White Rabbits
Using my approach White Rabbits can be dealt with as follows [I think]: The dynamic starts with and continues a pattern - a path to completeness. The path is not deterministic because most states would be multiply incomplete so any two successive states will differ by some fractional reduction in this incompleteness and that fraction can not be selected prior to the transition [minimal selection]. However, this fraction is nevertheless composed of information that reduces an incompleteness that started in a logic observation - responses to meaningful questions - and should remain in this venue. There would be only one possible maximum size transitions and many possible small ones. In this approach large transitions that resemble White Rabbits would be uncommon and patternless White Rabbit events should not exist. Hal Ruhl --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: White Rabbits, WAND gates and WACOs
More on White Rabbits. Here is a thought experiment which attempts to prove the non existence of White Rabbits and of Black Rabbits. Definitions: 1) White Rabbits: phenomena that we cannot understand. Their existence indicates that the set of physical phenomena is larger than the set of ideas 2) Black Rabbits: ideas we can think of but which are not simulatable with computers based on physical laws. i.e., not implementable on a analog/digital computer. Their existence indicates that the set of physical phenomena is smaller than the set of ideas. Goal Demonstrate that Set(White Rabbits) = 0; Set(Black Rabbits) = 0 and thus prove that the mental universe is identical in size to the physical universe Assumption: COMP hypothesis: People thoughts can be simulated by a computer Converse COMP hypothesis: A computer program can be understood by a person. (h) Reminder: Church/Turing Thesis: All algorithmic functions can be simulated by a computer. Converse Church Thesis: A computer can only simulate algorithmic functions Proof: Let's proceed via absurdum. 1) Let's say there are White Rabbits. Let's be a little more precise and say that there are devices (a kind of transistor that produces White Rabbits logic operations: WAND gates. Wonderful! I am an engineer and I'll use one of these WAND gates in the design of a White Rabbit Computer (WACO) just to fool the hackers, the CIA, the FBI, the KGB and the IRS. However, since a WACO can incorporate a WAND gate, so can a person (by the COMP hypothesis). Hence a person should be capable of generating the same outputs as the WACO and therefore predict a WACO (unless the White Rabbits device generates a totally random signal as in QM). Hence no White Rabbits. 2) Now lets say Black Rabbits exist. It means that I can think of a Black Rabbit but I can't program one on a computer. (I have done that so many times :-) ) By the COMP hypothesis all ideas should be programmable. Hence no Black Rabbits. Therefore Mental Universe == Physical Universe I realize the proof is shaky kind of like prestigitation with rabbits???... but it is a starting point:-) George
Re: White Rabbits, Consistency and Dreaming
More on dreaming Believing in a cat morphing into a lion Believing in ogres and demons Believing in the tooth fairie Believing in a flat earth Believing in the geocentric system Believing in Newtonian Physics All these are beliefs. We hold these beliefs when we are awake or when we are asleep. Beliefs shape the world we live in. They range from the totally absurd, to the almost reasonable. But they are all false. They all have their own sets of inconsistencies which were may not be readily apparent. In fact it took a lot of work to demonstrate the inconsistencies of Newtonian Physics. Our beliefs form part of our frames of reference. They are the only things that matter. When they are demonstratedly proven inconsistent, our world comes tumbling down and a new world takes its place... with a new sets of beliefs. Scientists are kind of like Elmer Fudd: the history of science is the hunt for, and extermination of, all white rabbits... I think, they are in for a big surprise the mother of all white rabbits is just around the cornerand she is morphing into a lion. George Levy
Re: White Rabbits, Consistency and Dreaming
I think the problem is that folks are assuming that the only way you can tell whether you are awake or dreaming is by sensory input limited physical senses, ie., 5 senses. If one pays attention, one can be aware of a number of senses that are not quantified by popular understanding. One of these is the awareness of the passage of time. One can remember *typically* which memories come before or after another. Not always, but a sense of temporal organization exists for most people within the ability to manipulate memories. Another more difficult *burried sense* is one that allows to ask the question: where do our words come from? If one concentrates, one can be somewhat aware of the flow of words from the depths of their consciousness as they *feel* a meaning, and turn that meaning into the spoken word. How is that one has the ability to explore this awareness? Is it a journey through some kind of n-space? Is focus something that can be moved? How does one point to an abstract space? I've just explained how one might explore the *where do my words come from* thing. But how do you locate this space? I've not provided the address, just a description of how one might concentrate in a way to illustrate this concept. Another would be minds-eye thinking. How one visualizes something. How do we do this? How do we even know we can do it? One could argue the ability just apeared and we found some kind of tag/button we could toggle to manipulate this space. How does one know the difference between visualization and physical seeing? There are some that can visualize things so powerfully they are more real than what we would call *real*. So what kind of tag or label do we have to tell which space we're in? All of these things I mention illustrate or point to what I would call buried-senses. They seem to be abstract senses we can form as we wish. We can create new one as we can create new burried features of thinking. All of these and many more I don't even know how to go about describing would form a composite that would grant us situational-awareness. This situational awareness is how one tells when one is in dream space. At some point you'd have to ask yourself, what's more real?, that which I see through physical eyes, or things I create and put my own rules and senses on. We have a common ground for which we interact. We see other people and things and can model their behavior well enough that we can be confident that these rules will hold as long as we choose to participate. We have a sense of what is *us* and what is not. Is this learned? Or is it built in? The question of animals morphing to other things is only meaningfull statistically. We've grown up in a world where things like that don't happen. Not many people claim to have seen such things, so we accept that as a-typical behavior. It does'nt fit our model of *reality*. I submit that if people relied on this kind of defintion of reality that they set themselves up for a kind of weirding-out, lost feeling when life then throws us a curve. If one day rabbits do develop the ability to morph, I think most science types could be found wandering around in a stupor and babbling meaningless phrases. To get an idea of this, one might recall a movie or experience like culture-shock that caused a person to feel out of place and lost. For me this is easily accomplished with a really strange movie. I saw a program on WWII where an interviewed paratrooper mentioned mentioned that after puting on all his gear, and while waiting to board the aircraft amidst all the noisy aircraft in preperation for the D-Day invation, he felt a kind of disconnected, surreal feeling. I've felt this as well when some time ago on board a small aircraft wearing a headset and voice activated mike. It seems just the loss of something familiar like aural echos and hearing one's own natural voice can be enough to leave one in a dreamlike state. I think just the loss of the ability to model enough of one's sensory input would cause this loss of connection to reality. Robert W. --- George Levy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a continuation of Consistency? + Programs for G, G*, ...+ White Rabbits Some more thoughts about dreaming. I wrote: To summarize: White rabbits are inconsistent by definition. The issue is inconsistent with respect which frame of reference? If we dream of a real world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the real world point of view) then it may be perfectly consistent in the dream world. If it is consistent in the dream world, no problem. No paradox in the dream world. No paradox in the real world.. If we dream of a dream world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the dream world point of view), then we realize the dream world is a fake and we wake up. No more dream world. No more paradox. We can resolve the white rabbit paradox if we take relativity seriously. George Let's say you are dreaming
Re: Consistency? + Programs for G, G*, ...+ White Rabbits
Marchal wrote: Do you think the dream and awake state are symmetrical? I am not sure. It seems to me that in the dream state you can realise you are dreaming, but that in the "awake" state you can never realise you are awake. "awakenings" go from more relative inconsistencies to less relative inconsistencies. (To be awake is akin to >t, to be dreaming is akin to []f, at least in a first approximation.) Bruno Dream and awake state are in principle symmetrical. Here are four points to cover all bases: 1) Knowing you are dreaming: A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming 2) Knowing the Plenitude: Someone who believes 100% in quantum immortality leads a life akin to lucid dreaming. (Also valid if you replace quantum immortality by God or Heavens). 3) Not knowing you are dreaming: In some cases you are dreaming but do not know it. For example, a nightmare would not be a nightmare if you knew you were dreaming. 4) Not knowing the Plenitude: Someone who does not believe in quantum immortality (like most of us) takes his life so seriously that when it turns for the worst it become a "nightmare." Belief in quantum immortality eliminates the "seriousness" of bad experiences. Yes I do think there is a symmetry between dreaming and being awake. The critical issue is BELIEF: whether you believe you are dreaming or not and this affects the CONSISTENCY of what you are observing. Same goes for the "real" world. There may be a difference only in the "quality of the rendering" just like the difference between a black and white silent movie and a 3D full color holographic audio visual display. One could also imagine a super being for whom dreams would be in full 3D color. So in principle I don't see any difference. I just want to clarify the idea of "shared" dreams. I think we must relate this idea to the concept of "objective reality" that is the sharing of a common "frame of reference" between different observers.
Re: White Rabbits, Consistency and Dreaming
This is a continuation of Consistency? + Programs for G, G*, ...+ White Rabbits Some more thoughts about dreaming. I wrote: To summarize: White rabbits are inconsistent by definition. The issue is inconsistent with respect which frame of reference? If we dream of a real world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the real world point of view) then it may be perfectly consistent in the dream world. If it is consistent in the dream world, no problem. No paradox in the dream world. No paradox in the real world.. If we dream of a dream world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the dream world point of view), then we realize the dream world is a fake and we wake up. No more dream world. No more paradox. We can resolve the white rabbit paradox if we take relativity seriously. George Let's say you are dreaming of a nice little pussy cat. Suddenly the pussy cat morphs (white rabbit?) into a hungry lion who goes straight for you with bared fangs and drooling saliva.with anticipation of a good meal. The first consistency test is whether you believe in the morphin process or you don't. If you do believe that the cat morphed into a lion, then your world is consistent and you are having a bad nightmare.The lion will tear you to pieces and you'll die in your dream. At that point you meet the second consistency test. Either you believe you are dead and then you must stop dreaming and therefore stop believing you are dead... This is impossible. Your dream world therefore becomes inconsistent and comes to an end. You either switch to a deep theta sleep state or you wake up... unless you go to a dream heaven... but then you are not really deadand the whole pussycat/lion nightmare could arise again... Death in a dream leads to infinite heavenly regression or to inconsistency. Now if you don't believe that the cat morphed into a lion, you realize that your world is a dream world. You then have two choices. Either wake up (end of the dream world) or continue to enjoy your dream with the full knowledge that it is only a dream not the reality (end of real dream) and that no matter what the lion does to you, it's only a dream and nothing bad could really happens. So you let the lion eat you. In fact you are really enjoying the process. Finding yourself in the stomach of the lion becoming the lion what fun!!! A dream that you know is a dream is called a lucid dream. Lucid dream are fun! You can jump from a huge cliff and not get hurt, stand in front of a speeding locomotive and see it go right through you. In a lucid dream, you are immortal. Not let's take a step back and look at science in interpreting our world. The role of science is to expose inconsistencies and reveal the old perception of the world world for the dream it isOur set of beliefs affects how we perceive the world. Way back before Copernicus, we were living in a dream world where the earth was at the center of the universe etc... But there were inconsistencies... Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc.. resolved the inconsistencies. They showed us that the old set of beliefs were just dreams, not reality. Our horizon has been expanding. We have been waking up, and waking up again, and again. We are now faced with the ultimate expansion of our horizons: the plenitude. Quantum immortality is like lucid dream immortality. Yes, our world is a dream. But what a magnificient dream! Let's be like the lucid dreamer and enjoy it to the fullest! George
Re: Consistency? + Programs for G, G*, ...+ White Rabbits
Marchal wrote Ok. Physics is pattern of laws perceived by the consciousness observing the plenitude. The consistency filter that restricts consciousness is the same filter that restrict the world that consciousness observes. This is why the world is understandable and this is why there are no white rabbits. White rabbits are not consistent. Unfortunately I don't think this is true. The problem with the white rabbits is that there are consistent! For exemple we can dream of white rabbits. This is too simplistic. It could be that we differ because of semantics or maybe because of confusion with regard the frame of reference. Let's explore the issue with some thought experiments. 1) Let's consider dreams that I've had. I have dreamt many times of flying (white rabbits? to be determined). In those dreams, I strongly believe that flying is a natural ability that I have and I wonder why sometimes in the so call real world I cannot fly. Everything in the dream world seems to be consistent and I can fly. Flying, from the dream world perspective is not a white rabbit. In fact the so called real world seems to be false and not having the ability to fly IS a white rabbit! In the dream world, the rule of physics seem to be different and allow flying. My belief system appears to conform to those physical laws and I do not find any contradiction. Flying is OK in the dream world! The resolution of the paradox is simple. The frames of reference are different. What appears to be a white rabbit in one frame is not in another! Now, is the dream world frame of reference consistent? As far as I tested it it was. I did not do much testing. 2) Here is an example in which a kind of dream state Uncertainty Principle seems to preserve consistency. I dream sometimes of seeing shapes and color ( these are a form of phospenes produced by the brain in the dream state.) These phospenes begin as relatively simple geometric patterns but then, as I enter deeper into the dream state, they evolve into wonderful geometrical shapes, or animals or people etc... They are so beautiful that I try to stop them form changing, to be able to analyze them in detail. A soon as I attempt to focus on them, they disappear. I can't perform any kind of consistency analysis on them. 3) Here is another dream which illustrates how the discovery of an inconsistency brings the dream to an end. I sometimes dream of out of body experiences Are they real or not? Being a amateur physicist -even in my dreams - I want to know if these experiences are real. So I give myself a test: to find out what is the arrangement of certain objects in another room. When I tried that I came up blank. I just couldn't do it. So, in the dream, I realized that these out of body experiences were not real and that I was dreaming. This realization, effectively, put an end to the dream - even though I continued dreaming, I knew it was a fake. To summarize: White rabbits are inconsistent by definition. The issue is inconsistent with respect which frame of reference? If we dream of a real world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the real world point of view) then it may be perfectly consistent in the dream world. If it is consistent in the dream world, no problem. No paradox in the dream world. No paradox in the real world.. If we dream of a dream world white rabbit (inconsistency as seen from the dream world point of view), then we realize the dream world is a fake and we wake up. No more dream world. No more paradox. We can resolve the white rabbit paradox if we take relativity seriously. George
Re: White Rabbits and QM
- Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] My much hyped paper is now available for review and criticism (hopefully constructive). The URLs are http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/ps/occam.ps.gz or http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/occam/ depending on whether you like your papers in postscript or HTML. I think this is generally a very good paper - probably because I agree with most of what I can understand of it! My comments follow. Introduction
White Rabbits and QM
My much hyped paper is now available for review and criticism (hopefully constructive). The URLs are http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/ps/occam.ps.gz or http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/occam/ depending on whether you like your papers in postscript or HTML. The abstract reads: In this paper, I show why in an ensemble theory of the universe, we should be inhabiting one of the elements of that ensemble with least information content that satisfies the anthropic principle. This explains the effectiveness of aesthetic principles such as Occam's razor in predicting usefulness of scientific theories. I also show, with a couple of reasonable assumptions about the phenomenon of consciousness, that quantum mechanics is the most general linear theory satisfying the anthropic principle. I haven't decided which journal to send this to yet. Cheers Dr. Russell StandishDirector High Performance Computing Support Unit, University of NSW Phone 9385 6967 Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 6965 Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
