Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Robin Faichney]

Hi again Bruno,

Heeding Pedro's kind reminder, this is my second and therefore last
message to the list this week. However, I'll be happy to continue the
discussion off-list (and to copy in any others who signal their
interest).

Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 10:57:41 AM, Bruno wrote:

> The guy know all this in advance. He knows that if comp is true, he
> will survive the duplication, and that, in all possible future
> personal situation, he will feel to be in only one city, with an
> inferred doppelganger in the other city.

No, in my view "he" will experience being in each city (both cities)
with an inferred doppelganger in the other city, because "he" is
one before the procedure and two after. This is very counter-intuitive
regarding personal identity but it is the logical consequence of your
assumptions.

> So, if he is asked in Helsinki where he will feel to be, he can
> only answer that he will feel to be in W or in M, but without being
> able to be sure if he will feel to be in W or that he will feel to be in M.

Looking forward, pre-bifurcation, the rational expectation is that his
identity will split, so that both post-bifurcation versions are
genuinely him, and there is no reason for the pre-bifurcation version
to choose either city as his destination, he genuinely has two
simultaneous destinations, in this scenario one person
(pre-bifurcation) can be in two places at once (post-bifurcation).

-- 
Robin Faichney


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Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Apr 2012, at 11:44, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

>> It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the
> protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow  
> and
> Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two  
> people with
> absolutely identical physique and memories immediately afterwards,  
> which
> will then begin to diverge.

OK. Then the uncertainty is bearing on the outcome of that divergence

You can predict this, in Helsinki:

(I will feel to be in W) and (I will feel to be in M)

But here you adopt a 3-view on your future 1-views.

But we assume comp, so we know that both copies will *feel* to be  
entire and complete in only one city. So from the first person point  
of view, it is

(I will feel to be in W) or (I will feel to be in M).

Assuming comp and the correct substitution level, you will never feel  
to be simultaneously in W and in M. This would entail a telepathic  
element which, given that we have chosen the right substitution level,  
would have a non computable element, and contradict comp.

We can verify this by asking the copy in W, and he will assesses to  
feel to be in W, and not in M, and having only an intellectual (3- 
view) belief of the existence of its copy in M. He cannot even know  
for sure that the copy has already been reconstituted there or not.


> Both, looking back to pre-bifurcation times,
> will say "that was me", and both will be correct.

Absolutely so. That is why we have to listen to both of them, and both  
of them agree to feel to be in only one city. One sees english  
speakers around him, the other sees russian speakers, and none of them  
can realy *know* if their doppelganger has been reconstituted. Nor  
could they know in advance that they would hear russians or americans.

The advantage of proceeding with such thought experience is that it  
avoids the need to agree on personal identity. The indeterminacy bears  
only on experience which can be noted in a diary.

Of course, the experience suggest that personal identity is an  
illusion. If you keep your identity on both copies, then we can argue  
that we are all the same amoeba, who duplicates itself a lot since a  
long time. But this remark needs not to be agreed upon to understand  
that computationalism reverses physics and the information/computer/ 
number science.

If you really believe that the you-in W and the you-in M are really  
still exactly the same person, having different experience, then I can  
argue that you and me are already exactly the same person. Why not?  
Perhaps God, playing hide-and-seek with itself :)
But here we try to predict direct accessible results of self- 
localization after a self-duplication, and without a non computable  
telepathic link, the answer of the copies are different.


> There is no "essence" to
> be randomly (or non-randomly) assigned to one location and not the  
> other.

But there are human beings, knowing in which city they feel to be.  
None will write "I feel to be in both M and W at once". Each will  
write "I feel to be in just the city X", with X being M or W  
respectively. They can only bet, intellectually, about the existence  
of the other. Indeed, the guy in W would not been able to see I have  
cheated on him, and that I did not reconstitute him in M. OK?


> The individual is now two people and therefore can be and is in both  
> cities.

Only from a third person point of view. From the point of view of each  
copies, despite both being the "same" person as the one in Helsinki,  
they both feel right now to be in only one city. And the first person  
indeterminacy bears on such feeling, not on the bodies to which we can  
attriibute consciousness, but on the content of the consciousness,  
which in this case corresponds to the result of the self-localization  
(W, M?) which they will write in their diaries. None will write in the  
diary "I feel to be in W and M".

Just replace humans by robots having some amount of inference  
inductive power. And imagine the iteration of the experience. So after  
finding themselves in some city, they buy a ticket to come back by  
plane to Helsinki, and they do the experience again and again. After  
iterating that experience 64 times, there will be 2^64 copies, and  
each of them will have, written in their respective personal diaries a  
specific sequence of "W" and "M". Such robots can have already well  
defined elementary inference inductive power to guess that their  
sequences are non algorithmically compressible. Each of them cannot  
predict the next outcome of the self-duplication. Of course, some of  
them will develop theories. For example the one having the story  
W...W, will be tempted to predict "W", but we know she will  
have many "descendants" contradicting that theory, and in this  
setting, they are deluded.

Of course "real life" will not be a sequence of self-duplication, but  
it will be a sequence of sel

[Fis] Only Two

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Discussants are kindly reminded that only two messages per week are 
allowed in the fis list.
--Pedro

-- 
-
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-

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Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Apr 2012, at 11:23, Robin Faichney wrote:


Hi Bruno,

This is very interesting for me, my approach to information is via the
mind-body and "hard" problems, and I'm sympathetic to
computationalism. On the other hand, I have difficulties understanding
much of what you say here. Let me focus on one point for now though.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 8:48:48 AM, Bruno wrote:


Let me sketch the reasoning shortly. If I can survive with a
digitalizable brain, then I am duplicable. For example I could, in
principle, be "read and cut" in Helsinki (say) and pasted in two
different places, like Moscow and Washington (to fix the thing).



The subject to such a duplication experiment, knowing the protocol
in advance, is unable to predict in advance where he will *feel to
be* after the duplication. We can iterate such process and prove
that at such iteration the candidate, seeing if he feels to be in W
or in M, receive a bit of information, and that his best way to
predict his experience, will be, in this case, to predict a random
experience (even algorithmic random experience): like WWMWWWMMMWM
, for example. That is the first person indeterminacy.


It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the
protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow
and Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two
people with absolutely identical physique and memories immediately
afterwards, which will then begin to diverge. Both, looking back to
pre-bifurcation times, will say "that was me", and both will be
correct. There is no "essence" to be randomly (or non-randomly)
assigned to one location and not the other. The individual is now two
people and therefore can be and is in both cities.


You are right. That is why in more lengthy explanations I introduce  
the key distinction between the first person points of view, and the  
third person points of view.
For the simple case of self-duplication the first person account can  
be defined by the content of a personal diary brought by the  
candidate: which means that it will be read and cut itself and  
reconstituted in both cities. Here the third person account is  
provided by the memory, or the content of a diary of an external  
observers, and is not going to be annihilated and reconstituted.


The indeterminacy bears on the first person experience(s). You are  
read and cut in Helsinki, and reconstituted in W and M.
You are asked to predict where you will *feel* to be after the  
duplication.


We suppose that you assume comp, and so you believe that you will  
survive such duplication. We assume also that the correct level of  
substitution has been chosen, and all the default assumptions (no  
bugs, no asteroids demolishing a reconstitution machine, etc).


So you can predict, with this relative to comp certainty, that you  
will survive, and that indeed, you will survive in both city. But comp  
prevents the existence of some telepathy between the two copies. So  
you know in advance that both of "you" (the M-you and the W-you) will  
both *feel* to be in only one city.


One will write in his diary: "Oh, I see that I am in Washington and I  
can only intellectually believe that I have a doppelganger in Moscow",  
and the other will write "Oh, I see that I am in Moscow, and I can  
only intellectually believe that I have a doppelganger in Washington".


So from both their first personal point of view, they get one bit of  
information.


The indeterminacy comes from the fact that they cannot have predicted  
in advance which one they will become, before the duplication.


If, in Helsinki the candidate predicts that he will feel to be in W,  
the guy in M will  rightly consider that he was wrong in his  
prediction made before in Helsinki, and vice versa.
As you say yourself, bot copies shares their memory-life up to the  
experience in Helsinki, and to evaluate their uncertainty, they have  
to take into account all the future copies discourses.


If this is not clear, let me copy you a slightly more elaborate  
account. It is called "step 3", because it is the step 3 of the  
Universal Dovetailer Argument, which is the main argument showing the  
reversal between physics and information/computer science following  
the comp assumption. It takes into account preview critics similar to  
what you said.
 In fact you attribute your consciousness and identity to both copies  
(it is a 3-person-view on the 1-person-view, but the indeterminacy is  
on the 1-view themselves). You can say "tomorrow, you can join me in W  
and in M". But from your personal perspective you get after the  
duplication, you will feel to be one and entire in a well defined city  
(W *or* M).


If you get this, don't read what follows. If it is still unclear, read  
what follows, and if some questions remain, I will answer them here.




== UDA step 3 == (from the FOAR mailing list) == ( 
http://groups.google.com/group/foar?hl=en.)

I assume

Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Loet Leydesdorff]

> It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the
protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow and
Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two people with
absolutely identical physique and memories immediately afterwards, which
will then begin to diverge. Both, looking back to pre-bifurcation times,
will say "that was me", and both will be correct. There is no "essence" to
be randomly (or non-randomly) assigned to one location and not the other.
The individual is now two people and therefore can be and is in both cities.

But this ignores the second law: one can expect unavoidable error in the
replication. :-)  !  L.

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Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Robin Faichney]

Hi Bruno,

This is very interesting for me, my approach to information is via the
mind-body and "hard" problems, and I'm sympathetic to
computationalism. On the other hand, I have difficulties understanding
much of what you say here. Let me focus on one point for now though.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 8:48:48 AM, Bruno wrote:

> Let me sketch the reasoning shortly. If I can survive with a
> digitalizable brain, then I am duplicable. For example I could, in
> principle, be "read and cut" in Helsinki (say) and pasted in two
> different places, like Moscow and Washington (to fix the thing).

> The subject to such a duplication experiment, knowing the protocol
> in advance, is unable to predict in advance where he will *feel to
> be* after the duplication. We can iterate such process and prove
> that at such iteration the candidate, seeing if he feels to be in W
> or in M, receive a bit of information, and that his best way to
> predict his experience, will be, in this case, to predict a random
> experience (even algorithmic random experience): like WWMWWWMMMWM
> , for example. That is the first person indeterminacy.

It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the
protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow
and Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two
people with absolutely identical physique and memories immediately
afterwards, which will then begin to diverge. Both, looking back to
pre-bifurcation times, will say "that was me", and both will be
correct. There is no "essence" to be randomly (or non-randomly)
assigned to one location and not the other. The individual is now two
people and therefore can be and is in both cities.

-- 
Robin Faichney


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Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Bruno, 

 

(*) You might look at my short article:

http://www.scitopics.com/The_first_person_computationalist_indeterminacy.htm
l

 

I read your paper and think that I understood it, but I don’t understand
immediately how it relates to this discussion. I understand that there is a
remaining uncertainty of 1 bit (0 or 1) that cannot be foreseen or dissolved
by an omniscient being. The latter seems to me something from the times of
Leibniz and Descartes when the omniscient being had to guarantee that
empirical and mathematical knowledge were in accordance. Can an omniscient
being know the uncertainty of empirical distributions without measuring
them? 

 

Huygens (1690): “It is not well to identify certitude with clear and
distinct perception, for it is evident that there are, so to speak, various
degrees of that clearness and distinctness. We are often deluded in things
which we think we certainly understand. Descartes is an example of this, it
is so with his laws of communication of motion by collision of bodies.”

 

Anyhow: while one can define a system and therewith its maximum information
content (log(N)), the expected information content and redundancy have to be
measured. A system which generates more redundancy than information
(uncertainty) can be considered as a meaning-processing system because the
number of options proliferates faster than the historical filling of the
options. Obviously, new possibilities (meanings) are generated.

 

For reasons of consistency with the second law (which is valid since S= k(B)
H), such a system would operate against the arrow of time: meaning is
provided from the perspective of hindsight; incursively. Such a system would
therefore be an anticipatory system. For example, meaning incurs on us as
such systems. Furthermore, meaning is provided with reference to other
possible meanings, that is, “horizons of meaning”.

 

Does this accord with your approach?

 

Best wishes,

Loet

 

  _  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
l...@leydesdorff.net   ;
http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ;
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ
 &hl=en 

 

From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 6:48 PM
To: Loet Leydesdorff
Cc: 'Pedro C. Marijuan'; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Physics of computing

 

Dear Loet, dear Pedro,

On 11 Apr 2012, at 11:28, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:





Dear Pedro,

 

You are right: the dimensionality of thermodynamic entropy is Joule/Kelvin.

Probabilistic entropy/uncertainty/information is dimensionless and measured
in bits.

 

Configurational information (a point of access to measuring meaning) is also
measured in bits, but it is not a Shannon entropy (Krippendorff, 2009). It
can be considered as a redundancy = reduction of uncertainty = a difference
which makes a difference.

 

I agree. Redundancy is the key, in my opinion (and work). Note that if you
enumerate the partial computable functions (from N to N to fix the thing),
there is an important redundancy which cannot be removed in any computable
way.

 

Information is then generated from the first person point of view of the
(universal, Löbian) machine trying to bet on its most probable universal
neighbors. (cf the first person indeterminacy(*)). Hard calculus because the
redundancy is infinite.

 

I distinguish the finite information, available locally by machine, and
which can be treated as numbers, but with extensional and intensional roles
(cf 17 is prime versus 17 is the number address of the café) from what a
universal number (machine) do with that number. This provides a clean base
for the distinction between information capable of quantitative evaluation
and meaning, although it is only just a tiny part of the meaning which is
addressed here, of course. The meaning admits many quantitative aspect, but
cannot be characterized by one measurement.

 

A Löbian machine or number is a universal machine or number which knows, in
some technical sense, that he.she/it is universal. It is aware of its
ignorance, notably about the universal neighbors.

 

Bruno

 

(*) You might look at my short article:

http://www.scitopics.com/The_first_person_computationalist_indeterminacy.htm
l

 

 

 

 


  _  


Loet Leydesdorff

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ;
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ
 &hl=en

 

From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On
Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan
Sent: Wednes