdb wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. That is not a problem. In arithmetic I will exist in infinities of environments, played by UMs (with and without oracles). Such existence are relative, and phenomenological. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. I can agree with this. What does it change in the reasoning? It undermines the MGA because it shows that whether a physical process instantiates a computation is a wholistic question, one whose answer is relative to the environment and interaction with that environment. This means that isolating the movie graph and then showing that it is absurd to regard it as a computation is not a legitimate move. Brent The point is that your generalized brain, as long as it is digital, cannot singularize your soul. If you don't add non Turing emulable magic in matter, the argument shows that matter has to arise from a statistics on all computations going through the current state. If not, could you say precisely when the proof go wrong? Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 18:59, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: What axioms led to arithmetic? The Peano axioms. Or the Robinson axiom, or many other systems. but they don't disagree on any formula. Even the theories having weird axioms like PA is inconsistent will not disagree on what they say for the standard natural numbers. They disagree only on religion, somehow. They were chosen because they are very simple and self evident. You need to be very conservative when picking axioms, for example we could just add the Goldbach Conjecture as an axiom, but then if a computer found a even number that was NOT the sum of 2 primes it would render all mathematical work done after the addition of the Goldbach axiom gibberish. Or take Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZFC) Well, that is Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory + the axiom of choice. and the Continuum Hypothesis which says that there is no infinite number greater than the number of integers but less than the number of Real Numbers; in 1940 Godel showed that ZFC cannot prove the Continuum Hypothesis to be incorrect, and in 1963 Paul Cohen showed that ZFC cannot prove the Continuum Hypothesis to be correct either. So ZFC has nothing to say about the Continuum Hypothesis one way or the other. You could just add an axiom to ZFC saying the Continuum Hypothesis is true but you could just as easily add the Continuum Hypothesis is NOT true, so which one do you add? The problem is that neither of these axioms are simple and neither are self evident. Could one have chosen different axioms? It's never a good idea to change axioms unless somebody finds a set of axioms that are even simpler and even more self evident. It depends what we need. RA is interesting because it is the simple essentially undecidable theory. Take any of its axioms, 0 ≠ s(x) s(x) = s(y) - x = y x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y)) x+0 = x x+s(y) = s(x+y) x*0=0 x*s(y)=(x*y)+x and remove it. You get a theory which is undecidable, but not *essentially* undecidable. It means you can extend those subtheories into decidable theories, like the theory of real numbers. But RA is already essentially undecidable: all its consistent effective (RE) extensions are undecidable and incomplete (with respect to arithmetical truth). But RA cannot prove many things. It is simple to see that 0 + x = x is undecidable in RA. And RA is not Löbian. It is Turing universal, but cannot prove it, unlike PA, ZF, ZFC, ZF+kappa, etc. Once Löbian, they get the same theology, and the same testable comp physics. Note that ZF and ZFC proves the same formula of arithmetic. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/9/2015 1:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: ... That can be useful in AI, and for natural language. But not in QED, string theory or theoretical computer science. A rocket using water instead of hydrogen gas will not work. That does not refute that rockets can work. Brent :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 June 2015 at 13:35, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: On 10 Jun 2015, at 9:09 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one. Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? I'm not sure if you're asnwering my attempt at humour or Bruce's apparent use of Solipsist! as an insult. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 9:09 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one. Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? Sounds to me like we should make AS IF this is true because it seems to be a way to get humans to respect each other more. Solipsism is a useful belief to maintain. It emphasises how alike we all are which leads to love of self and selves rather than emphsises our cosmetic differences which leads to war. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 Jun 2015, at 11:53 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 13:35, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: On 10 Jun 2015, at 9:09 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 12:07, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Jun 2015, at 07:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. But people can kicked stone in dreams too. But do they wake up with broken or bruised toes? Do they ever wake up? Solipsist! Another solipsist? Phew! I was worried I might be the only one. Surely it isn't a crime to be a solipsist. What's socially unacceptable about the belief that you are the only mind and that all other minds are you as well? I'm not sure if you're asnwering my attempt at humour or Bruce's apparent use of Solipsist! as an insult. Both. I'm exploring the concept of solipsism with a positive attitude. What are the benefits? Your attempts at humour always hit the mark (with me.) So yes, I don't think hurling 'solopsist!' at someone hurts them much. So, solipsism is a plural phenomenon. I don't care if I am a solipsist, I'll always have each other. - Mini Me. K -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 10 June 2015 at 15:23, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Both. I'm exploring the concept of solipsism with a positive attitude. What are the benefits? Your attempts at humour always hit the mark (with me.) Thanks! :) So yes, I don't think hurling 'solopsist!' at someone hurts them much. It's basically abusing yourself, if you'll pardon the expression. So, solipsism is a plural phenomenon. I don't care if I am a solipsist, I'll always have each other. - Mini Me. Contrariwise, does a group mind refer to ourself or myselves ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. But my computer does some computations and not others. So there must be some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't. Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. But in saying I am a digitalizable machine you implicitly assume that machine exists in the environment that you exist in. It is this environment and your potential interaction with it that provides meaning to the digital thoughts of the machine. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 1:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 08 Jun 2015, at 06:31, LizR wrote (to Brent) Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato'sTheaetetusdialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. Yes. See my answer to brent. The whole AUDA is made possible because we do have an excellent axiomatisation of justification. It's an excellent axiomatization that relies on inference from axioms. To say it formalizes good reasoning would mean that I would have to axiomatize vision before I could see anything. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 8 June 2015 at 16:22, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. I may not have phrased it very well, but comp1 is the assumption that consciousness is based on computation, and can't be created by anything else (at least that's comp1 in a simple form - actually, I believe it's the assumption that at some level physics is Turing emulable). On that basis, a brain must do computation (at some level), since it's conscious, and an AI could be conscious given the correct programme. (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sat, Jun 06, 2015 at 07:18:19PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In a Newtonian world physics is deterministic Yes, but deterministic is not the same as predictable. so there is an exact solution: That doesn't necessarily follow. Actually, there is usually an existence theorem for differential equations showing the existence of an exact solution for given boundary conditions. It may well be that the solution cannot be expressed in closed form using our existing catalogue of transcendental functions, but our catalogue can always be added to, such that it becomes possible to express the exact solution in closed form. Indeed, before computers were invented, it was popular to enlarge the catalogue with solutions to certain strategic differential equations - think gamma function, Bessel functions etc, so as to tabulate numerical values to help solve other DEs. But now, with general availability of electronic computers, you may as well do it directly for the DE of interest. Approximations can be made but in general an exact solution to the 3 body problem would require an infinite (and not just astronomical) number of numerical calculations. Numerical approximations are a different matter. Even having a closed form exact solution will not help numerical predictions if the algorithms for computing it are numerically unstable. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lizj...@gmail.com'); wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 16:22, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. I may not have phrased it very well, but comp1 is the assumption that consciousness is based on computation, and can't be created by anything else (at least that's comp1 in a simple form - actually, I believe it's the assumption that at some level physics is Turing emulable). On that basis, a brain must do computation (at some level), since it's conscious, and an AI could be conscious given the correct programme. There are two good justifications for computationalism that I can think of. One is the evolutionary one: that consciousness produces no effects of its own, so must be a side-effect of intelligent behaviour. The other is Chalmers' fading qualia argument. Neither of these justifications make a case for computation *exclusively* being responsible for consciousness. That is an added assumption, and at least in the first instance seems unnecessary. (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that snuck may have sneaked into the language: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Tue, Jun 09, 2015 at 02:32:13PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 14:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that snuck may have sneaked into the language: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html Not yet, by gad! It's still non-standard... Also, I see 'slinked' has slunk off. I have a theory that some verbs oscilate between weak and strong forms on some kind of multigenerational timescale. I was brought up saying snuck, lit, dove rather than sneaked, lighted and dived, for example. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 June 2015 at 05:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. But my computer does some computations and not others. So there must be some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't. Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much. I don't see that. Surely the problem is that it doesn't prove *enough* - assuming all computations exist (in some sense) in arithmetic, which I believe is trivially true to most mathematicians, how does this produce physics? If you're going to use a comp style explanation, your computer isn't defining which computations are real, it's somehow being generated by all those abstract computations. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization was invented for each of them. I'm not sure what invented differently means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical path? Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is different from ZFC. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 June 2015 at 14:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him. If it was then the religious majority throughout history would have been right. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically. Are you claiming an alien in another galaxy wouldn't find that arithmetic works? I'm not making any metaphysical claims about the status of maths, merely saying that most mathematicians would, I think, agree that two people working independently can make the same mathematical discovery by different routes, and that some maths has real-world applications, and that when it does, it works. (But I'm not sure how much kicking back you need from something, maybe being independently discoverable and working isn't enough?) Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization was invented for each of them. I'm not sure what invented differently means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical path? Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is different from ZFC. It means that two people starting from the same axioms and using the same system of logic came up with two different results (and neither made a mistake). If within a given system A always leads to B, then it's reasonable to say B is discovered - like, for example, a certain endgame in chess leading to a particular set of possible conclusions. But if within a system A can lead to B, C, D etc then it's reasonable to say it's invented, like a competition to finish (within the grammatical system of English) a poem that begins And now the end is near... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? The arguments do apply. The point is that once the axioms are chosen, the results that follow are not a matter of choice. Arithmetical truths appear to take the form if A, then (necessarily) B. However, some of the elementary axioms (or even perhaps axions! :-) do appear to be demonstrated by nature - certain numerical quantities are (apparently) conserved in fundamental particle interactions, quantum fluctuations can only occur in ways that balance energy budgets, etc. So one could say that for anyone of a materialist persuasion, the assumptions of elementary arithmetic aren't unreasonable, at least (Bruno often mentions that comp only assumes some very simple arithmetical axioms - the existence of numbers and the correctness of addition and multiplication, I think) So if you choose Peano arithmetic, then such-and-such follows, while if you choose modular arithmetic, something else follows. The kicking back part is simply the fact that the same result always follows from a given set of assumptions. To put it a bit more dramatically, an alien being in a different galaxy, or even in another universe, would still get the same results. Nature is telling us that given A, we always get B. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 June 2015 at 14:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that snuck may have sneaked into the language: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html Not yet, by gad! It's still non-standard... Also, I see 'slinked' has slunk off. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 7:41 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Jun 09, 2015 at 02:32:13PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 14:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: (And what's wrong with sneaked ?) I was trying to be faintly amusing, but I see that snuck may have sneaked into the language: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/g08.html Not yet, by gad! It's still non-standard... Also, I see 'slinked' has slunk off. I have a theory that some verbs oscilate between weak and strong forms on some kind of multigenerational timescale. I was brought up saying snuck, lit, dove rather than sneaked, lighted and dived, for example. I recently heard a linguist speak on this and his theory was that as a language spreads as a second language, i.e. is learned by adults, it tends to become more regular - and English is the prime example. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 4:13 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. But my computer does some computations and not others. So there must be some sense in which some computations are real and others aren't. Handwaving that they're all there in arithmetic proves too much. I don't see that. Surely the problem is that it doesn't prove /enough/ - assuming all computations exist (in some sense) in arithmetic, which I believe is trivially true to most mathematicians, how does this produce physics? If you're going to use a comp style explanation, your computer isn't defining which computations are real, it's somehow being generated by all those abstract computations. And all those abstract computations are also generating all possible instances of my computer computing all possible computations, plus many others which are not nomologically possible. So when Bruno says we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others my question becomes, Ok, what can we use, because some computations ARE more real than others. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/8/2015 7:30 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 14:00, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 4:16 PM, LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 05:31, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/8/2015 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. That even just arithmetical truth is independent of mathematician. This is important because everyone agree with any axiomatic of the numbers, but that is not the case for analysis, real numbers, etc. Everyone agrees on ZFC in the same sense. So does that make set theory and its consequences real? Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. Tell it to Bruno, I was just following him. If it was then the religious majority throughout history would have been right. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Mathematics doesn't kick back - except metaphorically. Are you claiming an alien in another galaxy wouldn't find that arithmetic works? No. Is that what you mean by kicks back? I'm not making any metaphysical claims about the status of maths, merely saying that most mathematicians would, I think, agree that two people working independently can make the same mathematical discovery by different routes, and that some maths has real-world applications, and that when it does, it works. Arithmetic is a hard example to discuss because it is so simple and probably even hardwired into our thinking by evolution (crows can supposedly add and subtract up to six), but it's not really so inevitable as it seems. In order to count you have to discern distinct objects and group them in imagination into a whole: So you count the players on a college football team (U.S.) and you get 105. Then you count the number on the basketball team of the same school, 35, and you add them to the football team you get 140 - but that may well be wrong. Of course you will say that's just a misapplication; but that's the point, that arithmetic is an abstraction that is invented to apply to certain cases and it is no more out there than other aspects of language. I agree that it's hard to imagine an intelligent species that doesn't perceive discrete countable objects and didn't invent arithmetic to describe them; maybe some plasma being on the surface of the the Sun that thinks only in continua. (But I'm not sure how much kicking back you need from something, maybe being independently discoverable and working isn't enough?) Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? I'd say ZFC and arithmetic were both invented and then an axiomatization was invented for each of them. I'm not sure what invented differently means?...getting to the same axiomatization by a different historical path? Or inventing something similar, but not identical, as ZF is different from ZFC. It means that two people starting from the same axioms and using the same system of logic came up with two different results (and neither made a mistake). That would mean either the axiom system was inconsistent or there was a mistake in logic. Note that Graham Priest has written several books on para-consistent logics, ones in which there can be contradictions but don't support /ex falso quodlibet/. If within a given system A always leads to B, then it's reasonable to say B is discovered - like, for example, a certain endgame in chess leading to a particular set of possible conclusions. ?? At first reading I thought you meant A logically implies B, which means B is implicit in A. And so I thought the example was a chess endgame in which every move is forced (except resignation), A would be the board position and B the sequence of endgame moves. But then you say B is a set of possible conclusions. Since chess is a finite game the starting position already leads to a */set/* of possible conclusions. But if within a system A can lead to B, C, D etc then it's reasonable to say it's invented, So does the fact that Peano arithmetic lead to many different theorems mean it's invented? Does the fact that it's incomplete and can have infinitely many new axioms added to it mean it's invented? I don't think your criterion for distinguishing invented from discovered reflects common usage. like a competition to finish (within the grammatical system of English) a poem that begins And now the end is near... And so I face the final curtain My friend I'll say it clear I'll state my case of which I'm certain Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
LizR wrote: On 9 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: Reality isn't defined by what everyone agrees on. What makes ZFC (or whatever) real, or not, is whether it kicks back. Is it something that was invented, and could equally well have been invented differently, or was it discovered as a result of following a chain of logical reasoning from certain axioms? Why do not those same arguments apply equally to arithmetic? What axioms led to arithmetic? Could one have chosen different axioms? The arguments do apply. The point is that once the axioms are chosen, the results that follow are not a matter of choice. Arithmetical truths appear to take the form if A, then (necessarily) B. However, some of the elementary axioms (or even perhaps axions! :-) do appear to be demonstrated by nature - certain numerical quantities are (apparently) conserved in fundamental particle interactions, quantum fluctuations can only occur in ways that balance energy budgets, etc. Yes, exactly. That is why I would say that arithmetic is invented as a codification of our experience of the physical world. If we had chosen a set of axioms that did not reproduce the results of simple addition -- add two pebbles to the two already there, to give four in total -- then we would have abandoned that set of axioms long ago. Axiom systems are evaluated in terms of their utility, nothing else. In more advanced mathematics, utility might be measured in terms of simplicity and fruitfulness for further applications. But in the beginning, as with arithmetic and simple geometry/trigonometry and so on, utility is measured entirely in terms of the applicability to the experienced physical world, and of the utility of the system in helping us live in that world. So one could say that for anyone of a materialist persuasion, the assumptions of elementary arithmetic aren't unreasonable, at least (Bruno often mentions that comp only assumes some very simple arithmetical axioms - the existence of numbers and the correctness of addition and multiplication, I think) So if you choose Peano arithmetic, then such-and-such follows, while if you choose modular arithmetic, something else follows. The kicking back part is simply the fact that the same result always follows from a given set of assumptions. Given a set of axioms and some agreed rules of inference, the same results always follow, regardless of by whom or at what time the application is made. This is not what is usually referred to as kicking back. Johnson did not apply some axioms and rules of inference in answer to the idealists, he kicked a stone. To put it a bit more dramatically, an alien being in a different galaxy, or even in another universe, would still get the same results. Nature is telling us that given A, we always get B. Nature doesn't particularly tell us that. Rigorous application of the rules of inference to certain axioms tells us that. The physics might, after all, be different in a different universe, but using the same rules of inference on the same axioms will give the same result, regardless of the local physical laws. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 04:14, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION! I can do better. I can prove their existence in arithmetic. Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. You don't know the other half. You said repeatedly that you never find the need to read after step 3. Because step 3 of you proof was S-T-U-P-I-D. Fix it We have shown that my proof fix it at the start, but you made only one half of the proof. You forget to put yourself at the place of each continuators, and analyse their first person discourses. More than 4 people have tried to explain this to you, and you are the only person disagreeing with this, for still unknown reason, as we have shown you were invalid. Bruno and I'll keep reading until I see the next stupid thing. . John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 06:31, LizR wrote (to Brent) Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. Yes. See my answer to brent. The whole AUDA is made possible because we do have an excellent axiomatisation of justification. The theory applies to all consistent continuations of anyone believing in RA or PA axioms. Then INFORMAL justification, is obtained by the move []p to []p p, made possible by the fact that incompleteness implies they obey quite different logics. There is no modal logic. Only arithmetical machine self-reference logics. It just happens that modal logic simplifies a lot the calculus. Like tensor analysis simplifies general relativity, but is not part of the theory itself which is concerned with space-time and gravity. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 01:14, meekerdb wrote: On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I think that assumes that true and exist are the same thing. You have said this often, but that does not make sense. But we do believe in classical logic, and so accept the rule P(n) === ExP(x), for n being any number. So we do accept that 2+2=4 is enough to infer that it exist a number x such that 2 + x = 4. One can affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one existed. ... existed in our local physical reality. But if define precisely enough, we can show that Watson exists in arithmetic, plausibly not in a way directly accessible to us. So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. It is as much clear than when you say that prime number exists. And it is explained how to recover physical existence from it. It is phenomenologic existence, of the type [2]2Ex [2]2 P(x), with [2] being the box of the Z1*, X1* or the S4Grz1 mathematics. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. On the contrary. Gödel provides a formal justification of justify which I take as equiavalent with proof, that is Gödel's beweisbar. So I don't reject the conditionning on justify, I exploit it. Then informal justification is given by the Thaetetical variant []p p. It obeys S4, it is not 3p definable by the machine, and so is not formalizable (although it is meta-formalizable at the proposotional level), ... So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 04:31, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. If 2+2=4 exists then 2+2=5 does too. 2+2 is true. That's all. Platonia may contain all true statements but it contains all false statement as well The physical reality too, once we make sense of what you say. This does not make the Moon into Mars. Same in Platonia: 2+2=5 is false there, and that is enough. and even Platonia has no way to completely separate the two. Platonia separates them by definition of Platonia. And that can be proved in set theory, or second order arithmetic (that you need to define mathematically Platonia (arithmetical truth). Bruno And there are many ways to be wrong but only one way to be right. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 08 Jun 2015, at 00:00, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. The materialist assumption is that there is a primitive physical universe, and that we are conscious because we have a phsical body containing a computer doing relevant computation. This is shown to be an epistemological nonsense, or to be based on a god-of-the-gap type of move. The way I define comp1 is a much weaker hypothesis, a priori neutral. It is the hypothesis that my consciousness does not change if my brain is replaced by a digital physical brain emulating my brain at some level. It is ontologically neutral (matter is not taken as primitively existing). Then, the goal is not to explain consciousness per se, but to show that any explanation of consciousness will necessitate an entire explanation of the physical appearance without using the assumption of primitive matter. UDA shows that the materialist assumption is incompatible with the computationalist one, even when used in that weak sense. Consciousness itself is then explained by computer science, but that is done in AUDA, not in UDA, which strictly speaking just expose the problem. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) Comp1 is not comp, even if it is comp for a materialist: but that position is proved to be nonsense. Comp is just I am a digitalizable machine. String AI is the thesis that machine can think (be conscious). It does not logically entail comp. Machine can think, but does not need to be the only thinking entities. Gods and goddesses might be able to think too. - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). Hmm Let us be precise. That the computation take place in arithmetic is a mathematical fact that nobody doubt today. UDA explains only that we cannot use a notion of primitive matter for making more real some computations in place of others. It makes the physics supervening on all computations in arithmetic. This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I always intuit that you get the thing, but express it in a slightly misleading way. To say that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang does not really make sense, as an arithmetical proposition is true out of time and space. mathematical propositions are not depending on physics. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Why? If you define to know by true belief, then we might be able to know things. may be we do know that 2+2=4, because we believe it, and it might also be true. (It is my fault, because someone I use to know in the non theaetetical sense of know for sure. So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION! I can do better. You can't do better than a demonstration! Just make one calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics and you've won and this debate is over. I can prove their existence in arithmetic. Nobody denies that true statements exist in arithmetic, but the trouble is false ones do too, and the only way known to sort one from the other is to use matter that obeys the laws of physics to make a calculation. You forget to put yourself at the place of each continuators, and analyse their first person discourses. And you forgot that when creating thought experiments designed to illuminate aspects of personal identity you can't talk about yourself and use personal pronouns in a casual willy nilly manner as you do in everyday life! More than 4 people have tried to explain this to you, and you are the only person disagreeing with this, Then I must be smarter than those 4 unnamed people. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. Deterministic perhaps, but not predictable even in theory. OK, but that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory or second-order arithmetic (analysis). Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, ? ! I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. You don't know the other half. You said repeatedly that you never find the need to read after step 3. And you show to know nothing about computability theory (which explains why the second part eludes you). So you have read 3/8 of the simple part (done for the novice), that is 3/16 of the work, and you judged it? As for comp... I have so often heard you say according to comp blah blah that I no longer know what your silly little homemade slang word is supposed to mean, but I do know it can't mean Computationalism. And now dear god we've got comp1 and comp2 to add to the mix! That was a gentle attempt by Liz to make sense of *your* distinction (between Computationalism (comp1) and what I explain as consequence of it, comp2). Comp2 is computationalism when you understand UDA, and that primitive matter is transformed into a god of the gap type of notion, with respect to the mind-body problem, or even just the body problem. It is not that we don't need the notion of primary matter, it is that even if that exists, we can't relate it to consciousness in any way. If we would need a piece of matter, either it is Turing emulable, and it means we did not get the level right, or it is not Turing emulable, and then, its needs just shows that comp is wrong. QED. UDA is a question, and AUDA is the non trivial beginning of the Universal Machine's answer, when she introspect herself enough (can prove its only universality, in some technical precise sense). But how foolish am I when trying someone to listen to the machine, if that person cannot even listen to humans. The universal machines, like babies, are born intelligent, but they can evolve and become stupid, feeling superior, and destroying themselves. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 06 Jun 2015, at 02:00, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 4:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? In response you your initial point that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions, the obvious questions is Abstractions from what? Abstractions from physical events. We find we can leave out stuff like the location (and so conserve momentum) and the position of distant galaxies and the name of the experimenter and which god he prays to etc. Of course what we can leave out and what we must include is part of applying the theory. Physicists work by considering simple experiments in which they can leave out as much stuff they're not interested in as possible in order to test their theory. Engineers don't get to be so choosy about what's left out; they have to consider what events may obtain. But they also get to throw in safety factors to mitigate their ignorance. In other words, in this account, the pre-existing physical world is taken as a given, from which laws are simplified abstractions. Fine, that's the way I think it is. No problem when doing physics. But when working on the mind-body problem, we get reason to think that is not the way things are. Physics needs not to be physicalist, even if it is so FAPP. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. Deterministic perhaps, but not predictable even in theory. Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, ? ! I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. As for comp... I have so often heard you say according to comp blah blah that I no longer know what your silly little homemade slang word is supposed to mean, but I do know it can't mean Computationalism. And now dear god we've got comp1 and comp2 to add to the mix! John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 20:35, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Event is a physical notion. Algorithmic non compressibility is an mathematical notion. An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. Nothing caused the 9884th digit of a random number to be a 6 rather than some other digit, and that is the one and only reason it is NOT algorithmically incompressible. But something did cause the 9884th digit of PI to be a 4 and not some other digit, and that's why PI IS algorithmically compressible. I have a counter-example to your claim. Fix a universal system. It determines completely its Chaitin number, yet it is algorithmically incompressible. I don't know what you mean by fix I mean choose one. If you take a Fortran universal interpreter, you can define its Chaitin number. The Chaitin number is relative to the choice of a universal system. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. ? I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Bruno If time or space is quantized as most physicists think it is then the real numbers are just a simplified approximation of what happens in the physical world. Typically, physical quantization is defined by using complex numbers. Because even if space and time are quantized the discrete steps are so little that complex numbers are a good approximation of the physical world unless you're dealing with things that are ultra super small. But again, the point was just that CT does not refer to physics. Bullshit. Computationalism says you can make matter behave intelligently if you organize it in certain ways, That is a rephrasing of computationalism, and what you say follow from it, but the more precise and general version is that you stay conscious [...] To hell with consciousness! Figure out how intelligence works and then worry about consciousness. maybe that matter is primitive and maybe it is not but there has been a enormous amount of progress in recent years with AI demonstrating that Computationalism is probably true. There has been zero progress demonstrating that mathematics can behave intelligently. Mathematics does not belong to the category of things which can behave. That is a HUGE admission on your part, if it is true (and I don't know if it is or not) then the debate is over and physics is more fundamental than mathematics. End of story. But mathematics, and actually just arithmetic can define relative entities behaving relatively to universal number And I can define a new integer that has never been seen before, I call it fluxdige and it's definition is that it's equal to 2+2 but it's not equal to 4. You can't make a calculation with a definition! Nobody has shown the existence of primitive mathematics either. Primitive means that we have to assume it. Logicians have prove that arithmetic, or universality, is primitive in the sense that you cannot derive arithmetic, or the existence of universal numbers, without assuming less than that. When Peano came up with the integers he had to first assume that the number 1 existed and then he came up with rules to generate its successor, but if the physical universe did not exist, if there were ZERO things in it, then it's not at all obvious that the number 1 would exist. Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't, I don't know. One of your Greek buddies Socrates said that the first step toward wisdom is knowing when you don't know. So if Socrates was right then I'm wiser than you are. Computations have been discovered in mathematics. All textbooks in the filed explains that. You can't make a computation with a textbook! You can't make a calculation with a definition! You can. Then stop talking about it and just do it! And if it is simple enough, you can do that mentally. You will tell me that in this case we still need a physical brain Indeed I will. but this can be a local relative notion, Local? A good rule of thumb is that if a theory says Local means the entire multiverse then things may be getting out of hand. I say compute means
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 21:03, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Do you agree that the simulated john Clark will still complain that matter is missing in computation, despite we know that he refers to number relations, without knowing it? If the simulation had been done correctly then the simulated John Clark will have the same opinions I do including reservations about computations being made without matter. If the simulation was being performed on a computer made of matter then the reservations were justified, if the simulation was being performed by pure mathematics and nothing else then they were not. You need also the Pope to bless the matter, I think. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 8 June 2015 at 11:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I think that assumes that true and exist are the same thing. One can affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one existed. So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. Yes, of course it isn't clear. But 2+2=4 isn't by definition it's the result of empirical observation of - as John wuold say - material objects. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. Yes. So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. Both of those scenarios assume that there was an external world with which the brain/AI was related to in the past and which provides meaning to the computational processes that are *ex hypothesi* now isolated from the world. The relation need not even be direct, i.e. the AI was constructed by a programmer whose knowledge of the world provides the meaning. But without some such relation it's hard to say that the computational processes are *about* anything, that they are not just noise. Yes, that's the problem in a nutshell - why aren't conscious computations just noise? (Or are
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Monday, June 8, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marc...@ulb.ac.be'); wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marc...@ulb.ac.be'); wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's paradox - sorry, I mean argument - that a recording of such complexity may indeed be conscious. The MGA seems to hand-wave a bit about this whole process - like the Chinese room, we simply record the activities of the processing devices and then simply' project the movie onto the system, and so on, leaving aside the Vast size of the envisaged apparatus. Nevertheless, if we assume comp1 then we assume by hypothesis that a recording isn't conscious (only a computation can be conscious, according to comp1). It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. So that's really a comp1 objection. So the question in the end is which is the most reasonable hypothesis. How does materialism explain consciousness? How does comp explain the appearance of a material
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's paradox - sorry, I mean argument - that a recording of such complexity may indeed be conscious. The MGA seems to hand-wave a bit about this whole process - like the Chinese room, we simply record the activities of the processing devices and then simply' project the movie onto the system, and so on, leaving aside the Vast size of the envisaged apparatus. Nevertheless, if we assume comp1 then we assume by hypothesis that a recording isn't conscious (only a computation can be conscious, according to comp1). So that's really a comp1 objection. So the question in the end is which is the most reasonable hypothesis. How does materialism explain consciousness? How does comp explain the appearance of a material universe? Over to you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Must re-read my posts before sending. That should of course be which hypothesis, not why (D'oh!) And I seem to have too many coulds ...Oh well. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I think that assumes that true and exist are the same thing. One can affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one existed. So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. Both of those scenarios assume that there was an external world with which the brain/AI was related to in the past and which provides meaning to the computational processes that are /ex hypothesi/ now isolated from the world. The relation need not even be direct, i.e. the AI was constructed by a programmer whose knowledge of the world provides the meaning. But without some such relation it's hard to say that the computational processes are *about* anything, that they are not just noise. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION! Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. You don't know the other half. You said repeatedly that you never find the need to read after step 3. Because step 3 of you proof was S-T-U-P-I-D. Fix it and I'll keep reading until I see the next stupid thing. . John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. If 2+2=4 exists then 2+2=5 does too. Platonia may contain all true statements but it contains all false statement as well and even Platonia has no way to completely separate the two. And there are many ways to be wrong but only one way to be right. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? Newton's mathematical abstractions leave out how 3 bodies of similar mass interact. Einstein's General Relativity field equations leave out the 3 body problem too, and also leaves out all the forces of nature except gravity, and Einstein leaves out what gravity does when things become both very small and very massive. And the equations of Quantum Mechanics leave out gravity and Dark Matter. And every mathematical abstraction known leaves out Dark Energy which makes up about 3/4 of the mass/energy of the universe; nobody has a clue what that's all about, it's the deepest mystery in physics. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In a Newtonian world physics is deterministic Yes, but deterministic is not the same as predictable. so there is an exact solution: That doesn't necessarily follow. Approximations can be made but in general an exact solution to the 3 body problem would require an infinite (and not just astronomical) number of numerical calculations. numerical predictions can be good for a long time How long the prediction remains good depends on how strong the gravitational field is and how rapidly it changes with distance; the greater the strength and rate of change the worse prediction. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: (very much in theory) a TOE would describe everything - it would in principle be like Laplace's demon (though possibly only for a multiverse). Laplace's demon could make predictions and that is far more difficult than just making a description. Even if the world worked according to Newtonian physics you couldn't predict how 3 bodies of similar mass will interact over the long term, you could do it for 2 bodies and there are a few very specific orbits you can do it for 3 bodies but in general if there are 3 you can only make approximations, there is no exact solution that is general, so the longer the prediction of where the 3 bodies will be the more inaccurate it will be. John K Clark On 6 June 2015 at 09:46, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. I know what you mean, but this statement could be considered a bit misleading. Unlike the other branches of science, physics at least tries to be a complete description. Of course it fails in practice, but (very much in theory) a TOE would describe everything - it would in principle be like Laplace's demon (though possibly only for a multiverse). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/6/2015 10:24 AM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , LizR lizj...@gmail.com mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote: (very much in theory) a TOE would describe everything - it would in principle be like Laplace's demon (though possibly only for a multiverse). Laplace's demon could make predictions and that is far more difficult than just making a description. Even if the world worked according to Newtonian physics you couldn't predict how 3 bodies of similar mass will interact over the long term, you could do it for 2 bodies and there are a few very specific orbits you can do it for 3 bodies but in general if there are 3 you can only make approximations, there is no exact solution that is general, so the longer the prediction of where the 3 bodies will be the more inaccurate it will be. In a Newtonian world physics is deterministic, so there is an exact solution: the integration of the differential equations of motion. But in general there's no closed form solution in terms of simple functions. The differential equations are sensitive to initial conditions but even so numerical predictions can be good for a long time, as evidenced by predictions of planetary positions. There's a nice simulation of the chaotic motion of Nix, one of the moons of Pluto at http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/chaotic-orbital-interactions-keep-flipping-plutos-moons/ Note the speedup. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 07:33, John Clark wrote: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The physical device is far more complex than the algorithm, astronomically more complex, so you tell me which is a simplified approximation of which. The physical device is no more relevant to the algorithm than any other universal system. Yes, an algorithm is a simplified approximation of the way a real computer works, and in general good simplified approximations work with a large number of real world situations. And so can be indeopendent of them, and belong to another realm, like logic and arithmetic. But, actually, you are wrong. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians (who were unaware of Babbage), and computer have been constructed after. You can implement the factorial in fortran, and you can implement fortran in lisp, and you can implement lisp Correct again, but whatever language you implement your algorithm in it must be implemented in matter that obeys the laws of physics because you can't make a calculation with software alone. But the goal of making real-life computations is not our goal. Your remark remains non relevant. Eventually we will have to explain real-life appearances by an internal statistics on the computations existing in arithmetic. The level of complexity is not relevant here. It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. If you agree that the math notion of computation miss something (matter), then you agree that they are mathematical. Now, when a the Milky Way is emulated by arithmetic below our substitution level, explain me how the simulated humans can guess that matter is missing. Do you agree that the simulated john Clark will still complain that matter is missing in computation, despite we know that he refers to number relations, without knowing it? Bruno John K Clark John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 04 Jun 2015, at 19:54, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: or A string which is not algorithmically compressible, Yes, that is a very good example of an event without a cause. Event is a physical notion. Algorithmic non compressibility is an mathematical notion. Nothing caused the 9884th digit of a random number to be a 6 rather than some other digit, and that is the one and only reason it is NOT algorithmically incompressible. But something did cause the 9884th digit of PI to be a 4 and not some other digit, and that's why PI IS algorithmically compressible. I have a counter-example to your claim. Fix a universal system. It determines completely its Chaitin number, yet it is algorithmically incompressible. Same with Post number: that one is compressible, yet most of its digital are not computable, although completely deterlmined, if you agree that a close machine (a machine activated on some input) either stop or does not stop. But that is not yet proven too, as comp implies there is something non computable, but it might be just the FPI and the quantum FPI confirms this. I don't care, I'm not interested in comp or of the Foreign Policy Institute. If you don't care, you would abandon the idea of showing that comp1 does not imply comp2 And I'm even less interested in comp1 and comp2 whatever the hell they are supposed to be. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, and that we need to be irrational to believe in the negation of computationalism. So you start again your dismissive rhetorical maneuvers. Physics use a lot of non computable things in the background. Name one. The set of real numbers. If time or space is quantized as most physicists think it is then the real numbers are just a simplified approximation of what happens in the physical world. Typically, physical quantization is defined by using complex numbers. Even mathematicians are starting to have reservations about the real numbers, even Gregory Chaitin has started to distrust them and ironically his greatest claim to fame came from discovering (or maybe inventing) a particular real number, the Omega. Mathematicians have some problem with the real numbers since the beginning. Most are solved by method usuallu judged to rough, like an axiomatic set theory, etc. It is on analysis that intuitionist mathematics and clmassical mathematics differ the most. In theoretical computer science we can justify the needs of non constructive method, as very often there is provably no constructive tools available, and it is part of the subject. But again, the point was just that CT does not refer to physics. And yes CT entails incompleteness and the existence of non computable functions and of algorithmically non soluble problems. It is intuitively obvious that no computation can be made without the use of matter that obeys the laws of physics. made is ambiguous. Bullshit. Did you mean made in the physical reality, by a physical universal machine, Of course I mean that! or did you mean made by a immaterial universal machine, like Robinson Arithmetic? Of course I don't mean that, unless you know how to build a immaterial machine with material! Couldn't you have figured this out by yourself? It is easy to implement an immaterial machine with matter, like you can represent the abstract number 2 with two pebbles. I say that computationalism is false, because you use primitive matter. Computationalism says you can make matter behave intelligently if you organize it in certain ways, That is a rephrasing of computationalism, and what you say follow from it, but the more precise and general version is that you stay conscious (and don't see any difference) when simulated at the right level (which existence is assumed), and that will entail that we can't distinguish a physical computation from a purely arithmetical one, by pure introspection (without clues from observation). maybe that matter is primitive and maybe it is not but there has been a enormous amount of progress in recent years with AI demonstrating that Computationalism is probably true. There has been zero progress demonstrating that mathematics can behave intelligently. Mathematics does not belong to the category of things which can behave. But mathematics, and actually just arithmetic, can define relative entities behaving relatively to universal number, and that is known since Post, Turing, etc. Why should we abandon computationalism, given that nobody has ever show the existence of primitive matter? Nobody has shown the existence of primitive mathematics either. Primitive means that we have to assume it. Logicians have prove that arithmetic, or universality, is primitive in the sense that you cannot derive arithmetic, or the existence
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 06:59, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 , Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The point is just that the notion of computation, once you agree with Church-Turing thesis, is made into a purely arithmetical notion. That is incorrect. The Church-Turing thesis says that a function on the positive and negative integers is computable if and only if it is computable on a Turing Machine; and if the Turing Machine is not made of matter that obeys the laws of physics then the machine is useless because it does absolutely positively nothing. I begin to think that you are attempting to become the champion of nonsense. Turing machine are not made of matter, and computation is definable in arithmetic, just using the symbol s, 0, + * and the usual logical symbol. We can even eliminate the A (for all) quantifier. You can define computable and finite piece of computation by one precise combinators, or one precise number, or one precise diophantine polynomials, etc. YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION!! But the point is that we dont have to made them once you agree that 2+2=4 does not depend on matter, and that is the case, by definition of the notions involved. You are the one invoking some God (Matter) capable of making some computation more real than others. It could not be clearer that some calculations ARE more real than others. Relatively? Sure. I have to pay by national taxes, that's real and important to avoid real problems, but that is not relevant. Again, you beg the question if you say that the physical computations are more real. you could say that only those blessed by the Pope are really real ... Matter can make calculations that I can see, but your calculations are invisible; Like the numbers. But in the computation which exist in arithmetic, some emulate person seeing object. You could say that there is no real driving car, or any movement, in a block-universe, as there is no time there, and we need time to measure the presence of movement. But we have no problem because those notions are relative. Similarly here. That is why the notions of points of view is capital in the computationalist approach. the transubstantiation in the Catholic Mass that turns bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ is also invisible. As I've said, being invisible and being nonexistent look rather similar Assuming some aristotelian theological dogma. comp, explains the physical, from machine self-referential properties, and so can be translated in arithmetic to give the proposition logic of physics. I don't care, I'm not interested in comp. Then why do you participate in this list where comp and its (meta)- physical consequences are discussed since about 20 years? - You agree with the multiverse. Some (rare) physicists have criticized my thesis (without reading it) because they were told that I defend Everett, and that was enough for them, (which, btw, is false, as I do not defend any thesis). - You agree with comp, and might be said being, like Hal Finney, a real comp practitioners. - You agree that physics might not be fundamental. So what? You would disagree only because you would have found a flaw in step 3, without ever being able to convince anyone on this? or because, CT would use physics? (But you have not find serious confirmation on this on the net, and still deny). or you want just be disagreeable? or what? I tell you that I can decompose step 3 in smaller steps, ... but recently, even 14 years old children told me that this was necessary only for the 12 years old one! Indeed, if you take the definition which are given, this is 3p obvious (and you said so yourself), so nobody in this list or elsewhere understand why you don't move on the other steps. Yet, you keep the tone everyone know that this is just peepee. That shows that it is purely rhetorical dismiss. I am not sure I can see what is your problem. It does look personal, given the constant ad hominem way of addressing the posts. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/4/2015 10:33 PM, John Clark wrote: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The physical device is far more complex than the algorithm, astronomically more complex, so you tell me which is a simplified approximation of which. The physical device is no more relevant to the algorithm than any other universal system. Yes, an algorithm is a simplified approximation of the way a real computer works, and in general good simplified approximations work with a large number of real world situations. You can implement the factorial in fortran, and you can implement fortran in lisp, and you can implement lisp Correct again, but whatever language you implement your algorithm in it must be implemented in matter that obeys the laws of physics because you can't make a calculation with software alone. The level of complexity is not relevant here. It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Event is a physical notion. Algorithmic non compressibility is an mathematical notion. An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Nothing caused the 9884th digit of a random number to be a 6 rather than some other digit, and that is the one and only reason it is NOT algorithmically incompressible. But something did cause the 9884th digit of PI to be a 4 and not some other digit, and that's why PI IS algorithmically compressible. I have a counter-example to your claim. Fix a universal system. It determines completely its Chaitin number, yet it is algorithmically incompressible. I don't know what you mean by fix but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. If time or space is quantized as most physicists think it is then the real numbers are just a simplified approximation of what happens in the physical world. Typically, physical quantization is defined by using complex numbers. Because even if space and time are quantized the discrete steps are so little that complex numbers are a good approximation of the physical world unless you're dealing with things that are ultra super small. But again, the point was just that CT does not refer to physics. Bullshit. Computationalism says you can make matter behave intelligently if you organize it in certain ways, That is a rephrasing of computationalism, and what you say follow from it, but the more precise and general version is that you stay conscious [...] To hell with consciousness! Figure out how intelligence works and then worry about consciousness. maybe that matter is primitive and maybe it is not but there has been a enormous amount of progress in recent years with AI demonstrating that Computationalism is probably true. There has been zero progress demonstrating that mathematics can behave intelligently. Mathematics does not belong to the category of things which can behave. That is a HUGE admission on your part, if it is true (and I don't know if it is or not) then the debate is over and physics is more fundamental than mathematics. End of story. But mathematics, and actually just arithmetic can define relative entities behaving relatively to universal number And I can define a new integer that has never been seen before, I call it fluxdige and it's definition is that it's equal to 2+2 but it's not equal to 4. You can't make a calculation with a definition! Nobody has shown the existence of primitive mathematics either. Primitive means that we have to assume it. Logicians have prove that arithmetic, or universality, is primitive in the sense that you cannot derive arithmetic, or the existence of universal numbers, without assuming less than that. When Peano came up with the integers he had to first assume that the number 1 existed and then he came up with rules to generate its successor, but if the physical universe did not exist, if there were ZERO things in it, then it's not at all obvious that the number 1 would exist. Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't, I don't know. One of your Greek buddies Socrates said that the first step toward wisdom is knowing when you don't know. So if Socrates was right then I'm wiser than you are. Computations have been discovered in mathematics. All textbooks in the filed explains that. You can't make a computation with a textbook! You can't make a calculation with a definition! You can. Then stop talking about it and just do it! And if it is simple enough, you can do that mentally. You will tell me that in this case we still need a physical brain Indeed I will. but this can be a local relative notion, Local? A good rule of thumb is that if a theory says Local means the entire multiverse then things may be getting out of hand. I say compute means figuring out an answer, nobody has ever done this without using matter that obeys the laws of physics. You are right, but this does not prove that the notion of matter is used in the definition of computation. Who cares about the damn definition? You can't make a computation with a definition! To do something materially we need matter Yes, but if mathematics is more fundamental than physics it's not obvious why that should be the case. PA and formal systems compute things without doing the computation physically. Bullshit. Kleene invented his famous predicate and got his normal form theorem for the computable function by using the arithmetical existence of the computations only. Then why isn't there a Kleene Computer Corporation with a trillion dollar valuation? If you know how to make
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 8:15 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Turing machine are not made of matter, If it's not made of matter then it's not a machine it's a Turing Something and it can't do a damn thing. and computation is definable in arithmetic, just using the symbol s, 0, + * and the usual logical symbol. YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION!! But the point is that we dont have to made them once you agree that 2+2=4 does not depend on matter, But I don't agree that must be true, it's the very point we're debating. If 4 physical things did not exist in the physical universe or even 2 I don't know if 2+2 would equal 4 or not and neither do you. If it does then mathematics is more fundamental if it doesn't then physics is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Do you agree that the simulated john Clark will still complain that matter is missing in computation, despite we know that he refers to number relations, without knowing it? If the simulation had been done correctly then the simulated John Clark will have the same opinions I do including reservations about computations being made without matter. If the simulation was being performed on a computer made of matter then the reservations were justified, if the simulation was being performed by pure mathematics and nothing else then they were not. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. Brent A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language, but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the physical universe. Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than physics but if it is it has not been proven. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language, but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the physical universe. Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than physics but if it is it has not been proven. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6 June 2015 at 07:22, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? I'm not sure that mathematicians say this (well, Galileo did, iirc, but generally they don't). The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language, but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the physical universe. Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than physics but if it is it has not been proven. I doubt anything could prove this if it's still being debated even though physics has been based on maths for 300 years. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6 June 2015 at 09:46, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. I know what you mean, but this statement could be considered a bit misleading. Unlike the other branches of science, physics at least tries to be a complete description. Of course it fails in practice, but (very much in theory) a TOE would describe everything - it would in principle be like Laplace's demon (though possibly only for a multiverse). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/5/2015 4:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? In response you your initial point that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions, the obvious questions is Abstractions from what? Abstractions from physical events. We find we can leave out stuff like the location (and so conserve momentum) and the position of distant galaxies and the name of the experimenter and which god he prays to etc. Of course what we can leave out and what we must include is part of applying the theory. Physicists work by considering simple experiments in which they can leave out as much stuff they're not interested in as possible in order to test their theory. Engineers don't get to be so choosy about what's left out; they have to consider what events may obtain. But they also get to throw in safety factors to mitigate their ignorance. Brent Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
LizR wrote: On 6 June 2015 at 07:22, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? I'm not sure that mathematicians say this (well, Galileo did, iirc, but generally they don't). The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language, but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the physical universe. Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than physics but if it is it has not been proven. I doubt anything could prove this if it's still being debated even though physics has been based on maths for 300 years. I think you will find that physics has been based on experience, and the the experience/experiments have been codified/described by mathematics. To say that is has been based on maths is a gross distortion of the facts. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? In response you your initial point that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions, the obvious questions is Abstractions from what? Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 4:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? In response you your initial point that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions, the obvious questions is Abstractions from what? Abstractions from physical events. We find we can leave out stuff like the location (and so conserve momentum) and the position of distant galaxies and the name of the experimenter and which god he prays to etc. Of course what we can leave out and what we must include is part of applying the theory. Physicists work by considering simple experiments in which they can leave out as much stuff they're not interested in as possible in order to test their theory. Engineers don't get to be so choosy about what's left out; they have to consider what events may obtain. But they also get to throw in safety factors to mitigate their ignorance. In other words, in this account, the pre-existing physical world is taken as a given, from which laws are simplified abstractions. Fine, that's the way I think it is. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The physical device is far more complex than the algorithm, astronomically more complex, so you tell me which is a simplified approximation of which. The physical device is no more relevant to the algorithm than any other universal system. Yes, an algorithm is a simplified approximation of the way a real computer works, and in general good simplified approximations work with a large number of real world situations. You can implement the factorial in fortran, and you can implement fortran in lisp, and you can implement lisp Correct again, but whatever language you implement your algorithm in it must be implemented in matter that obeys the laws of physics because you can't make a calculation with software alone. The level of complexity is not relevant here. It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. John K Clark John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 6:34 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Mr Clark's response to Bruno indicates that he (Mr Clark) doesn't know what he (Bruno) is talking about Correct. And Mr.Clark strongly suspects that Mr.Marchal doesn't either. However Mr Clark's opinion on this isn't particularly valuable, since he admits he doesn't understand this stuff Perhaps because there is nothing in the peepee stuff to understand. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
