Hi Günther, Nice post! Coments soon.
Speaking of Svozil's work, please see: Cristian S. Calude, Peter H. Hertling and Karl Svozil, ``Embedding Quantum Universes in Classical Ones'', Foundations of Physics 29(3), 349-390 (1999) [abstract], [CrossRef DOI:10.1023/A:1018862730956], [pdf], [pdf], [tex], [ps]. How can we derive quantum logics from purely integer (or even real number) based logics? This paper seems to yeild a no-go theorem! Onward! Stephen ----- Original Message ----- From: "Günther Greindl" <guenther.grei...@gmail.com> To: <everything-l...@googlegroups.com> Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 5:53 PM Subject: Re: Boltzmann Brains, consciousness and the arrow of time Hi Bruno, first of all thanks for the long answer, and yes, it was very helpful. You described the production of all reals with a very vivid imagery; it showed a glimpse of the vastness of the UD. And, I agree, _in the limit_ there will be an infinite number of histories. So, as we have to also take into account infinite delay, we must take this limit into account and have infinite histories going through a "state" (do I understand you correctly?). As to the interacting programs: do you consider them purely because they are part of UD or do you think this is a possible way to share histories? (I am interested in this because I find COMP very convincing, though I am still a bit worried about solipsism). I am also preparing a few thoughts (in a later post, but see hints below) on how consciousness might supervene on large parts of past causal histories, thereby also steering a bit away from solipsism (arguing via the concept of external realism from analytic philosophy, summarized by Putnam's "meaning is not in the head"). I also have another question (related to the above issue of solipsism): We have considered COMP and MAT and seen that the two are not really compatible. But you also say that with COMP, the universe itself is not computable (I understand why, and I agree with your reasoning as you have presented it). But I have one "worry": what if the subsitution level is "at the bottom" of the universe - (for a moment drawing on materialist intuitions, the universe in the "normal" sense and not considering infinite histories for the moment). If the universe is a computation, then also an individual in the universe is part of this computation. But this individual can't be "duplicated" because of the quantum no-cloning theorem (that is what I mean with "at the bottom" - not above the quantum level). Svozil for instance refers in a number of papers to the work of Moore and Finkelstein that show, assuming we have an automaton, we would witness complementarity. http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/publ.html (see for instance these overview papers: Svozil, K. ``How real are virtual realities, how virtual is reality? The constructive re-interpretation of physical undecidability'', Complexity, 1, 43-54 (1996). Svozil, K. Computational Universes Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 2005, 25, 845-859 Svozil, K. Physical Unknowables physics/0701163, 2007) The results of course would also apply if we were "solipsist" automatons and "the whole" not (so the arguments are quite compatible with varying versions of machine conception (universe/person) ). I am just saying that we can't know if we are "separable" from the universe. To state it differently (and to make the connection with complementarity and duplication): If we assume the whole universe to be an automaton, also it's inhabitants would be "mechanical" =effectively computable of course - but maybe they could then not be duplicated, because, when person A were trying to make a scan of the properties of person B, the universe as a whole would move into different states and make complementary observables - which _could_ be necessary for a duplication - unavailable. This may only work if consciousness supervenes not on "isolated" computations, but only if it is embedded in computations constructing whole universes - but then again, we can't exclude this a priori. And we would still have to consider many worlds, but these would then indeed be _worlds_ and not only OMs with incoming/outgoing histories (of course it would still seem this way from the concrete OM, but with greatly reduced danger of white rabbits) - the laws of physics would not emerge for OM's stranded in the UD deployment but for OM's embedded already in highly structured computational environments - we would only have to take into account duplications of OM's where also whole universes are duplicated. So, what I am getting at, wouldn't you have to modify your argument - the reversal physics/machine psychology - insofar that not only a substitution level exists (COMP), but that this level is "separable" from a possible universe-machine (the possibility of which we can't exclude at the beginning of the argument). A kind of qualified COMP, QCOMP? Of course, the variant where the whole universe is necessary for duplication would still be machine psychology, but at a different level - at the universe level (classical sense again) and not at the level of everday conception of persons. Maybe COMP with the assumption that consciousness needs whole universes to supervene on (I don't mean that a universe is conscious; persons, brains would be conscious, but they would need the surrounding computations supplied by the universe to provide "meaning") is even preferable to the view that one can duplicate a person from _within_ a universe (because of the white rabbit problem). Reading through my post above again, I believe that your COMP argument also works with the above conception. QCOMP and UNIVERSE-COMP would just be different as to what would be possible for us in _this_ universe: for instance, QCOMP would allow mind-uploading and teleportation and other such things in _this universe_ (materialist intuition again); while UNIVERSE-COMP would only allow this in Platonia, in the Universal deployment, which is inaccessible for manipulation for us inhabitants of the rather small (considered against Platonia) visible universe. Best Wishes, Günther --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---